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TrueTomHarley

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  1. I could have told you that JTR would instantly jump in to answer this one. I didn't need a crystal ball for that one. Yeah. The opponents are going bonkers. That is why this might have a place somehow: Â
  2. Here is Part 2: https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/70723-is-it-time-for-jehovahs-witnesses-to-apologize-part-2/
  3. First, it may be well to catch up with Part 1: https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/70655-is-it-time-for-jehovahs-witnesses-to-apologize-part-1/ Jehovah’s Witnesses did fail in this regard. Let us admit it. They failed to ‘go beyond the law.’ The stakes are so high that law is thereafter reinterpreted to mean that they did violate it. Why did they fail? Ms. Chuck accurately states that any Witness victim or family of victim was always free to report child sexual abuse and that congregation justice did not preclude outside secular justice. Arguably, then, they failed because they were insular, as she says, and they may not realize just how firmly she has put her finger on the reason. They were not inclined to air their dirty laundry before the public. It is not hard to understand. In some cultures, the concept of ‘saving face’ is so firmly entrenched that your efforts to communicate are doomed to failure if you ignore it. The very reason there is an expression ‘skeletons in the closet’ is the universal human instinct to keep them there. It is even found in the scriptures that Ms. Chuck acknowledges underlie everything Witnesses do. Decrying the spectacle of early Christians taking one another into court over personal disputes, the apostle Paul writes: “I am speaking to move you to shame. Is there not one wise man among you who is able to judge between his brothers? Instead, brother goes to court against brother, and before unbelievers at that!” If Jehovah’s Witnesses today are ‘insular,’ it is because Christians back then were ‘insular.’ In this case, however, insularity, and the failure to ‘go beyond the law’ has resulted in child abusers who did not take their turn in the police lineup, as well as victims thereby deprived of justice. Whether they would have received justice otherwise is arguable, for no end of persons manage to evade the wrath of the law. But that is not the point. They should have been turned over to police, the argument goes, for the latter to either nail them to the wall or let them beat the rap. The victims want justice. Like victims anywhere, they don’t always get it. But don’t get in the way of their quest for it. Since the Witness organization is perceived to have gotten in the way, with law being reinterpreted so as to more damningly point to that conclusion, should they apologize to victims or issue a public statement of regret? You could certainly build a case for it. When the cop speeds in hot pursuit and a horrific accident results, pointing out that he had permission to speed only goes so far. There are times when only a sincere expression of regret stems the tide of outrage, for who is going to dismiss a run-over pedestrian as ‘just one of those things’? At such times legal matters become technicalities and you look tone-deaf if you harp on them. Best to say that, in pursuing one’s mission, even within existing rules, a terrible tragedy has resulted for which there is sincere regret. Were the Witness organization to ever do that, it would cut them no slack with the Reddit group. They would merely drop down a notch on their list to highlight the next reason they hate their former religion before surfacing briefly again to declare the statement insincere. No, there will be no placating these folks. But it might very well clear the air for all other persons, who know very well, simply through personal experience, that Jehovah’s Witnesses are very fine people. Even arch-enemy Barbara Anderson concedes this, as she somehow manages to insinuate that this is despite their evil governing body, rather than the much more reasonable ‘because of it.’ Not because of it solely, of course, for Witnesses’ decency stems from the God they worship. But in the sense that the Witnesses’ governing body keeps them clearly focused on the Bible, the source they signed on for, they surely deserve credit, not condemnation. Almost all other faiths have swayed with the changing winds of contemporary culture. Witnesses have not. They merely update now and then, as they have with their procedures of child sexual abuse investigations. Is it intimidating for a victim of child sexual abuse to appear before the three men of a investigatory committee? Well, they never thought of that. Maybe they should have. So now it is that a child’s recorded testimony can serve itself as the witness and he or she does not have to appear personally. If he or she does, it can be with any congregation member they choose, whether male or female. The religion’s fiercest critics say they will never stop opposing until Witnesses fix their child abuse policies. Arguably, they