Evil, crime, and madness
Everyone knows about the child-molestation scandal engulfing the Roman Catholic Church. There is a pervasive pattern of priests sexually abusing children, and (even more shocking) an equally-pervasive pattern of the Church hierarchy shielding the abusers from prosecution, moving them to other locations where fresh victims await, intimidating victims into silence, and otherwise actively hiding the abuse and helping it to continue. The scandal erupted in the United States and Ireland in the 1990s and has come to light in country after country, most recently in Germany and Brazil. Thousands of priests, if not more, are involved.
The scale of the hierarchy's complicity is staggering. A three- month investigation by the Dallas Morning News in 2002 found that of the 178 Catholic bishops and archbishops in the United States, 111 had allowed accused or even admitted molesters to continue working, or otherwise protected them (see the bishop database). Cardinal Brady, the Church's top man in Ireland, was involved in swearing victims to silence and has said that he would still not report abuse today; the Church in Ireland is imploding from years of scandal. Before Joseph Ratzinger became Pope, he participated in protecting abusers in Germany and later issued a worldwide directive that the Church's investigations of priestly molestation be kept secret from secular authorities.
Such stories could be multiplied indefinitely. The point is that this same pattern of systematic protection of child-molesting priests, allowing the abuse to continue, has been found in the Catholic Church in many different countries all over the world, and that it reaches to the highest levels of the institution, and that this has been the case for decades. This is not just an issue of a few, or even many, bad apples. It is clearly policy.
There is such a thing as evil. Raping children is evil, and protecting child-rapers from prosecution so that they can continue to rape children is evil, and the Catholic Church is an evil organization. Don't tell me about the good the Church does. When an institution has committed evil of such profundity, on such a scale, it doesn't matter what else it has done. We would not have commuted John Wayne Gacy's sentence if it turned out he had often donated to charity. The Catholic Church is an evil organization, period.
Besides being an evil organization, the Catholic Church is also a criminal organization. By shielding child-rapers and allowing their activities to continue, it has been an accomplice to hideous crime on a vast scale, all over the Earth. In a just world, the Catholic Church worldwide would be treated like the organized-crime ring that it in fact is; its operations would be shut down, its leaders would be prosecuted for their actions, and its assets, up to the Vatican itself, would be seized and liquidated to pay compensation to the victims.
But we do not live in a just world. We live in a world in which the madness of religion still infects the brains of billions of humans, making it seem acceptable to minimize or make excuses for the most horrific crimes, if they are committed in a religious context. And so that evil man will continue to squat on his throne in the Vatican, and that evil organization will continue to decay and putrefy and collapse, year after year, revelation after revelation, exuding its rancid miasma of horror and corruption from its every rotting tentacle in every land, until the curse of religion itself finally passes from our species.
The scale of the hierarchy's complicity is staggering. A three- month investigation by the Dallas Morning News in 2002 found that of the 178 Catholic bishops and archbishops in the United States, 111 had allowed accused or even admitted molesters to continue working, or otherwise protected them (see the bishop database). Cardinal Brady, the Church's top man in Ireland, was involved in swearing victims to silence and has said that he would still not report abuse today; the Church in Ireland is imploding from years of scandal. Before Joseph Ratzinger became Pope, he participated in protecting abusers in Germany and later issued a worldwide directive that the Church's investigations of priestly molestation be kept secret from secular authorities.
Such stories could be multiplied indefinitely. The point is that this same pattern of systematic protection of child-molesting priests, allowing the abuse to continue, has been found in the Catholic Church in many different countries all over the world, and that it reaches to the highest levels of the institution, and that this has been the case for decades. This is not just an issue of a few, or even many, bad apples. It is clearly policy.
There is such a thing as evil. Raping children is evil, and protecting child-rapers from prosecution so that they can continue to rape children is evil, and the Catholic Church is an evil organization. Don't tell me about the good the Church does. When an institution has committed evil of such profundity, on such a scale, it doesn't matter what else it has done. We would not have commuted John Wayne Gacy's sentence if it turned out he had often donated to charity. The Catholic Church is an evil organization, period.
Besides being an evil organization, the Catholic Church is also a criminal organization. By shielding child-rapers and allowing their activities to continue, it has been an accomplice to hideous crime on a vast scale, all over the Earth. In a just world, the Catholic Church worldwide would be treated like the organized-crime ring that it in fact is; its operations would be shut down, its leaders would be prosecuted for their actions, and its assets, up to the Vatican itself, would be seized and liquidated to pay compensation to the victims.
