by VorJack
As I was afraid it would, the child abuse scandal for the Catholic Church in Germany is spreading. However, it’s also climbing.
One of the marks against Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, was the suspicion that he had shielded members of the clergy from prosecution for child abuse. As the full nature of the abuses in Germany come to light, new suspicions are being added to the pile. From the NYT:
The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.
If Ratzinger allowed a priest to be transfered for therapy, rather than discharging him and requiring him to stand trial, then the Pope is one of the members of the church hierarchy that has perpetuated the problem.
The scandal has also touched Georg Ratzinger, the Pope’s brother. From the CSM:
The pope’s older brother, Rev. Georg Ratzinger, was in charge of the select Regensburger Domspatzen boys’ choir from 1964 to 1994. Members of that choir have alleged in recent weeks that choir leaders physically and sexually assaulted them on numerous occasions.
The Church hierarchy is fighting back the only way it can: by returning fire on its detractors and declaring victory:
In a note read on Vatican Radio on Saturday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said it was “evident that in recent days there are those who have tried, with a certain aggressive tenacity, in Regensburg and in Munich, to find elements to involve the Holy Father personally in issues of abuse.” He added, “It is clear that those efforts have failed.”
Over at Newser, contributing editor of Vanity Fair Michael Wolff asks bluntly, Is The Pope Toast?.
Trouble, trouble. Not-going-away trouble. Run-out-of-office trouble. It’s a potentially transformative moment in matters of religion and of power, wherein even the infallible turns out to be vulnerable. Some of us live for such moments.
Wolff is speaking with perverse instincts of a journalist: scandal sells. For the rest of us, I think we just want to know the truth, no matter how grim it is.
Nah, can’t be. There’s officially no evil in the Vatican. Their chief exorcist says so, and he ought to know about these things.
From the no evil in the vatican link:
“[Father Gabriele] Amorth, the founder of the International Association of Exorcists, has performed more than 70,000 exorcisms in his career, he estimates.”
70,000. The article says he’s 85. If he started exorcising at 25 (which I doubt), over a career of 60 years, then that’s around 4 exorcisms a day for 300 days every year (I guess he takes vacation). Busy man.
I’m tempted to think he probably just combined his achievement score for Devil may Cry 4, and Ghostbusters to get that figure.
I always thought the pope looked like Satan with those dark sunken in eyes! hehe!
I hope to look back in years to come and think of Darth Ratzinger as one of the coffin-nails of the Catholic church. I hope that Catholics the world over will look at that vile piece of sputum who has become the head of their church and ask themselves “Where is the divinity here?”
When a paedophile-protecting, holocaust-denying fascist is in charge, it’s time to realise that it’s not just a case of the church being rotten to the core – the church is the rot, and the only way to treat rot is to cut it away.
Having stepped away from my Roman Catholic up bringing but still having family members deeply involved with the church I can say there will be very few who back away. The church’s attempts to spin this in the media have failed so far but they’re really good at spinning it at a local level.
Anytime there is something about corruption and the church brought up among my family members they immediately get angry and start yelling about vicious people attacking the church and how they’re being persecuted ruthlessly and its an international conspiracy by protestants and atheists. Between this instant anger and yelling and the ability to stick their fingers in their ears and say “I can’t hear anything” many catholics manage to completely overlook this type of stuff.
Will the church lose some members? Yes probably but they won’t lose a lot and the rest that are there will become more extreme in their practices to make up for it (including breeding and training more catholics).
“Between this instant anger and yelling and the ability to stick their fingers in their ears and say “I can’t hear anything” many catholics manage to completely overlook this type of stuff.”
Personally I think that anger is the cognitive disonance manifesting itself – and I firmly believe that you can only go through so much of that before you stop believing. I’d bet there are many, many Catholics who *don’t* believe anymore but pretend that they still do in order to not lose friends / familly / status. I hope there’s a snowball effect when enough people step away from it so that more feel empowered to do the same and even more start to see the contradictions that the church causes in their lives.
Some of the Catholic friend I’ve spoken to insist that this is an isolated case, and it does not speak of their institution as a whole.
I put it to them as politely as I could that the church DID systematically keep these scandals under wraps, and that pastoral letters have been distributed ordering involved priests to be quiet. In short, the incident DOES speak of the institution as a whole.
And now of them is arguing that these events don’t discredit the RCC’s general aim of being some sort of moral bastion.
Damn it, if he were not my friend, I would have socked him in the jaw by now :(
Your poor friend is trying to deal with massive amounts of cognitive dissonance. If he were to acknowledge the grievous evil perpetrated upon boys and girls under the tacit approval of the “Holy See,” he’d probably wonder why the frak he’s wasted his time in this hideous, hidebound organization of pathetic, power-mad perverts.
And it’s all Satan trying to bring down the church.
Wait a minute, Ratzinger denies the holocaust?
Where?
He doesn’t. Custador is wrong. Ratzinger was a member of Hitler Youth, but membership was compulsory for all young boys in Nazi Germany. To my knowledge, he has never denied or downplayed the holocaust.
“I think we just want to know the truth, no matter how grim it is.”
It’s pretty grim.
The truth is that the Catholic church is a political organization with a long history and without national boundaries and that that organization subsists on fear of the unknown, blind loyalty, and superstitious mumbo-jumbo aimed at the weak-minded and those needing to belong to a large group. This political organization has, throughout its history, perpetrated crimes of violence, sexual perversion and genocide against humanity (generally) on an epic scale.
I have to side with Wolf. I also live for these moments. Not because I love scandal, but because I love watching churches fall. Among my great joys in life is seeing a church converted into an art museum, or soup kitchen. If things keep going the way they are, we have a slim chance of seeing the Vatican converted into a giant museum/soup kitchen for the poor.
My freudenschade is peaking I think. Between the Catholics and the $cientologists, this has been a good beginning for 2010.
Islam is a tougher nut to crack. Their own prophet was a pedophile, and they see nothing wrong with killing little girls who step out of line. They also lack a central authority figure, so its going to be tough to embarrass them.
Schadenfreude, possibly?
Ja, Schadenfreude!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9B-ZoS0wvU
On a slightly OT note, the Pope’s admittedly Backpfeifengesicht
Got to love the enormous German vocabulary of words which mean cool things :-)
According to comedian David Cross, the only reason why priests are into little boys is because god himself is into little boys
God would appear to have an insatiable appetite for pre-pubescent foreskins.
Holy calamari?
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2010/03/16/purge/
I am appalled at this whole mess. And a little ashamed. I grew up protestant and the whole catholic thing was just something I didn’t pay attention to. Heck once I dropped the silliness of god bothering I still didn’t really see anything.
Revoke the Vatican’s diplomatic status, start charging priests who molest and those who cover for them. Yank tax exempt status for a corrupt child molesting organization that’s usefulness has passed.
It’s a good thing there isn’t a god, because if there was, what it allows would make it evil and vile beyond the wildest stories that have been ascribed to the devil.
Child Abuse – you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution
From a Fundie Xtian point of view, this is not at all that surprising. The Catholics are not real Christians at all. So they did what they did because they are not following the true word of God. Besides, the chroir boys were asking for it anyways for not turning themselves to become true Crhistians like the Fundies. Not harms done to Christianity.
Agentsmith is quite correct. All the evangelicals who were previously going to heaven without the Roman Catholics (but are abusing children evangelically all along the way), well, they are secretly RC’s too, dressed in shiny Pentecostal suits. I guess my old preacher was right about heaven being a real Baptist place. All you other weirdos are headed for the fire.
“All you other weirdos are headed for the fire.”
A hell with a lack of fundies sounds like heaven to me ;)