Catholics turn

[mrjohns2]

33 minutes ago, jcousino said:

Are you will risk your house and future very time you take a group of kids camping?

I am. All scout leaders do. I see it as part of the package. I follow the rules and try to make sure everyone else does. Am I risking everything? To some extent, yes, but I try to reduce the risk to acceptable. 

[Eagle94-A1]

The Archdiocese of New Orleans had all their parishes drop Scouting back in 2021, during the bankruptcy, as  things became known how much the BSA did not tell the COs.  

[TuckahoeJoe]

We have worked hard to find a new chartered organization to continue scouting for our units.  BSA issues aside, I have an issue with the lack of candor by the insurance company with the court on its promise to promote scouting.  Instead, it is creating fear, uncertainty and doubt.

As a result of the recommendations of the company, I am aware that certain parishes in my diocese have wrested control of the units' checkbooks, rendering the unit committees as merely advisory--so much for all the training and planning.  Moreover, some are not being transparent about 2024.

I am personally glad that we are moving charter and gear during the middle of the summer as opposed to the middle of the school year and winter break.

 

[SSScout]

What's that jazz number, it ain't the heat, it's the humidity?

Birds come home to roost.  BSA as we knew it is done.  Thankfully.  

As has been said here and elsewhere, if the past BSA had only been honest and open about the problems, had only dealt with the problem makers instead of just slapping the wrists and letting them move on  to other areas. If only.... BSA  had confronted the bullies, the sexual offenders, the ones that didn't think the Scout Promise and Law applied to them and held them up to the Light , made them (unfortunately) visible.  If only.... 

When was the last time you got a traffic ticket for something that happened a year ago?   Five years ago?   Twenty years ago?   NOW we make it policy to report and DEAL with the offense NOW, not (maybe) later, if we have to...

I took French in high school, failed miserably at it (German became my second language, later). Our French/Spanish teacher was a younger man, maybe mid twenties back then.  Only about ten years ago, here's a newspaper  article about a man who was arrested for umpteen sexual assaults, etc. , picture, name, IT"S MY FRENCH TEACHER FROM THIRTY PLUS YEARS AGO....  Did things happen back then?  I don't know.  But (to use Yoda language) caught up to him, he was.  

If only....

[HICO_Eagle]

On 8/2/2023 at 5:56 AM, SSScout said:

What's that jazz number, it ain't the heat, it's the humidity?

Birds come home to roost.  BSA as we knew it is done.  Thankfully.  

As has been said here and elsewhere, if the past BSA had only been honest and open about the problems, had only dealt with the problem makers instead of just slapping the wrists and letting them move on  to other areas. If only.... BSA  had confronted the bullies, the sexual offenders, the ones that didn't think the Scout Promise and Law applied to them and held them up to the Light , made them (unfortunately) visible.  If only.... 

When was the last time you got a traffic ticket for something that happened a year ago?   Five years ago?   Twenty years ago?   NOW we make it policy to report and DEAL with the offense NOW, not (maybe) later, if we have to...

I took French in high school, failed miserably at it (German became my second language, later). Our French/Spanish teacher was a younger man, maybe mid twenties back then.  Only about ten years ago, here's a newspaper  article about a man who was arrested for umpteen sexual assaults, etc. , picture, name, IT"S MY FRENCH TEACHER FROM THIRTY PLUS YEARS AGO....  Did things happen back then?  I don't know.  But (to use Yoda language) caught up to him, he was.  

If only....

 

While I agree that Scouting as we knew it is likely done, I am not thankful for that condition.  I also disagree with the societal trend to blame BSA for past ills rather than the miscreants themselves.  Lawyers went after BSA because it had resources that they could reach easily:  land.  Going after the actual perpetrators would have been fruitless from the lawyers' point of view because many of them are dead or don't have significant resources.

Remember, the secret files that were used to prove the case against BSA were secret largely because BSA couldn't prove criminal charges against the men in question.  Even openly questioning them would have exposed BSA to liability for defaming the men in question.

In my opinion, these lawsuits and the resulting impacts are the culmination of a decades long attack on Scouting as one of the pillars of traditional American society.  The activists used vile deeds by a very small minority of people to attack and undermine the entire organization -- and then not only refuse to condemn that minority but encourage the spread of those very actions.  Just look at their current attempts to change terminology from "pedophiles" to "minor-attracted persons".

