This article was brought to my attention last week. “Why Humanists shouldn’t join in this Catholic-Bashing” by Brenden O’Neill.
I disagree with O’Neill on a number of views:
1) O’Neill suggests that two factors need to be considered in the Church’s sex scandal “the backward cult of victimhood and the 
dominant ‘new atheist’ prejudice against any institution with strong beliefs.” I can agree with the first observation that the victims, young children would have been terribly confused as to what to do after being raped. Their parents told them to trust priests and that priests are there as representatives of Jesus, whom they have been told is someone they should worship. Does a child tell her parents, another adult, who does she trust? And when she tells someone, do they believe her? And IF they believe her, do they have the guts to questions their own pastor or religious environment enough to raise a stink?
The second suggestion that there is a prejudice against an “institution with strong beliefs” misses the point of atheism. An atheist’s stance on religion is “show me the evidence”. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Fantastical religions like the Catholic church who believe that they have to eat Jesus’ actual flesh and blood in order to live in a unproven “heaven” after they die comes with no empirical evidence. That is simply the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fantastical claims, believed strongly but completely unsupported by evidence. There is no prejudice against strong beliefs, there is simply an intolerance for fantastical beliefs with no evidence for their validity.
2) O’Neill takes issue with the manner in which the Church’s sex scandal has suddenly come out all at once. He states: “the fact is that sexual abuse by priests is a relatively rare phenomenon.” With 5% of the priesthood being reportedly involved in child molestation, this amounts to an alarmingly high number of priests with often multiple victims. Keeping in mind the “victim mentality” we can gather that there are unreported cases out there that may add to those numbers. Regardless, the point in all this is not “how many” but “how”. How did the Catholic Church handle the 5% of it’s ordained members who raped children? We are now learning, as has been long suspected, that Pope Benedict was for 20 years in charge of disciplining priests that were out of bounds. He was the head guy when it came to handling child abuse cases. He most likely knows more of the intricate details about what priests was moved where and how many children were reportedly raped than any other church official today. This is inexcusable.
To his credit, O’Neill does add: “Of course, one incident of child sexual abuse by a priest is one too many. ” If this were a public school instead of the Catholic Church, would you hear these same arguments? Oh, only 5% of school teachers rape children, not everyone, no big deal. Oh, they didn’t prosecute the rapists and just moved them from one school to another, no big deal. My guess is that from all groups of people you would see a completely different tone, calling for resignations, public apologies and restitution for the victims.
3) This next bit makes my stomach turn: “very, very small numbers of children in the care or teaching of the Catholic Church in 
Europe in recent decades were sexually abused, but very, very many of them actually received a decent standard of education.” Seriously? Would he like to tell that to Jonny who was raped by his kindly school priest. Well, kiddo, you were sexually assaulted at a tender age and will likely have social issues as you get older, take to drugs to get away from the painful memories and have to go through years of counseling in order to be somewhat normal again, but you did receive a great education! This argument is your classic “The end justifies the means”. We can evidently excuse the most heinous crime in our society because the same people that committed those crimes gave our children a “decent standard of education”.
4) His next move is to downplay the severity of the victim’s pain. Perhaps this author has never met an abuse victim and does not realize how overarching the damage can be. When not dealt with properly, it can ruin a persons entire life. Blaming the victims for not talking about their childhood trauma until they were older and perhaps actually then able to deal with the public aspect of their abuse is utterly shallow.
5) Next O’Neill attempts to drag Dawkins into this by quoting his statements suggesting that there are many more children who are mentally abused by priests and religious than there are children abuses physically by them. Dawkins is not suggesting that this is a worse form of abuse, but rather that is it far more prevalent and there is no concern in society for the mental abuse of children brought up to “fear” god and be threatened with eternal fire and brimstone should they disobey their elders. Blind obedience is considered a lauding trait in the religious upbringing. A child is told to do what is asked of him without question. Such a curious mind is labeled as a “doubter” or a “rebel”. Questioning the quackery of religious assumptions should be encouraged, not negated by parents or teachers.
O’Neill suggests that if we start recognizing childhood indoctrination and threats of hell as mental child abuse, we will have to require religions not to indoctrinate children and only begin teaching them until they are “at the age of reason”. Mental child abuse is wrong, no matter what the goal. If a parent were to mentally abuse their child for the purpose of turning that child into a Communist, would polite society be ok with this? Well, the parents want that of their child, so it is ok. No it is not ok! Children are not property and should certainly not be labeled as Communist, Democrat, Republican, Jewish, Catholic, Muslim… Children should be allowed to decide for themselves what they think once they reach the age of reasons. Labeling a child according to his parent’s strongest beliefs is entirely unjust.
Quotes taken from http://spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8360/
