This from the Associated Press: \u201cPope Benedict XVI\u2019s personal preacher is likening accusations against the pope and the church in the sex abuse scandal to \u2018collective violence\u2019 suffered by the Jews. The Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa said in a Good Friday sermon, with the pope listening to him in St. Peter\u2019s Basilica, that a Jewish friend has said the accusations remind him of the \u2018more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.'\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know whether I should laugh or cry, though the fact that Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa has a Jewish friend is nice. For the Vatican See that preferred to see little and say nothing while millions of Jews were being slaughtered by good Christians and Catholics throughout Europe, to now hide behind anti-Semitism to avoid having to face the fact of church cover-ups of pedophilia among priests is outrageous.<\/p>\n
Obviously the Church can\u2019t tell the difference between sticks and stones (not to mention guns and Zyklon B gas) and words. When priests are being indiscriminately rounded up and murdered because they are Catholics, then maybe we can talk. But when pedophile priests are not even rounded up, but in fact recycled into new parishes where they can troll for fresh victims, I think the analogy falls a bit flat.<\/p>\n
But wait! Perhaps I am being too partisan. Maybe what Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa is saying is this: Just as newspaper accounts revealing the evil of pedophilia corrupting the Catholic Church are true, so Nazi revelations of Jewish evil corrupting Europe were true. Now it makes sense. He isn\u2019t saying the charges against the Church are false, only that the charges against the Jews were true. Bravissimo!<\/p>\n
Here is the problem with the Church and the Pope: they care more about the church and the pope than the people the church and the pope are supposed to serve. The Pope is protecting the brand at the expense of those it has harmed. Not surprising, of course. This is how most corporations react when faced with the evil they do.<\/p>\n
Compare the Vatican\u2019s statement that it doesn\u2019t directly hire bishops and priests and is therefore not responsible for anything they may do with Union Carbide Corporation\u2019s response to the disaster in Bhopal, India where 35 tons of toxic gas was leaked from a pesticide plant killing more than 7000 people:<\/p>\n