Pope: we hope the next one keeps the brand name.

As our readers may have noticed, DJ! has a love-hate relationship with the Catholic pontiff.

We love holding Maledict's misogyny and homophobia up to ridicule; we hate the abusive power wielded by this patriarchal, ideologically fundamentalist religious leader.  And we rigorously noted his obdurate justification of priests' pedophilia.

Our response to the news of his renOOOnciation (I can't help but imagine that word expressed as Preston Manning did with refOOOrm) was varied.

We wondered if it was something we said:

Also:

Though it's tempting to suggest that the cumulative burden of ignoring decades of child abuse in dozens of countries by Catholic clergy and laity, as well as maintaining a hard line on controlling women's sexuality in servitude to men was all too much for Maledict...

This recent news report about the loathsome financial manipulations of the Church (via Pale) is sadly typical of its hypocrisy, in all matters that threaten its considerable wealth.

So, why is he renOOOnciating his job as CEO of a wealthy multinational corporation? (He probably gets to keep most of the luxurious perks.)

Luna thinks that he may want to influence the selection of his successor.  She also has other thoughts, which appear to be badly received by thin-skinned, thick-headed Catholic zealots.

Go check out the rest of her twitterstream here.

The Québecois cardinal that DJ! has dubbed the Ayatollah Ouellet appears to be a fore-runner in the papal selection process.

Father Raymond Gravel was interviewed on Radio-Canada with regard to the Pope's resignation and Ouellet's prospect.  He was gentle and respectful as he shared his observations on the personal quandary as well as the formal letter tended by the pontiff.  On the topic of the suitability of Ouellet for the position, he was definitely chilly, pointing out that the Catholic Church needed a leader, a unifier, someone who had worked as a parish priest, who knew how to connect with the faithful and that the Québecois cardinal had none of those attributes.

All that we at DJ! require of the next Vatican Taliban head poobah is, to quote fern hill: "at least half as evil-looking as Maledict. Too much to hope for, I suppose, for someone so often captured with pure malice blazing from his eyes".  My humble wish is that the new pope will decide to honour his predecessor by choosing the name Maledict ... err, ... Benedict XVII.

The last words on this whole international hoo-haw surely belong to the Queen. Yes, this one.

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.

Vatican Taliban Child Pornographers

This is from the website of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

Then people wonder why some boys grow up to be Russell Williams.

Link from this tweet. Grand merci!

Added: The man in the background is dressed in full Knights of Columbus regalia. I wonder if Stephen Woodworth MP has one of those costumes.

Catholic Church only *protects* The Fetus©™, not girls.

At DAMMIT JANET! we write a lot about pedophile priests since it's one of the perfect examples of the utilitarian character of Catholic doctrine that claims to defend and protect the interests of the unborn - zygote, embryo, fetus - yet abandons children to the sexual vicissitudes of its clergy.

Here's the latest example of Vatican Taliban hypocrisy.

She was a 13-year-old girl, fifth child of seven in a devout Catholic family in suburban Roslyn whose mother attended Mass once or twice daily.

But the girl dreaded Sunday mornings.

Not because of a crisis of faith but because she knew it would mean another morning of groping by the Rev. Albert T. Kostelnick.

The woman, now in her mid-50s, told a Philadelphia jury this morning about how Kostelnick, now retired, fondled her for two years as she worked in the rectory of St. John of the Cross church in Roslyn - and then did the same to two of her sisters who followed her into the job.

"I didn't know what to do," the woman told the Common Pleas Court jury. "I felt helpless and trapped. My parents expected me to work."

The woman's testimony continued the prosecution's effort to show how Msgr. William J. Lynn and other church leaders shuffled and protected priests suspected of sexual misconduct or abuse.

Lynn, who as secretary of clergy from 1992 to 2004 ran the office that recommended priests' assignments, is the first church official nationwide to be tried for allegedly enabling or covering up clergy sex-abuse.

His codefendant, the Rev. James J. Brennan, is charged with attempting to rape a 14-year-old boy in 1996.

Both have denied the accusations.

Although Kostelnick is not criminally charged in trial, city prosecutors are citing his case and others to show a pattern in which Lynn and officials of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia showed concern for the sexually abusive priests, but not their victims.

"... a pattern in which ... officials of the Archdiocese ... showed concern for the sexually abusive priests, but not their victims ..." Multiply that by thousands and thousands, in every country in the world, since the first century.

