I have been thinking about the whole idea of judging others and want to add one other point, which has been made before, and that is that most of the people on this forum are witnesses - they are not the prosecution or the defence.
If you read through the posts, you will see that a great many say “this happened to me”, “the impact this had on me was” or “what I saw or heard was”. These are not actually judgements; they are references to verifiable facts. That doesn’t prove they are all true of course, but they are things that could possible be proven one way or the other.
A few pages ago, Kelvin raised a number of questions and said he (I am assuming Kelvin is a he) found many of the claims unbelievable. But he didn’t bring any actual evidence – just a claim that he found other evidence unbelievable and concluded that, since it was so obviously unbelievable, it should not be investigated. (Now, why does Cardinal O’Brien come to mind at this point? It is hard to believe that anyone is still thinks that the “sweep it under the carpet” approach is justifiable.)
When Kelvin was pushed for which claims he found unbelievable, the only one he could specify was that cbarb was looking at her father through rose-coloured spectacles (I paraphrase). So a vague assertion about lots of things being unbelievable boils down to this one issue, which doesn’t really have much to say about the church itself, either good or bad. Not very weighty stuff in my view.
I do also have to agree with CovLas when she says,
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CovLass
I feel I must comment on the point you make when you say "I truly believe that each and every one of the leaders within the church care for and pray for their fellow members and truly seek the best for them" Of course you are entitled to that opinion, however I have seen numerous occasions that would point to them only caring for a select few.
I have not only seen that sort of favouritism, caring for a select few, I have seen people who were favoured by the leaders suddenly cut off and left with no support at all. That is not the action of someone truly seeking the best for others, and it is not the action Jesus himself said a shepherd should take if one sheep out of one hundred goes astray.
As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." Opinions are one thing, but there is also a responsibility to examine the evidence base for opinions and to at least try to determine the facts.
From the evidence I see, the leaders are only there for the few they decide they are “drawn to” – and I believe any objective review would confirm this conclusion.
I am not sure whether any or all of this is relevant to the Review being undertaken by the Scottish Charities Regulator, but it seems to me that it is, as one of the key features of a charity is that it should be of public benefit. If the benefits are just for a few that are selected by some unverifiable mystic process, I can’t see how that is a public benefit.