The Vatican Taliban beat goes on!

It appears the Fathers of the Catholic Church feel that their image needs a little public relations adjustment gilding. And they've found a guy who can help them with that!

The Vatican has hired an American journalist from the Fox News Network and member of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei to help improve its relations with the media, a senior Church source said on Saturday.

Burke, 52, a native of St Louis Missouri, has been working for Fox for 10 years. Before that he worked for Time magazine in Rome. He has also written several books, one about an Italian soccer team.

We presume that this recent legal decision in the US will be among those that will occupy Burke and require that he crank out a new flavour of bullshit to replace the old one.

Msgr. William J. Lynn, a former cardinal’s aide, was found guilty Friday of endangering children, becoming the first senior official of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States convicted of covering up sexual abuses by priests under his supervision.

The single guilty verdict was widely seen as a victory for the district attorney’s office, which has been investigating the archdiocese aggressively since 2002, and it was hailed by victim advocates who have argued for years that senior church officials should be held accountable for concealing evidence and transferring predatory priests to unwary parishes.

With willfully deaf, blind and dumb faithful followers like this one, how can they possibly go wrong?

Added: A good overview of the pedophile priests issue in the US, here.

How Wilde.

"There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution." These bons mots from Oscar Wilde, taken from The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) are les mots justes in response to what appears to be the Vatican's recent attempt to re-habilitate him.

More precisely, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, offered up a review of a new book about him. This has produced a frisson in the British press.

The Telegraph:

In a surprise act of reconciliation with the playwright, the Holy See's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, praised the poet as a "lucid analyst of the modern world". Wilde, who was sent to prison for acts of gross indecency with Lord Alfred Douglas and later converted to Catholicism, has been regarded by the Roman Catholic Church in the century since his death as a dangerous degenerate and dissolute nonconformist. ...

While acknowledging that Wilde, who died in 1900, was a rebel who delighted in shocking Victorian England, L'Osservatore said he was a profound thinker who spent his professional life asking "what was true and what was false". The
move towards rehabilitation builds on a softening of the previously hardline Vatican stance two years ago, when some of Wilde's best known aphorisms were included in a book of witticisms for Christians collated by the Vatican's head of protocol, Leonardo Sapienza.

The Guardian:

Despite the Catholic Church's condemnation of practising homosexuality, the newspaper has now run a glowing review of a new book about the famously doomed lover of Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde was "one of the personalities of the 19th century who most lucidly analysed the modern world in its disturbing as well as its positive aspects", wrote author Andrea Monda in a piece about Italian author Paolo Gulisano's The Portrait of Oscar Wilde.

In an article headlined "When Oscar Wilde met Pius IX", Monda wrote that Wilde was not "just a non-conformist who loved to shock the conservative society of Victorian England"; rather he was "a man who behind a mask of amorality asked himself what was just and what was mistaken, what was true and what was false".
"Wilde was a man of great, intense feelings, who behind the lightness of his writing, behind a mask of frivolity or cynicism, hid a deep knowledge of the mysterious value of life," he said.

The Independent:

With his outrageous wit, clear disdain for figures of authority and openly homosexual lifestyle, Oscar Wilde is an unlikely pin-up for the Catholic Church. Persecuted and imprisoned for his sexuality, gay rights campaigners have long idolised the 19th century writer as one of their own. But the Vatican, it
seems, is equally enamoured of Ireland's greatest wit. ...

Pope Benedict XVI has continued to uphold the Catholic Church's strict teachings on homosexuality, which is still very much viewed as a sin that should not be practised. But part of the Vatican's willingness to gloss over Wilde's more "sinful" proclivities may stem from his little known conversion to Catholicism as he lay dying in a Paris hotel room. Irish-born and fascinated by the ritualism of the Catholic Church, as a young man travelling through Rome in 1877 Wilde had managed to secure an audience with Pope Pius IX. During his time in prison he was also known to have devoured the writing of St Augustine, Dante, and Cardinal Newman.

When he left prison in 1897 in frail health, Wilde exiled himself to Paris and continued to engage in the sort of behaviour that the Vatican would certainly have frowned upon. But just before he died three years later a Catholic priest – Father Cuthbert Dunne – baptised him into the Catholic Church. It was, perhaps, a likely end for a writer who once remarked: "I'm not a Catholic – I am simply a violent Papist".

It would seem that the Vatican is trying to 'soften' the harshness of its ideological position on homosexuality by strategically awarding a small measure of approval to Oscar Wilde, a century after his death. "...When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. ... " Indeed. How can anyone blame the Catholic Church for its intransigeance towards homosexuality when it has deigned to embrace Wilde to its damask bosom.

