335
Vatican upholds excommunication of US deacon who resigned after son was molested by priest
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2026
335 points (99.1% liked)
News
39764 readers
2741 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Centralized religions can't tolerate dissent, no matter what. If you (claim to) hold the only truth backed up by a deity, then you almost have to be draconian about it.
That's also why religion is shit.
They don't HAVE to be this way. Religion, as a whole, can and does do great things for people worldwide; it's when they start to view themselves and their doctrine as the ONLY one that is correct and therefore everyone who doesn't deserves conversion or death, that's where problems start to arise. Or rather, the problems have probably already started for whatever reason and they turn themselves into extremists as a strategy but you get my point. Plus, most of the time, when you reach that point, the religion in question has usually been co-opted by a political movement who wants to USE the faith to greater or lesser degrees to accomplish their goals.
Roman Catholicism is just a particularly good example of the draconian aspect you mentioned because for most of it's history it WAS a political entity and yeah, capital-S States tend to frown upon dissent in any form. Fun fact, the term "Catholic" is derived from an old Greek word that roughly translates to 'universal' or 'regarding the whole' and has been used by basically every denomination at one point or another to say 'I'm the correct version'. Eastern religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, etc, TEND to be less overtly problematic than their Western counterparts (although they're still far from perfect), but I think it's safe to say that the geopolitical and cultural histories of each region have a greater effect on the religion in question rather than vice versa. But that's something we could (and have) debate for literal centuries
But yeah, even though on a scale from 0-10 of 'how religious one is' I'm probably at like a 0.1, or even lower, I still firmly believe (ha) that if someone can find peace or community or whatever else they're looking for in their life through religion, I say let 'em go for it (as long as nobody gets hurt or has their liberties infringed, obviously)