Sinead O’Connor has died

Cool down the hysteria.

The Catholic Church has 100x less abuse than public schools (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-...) , and yet schools don't have this negative reputation.

I know a single abused child is a child too much, but the bad reputation the Church gets is excessive. They probably have a better track record than any other institution.

As slow as it is, society has been making progress. A lot of things that were unthinkable or unsayable in the 90s are in the open now. The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice.

It’s sad we’re still fighting on the LGBTQ front but in general it’s notable largely because justice is winning and these are the dying spasms of a hate movement that is losing state favor and is having to fight for its survival. They’re fighting because if they don’t then LGBTQ people are generally getting their rights protected and normalized.

Scouts is another example of how much the zeitgeist has turned on overt religiousity and bigotry. Even in the 2000s you couldn’t be an openly gay scoutmaster because what if you fucked a kid? And of course the deep religious pagentry/teaching that’s buried in a lot of the scout materials and routines. Just 15 years later that’s a really bad look.

Anyway there are a few rare people who are ahead of the curve on these issues and usually take a punishment for it, but time often proves them right.

She was right, and the Catholic Church and organized religion in general continue to be a plague on humanity. All the good they’ve done in the past few decades is more than undone by the Mexico City policy alone and the immensely negative impact it’s had on half of our population, along with continued assaults on women’s health, LGBTQ rights, etc. It’s just still tremendously impolite to say it but she’s right, this institution is a negative force on society.

As mentioned elsewhere, not standing/reciting the pledge of allegiance is another thing that was a bit controversial in the 90s but I think has just faded away nowadays. Even at sporting events today it feels a bit over the top and the connection to the hyper-militarized US culture and the pipeline to military recruiting is obvious - not a coincidence that flyovers and uniformed personnel are another common sight at sporting events.

Sorry to hear this. Recently watched a video interview with her, wearing a hijab, she'd moved into Islam, said she was wearing it though she didn't have to (age), and then that she was mostly into Sufism. (2:05 of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je8Mh7Bc2hI

She never shyed from a difficult path.

The US is astoundingly good at re-litigating, on a local level, things that were “decided long ago.” Florida has now decided that slavery had some upsides for Black people.

> The Catholic Church has 100x less abuse than public schools, and yet schools don't have this negative reputation...the bad reputation the Church gets is excessive. They probably have a better track record than any other institution.

When children are exposed to Catholic churches for the same amount of time that they are exposed to the public school system and in equal numbers, and when some central authority of the public school system starts actively hiding any evidence of known sexual abuse from authorities and the public, and once the public school system starts silencing victims with threats or hush money, and after the public school system spends decade after decade quietly relocating known child-abusing teachers to new schools, one after another after another, so that the pedo will have a constant supply of new child victims every few years then I might agree that public schools deserve the same horrible reputation that the Catholic Church has more than earned for itself.

Until then, maybe you can stop pretending that the situation at public schools and the situation with Catholic churches are even remotely the same thing and that "any other institution is probably worse". There is no evidence to support that theory of yours, no matter how much you might wish it were true.

Downplaying the evils of the Catholic Church doesn't help their victims, and doesn't help the church either. You have to be able to look clearly at something broken if you want to be able to fix it. Pretending that the problem isn't that bad is the behavior of an enabler.