In another round of Put The Blame On fill in the blank regarding the Catholic Church pedophile priest scandal, Pope Benedict's personal preacher, the Reverend Raniero Cantalamessa, is likening accusations against the pope and the church in the sex abuse scandal to the "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.
Yes. Asking the church to come clean about the decades of child molestation and subsequent cover-up and protection of pedophile priests is just like sending six millions Jews to German death camps.
I had a hard time comprehending the Catholic church's excuse that it was gay priests who were molesting young boys, because all statistics point out that most pedophiles are heterosexual men.
I was confused when the Catholic church said it wasn't pedophilia, because most of the boys weren't prepubescent boys, but were over the age of thirteen; that's called pederasty. But guess what, Catholic church? Anyone under the age of eighteen is considered a child, so you can play your little semantics game, but it's all child molestation.
And I giggled a little when the Vatican exorcist blamed all the Pope's troubles--note they never mention the children, all the trouble is on the Pope and the church--on Satan.
But now, to say that what the church and the Pope are dealing with is similar to the mass executions of Jews, is particularly shameful and disgusting. Again, the church plays the Poor me card; they don't mention the children; they don't mention their own Pope's hand in moving pedophile priests from church to church. They ask why they're being attacked.
You're being attacked because you have systematically let the children of your faith be molested by priests; you are being attacked because, rather than have those pedophile priests face charges, you move them around so they can continue to molest; you are being attacked because you lay the blame for the mistakes of the church and the Pope at the feet of anyone and everyone other than your own.
A particularly clueless move by experts at the game.
ReplyDeleteIndeed,the fact that the Pope & Vatican officials, surrounded by the opulence and gold leaf that is the Vatican, could compare themselves to people who were pulled from their homes, stripped of their possessions, and sent to concentration camps is beyond absurd. Almost as crazy as the wealthiest corporation on the planet asking the poor to give money weekly to feed the poor, while walking around in their silken robes, gazing on priceless art hanging on the walls of the Vatican, some of which was donated by war criminals in a move to try to buy forgiveness and a place in heaven that was being sold by an institution acting more like Century 21 than the man at the basis of all its 'supposed' teachings.
ReplyDeleteYes, I was also appalled by the "devil made me do it" defense. Pathetic.
ReplyDeleteYou and your commenters will, I am sure, be pleased to know that the preacher didn't actually equate the unproven accusations against Pope Benedict to the violence suffered by the Jews in the Holocaust.
ReplyDeleteHere's what he actually said.
http://zenit.org/article-28840?l=english
As you see, he said that the Jews are victims of collective violence and that this gives them special awareness of the sorts of things that lead up to it. And then he quoted from a letter he had received from a JEWISH friend. And it was that Jewish friend who compared the hate-mongering campaign against the Pope and the Church to anti-Semitism. Neither the preacher nor the Jewish writer said that the attacks on the Pope and the Church were comparable "to the "collective violence" suffered by the Jews." No one said or remotely suggested that "Asking the church to come clean about the decades of child molestation and subsequent cover-up and protection of pedophile priests is just like sending six millions Jews to German death camps."
Certainly, "to say that what the church and the Pope are dealing with is similar to the mass executions of Jews, [would be] particularly shameful and disgusting." So you will be very pleased to see that nobody said that.
And Howard will be glad to know that Fr. Cantalamessa did not "compare [the Vatican] to people who were pulled from their homes, stripped of their possessions, and sent to concentration camps," nor did the Jewish friend whom he was quoting.
I am happy to have been able to set the record straight and set your minds at ease on this matter.