I usually don’t elevate to Comment of the Day status comments that illustrate common fallacies and lack of perception. I’ve done it a few times: I know it can seem mean. But Cici’s Comment of the Day so exemplifies the abysmal level of comprehension and critical thought so many of our fellow citizens suffer from, thus making them prime targets of misdirection in this election year, that I felt attention should be paid.
Here was Cici’s comment, one of many she offered, on the post about the foreign and domestic Left arguing that a U.S. Presidential candidate should not be allowed free rein to say whatever he chose to in a discussion with Elon Musk, who owns the platform where the discussion was taking place:
“Third parties decide what you read and hear all the time. And I’m not even arguing for that so I’m not sure where you got that from. I trust that people in charge of these platforms are able to factcheck properly.
I don’t share in your mistrust of “institutions.” I think that leads to people not knowing what’s even true or not. You’re free to disagree with that notion.”
Analysis:
1. Cici is satisfied to allow faceless ideologues, corporate toadies and others censor the news and social media platforms. I stated that it was absurd to trust such people and others to restrict, control and manipulate what we know about the world, and that I do not and will not. “Third parties decide what you read and hear all the time” was her response, a variety of Rationalization #1, “Everybody Does It” (so it’s okay!)
It is not okay. It would be okay if the people making these decisions were smarter, more virtuous and more ethical than everyone else, but they are not and never have been. As much as I can, I do not let any one source decide what I am going to learn and believe. Long ago, even before I first started dealing with reporters and learned how routinely they misquoted me and everyone else, I realized that the more I knew about a subject, the less accurate and the more mistaken (or dishonest) I would find news reports about that subject. Indeed, third parties do decide what most people get to know about the world around them, and that is a serious handicap to life competence and democracy. One can minimize the effect of this, largely because of the internet, but most Americans, like Cici, lack the time, interest, curiosity, skill or erudition to do it.
2. “I trust that people in charge of these platforms are able to fact check properly.” The people in charge of these platforms use ideologically biased “factcheckers” like Snopes and PolitiFact, and that they are biased, dishonest and corrupt is not a matter of serious dispute. Cici is new to Ethics Alarms, and obviously hasn’t read the voluminous commentary here about unreliable and biased “factchecks.” Factchecking is almost always a tactic to disguise advocacy as objectivity. Elon Musk’s “X” has readers do the factchecking, and that has drawbacks as well.
As a more general point, why would anybody trust someone they don’t know or know anything about to control the information one has access to? That is literally what Cici says in her comment: she trusts…oh, whoever. I’m sure they’re fine. Why? Why would anyone reach such a conclusion? Answer: it’s easier that way. Just like its easier to love Big Brother than to have hungry rats bore through your face.
In addition, we have learned that the government puts pressure on the social media platforms to censor certain stories; before that, we learned that prominent journalists sometimes give the objects of their reporting veto power over some stories. There is no reason to “trust that people in charge of these platforms are able to fact check properly,” or more to the point, that they will do it “properly” even if they are able to. There are many reasons to believe they won’t, because controlling what the public reads and hears is power, and power corrupts.
3. This leads to the third assertion in the Comment of the Day, and the one that made me decide to post it here. “I don’t share in your mistrust of “institutions.” I think that leads to people not knowing what’s even true or not. You’re free to disagree with that notion.”
The first part of the statement is, to me, the equivalent of someone saying “I don’t share your belief in arithmetic.” I regularly post and discuss Gallop’s annual survey of public trust in occupations, professions and institutions, and the percentages have been going down sharply across the categories year after year. That’s because every one of the occupations, professions and institutions has been revealed as less trustworthy as time goes on.
To responsibly trust an institution (profession, occupation), one must be able to rely on it all the time, recognizing that there will be periodic anomalies and mistakes. The Catholic Church allowing predator priests to molest children worldwide was not an anomaly: you can’t trust that institution. Harvard installing as president a serial plagiarist and free speech opponent who quickly proved incompetent simply because she was a “diversity” advocate was a university-wide betrayal of the organization’s values and alumni, and the culmination of decades of rot. Can’t trust Harvard. Or Columbia. Or Yale. Or MIT…gee, I guess you can’t really trust higher education.