already have, since almost all cases tried are from 20-30 years ago. Not everyone likes Jehovah’s Witnesses. Probably more do not than do. But people are mostly fair. A statement of regret would go a long way for them to say: “Oh, I see. They did screw it up, but now I can see why. They really do abhor child sexual abuse over there.” Otherwise, their enemies find it a cakewalk to portray those in leadership positions among Jehovah’s Witnesses as ‘arrogant,’ and in some cases, careful cultivators of child sexual abusers. They are probably the least arrogant people on earth, but that does not mean they cannot be painted that way. They do Bible education work. They do it extensively and effectively. In the developing world, a person is stuck with some 200-year old turkey of a Bible translation that he can neither afford nor understand because nobody other than Jehovah’s Witnesses thinks it is inappropriate for Big Business to handle distribution of the Word of God. The Witness Governing Body does think it is inappropriate and they have invented an entirely new production and distribution channel so that the person can obtain a modern Bible at minimal cost, or even free. That accomplishment is not nothing. They do not do all of this personally, of course. Detractors routinely spin it that Witnesses are ‘controlled’ by ‘eight men in New York.’ It makes no sense. They are modest persons. Many of them cut their teeth performing their trademark door-to-door ministry in the developing world, carrying out a work more lowly than that of the ones they ultimately lead. They have a certain knack at administration, as with any effective organization, but other than that, they have little expertise in anything. But they know where to find it when they need it. From a field of eight million members, where there are no paywalls nor turf battles, they can quickly assemble whatever they deem necessary. Their latest offering in the field of Bible education consists of an online, self-guided, and anonymous course of Bible study offered on the front page of their website, JW.org. The Bible offers convincing answers to important questions of life, Jehovah's Witnesses feel, questions not readily answered anywhere else. The course is all available online for free, now. After each lesson there is the option to 1) go deeper, for the presentation is necessarily simple, 2) attend a group study at the Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall, 3) request a personal instructor, or 4) say ‘none of the above’ and proceed to the next lesson. It’s a relatively new feature. I don’t know how it will be incorporated. But with only some exaggeration, I am looking forward to saying: “I don’t want to study the Bible with you. Do it yourself. If you have any questions or want to go a level more, I’ll be around.” With only slightly more exaggeration again, the new feature illustrates that, if need be, the main Bible teaching component of the Witnesses’ work could be run out of a server in someone’s dorm room. They always will be ‘insular,’ or to put in their terminology, ‘no part of the world.’ Surely, they must be permitted to be, for the alternative is to snuff out the type of Christianity that existed in the first century, arguably the most 'true' model. Snuffing out this model in favor of societally evolved ones would be a very fine outcome in the eyes of today’s ‘anti-cultists,’ who will allow that religion can have a place only so long as it is clearly subservient to contemporary life and leaders. Anything not meeting this description they are inclined to label a ‘cult’ that ‘brainwashes’ people through ‘mind-control.’ Those of that spirit of Western anti-cultists have used exactly that reasoning to fuel the furor that has banned Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia and confiscated all of their property, with many other faiths shaking in their boots that they will be next. Of a prominent Russian anti-cultist, Alexander Dvorkin, who shares Western connections via an French NGO, a human-rights expert has said: he “enjoys disseminating inflammatory narratives and hate speech.” It is no less with anti-cultists here, who further their goals through whatever avenues present themselves. It may well be time to acknowledge that this avenue, this one involving child sexual abuse reporting, is one that became riddled with axle-bending potholes, express sincere remorse, help out to whatever extent is necessary to fill them in, so as to move on with the overall program. End of Part 2. Part 3 to follow.
  4. You know, I like this. I just do. I mean, he is. Say it & be done with it & move along, as he does. He is not self-aggrandizing. He doesn't do it to show off. He is merely trying to strike blows for what is truthful.
  5. He wrote a one or two paragraph article about the Dec 2018 WT & for 42 straight days he had been pitching it to two woman’s rights group, tagging them each day, and scolding them when they do not respond. It is staggering self-importance, IMO.  I half expect his next post to be: ‘G**dammit, answer me when I’m talking to you!’