But we do not live in a just world. We live in a world in which the madness of religion still infects the brains of billions of humans, making it seem acceptable to minimize or make excuses for the most horrific crimes, if they are committed in a religious context. And so that evil man will continue to squat on his throne in the Vatican, and that evil organization will continue to decay and putrefy and collapse, year after year, revelation after revelation, exuding its rancid miasma of horror and corruption from its every rotting tentacle in every land, until the curse of religion itself finally passes from our species.
posted by Infidel753 at 7:02 AM
16 Comments:
All very true. It's interesting how so many conservatives are so quiet about this criminality. Where is the yelling and screaming from National Review or WorldNutDaily? One can imagine the cries would be deafening if the organization in question were the Black Panthers or Common Cause, etc. Apparently, magic does work, and by merely repeating th magical name "jesus", makes one invisible and inviolate to the Right Wing.
Mendip: Exactly so. The problem isn't confined to conservatives, either. Even those who condemn the abuse and the hierarchy's complicity in it rarely have the guts to face up to what it all reveals about the institution as a whole.
I agree I agree! The Catholic church is a church led by Satan. I'm sorry to offend any Catholics who come here, But that is my humble opinion. I don't like organized religion even if I do call myself a Christian. The churches are full of racist bigots, they try to mask it but what they did to get Bush elected twice is just some of the proof.
There is a saying from the Bible, Suffer the little Children. I always wondered if this is what God meant. The children of the world have suffered greatly by the hands(and excuse me for this, the dicks) of the catholic priests!
Infidel
One of my mantras is There is no God!
So when I recall History and see the atrocities done in the name of God,I shutter. Being a former Catholic I can think of no reason they should not be held accountable. People hate when I carry on about the sickness called religion. What started out as an idea to control tribes has turned into the most laughable of schemes.
Give us money in order to get to heaven. Anyway you did a good job on this! mendip..true how selective they are.
Later
Sue: I would hope that Catholics, as such, would not be offended -- the problem is the Church as an organization, not the hundreds of millions of laity who are themselves really victims as well, in various ways. The only party who might have a right to take offense at your comment would be Satan -- I don't think even he would stoop to associating with such evil.
Tim: The bright side is that more and more people are seeing the light, as you did. As for the hierarchy, since most of them will not be held accountable, let the endless revelations about their crimes stand as an object lesson on the corrupt character of themselves and what they represent.
This crap has been pouring out of the woodwork like termite's trying to avoid extermination in recent year's ... what is sad .... is that this has been going on even before we had modern media, one of the "unspoken" truth's of the inner order, and the common practice's of those who must live their live's in celebacy because of some crappy rule book. And these MF's knew this all along, and relentlessly tried to cover and cover and cover.It is nature for a man to get a goddamn erection. One of the most disgusting thing's is that the apologies and excuses they come up with and having these Vatican excorcist's blame it on Devil Temptation's, saying they "need" treatment or other crap. The fact of the matter is .... whether the devil tempted you, or Jesus, or even the Easter Bunny, you "chose" to act. If you or anyone of us done these thing's .... we would be doing hard time in prison, rest assured, because of their robe's and a cunning hierarchy with mega wealth, and "bought" respect they have been given too much sympathy! But's that's just my couple bux worth. Nice posting indeed Sir.
RC: It has often struck me that these abuses might even have been going on for centuries. How would we know? The celibacy rule has been in place for almost a thousand years! The hierarchy seems to repeatedly react with shock, not at the child abuse, but at the fact that the modern media and police are willing to investigate and expose it. Who knows how long this has been going on before, when no one dared challenge the Church and bring such acts to light?
I'm a recovering Catholic, and while I severed my official ties with the Church years ago, Catholic moral values and sensibility are still close to my heart (with some exceptions, of course, which render me incompatible with the Church even if I wanted to re-join it -- and I don't -- abortion, celibacy, and ordination of women being the most prominent).
I hope this latest wave of scandals will seriously undermine this sick and corrupt institution and expose its dark side to the world.
I too have stories of abusive priests -- they are everywhere, and the more Catholic the country, the stronger the forces against bringing them to light. But it's about freakin' time.
Elizabeth: These days it seems like "abortion, celibacy, and [non-]ordination of women" are pretty much the hierarchy's top priorities.
