Why does the Pope want to screw your child?

Because he can.

I have been remiss in not posting on the pope’s year end message but I continue to hope that the man and his organization will simply disappear after every supporter justly walks away from it.

I can dream, can’t I?

Christopher Hitchens once described the entire career of this current pope, Pope Benedict XVI, aka Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Palpatine, aka The Rat, as having “the stench of evil about it.” He was writing specifically about the depth of responsibility carried by this man towards creating and maintaining the catholic church’s ongoing child abuse scandal and protecting those criminals who participated in the raping of children. Clearly, Ratzinger’s concern has been and continues to be focused on insulating the hierarchy of the catholic church from its deeds by sidestepping responsible accountability rather than instituting meaningful change to protect the health and welfare of children in its care.

It is richly hypocritical then to read pope Palpatine’s latest attempt to try to deny gays and lesbians equality in civil law and social policies, in what The Rat calls settings… all in the name of protecting the family regarding child welfare! This is the evil Hitch describes, a pernicious and malevolent intent to harm others in the name of bigoted piousness and religious doctrine:

Among these (settings for teaching children), pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman. This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself. The family unit is fundamental for the educational process and for the development both of individuals and States; hence there is a need for policies which promote the family and aid social cohesion and dialogue. It is in the family that we become open to the world and to life…

In this context of openness to life, I note with satisfaction the recent sentence of the Court of Justice of the European Union forbidding patenting processes relative to human embryonic stem cells…the European Court of Human Rights upholding the presence of the crucifix in Italian schoolrooms… I am convinced that legislative measures which not only permit but at times even promote abortion for reasons of convenience or for questionable medical motives compromise the education of young people and, as a result, the future of humanity. There is a need to implement educational policies which ensure that schooling is available to everyone and which, in addition to promoting the cognitive development of the individual, show concern for a balanced personal growth, including openness to the Transcendent. The Catholic Church calls for respect for religious freedom. This freedom has individual, collective and institutional dimensions…Finally I would stress that education, correctly understood, cannot fail to foster respect for creation….

And so on, and so on. It positively reeks of duplicity and dishonesty.  

For example, note carefully how insidiously this vile man circumscribes his way completely around the gay marriage bush without coming right out and saying it and how pleasing it is to him when public institutions kowtow to the Catholic church’s ignorant anti-life and bigoted positions. As Macdonald describes so well,

No, the pope doesn’t mention gay marriage at all, but he does speak about “policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself,” in a context where the heterosexual family — as the place where education for the future is to take place – that is, the restriction of marriage to a man and a woman (and the issue of that relationship), is the issue, and we know, from what the bishops in New York were up to recently (as the most salient recent case that I can think of), that when Roman Catholics say this, what they’re saying is that the very idea of gay marriage undermines the family, threatens human dignity, and the places the future of humanity itself in danger.

In other words, please stop whinging and complaining about nothing meaningful being done about the global scandal that is the Roman Catholic Church. It’s the fault of everyone but us. Now get to work incorporating our bigoted anti-enlightenment, anti-knowledge death cult doctrine into your secular institutions, your secular legislatures, your secular laws and into your secular schools. We who are Roman Catholic don’t just want to screw with our own children; we want to screw with yours, too!

Will the ICC hold the Pope and other Vatican officials to account for its child-raping ways?

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) hopes so, which is why they filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court of the Hague with more than 20,000 pages of supporting documentation.  SNAP’s president, Barbara Blaine, writes in this article:

By the Vatican’s own account, “only” about 1.5-5% of Catholic clergy have been involved in sexual violence against children. With a reported 410,593 priests worldwide as of 2009, that means the number of offending priests would range from 6,158 to 20,529. Considering that many offenders have multiple victims, the number of children at risk is likely in the tens, or even hundreds, of thousands.

We believe the thousands of pages of evidence we filed this week will substantiate our allegations that an operation has been put in place not only to hide the widespread sexual violence by priests in all parts of the world, but also to obstruct investigation, remove suspects out of criminal jurisdictions and do everything possible to silence victims, discredit whistleblowers, intimidate witnesses, stonewall prosecutors and keep a tighter lid than ever on clergy sex crimes and cover-ups. The result of this systematic effort is that, despite a flood of well-publicised cases, many thousands of children remain vulnerable to abuse.

