The article frames this as a priest being outed for his sexual preferences but that is a terribly warped perspective.
This priest, as all Catholic priests do, _voluntarily_ took a life long vow to abstain from any sexual relations. He was wantonly breaking that while hiding it from his community. Worse, he was literally on the committee creating regulations to discipline other priests for violations against that very same vow he was breaking. It’s always sad to see a man not live up to his own convictions, but this was a particularly egregious case of hypocrisy as well. It would have been much better for him to withdraw from public life once he knew he couldn’t keep his vows.
This is not an instance of an innocent man being outed. It’s a case of a man committing canonical crimes who got caught via anonymized location data. I am worried about some of the future implications as the article states, but what happened in this instance is a good thing.
The issue with assigning guilt from the actions of ancestors is that not everyone is guilty.
I’m first generation Canadian. Is it fair that I should pay for the sins of your great grandfathers when mine weren’t even in the country? Canada accepts 300k immigrants per year. Since the closure of the residential schools, (very roughly speaking) 9m people have entered the country so it’s not a small number we’re talking about here.
There’s also the added issue that not everyone supported the residential schools. What if my ancestors protested the system? Should I still pay reparations?
I agree the quality of life on the reserves is a real problem that needs to be fixed but pushing the blame on the children of the settlers (or not even their children!) is not a good solution.
The crusades were armies raised in response to the Muslim invasions of Christian countries. Motivations varied between religious (defense of the Christians being oppressed) to political (I want a kingdom to rule over) [1].
The documented death rate of the inquisitions is on the order of 4500 people over 400 years [1]. That’s a rate of 11 people per year.
Aztec sacrifice estimates are on the scale of 20,000 to 250,000 per year. [2]
In actual fact, the Aztecs are in a far worse light than the Dominicans and Franciscans. The Nazi comparison is valid. There’s no society on earth that would end innocent life on that scale for another 500 years.
The article frames this as a priest being outed for his sexual preferences but that is a terribly warped perspective.
This priest, as all Catholic priests do, _voluntarily_ took a life long vow to abstain from any sexual relations. He was wantonly breaking that while hiding it from his community. Worse, he was literally on the committee creating regulations to discipline other priests for violations against that very same vow he was breaking. It’s always sad to see a man not live up to his own convictions, but this was a particularly egregious case of hypocrisy as well. It would have been much better for him to withdraw from public life once he knew he couldn’t keep his vows.
This is not an instance of an innocent man being outed. It’s a case of a man committing canonical crimes who got caught via anonymized location data. I am worried about some of the future implications as the article states, but what happened in this instance is a good thing.