It gets better...

Ray Comfort, after not really reading my post, and accusing me of trying to "justify pedophilia", got a little tongue lashing from his own fellow Christians, who read my reply as well, and called him on it! They asked him where I tried to justify Pedophilia, told him that I said no such thing, and even that he owed me an apology.

So he wrote me a sort of half-way apology, and apparently still does not understand what I wrote. My guess is that he still hasn't actually read it.

Here it is, with my response.

Ray Comfort wrote:

"My apologies David. I was too quick in my response."

Apology accepted, but from what you write, I still don't know if you understand what I wrote.

You wrote:

"You are saying that you believe that time forgives serious crime, when these men violated the law, and their positions of trust, and many of them are still in positions of great authority. That is wrong. If it isn't, then why storm the Texas compunds now? Simply leave the issue for 20 years, and everything will be okay."

No, that's not what I said at all. It's not even remotely what I wrote by a long shot. I don't know if you read what I wrote.

I wrote that the abuse scandals of the Catholic Church were not about people who were in the process of being abused when the issue was raised. The victims lived silently with their memories, and never reported the crimes, so police and other law enforcement officials were not even aware of the crimes. Some of them waited for 30 years before they spoke out and told their story. When they told their stories, they named specific individual priests who abused them. After an investigation, and after more people came forward to add their names to the list of victims, Those individuals were then charged with their crimes, and eventually went on to serve prison terms.

There were no children being held hostage in a compound, which is why there was no need for a raid.

This Church cooperated with the police, and gave them information on the history of transfers of the priests, along with internal church documents, and the Church agreed to pay compensation to the victims (which forced them to sell a lot of their properties in the USA) as part of civil lawsuits rising from the matter. I will tell you that there is no excuse what what happened -- I think that the Catholic Church made a lot of negligent decisions in how they handled their affairs internally -- and that more individuals will go to prison, eventually.

This is in stark contrast to the situation in Texas, where a small criminal enterprise was being run (They were running a welfare scam, and marrying off girls to men so that they could fraudulently file for child support welfare, which the men would collect and use for themselves). When the FBI came investigating the accusation by the girl who tipped them off, they realized that this would blow the cover off the whole scam they were running, and THEY REFUSED TO COOPERATE. Refusing to cooperate was why the raid was neccesary. If they cooperated, and went peacefully, the raid would not have been.

There is no double standard here, Ray -- these are two completely different cases, with completely different sets of circumstances, and completely different requirements under the law. I don't know if you will still understand it after reading this, but you clearly did not understand what I wrote before. I don't know if it's because you read too fast, or if it's because you're all worked up over it. So please, let me know if you now understand why I don't consider there to be a double standard, and if you acknowledge that these two cases are radically different from each other.