Published: Tuesday, 14 February 2023 3:04:41 AM

''Andrew Collins The faithful say that they are the church. Yet they turned a blind eye to the rumours and stories. Then when they saw offenders jailed, they pretended nobody had any idea. When they heard details from the royal commission they refused to believe it, and made up excuses. They blamed the victims. And they kept giving money, even after they heard that it was used to pay for lawyers and to take care of offenders and pay victims. They put their heads in the sand.

THEY ARE JUST AS MUCH TO BLAME.

Thier inactions have allowed the abuses to continue. Why haven't they marched up to the bishops offices, demanding that every single offender be removed from their church? That their church stops fighting victims? That their church shows leadership to every other person on the planet that child sexual abuse should never be tolerated? That the victims be cared for and treated with love and respect? That those who covered up be expelled or sanctioned?

They have allowed their church leaders to act this way. Good people wouldn't stand back and do nothing. Good people would take action. If their Church is a paedophile protecting church then they are responsible. They need to fix it.''

JohnB: Andrew Collins I do understand that this a vexed issue that even the Royal Commission became bogged and divided on on multiple occasions.

SNAP Australia article 10 February 10:36 The Catholic (and others for that matter) laity's part in clerical sexual abuse of children.

There are many ways to look at the issue when it comes to the actions of individuals. When doing so we need to be mindful of several known factors that are relevant to survivor/victims of abuse of the kind that we encounter when attempting to come to a decision or a conclusion as to the actions and responses that we ourselves have and those we are assessing have.

The following are some only of the basic aspects that come into play for all of us who are entwined in the global crimes of the Catholic and other religions against vulnerable people. These are women, children (male and female and anywhere in-between on the spectrum) and men in approximately that order. Access and vulnerability are primary considerations.

a) Each individual's response to being abused is unique; there is no reasonable response to an unreasonable situation.

b) The standards by which we judge or asses someone are a mixed and varied set of conditions dependent on our own experiences and on where each of us is in our own recovery.

c) Each of us experience our own form of denial (As defined by whichever diagnostic guide we are using at the time).

d) Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that become necessary when something essential is lacking. (Alice Miller "For Your own Good" The roots of Violence in Childrearing. Miller is a world renowned author across the world but is not well known or widely recognized or acknowledged in Australia.

e) The default state for humans is to trust (Robert Sapolsky - World renowned expert on human biology, neuroscience and much more).

f) The role of the Amygdala is to learn who and what not to trust (Sapolsky).

g) We live in a Christian cultural hegemony that has defined our legal and justice systems and more for more than 100 years.

h) The law is decades behind the reality of what it is to be a human being - the nearest and most easily understood description of that that I am aware of is openly discussed by Sapolsky and Alan Alda in the following video Sapolsky and Alan Alda

i) The order of precedence of events is of paramount importance.

j) When all of the above have been taken into account including our own responses to our own abuse and our own projections and our own disconnections and dissociation then we are possibly in an appropriate position to make public judgements and assessments on others. Other unknown or unmentioned, or unintentional requirements may need to be added to this list.

k) An assessor must at all times provide procedural fairness and natural justice. The decision maker must only take into account the relevant facts and ignore the irrelevant facts.

l) If your premise is false all that follows will also be false.

j) Given our propensity to anthropomorphize other humans we are prone to that form of blindness.

k) Our ability to pattern match with and to recall with accuracy is also an essential in discussions like this.

Until then we are not working with the best possible grasp of the spectrum of issues that both we and the individual we are assessing or may be experiencing or my have experienced in the past are included together with a balanced perspective of our own biases and limitations in regard our intention or motivations with respect to the outcome or assessment we are aiming for.

Andrew Collins Your statements would be valid if the premise that "The faithful say that they are the church" is true and partially correct; unfortunately it is only partially true and correct as some do say or claim that they are the church while others do not.

That makes it difficult to apportion blame in the above way, which does not serve to clarify the situation as many assertions have to be qualified on the basis of fact. The basis on which some of the above assertions are made cannot be claimed to be valid and applicable to all laity.

It is correct that some laity are responsible to some degree. Some did stand up and speak out, some were further abused when they did attempt to raise awareness. The actions of some did play a role in continuing the abuses. Some did march up to the bishops offices and were lied to as usual.

Others were too afraid to do anything. Those that did demand that the church should stop fighting victims (This would include the many victims still bonded to the the church) and those who demanded that the church shows leadership to every other person on the planet is simply not feasible as there are billions of people who see no relevance or importance in the weasel words of a complicit pope or other Church leadership as in the view of many applying more mythology, more fallacious claims and more outlandish claims and endless spurious measures and long wordy named panels simply cannot resolve the issue of clergy raping children just as you or I individually cannot achieve that.

Many people will be outraged by your deferral to this corrupt Church and many more will find your notion to be both absurd and undemocratic in our secular country. Others will resist with every recourse at hand as if your ideals were to be fruitful we would quickly fall into a more advanced stage of a the current Christian cultural hegemony than we already have. Many will be more than outraged at the attempt to embolden a foreign state to interfere with the sovereignty of Australia and it's rules and laws of governance and many would also see that as a act of treason.

Why? The Roman Catholic Church is the property of and in the control of the Vatican' that is why we have am embassy in Rome via the Holy See; also because the role of governance and sovereignty in our country places that burden on to the state and federal governments pf Australia as well as the Chief ministers of each territory simply because no-one wants to have a bigger and more powerful hegemony thant we have and continue to have and still allows religions to pervert the course of justice for every victim of sexual crimes in the country.

The failure is in fact a failure of governance by our own governments which have been extensively infiltrated by badly affected psychotic, psychopathic, misogynistic compromised people of religion and those who gain benefit, power and control over large numbers of Australian people.

I have a personal preference for my own hypothesis which I have published as the home page with additional notes and is open for public review and public discussion along with this page at any time which can be made via +61 075 64 12311 or by emailing me at john@traumainreligion.com with a subject line that includes a reference to this article by including it's identifier of 'about article 676'

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