That rumble you hear is not the warning of new earthquakes in L'Aquila, but Oscar Wilde, roaring with laughter from his tomb in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

No-fault regrets profferred by Pope

Isn't that just so special? The Church Lady would have been quite pleased at Pope Benedict's performance at a private meeting held in the Vatican between the pontiff, Catholic clergy, Phil Fontaine and delegates from the assembly of First Nations.

Mr. Fontaine said the fact the Pope never used the word "apology" during the 20-minute meeting, which also included the Most Reverend James Weisgerber, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, and several B.C. aboriginal leaders, did not diminish in anyway the impact of the statement.

It would seem that the words "sorry", "asking forgiveness", "taking responsibility" or "pedophile priests" were also part of the vocabulary not ever used by the Pope, either in the private audience or in the public statement that the Vatican released. Chief Fontaine offered forgiveness, though the Catholic Church has never allowed individual priests to publicly acknowledge their crimes against the Aboriginal children who were entrusted to them. Some First Nations leaders took exception to the Pope's statement.

... Hereditary Chief Bill Wilson said Wednesday he was angry the Pope did not take direct responsibility for the harm caused by the residential schools experience. "There is no apology," Mr. Wilson said from Musgamagw Band in northern Vancouver Island. "He says he has great sorrow. Well, it's one thing to have sorrow for tragedies that happened in the world. It's quite another thing to accept responsibility for causing them. And the Catholic Church caused a great deal of misery and suffering in this country. And it's not apologizing for anybody."

One has to wonder if the pontiff was expertly coached by civil law specialists in order to ensure that no utterance could be viewed as an admission of guilt and thus be actionable.

The Unbearable Wrongness of Benedict.

Over at Canadian Cynic, psa delivers one fine, fine rant. Fire the Pope encapsulates and sharpens the arguments that the Pope and his ecclesiastical goon squad have lost sight of and touch with humanity.

The DAMMIT JANET! crew has delivered a number of observations about the perorations of the Pontiff, here. psa's rant is sublime. Go read.

Moonies, and Catlicks, and Kennedys. Oh My!

While I don't know how much to trust The Washington Times -- after all, it is owned by the Moonies -- this story is generating a bit of heat. Referring to an Italian journalist, it claims that the Vatican has rejected three of the Obama admin's proposed ambassadors to the Vatican. The reason: all three were Catlick, but they were all pro-choice. (The Vatican denies that it has rejected any one, but then on the trustworthy-scale, I'd rate the Moonies and the Catlick Church about even.)

An outfit called Americans United for Separation of Church and State is, understandably, not pleased.

When U.S.-Vatican ties were proposed during the Reagan administration, Americans United vigorously opposed the move and warned that there would be problems down the line. It just wasn’t right, AU argued, for the U.S. government to have formal diplomatic relations with a church. . .

Americans United tried to raise some of these issues in court, challenging the diplomatic exchange on church-state grounds. Unfortunately, a federal appeals court refused to deal with the issue and dismissed the lawsuit on a technicality, saying AU did not even have the right to even bring the case.

So now it appears that not only must the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican be Catholic, they must oppose legal abortion as well. I wonder what other qualifications a potential ambassador must meet? Must he or she oppose same-sex marriage as well? Can he or she be divorced? Will someone check up on the candidate to make certain he or she attends mass every week?

Imposing such qualifications on ambassadors would seem to violate the clear provisions of Article VI of the Constitution, which bans religious tests for federal office.

I just investigated and holy crap! Canada has an ambassador to the Holey Sea too! Who knew? (Paging deBeauxOs . . . )

Today, Good Friday, the rumour mill has coughed up the fourth candidate for the US job -- Caroline Kennedy. Somehow, I don't think His Poopiness will be any better pleased, even if she is a celeb of sorts.

UPPITY-DATE: The Pope says 'nope' to Caroline.

SoCon Or Bust = Member of the Catholic Taliban

SoCon Or Bust's recent bout of brain diarrhea is a mess of hysterical, vituperative and deranged attacks on the Youth section of the internationally respected Development and Peace organization. Warning: sit back from your screen when you read it, you might retch.

According to SoCon, fundamentalist Islamist and Catholic men share the same agenda: return women to the control that religious political authority allows men to enjoy.

His remarks about the programs that Development and Peace support: For SoCon Or Bust, this is ...

The whole thing is one big hate-fest against men and the traditional family, not to mention the promotion of sexual license, “reproductive rights”, and abortion.

This is what gets him foaming at the mouth:

Women participate in their government The East Timor Women’s Network that works towards empowering women and promoting democracy: Hosted legal workshops which enabled the participants to lobby the national parliament to pass a pending law against domestic violence.

