More evidence that if morality comes from God, religion is good at blocking it out.

Count ’em: four arch-bishops covered up and colluded with perverts to protect immorality.

The commission found that three archbishops of Dublin — John Charles McQuaid (1940-72), Dermot Ryan (1972-84) and Kevin McNamara (1985-87) — did not tell police about clerical abuse cases, instead opting to avoid public scandals by shuttling offenders from parish to parish.

It was not until 1995, seven years into his reign, that then archbishop Connell allowed police to see church files on 17 clerical abuse cases. The documents were kept in a secret, locked vault in the archbishop’s Dublin residence.

Full article is here.

What jolly good fellows, these arch-bishops, looking out to keep the stream open for the toddlers and youngsters to be fed to a bunch of pedophiles and child rapists. It takes a special kind of belief to do so much horrendous wrong against innocents, but the Catholic church seems particularly able to maintain a sustained attack against, what just about any atheist knows to be, common morality, namely, to look out for and do whatever is necessary to protect children from abuse.  But not these arch-bishops; the welfare of Mother Church to avoid scandal is more important to these dress-wearing, supposedly celibate, guys than the welfare of children within its congregations.

How any moral person can continue to support this thoroughly discredited institution and look up rather than down to it on its moral track record is indeed a mystery of biblical proportions. It requires faith to replace such stark evidence to the contrary, and willful moral blindness to maintain such faith in spite of such very real pain and suffering caused by the people in positions of authority within this institution. Yet people do maintain faith in the institution, do continue to grant wisdom to these same people in positions of authority within it, and do continue to support the institution that does continue to cause harm and suffering throughout the world.

And everyone is supposed to be tolerant of that misguided, misplaced, misapplied allegiance because it falls under the name of religion. In fact, we are supposed to respect that allegiance and, to add insult to injury, continue to assume in spite of all evidence to the contrary that morality itself can be found through its doors. But how can any self-respecting person with an ounce if intellectual integrity actually go along with this bullshit? Something is wrong in the thinking pattern of the RC supporter and this thinking deserves our collective criticism, ridicule, disdain, and intolerance to any meddling by any of its agents of this institution on questions of morality within the public domain.