While many pedophile priests have been suspended in recent years, few have been criminally charged and even fewer defrocked. Worse, no one who ignored, concealed or enabled these predators has suffered any consequences. At the head of this hierarchy of denial and secrecy is the pope, who has served as an enabler of these men. We believe the Vatican must face investigation to determine whether these incidences have been knowingly concealed and clergymen deliberately protected when their crimes have come to light.

Justice deferred is justice denied. How else can we hold a multinational, politically independent criminal organization to account if not through an international criminal court?

It’s time to hold those in power, those agents and officers and officials who staff the Holy See, accountable for their criminal activities. It’s time to put their Chief Executive Officer Ratzinger (aka Pope Palpatine) on trial and expose the Catholic Church for what it is: an institution of abuse, misogyny, and sexual perversion with the entrenched  moral values of a serial rapist.

What’s wrong with religious belief and why is its exercise so bad for you?

What’s wrong is that by granting faith-based beliefs merit we end up warping our thinking to suit its assumptions about what is true, and when put into practice these beliefs often make the believer cause real harm to real people by exercising those beliefs in reality. Hitchens argues religion poisons everything; I argue that exercising faith-based beliefs poisons yourself… it’s bad for you because it interferes with your ability to interact honestly with reality.

So what?

What’s the harm in believing in some set of theological precepts that helps me to feel good about myself, helps me feel connected to some mysterious agency that cares about me, that has a plan with purpose for my life and helps to provide it with meaning? How can this be a bad thing?

Well, theological beliefs undermine our critical faculties by removing any possible constraints offered by reality. Reality is not accepted as the benchmark against which we can compare and contrast and test the beliefs’ truth claims  to determine their truth value. That is why theological beliefs require ‘faith’ in the religious sense of the word, meaning trust and confidence in the truth value of the central tenets of the theology without strong supporting reality-based evidence… a ‘I heard it from a guy who knows this guy who read about this guy who was there…’ kind of witnessing. It supports taking actions in support of faith, trimmed from what’s true in reality, that are in every way indistinguishable from support of delusion. This harms one’s intellectual credibility and integrity.

As weak and tepid that evidence may be to earn trust and confidence for some extraordinary claim about reality – a claim in conflict of the laws that govern reality as we know it to be – we must embrace the theology’s truth claims as if they were true first in order for us to enter the sacred domain where the really powerful evidence for the truth of the claims exists.

This is the same path to gullibility that provides con artists a means to make a living: don’t trust reality nor use it as an arbiter of what’s true… trust first how the con makes you feel.

So. What does it matter if a few billion people reduce and minimize the evidence provided by reality and first maintain a set of faith-based precepts that are in conflict with what we know about it?

A lot, it turns out.

For example, let’s first assume the catholic version of christianity is true. Let’s assume that the vatican’s leadership absorbs revelations from its god for enlightening its moral leadership in the world community. Let’s trust these assumptions as true for a moment first and see where it leads in the case of caring for Irish children.

We are naturally shocked – Shocked!, I tell you – that a great deal of sexual abuse took place involving tens of thousands of children under the watchful eye of catholic clergy charged with their care. We are shocked – Shocked!, I tell you – that the local church leadership in Ireland failed at every step to put the safety and welfare of children in their direct care ahead of protecting the reputation of the church when all kinds of abuses took place. We are shocked – Shocked!, I tell you – to find out that they put the interests of the church first and did so under specific direction of the vatican leadership over many, many decades. We are shocked – Shocked!, I tell you – that for many, many decades abusers were protected and that the increasing numbers of victims over many, many decades were blamed for their own abuse including rape. Of children. By clergy. And we are further shocked – but not so much in this case – to find out that sometimes even those in positions of public trust within various secular authorities – both in government and law enforcement – helped the church cover up the misdeeds of its agents, assuming first that such widespread abuse had to be the work of ‘a few bad apples’, the exception of rare abuse, a temporary and unfortunate set of misdeeds by some of those church agents too easily swayed by the secular times and secular expectations of behaviour. But public officials in government and law enforcement are not in the business of being agents representing god’s vicar on earth as are the catholic clergy; their job is to make and enforce secular law. And raping children – even in Ireland – just so happens to be against the secular law.

In spite of previous investigations and settled law suits and orders to make changes and agreements how to implement these changes, there remains a problem of catholic compliance. I wrote about it here. And, yet again, we find the vatican interfering to first protect its reputation.

So.

Another report was commissioned by the government called the Cloyne report.  In its finding we are shocked – Shocked!, I tell you – to hear the author of the report tell us that ““words are not enough nor is condemnation sufficient” to describe what has been allowed to continue to happen. But how can this be?