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

12 hours ago, HICO_Eagle said:

In my opinion, these lawsuits and the resulting impacts are the culmination of a decades long attack on Scouting as one of the pillars of traditional American society.  The activists used vile deeds by a very small minority of people to attack and undermine the entire organization -- and then not only refuse to condemn that minority but encourage the spread of those very actions.  Just look at their current attempts to change terminology from "pedophiles" to "minor-attracted persons".

Maybe this is because I'm not US American, but this seems completely out of left field to me. Nothing I've seen or heard anywhere connects to this. Would you be willing to explain more about why you believe this?

For example, what makes you say that scouting is a pillar of traditional American society? I don't think anyone in Sweden, including scouts and scouters, sees scouting as a pillar of Swedish society, so it's not clear to me why it would be here. Would you be willing to explain?

Who are these activists, exactly? 

I have never heard of anyone anywhere consider pedophilia anything but morally repugnant.

[InquisitiveScouter]

2 minutes ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

Maybe this is because I'm not US American, but this seems completely out of left field to me. Nothing I've seen or heard anywhere connects to this. Would you be willing to explain more about why you believe this?

For example, what makes you say that scouting is a pillar of traditional American society? I don't think anyone in Sweden, including scouts and scouters, sees scouting as a pillar of Swedish society, so it's not clear to me why it would be here. Would you be willing to explain?

Who are these activists, exactly? 

I have never heard of anyone anywhere consider pedophilia anything but morally repugnant.

The are many groups within the US that are (were?) considered "pillars" or a "bedrock" of America, and represent "all that is good about America"  Here are a few:

Boy Scouts of America

Girl Scouts of USA

US Olympic Committee

American Red Cross

American Legion

Little League Baseball

National Academy of Sciences

Daughters of the American Revolution

This list is not "official", and will vary depending on whom you talk with.  One good listing contains those organizations with a Congressional Charter, although some are questionable, and Congress is no longer doing this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Patriotic_and_national_organizations_chartered_by_the_United_States_Congress

Norman Rockwell, with his paintings, many of which were published in widespread media, helped to seal Scouts into the American experience...

https://www.nrm.org/2018/04/norman-rockwell-boy-scouts-america/

The activists he is referring to are various groups who wish to change (or destroy, as an alternative) social institutions in order to reshape the social landscape, through a strategy called "The Long March Through the Institutions."

Here are a few viewpoints on this:

https://renew.org/the-long-march-through-the-institutions-of-society/

https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/the-long-march-through-the-corporations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEt9XepeGt4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institutions

Some folks think this is tin foil hat stuff, some think it is a concerted effort (conspiracy?).  I am somewhere in the middle of those two.

As to pedophilia being rebranded... yes, there is a move afoot...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8466899/Paedophiles-rebrand-minor-attracted-persons-chilling-online-propaganda-drive.html

https://torontosun.com/news/world/woke-watch-prof-says-lets-ditch-the-term-pedophile-for-minor-attracted-person

https://amac.us/newsline/society/u-n-under-fire-for-suggesting-minors-can-consent-to-sexual-activity/

 

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

Thank you, @InquisitiveScouter. That's some great context. I read and watched the links and did some searching on some of these terms. This view was almost all new to me, no doubt in large part because of the different political context I came of political age in. These kinds of political narratives always rely on the hearer having had certain experiences for it to feel true. A fair few of the experiences referenced in the long march through the institutions I've never had, nor heard anyone I know complain about.  A number of labels are also used in ways I've never seen or heard of them being used before, either. So I would never had made any sense of this 'shadowy forces are attacking the BSA' argument without all this background.

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

22 hours ago, HICO_Eagle said:

In my opinion, these lawsuits and the resulting impacts are the culmination of a decades long attack on Scouting as one of the pillars of traditional American society.  The activists used vile deeds by a very small minority of people to attack and undermine the entire organization -- and then not only refuse to condemn that minority but encourage the spread of those very actions.  Just look at their current attempts to change terminology from "pedophiles" to "minor-attracted persons".

