Comments

1
They allowed a registered sex offender to be the pastor at their church. Anyone who has access to children should have a background check.
2
and the lawsuits would prove that denny's is one big huge corporation. the church has successfully lied to all societies by claiming it's a bunch of different corporations, several per diocese, thus letting it declare banktuptcy or threaten to do so! when a cluster of claims arises.....the central office at the vatican, I here, has price less art worth BILLIONS where is the balance sheet for ALL church assets and how come prosecutors and civil lawyers aren't piercing the false corporate veils here? the vatican approves major transactions for diocesan corporations, they are not truly separate, we are all just letting them conduct this charade. seriously an AG should revoke their corporate charters as they ABUSE them.
3
@1 - It was OK because he had been 'saved' and Jesus cured him.
4
are we sure SCOTUS hasn't made Denny's a church? but then Denny's isn't perhaps "closely held" enough. next ruling will fix that.
5
@1 @3

I just realized that I have never heard of any requirement for background checks for pastors.
6
You're right AFinch.

So, I guess this puts a lot of pressure on this guy Jesus. Either Jesus unwilligly failed this miracle cure, which is rich from a deity's offspring, or he never bothered to cure the guy though he could have if he'd cared a bit. Besides, in both cases Jesus is complicit in child rape, since it happened under his watch and he did nothing to protect the child.

Let's put this Jesus on trial and settle this once and for all.
7
Somehow I don't think Denny's will thank Dan for the free publicity here.
8
@6 ...now, on the other hand...if he'd been touched by his noodly appendage, this wouldn't be an issue.

Honestly, I'm still kind of gobsmacked by yesterday's wolves-in-sheeps-clothing story. I don't want to get into ranking the relative harms of various types of child abuse, but the description of what they did to that kid is pretty horrible.

I'm sure a lawyer could bring a criminal negligence lawsuit against this church for hiring this guy....maybe that is the answer. I have no idea what the liability insurance situation is for churches, but a bankrupted church might be the fear of $deity into these people.
9
@1, I volunteer for a sports club that includes kids. I'm not even a coach, I just help set up the equipment before practice. I have to go through a background check because there are kinds involved in the program, and rightfully so.

Yet a youth pastor doesn't have to.

There is something seriously wrong with this.
10
@4 - It is their sincerely held religious belief that moons must be found over my hammy 24 hours a day.
11
How else are little children supposed to feel God's love?
12
As an occasional volunteer with youth in my church, I had to get a background check. There are many churches that are serious about protecting kids (often forced on them by insurance companies), but plenty that still aren't, especially ones who aren't connected to a denomination and thus not responsible to any real authority.
13
Dude, I'm not religious, and I'm maybe a deist at best, but even I see that Dan Savage is, once again, full of shit. Here's some real reporting about where the most child sex abuse happens: in the public school system:

_______________________________________________
Consider the statistics: In accordance with a requirement of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, in 2002 the Department of Education carried out a study of sexual abuse in the school system.

Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church.

"[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?" she said. "The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."
---------------------------------------------

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ig…

But of course Dan Savage would NEVER insult the public school system, because that would make his authoritarian-liberal friends get angry.

Bottom line is sex bastards exist everywhere. Parents have to keep their guard up and talk to their kids. Singling out religious institutions is just plain bias and even a Godless queer like me can see that.
14
Guess what? They DID background check him, then decided that the charges (which he was found GUILTY of in a COURT OF LAW, leading to his placement on the registry as a VIOLENT SEX OFFENDER) were FALSE.

Because, Jesus, forgiven, yadda, yadda.

They just didn't feel that they could JUDGE y'know, because Jesus, forgiven, yadda, yadda.

I'm a church bookkeeper - all pastors and anyone working with the kids at our church must be background checked. There is a huge danger in churches checking their judgment at the door when a hard-headed risk assessment needs to be rendered.

Forgive, sure - but don't be stupid. You can forgive the fox, but don't let him guard the chickens. They were stupid and they should be sued at least, or, more ideally, charged with criminal negligence.
15
@13: Teachers are generally background-checked. Pastors almost never are. One thing you see in the Catholic Church that you almost never see in public education is an authority figure abusing children, followed by a cover-up in which the authority figure is simply relocated to a different district, followed by a repetition of the abuse.
Also, that "[s]ource" wasn't evidence, but rather an opinion piece written by the executive editor of the National Catholic Register. Not exactly an objective source! If you want the actual evidence, you may find Ms. Shakeshaft's report here.
16
@15
It's not really the story I'm objecting too, but rather Dan Savages choice of words for a headline. Yes, this church sucks, but the headline is so anti-religion as a whole it makes me not want to even read the story.
And I'm no fan of organized religion myself.
17
@16, Then don't read the story. I skip lots of Dan's blog posts because the Titles don't inspire me to read them.

On the internet you vote with your feet.

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