  6. These amounts are generally reduced upon appeal and sometimes thrown out entirely, as was the previous record-holder. The much ballyhooed $4000 a day penalty imposed by some court, which ultimately became a substantial sum, was thrown out by a higher court as judicial overreach, just as @AllenSmith34, practically alone as I recall, said. In that regard, although chased around so much that he had to employ 100 aliases, though nobody else suffers too much for being offensive, he proved himself the MVP of the forum. Nevertheless, I would never say that they are nothing, nor that they do not add up. Time will tell. It may be that our version of truth will prevail in time and not yours. Will Jehovah go to bat for those who, to the best of their ability, carry out his will? If he does, it will be like putting his finger on the scales. So substantial is his finger that whoever sits on the opposite scale goes hurtling off into oblivion. To the extent that you succeed in your goal you impede the most selfless and efficient disaster relief program the world has known. Will God allow that? Time will tell. Please don't carry on about 'they only help fellow Witnesses.' The reason that they only (for the most part) help fellow Witnesses is that they are mostly volunteers using vacation time, and cannot do everyone. The best they can to is to set an example in selflessness that others can follow, if their heart moves them. So far, their example is not followed by others, who prefer established charities where everyone must be paid and sometimes unbelievable waste occurs. Such as here: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes This is the model you have chosen, John. Half a million dollars. Almost all of it flushed down the toilet. Embrace it, John. It's yours. JTR too, I think, for he has also waxed enthusiastic over the prospect that the JW relief work may be slowed.
  7. I managed to torpedo even that. After the paragraphs carrying on and on about Tom’s misguided suspicions, I raised my hand and said: ‘In hindsight I was embarrassed over the whole thing, and I’m glad that I didn’t blow the brother in.’
  8. Well, I certainly donÂ’t see any downside here. IÂ’ll just put back on the shelf that Twilight Zone episode, ‘To Serve Man,Â’ and be on my way.  Say, did you hear that the report that Bethel was on the ropes was completely phony. Apostates had orgasms over that report, I recall, and every opposer here, even many of the faithful, swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. There really is something to be said for that recent study article on avoiding the liars. Â
  9. Actually he probably was. Not exclusively, but that was probably in the mix. Jesus said they would be “lyingly saying every sort of wicked thing” about his followers. History records they were accused of cannibalism. While not pedophilia?
  10. What! Do you think I’m kidding? Yes, of course IÂ’m going to link to it. ItÂ’s unbelievable. Covert says: “Hey guys, please read the correction below. Really sorry this slipped through, and weÂ’ll tighten our process to make sure we donÂ’t repeat it. Again, apologies everyone. WellÂ….probably no big deal, and after all, he did apologize. LetÂ’s see what this is all about. His friend Lloyd says of his previous ‘reportÂ’: “Thanks so much for the kind comments. We really enjoyed putting this episode together and IÂ’m glad many of you seem to be finding it helpful and informative. Unfortunately, I need to offer an apology and a retraction. A trusted source passed on information to us that got included in the show notes but later proved to be incorrect. Specifically, the schedule of talks from which I was reading (including themes having to do with reduction and ‘centralizationÂ’ of branches) was apparently written by an ex-JW and was purely speculative and/or intended for satire [edÂ…it was a lie] Though we can see the funny side, we also take the accuracy and truthfulness of our work extremely seriously so I have edited out the relevant parts (edits may take a while to process and we are taking a close look at how we can more thoroughly vet our sources in the future. I can only apologize to the thousands of you who have already heard the incorrect information. The last thing we want to do is remotely contribute to affirming the “lying apostate” stereotype by passing on spurious information and we will certainly learn our lesson here. Thank you for your understanding on this.” Of course! I understood perfectly, and I instantly dismissed it all as ‘just one of those things.Â’ I did this even though it was the apostate lie ‘heard around the worldÂ’ and if you had tapped their phones and been listening in to some of them, you would have thought they were having sex in there, so loud were the orgasms. What was causing the ‘reduction and centralization of branches,Â’ according to the retracted report, was the fantastic news that the Watchtower was on the ropes financially and just a few more successful lawsuits would topple them for good. This is the stated goal of many of them, to litigate their former religious organization out of existence, and this glorious bit of ‘newsÂ’ was more welcome to them than if their team had, not only won the Super Bowl, but had been conceded the championship for the next hundred years. However, Lloyd is so responsible. He says he does not “remotely want to contribute to the ‘lying apostateÂ’ stereotype,” as though he is genuinely amazed that anybody could ever think such a thing, but just to be sure, he will take action to eliminate this mother of all lies and not repeat it again. I hope you understand. Look, if they ever succeeded in their stated goal of litigating the Watchtower out of existence, they would be proving themselves friends of child sexual abuse. There is good reason to think that JehovahÂ’s Witnesses enjoy considerable success in preventing it within their ranks, though with InvisibleChildren.org reporting that one out of five American children will be suffer molestation before 18, they clearly are not going to ever snuff it out. If they have enjoyed some success, then spread around whatever they have, and others will enjoy some success. It is not rocket science. It is not even ‘GodÂ’s spirit.