TrueTomHarley

Okay
Okay
Now you've got it!
Once again, you have nailed it. I am way way up there in the ranks and I neglect all my crucial responsibilities to spend oodles of time posting to malcontents on the net, some of whom are nincompoops. I am a veritable theocratic tweeting Trump - 
 
But @AllenSmith is even more lofty than me. I would not be shocked if he were the alter-online-ego of Bro Jackson, himself, working out his frustrations on a backwater internet channel that the most clean organization in the world is portrayed by the  ARC as among the foulest. To say nothing of the mysterious @Space Merchant.Where does he come from?
Come, come. This is the internet, the land of the liars. If you want people you can know and trust, go to a place where you can physically interact with them.
I think you are not being forthright either. You appear to have accepted the case 54 data that JW's have a better prevention record than anyone else. At any rate, you offer no pushback to it, though you do on other things. And ...
you acknowledge that the organization with the best record, though not perfect, is improving. So NOW is the time you decide that it is too foul a place in which to sully your  feet? There is more to you than meets the eye.
When God finds out about the few denarious' debt you will not forgive your fellow slave, what will he say about the 10,000 fold amount that you owe him?

There was a study in the Sun not long ago that found nearly all teens were found to have the BHP chemicals of plastic in their systems, which mimic estrogen.
Should we be surprised at the explosion of transgender cases in the last 2 or 3 years? It has been found that transitioning such does not spare them from a 40% higher suicide rate than the general population.
And maybe even the explosion of homosexuality over the last few decades.

There was a study in the Sun not long ago that found nearly all teens were found to have the BHP chemicals of plastic in their systems, which mimic estrogen.
Should we be surprised at the explosion of transgender cases in the last 2 or 3 years? It has been found that transitioning such does not spare them from a 40% higher suicide rate than the general population.
And maybe even the explosion of homosexuality over the last few decades.

In fact, it was. It is contained in that article forbidding the use of copyrighted materials including artwork and logos, and the suggestion that Bethel may go after even friends who do this.
As I recall, nobody screamed louder about this than you.
As to the shirts themselves, I'm with @Steve Wilkinson. You will not see one at the Kingdom Hall. ideally none of our people will wear them in any setting. But any gift shop for any attraction features tons of such tacky fare, so time only will tell.

In fact, it was. It is contained in that article forbidding the use of copyrighted materials including artwork and logos, and the suggestion that Bethel may go after even friends who do this.
As I recall, nobody screamed louder about this than you.
As to the shirts themselves, I'm with @Steve Wilkinson. You will not see one at the Kingdom Hall. ideally none of our people will wear them in any setting. But any gift shop for any attraction features tons of such tacky fare, so time only will tell.

Wasn't that Janet Joplin's? Did Joanie do it, too? or even write it for her?
Al Capp used to call her "Phony Joanie."

It must also be remembered that , following a thorough discussion of spiritual food, it always becomes a matter of what they ate.

Thanks Sister Queen Esther.  A reminder that it is a basic requirement for all to preach the good news.
 
Once again, thank you.
 
 
 

You would almost think from the way some carry on here, that a case of child sexual abuse "properly handled" means it did not happen.
It is like the team of grief counselors called in after a school shooting. Of course, it is nice that they are called in. But it would have been even nicer had the school shooting not taken place in the first place.
Therefore the transcending lesson to take away from this hearing is not the 1006 abuse victims whose cases were not handled properly in the eyes of Australian authorities. It is the 37,000 cases of abuse nationwide (in a single year) that would not have happened were greater society able to imitate the record of Jehovah's Witnesses.

He did, @Space Merchant You will have to back off on this one.
As soon as the janitor would unlock the doors each morning, he was there with an armload of pamphlets, saving seats for his friends, just like Witnesses do at the Regional.
There was a lot of boring stuff that had nothing to do with Witnesses and he slept through all that, but he came to when they got to the good part.

He did, @Space Merchant You will have to back off on this one.
As soon as the janitor would unlock the doors each morning, he was there with an armload of pamphlets, saving seats for his friends, just like Witnesses do at the Regional.
There was a lot of boring stuff that had nothing to do with Witnesses and he slept through all that, but he came to when they got to the good part.

You could have just left it there.
The spotlight is only on them because they were proactive enough to look into something everyone else ran away from. Other faiths did not know or want to know whether members actually applied Bible teachings or not. Through neglect of what turns out to be a most serious problem, they produced no record for the ARC or anyone else to hold hearings on.
The other case studies the ARC investigated (there were 57 altogether) were social or govenment institutions or schools, who tracked abuse incidents. Other religions did not touch such things.
The finding that should be spotlighted, though it was not because its mission was something else, is that children appear to be 10 times safer in the Witness community than in the general Austrailain popluation. 

sigh ... If you only did one tenth as much to support the Christian leadership that has proven 10 times more effective in preventing child abuse, as you do your favorite politician.