His obsession with death reveals much about the demons he keeps corked up in a bottle. He is completely uninhibited about displaying the neuroses and phobias that feed his religious zealotry. Since sex is the ultimate evil, allowing women to die by being infected with AIDS is a validation of the Vatican's doctrinal authority.

Whenever I read SoCon's vile, overwrought, agonizing screeds, it brings to mind the martyr Saint Sebastian in all his representations. He should post that icon on his website, and not Mary who was asked by God to consent to being Jesus' mother and who chose to do so.

Merci to unrepentantoldhippie who giggled at Blob Blogging Wingnut's shrieeeking at this. DAMMIT JANET! doesn't find SoCon quite as amusing.

Vatican Rag

Wow. When the Stun Media Group and the Notional Pest geddit, what next?

First, Mindelle Jacobs:

Another International Women's Day has passed and the Roman Catholic Church has started the year badly, predictably, by condemning an abortion for a nine-year-old Brazilian rape victim.

The Vatican is having a difficult time forcing women to have unwanted children, particularly in developing countries.

In Brazil, for example, there are an estimated 1.4 million illegal abortions a year.(The procedure is only allowed in cases of rape or to save the life of the mother). One in four pregnancy-related deaths in the heavily Catholic country is due to complications from an unsafe abortion.

But that hasn't stopped the Catholic church from continuing to place the fetus above the health and economic needs of women.

. . .

It's almost like the church gets off on female suffering.

And the Notional Pest on the importance of the washing machine to women's rights:

The article provoked an angry response from some commentators and politicians.

"Instead of entering into an abstract debate on gender, it would be better if L'Osservatore Romano discussed reality, such as the fear in which many women still live when they are in the streets and between the walls of their own homes," Paola Concia, an MP from the opposition Democratic party, told La Stampa newspaper.

The Roman Catholic Church has come under attack in recent days for what has been perceived as a callous approach to women's issues.

Last week, Brazil's health minister accused the Church of an "extreme" and "inadequate" position for opposing an abortion for a nine-year-old girl who became pregnant with twins after she was allegedly raped by her stepfather.

Seems like even the NP and Sun Media are getting on the anti-Catlick bigot bus.

Men In Fur, Again.

In the comments to fern hill's blogpost, "Anonymous" suggests that criticizing and ridiculizing the Vatican is the same as spreading hatred against blacks, Hispanics or Jews.

"Anonymous" conveniently overlooks the historical facts about the men in fur. The Vatican's clerics choose to elevate themselves above the rest of humanity, with their ritual, their pomp, and their arcane rationalizations for establishing themselves as religious royalty. They are the ones who exclude, judge, condemn others from their gilded palaces.

It is revealing that their ecclesiastical rule is rooted in principles that, century after century, conveniently dismiss the real harm and destruction that pedophile priests have caused to girls and boys.

Hold on to your delusions, "Anonymous". But if you - or the Vatican - can't stand a little heat now, just imagine what it'll be like when you arrive in the hell of your own vision and making.

BREAKING! Vatican Discovers Washing Machine, Misunderstands Its Significance

As if we needed any further evidence of the Vatican's complete cluelessness, after it endorsed the excommunication of the Brazilian mother and doctors involved in the abortion performed on a 9-year-old girl impregnated by her rapist step-father, today, on International Woman's Day, there's this:

Washing machine brought rights to women: Vatican

VATICAN CITY -- The washing machine has had a greater liberating role for women than the pill, the official Vatican daily said in an International Women's Day commentary Sunday.

"The washing machine and the emancipation of women: put in the powder, close the lid and relax," said the headline on the article in Osservatore Romano.

"In the 20th century, what contributed most to the emancipation of western women?" questioned the article.

"The debate is still open. Some say it was the pill, others the liberalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. Others go even further: the washing machine," it added.

Yes, indeedy, the Vatican goes even further. Into absolute and total irrelevancy.

I stole that delightful photo of Ratso from Antonia Z.

UPPITY-DATE: In the comments, Anonymous provides a link to the article in Italian and says that it is written tongue in cheek. Who among us reads Italian well enough to call bullshit say? Paging LuLu perhaps?

FURTHER UPPITY-DATE: Anonymous provides a working link to the original article in Italian. It's at Free Republic (big surprise).

More about the Vatican's support for human incubators

Canadian Cynic must have heard the same news item I did this morning, about Eluana Englaro.