Of news to no one is the idea that systemic child abuse within any organization is morally wrong. That such abuse is allowed to continue in order to protect that organization’s reputation – a reputation clearly contrary to what is practiced in reality – is morally wrong. That no one who has ordered this skewed protection (not only in Ireland but around the world) is held accountable and culpable is morally wrong.

How do we know?

Well, if we lifted this entire mess out of the workings of the catholic church and its Irish and placed it, let’s say, in the public school system of a secular country, the vatican and catholic supporters would be clamoring to be first in line to condemn this abuse of secular power. (Secularism, after all, is assumed by most religious believers first to be a bad thing because it is not beholden and submissive to some theologically acceptable doctrine.) But when the abuse occurs under an organization that claims moral leadership by the assumption that it is in such a privileged position because of the truth of its theological claims, then we have a never-ending stream of inadequate excuses and apologies and promises to do better later. I am not aware of god serving a summation to those charged with crimes for a specific and public court date. That’s why the abuse has gone on for as long as it has; no one is accountable for their criminal behaviour except under legal decisions of secular law.

In total, then, what we see in practice is a moral capitulation by all those who continue to support the catholic church from its rightful responsibilities in order to protect its ‘reputation’ as an assumed  moral authority. Evidence from reality contrary to the truth value of the assumption doesn’t matter, you see. Belief is not beholden nor constrained nor restrained by what’s true in reality. And left in this belief’s wake in Ireland is tens of thousands of abused children with an unknown number yet to be sacrificed on the alter of the church’s reputation as a moral authority. For as long as the church is assumed first to be a moral authority as a matter of faith-based belief, then no evidence gathered from reality contrary to that belief will matter. And that belief – in action – causes ripe conditions for ongoing abuse that produces real victims of real people.

Whether the specific faith-based belief justifies this act or that, what we see are the symptoms. It can be argued that some faith-based symptoms are benign – like charity and aid and community work – while others are malignant – like misogyny and bigotry and abuse. What I am suggesting is that we have a faith-based problem: that reality and not belief must be granted primacy in arbitrating any truth claims. To grant theology the right to establish assumption and assertion and wishful thinking as equivalent in truth value without any outside checks and balances is to invite the conditions pregnant for abuse.

What is the vatican’s response to this report? I’m almost, but not quite, shocked – not quite Shocked!, I tell you – to find that they disagree:

Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, denied that a letter sent by the former Papal Nuncio to Irish bishops encouraged them to cover up abuse allegations. (He said that) harsh criticisms of the Vatican following the report were “curious”, claiming they “demonstrate little awareness of what the Holy See has actually done over the years to help effectively address the problem.”

And how did they help effectively address the problem of clergy raping children and avoiding prosecution? I’m sure it had nothing whatsoever to doing with failing report cases of abuse to the civil authorities as required under Irish law, failing to put a system of support for victims in place after promising to do so, failing to appoint an independent advisory panel after agreeing to do so, and failing to properly record cases of sex abuse (we wouldn’t want to help any secular investigators, now would we?). See how the lack of awareness is on the part of secular authorities? The proof – exempt from reality as usual – is how the Holy See says it is doing everything it can to be as helpful while not doing whatever it can to be as unhelpful as possible.

When you are not beholden to reality to be arbiter of what is true, you are free to just make shit up and pretend it’s true. That’s what’s wrong with theology in that there is no way to tell in theory if it’s just made-up shit. And it’s bad for you because the inevitable result is behaviours justified within the context of the made-up shit that act contrary to what they pretend they are supporting. That’s why misogyny is presented as respect for women, bigotry against gays as loving the sinner but hating the sin (as if the two were separate entities), cruelty in law to honour god’s concern for us, and so on. Up means down, white means black, catholicism means moral.

What is the vatican’s underlying problem with facing and changing its child raping ways?

It’s really just a problem with language, you see.

Whereas clear documentation has shown smoking gun after smoking gun – a smoking arsenal these days – linking vatican authorities to actively and intentionally and criminally covering up systemic child abuse within the institution of the catholic church, the problem I think may stem from a simple linguistic misunderstanding.

For example, the vatican’s ”ambassador’ to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, assures us of  “the total commitment of the Holy See for its part in taking all the necessary measures to ensure the protection of children.”

Now doesn’t that sound reasonable? Who doesn’t want to protect children? So what might that protection look like, let’s say, in the case of Ireland?

