It Won't Get Far ...

... but I have to give it points for creativity.

Crimes Against Humanity Charges Against Pope Benedict

There's a copy of the entire submission in the link - it's interesting reading ... but I don't think it has a snowball's chance in hell of going anywhere.

The Problem With Lies ...

... is that they come back to haunt you later.

As the Vatican is learning

A newly revealed 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 Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of coverup.

The 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.

The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that the church in Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations, and determine punishments, in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.

Please, Vatican, try to explain that one away as "an exception" or "a rogue priest". The fact is that the more that these things become visible to the public, the more set in the public's mind will be the image of the priesthood as a refuge for pedophiles, and the Church as their primary enabler.

Really, the best thing the Catholic Church could do right now for itself - and its victims - is issue a very lengthy "Mea Culpa", along with every last document related to their appalling handling of child molestation since the 1950s - and start negotiating settlements with their victims. Anything less shows the organization to be no better than those it covered up for so long.

You Have Got To Be Kidding

Since when has child abuse ever been considered "normal"???

In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.

“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than' and a ‘worse than'. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

... and this is coming from the organization that rails against GLBT people as "unnatural" and "objectively disordered", and condemns the use of condoms even when life threatening diseases are involved? I believe the correct term here is "hypocrisy".

Papal Misogyny is Alive And Well

Who is it that comes up with these things? In the same breath that the Catholic Church made the first steps to rehabilitate itself in light of the Pedophile Priest scandal, they turn around and do this.

The Vatican's reclassification of attempted female ordination was part of a revision of a 2001 decree, the main purpose of which was to tighten up the rules on sex abuse by priests in reaction to the scandals that have been sweeping through the church since January. The most important change is to extend the period during which a clergyman can be tried by a church court from 10 to 20 years, dating from the 18th birthday of his victim.

The new rules introduce speedier procedures for dealing with the most urgent and serious cases; allowed for lay people to form part of church tribunals that judge such cases; put abuse of the mentally disabled on a level with that of minors, and introduced a new crime of paedophile pornography.

Really? The idea that ordaining women is a "crime" on the same level as child molesting priests commit tells us a great deal about how far the Catholic Church has stepped backwards in time.

It seems to me that the current pope is doing a great job of showing the world just how desperately broken the Church is today. There's no way you will ever convince me that someone who has attempted to ordain a female priest has done something as damaging to the lives of others as a priest who molests young children. That the Church is so clueless as to announce these changes along with changes that are related to the pedophile priest situation is a sad, sad testament indeed.

That's A Start ...

It's probably as close to "Mea Culpa" as we'll ever hear Pope Benedict XVI utter.

Unfortunately for the Pope, it will take a lot more than a few words to convince the world that the Catholic Church has cleaned up its act where the issue of molesting priests are taken care of.

Vatican Dodge #2,532,792: You Took It Out Of Context

So, now the Vatican is trying to dodge the current Pope's direct involvement in hiding and enabling pedophile priests.

A spokesman said the claims, which stem from a letter signed by Benedict XVI when he was a senior Vatican official, had been taken out of context.

Well, let's go take a look at this letter, shall we?

Most Excellent Bishop

Having received your letter of September 13 of this year, regarding the matter of the removal from all priestly burdens pertaining to Rev Stephen Miller Kiesle in your diocese, it is my duty to share with you the following:

This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favour of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ's faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner.

It is necessary for this Congregation to submit incidents of this sort to very careful consideration, which necessitates a longer period of time.

In the meantime your Excellency must not fail to provide the petitioner with as much paternal care as possible and in addition to explain to same the rationale of this court, which is accustomed to proceed keeping the common good especially before its eyes.

Let me take this occasion to convey sentiments of the highest regard always to you.

Your most Reverend Excellency

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

I see ... in effect, then Cardinal Ratzinger is saying that he will do NOTHING - mostly out of fear that the church will be "embarrassed"!

I cannot even begin to express my outrage over the Pope's obvious and direct involvement in this case.

AP said the Rev Kiesle was sentenced to three years of probation in 1978 for lewd conduct with two young boys in San Francisco. It said the Oakland diocese had recommended Kiesle's removal in 1981 but that that did not happen until 1987.

Cardinal Ratzinger took over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases, in 1981.

AP says the 1985 correspondence, written in Latin, shows Cardinal Ratzinger saying that Kiesle's removal would need careful review.

Cardinal Ratzinger urged "as much paternal care as possible" for Kiesle.

Kiesle was sentenced to six years in prison in 2004 after admitting molesting a young girl in 1995.

Kiesle is now 63 and is on the registered sex offenders list in California.

So ... the man had already been convicted in criminal courts of precisely the kind of conduct that the Church routinely condemns very publicly, and the Vatican doddles over taking any meaningful action for how many years? Good lord, but that's criminal in itself.

Yes, eventually, Cardinal Ratzinger's offices did defrock this priest - six full years after the diocese itself asked for this priest to be removed? That's supposed to be 'good enough'?

It's not. Moving so slowly when the accused has already been found criminally responsible is appalling - and speaks to an organization that has its priorities so profoundly misplaced that it really should give its head a shake. The leadership in Oakland had its priorities straight, and actually acted in the best interests of the church. This ball dropped in the Vatican.

And The Catholic Church Tries To Dodge Accountability

...Again...

The pope’s personal preacher, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in a Friday sermon in St Peter’s Basilica, said attacks on the Catholic Church and the pope over a sexual abuse scandal were comparable to “collective violence” against Jews.

Yes, the mass extermination of Jews in Europe over imagined collective crimes is entirely analogous to demands the Catholic Church hierarchy be held accountable and liable for very real crimes and very real cover-ups of those crimes.

Today, we see the Church trying to backpedal from such an obvious blunder.

