Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Un-Fucking-Believable

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope and the Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.

"The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.

Herranz didn't identify the lobbies but "defense of life" is Vatican shorthand for anti-abortion efforts.

Also arguing that Benedict's promotion of conservative family models had provoked the so-called attacks was the Vatican's dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano.

"By now, it's a cultural contrast," Sodano told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. "The pope embodies moral truths that aren't accepted, and so, the shortcomings and errors of priests are used as weapons against the church."


Shortcomings? If this is code for priests cumming inside little children, then I can see the logic here. Otherwise, these dipshits are even bigger dipshits than I originally thought. Blaming gay folk & pro-choice advocates shows exactly how desperate the Church has become.

Also rallying to Benedict's side was Italian Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who heads the Vatican City State's governing apparatus.

The pope "has done all that he could have" against sex abuse by clergy of minors, Lajolo said on Vatican radio, decrying what he described as a campaign of "hatred against the Catholic church."


Be serious. The entire Catholic infrastructure "did all they could do" to cover up the criminal behavior of their brethren & ensured they would have access to new children. That's it. Anyone who believes otherwise is woefully delusional.

Sex abuse allegations, as well as accusations of cover-ups by diocesan bishops and Vatican officials, have swept across Europe in recent weeks. Benedict has been criticized for not halting the actions of abusive priests when he was a Vatican cardinal and earlier while he was the archbishop of Munich in his native Germany.

The mainland European scandals — in Germany, Italy, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland — are erupting after decades of abuse cases in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and other areas.

In Germany, nearly 2,700 people called the church's sexual abuse hotline in the first three days it was operating, a Catholic church spokesman said Tuesday.A team of psychologists and other experts have spoken with 394 people so far, ranging from several minutes up to an hour, Trier Diocese spokesman Stephan Kronenburg said.

"Most callers reported cases of sexual abuse," he told The Associated Press.


Damn those 2,700 gay pro-choice folk & their malicious lies, eh?

Benedict has ignored victims' demands that he accept responsibility for what they say is his own personal and institutional responsibility for failing to swiftly kick abusive priests out of the priesthood, or at least keep them away from children.


Oh the persecution, oh the humanity.

But he has been protected by a vanguard of senior Vatican prelates who are fending off what they contend is an orchestrated attempt to attack the leader of the world's more than 1 billion Catholics.

The Vatican No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, rebuffed questions about the pontiff's silence on the topic, indicating that Benedict was standing firm.

"He's a strong pope," he told reporters after arriving Tuesday in Chile. The Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as calling Benedict a "great prophet of the Third Millennium."


"A great prophet of the Third Millennium?" Hmmmmm...a prophet this astute should have foreseen the groundswell of criticism that would follow in the wake of the Church's decision to obfuscate & shield abusers instead of...oh, I don't know...say, calling the cops on them.

Bertone, now the Holy See's secretary of state but formerly Benedict's deputy when the future pope, then-called Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, headed the Vatican's morals office, has himself been swept up in the scandals.

During a May 1998 meeting at the Vatican, Bertone told Wisconsin bishops to halt a church trial against an ailing priest who was accused of sexually abusing 200 deaf children, according to a Vatican transcript. The priest died soon afterward.

"It's not true, it's not true! We have documented the opposite," ANSA quoted Bertone as saying in Chile. "Let's not talk about this topic now, because otherwise we'll be here all day verifying precisely the action taken by me and by his eminence."


Child abuse enablers, like birds of a feather, evidently flock together.

On Easter, the most important day in the Catholic faith, the Vatican broke with tradition and began its service in St. Peter's Square with a ringing defense of Benedict delivered by Cardinal Sodano.


The logic behind this Easter display puzzled me. But, if one accepts that Christ "rose" from the dead, then one can draw an analogy with the way all those saucy little kinder-flirts made those priest's wattled old penises rise from the dead also.

The Vatican newspaper quoted Sodano on Tuesday as saying the church is "certainly" suffering because of pedophile priests but he asserted that "Benedict XVI has apologized several times."


The Church is suffering? Poor little victims. I'd feel bad if I weren't giggling so hard.

"But it's not Christ's fault if Judas betrayed" him, Sodano said. "It's not a bishop's fault if one of his priests is stained by grave wrongdoing. And certainly the pontiff is not responsible."

"Behind the unjust attacks on the pope are visions of the family and of life that run contrary to the Gospel," Sodano said. "Now the accusation of pedophile is being brandished against the church."


