First of all, you said you hated the church for covering up pedophilia, not for their beliefs.
Actually, I hate them for both, and their intertwined.
There's nothing in Catholic doctrine that condones pedophilia or covering it up. The two are not intertwined.
Secondly, Sandmann's Catholic anti-abortion beliefs have nothing to do with the church's cover up of pedophilia.
First, he's 16... he doesn't get to have "beliefs". When he can vote and pay taxes, then he gets to have beliefs.
You're kidding, right? This is the most asinine thing you've ever said and you've said some pretty asinine things. Did your dog type this?
Beliefs are not handed out as privileges or rights by the government or whoever when you reach a certain age.
Second, um, yeah, the Catholic Church uses this kind of bullshit to raise money to pay off the altar boys.
The church uses anti-abortion beliefs to pay off altar boys? As in, "I believe abortion is wrong so I'll give money to the church to cover up pedophilia."?
I agree, it was contemptible, but faith can be very compelling. You didn't seriously think that Catholics would just turn their backs on the church and the only life they've ever known because of the wrongs committed by others, did you?
Um,yeah, I think most of the parents KNEW that Catholic Clergy are EXACTLY what they are. If you are such a ******* brainwashed zombie that you can see that your clergy are complete perverts, and you keep sitting your ass in a pew and throwing money at them, that's on you.
If you are such a brainwashed zombie that you can't see that Catholicism had nothing to do with Phillips approaching Sandmann that day, that's on you.
And you still haven't answered my question: Did Phillips approach Sandmann?
Actually, I don't think I could make the same argument. I don't agree with you on this one. I know other countries have their problems with their youth like anyone else but this phenomenon is relatively new in this country. Or at least, we've never seen it to this degree before.
Again- the only difference is that this country lets any crazy person with a tiny dick buy a gun.
Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass shooter with the as yet highest mass shooting body count, purchased a semiautomatic Mini-14 (.223/5.56 caliber like the AR-15) and a Glock pistol legally in his home country of Norway.
We can't get rid of the kids but we can get rid of the angst, or alleviate it some by teaching our children more about the real world, how to deal with bullies, how to deal with personal failures and difficulties and how to approach life head on. We can simply become more involved in our childrens' lives and their doings and if we can just start with that, we'll be just fine.
Or we can just NOT LET THEM HAVE GUNS... That seems to be the simpler solution.
And that's why things like mass killings will continue even if there's a total ban on guns; people like you would rather take the easy way out. But easy answers or simple measures will never solve complicated problems.
I don't think any amount of "teaching" fixes a Cruz or an Adam Lanza, and often their caregivers are a large part of the problem. Nancy Lanza armed herself like the ******* Zombies were coming and took little Adam to the shooting range.
Once again, as is your wont, you oversimplify the issue.
Cruz, like Lanza had mental health issues and also like Lanza, he was autistic. This may be partly attributable to the fact that his birth mother was a crackhead (she was arrested for buying crack while she was pregnant with Nikolas). Also, he had had care for his mental health issues at one time but had received no care for a year before the shooting. Add to that the death of his adoptive mother, which he took very hard. With all these factors in play, it should come as no surprise that he snapped.
As for Lanza, we both know he had mental health issues; though I say he was autistic (which he was) and you say he was retarded (which he was not). He withdrew more and more from everyone and spent the last three months of his life shut up in his room and, not knowing how to deal with this, Nancy simply let him be.
You seem to think that 37,000 deaths, 2.35 million injuries and 230.6 billion dollars in economic losses a year in automobile accidents are something we can live with.
Again, autos are licensed... designed with new safety features, and we have thousands of cops patrolling the roads policing conduct.
We can't really live without cars... We can get rid of guns quite easily.
And yet, still more people die in automobile accidents than from guns.