Defending The Church

I knew it wouldn't take long for religious zealot and lunatic-fringe "Catholic" prattle-head Bill Donohue to respond to the recent revelation that The Pope is implicated in a cover-up of the sexual assault of deaf children.

The rash of stories about priestly sexual abuse in Europe, especially in Ireland and Germany, has put many Catholics on the defensive. They should not be. While sexual molestation of any kind is always indefensible, the politics surrounding this story is also indefensible.

Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so.

I'm guessing Donohue must have been in a coma when females teachers are arrested for sexual assault on their students, as it was highly publicized and was a major topic of discussion within the conservative realm.

Why, for example, are the psychologists and psychiatrists who pledged to "fix" abusers treated so lightly? After all, employers from the corporate world to the Catholic Church were told over and over again that therapy works and to give the offender a second chance.

Indeed, the zeitgeist of the day was that rehabilitation not only works, it is virtuous. That such advice was wildly oversold can now be agreed upon by almost everyone, and that is precisely why it smacks of politics to deny how strongly held the rehabilitative ideal was. Had the Catholic Church simply tossed the offenders out, it would have been branded as heartless.

No. The church would have been seen as taking a very harsh, and moral, stance against the molestation and rape of children. From not only my perspective, but that of a plurality of people within both the religious and secular worlds, but the Catholic church has a rich and storied tradition of protecting those that have sexually assaulted children.

No one is foolish enough to believe that simply having a pedophile recline back on a couch and tell his life story to a psychiatrist is going to prevent this from ever happening again. So to essentially claim that it is the fault of the behavioral sciences field - in essence claiming you were duped into letting these priests to stick around - is further proof that the Catholic Church lacks that ability to take responsibility for their membership.

The hyper-concentration on the Catholic Church is not by accident. The Church preaches an ethic of sexual restraint -- a profoundly countercultural idea -- so when a priest fails, it's tempting to highlight it. Human nature being what it is, that's understandable. But it's also immoral. Quite frankly, if sexual abuse is wrong, it should not matter what the identity of the abuser is. Selective justice is the highest form of injustice.

Donohue, more so in this piece than just about anything else he's ever written or spoke, is basically telling everyone that the Catholic Church should not be put under any type of scrutiny. He wants you to laud the accomplishments of the church, but when it comes to something like sexual abuse, then we aren't supposed to speak of it. But we do, because the church ( and not just Catholics ) set themselves up as institutions of purity and spirituality.

Why is this man defending the molestation and rape of children?

All The Way To The Top

Seems that The Pope knows a little more than he's willing to discuss.

Five years ago he sent out an updated version of the notorious 1962 Vatican document Crimen Sollicitationis - Latin for The Crime of Solicitation - which laid down the Vatican's strict instructions on covering up sexual scandal. It was regarded as so secret that it came with instructions that bishops had to keep it locked in a safe at all times.
Cardinal Ratzinger reinforced the strict cover-up policy by introducing a new principle: that the Vatican must have what it calls Exclusive Competence. In other words, he commanded that all child abuse allegations should be dealt with direct by Rome.

I'm having a harder and harder time reconciling how anyone can be Catholic. Not just in light of this revelation about The Pope, but about how they are so divided when it comes to healthcare reform.

I know that priests touching the alter boy in the cloak room and The League of Bishops opposing healthcare legislation aren't intrinsically linked, but think about this - Catholics are more concerned with preventing healthcare reform than they are stopping the abuse of children. It's very odd way to present yourself, especially if you're a highly regarded religious institution like The Holy Catholic Church.

The Comedian That Makes A Better Senator Than Most

The way in which conservatives attacked and attempted to besmirch Al Franken's bid for Senate is the halmark of conservative ideology - rely on gimmicky schtick rather than substance.

Turns out that Franken makes a better representative for not just his state, but this whole nation than many Senators that have held their position for years.

In respect to his amendment that would take a hard stance against companies that shelter rapists ( like KBR ) 30 Senators voted against it, thereby siding with the rapists.

To see Franken in action is something that everyone should pay attention to. This isn't the man that brought us Stewart Smally. This is someone that the Right ( for as many times as they claim that liberals and progressives are somehow afraid of the childish antics perpetrated by their apparent leadership ) honestly fears because he has the knowledge and the constitution to take on even their most arden of supporters.





For the full story behind Jamie Leigh Jones, check my diary on Daily Kos from December 2007 about her horrible ordeal and how conservatives reacted to it.

The Right's Sexual Abuse Problem

No, it's not about this

Now that the G20 is in full swing, the personalities at Fox"News" are ready to talk about the protesters rather than what world leaders are hoping to accomplish.

They’ve always been there. But now they’re coordinated by the internet, now they can talk to each other. It’s like child molesters, you know? I mean, child molesters have always been around but now they got a place to go and gather and do their evil deeds.

O'Reilly loves to create the aura around the internet that it is filled with nothing more than sex offenders and liberal bloggers. He's even gone so far as to say that the internet has a "liberal bias". As recently as last night, he had on one of his "pretty-conservative-girls" to talk about Joe Biden's daughters alleged cocaine use and how talk of that online was wildly different than discussion revolving around Bristol Palin.

-- I'll have more on that conversation later today --

Bill's gimmick is to equate what he does not - or refuses - to understand with something that most rational thinking people would consider downright vile. Unfortunately, the only people that are falling for O'Reilly's clap-trap are the ones that actually consider him a viable journalistic force.

But O'Reilly's not alone in tacking on the "sexual abuse" meme to news stories.

You don’t want to think if you get in bed with Uncle Sam he’s going to strip you naked, chain you to the bed, leave you there and then take nasty pictures of you and then put them on the Internet. Because that’s what’s been happening.

This all reminds me of a theory known as Godwin's Law

As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one