What this actually has meant on the Emerald Isles is the active protection of abusers from legal prosecution, while taxpayers pay out nearly 1.5 billion dollars in damages to some 13,000 victims. The vatican, through its then-ambassador Archbishop Luciano Storero, warned Irish bishops in a 1997 letter that a powerful church body, the Congregation for the Clergy, had ruled that such mandatory reporting of abuse claims to civil authorities conflicted with canon law (clarified in no uncertain terms by the catholic’s Dear Leader, version XVI.0, aka ‘Pope Palpatine’, Himself). Storero wrote that canon law, which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church, “must be meticulously followed.”

See? That’s what the protection of children looks like to the vatican.

The confusion as I see it is between the very similar looking words ‘children’ and ‘the church’.

When we revisit ambassador Leaza’s statement with the confused word removed and the correct words inserted, we can see how it lines up beautifully with the evidence that “the total commitment of the Holy See for its part (is) in taking all the necessary measures to ensure the protection of children the church.” That that includes the taxpayers funding the damages caused by child raping clergy is just so much sweet icing on the vatican’s cake, which the vatican has not only been able to have, but has eaten (along with other criminal acts), too. It’s all somebody else’s problem, you see, and so these somebody else’s can pay for the privilege of holding the vatican to account for its criminal agents. The church – no matter how evil and corrupt and criminally liable it may be – must be left with enough secular power to determine which laws it may or may not follow but none of the responsibility for exercising it. As I mentioned, a very sweet deal. God is apparently pleased with this compromise. After all, the church means well in its insistence that it is the moral voice of god even if its actions show – century after tedious century – that it does not. As I like to say, never let what’s true interfere with good belief.

But perhaps the times, they are a’changin’.

Ireland’s Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore said, “”There’s one law in this country. Everybody is going to have to learn to comply with it. The Vatican will have to comply with the laws of this country.”

How very bold. No doubt he’s up for excommunication for that one.

Now imagine… the catholic church operating under and beholden to secular law. End of days must surely be upon us when priests can’t just rape children and then go on their company’s mandatory vacation.

Meanwhile, good little catholics continue to go to church and pay their tithes and fund this criminal organization in the name of catholic ‘morality’. Now I am left to wonder what that term has been confused with?

(From AP)

 

 

 

What does a smoking gun in Vatican terms look like over institutionalized child abuse?

The smoking gun has been found. In this AP article we read that

A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland’s Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure that victims’ groups described as “the smoking gun” needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests.

The newly revealed letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican’s rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland’s first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

What’s almost as sad is that many faithful catholics will continue to excuse this reprehensible institution for its gross acts of policy indecencies against victims of criminal abuse.

Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the 1997 letter demonstrates that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but ordered by them.

“The letter is of huge international significance, because it shows that the Vatican’s intention is to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities. And if that instruction applied here, it applied everywhere,” said Colm O’Gorman, director of the Irish chapter of human rights watchdog Amnesty International.

Perhaps the law suits that will now surely follow will drive home the point that the church cannot be immune from prosecution. Although I have no doubt the men in funny hats and dresses from Rome will insist that local parishes pay for their crimes, my sincere hope is that those who belong to local parishes will finally stop donating any money at all in any way to these criminals in Rome.

Just how gullible does the Roman Catholic Church want Americans to be?

This is the US we’re talking about, land of the free, home of the brave, the shining city on the hill, the Nobel prize capital of the world. So, naturally, I thought the roman catholic church was so busy vilifying secularists and the great evil they represent – including such theistic affronts as human rights, political freedoms, dignity of personhood, respect for scientific understanding, and all that mundane, temporal jazz – that I assumed this conference was a bunch of modern day catholics poking fun at one of their absurdities from almost-ancient history.

Isn’t that the way most enlightened and educated Americans think about demonic possession?

But when it comes to treating demonic possession, the rc church is all business. It remains steadfast in bringing to bear all the modern weaponry at its disposal for the modern American citizen: exorcisms! That’s right, folks. There is growing need for them and the church needs to step up and do its theological duty. Cast that demon out. Use force if you have to. That very difficult and demanding expertise includes the brute force of using conjugated Latin, too. Very scary stuff to any demon to be sure… and even scarier to young people everywhere who need to learn it. Nevertheless, let us press on and read about what the rc church is doing behind closed doors at a hush-hush Baltimore conference:

There are only a handful of priests in the country trained as exorcists (it IS a university degree after all), but they say they are overwhelmed with requests from people who fear they are possessed by the Devil.