I haven't heard whether or not the molestation scandal has spread to Poland, but there seems no reason to doubt that there have been these crimes there like everywhere else. Let's hope word will get out and there will be a massive turning away from the Church, as in Ireland.
The scandal has not spread to Poland, though abuse is pretty well established there, too. I keep hoping that this will change, but Poland is kinda helpless, both when it comes to recognizing the reality of sexual abuse and the Poles' almost blind adherence to religion and their devotion to the Catholic church.
Unless things have dramatically changed since I was there last*, for most Poles church can do no wrong.
*I really doubt it -- there are more churches being built there today than supermarkets, and not that long ago, a Polish politician proposed a law that would make Jesus Christ the king of Poland -- I kid you not. Thankfully, he did not get enough votes.
Gah. I wonder how many votes we could get to have Yoda declared king of the United States. On second thought, I don't want to know.
I know the Catholic Church is very entrenched in Poland, but the same was true of Ireland less than 20 years ago. These scumbags are going down all over the world, and it will happen there too.
And when they do (go down), it won't be a moment too soon. Even my mom, who is deeply religious (and as close to a real saint as anyone I know), is dismayed by what's happening in the church and by the top hierarchy's attitude to it. Her response last night, when we talked about it, was "It's time these parasites were sent to work and made themselves useful."
Now, when you think about it, isn't priesthood a sweet gig for so many men? They do not work, but are generously supported by people over whom they have almost unlimited power (which they then abuse at will and without consequences). Their daily needs are attended to by others as well, often by nuns (surprise, surprise), who, btw, really do the bulk of work in the Catholic church, but get the least recognition. Typical, huh.
And that brings me, in a round-about way, to Bart Stupid Stupak, who, when asked why he did not agree with Catholic nuns in their support of the health care bill, said,
When I'm drafting right to life language, I don't call up the nuns. Instead, (I talk to) leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and the National Right to Life Committee.
Well, of course he won't listen to nuns -- what do nuns know about the right to life? They are women without power, they only deal with human misery day in and out, and patch it up as best they can. On the other hand, the bishops are powerful men, and the organizations Stupak mentioned are populated and run by guys who relish controlling female sexuality in any way they can.
Stupak has shown his real "pro-life" stance, the arrogant dweeb.
Alright, Monday morn rant over. ;)
BTW, I've just read RC's comment -- right on.
And of course these abuses have been going on for centuries! Again, it often took women (nuns) to point them out -- and for that, they paid dearly.
Speaking of erections (now that you've mentioned them, RC ;): way back when, I had a friend (an almost boyfriend), who left, for good, the Catholic seminary where he prepared for priesthood and told me about what went on within its walls. The only "advice" given to these men by their teachers and superiors in the matters of sexuality, or at least its natural manifestations, was, "Forget about it. Don't pay attention to it. And if you can't, cut IT off" (literally). We had a good laugh about it -- that was the sorry level of instruction in sex and abstinence given to these young and impressionable men.
Goodness... That takes me back again. One of the most respected Polish priests, a Catholic philosopher specializing in ethics, had a habit of "grading" his female students at a Catholic university according to their willingness to sleep with him -- he was in his 70's at the time, and a close friend of mine was one of those students...
I do have stories, I warned ya. :)
Elizabeth: Such stories are always of interest, and certainly don't surprise me.
Control female sexuality any way they can. As for their own, ignore it, or "cut it off". This is why the Catholic hierarchy is constantly engulfed in weird obsessions and scandals about sexuality that wouldn't happen with normal people who have normal lives. They're constantly trying to stamp it out, and it can't be stamped out, and it always comes back. Dam up a river completely, and it will overflow somewhere else, often disastrously.
When normal sexuality is forbidden to people just as much as genuine evil is, perhaps they eventually lose the ebility to distinguish genuinely evil from what's normal? It's all equally forbidden.
Now, when you think about it, isn't priesthood a sweet gig for so many men?
Wouldn't work for me. I'm not attracted to little kids. I see your point, though.
Considering what some of these guys ended up doing, better if they had "cut it off".
Wouldn't work for me. I'm not attracted to little kids.
LOL! If that's any consolation(?!), they are not only after kiddies. Grown women will do, too, although they are so much messier to deal with -- they fall in love, blabber to their friends, get pregnant -- yuck. Kids are easier to control.
But I see your point. :)
On the subject, Maureen Dowd has an excellent column on Stupak, Catholic nuns, and Catholic church in general.
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