Public Education? At a recent Harris campaign event, a public school teacher proudly stated, “I saw education for what it really was. The greatest instrument of social justice in this country.” Our schools are ideological indoctrination factories; it’s one reason we home schooled our son. Watching classes on Zoom during the lockdown, parents realized just how terrible public school instruction is. No, we can’t trust the schools…nor the unions, the medical profession, academia, scientific research, bar associations (in California a bar protected a powerful member who was stealing millions from clients), the judiciary (Manhattan’s Trump trial proved that) including the Supreme Court (Clarence Thomas needs to resign) the FBI, the CDC, the Secret Service, corporations, sports organizations, ethicists (don’t get me started!), historians…and, of course, journalists, possibly the worst of all. Congress? A member of Congress set off a false fire alarm to interfere withe a vote, lied about it, pleaded guilty to the crime, and was allowed to keep making laws anyway. The executive Branch? It just was caught in a long conspiracy to hide the mental decline of the President, involving the news media in the cover-up. How about Hollywood? Even as it was posturing about women’s rights, it was allowing its most powerful producer to use his power to force aspiring actresses into having sex.
I could go on and on, but I shouldn’t have to. Trusting in any of our institutions at this time in our history can only be a product of desperate wishful thinking.
4. The last statement is…I don’t know, sad? “I think [distrusting institutions] leads to people not knowing what’s even true or not.” No, not having trustworthy institutions leads to people not knowing what’s “even true or not.” Distrusting those institutions because they have proven untrustworthy—then making that distrust known and behaving accordingly—at least begins the process of exposure and reform. Cici is saying, I think, that it’s scary thinking that we don’t know what’s true, so the best approach is to decide to believe that what we are hearing and reading is all there is. The alternative, that we are being manipulated and deceived to serve the interests of others, is too horrible to contemplate.
No. You determine what is happening, what has gone wrong, and you set out to fix it, in the best interests of your community, society and nation. That’s the American way. The Cicis among us just make it more difficult, and it’s very difficult already.
Ethics Alarms 
Third parties decide what you read and hear all the time…
Yes, it is totally fine for journalists, the news media, blog writers, publishers, etc to decide what you read and hear. What’s the alternative?
You’re not really arguing that freedom of speech means freedom of reach are you?
Even 4chan has a policy on what you can post. Don’t YOU have a policy on what you allow on your blog no one even reads?
I’m not reading the rest of your post because your argument style is exhausting. Peace YO
“I’m not reading the rest of your post because your argument style is exhausting. Peace YO”
Why is thinking so exhausting? Be honest with yourself, you only trust that with which validates your preconceived ideas. That is all there is to it.
“Even 4chan has a policy on what you can post. Don’t YOU have a policy on what you allow on your blog no one even reads?”
You do realize that this statement is not materially different than of what Trump is accused with respect to misinformation. It is hyperbole to say that this is a blog that no one even reads. Obviously it is not the case given you have been responded to by others. Thinking people can discern the difference between substantive lies and sales puffery and hyperbole.
“You’re not really arguing that freedom of speech means freedom of reach are you?”
Do you understand the difference between editorial control by the purveyor of the report and the use of either government, or third parties that intimidate others from monetizing a platform in order to control reach. The first is something we accept. You can see the difference in editorial control between Fox and MSNBC or OAN and CNN. You get different perspectives and stories that align with the purveyors ideals. Conversely, when the government works with social media to block ideas they do not want to reach people that is a civil rights violation. When the government works through third parties like GEM to intimidate advertisers with boycotts if they advertise on an information source that does not align with the parties narrative that is called Fascism. When organizations like GEM do it independently to advance a globalist ideal it is very close to organized criminal behavior. Imagine if your news reports had to have the government stamp of approval before it could air or be printed.
And to answer you question, to my knowledge no idea is censored here if it its presented in good faith. Some people get banned for continued violation of his Jack’s rules after being warned multiple times and trolling but their original idea was not censored. The series of posts that lead to such a ban may be taken down after the banning.
An excellent response. I was going to call out Cici’s misinformation regarding readership here, but you beat me to it. It’s possible that Cici will find your argument style exhausting.
P.S. For Cici to label Jack’s argument style exhausting, that would necessarily mean that 1) Cici may not fully understand reasoning and debate, and 2) Cici never read any of Alizia Tyler’s responses in this arena.
Cici never read any of Alizia Tyler’s responses in this arena.
Oh, that takes me back. That was some next level stuff right there. And Yet, it was still nice to have her around. Not a fan of Charlie Kirk, but I whole agree with his permeance if people are talking, good things can happen. Its only when they stop do bad things happen.
I think she’s headed for ban territory.
I’m surprised she (?) has gotten this far.
PWS
I am too. I wonder if she’s calling it quits after her reply above, but if she’s not, I hope she looks at what others have been saying and will strive to elaborate more on her stances. More discussion and debate is always helpful.
