Out in Portland, Oregon, the Preble Street's Homeless Voices for Justice--a social service agency that supports marriage equality--has lost its local and national funding from the Catholic Church's anti-poverty program because of that stance. The group has lost over $17,000 this year and will lose $33,000 for its next fiscal year.
And Wingnut officials with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland and the Washington-based Catholic Campaign for Human Development don't hide their reasons why, saying that Preble Street violated its grant agreement by supporting Maine's "No on 1" campaign last fall.
So, the homeless go hungry in Portland because this group supported equality in Maine.
That's the Catholic Church.
According to church files being used in yet another molestation suit, top Vatican officials--up to, and including, the future Pope Benedict XVI--did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church.
These letters between the bishops in America and church leaders in Europe plainly show that while their was argument over whether the pedophile priest should be dismissed--notice they never say arrested and prosecuted--those higher up the Catholic food chain were more concerned with protecting the image of the Catholic church.
These damning documents are being released as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.
Rather than protect children,m they protected their image.
And finally we have the tale of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, and how it now appears that he was kept more closely apprised of a sexual abuse case in Germany than previous church statements have suggested.
Cardinal Ratzinger, the future pope and archbishop in Munich at the time, was copied on a memo that informed him of the priest whom he had approved sending to therapy to overcome pedophilia, would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. That priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another parish.
Previously, the church had placed the blame for this mistake on Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy, the Reverend Gerhard Gruber, but this new memo shows that the future pope not only led a meeting to approve the transfer of the pedophile priest, but that he was kept informed of the priest's new assignment.
That, too, is the Catholic church.
Now, I am not a Catholic, if that isn't obvious by even one visit to my blog. And, you may well have also guessed that I am not a member of any organized [disorganized?] religion. But I do have my beliefs, and they include no longer being a member of any organization that punishes one group of people, like, say, the homeless, over a group's interest in the equality of another group, like, say, the LGBT community.
And I would not want to be part of a group that prefers to protect their own image rather than the lives and souls and psyches of children.
Nor would I remain associated with a group whose very leader seems to be at the center of an attempt to save a pedophile from prosecution, while keeping him employed around children in another town.
No, I don't get it. I get how people can be Catholic; I get how they can follow that faith, even though I don't get the faith. But what I don't get is how they continue to attend that church, give money to that church, and send their children to that church.
That, I would assume, is blind faith. Deaf and dumb, as well.