Now, American bishops are holding a conference on Friday and Saturday to prepare more priests and bishops to respond to the demand. The purpose is not necessarily to revive the practice, the organizers say, but to help Catholic clergy members learn how to distinguish who really needs an exorcism from who really needs a psychiatrist, or perhaps some pastoral care.

“Not everyone who thinks they need an exorcism actually does need one,” said Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., who organized the conference. “It’s only used in those cases where the Devil is involved in an extraordinary sort of way in terms of actually being in possession of the person.

Let’s ponder that last quote for a moment. Exorcism is needed when the devil is involved. Otherwise, one doesn’t really need that directed Latin. I see.

“But it’s rare, it’s extraordinary, so the use of exorcism is also rare and extraordinary,” he said. “But we have to be prepared.”

Yes, I strongly suspect that is rare. And extraordinary. And supernatural, it goes without saying. But the church is on the job. Take THAT, you evil secularist doubter who stands by while that misogynistic Satan has his way with small boys and helps protect the pedophiles in his employ. Oh, wait… I’m thinking of… umm… (diversion is needed)… Squirrel!

Where was I? Exorcism. Right.

So how does one diagnose demonic possession?

Some of the classic signs of possession by a demon, Bishop Paprocki said, include speaking in a language the person has never learned (excluding Latin, I presume); extraordinary shows of strength; a sudden aversion to spiritual things like holy water or the name of God; and severe sleeplessness, lack of appetite and cutting, scratching and biting the skin.

A person who claims to be possessed must be evaluated by doctors to rule out a mental or physical illness, according to Vatican guidelines issued in 1999, which superseded the previous guidelines, issued in 1614.

1999. Yup. New guidelines. 1999. The age of rare, extraordinary, supernatural demonic infestations are being re-defined by Vatican bureaucrats for their version of the disease in DSM IV (under Demonic Possession, no doubt) while atom colliders are being built deep underground, genomes are being catelogued, and missions to Mars are being carried out.

Now that leaves me wondering what kind of doctor rules out mental or physical illness for a bat shit crazy person babbling incoherently (sorry… speaking in ‘tongues’ is the correct lingo I think) and exhibiting violent behaviours including self harm? I would tend to think it must be a bat shit crazy doctor who is no longer able to maintain a living as a general practitioner… for somewhat obvious reasons of having lost his mind and turning to Oogity Boogity! for his professional opinion. I’m glad that such a person is not my family doctor and the church is welcome to him (I assume no women would fit the employment criteria… having the wrong gonads and all).

“People are talking about, are we taking two steps back?” Father Vega said. “My first reaction when I heard about the exorcism conference was, this is another of those trappings we’ve pulled out of the past.”

But he said that there could eventually be a rising demand for exorcism because of the influx of Hispanic and African Catholics to the United States. People from those cultures, he said, are more attuned to the experience of the supernatural.

That’s religious-speak for too damned ignorant to know any better, which is just the way the church likes ’em. Especially those with an MD after their names. Always room at the inn, dontcha know, if you have the right gonads, the right frequency tuned to bat shit crazy, and the right gullibility to think modern medicine and demonic possession are mutually accommodating.

And people think science and religion are incompatible. I know! Those militant, strident, and arrogant atheistic secularists say the most ridiculous things!

How shocked are you… really?

From the CBC:

A Roman Catholic order in Quebec was aware of allegations of sexual abuse by brothers in the religious group, according to evidence discovered by Radio-Canada.

A nine-page document, written by a long-term member of the Order of Holy Cross, chronicles specific allegations of abuse over the years at Montreal’s College Notre Dame. The document lists a dozen Holy Cross brothers from various institutions.

It also outlines how alleged abusers at the order’s flagship private school were not reported to the police and instead were allowed to stay on as teachers or support staff.

Wilson Kennedy, a former member of the religious order, told Radio-Canada in an exclusive interview that while he was with the order he spoke to a Vatican official about the problem.

“Rome was informed and the Superior General asked me for clarification on several cases,” Kennedy said. He said there was a culture of silence that protected alleged abusers.

Now just how shocking is this news? Or is it now so commonplace, so widespread, so endemic that the Vatican’s actual policy is clear: pay off those who have the best claims about abuse within church-run organizations while it continues to pay the legal bills for the pedophiles it maintains on staff but hold fast to the lie that the Vatican knew nothing while swearing that each new case is simply an isolated incident carried out by a few bad apples?