Again, these supposedly holy men miss the point entirely, don't they? If they would have immediately dealt with the abuse instead of covering it up, no one would be blaming them for the actions of their priestly "Judases." But they didn't, did they?

He noted that past popes have also been criticized, including the "offensive against Pius XII for his conduct during the last World War as well as that against Paul VI" for his encyclical against birth control, the cardinal said.

Pius has been accused by Jewish groups and some scholars as not having done enough to save Jews from the Holocaust, although the Vatican contends he used behind-the-scene diplomacy to help them. Benedict has hailed Pius as a "great" pontiff, who is being considered for possible beatification.


"Behind-the scene diplomacy?" It must have been so far "behind-the scene" that no one has been able to find any evidence of it. Although, there appears to be oodles of evidence that the Church did more to help fleeing Nazis than they did fleeing Jews. Those nefarious gay pro-choice historians must be "behind-the-scenes" revising history again.

Vatican Radio, presenting listeners with some of the most vehement counterattacks yet, depicted the church as a victim.

"There are those who fear the media campaign of anti-Catholic hatred can degenerate," Vatican Radio said.

It noted anti-Catholic graffiti on walls of a church outside Viterbo, a town near Rome, and reminded listeners that a bishop was attacked by a man during Easter Mass in Muenster, Germany. The bishop fought back with an incense bowl.

The radio likened the recent campaign to the persecution suffered by early Christian martyrs. "The crowds, incited by the slanders of the powerful, would lynch the Christians," the radio said.


"The slander of the powerful?" Wow. Someone should point out to the Vatican radio that
a. abused children aren't very powerful
b. since the Church opened the Pandora's Box of lynched Christians, someone should point out the thousands of folk the Church turned into crispy human tater-tots.

In Munich, meanwhile, an independent lawyer hired by the Catholic church wrapped up his investigation of abuse allegations at the southern Ettal monastery.

"The investigation clearly shows a system of abuse that lasted for decades," Thomas Pfister told The Associated Press.

There were some cases of sexual abuse at Ettal but most victims who came forward were physically abused and most cases took place before 1990, Pfister said in a telephone interview.

The lawyer declined to elaborate as his final report will be published next week.


I am utterly amazed at the intellectual contortions these yoo-hoos must go through to keep believing they're right. I suppose that, being Christian, mental contortions are something they're quite adept at using.
Still, this "woe is me, I'm the real victim here" is low even for the Vatican, who has a long & sordid history of cruising on the low side of the road.

Incredible.

3 comments:

Belliosto said...

Hello Richard, I am against the whole charade of the powerful Vatican and her changlings in the local churches. The priestly sexual behavior is condemned by me as well. But I'm still wondering about the mindset of the children who were fondled and raped. Especially the boys. What could have prevented them from explaining the molestations? I can't believe that thousands and thousands of parents would have put bars of soap in the kids mouths and sent them to bed if their progeny would have confessed to the sexual activity.

Confessions of guilt-ridden shame and self- disgust came many years after the abuse. The priest must have been very selective predators. Choosing the ones they felt would keep their mouths shut. I mean very selective. The numbers of young Catholics that would have been more than willing to narc on molesting coaches, priests and teachers has to be astronomical. It is rather unfortunate that these selected children had been preyed upon.

I see something entirely different than what I'm hearing and reading about. First of all most of the grown men I have talked to that belonged to my local parish deny that the priests did anything immoral to the boys. Even the ones that worked in the schools. The talk was that this was just speculation. Very few had admitted that this kind of activity actually occurred.



I understand that more than just priests were directly involved with these scandals. There were people behind the scenes that directly worked with the parishes and schools who actually assisted pedophiles with the selection of the boys, in my opinion. For example, certain coaches may have known which boys were more vulnerable to the advances of the pedophile and somehow encouraged the boy to spend private time together with the homosexual priest. A networking of respected? Catholics directly involved with the boys. And if they had connections to law enforcement, these certain connections prevented any serious investigations.

Why would these beer guzzling Catholics be so quick to deny that priests may have molested Jimmy down the street? I'm not saying that this network is a satanic network. I'm believing that there is a business element involved in the local church cities, USA. Maybe the homosexuality of a business leader's young son was used as a kind of blackmail. For this syndicate of individuals seem to be very ambitious and connected. They never got caught, and the fall guy priests and coaches were perfectly covered for decades by powers that led straight to the Vatican, as well as the local police precincts.

