Looks like some priests aren’t content to just blame homosexuality for the rampant abuse of children; Bernardo Álvarez, the Bishop of Tenerife in Spain, had this to say about the recent scandals:

There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you

I think this is called the “Lolita” defense, and it sounds about as convincing as you might imagine. All those kids who were sodomized against their will were really just asking for it, shaking their prepubescent little booties around, wearing tight t-shirts with the Transformer logo, and smelling of bubble gum and candy. The whores! How dare they tempt these poor Holy men of the cloth with their sexy, completely underdeveloped bodies?

So to recap, the people to blame are homosexuals (for spreading their sin around town) and overly sexed kids, who continually tempt priests with their erotic use of the word “dude”. You wouldn’t want to place the blame on pederast pieces of shit who have ruined the lives of thousands of innocent children; why, that would just be wrong and an insult to the memory those poor, downtrodden priests who did nothing more than “give” those horny kids what they were begging for!

I dream of the day when I no longer have to say the name Bill Donohue, for every time I do, a little bit of sick makes its way into my mouth. The fact that mainstream media continues to give him a platform to speak proves how shallow and uneducated they are. The latest words out of his poisonous mouth regarding the allegations of priestly sexual abuse (the subsequent attempt to conceal these activities) goes something like this: It wasn’t child rape because the kids were post-pubescent at the time (and were therefore just “sexy” teenagers).

Maybe Bill is a little confused as to the relative age of consent. According to him, if you’re above 12 years of age and a clergyman forcefully shoves his dick in your mouth, it’s in actually consensual gay sex (and silly you for thinking otherwise!). So in Bill’s view, the controversy surrounding the Vatican isn’t about child rape, but homosexuality.

Surely there are Catholics out there who are genuinely disgusted and outraged Bill could say such a thing while representing the interest of their institution. Unfortunately for them, the ones in power have no real interest in seeking justice for the victims; they simply want to avoid having to admit their culpability and end up paying billions of dollars in compensation. They would rather blame everything on gays and atheists rather than take a long hard look at the corruption and rot present in their own church.

Keep being the same old you, Bill. You do more to help atheism than you can possibly imagine.

Pope Benedict XVI is again being implicated in another abuse scandal, this time out of the state of Wisconsin. Reverend Lawrence C. Murphy worked in a school for deaf children, and while Benny was alerted in two letters that the priest had been suspected of molesting dozens of children, he failed to do anything at all. Unsurprisingly, Murphy was transferred from the school when the heat got too high to another parish where he continued to have unfettered access to young children. In all, it’s estimated he may have molested over 200 young boys.

I have to wonder what kind of spin the Vatican is going to try to put on this story; it’s yet another clear example of Ratzinger’s complete indifference towards the plight of abused children by the hands of his own employees. If he was a manager at a Denny’s he would not only have already been fired, he would also have gone to jail for failing to report such serious crimes to the police. But no; since he’s a religious figure living in his own tiny country, no one can touch him. I have to agree with Hitchens on this and say there’s a serious stink of evil coming from the new Pope (even though I hate this kind of rhetoric). We can only hope his failures as both a cardinal and a Pope are enough to make his sheep realize they’ve put their trust in the wrong man. I won’t hold my breath…

The aspect I find the most disturbing of the Catholic faith (and there are many things, let me assure you) is their singular obsession with sin. Since Jesus is supposedly commissioned with forgiving us and, in ritual consumption of his flesh and blood, absorb these supposed sins, it’s a cottage industry of suffering and redemption.

Their obsession with salvation is like a giant set of blinders that makes even the most well-meaning priest unable to see the very corruption and villainy of his own institution. In some cases, the need to defend this organization stretches the limits of imagination, and more particularly, sanity. The National Post (perhaps my least favorite Canadian newspaper) has a resident man of the cloth, Father Raymond D’Souza, that they call upon every once in a while to try and explain away the ludicrous actions and behavior of the world’s single biggest religious organization. As you would expect, it’s a bunch of apologetic nonsense:

Aside from the sins themselves, the principal failing of the scandals is that those who should have been seized with moral outrage reacted instead as bureaucratic managers seeking damage control. The Lord Jesus willed the Church to be governed by bishops, not bureaucrats.

So is “bureaucracy” his way of explaining away the rape of children and the subsequent cover-up of this “boy’s club”? I can assure you in even the most corrupt non-religious organization, it’s doubtful anyone would knowingly protect known child molesters (can you imagine any major corporation surviving such a scandal?). Even in fucking prisons (a place bustling in “sin”), it’s understood child molesters need to be kept separate from the general population, otherwise there’s a chance their stay might be “cut” a little short. But wait, it gets better:

If the Church should be the place where more cases are exposed rather than fewer, that is for the good, for there is the possibility of grace and healing. Consequently, if the Church as a whole feels the pain of shame and disgrace, that can be an expiatory suffering for a sexually dissolute and depraved age. Expiatory suffering is, amongst other salvific things, what the Church exists for.

Let me tell you something: there is no amount of shame or pain the Church can feel that will ever fucking compare to what a child victimized by rape has to go through, not even by a long shot. Even if all guilty individuals were exposed and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, it does not change the fact the Catholic Church systematically protected these men and sheltered them from their crimes. If anything, these scandals have highlighted the fact they have lost all of their supposed ability to redeem anyone of sin. How dare D’Souza call this world “depraved” and sexually dissolute when these are problems in his own Church rather than society at large? The rest of us are not so morally blind as to shelter and protect those who would harm innocent children. So far I find the only thing depraved here is the indifference the author has over the fact that the very institution he is trying to defend is so corrupt as to be unable (and unwilling) to punish known child rapists. How much more scandal do believers need before they shake off their delusional bubble and finally say “enough is enough”?