Ultimate Insult to Ultimate Injury
September 29, 2009 at 8:28 pm (Catholicism, Max Dunbar)
The Vatican has responded to the Ryan report. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, its observer to the UN, issued a statement yesterday. This would have been a good time for the head of the Catholic church to declare its crimes and ask what it could do to make amends.
Instead, it has chosen to defend the indefensible.
This, according to the Guardian, is the thrust of its statement:
1) Only 1.5% to 5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child abuse. So that’s only around x million child abusers.
2) Child abuse goes on in other religions too, which makes it okay.
3) And, in fact, there are loads of paedophiles who are not ministers of any religion.
4) Anyway, the Catholic priests who abused children aren’t paedos, they just have a thing for teenage boys: ‘Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17.’
This is the conclusion:
As the Catholic church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it.
Other institutions and authorities? Can you imagine the head of a business responding to proven allegations about his employees in this way? Would Gordon Brown excuse the crimes of a Labour Party paedo ring by saying: ‘Well, most of them are just gays so it’s okay?’
It really is beyond me how anyone can remain a member of an organisation whose leaders say such stupid, ugly, callous things.
All the Vatican could do was apologise and promise to make amends. And it couldn’t even do that. What disgusting, irredeemable, subhuman scum.
Shiraz Socialist 
Matt said,
September 30, 2009 at 9:17 am
Nothing the hierarchy of the Catholic Church says or does surprises me. Their default mode is to suppress, deflect and belittle any criticism. Believing yourself to be the divinely appointed and infallible successor to the Son of God gives you confidence to do that. They’ve also had a couple of thousand years practice.
It really shouldn’t be beyond you to understand ‘how anyone can remain a member of an organisation whose leaders say such stupid, ugly, callous things’. Even those members of the Church who haven’t suffered sexual, physical or emotional abuse at the hands of the priests have been in their psychological grip, as witnessed by last week’s queues outside Liverpool Cathedral to touch a casket containing the bones of a poor French girl dug up and canonised twenty years after her death for allegedly interceding in the performance of miracles.
All of which should spur us on to organise the biggest demonstrations we can of socialists, women’s and LGBT groups and halfway decent liberals when Pope Benedict XVI himself tours Britain next year. The charge sheet against him personally is a long one and was admirably summarised by Tanya Gold in yesterday’s ‘Guardian’.
maxdunbar said,
September 30, 2009 at 9:26 am
Yeah, that Gold article was bang on. It would be great to get a demo together.
entdinglichung said,
September 30, 2009 at 11:51 am
meanwhile, the Vatican can’t also be bothererd to show some solidarity towards attacked (in their majority catholic) Roma in the Czech Republic: http://dokmz.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/czech-roma-betrayed-by-vaticans-ignorance/
Dr Paul said,
September 30, 2009 at 4:16 pm
It’s very telling that Ratfinger played a central role in covering up the disgraceful business of child abuse in his organisation at the same time that he was attacking the Liberation Theologists who saw their role as helping the poor and disadvantaged.
As a pal of mine said about this former member of the Hitler Youth: ‘You can take the Pope out of the Nazi Party but you can’t take the Nazi out of the Pope.’
And the Broon has welcomed this crook to Britain!
entdinglichung said,
September 30, 2009 at 4:27 pm
membership in the Hitler Youth was compulsory … but the ideological milieu in which Ratzinger grew up did not need nazism to shape him, he comes from a deeply conservative bavarian catholic background which includes a certain degree of traditonal catholic anti-judaism, a strong anti-liberalism and anti-communism, etc.
Jim Denham said,
September 30, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Matt and Max have mentioned that brilliant Tanya Gold article in the ‘Graun’ (surprising it got past their pro-religion “multi-culturalist” border guards). For those who want to read this devastating polemic,, here’s the link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/29/the-pope-visit
Rosie said,
September 30, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Gold is good!
Matt said,
October 2, 2009 at 4:38 pm
It looks like the planning of protests against Ratzinger’s visit to Britain is already underway: http://www.secularism.org.uk/protests-planned-for-popes-visit.html
James said,
October 5, 2009 at 2:32 pm
It really is beyond me how anyone can remain a member of an organisation whose leaders say such stupid, ugly, callous things.
Once you’ve been baptised that’s sort of it: as far as the Church is concerned you’re a member, God recognises you & God can not be blinded.
Agreed with the rest, though: this response is an exercise in ineffectual fallacy. You could play bingo with it.