There is much more than meets the eye here. Like I wrote, I do not buy into the fact that this is some kind of satanic networking of people. No sir. There seems to be a money/power element in the local cities that has yet to be reported on. The regular Joe's taking advantage of the more vulnerable boys and their families. And this also has ties that go up levels. Local, state, archdiocese, county, etc...

A Chaldean Catholic Church in Detroit worked directly with the State Department and also with the Vatican's approval to present Saddam Hussein the key to Detroit. These connections definitely had the know how to bust up the pedophile rings within the Catholic Church. They are not intimated by very many people, you know.

Did you notice how close the helicopter gunner, in the military video, got to killing those two kids. That was close. All those men learned who the enemy was but it was too late. It seemed as if it was an ordered hit on the journalists.

just_another_dick said...

Mr. B., isn't there an element of the Catholic Church that's descended from the Roman senatorial leadership? An element that probably only has a very nominal, for appearances sake, belief in the actual teachings of Christ?

While I give my ranting anti-Christian screeds here Mr. B., they should be taken with more than a few grains of salt. I spent 12 years in Catholic School & no one ever molested me.

My largest problem will always be with the behavior of the Church. For example, your questions, I think, have much merit, but since the Church chose to cover things up rather than undergo a very public examination of everyone involved, we'll probably never know any answers.

Maybe it is all based in some kind of movement seeking to discredit Christianity.
But, if so, the Church willfully aided & abetted their enemies by covering everything up.

Cover ups always imply guilt.

For example, in my job, it would astoundingly easy for me to usher a misbehaving client into the privacy of his own bedroom where I could do anything I wanted to do to him.
That's why I prefer to do everything in front of a crowd so there's no possibility of me ever being accused of abuse.
I should also add that I hate being the center of attention.
Overall though, it just seems like the wiser course of action.

I think that if the Church had showed a willingness to air its dirty laundry as it was being soiled, rather than hide it under the bed, the Church would have demonstrated that it was worthy of respect.
Instead they look as creepy as the accused pedophiles.

As far as the video goes, I think one could read it in many ways.
To me, it's irrefutable evidence as to why one should not "let loose the dogs of war" unless one has a damn good reason for doing so.
Because, given the very nature of warfare, shit like this will happen & no adoption of generic phrases like "collateral damage" do anything to erase one's moral culpability in what is nothing more than murder.

If some black crack dealers open up on a crowd to kill one rival dealer while slaughtering a few innocent bystanders, they're demonized and quickly jailed.
When the US military does things that aren't much different from that gang mentality, they're magically placed above reproach and armies of spin doctors rush to excuse their behavior as "understandable" and "justified" under "rules of engagement."

It always sounds like bullshit to me.

Like William Burroughs said, this reality is obsessed with games and war.
I spent some time on a few Tea Party blogs and, on every one, I managed to get myself censored and banned by taking their "governments can't run shit" line of BS and just applying it to the military/industrial beast that eats such a huge chunks of our tax dollars.
These folk didn't want to hear it or discuss it or even have evidence of such heretical thoughts on their little bloggies.
In this country, the miltary is evidently holy & ineffable, much like God.



Having said that, I don't discount your theory. I can't see any reason why the military would want journalists on the Iraqi streets talking to actual Iraqis. Especially Iraqi journalists connected to international news agencies.
I would think that it would throw a big wrench into their whole "embed to censor & control the news" plan.

I'm slowly coming around to believe that everything we see & hear anymore is completely manipulated.
For example, the Partnership For a Drug Free America is primarily funded by the alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical industries. The anti-nuke movement that sprung up in 70s was funded by the 7 sisters of Big Oil.

Oh, there may be a few pockets of isolated journalistic resistance,
but they're few and far between.

Belliosto said...

I had inadvertently stumbled on the videos "Boys for Sale" on Rig Int discussion board the other day. If you have not viewed them, it is a 1981 doc set up by Frank Morrow and a Dr. Tom Philpot from TX. Interviews with boys and some discussions about John Wayne Gacy and other rapist/killers too, etc... The local connections in local cities are vaguely discussed. I have yet to watch Part 2. Maybe you are interested.

By the way, I have never been molested. I actually was surprised to find out that these things were going on in my church long after I left my teen years behind. Any similarities to my mentioning of this possible reality happening to me was strictly in pun. This to bring up the point that this kind of sexual predation can hit close to home. It is this principle I acted on. But, never actually happened to me.

I do know a friend that this has happened to, but he seemed to be okay with it as a kid, though. He does possess some intelligence about this kind of networking of men. Things I never heard of before I met him.

Take care.