Â’ If you hammer away at anything long enough, some of it sinks in. Relentlessly they teach family values over there in Witness-land, and they are the only organization on earth to have gathered each and every member via their 2017 summer convention and there consider detailed scenarios in which child abuse might occur, so that parents, the obvious first line of defense, can be vigilant. Moreover, since so much child sexual abuse occurs in settings of youth groups, surely it helps that they have no such segregation They donÂ’t even do Sunday School. You know, I donÂ’t really question LloydÂ’s sincerity in ferreting out an obvious lie, but I guarantee that he led the way with wet dreams when he heard that his former religion was on the ropes. Moreover, it improves matters only to a slight degree on his forum to take the blatant lie out, for the rest of it abounds with distortions of truth. They are often distortions hard-to-spot in a world gone increasingly atheistic. That is why I have declared him (for now) my #1 opponent and have written posts undercutting the hate that he spreads. For example, there is this article about women in abusive relationships. Is this hard on me? WellÂ…you know the expression that a writer needs a muse? He also needs a villain. Lloyd is dumbfounded at the moniker ‘lying apostate.Â’ How could anyone think that? He is also offended should anyone connect him with the atrocities against religious people in Russia, my own first of all, they alone are under ban and declared extremists, a label they share only with ISIS. No! He will not be accused. Why, he has spoken out against it. But of his anti-cultist-in-spirit, one Alexander Dvorkin, who aggressively pushes there just what he pushes here and is affiliated with anti-cultists in France, a human-rights expert has stated: “He enjoys disseminating inflammatory narratives and hate speech.” It is no different with Lloyd and his buddies. When you spew hate speech, eventually there arise people who act upon it. And what will he say then? ‘Hey guys, just want to let you know that we released the hounds of hell and they did more damage than we ever intended. Sorry.Â’  Â
  11. HeÂ’s got a point there. The trick is not to primarily speak to him, but to speak to whatever audience may be in the background.
  12. You make a start by following as many contrasting sources as you can on Twitter. Don’t just follow the ‘home team.’ Also, cover as many different disciplines as you can.
  13. If I from time to time poke mild fun at @admin, it is nothing to the fun I poke at the Librarian, the old hen. It is riotous. She really is a Jehovah's Witness, I think, though certainly an avant-guard one. She used to have for a banner an interior photo of a magnificent library; I thought it was the Library of Congress, but she told me it was some university library. It was gorgeous. Nonetheless, by degrees I have been able to portray her before the world as a petty mean school librarian, who really doesn't like children, but she is too arthritic and just plain tired to do much about it when they misbehave. Moreover, she is frequently on the bottle, and while she knows her pupils are tittering behind her back, and sometimes right in front of her, she spends most of her days counting down to her retirement. The strange thing about all of this is that she is actually a man. No, not a transgendered man; don't even go there. We started this gag long before transgenderism took the world by storm. @The Librarian and I made a deal long ago after she unfairly accused me of hawking my first ebook, Tom Irregardless and Me, on her forum. It was inexcusable for her to do this and the only conceivable reason that I can think of to excuse her vile accusation is that I was hawking my first ebook, Tom Irregardless and Me, on her forum. I have been very careful not to ever do this again, which is a shame because it is an excellent ebook, and unlike Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah's Witnesses Write Russia, it is not free. I actually make a buck off it. Maybe no small thing for you, but a big deal for me. Do you have any idea of how my wife goes through money? So crack open your wallet and buy the thing already, will you? As books go, it is not pricey. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/686882 The Librarian would scream at me for this, normally. But here I am in her library, her bad boy pupil, but her pupil nonetheless, and she has not shown up for work yet. I think she may have fallen off the wagon once again.
  14. Of course! People want a universe that's good. Instead, they get one that sucks. They are bummed over this. Whatever is wrong with them? Are you sure you are a Witness? I mean, even as a renegade one, I don't see how it can be. Does the JTR version of Jehovah's Witnesses really read that life just gets better and better, until God from his heavens says: "I was going to chastise these fine people? Whatever was I thinking?" and then goes off to see if 'Gone Fishing' has an empty spot?