I THINK she self-banned.
Jack,
Assuming an institution realizes its mistakes, acknowledges that it has behaved in such a way to lose trust, and initiates a program to regain trust, what would be the criteria you would use to say trust has been restored? Frankly, I have the same issue with trying to formulate how a convict can rebuild trust with society. I think the following points are critical:
What else should be added to that list, and is anything on that list incorrect?
Direct and adverse consequences for each and every individual involved in a timely fashion. We have not seen that from the Catholic Church.
The other question is when a breach of trust is so massive and destructive that the actor permanently forfeits the privilege of being trusted again. When does the Scorpion and the Frog kick in?
Jack,
If you can show that the betrayal of trust is intrinsic to the institution, then the parable of the Scorpion and the Frog would be applicable. After all, the scorpion’s explanation was that it was in its nature to sting. So, in keep with a court decision I just recently read, either the institution would have to have betrayal of trust as part of its mission statement, or one would have show overwhelming evidence that such a betrayal of trust was part and parcel of the institution that it doesn’t matter what the institute says its mission statement is.
In the case of the Catholic Church, the molestation that was covered up is so fundamentally contrary to the Church’s teaching that on the face the parable doesn’t apply. And I would argue that despite how widespread the molestation was, that does not stand as sufficient reason to say the Church is not actually opposed to molestation. Molestation has shown itself having invaded so many institutions across so many countries that I think it is like a pandemic, and the Catholic Church was so quickly diagnosed with the disease for the very fact that the Church is so adamantly opposed to such sexual depravity. But that’s just my opinion, and going off topic.
I don’t think the Scorpion and the Frog necessarily applies to journalism, at least in the classic sense of reporting the news. Advocacy journalism is probably a scorpion. But assuming all these news organizations admitted they had admitted they allowed their mission to be corrupted, held the responsible people accountable, and promised to return to “Just the facts, ma’am,” what more would they need to do to regain trust?
Ryan, here’s who I am: The second son of a devoted “Vatican I” Irish Catholic mother. My mother’s greatest wish was her two boys (she wanted to have at least ten kids but started too late) to become priests, or monsignors, or maybe even bishops. Catholic kindergarten, grade school, high school and law school. Altar boy through grade school. Quit going to mass as soon as I got my driver’s license, plus I couldn’t stomach guitar masses and vernacular mass. One Marist brother at my high school propositioned my friend, another was banging another friend’s divorcee mother. I taught in Catholic grade school for a year and a Catholic high school for two years. So, trust me, I know the Church. In my opinion, the Catholic hierarchy has been nothing but a gay cabal for centuries, perhaps millennia. It is rotten to its core. They’ve kept women out of the priesthood so there wouldn’t be anyone anywhere near the rectories to break up the party. Gay guys prey on younger (likely gay, but maybe not) guys. It’s what they do. The church will never, ever be rid of, never mind address the problem. Which is tragic.
If it were me, I would say no. The problem a lot of new commenters have is that they wade in and don’t know when to stop. It is a skill you need to learn.
And, even though I have learned it, it is difficult to do sometimes.
Granting a cooling down period (even, perhaps, after you have demanded an answer) is probably a good policy.
Absent a clear indication someone intends not to come back, I would not presume it.
-Jut
I took “Peace YO” to be the equivalent of “Good day, sir!” No?
Depends.
It could just be, “I am done with this conversation.”
Of course, if she never appears again, that would say something. If you see occasional comments in the near future (especially on non-Trump/Harris posts, that’s a different thing).
Doubtful, but she could be perusing the Rationalizations List and comment policies as we speak.
-Jut
I would view that as a victory.
Well, I let her get away with “fuck you,” which I took as a somewhat justified “bite me” after I suggested that she was a fool, which, of course, she obviously is. She also just pings at least two other reasons for banning: claiming that the news media isn’t biased (though she hasn’t done this directly, only by inference)and the Stupidity Rule. Sadly, Cici just isn’t very bright. When you complain that basic substantive argument techniques (as opposed to “this is just what I think, so there!”) are “exhausting,” its time to move over to the Nickelodeon site.
I was going to suggest the proper terminology was, in fact, “Bite Me!”
But, I did not want to provoke her into worse behavior.
-Jut
I can say without a doubt, I have said things that make Jack want to pull out any hair he can find (I’m in the same boat, FWIW). I have said things he hates, things he definitely does not agree with, and things that he thought were idiotic. To tell the truth, I have brought up points that I don’t believe because I thought they were valid points that no one was considering and I thought they should be discussed. Jack has let me do all of that throughout the years.