You are of course entitled to hold and express this opinion, but now that I understand the context here I feel obliged to point out that expressing it within the container of scouting is throwing culture war bombs within that container. 

Is this really helpful? Is this a productive place to say this?

Scouting is civic, not political. We are building a better world, are we not? And when we say 'better', we don't mean according to any ideology, we mean in the hands-on fix obvious practical problems sense, taking responsibility for the community one lives in kind of way from a perspective of kindness and compassion. 

[InquisitiveScouter]

14 minutes ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

Scouting is civic, not political.

There are many who cannot distinguish between the two.  Ideology often runs deep into our Scouting experiences here in the US.

This (for example) was the source of much of the pushback against the genesis of the Citizenship in Society Merit Badge.  And that pushback caused BSA to rewrite (thankfully) many of the originally released requirements.

Edited August 7, 2023 by InquisitiveScouter

[HICO_Eagle]

35 minutes ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

Scouting is civic, not political.

My point was that Scouting in the US has been under attack by certain socio-political groups for decades -- since at least the 1980s in my experience.  The lawsuit that resulted in huge financial liabilities and the loss of various Scouting properties and damage to charter organizations -- and therefore the withdrawal of the Catholic church that is the subject of this thread -- was a product of that attack.

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

33 minutes ago, HICO_Eagle said:

My point was that Scouting in the US has been under attack by certain socio-political groups for decades -- since at least the 1980s in my experience.  The lawsuit that resulted in huge financial liabilities and the loss of various Scouting properties and damage to charter organizations -- and therefore the withdrawal of the Catholic church that is the subject of this thread -- was a product of that attack.

Occam's Razor suggests that the lawsuit was the result of the BSA failing to take appropriate action on rape and other sexual abuse reports to protect scouts from further abuse, much like the Catholic Church's own pedophile shuffling scandal.

Alleging the lawsuit is just a malicious attack by groups that include fellow scouts and scouters, but had nothing to do with the fact that 92,700 scouts were sexually abused under the auspices of the BSA, is dividing the scout "sangha" while also declining to accept the BSA's responsibility for allowing pedophiles to continue abusing. 

This just isn't complicated. Pedophilia is really bad. Covering for pedophiles is therefore also really bad. If you do it, expect people to be very angry when you get caught covering their crimes up, especially the victims. People don't really need any additional reasons to be mad at that point, pedophilia 105% covers it. Leftists definitely didn't make scouter pedophiles rape anyone, or prevent the BSA from filing police reports or proper banning all suspected pedophiles from the organization. Leftists didn't tell abused scouts not to tell their parents. You may be sincere in your belief in this attack, but the BSA was in full control of itself when it comes to dealing with pedophiles.

The BSA's karma has ripened. Looking to put the blame outside is just going to create more bad karma that's going to ripen in the future. Please don't sow more seeds of suffering.

The good news about karma ripening is that it becomes easier to move into a more meritorious direction, so let's take this opportunity to create bliss instead. The truth is out; we can do our best to help the victims and make sure that we handle any future pedophiles and their crimes right. We have no more reputation to lose. This is how we burn up any remainder of bad karma and prevent more of the same from accumulating. But it starts with not blaming others for the BSA's faults.

[Tired_Eagle_Feathers]

7 hours ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

Occam's Razor suggests that the lawsuit was the result of the BSA failing to take appropriate action on rape and other sexual abuse reports to protect scouts from further abuse, much like the Catholic Church's own pedophile shuffling scandal.

Alleging the lawsuit is just a malicious attack by groups that include fellow scouts and scouters, but had nothing to do with the fact that 92,700 scouts were sexually abused under the auspices of the BSA, is dividing the scout "sangha" while also declining to accept the BSA's responsibility for allowing pedophiles to continue abusing. 

This just isn't complicated. Pedophilia is really bad. Covering for pedophiles is therefore also really bad. If you do it, expect people to be very angry when you get caught covering their crimes up, especially the victims. People don't really need any additional reasons to be mad at that point, pedophilia 105% covers it. Leftists definitely didn't make scouter pedophiles rape anyone, or prevent the BSA from filing police reports or proper banning all suspected pedophiles from the organization. Leftists didn't tell abused scouts not to tell their parents. You may be sincere in your belief in this attack, but the BSA was in full control of itself when it comes to dealing with pedophiles.