Hey SUZANNE! Is this what you mean?

Former Catholic priest James Boudreau took advantage of a young man’s friendship and another’s interest in the clergy when he sexually assaulted the two in the 1980s, a city courtroom heard Wednesday.[...]

Boudreau served as pastor at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, on Victoria Road North, from 1978 to 1985. He went on to work at six other Ontario churches, including Kitchener’s St. John’s Catholic Church.

One of the complainants was an active member of the St. John the Baptist parish in July 1984 and was a family friend of Boudreau when the sexual assault took place, said assistant Crown attorney Steve Hamilton.

From here.

So, if someone or some organization out there would like to continue with the project, let me remind you of the kind of information to gather that SUZANNE doesn't think is an invasion of privacy or likely to promote violence against individuals: photos, credentials and certificates, disciplinary records, news articles, videos, criminal histories, and more.

Though Blob Blogging Wingnut believes ALL abortion services providers in Canada should be documented, DAMMIT JANET! suggests a registry for Catholic pedophile priests should be limited to *only* priests suspected of, alleged to have committed, charged with or convicted of criminal sexual offenses against children and youth.

Oh, and Church Fathers like Bishop Bernando Alvarez must also be thoroughly documented; members of the Vatican Taliban definitively should be held accountable for lying about child abuse and shielding their priests from investigation and criminal prosecution.

SUZANNE - do you really want to go there?

Local fetus-lobbying, abortion-criminalizing Catholic zygote zealot @Roseblue aka Blob Blogging Wingnut SUZANNE FORTIN recently suggested her own project, based on this US initiative of a "hit-list" of abortion services providers.

Our blogging & tweeting colleagues Dr Dawg and Canadian Cynic responded.

Although the Vatican Taliban and Pope Maledict haven't honestly said so, most Church Fathers clearly believe all this nastiness about holding Rome and its powerful clergy accountable for their priests' abuse of children is inappropriate.

How will the Church be able to recruit and keep priests if not for the pedophile bait it once dangled in front of the right men?

Thus Catholics have been ordered to breed more and more, to satisfy dogmatic need to mold children, body & mind, and break their will so that they'll be blindly devout Catholic foot soldiers.

The organizations representing women and men who were physically and sexually violated as children by church clergy should start, as SUZANNE suggests, a registry of names and known addresses for pedophiles and abusers, as well as the names of the bishops, cardinals and other Church Fathers who facilitated their crimes and protected them from judicial prosecution.

That should end well, no?

Vatican Taliban lobbies politicians in US via its bishops.

Just in case you thought the innumerable attacks on reproductive rights for women in the US were all - you know - *accidental*, Laura Bassett delivers a splendid investigative piece about the blatant lobbying war the Catholic Bishops have waged on state and federal politicians.

From here:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is currently considering a list of insurance coverage guidelines that would mandate that all health plans under the Affordable Care Act cover birth control at no cost for women. The rules have a religious exemption for churches, but many Catholic-affiliated organizations such as charities, schools and hospitals would still have to offer plans that cover birth control for their employees.

The bishops argue that the exemption is too narrow.

"You have to hire and serve primarily people of your own faith [to qualify for the exemption]," Doerflinger said. "Jesus himself would not be exempt, because he treated Samaritans and Roman soldiers. It's absurd."

Absurd indeed.

What Would They Do to Jesus? They wouldn't let Him have access to healthcare-provided contraceptives, according to the man leading the catholic jihad against women.

Oh. Wait.

Just imagine if the Vatican Taliban had invested all that lobbying money and energy on a campaign to prevent priests (and other Catholic men in positions of authority) from sexually abusing girls and boys.

But then, its ideological imperative is to control women's sexualities and reproductive capacities and to *save* the pre-born. Children are required, to supply a target-rich environment to Church sexual predators aka pedophile priests and clergy.

To paraphrase Mark Steyn, it's sure convenient to have a tax-exempt religious institution to justify your pathologies.

What do you call a Catholic Bishop indicted

on a charge of failing to protect children after he and and other clergy in his diocese did not report - for five months - to police that hundreds of images of child pornography were found on one of their priests' computer - a priest who worked in a parochial school?

A beginning.

From here.

SNAP!

An international association of people that were sexually abused by priests is suing Pope Maledict and other Vatican Taliban officials through the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said it had filed a complaint calling on the court to "take action and prosecute the Pope" for "direct and superior responsibility for the crimes against humanity of rape and other sexual violence committed around the world."