I probably have gotten mad and crossed the line a time or two, but I haven’t been banned. The breadth of ideas allowed here is truly vast. To participate in this blog for any length of time requires some tolerance, the ability to reason, and the ability to explain your points in a way that others can understand them.
Proofreading skills are thankfully optional.
Thankfully.
Strangely enough, the commentariat here approves of detailed analysis, nuanced thought, and evaluation of arguments against previously defined standards. If you find Jack’s style exhausting, what drew you to his blog in the first place? What about the blog sparked a desire to comment? Are you here to engage, or just showing up to denounce what you think is wrong, without any substantive backing? And keep in mind, the concern about substantive backing is not whether your conclusion is right or wrong, but what premises you use to reach a conclusion. If you are feeling misunderstood, please note that you have not provided sufficient context for understanding.
Yes, it is totally fine for journalists, the news media, blog writers, publishers, etc to decide what you read and hear. What’s the alternative?
What they do not do is decide what people read and hear on other platforms.
Sorry Cici, but I’m not at all happy with journalists deciding what we should hear all the time, which is why I follow multiple media sources and keep an eye on sites that compare which articles appear in which media.
You often find stories that seem pretty important only appear in left leaning or right leaning sites.
Here in Australia, when confronted by people supporting censoring ‘Disinformation’ I ask them, since they are usually supporters of the Labour Party (think, the Australian version of the Democrats):
“Would you be happy to have the Liberal Party (Republican-ish?) deciding what is disinformation and blocking anything they don’t like?”
Suddenly they are horrified at the thought; but given that Labour holds the Federal Government and every State and Territory Government at the moment they don’t see it as a great concern.
During the first Trump administration, every so often my sister would be totally outraged by something that the administration or Trump had done that totally violated human rights or some such thing.
The first few times I heard such things, I had no response as they were actions no sane person would condone. But then I started noticing a pattern — there would be this heinous act or action, reported by MSNBC, sparking massive outrage. A week or two later, however, the issue had disappeared (as an analogy, think of the outrage after Jan. 6. It was like by Jan. 27, the whole incident had been forgotten).
Why was this, I wondered? Well, I started doing some research when issues surfaced and found — hmm, this is only being reported on MSNBC and CNN. If one found the issue elsewhere, it was a completely different story. Well, fool me once. I learned never to take MSNBC at face value because they LIED to us all the time (their lips were moving……).
Now, I am not naive enough to think that other outlets such as FOX don’t engage in similar conduct. However, at least with FOX, there tends to be some factual basis for their stories, they don’t seem to typically make them up out of whole cloth. And the venom I constantly hear on MSNBC is just astounding. Fox is partisan, but I don’t hear the viciousness.
Bottom line — if one of these networks shows me a burning aircraft in a big hole in the ground, well I am prepared to accept that a plane fell out of the sky. But I might also do some research to make sure.
“But I might also do some research to make sure.”
If your Mother says she loves you, check it out.
PWS
By “alternative” do you mean “what should they be doing instead”? In that case, the alternative is for journalists and such to report accurate and honest information about what is in the public interest, and not merely the writers’ own. For example, if you’re an investigative journalist, and you’re given a tip about the local factory doing illegal waste dumping, but you pass on that story because your sister works there and will be out of a job if the factory shuts down, you are behaving unethically, betraying your profession and your readers. You are deciding what is fit to print at the expense of public interest.
Or, if by “alternative” you mean “what is the alternative for us consumers”, I suggest the following: Take everything you see, hear, and read with a grain of salt, including info from the “fact-checkers”. Be especially wary of sensationalized clickbait (from any side). Examine the claims being made, look up the original sources, and get your news from a wide variety of media. And take the time to study up on a subject before you pontificate on it. What I, (and I expect our host), find exasperating about newcomers like you is you come across something like this blog that doesn’t agree with you, respond with generic party-line talking points and think you’ve scored a victory. You don’t take the time to understand the forum you’ve entered, and as a result you’ve learned nothing and persuaded nobody.
Great comment. Thank you.
Going beyond what you said though, it’s a tough question to answer. Your first paragraph outlines an easy call of ethical failure, but the tough calls are what get you.
What if the journalist thinks waste dumping is inconsequential because it’s a relatively tiny amount, or because he doesn’t care about that part of town? I’d guess that more often than not, people are blinded by their own bias into believing they are not doing anything unethical. “Oh, I don’t need to cover Walz’s lie about combat service. Others will and it’s not even a big deal to begin with. But Trump did say that Harris uses AI, and that just shows he’s a liar.”