The BSA's karma has ripened. Looking to put the blame outside is just going to create more bad karma that's going to ripen in the future. Please don't sow more seeds of suffering.

The good news about karma ripening is that it becomes easier to move into a more meritorious direction, so let's take this opportunity to create bliss instead. The truth is out; we can do our best to help the victims and make sure that we handle any future pedophiles and their crimes right. We have no more reputation to lose. This is how we burn up any remainder of bad karma and prevent more of the same from accumulating. But it starts with not blaming others for the BSA's faults.

Both things can be true. 

There has definitely been an ongoing attempt to undermine American institutions for most of my life.  Anything that promotes patriotism and pride in America is under attack.   "Nationalism" is now a dirty word.  There are many who want to see institutions like BSA fail.  A nation full of people who do not love their country is easy to divide.

As for the child abuse, I personally think the BSA did the best it could in the times it operated.  The earliest entry in the P-list is like 1912 or so.  There were no computer databases back then - even into the 70s.  What was the best course of action for BSA back then?  They could report to the police, but often times nothing was done.  People were not as eager to believe that a "fine member of the community" could do such a thing back then.  An abuser could simply go to another town and start abusing again.  Background checks were probably relatively impossible.  I'm convinced that the BSA keeping its own database of abusers was the best course of action prior to about 1970.

Maybe sometime after that they could have relied on the government to punish and keep track of pedophiles.  But I'm not sure I would rely on that.  I wonder if BSA still keeps a database of known abusers?

Now one thing BSA should have done was institute powerful YPT policies faster.  I'm sure we all agree that YPT is fantastic and is the best way to protect Scouts.

Anyway, the reason why charter organizations are dropping Scouts is very simple: money.  It has become too financially risky to become legally associated with a youth organization today.

The solution is self-chartering.  Troops should be chartered via their councils.  We shouldn't be trying to hitch our wagons to other organizations.

[InquisitiveScouter]

8 hours ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

Covering for pedophiles is therefore also really bad. If you do it, expect people to be very angry when you get caught covering their crimes up, especially the victims.

I think you have this part wrong.  BSA did not cover for anyone.  It's that they had accusations, and not enough info to make allegations.  False allegations are a crime... defamation, libel, slander, etc.

As I understand it, where they had enough info, or victims or families who wanted it brought to the authorities, they reported.

What BSA did was to hide the fact that they had a problem within the organization with child predators using it as an environment for depredation.  They chose to protect the image of the organization and accepted the risks involved without making substantive changes to protect children, rather than  bring the problem  to light. 

Those are still horrible actions, and certainly "bad karma," but they aren't the same thing as covering up a crime.

Agree 100% with the rest of your post.

Edited August 7, 2023 by InquisitiveScouter

[Eagle94-A1]

8 hours ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

...Covering for pedophiles is therefore also really bad. If you do it, expect people to be very angry when you get caught covering their crimes up, especially the victims. People don't really need any additional reasons to be mad at that point, pedophilia 105% covers it. Leftists definitely didn't make scouter pedophiles rape anyone, or prevent the BSA from filing police reports or proper banning all suspected pedophiles from the organization. 

Have you any evidence that BSA covered up crimes? In the reports I have read, once BSA became aware of the situation they removed the individual from Scouting. Depending upon jurisdiction, mandatory reporting laws came for youth volunteers came about in the late 1970s to late 1980s (first mandatory reporting laws only protected physicians from false reports, and they started in the late 1960s/early 1970s). In the files I have read,  it is noted that parents did not want to prosecute the pedophile because they did not want their child to relive the horrors in court. One file showed a pedophile going to a mental institution instead of jail because the parents would not press charges. Once he was released from the mental institution, he moved to a new location, and applied to work for the BSA. If it wasn't for the Ineligible Volunteer File that had him in it, he may have gotten hired since he did have a clean background.

Another situation I am aware of was never reported to anyone.. The individual was a 'well respected and upright member of the community," Individual knew no one would believe him, except his parents, and he did not want his father taking the law into his own hands. He does not blame BSA, but the abuser, who is now long dead.