6 Reflections on Sleepovers

I didn’t see this one coming. After over ten years of daily blogging, I tend to have a pretty good sense of which articles have the potential to cause a reaction and which articles have the potential to fizzle. I might have guessed that an article on why my family doesn’t do sleepovers would have attracted a few more readers than usual, but I wouldn’t have believed that in its first week it would be read by nearly 750,000 people. But it was, and I found myself wondering why.

I’ve spent some time reading through comments and responses to try to understand why so many people were interested in reading about sleepovers. Here are a few personal takeaways from the discussion.   Continue at Tim Challies

Warn Them to Not Abuse Their Children

Do your church members physically abuse their children? Maybe you think it’s so few that you don't feel compelled to teach publicly what everyone knows: don't abuse your kids. At most it's one or two bad apples, right?

I'm not so sure.

I cannot say that I want to write about this topic, and I’m no expert. But I keep stumbling into abuse situations in one church or another. And in every case it's been a “model family” who abused their children in the name of what they thought was “biblical discipline.” In other words, I’m talking about well-meaning parents.

Sometimes anger was to blame. The parents confess that their temper got the best of them when their discipline left bruises. Then again, something about their overall approach regularly leaves cuts, welts, or bruises.

Sometimes a severe deficiency of wisdom was to blame. I heard of one couple who spanked their six-month old. Or another who would strike different body parts of their older children with a hard object. And all of these parents believed they were doing the right thing. 

Defining abuse would take another article. But like the Supreme Court justice said about pornography, you know it when you see it. You can see the frightened child backing away as their young eyes behold the grotesque ungodliness storming toward them.   Keep Reading >>>

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Ireland Ramps up Battle with Vatican over Child Abuse

The Roman Catholic Church regards information learned in confession as completely confidential.

(CNN) -- Ireland stepped up its battle with the Roman Catholic Church over child abuse Sunday, with Justice Minister Alan Shatter vowing to pass a law requiring priests to report suspicions of child abuse, even if they learn about them in confession.

The Catholic Church regards information learned in confession as completely confidential.

But under the law proposed by Shatter, priests could be prosecuted for failing to tell the police about crimes disclosed in the confession box.

Shatter said in a statement through a spokesman last week that priests' failure to report what they learn in confession "has led sexual predators into believing that they have impunity and facilitated pedophiles preying on children and destroying their lives."

The minister's comment to a local radio station Sunday comes after the Vatican rejected Irish accusations that church leaders sought to cover up extensive abuse of young people by priests in Ireland.

Saturday's 25-page statement is the latest development in a row that has seen an unprecedented rift open up between the Vatican and Ireland, a heavily Roman Catholic country.

"The Holy See does not accept that it was somehow indifferent to the plight of those who suffered abuse in Ireland," the statement says.

Rather, it says, the Holy See "devoted considerable attention to the Irish situation," through meetings with Irish bishops and directions given by the Pope to Irish church leaders.  Continue Reading...