Because the Watchtower did what no one else was proactive enough to do. 
With an eye to keeping clean as a congregation before God's eyes - as clean as possible - which the Bible obligates Christians to do, they chose to look into reports of abuse, and not hide their heads in the sand, as did everyone else. That is why there is this list of 1006 over 60 years that you and Rook have focused on. 
Everyone else (except for clergy) have had crimes of child sexual abuse discovered independently by authorities, and no connection is ever made with whatever religion they belong to.

Yes, I understand this. 
Pursue this point if you wish, but also point out, at least in a footnote, that the ones you are castigating are 10 times more successful in preventing child sexual abuse in the first place than the general Australian population.

Since this is the case, you might rethink how you approach this topic.
Many of your posts would indicate - to the casual reader, which is what most of us are - that JW land should be re-labeled "Child Molesters R Us." But now you have agreed with my premise and concluson, which essentially is that children are 10 times safer in the JW community than anywhere else.
Can it really be that this is despite the headship of the present human arrangement? It is they who put the diet of spiritual teachings together through print, media, and meetings. Okay, if you somehow feel they are still messing up everything, then you could assert that children would be 15 times safer in the JW community than without them. But that is the factor that you should always highlight, for that is the factor with the most implications.
After all, were all Australia able to duplicate the success of Jehovah's organization, the country's abuse rate would be 90% lower, and they probably would not have felt a need to assemble a Royal Commission in the first place.
 

The home of the typical forum participant here:

 
TrueTom's modest abode:

The home of the typical forum participant here:

 
TrueTom's modest abode:

sigh ... If you only did one tenth as much to support the Christian leadership that has proven 10 times more effective in preventing child abuse, as you do your favorite politician.

The home of the typical forum participant here:

 
TrueTom's modest abode:

So now you seem to be walking back on your acknowledgement that the JW organization is 10 times more successfull in preventing child abuse than the general Australian population. Or are you? I am not sure what you are doing. It may be you just gag at the thought of saying anything good about them, though they have clearly earned it.
However, to draw an analogy that I think is parallel:
Unilke Jehovah's Witnesses, who are politically neutral, or at the very least, keep their politics to themself, you wear yours on your sleeve. You have made it very clear who you regard as the better political leader, even calling HRC the Devil.
Trump, in your eyes, is (at least) 10 times better in leadership than Hillary.
Therefore, I would expect you to be maligning and castigating him, as you do here with the ones whose record is 10 times better. Don't let anyone give him any credit for anything. Blast him away. Say something nasty about past business dealings, or comments to Billy Bush. Don't let them tell you there is nothing to Russian collusion. Dig into it!
You do not hesitate to do it and more with Christian leadership. Do it with the political leader you favor. 
 

Well, now that you put it that way, the work stinks. 
But you shouldn't put it that way. It is a ridiculous description. 'Brazen' is nebulous whereas 'loose' is crystal clear? You're just beating a familiar dead horse, possibly one that has thrown you.

Because it is not, relatively speaking.
Study 54 of the report, a follow-up to Study 29, makes possible an apples-to-apples comparison. Study 54 looked at the 17 instances of child abuse from the Witness organization that had been reported in the interim, from August 2015 to January 2017. Nine were historical cases and none involved an elder. All occurred in a familial setting. Of the seventeen, two had refused to report as they were adult survivors and it was their right not to report. The number of Witnesses in all Australia at the time was 67,418.
An apples-to-apples comparison becomes possible with a pool size large enough to be significant. Out of a total national Australian population of 23,968,973, The Australian Institute of Family Studies reported 41,622 notifications of child sexual abuse, (2014-2015) and the Commission likely reviewed some of them. Seemingly, the safest place a child could be was in the Jehovah’s Witness community, for proportionately, one would have expected 117 incidents, 100 more than the actual number. (The disparity is even greater, since a 17 month period for the Witnesses is compared to a 12-month period for all Australia) Do the math discover from these figures that a child is ten times safer in the Witness community than in the overall world.
What the ARC criticized was procedures for handling abuse cases that have occured. It was not their mission to look at whether, in a given setting, abuse was more or less likely to happen in the first place. Had it been, they would have awarded JWs a Family Glory award, just like Putin did to the Russian Witness family.

No argument with this. It might be good to acknowledge this more frequently than is done.
Nonetheless, it is a bit like you hire a worker to reroof your house and he paints the house instead. Even though it did need painting, you are not happy. If he had painted in addition to reroofing, you would have been thrilled. But he painted instead of.
So it is with preaching good news and charitible works. Preaching always has the priority. See, for example, Matthew 9:35:
And Jesus set out on a tour of all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the good news of the Kingdom and curing every sort of disease and every sort of infirmity.

For example, I just read that Billy Graham died today at 99, the grandpa of the TV evangelists.
I don't recall any financial abuse with him, and his final circumstances appear to be reasonably modest. When he traveled, it was not via VW Beetle and he didn't clip the Pennysaver, but they conducted operations as would anyone else on tour -  I can recall Carlin or someone making fun of his expensive suits, but it is a cheap shot and everyone knows it - even he himself, probably, who was just doing what comedians do.