President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

You already told us you have the sads because your guy who tells you things you like to hear about the invisible man who lives in the sky raped a 12-year-old girl. What am I presuming?

 

I've seen several news stories in the last 24 hours or so that say she's been telling her story for years, but until now nobody really listened. Apparently she tried to sue him in 2005, but it didn't go anywhere because of the statute of limitations.

I'm a huge believer in redemption and that people are more than the worst thing they've ever done. I also believe we're all sinners, that we're all broken in some way. At the same time, she has every right to be angry and to call out his hypocrisy.

The Bible calls on us to ask for forgiveness, not just from God, but from those we have harmed. Not from the father of the person we have harmed, but the person we have harmed. By all accounts, at some point in time he spoke to her dad about it and washed his hands of it. Her anger is righteous.

 

Not since St. Francis NY shut down the athletics department.

 

One minor point: He never mirrored her faith, nor anybody else's faith. He was a fraud, and he defrauded people spiritually.

Hmmm ... that may be a stronger point than I first realized.

 

Now, I do get that pain. I adored the priest at my parish growing up. He was a phenomenal preacher and a kind and wonderful man. He inspired me to think about seeking ordination, myself. When I was 18 and about to leave for college, it came out that he and one of the children's ministers were having an affair. He ended up getting divorced, renouncing his orders and leaving the church all together.

It shattered my faith at an impressionable time, and I didn't set foot in a church for anything other than a wedding or a story assignment for about ten years.

I'm presently at a church that was rocked by a different kind of scandal involving the priest that left the congregation in shambles in its wake. My wife and I joined a couple of years later when the official membership was down to 18 people. It took 10 years for us to get back on solid ground financially. For some former members, the pain will never heal. But most have made peace with it. Lives go on.

 

For all the drama and unpaid extra work it has sometimes created for me, I’ve come to appreciate the UMC practice of moving pastors around every so often. It isn’t healthy for people to invest their faith in a single leader who is building a personal empire.

 

I've read this several times and am still stunned. And terribly sad for anyone who thinks this about a child rape victim: "in a week, all she will have done, probably, is destroyed a thriving church."

I ask in all sincerity, do you know any victims of sexual assault? (Of course you do -- we all do.) Can you please have conversations with them about what it takes for a survivor to come forward?

 

Hannity really helping his cause tonight

 

He's probably too busy being pissed off at 82,000 victims who sued and ruined the Boy Scouts of America to have that conversation, even though he likely has one somewhere in his orbit.

 

It's a good practice.

One of my grandfathers was a Quaker minister. Yes, those exist. They lead "programmed meetings."

Anyway, he would move to a new church every six or seven years. Always joked that after that amount of time, he'd run out of sermons and needed a new congregation so he could re-use them. But it was really born of a belief that it helped him stay humble and within his call.

 

No reason to get Holy Cross about it.

 

"He" is a she, which might boggle your mind further on this one ...