That is an easier call too, because an objective journalist (or commenter!) would recognize that it’s a double standard created by bias.
I think the answer is a combination of critical thinking (learning to read between the lines when reading articles, ESPECIALLY when you’re reading things that agree with you. It’s easy to read between the lines when you’re already critical of the message) and seeking out a wide variety of sources. I’m unpleasantly surprised to see close family members who apparently do not know how to read between the lines when they read news articles, and it seems that Cici fits that description as well. Because why would you need to do that when they’ve always decided what’s fit to print?
She’s a talking point spouter on someone’s payroll.
You can’t argue with talking point spouters. They just go to the next talking point.
True…and if I wanted real talking points from the Democratic Party, I could simply turn on CNN, since they will spout whatever the DNC tells them. Let’s see, we’ve had “Trump and Vance are weird”…that was original. Then earlier this week, it was “Harris is bringing joy to the campaign”…which I translate as “Harris couldn’t debate her way around a single-celled amoeba (much less deal with Vladimir Putin), but here’s a smile!”
And that whole crowd size/AI thing was a major plot point for Cici.
I’ve been wondering about that. While it wouldn’t surprise me that activist groups, political parties, and campaign offices employ online evangelists, I haven’t seen any concrete proof this is the case. I would think that paid spouters would generally leave just one comment and move on to the next blog, spreading their talking points far and wide. While Cici quit earlier than some, they still stuck around for a couple of posts, and many stick around until they are banned. I would also think at some point somebody would expose a major comment-farming operation.
The Catholic Church allowing predator priests to molest children worldwide was not an anomaly: you can’t trust that institution.
It is not just the Catholic Church, you know.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/465538/Islamic-teacher-who-molested-girl-11-escapes-jail-as-wife-doesn-t-speak-English
If you want people to come here and learn from you, Jack, you can’t expect them to already know what you’re trying to teach them. They’re going to be wrong about things. How you communicate that to them will influence whether they actually learn anything or just write you off. They won’t be able to tell the difference between someone who knows what he’s talking about and just another enemy who happens to sound smart.
You can maintain a space where you don’t have to deal with ignorant people, or you can expand your influence, but you can’t use the same space for both purposes.
Moreover, if you learn enough about someone’s point of view to teach them, you may realize they’re right about some things as well.
EC. I don’t know how you communicate with someone who thinks “I don’t share in your mistrust of “institutions.” I think that leads to people not knowing what’s even true or not” makes sense.
I believe I engage with commenters more than anyone on the web. It’s too much as it is: I’ve made almost 65.000 comments. In a seminar, or a tutoring session, I am confident that I could even help Cici (within limits). But I don’t have time–and besides, people like this don’t listen. I kept asking for 10 examples of what she considered “Trump” lies, and all she could do was to keep repeating the AI crowd story. I could come up with ten, easily. She couldn’t because she was basing her comments on what others said was true, and she preferred to believe “others” than engage with someone trying to explain something. You will note that before banning someone, I often write, “You are wasting my time.”
Do not engage with talking point spouters. It’s futile. You might as well talk to a low-grade artichoke. They’re just here to gum up the works. And boy, do they ever.
In one sense, I find it entertaining to see these people venture out of their echo chamber and be gob-smacked by the fact that not everyone sees the world the way they do. I kind of miss the days when the blog had more traffic and we had a wide variety of commenters; many of whom needed a wake-up call.
In another sense, the value I see in responding to people like Cici is that even if they reject the other point of view, a seed can still get planted, and others pushing back in the future against the same trite talking points can possibly dig through the bias armor. Also, while pushing back against talk-point evangelists in their own echo chambers is generally futile, pushing back in forums like this, benefit passive readers who may be open to new ideas, or nee reinforcement in their own skepticism.
By the way, who doesn’t know what “hooey” means?
I’ve known it as a synonym for nonsense, but a couple of Google searches led me to Hooey Magazine, which I’m guessing is where the term comes from.
That’s great! I never knew that!
“I trust that people in charge of these platforms are able to fact check properly.”
I do not. I think they have proven repeatedly to us that they have no interest in properly fact checking, that their ‘fact checks’ are mostly used to further a political or social agenda.
Let’s use a baseball analogy. Suppose the home plate umpire is very consistent in calling pitches that are an inch outside the formal strike zone. But he always calls those pitches strikes when the Red Sox are batting and balls when the Yankees are at the plate.
