OMFG... part II

Try not to retch while reading this one from Pharyngula.

PZ links to a rather troubling (aka - completely disgusting) comment by a bishop.

My guess is that there will be a Part III, Part IV, Part V.... (I think the usage of Roman numerals is appropriate in this case.)

OMFG...

There are a few reasons I did not start writing about the catholic church and their serial rapist priests***.

First - So many folks were writing so much about it that I thought nothing more needed to be added.

Second - The atrocities were so numerous, once started where would I end?

Third - it was just so damned depressing.

This morning I was reading yet another story of yet another serial rapist.  This one involves not only a cover-up, but atrocities forced upon the weakest and neediest.  According to a lawsuit filed in Alaska, some pedophile priests were moved to low income, isolated areas in Alaska where the priests could run wild.  h/t Pharyngula for that story - read PZ's analysis/rant of disgust on the situation, but you may not want to read the whole story on a full stomach.  Preferably - have a good stiff drink next to you.

But wait - there's more.... Also courtesy of the same Pharyngula article, a link to a call for the Pope's resignation.

So, yes, there is still a lot being written, and I don't know where/when/how it will stop  And it is still so...damned...depressing.


***Please note - I do not believe that every priest or that even more than a small minority are sick rapists/pedophiles.  I attended catholic church for years, and even got to know the local priest in the catholic church during my teen years.  The Father lived in the house 3 doors down from me, right next to the church, and I delivered newspapers to him daily - he was a good guy, and was happy do discuss/debate religious issues in a constructive manner.  After a few of those discussions (some involving teachers and friends) we left each other agreeing to disagree - and to the best of my knowledge he never damned me to hell.  Most priests probably are very similar to him.  Sadly, the small percentage who are rapists and pedophiles were protected by a corrupt administration.

That's Funny, I'm Not Laughing...

Just as during Bush the younger's administration the truth sometimes came out most clearly from Comedy Central's Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) and Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report), the truth about the catholic church's cover-up of child-raping priests and the current Pope's involvement in that scandal can be quickly described by a couple of comics: http://www.jesusandmo.net/2010/03/30/visit/ & http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=355.

Sadly, as funny as those two comics are, I am not laughing.

(Update - of course, The Onion has to get in their two bits:  The Onion's Take)

How can an organization that purports to do "god's work" and claim to be a tool for good let priests sexually abuse children, hide the fact that some priests did that, PROTECT those same priests from the law, and then reassign them to other dioceses to work with other children?

This happened in the US, UK, Brazil, Ireland, Austria, The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, as well as the pope's native Germany.  (ABC story about the popes and the pedophile in Mexico.)  There is no excuse.

I had a discussion the other day with a buddy who was raised and is still a Catholic.  I asked him what he thinks about the pedophilia and how the church has handled it.  I figured he is like most Catholics - disturbed by the priests who rape the kids, and disgusted at the church hierarchy for the cover-up.  That is pretty much how he felt, he had said.  You could tell the crimes really, really bothered him, but that he hoped the rest of the parishioners, clergy, and administration would help the church recover.

I was leaning towards that view - that the catholic church would recover and clean house, but then I read this.  Two instances - eight years apart, but all too similar.  Folks so caught up in the wonderfulness of their guy, that they look right past the rapist part of that guy.

“We didn’t need to clap him,” parishioner Maura McClean said afterwards, “because I think God will applaud him”.

“But that was the reaction of the decent people of Armagh. I think he’s a true genuine person who’s done no wrong.”

Even if I believed in such a creature, I do not think any god would applaud a pedophile enabler.  And to that parishioner who stated he had "done no wrong" - I can only hope that nobody "does no wrong" to a child he is close to.

As a reader of Andrew Sullivan notes, one-time Cardinal Ratzinger was a micro-manager.  I find it hard to believe that he would call an American university about firing somebody, yet would not know anything about a child molester in his organization.  The Pope has stated that his flock should not listen to "petty gossip".  I've not heard any gossip.  I've read stories of rape and pedophilia and cover-ups, but no gossip.

And for one final WTF approach to the whole priestly pedophilia/rape/cover-up situation, read this and try not to get sick to your stomach.  That "not me - the devil made me do it" bullstuff did not work for Family Circus, and it shouldn't work for the child rapists and their enablers.


In a previous post about being raised catholic, I wrote that one action I may take is to contact the diocese where my parents had me baptized and where my first communion was, and request they remove my name from their records.  That takes place Monday. 

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means"

Inigo Montoya said that to Vizzini after Vizzini's repeated (mis)use of the word "inconceivable".  I think that quote is just as appropriate for the catholic church and their use of the word "celibate" (or "celibacy").

For years we have heard of child sex abuse by catholic priests in the United States.  A priest would abuse kids.  If he was caught, or is suspicion became too great, the church would move the priest to another city/diocese.  And as the commercial goes - lather... rinse... repeat.  The church hierarchy was complicit in allowing these pedophiles to continue raping young boys.

Celibacy is "abstention from sexual relations".  Some would argue that "sexual relations" means the act of intercourse.  Common sense has a more liberal view of sex - if genitals are involved in an act of pleasure, it is sexual in nature.  (We'll ignore the non-sexual contact with genitals when one washes oneself, unless, as Stewie Griffin said to Brian: "You were clean fifteen minutes ago. Now you're just on vacation.")

Celibacy for priests should effectively ban their coming in contact with another's genitals, or others coming in contact with the priests' genitals.  Yet many priests have been accused of sexually abusing children.... Priests being celibate?  "(They) keep using that word.  I do not think it means what (they) think is means."