In a statement, SNAP said members from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the US had travelled to The Hague to urge prosecutors to investigate the pope.

They also asked for three high-ranking Vatican officials -- Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, his predecessor Angelo Sodano and the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, US William Levada -- to be investigated.

The Vatican is not speaking to the media about this. Quelle surprise.

Via twitter, barbares arrogants.

NOT #elxn41 news: Pedophile Catholic Priests

From here:

"In one of the largest monetary payouts nationwide in the Roman Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis, and the largest one by a religious order, the Jesuit order in the Northwest has agreed to pay $166.1 million to about 500 abuse victims as part of its bankruptcy settlement," The Seattle Times writes.

As The Associated Press adds, the payments will go to "hundreds of American Indians and Alaska Natives who were abused at the Catholic order's schools around the region. The settlement also asks the order to provide a written apology to the victims and to share documents with them such as their personal medical records."

There are MASSIVE resources at this website, about various forms of abuse by members of the Catholic clergy: news, updates, groups, connections, discusions - BishopAccountability.org

Pedophile priests and hockey coaches

Holding up photographs of girls and boys who were sexually violated by Catholic priests, parish members in the diocese of Philadelphia demonstrated outside the basilica to denounce church officials who engineered a deliberate cover-up and evasion of crimes perpetrated against children.

From here:

[...]the Philadelphia Catholic Archdiocese placed on leave 21 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors [...] The leaves followed a grand jury report last month that lambasted the archdiocese for allowing 37 priests to remain around children despite "substantial evidence of abuse." That report and the investigation that led to it were made possible because the diocese had supplied prosecutors with information following an earlier grand jury report in 2005.

The earlier report concluded that dozens of priests had sexually abused children dating back at least a half-century. But prosecutors were powerless to bring criminal charges because statutes of limitations had expired.

While prosecutors can't bring charges against the 37 priests due to statutes of limitation, prosecutors say the cases "show a pattern of the church looking the other way when it came to investigating these charges," said Tasha Jamerson, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office. [...]Critics [...] said church leadership continued to show a lack of understanding about child sexual abuse in the way it handled the suspensions. The archdiocese drew condemnation for, among other moves, declining to release a list of the priests, choosing instead to inform each parish. Local news outlets gathered and published the names this week.

The grand jury found that an archdiocesan board that reviewed allegations often judged as "incredible" or "unsubstantiated" allegations against priests who had been independently accused or flunked a lie detector test.

"These are simply not the actions of an institution that is serious about ending the sexual abuse of its children. There is no other conclusion," the report said. That the church provided the district attorney's office with information "is some sign of progress," although "much has not changed," the grand jury said.

"It's not unlike a chemical company that has toxic spills in 21 places around Philadelphia," and it won't say where they are, said Barbara Blaine, president of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. "The priests only get removed when there's public pressure or publicity to make that happen, and we see that across the U.S. as well," she said.

More here.

Corporate types in the business of *creating wealth* for themselves - as recently observed from the actions of the Kochs and their koch-suckers in Wisconsin - will interven in government in order to protect their interests and increase their profits. When there is resistance and even push-back, they will fight tooth and nail to discredit their critics and to crush people who don't fall into line.

Institutions such as the Catholic Church and the NHL follow the same business and risk-management models. (In other news recently yet another adult survivor of adolescent sexual abuse suffered at the hands of Graham James stepped forward to tell his story.)

Pope Maledict, Gary Bettman and the Kochs have a lot in common, it seems.

To paraphrase yet again Mark Steyn: It must be convenient to have canon and business laws that oblige all your pathological greed.

Fundamentalist preacher charged.

Two mothers taking their children to a park in New Orleans noticed a man masturbating in his vehicle.

The police apprehended and charged the man. It turns out that he's a fundamentalist preacher and a habitual crusader against gay pride celebrations.

From here.

Storms [...] was taken into custody at Lafreniere Park after two women reported seeing him masturbating in the driver's seat of his van, which was parked near the carousel and playground, a Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office report said.

The first woman told deputies she was taking her children to the playground and parked next to the van at about noon. As she was walking around her own vehicle, she noticed the van windows were down and the occupant was "looking at the playground area that contained children playing, with his zipper down...," the report said. The woman noted that he was masturbating [...]