Would you trust that umpire? Well, if one is a die hard Yankees fan, perhaps the answer would be year. For anyone else, after you see this conduct for a while you aren’t going to trust that ump. And, of course, if you’re a die hard Red Sox fan you might be looking for a gently sloping roof nearby……
———-
Ronald Reagan famously said, “Trust but verify”. The appropriate statement here would be more like “Verify because you’ve proven we can’t trust you.”
You have described the “dishonest waiter” as described in the film “Denial.” Here was the last time I referenced it:https://ethicsalarms.com/2024/05/06/rfk-jr-supporters-are-going-to-sue-meta-facebook-instagram-good/
OB,
I’m not directly replying to you so the comment tree can start over again from the left.
Here’s who I am: I am the son of a nominally Catholic mother from an Irish Catholic family, and a Methodist father who nominally converted to Catholicism when I was two. We went to Mass each Sunday growing up. As I was born in ’81, Mass was Novus Ordo, and I never knew the Tridentine form of the Mass. I dutifully attended CCD through confirmation, which was in 11th grade, but went to public school. By the time I graduated from high school and was heading off to college, I could not more have described to you the difference between Catholics, Episcopals, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Mormons.
In college, I fell away from all faith. I was a depressed, lonely young man, and one night while wandering the streets of Laramie, I checked in at a Catholic Church, vaguely inspired to see if God had anything to say to me. The doors were locked. I walked away, thinking there was nothing more useless than Christianity.
Fast forward a couple of years, and I landed myself into a good deal of trouble. Even worse, I found myself still behaving in the ways that got me into trouble, even though I should have been vehemently straightened out from the experience. While by that time I had become engaged and hoping to marry a Catholic girl, I was at one of the lowest points of my life. And then I had something of a Damascus Road moment. I won’t go into the details (math was heavily involved, believe it or not), but the more I learned about the Catholic faith, the more I craved to keep learning. I returned to the Catholic Church in March 2008, and have been faithful since.
I don’t want to at all dismiss what you lived through, OB, nor what thousands of victims endured at the hands of pedophile priests. I am angered at the Church hierarchy for not doing a better job handling the situation, for often burying the problem, and for often striving to keep face rather than admit the truth. I feel a great sorrow for the lives that were ruined, and then were summarily dismissed in order to protect the Church’s reputation. However, I do think it is almost impossible to look at the Church with a neutral outlook when one has been gravely wounded by a member of the clergy.
In my research, what I concluded is the following. The vast bulk of incidents of clergy abuse happened between 1950 and 1980. At that time, the Church had implemented a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” policy regarding a man’s sexual preference, and a large number of men with same-sex attraction entered the clergy. I am inclined to believe that a number of those did so with the intent to change the Church from within, though I don’t have concrete evidence of that. What is interesting is that men with same-sex attraction ended up being four times more prevalent in the Catholic clergy than in the populace at large, and yet a smaller percentage of those men committed abuses than did their counterparts outside the Catholic clergy. However, even that smaller segment of homosexual priests committed the lion’s share of the abuse, and the vast majority of that abuse was directed at adolescent boys.
Once the extent of the clergy abuse was revealed, the Church implemented a large number of pastoral reforms, which actually helped serve as templates for other bodies who have since discovered sexual abuse problems in their midst. The Church now faces not greater insurance liability than any other religious organization, thanks to those reforms. I don’t think the ship is entirely righted; I think there are still answers that need uncovered at the Vatican, but from my vantage, it seems that the Church has done a decent job of cleaning house.
In my studies, I have also learned that this abuse crisis is hardly the first clergy scandal the Church has faced. From popes that kept mistresses, to popes that were practically heads of criminal organizations (I’m looking at the d’Medici’s), to corrupt clergy who fleeced their flocks, to, yes, homosexual orgies in various parishes and diocese, there have been periods in Church history where these abuses flared up. And always these resulted in the cry for restoration, the rise of saintly people who influence the Church back to a right path, and the Church would return to its course and keep going. For two thousand years the clergy have been trying to destroy the Church, and they have not succeeded. That in itself should be considered a miracle.
However, even that smaller segment of homosexual priests committed the lion’s share of the abuse, and the vast majority of that abuse was directed at adolescent boys.
That is an important thing to remember.
The cast majority of abuse by rthese priests was done against adolescent boys, while in society at large, the vast majority of abuse is done against adolescent girls.
The vast bulk of incidents of clergy abuse happened between 1950 and 1980
That is also an important thing to remember.