Church Turns To Facebook To Find Priests 286
crimeandpunishment writes "The Catholic church of France isn't looking for friends on Facebook, it's looking for priests. The church has turned to Facebook as part of a campaign to attract young people to the priesthood, in an effort to combat its drastically dwindling number of priests. It may be working. The Facebook page attracted more than 1,200 fans in one week."
Sex offenders banned? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
A better, more old fashioned solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps they should actively seek to inspire people rather than trying to protect and defend themselves. There may have been a time when their church was above and beyond criticism, but those days are long gone. They need to accept this fact and focus on the positive rather than the negative. Furthermore, they need to look within themselves and to blame themselves for the current public opinion of their church. (In other words, instead of blaming the victims for speaking out, blame the people who did the victimizing!)
Then, after all that, do good works... LOTS of good works. That used to work in the past. These days, one rarely hears much about the good works of the church...
Just allow priests to marry already. (Score:5, Insightful)
It will largely take care of the pedophile problem and the dwindling number willing to be priests in one shot.
Priests marrying wasn't disallowed all throughout church history anyway, it was political nonsense to do away with questions of inheritance.
Re:A better, more old fashioned solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please refrain from pedophile jokes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please refrain from pedophile jokes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also wrong. The biggest threat to children are parents (or generally close family and "friends"). As with most of serious crime BTW...
Re:Just allow priests to marry already. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Catholic Church is the last (Christian) religious institution to have the "sacred dogma" marketability. It's a very large bullet point on their sales presentation slide. "We have been around the longest. We are full of mystical, intriguing quirks that lend to our legitimacy."
Once they start giving in to modern concepts (and giving up dogmas), they begin to lose that essence and have less to compete against other Christian sects with.
It's also a great source of pride, however depraved that may seem.
So, they need to change slowly. They don't want to seem like some willy nilly religion that makes arbitrary rules. THEIR rules are from God.
If they were to change in the midst of this pedophile scandal, it would seem as a reaction to the scandal and not edict from Heaven. That would lose credibility among followers, priests (who've had to be celibate all this time), and those potential followers looking in.
In other words, the writing's on the wall, but the situation is delicate.
Re:Please refrain from pedophile jokes... (Score:3, Insightful)
Alright, I'm an atheist! That means I can joke about it as much as I wish!
But I wont, because frankly it's just painful. But I'll give you some free advice (the worst kind, I know): if the best you can say to defend your own religion is that all other religions are just as bad or worse but have somehow managed to keep a lid on it... then maybe it's time to look for a new religion, or, and I say this from experience, to let go of them altogether.
Re:A better, more old fashioned solution (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think they can easily combat underlying circumstances. See, France and generally (though not as a whole...) Europe has changed, it's waking up. Secularization has progressed quite a lot; I wouldn't be surpised if, by the time of next Eurobarometer polls regarding faith, less than 50% of Europeans will declare themselves religious. It wasn't that far the last time...
Priesthood, being a priest simply lost its social prestige. It's not "cool" (and this FB campaign likely won't change that...even if they would show some of the excesses in seminaries or monasteries) anymore to have a priest in the family.
And no, they won't introduce changes proposed by you, not for the next few decades - remember that the Church is essentially run by the "elders" (and this trend will get stronger with few young priests); it's not only about their conservatism, also personal distaste - those are the men (well, supposedly...) who gave their entire lifes to church, distanced themselves from "earthly joys". Do you think they could bear the sight of young happy priests (also women), with families, happily fucking without any potential problems?
Re:Please refrain from pedophile jokes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod +5 funny. Or +5 naive. I'd love to think that there is some religion or non-religion that consistently makes people better people
But centuries of data shows otherwise.
Utimately, it comes down to individuals and their individual choices. I've known very good Chrisitans and very evil ones. I've known very good Atheists and ones who I certainly wouldn't trust my kids with.
The bottom line is that you need to judge people individually and not collectively
Re:Please refrain from pedophile jokes... (Score:5, Insightful)
In a word: Bullshit.
The biggest threat to kids is family, and family friends. Those statistics make all others look small.
Re:Please refrain from pedophile jokes... (Score:4, Insightful)
And even then, to be fair, back in the 1970's and before, there weren't mandatory reporting laws for sexual abuse. Society in general has become more aware of the problems; the Church really wasn't out of step with the prevailing attitudes.
(Of course, what does that say about their claims to be moral leaders?)
Re:A better, more old fashioned solution (Score:3, Insightful)
No, no, no.... Wrong approach... Allow women to be priests and make it mandatory to attend weekly orgies for clergy.
That would boast priesthood numbers for sure!
We don't need any more priests!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do people still believe in Christianity? It is 2010. Must we propagate this insanity any further?
Re:JUST WOW (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A better, more old fashioned solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:JUST WOW (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not the most ridiculous thing about this. Think about it, they're looking on Facebook for people who want to be celibate.
I don't rate their chances very highly.
Children + Facebook * church = .... dangerous? (Score:1, Insightful)
After so many scandals of the church.
I'm realy not proud of the religion, i'd rather would protect the innocent against any books of so called wisdom.
A religion works only on the personal level, and beyond that a few steps higher it becomes politics, scandals and greed for power.