What’s surprising is that anyone – even devout die-hard life-long catholics who cannot comprehend how the institution itself can be so corrupt – continue to believe this tired spiel and that the pope has not been criminally liable for his active part in aiding and abetting these child rapists from secular authorities. That the pope himself has been an integral part of this ongoing cover-up for the past four decades seems to me to be very well documented while he avoids prosecution because he is immune as a ‘head of state’.

What a remarkable legacy for a life time of work for Pope Palpatine: helping a world wide organization to maintain a pedophile ring and helping the participants to avoid prosecution all the while claiming to be the moral voice for god. The arrogance and temerity and hypocrisy is profound, while the believers’ willful ignorance and trust and avoidance to seek the truth equally so.

How does the Vatican plan on dealing with its abuse of Irish children?

By blaming the godless secularists, who are the REAL reason priests in Ireland raped and abused Irish children. (And don’t you love this picture gracing the cover of a catholic magazine?)

Come on people: you don’t think it can blamed on the catholic church or anyone in position of leadership from the Holy See, do you? Nope. Clearly, Irish catholics are getting too uppity and assertive in their indignation of being victims of organized abuse and need a visit from the Vatican version of ‘Special Forces’ to re-establish proper order, necessary hierarchy, and renewed respect for their abusers. This clean up will begin with getting the Irish clergy whipped into theological – meaning ‘roman catholic’ – shape. Excerpts from the Independent:

VATICAN investigators to Ireland appointed by Pope Benedict XVI are to clamp down on liberal secular opinion in an intensive drive to re-impose traditional respect for clergy, according to informed sources in the Catholic Church.

The nine-member team led by two cardinals will be instructed by the Vatican to restore a traditional sense of reverence among ordinary Catholics for their priests, the Irish Independent has learned.

Priests will be told not to question in public official church teaching on controversial issues such as the papal ban on birth control or the admission of divorced Catholics living with new partners to the sacraments — especially Holy Communion.

Theologians will be expected to teach traditional doctrine by constantly preaching to lay Catholics of attendance at Mass and to return to the practice of regular confession, which has been largely abandoned by adults since the 1960s.

An emphasis will be placed on an evangelisation campaign to overcome the alienation of young people scandalised by the spate of sexual abuse of children and by later cover-ups of paedophile clerics by leaders of the institutional church.

A major thrust of the Vatican investigation will be to counteract materialistic and secularist attitudes, which Pope Benedict believes have led many Irish Catholics to ignore church disciplines and become lax in following devotional practices such as going on pilgrimages and doing penance.

Those damned secularists and materialists are everywhere… especially where pedophile priests have had free reign. Funny, that. What people who hold the church responsible need is a good dose of catholic discipline to fix everything.

Why is there a single catholic left in Ireland? Do they really think so little of themselves that they are willing to tolerate this colossal arrogance and disrespect from their religious leadership? How is it that catholic guilt runs so deeply in the laity but apparently not at all for real crimes at its highest leadership that caused so much suffering and so many victims… of children? What moral cowards, one and all.

Who will the church blame today?

Stay up to date on the latest catholic church blame game. Because we know for certain that no blame can be attributed in any way to the institution for aiding and abetting and covering up child abuse by clergy within the church on a global scale, and we know this to be true in spite of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, we are left wondering: who is to blame? To our rationalizing rescue comes this site where we find we can find out the daily answers here.

The smoking gun of catholic church’s culpability in the global sex abuse scandal: haven’t we already been here, done this?

Oh my… lookee here… why, it’s what I posted a few months back here on Questionable Motives and what the Guardian (from this article) calls a “smoking gun”: the Vatican’s official policy sent to bishops around the globe on how sexual abuse allegations were to be handled:

The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of ‘strictest’ secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication.

They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to ‘be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.’

Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases ‘in the most secretive way… restrained by a perpetual silence… and everyone… is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office… under the penalty of excommunication’.

Is anyone with a working neuron still surprised that the scandal isn’t that abuse occurred within the Roman Catholic Church but that the official policy was to cover it up? Although catholic apologists will attempt to deflect this central issue (Commentator Nor1 scoffed to this official directive as merely a “dusty old document” here and wrote “its (sic) fairly clear that the Catholic Church is actually remarkably consistent with other institutions and organizations in its approach to dealing with this problem) to all kind of other reasons why the church is the real victim, the rest of us with a shred of morality not polluted by fanatical faith in the inerrant goodness of the church will see it for what it clearly is: another nail in the coffin of those who pretend that they and they alone hold the keys to what is moral but who really represent a corrupt institution.