The heart-wrenching case of a woman in a coma for 17 years and the father who wants to end her life has been transformed by Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with quiet but forceful backing from the Vatican, into an attempt to short-circuit the Italian constitution, enhancing his own powers. Eluana Englaro, 38, suffered massive brain damage in a car crash when she was 21, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state. After struggling for years through the courts to stop the force-feeding, her father, Beppino, finally won the backing of the Court of Cassation, Italy's highest court, last year. But Catholic politicians supported by the Church establishment fought on despite the court's verdict and the case has turned into a battle royal for the "pro-life" lbby.

One of the arguments that the fetus fetishists are shrieeeking over and over, as a justification for maintaining the mechanically-assisted "life support" system that keeps her reflexive biological functions still operative, is that Eluana is still capable of conceiving and gestating.

...in an extraordinary turn of events, the country's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, after consultation with the Vatican, has issued an emergency decree stating that food and water cannot be suspended for any patient depending upon them, reversing the earlier court ruling. On issuing the emergency decree, Berlusconi declared: "This is murder. I would be failing to rescue her. I'm not a Pontius Pilate." Justifying his campaign to save Englaro's life, the prime minister added that, physically at least, she was "in the condition to have babies", ...

With her informed consent? MASSIVE silence.

And rightwing lunatics like Blob Blogging Wingnut deny that fundamentalist Catholics don't view women as potential human incubators.

Men In Fur

Not to be confused with Mein Fuhrer moments ....

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life at the Vatican, described President Barack Obama’s signing of an executive order allowing U.S. tax dollars to fund pro-abortion organizations beyond the shores of the United States saying it is "the arrogance of someone who believes they are right, in signing a decree which will open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life," as quoted by Italian daily Corriere della Sera on January 24.
The outspoken prelate, who also once denounced what he termed as “racism” on the part of instructors at the Academy, added "What is important is to know how to listen... without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death."

Irony is alive and thriving, thanks to the overwhelming duplicity of Roman Catholic dogma-spewing clergy.

Is it evul for this feminazi to wish for PETA to target the Vatican because of all the defenseless ermines who have been needlessly slaughtered for the aggrandizement of the high clergy, including Pope Benny the Rat?

Un grand merci to Let Freedom Rain and Canadian Cynic.

Benny Ratzo Pontificates Again

From the folks who brought you the Inquisition, more illuminating fundamentalist religious dogma served up as concern for the environment and of course, male breeding capacity.

In December, the Vatican opposed the use of the soon-to-be-available in Italy RU486 pill aka the morning-after contraception.

Faithful to its tradition of selective equivocation and/or denial of scientific data, the Vatican is claiming via its mouthpiece:

Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations said in a report in the Vatican newspaper, l'Osservatore Romano, that not only do“[they] have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill,” but that the pill “has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature” via female urine.

The Vatican's claim has been challenged by experts.

Here in Canada, scientists have demonstrated after decades of research on the Great Lakes, regarding the effect of contamination by PCBs:

... like many other chlorinated chemicals, PCBs are soluble in fat, so they tend to accumulate in living things and to enter the food webs, where they concentrate. The higher you are on a food chain, the greater the concentration of PCBs. Large fish and creatures that eat large fish, tend to accumulate in their flesh thousands, even millions of times the background levels of PCBs. Furthermore, by a cruel twist of fate, large birds and marine mammals (seals, sea lions, whales, and some dolphins) lack enzyme systems to efficiently detoxify PCBs. As a result, PCBs build up in the bodies of these predators and are passed to their offspring through eggs (in the case of fish and birds) and milk (in the case of mammals). PCBs mimic hormones and are a powerful disrupter of the endocrine system that governs reproduction. Marine mammals are already having trouble reproducing. It is entirely possible that, as more PCBs reach the oceans, all large mammals will disappear.

The Vatican is once again, attempting to spin stories to suit its ideological agenda.

Update: Antonia Z blogs about it here - Mellow Yellow. And more merriment, via Creekside's wise-beyond-her-days Emma Embryo.

Vatican: 'Morning-After Pill Does NOT Cause Abortions'

The Vatican has just released a big honking document on all sorts of panty-sniffing life and death matters.

Amid all the usual 'thou shalt nots', there's this stunning admission:

As a result, the Vatican said it opposed the morning-after pill, even if it doesn‘t cause an abortion, because an abortion was "intended."

Using terms like 'interception' and 'contragestion', the Vatican document does NOT call the morning-after pill an abortifacient.

You can read the whole thing at LifeShite, which is kinda ironic since nearly every reference to the morning-after pill there is prefaced by the phrase 'abortion-causing'.

Sheesh. When the Vatican won't toe the line on your lying lies propaganda, what's a fetus fetishist to do?