It was inevitable the Vatican would say something both offensive and wrong in regards to the debacle in Ireland over the Ryan report, which chronicled decades of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of Catholic priests and nuns. Cardinal Antonio Canizares recently said abortion is worst than child abuse. Here is his direct quote:

What happened in some schools cannot be compared with the millions of lives that have been destroyed by abortion. It (abortion) has legally destroyed 40 million human lives.

This is the typical response you can expect from an institution which systematically covered up centuries of abuse by the Catholic church. It is only in the past few decades that we have been able to demonstrate the extend of their evil, but the Catholic Church has known for a long time pedophiles make up a significant percentage of their employees. There is such a strong culture of abuse that I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow felt it was a mere inconvenience rather than an actual problem. Father Bad-touch apparently isn’t the bad guy; the real villain in the story wears a lab coat, folks!

In any case, if they feel abortions are so wrong, they might want to read up on miscarriages. Roughly 1/4 of early pregnancies result in a spontaneous abortion. This makes God the biggest abortionist of all time. I don’t see many people in the church freaking out about all this baby killing, though. I can understand why the Catholic Church is so upset about abortions though. I mean, think about how many nubile young boys and girls aren’t being born? That’s 40 million kids they could have molested!

It’s not only Ireland that is battling the Catholic church and their long list of abuses against children. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, the Diocese is attempting to keep thousands of pages of court files, numerous lawsuits dating back to 2001, from being released to the public. They attempt to show they have actively been fighting to prevent further abuses, but their obvious need to protect the identities of known offenders only goes to show how protective of their members this organization is.

The whole affair feels surreal. Even the group representing some of the abused sent a letter I can only describe as insanely polite given the fact they are abusing kids:

So we ask that you put the safety of children, the healing of victims and the overall benefit of the church itself (particularly the trusting, generous parishioners) above the short term discomfort of church officials who fear having to face tough questions — in the news media, from parishioners or in open court — about how much they knew and how little they did about these horrific crimes

Discomfort? I know I keep asking this question of “why is no one in jail?”, and maybe some of you are annoyed by it, but nobody seems to be able to give me a straight answer. Imagine that instead of a Church committing these abuses, it was a day care center. Would people be sending carefully worded letters asking them politely to stop their attempts to cover up what happened? No, no, and no.

It looks like the Church won’t be able to keep a lid on it anyway, but I find it personally insulting and telling that the Catholic Church is opposed to justice. They simply have never felt child abuse is a big deal. Are we now supposed to believe that without them, society would simply fall apart? Yeah, not so much.

Did you ever try to use the old “I didn’t know it was a illegal” defense when caught breaking the law? I’ve never been arrested, but I assume it’s pretty normal some people would try and use this lame excuse in order to avoid doing jail time. There are, however, certain times when this type of defense will do more harm than good. Case in point: retired Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland and his statements that he had no idea child abuse was a crime. Weakland apparently “accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember or they would ‘grow out of it.”

This is the same guy who in 2002 paid $450,000 to a man who had accused him of date rape, so his credibility on the issue of child molesting is somewhat hurt by this inconvenience. The fact this monster thinks kids can ‘grow’ out of being sexually abused just demonstrates the kind of willful ignorance and deception that is part of the Catholic Church’s modus operandi. How can the devout keep believing in light of such tragic and despicable representatives? I’ve got news for you: if these guys are closer to divinity than the rest of us, we all need to collectively jump off this religion bandwagon right fucking now. Who’s with me!?

If you listen to Christians talk about their religion, you could swear their members must all be saints, blessed with a greater gift for compassion than their fellow man. If a person is devout, people automatically assume they are dedicating their lives to some higher purpose, and their connection with God makes them moral pillars of society.

It’s a perception that survives despite the countless times priests, monks, nuns and bishops are caught in a variety of scandals, ranging from embezzlement to child abuse. The latest incident involves the Catholic-run reform school in Ireland, where a 2900 page report painted a most unflattering picture of a huge variety of abuses dating back all the way to the 1930′s.

The schools were little more than slave labor camps, where children, living in constant terror, would be beaten, humiliated or raped for failing to manufacture rosaries in the workhouse style reform school. Amidst the controversy surrounding the report, the Church sought to bury the names and identities of the serial child molesters, either dead or living, and won the right to do so. It seems like identifying the abusers isn’t as important as protecting known child rapists. Can’t you just taste the justice?

When are we going to stop allowing these monsters to get away with these kinds of atrocities? Here you have a powerful religious institutions literally raping kids, and nothing is being done about it. If this had been any other organization angry mob wielding torches would have burned the place down. But because a religion is involved, everyone is putting on their kid gloves.

I find it insulting and mortifying that religions still get such special treatments with regard to human rights offenders. Just who is supposed to be the moral guides in this world? Does anyone want to listen to a bunch of child molesters tell us how we need to get into heaven? If there was a hell, these guys would have booked a first class flight there when they die.

There are some passionate people out there with plenty of time on their hands. Most of them channel it by watching shitty television programs that slowly rot their brains. Luckily, a few of them end up trying to devote their lives to a worthy cause; and what could be better than trying to hold priests accountable for molesting children? Literally, I can’t think of anything that would rival it.

This site does not fuck around. Unlike most sites that seem to be lost trying to identify their purpose, BishopAccountability.org goes for the jugular. It’s a huge (though obviously passionately cluttered) database of written material dealing with everything pertaining to the Church’s involvement in child molestation.

It pleases me greatly there is an organization that takes this issue so seriously. Not only that, but their righteous indignation goes far beyond simple priestly accountability; they also have a huge beef with Google over censorship issues in China. Man, talk about fighting the power! If any of you feel generous, I suggest giving them a hand.