Children and religion

I went to a Catholic grade school where they made us do face-to-face confessions with priests once a week. Nothing sexual happened, but it was still horrifying. You were in a compromised position and wide open to any manipulation by the priest. Adults did not see anything wrong with this even though there were a few priests who had to go "away" during my time there.

 

Dear Benedict:
One Word:
RICO.
Think about it.

Love, the U.S. Department of Justice.

 

Starman, I like your first suggestion better:
They need to make a thunderous, draconian (and what will be to many people quite shocking) complete reversal on the whole issue: root the perps out of the church with a flamethrower and a machine gun.

Seriously, I like to think I'm a kind and reasonable person, but I have no forgiveness in my heart for these evil, evil cretins.

 

Starman's good at thunderous and draconian...

 

That's kind of how we are. We're Lutheran - and the church we belong to is heavily involved in community charity work and outreach at the local level. There's a lot of... our church joining with other churches in the area - not just Lutheran. I want my kids to be exposed to that, and honestly, I think in this area, it's hard to find such consistent good works being done outside of the local churches.

 

At some point these senile old farts have to wake up and see that people are leaving the church by the millions because of it.


(Even completely disregarding the moral issue of whether it's a good thing to enable and protect adult sexual perverts who prey upon children, which is a moral issue the RCC most certainly loves to completely disregard. IT'S COSTING YOU MONEY. People are walking out the door forever and taking their checkbooks with them. Even craven greedy ole bastards like you ought to be able to figure THAT out.)

 

That's an acronym, not a word.

 

According to the dictionary, an acronym is a word.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acronym

 

Ha. I'm just trying to be a wise ass. I probably shouldn't get into a language fight with a bunch of writers & editors. I totally do not have the ammunition necessary.

I would think that as long as you still use all caps when writing it, like FBI or RICO, it's not a word.

Once it goes to lower case, like scuba, it becomes a word.

But that's just me.

Sorry to interrupt. You guys had a good thread going.

 

If we're going to derail the thread anyway, I'll point out that acronyms being words in themselves is the reason RBIs is perfectly valid.

 

I figured one wise ass deserved another.

Actually, if you read the link, FBI is given as an example of an acronym (a word). But RICO actually falls a little closer to "actual word" on the "word to abbreviation spectrum" (heh heh) because when people talk about RICO, they usually say it "rico" -- as in rhymes with "Chico." (As in "...and the Man.")

So I would say RICO, as an acronym, is better able to defend itself as an actual word than "FBI."

And by the way, I'm squarely on Team "RBIs."

 

In fact, you know how people wear the t-shirts that say "Team Aniston" and "Team Jolie"?

I think I'm going to print myself a t-shirt that says "Team RBIs." Only my editor friends will get it.