  15. Exactly! Like the skyrocketing suicide rate of the young, who somehow don’t buy this bilge about life just getting better and better & decide to register their discomfort in the most telling way possible.
  16. It is too early for @admin. He gets up late and then has to putz around for some time before checking the mail. I’ll answer for him. As Monk says, he’ll thank me later. Somewhat reluctantly, he finds himself hosting a religious JW forum, though he is not that way himself. No JWs on it are typical JWs because if they were typical they would be more acquiesent to their organization’s preference they not take part in such forums. One important reason their organization prefers that they abstain is the undignified mess that results when they do not. For a variety of reasons, some Witnesses go there anyway, and, to be sure, there are parts of the forum largely innocuous. I avoid these parts and go right to the hot areas. It has helped me hone my writing, and about half of my ebook, Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia, can be found in about 500 fragments scattered throughout. Mr. Admin is thereby my friend. I owe him. As atypical JWs and their adversaries flail away, making points and counterpoints, some ridiculous, he has ‘lost it’ only twice to rebuke participants, once to say: “Jeez, you guys are a piece of work!” What could I tell him. That we’re not? It is so rare for him to chime in that when he does, it is like hearing a voice from On High. The only appreciable difference is that a voice from On High is unlikely to say, “Jeez, you guys are a piece of work.”
  17. I think @admin will not mind this. it is clearly relevant and he is mentioned. Of course, he wants to keep traffic on his page. Every forum host does. That is why I do not seek to undermine his interests. I allow no comments on mine. Anyone wanting to do so must come back here. My post even links back to him. http://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2018/10/high-praise-for-chuckles.html
  18. Believe me, you have nothing to worry about. It's unbelievable what they put up with around here. Even @admin holds his nose and endures. 'Well, the nutcakes are driving traffic to my site,' he says. His occasions for rebuke are rare. I can think of only one other time, when he said: "Jeez, you guys are a piece of work!" Ha! What could I tell him? That we're not? Tell him, Admin. Reassure the fellow. He means to stick around for a while, it appears. And he makes sense. Tell him 100 louts will go before you even think about tossing him.
  19. I wouldn’t worry about that. They are quite indulgent. From what I have seen of your manners, it will snow in you-know-where before you have any trouble from the bossman If you are a Witness, as are some here, you might want to avoid it due to the association. Don’t look to me to set the good example in this regard. I am being a bad boy, beyond all question. if it helps, I am considered a good boy in all other matters.
  20. I did NOT say you are loony. (Or did I?) What I said was that you so closely resemble loony that I cannot tell the difference. See? I am willing to put the onus on myself. Imagine. Here I propose what has never been proposed before, at least by me, making a magnificent concession, and the big baby just keeps saying hateful things about the Christian organization.
  21. I am not entirely sure of the meaning here, but it seems more and more likely that @admin had specific persons in mind when he blew his top at everyone, and that I was the one to sass him back, though I was the least of all targets. I do use humor a lot, sometimes to deflate those I think are whiners or windbags, (always on the other side of course, but this almost need not be said; none of my people would ever carry on this way) and humor often does not translate well. Ah well, if it is, it is. I’m not going to apologize to him again; I already did. I don’t necessarily read all comments closely, or even at all, before commenting. You cannot deduce everything through forensic methods. I miss some things. The threads drive me nuts, too, some of it. Admin and I may have more in common than he thinks.