Talk about out of touch with reality.

That Would Be A Start

While the Vatican's official mouthpieces gnash their teeth and angrily deny anything that implies that Pope Benedict XVI ever had anything to do with covering up the tracks of pedophile priests, someone in the Vatican makes a comment that makes sense:

"We need a culture of alertness and bravery, to do the housework," Cardinal Kasper said.
"There is no turning back on the path we are now on and that is good."

If the Vatican actually undertakes such a housecleaning, it could be very fruitful indeed.

However, that said, we have to also recognize that the church has tried to place itself above the law in many countries - and in doing so has failed utterly to do justice to either the victims of its most perverse clergy, but has stained itself twice over by actively allowing the abusers to go on.

This time, while a house cleaning might be a good thing, I think that housecleaning has to be seen to be done in an open, transparent manner, possibly with the church itself taking criminal and civil responsibility not just for its actions, but those of its clergy who were protected by policies that enabled the abuse.

Unfortunately for the Pope and his defenders, the allegations that he directly or indirectly was involved are serious, and must be addressed. To do anything less would call into question any 'housecleaning' exercise that might be undertaken by the Vatican ... and since the Vatican is clearly a biased party, the entire case - all of it - should be turned over to the legal authorities that operate in the region of the diocese/archdiocese that Ratzinger was in charge of.

I doubt very much that the Vatican will be anywhere near as open about all this as is truly needed.

It's About Accountability and Responsibility

Ironically, in spite of the headline, I'm not going to be talking about Stephen Harper and his band of twits. This is about the seemingly endless sex abuse scandal that continues to rock the Roman Catholic Church ... and Michael Coren's utter misunderstanding of the situation.

It’s Saturday, so it must be time for yet another attack on the Roman Catholic Church — this time involving lies about the Pope, his brother and, before long, his auntie Freda and his pet cat Hans.

Logical thinking and balanced thought were eliminated from this subject long ago. It’s church-bashing time and why bother about poverty and war when you can pretend that Catholicism is to blame for everything.

Of course - the nitwit picks up on the role that the current Pope has apparently played in one diocese, and conveniently ignores the fact that what's coming out now shows us a picture of an organization that has actively and systemically enabled pedophiles in its midst.

Yet if we are to believe the media, abuse is almost exclusively Catholic and — here we go again — all because of celibacy and an all-male clergy.

Complete trash-talk of course. A failed priest says no more about Catholicism than a failed Canadian says about Canada.

Nice straw man argument there, Michael. Care to try again? I don't think people really care what vows a priest takes. While personally I find the notion of a celibate priesthood a bit ridiculous, that's really an internal matter as it has little or no effect on the parishoners whether the priest is married or not.

While sexual abuse is obviously grotesque, the number of occurrences in the Catholic Church is neither higher nor lower than any other denomination or religion and the same as those in education, sports and any other institution that involves a power dynamic between adults and youth.

Again, Coren completely misses the boat. In those other "institutions", the abuser and their enablers are subject to criminal prosecution, and rightly so. The issue here is that the Catholic Church has tried to not only set itself apart from the laws in so many lands, but has actively attempted to protect its clergy from prosecution - not just once, but repeatedly.

Worse, from an optics point of view, is that the current Pope's name appears repeatedly in this history - including renewing or re-approving the original protocol the church came up with to conceal child molesters in its midst.

People are looking for something here - it's called accountability. The rot in the clergy has been percolating to the top, and today the people who are implicated are very highly placed in the church hierarchy. These are people whose acts and actions attempted to protect the abusers, but coerced the abused into 'vows of silence' and generally tried to place the clergy outside the laws of the land.

If a hockey coach abuses his players, he goes to trial. If his leadership moves him around to conceal his tracks, they too are culpable for their acts. Why should a member of the clergy be any different simply because they are part of the Catholic Church?

Yet More Child Molesting Clergy

In the last few days, it has become very apparent that the phenomenon of Roman Catholic clergy molesting children was not just an oddity that took place in a few North American parishes.

I see now that the Pope is saying "sorry" to his flock in Ireland with a Pastoral Letter.

This has been bubbling about for close to twenty years in North America, and the incidents that are being described go back as far as the 1950s. Entire generations of the faithful have been lied to and deceived by the church hierarchy which is known to have actively covered up the tracks of its pedophiles and protected them from the legal prosecution that would have befallen them had the law caught up to them.

At this point, anything like an investigation that originates in the Vatican will have no credibility whatsoever. It is already clear that the Vatican hierarchy has moved in the past to protect its own from the consequences of their actions, after so many decades, one can only imagine the degree of organizational rot that must pervade the entire structure. Coverups, deceit and lies all in the name of protecting the "reputation" of the Church are guaranteed to be corrosive to the organization itself.

Instead, If the Pope truly wants to make a clean break of things, and re-establish his Church's moral authority, he should open the doors of the Vatican's archives (all of them!), as well as those of every diocese of the church to a public, legal investigation by a third party such as Scotland Yard or Interpol.

The goal of such an investigation? To describe the activities not only of the Church's pedophiles, but also the actions of the church hierarchy with respect to those abuses. Further, the perpetrators must be brought to account for their actions - in both the courts of secular law and the Church itself. The results of that investigation must be fully public, and the consequences for those identified must also be public - anything less would smack of further coverup and protectionism. This may be a massive bloodletting within the Vatican hierarchy, potentially going all the way to the top, but it must happen in order for the Catholic Church to reclaim any sense of moral validity in the years to come.

At this point, the reputation of the Church is so besmirched with the taint of sexual abuse and coverup that it is hard to take any of its moral teachings seriously. To rail against civil rights for GLBT people whose actions are about living in society in peace with those whom they love when your entire organization seems to have become the world's largest pedophile ring seems more than just a little hypocritical.