Seriously. Salvation Army, Pope, Salvation Army, Pope, Pope...(Goose?) - if it weren't for the utterly fucking worthless family of that girl who played Padma Patil in the Harry Potter films beating her and threatening to murder her for dating outside of Islam, my half of this blog would turn into the All Catholic Dickery All The Time Site.
Okay. Get this. The Pope, in a piece of news that was mentioned to me by a bro with the intro 'light blue touch paper and stand well back', has declared that the systemic, serial rape of children by Catholic priests all over the world starting in the second century AD is....society's fault. Yes, really. He really, honestly did use the same excuse as the juvenile delinquents in West Side Story. More specifically:
"The psychological destruction of children, in which human persons are reduced to articles of merchandise, is a terrifying sign of the times," Benedict said.
He said that as recently as the 1970s, pedophilia wasn't considered an absolute evil but rather part of a spectrum of behaviors that people refused to judge in the name of tolerance and relativism.
What the fuck? Now I wasn't around until after the Seventies were over, but I'm reasonably fucking certain the only people around then who didn't consider it absolutely evil to rape a child were child rapists. I'm just gonna stick another bit in here 'cause it's too typically at odds with reality to miss:
"In the 1970s, pedophilia was theorized 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."
Where the fuck was this guy in the 1970s where people thought that? - oh, wait, that's right, in charge of covering up the systemic, serial rape of children by Catholic priests. No wonder he got the impression it was more accepted, all the cool clergy were doing it.
I mean, it's not even much new, that's the depressing part. There's suddenly a lot less surprise in noting that the Pope is behaving like an eight-year-old when it comes to excuses for shit that was done on his watch.
But seriously, Catholics. Give the other faiths time to piss me off too. This is just selfish.
I like to get an assist on the board every now and then.
ReplyDeleteSickening is what it is. If it was considered "normal" yet immoral, then why don't they play their "holier-than-thou" card for real and actually condemn paedophilia? Naaah, easier to have your cake and eat it, it seems.
ReplyDeleteEven if the Pope is right about the attitudes of the 70s (and I doubt he is), his church is supposed to have a direct line to the source of absolute and perfect morality. They answer to a higher authority, remember, and so they would never have been misled by some "devil's doctrine."
ReplyDeleteSo in my mind he is either: a) making excuses now that he can't cover it up any more, or b) admitting that his church has no access to divine authority and morality, or maybe c) admitting that his church has access to the divine but doesn't feel the need to obey that higher calling.
Either way, I continue to ask: why would anyone continue to support the Catholic Church?