he made the devil so much stronger than a man

(Continued from part VIII.)

This may seem like a cheap shot, but I feel compelled to answer something.

(from the media album)

I'm thinking these facts are relevant to this situation:

• In a case involving a priest who sexually abused possibly up to two hundred deaf boys, the Roman Catholic bishops and cardinals overseeing the matter directly chose not to prosecute. One of those cardinals later became the current Pope.
• Donald McGuire, now defrocked, is considered by many to be a 'predator priest', in that he spent the years from 1964 to 1980--at least, if not longer--sexually molesting boys under his care. However, priests who both worked alongside him and supervised him did little to remove him from his holy office, choosing instead to shift him to different communities--which gave him more opportunities for molestation.
• Former priest Michael Baker was charged on a dozen counts of child sexual molestation, was convicted on two, and it all could have been avoided if Cardinal Roger Mahoney had done something back in 1986. He did nothing.

You want more? There are literally thousands of cases from Boston, where priests were routinely moved around the parishes by the Archdiocese to avoid prosecution. And there are cases worldwide, it's not just a US phenomenon.

Now, am I saying that each and every Catholic is culpable? Of course not. And it was a pretty stupid thing for Zen to say, too. But what I am saying--which I think is relevant to the main--is that each priest who knew something was going on, each bishop, each cardinal, and yes, even the Pope himself--these men are culpable. Because any one of them could have stopped this. At the very least, stood up and said it was wrong, and tried to stop the molestation from continuing.

There is a wide, vast world of difference between predatory priests, and a bunch of people who wear pixelated tights and 'fight crime' on Second Life. A truly deep and important difference, in that, at the end of the day, what went wrong in the church cases still carries lasting harm, harm that has persisted for decades.

But, I think it is also important to note that, as long as we're interpreting this argument, I will go on record as saying yes--any individual who is part of the JLU who knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that these are actual transcripts of meetings that they have attended, or that people they know have attended; that they know for a fact that the individuals named took these actions; that (since they have access to the wiki) they have the power to look up meeting transcripts and read them...I'm going to say that for anyone who isn't remaining willfully ignorant, yes--they are as responsible as the people who broke into medical records and put those real life details on the internet. Absolutely.