Well, its been another wonderful month of revelations in the Vatican City.
For those of you either not reading the news, or if you’re Catholic, ignoring it, Pope Benedict is in the middle of quite the disaster right now. I call it a disaster instead of scandal because this is a very serious matter.
Tiger Woods bedding every stripper and hooker in the US is a scandal, but when you are the vicar of Christ on earth and it is now proven that you covered up multiple cases of child abuse as a Bishop and Cardinal, well, that’s a disaster. At least it should be, but from where I’m sitting, most Catholics are still sitting in the pews acting like someone’s grandfather farted and the stink will soon pass.
Christopher Hitchens made a good point in an interview this weekend saying that, even as recent news of more and more child molestation cases come out against clergy all around the world, all Pope Benedict has done is “expressed regret” for these actions.
Am I the only one that finds this infuriating?
I “express regret” when I can’t attend someone’s birthday party, not when someone’s children are being repeatedly sexually abused.
Benedict does not ask for the arrest of these Cardinals, or further prosecution… or not even reparation for the families. This is mainly because if the Pope supports criminal prosecution for these child molesting criminals he is effectively supporting prosecution of himself.
Pope Benedict is not just the leader of the church, but also the head of a nation, a political leader, yet we still allow a proven accomplice to child abuse travel freely, and live without consequences. This action alone looks at every child that has ever been abused by a member of the clergy (and the number is now well into the thousands), and says… “You don’t matter to us. We don’t care”
Christians that claim otherwise are fooling themselves.
These cases of abuse are not “rumours” or “heresay” they are recognized and documented FACTS. Everytime you walk into a church and give money to your parish and volunteer at mass you are supporting an organization that is clearly and blatantly sexually abusing children on a massive scale all over the world.
This entire issue has been a real blood boiler for me for a long time, mainly because it is obviously a HUGE problem within the Catholic church, yet Christians seem to look past it as if its nothing.
More than one Bishop and/or Cardinal have been allowed to flee their communities and take refuge within the Vatican City. So, is that what the Vatican City is allowed to become now; a refugee state for child molestors and sexually predators? Yes, it is.
And every Catholic worth their Sunday missal should be, as far as i am concerned, up in arms enraged over this world wide acceptance of child abuse.
So the next time you hand over your donation to the collection plate, know that you are doing your part to make sure that future generations of volunteers and alter boys can experience all the torture and therapy that every other generation has.
You just better pray its not someone in your family that gets to reap the nightmare and consequences of your own apathy.
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Isn’t is a horrible feeling to know that even though there are thousands of good people who work hard in this religion, there is a similar amount using it as a safe haven for paedophilia? Its not a case of ‘a few bad apples’, it really is a situation that they’ve been raising poisoned crops of men to fill the gig of priest for a long time.
This is really discussed in a documentary called “Deliver Us From Evil”. It’s about paedophile priest from Ireland who was moved around the US in the 70s as the infamous Catholic Church cover up. It will make your stomach turn but is worth seeing. The Irish priest is actually fascinating in the same way Satan can be fascinating. In his own revelations you can see that he knew he was a danger to children and openly admitted to his bishop that he was attracted to children in their underwear…and the church just moved him! The different angle for this story is that he was molesting girls, not boys. One of his victims admits that she was told that they knew she was being abused but she was a girl. Had she been a boy, then it would have been obscene.
In the movie you can see that the priest’s mental capacity clearly did not develop beyond that of a 15-year-old boy. The movie goes into the physiological development of young boys while they are being trained for the priesthood and how that they were not exposed to or taught about sexuality properly. I believe they acknowledge the fact that what could have caused such a disproportional amount of paedophilia in priest’s vs another sample group of the public is that the last time these men remember being able to be freely sexual was as a young boy, before being brainwashed into believing that sex was a sin and that they would never marry. All the while possibly being molested themselves. It really was a breeding ground for paedophiles. The poisoned crop.
Another consideration was that 50 years ago young boys who showed signs of being gay were thrown into seminary school to ‘fix them’ and if not fix them, at least have them live an socially acceptable life while not having to marry a woman. The entire concept of a priest not being able to marry (which as I understand is not in the bible, it was a Vatican made rule) is the fatal flaw in this system. Even for men who entered the priesthood later as a young adult it was a perfect set up to not face society as a gay man. Really, what else would a man in any era before the 1980′s, who was not attracted to women, do to fit in with society and get away with not marrying and having a family? And being a priest they would not have had access to other gay men back then like any free gay man would today. But what they did have was power and influence over young alter servers. Talk about recipe for disaster.
I wonder if in 200 years students will be reading (or downloading into their brains) history texts about this period in Catholicism and ask “what were they thinking!?”, much in the way we today question events like the Salem Witchhunt or the Holocaust. I wonder…
Regardless of how I or others feel, I can’t imagine what its like for those who truly believe in the Catholic Church to be witnessing this. Because no matter how many of us disgruntled, open-minded Catholics or non-Catholics comment or rant, it doesn’t rock our belief structure or make us question our life’s purpose.
But imagine what a 70-year-old nun anywhere in the world would feel like today watching her whole life’s work turned into this?