  22. Elizabeth Chuck wrote an article about Jehovah’s Witnesses and I would have preferred she write one instead about the PTA meeting in her town. It is a normal reaction, for it was news of a huge-dollar verdict against a religious organization I hold dear. Of course I hate to see it; that’s only natural. When you find yourself on the gallows you do not angle for a selfie with the hangman. Still, if you must hear bad news, hear it from Ms. Chuck, for her news in this case is straight reporting, not one of the hatchet jobs we often get. The topic is the most white-hot topic of all, child sexual abuse, and temptations to whip it into fever pitch are not resisted by all. She does resist it. That’s not to say I might not write it up differently. With every story, it is a matter of which facts you put where. But she doesn’t make any up or deliberately misrepresent them. Having said that, it is not to suggest that even those who do misrepresent do so on purpose, as I will outline. Well…I guess it is to suggest that, but only to suggest. It is not proof positive. When your own people merely say that they ‘abhor child abuse and strive to protect children’, but otherwise do not comment, what’s a reporter to do? Here’s what I like about the Elizabeth Chuck story. First of all, it is not like the Matt Volz AP article, picked up by many sources, that expressed seeming bewilderment that “the Jehovah’s Witness cases haven’t received the same national attention” [as the Roman Catholic Church]. Is not the reason a big ‘Duh’? The Montana case abuse under trial was all within a family and church leaders were accused of botching the handling of it, though blameless themselves. It’s a little different than church leaders actually committing the abuse, something which is very rare with Witnesses. Ms. Chuck correctly (and atypically) makes clear that a “two-witness rule” used by Witnesses “is only for internal modes of discipline and does not prevent a victim from going to the police.” She correctly points out that “there are very strict internal modes of discipline within Jehovah's Witnesses.” Yes. It is not an anything-goes religion. She correctly observes that being disfellowshipped is often a painful experience and serves as a negative incentive to do what might trigger it. So far so good. It might not be as I would phrase it, but it is certainly acceptable reporting. She stumbles briefly, though not seriously, when she says: “Jehovah's Witnesses are a misunderstood and very self-enclosed group, despite counting some celebrities among its ranks — including Venus and Serena Williams.” She is right that they are misunderstood. The only footnote I would add is about her seeming acquiescence to the common wisdom that groups are validated by having celebrities in their camp, many of whom are among the most silly people on earth, living radically different lives than anyone else. However, the miscue is minor, and, after all, I make use of poor Serena Williams, too. Ms. Chuck does her homework. She consults experts on religion, such as “Mark Silk, a professor and the director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn [who says of Witnesses] ‘They don't vote. They don't celebrate birthdays and holidays. They don't say the pledge [of allegiance]. They are not just another Christian denomination.’” It is not her fault if she does not know that the guy (likely) has it in for us, spinning his facts negatively, and the reason is revealed in his very job title: he is a professor at Trinity College. If you do not accept the Trinity teaching, you are toast in the eyes of many of these people. Nonetheless, what the professor about voting and not pledging allegiance is true enough. He does not mention that if nobody pledged allegiance to human institutions maybe the national king could not pit them so easily against each other in times of war, but that is beyond the scope of his information request. At least he doesn’t inaccurately charge that Jehovah’s Witnesses are disrespectful to country, for there are few people as scrupulous about ‘rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s’ (taxes) than they. Reporter Chuck relates the words of another expert: “"Whatever belief they have or mode of internal discipline they have, they have a biblical justification for it.” I’ll take it. It’s true. We don’t apologize for it. I prefer it infinitely over church reporters saying we are not Christian because we do not accept the Trinity. The reason we not accept it is that its scriptural support is based almost entirely upon taking literally certain passages which, if they were seen in any other context, would be instantly dismissed as figure of speech. She relates dutifully the sparse words of the Watchtower organization that they “abhor child abuse and strive to protect children from such acts,” attributing the sparseness to “a penchant for privacy.” She takes it at face value. She does not imply that they are lying through their teeth, like Mr. Gambacorta did in the Philadelphia Inquirer, dismissing the words as ‘boiler plate,’ and even ending his article with an anecdote of spying artwork at the JW headquarters captioned ‘Jehovah loves children,’ and using it as a pretext to wink at his readers as though to say: ‘Yes, I guess we know just how they love them’ before returning to his Witness-hating base on a Reddit thread, where he is hailed as a hero. He made me so mad that I responded by letter, and when it was ignored I put it online (and I wish it got more play than it actually does, for it is good, not the whole picture perhaps, but what is? It represents facts not exactly shouted from the rooftops. It offers perspectives not heard anywhere else.) However, eclipsing her skill at side-stepping all these landmines is that she puts her finger on the real problem in the very first paragraph of her article: Jehovah’s Witnesses are ‘insular.’ She doesn’t even try to spin that into a crime, as do some. Most Witnesses would not agree to the label ‘insular’, but that is primarily because they are unfamiliar with it and unsure just what attachments might come with it. They will instantly, even proudly, acknowledge two closely related phrases: they are ‘separate from the world’ and ‘no part of’ it. It is a scriptural imperative, they will say, because if you want to lend a helping hand, you must be in a place of safety yourself. Not all will agree that life today is constantly-improving. Some will say the overall picture more closely resembles the Titanic floundering. Did I not just read that generalized anxiety has replaced depression as the number one mental health malady? Can that be because there is nothing to worry about in life today? I think not. It is the ramifications of these two views, society is ever-improving vs floundering, that causes most of the ‘misunderstanding’ that opponents of Witnesses speak of. Witnesses are ‘insular,’ biblically mandated, and here is an instance where that insularity has contributed to a significant tragedy. Witness leaders find themselves in a situation parallel to certain vehicles being exempt from normal traffic laws—say, cops and fire emergency vehicles. Yet, in making use of that exemption, a terrible accident results and the public outcry is so great that they are convicted even though following the law. Or, to apply it more accurately, public anger is so great that the law is reinterpreted so it can be established that they did break it. I am not a lawyer. I can quickly step out of my depth. Yet most persons reading this section of the Montana child abuse reporting laws would, I suspect, agree that the Witness organization followed the letter of the law as stated. They make every effort to do that. The prompt appeal of any Witness judicial committee to their Branch organization is not to see how they can evade child abuse laws, as their opponents often spin it, but how they can be sure their actions are in harmony with them. On the very bottom of the document ‘Montana Mandatory Reporting Requirements Regarding Children’ is a section labeled "Members of the clergy or priests are not required to report when the following condition is met....a member of the clergy or a priest is not required to make a report if the communication is required to be confidential by cannon law, church doctrine, or established church practice.” Even “established church practice?” It seems extraordinarily loose, and yet there it is. It is a part of a doctrine called ‘ecclesiastical privilege.’ It has long been encapsulated into law, as has the privileged nature of the doctor-patient relationship and the attorney-client relationship, on the recognition that these relationships cannot function without the expectation of confidentiality. If such is the law, why is the Witness organization found culpable despite stringent efforts to follow it? Because the war today is against child sexual abuse, deemed the most critical crusade of our time, and they were expected to ‘go beyond the law’ so as to facilitate that end. Thus, the law was reinterpreted so as to allow that they did violate it. The Witness organization finds itself in a situation similar to that of Joe Paterno, the coach who was universally praised throughout his life as an excellent role model but then was excoriated beyond redemption when he merely obeyed the law regarding an unspecific allegation he heard of child sexual abuse but did not 'go beyond it.' He followed it. He reported the allegation to his superiors. But he did not ‘go beyond the law,’ reporting it directly to police. When the allegation turned out to be true, his career was over, and even his life, for he died two years later. If it is so crucial to ‘go beyond the law,’ then make that the law. This is exactly what Geoffrey Jackson of the Witnesses’ Governing Body pleaded for three times before an Australian Royal Commission. Isn’t that the purpose of law – to codify what is right? Make the law clear, unambiguous, and allow for no exceptions. Jehovah’s Witnesses are universally recognized for meticulously following secular law even as they are primarily guided by biblical law. Make universal mandating the law, with no exceptions. Requiring parties to ‘go beyond the law’ only enables Monday-morning quarterbacking to assign motives, invariably bad ones, to unpopular parties failing in this regard. An article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle dated November 20th, 2011 observed that: “it's a mistake to think that the failure…to report the abuse is a rarity....Studies over the past two decades nationally have consistently shown that nearly two-thirds of professionals who are required to report all cases of suspected abuse fail to do so....."I think that we fail miserably in mandated reporting," said Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Kristina Karle...” Is it not hopelessly chaotic to excoriate those who did their best to follow the law when two thirds of all professionals, for a variety of reasons, do not? Does anyone charge, as has been done with Jehovah's Witnesses by their opponents, that two thirds of all professionals do not give a hoot about children? Plainly there are other factors at work. Yet when the crusade against child sexual abuse reaches fever pitch only one factor is deemed to have any significance. (The Democrat and Chronicle article is behind a paywall. Snippets of the above quote exist here and there, but to my knowledge, the only complete package is found in a JoePa follow-up article I wrote at the time. All is not lost. Your employer will pay to get you behind that wall, and probably already has an account. Alas, my employer is me, and he likes to cut costs, seeing no need to return there, as he already have what he needs.) End of Part 1. Part 2 to follow soon.
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