I received a message from a former blogging buddy today. It read: "Not that I'm trying to ruin your day or anything, but are you going to write about this or should I? It may be the thing that brings me out of blog retirement. I have to calm down first, though."
The message referred to this video...
...in which Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican's second highest authority, alleges a relationship between pedophelia and homosexuality. "That is the truth - I read it in a document written by psychologists, so that is the problem."
No, Your Emminence, the problem is a church which protects pedophiles and other sexual predators (you do remember the girls and women molested by priests, don't you? Or do crimes committed against female victims not count because they don't fit into your nice little "gay conspiracy" theme?) Hey--come have lunch with me and my friend and let her tell you about her experience with a pedophile priest.
I have long wondered where the police are in all of this world-wide scandal. We see articles all the time about this priest or that priest who molested hundreds of children yet was returned to parish work. Well...we now know about it. We know their names. We know where they work. We know their bosses. Why are so many of them still out of prison?
Why is there a guy in ruby slippers and a long white dress, dripping in gold jewelry, with fingers covered in rings, looking for all the world like Alban in La Cage aux Folles, a man who has been proven to have knowingly blocked the de-frocking of at least one pedophile priest and sent him back into parish work and into contact with children again, still the head of the Catholic church? Why isn't he behind bars for aiding and abetting many felonies?
The Vatican on Thursday defended its decision not to defrock a Wisconsin priest accused of sexually assaulting as many as 200 deaf boys from the 1950s to the 1970s and denounced what it called a "despicable" attempt to smear Pope Benedict XVI and his aides. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinal
The Milwaukee Archdiocese has testified against a Wisconsin bill that would make it easier for victims to sue their abusers for damages and open a three-year window in cases where the statute of limitations has lapsed.
A devout friend told me, in good faith (pun intended), that the problem with the worldwide sexual scandal was the "secret homosexual sex rings" within the church. People actually believe this crap.
What's worse, in an amazing bit of spin, the Catholic Church is taking on the role of the VICTIM in all of this because, oh golly gee whiz, the media is suddenly reporting about their role in it all. Bertone is calling for the "attack of the Catholic Church by the media to end." (Lotsa luck, Your Eminence...check with Tiger Woods about how effective that plea is going to be!)
It is beyond stupifying to believe the stuff that is coming out of the Vatican these days. It's OK for them to continue the attacks on gay people over and over and over again, for centuries, but if, God forbid, someone should call them on their lies and their coverups they whine that they are being picked on.
I'm going to do something which is extremely distasteful to me. I'm going to pretend, just for a moment, that I accept what Bertone is saying. That I accept that the whole problem is due to the homosexuals.
OK, Your Eminence. You guys in the pretty dresses and the nice hats and the shiny shoes have KNOWN ABOUT THIS FOR YEARS...DECADES. WHY HAVEN'T YOU DONE ANYTHING ABOUT IT????
It was many, many years before any of this surfaced that I heard about a half-way house for priests who had been caught diddling with the little kids in the sacristy. The pedophile priests went there for "treatment" and then were sent back into parish work again. I thought then that this was criminal. That's like sending an alcoholic through rehab and then giving him a job as a bartender.
There are so many levels of victims in all of this. At the very top, of course, are the victims, the young children of both genders who were molested by pedophile priests and whose lives were forever ruined.
But we need also remember the millions of good, hard working priests who may be gay or may be straight, who respect the vow of chastity that they made, but who may now be suspect, or who may be moved out of parish work in some Catholic version of Don't Ask Don't Tell, which assumes that if they are discovered to have thoughts of men they are then, ipso facto, dangerous to small children.
The Catholic church itself, as an institution, is a victim because of the damage that has been done to it worldwide by the lying bastards who have let this all go on for decades. How many of us have walked away in disgust because of the attitude and actions of the church hierarchy?
But I don't have one eyeblink of sympathy for those in authority who are now whining that they are being persecuted. Good. Maybe they will learn something about humility in all of this.
Shut up and take your medicine, Your Eminence--you and all of the others who have been a part of this shameful chapter in the history of Catholicism.
3 comments:
I've been reading a 13th century novel about the Roman Church and its quest for power. Is it the only religion that sets up this hierarchy, with a human being at the very top who is supposed to be infallible?
I don't know, because I wasn't educated that way. On the one hand, I understand how the Church helps people cope with life. But on the other hand... well, I'm not supposed to understand it, right?
Mingle*****
Yes, They want to know about our sex life but they keep theirs a dirty little secret.
It's just tragic isn't it? My childhood parish priest was sent to jail, and my friend was one of the victims. It definitely gives you a different perspective on the cloistered and outdated hierarchy.
The good news is that loads of them are being put in jail in Wisconsin, thanks to a really strong advocacy group (SNAP). In fact, the latest hoo-ha with the pope was about a Milwaukee priest that was brought to light by them. So they're getting prosecuted, but there were so many who were covered up for so long, I think it's hard to catch up.
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