On the small scale i do understand people need religion (for life and death situations) for social and emotional peace.
On a the big scale explain me why doesnt the top of all the main religions come together and settle their differences.
There would be much more peace, around in the world.
And no i dont feel empty because i lost big faith in it, i think its the 21 century; mankind has become smarter.
We know what stars are, we cannt proof to explain it all; but then why should we?
I have totaly no need to understand darkmatter gods, or alians;
I mean beeing normal these days is complex enough to me.
But somehow i'm able to pickout those people who are normal too, almost on sight.
I therefor rather believe in real people, people who sometimes are bright examples of living a good life.
But sometimes are people who make small mistakes, as long as they dont become dangerous > is that atheism to believe in people?
Re:A better, more old fashioned solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Dwindling in importance? Are you certain? EU is considered quite readily as one of the most major powers lately, culturally it retains its identity fine (plus look past popculture; and also from where most of that popculture originated...); and demographically it won't be that big of a problem, I suspect - yes, it will need a wave of immigrants...so? Sure, there are failure stories, but also huge success stories (the largest population of "Muslims" in EU is probably in Germany; rather nicely integrated)
As for the topic - the Catholic Church will of course continue to increase in so called "3rd world" countries. But remember it doesn't have to reform itself to do that... (I would even guess that would inhibit its growth in impoverished areas!)
And since its losing importance basically only in Europe (also the place of TFA), it's sensible to assume we're discussing only that area.
Why facebook? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bad taste slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)
This really falls in the So What List. The catholic church is looking for more priests whats new. So they are using Facebook as a tool. So what... A good for them.
Now this is just in bad taste for slashdot as it will only really be just a forum to make fun of problems that a religion is having.
This Ain't News for nerds, this isn't news for geeks, if you are not interested in joining the priesthood it doesn't even matter. You just wanted an other forum to make fun of catholics.
Proof please? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the schools, but the teacher unions do.
Last I checked teacher's unions don't have a lot of pull in the district attorney's office.
While false accusations are a real problem, I'm pretty sure I've never heard of a case of a teacher's union covering for a real sexual abuse case. Care to link to some actual proof for your assertion?
Re:A better, more old fashioned solution (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Please refrain from pedophile jokes... (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience any man who claims to have a more direct line to god (or the supernatural) than you should be avoided at any cost. I'm certain that if there would be no religious leaders there would be almost no problems with religion...
Re:Please refrain from pedophile jokes... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reality is that a child is far more likely to be molested by a family member or someone else they know then by priests, teachers, Boy Scout troop leaders, etc.
I'm not defending the Church's actions. They need to be punished and made to pay so severely that they never again put their own interests above the people they claim to be guiding and protecting. But the fact is that like everything else to do with the "for the children" kneejerkism of the modern age, it's as much hype and fear mongering as anything else.
Scaring parents is a major industry now. Journalism, or at least the semi-journalism of news magazine shows makes a killing off of it. Politicians get elected by it. Police get big budgets to sit on their fat asses playing around on Internet forums with it.
The odds are that your child is probably safer in church or in school than they are in their own bedroom.
Re:Proof please? (Score:3, Insightful)
Last I checked Catholic Church also supposedly didn't have a lot of pull in the attorney's offices throghout the world...
The jokes just write themselves, don't they? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:1, Insightful)
Here we go, do we expect slashdot to become a sectarian site as well? Can we keep to technology commenting and avoid moronic remarks on the church? Not all the technical
people are athiest. Guess what some of them are even catholic. Should I deduce from this comment and the previous one that you call them pedophile or a perv?
Re:A better, more old fashioned solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Same can be said about Texas, or Confederate vs. Union States.
Re:Please refrain from pedophile jokes... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you seek consistency in your beliefs, try agnosticism.
Were I to care about other people's faith I would rather recommend apatheistic ignosticism. Since I don't, I recommend spending your time on improving your area's data on OpenStreetmap rather than meditating about the finer aspects of particular faiths. Religion has yet to do anything useful for the world at large, but OSM has aided me innumerable times in the few years since its inception.
Re:JUST WOW (Score:5, Insightful)
Give me a break, those are all piss-poor examples. Psychologists don't give advice on how to best be mentally ill, and the job of divorce lawyers is to offer legal services, something they are indeed very experienced in.
Would you go to a relationship counsellor who was never in a relationship? Well, you might, but it is hardly surprising that those of us not already blinded might think twice about it.
Re:Young people (Score:2, Insightful)
what religious prick went and made all these posts troll. The vatican got fuckheads on /. too. You can't keep covering it up mr pope.Christian churches covered up the fact the priests were buggering altar boys.
Fuck you covering it up is almost as bad as doing it.
Re:Proof please? (Score:3, Insightful)
The teachers union did not defend him.
"The current system works for no one," United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said, adding that the union "has made repeated attempts to work with the administration to resolve the rubber-room issue, but the administration has preferred to grandstand rather than solve it."
Perhaps you should read the articles you quote to the end???
Re:JUST WOW (Score:3, Insightful)
If you really think that any sort of schooling can teach someone about relationships the same way schooling can teach a doctor medicine, or a lawyer the law, then you are delusional beyond hope.