Storms told deputies he was having lunch at the park when he decided to urinate using a bottle instead of the restroom, the report said.

Sadly, this does not surprise me. Grant Storms appears to fit the profile of christian and catholic church officials who loudly denounce adult homosexuality and are eventually charged and found guilty of pedophile activities or of sexual assaulting children. One wonders, now that he has been charged, if victims will step forward to report other incidents to the NA police.

Pedophile priests in Nova Scotia

The diocese of Yarmouth has settled with some of its former parishioners who were sexually assaulted as children by pedophile catholic priests. When these crimes were reported to them, church officials denied that acts of sexual violence were committed by members of their clergy. Then later on they denied that they'd covered up their priests' pedophilia. And sadly the legal system was often complicit in this travesty of justice, even when priests were charged and found guilty of such crimes, by recommending sentences that invalidated the gravity of the offense and the harm the sexual abuse had caused. From here:

[...] Father Theriault was convicted in 1993 of indecent assault against one of the plaintiffs, for which he received no jail time, but rather a two-year suspended sentence and 500 hours of community service.

Filing the lawsuits are sisters Jeanne Doucette (nee Deveau), 48, and Margaret Deveau, 56, who went to the RCMP in the early 1990s to pursue criminal charges against Father Theriault. Both women live in Yarmouth County.

Both women are seeking a full investigation into the actions of Theriault and the diocese. "Their goal is to expose the truth,” states a press release issued by the Ontario law firm of Ledroit Beckett [...]

The sisters are also hoping their stories will encourage other survivors of abuse to come forward. [...]

In the 1960s the Deveau sisters were growing up in the community of St. Alphonse, Digby County. They were raised in a close and loving Roman Catholic family and were parishioners of Saint Alphonse Parish and attended Saint Alphonse Catholic School. [...]

In the statement of claim filed on behalf of Jeanne Doucette, it refers to how, because of Theriault’s position as a priest, parents trusted him with the training, safety and care of their children. As a result, her parents permitted her to be alone with the priest, which included being unsupervised in a bedroom during afternoon naps.

The abuse, it’s alleged, began when the girl was approximately three years old. The statement of claim says the sexual abuse was ongoing and continuous over a period of several years.

In the statement of claim filed on behalf of Margaret Deveau, it’s alleged the she was first sexually abused, assaulted and molested when she was approximately eight years old. The abuse was ongoing and continuous over a period of around seven years, ending when she was 15.

The statements of claim allege that the diocese and archdiocese knew that the priest had the propensity to engage in deviant behaviours, and that they knew he was doing so based on a number of factors that included knowledge or complaints of Father Theriault’s activities with young people at his previous postings, the frequency with which the plaintiffs and other children were involved with the priest, the unusual interest he took in children and the frequency and duration that the priest would have them in his company at the church or rectory. “Despite their knowledge set out above, the Archdiocese and Diocese took no steps to stop the behavior or to protect the plaintiff(s),” the statements of claim read.

And still the Vatican Taliban beat goes on and on with implicit and explicit gynophobic policies; women must breed more catholics or recruit them (as Mother Teresa did) for the greater glory of God the Father and/or Pope Maledict.

Will Vatican Taliban defend pedophile priest?

After all, Eric Dejaeger was *hiding* in plain view, working for a Catholic pilgrimage organization in Lourdes, France, where he welcomed and guided Flemish pilgrims around the site. The former Arctic missionary was on Interpol’s international wanted list but it seems Catholic Church security officials do not read or respond to these requests.

And in accordance to official Catholic policy, canon law - which is claimed to be established by God - trumps any man-made law, including those found in criminal codes, prohibiting the sexual assault of children. From here:

A newly disclosed document reveals that Vatican officials told the bishops of Ireland in 1997 that they had serious reservations about the bishops’ policy of mandatory reporting of priests suspected of child abuse to the police or civil authorities. [...]

The letter was written just after a first wave of scandal over sexual abuse by priests in Irish Catholic schools and other facilities [...] By 1996, an advisory committee of Irish bishops had drawn up a new policy that included “mandatory reporting” of suspected abusers to civil authorities. The letter, signed by Archbishop Luciano Storero, then the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio — or chief representative — in Ireland, told the Irish bishops that the Vatican had reservations about mandatory reporting for both “moral and canonical” reasons.

Following Dejaeger's deportation from Belgium, he will be taken to Nunavut by RCMP officers.

Dejaeger came to Canada from Belgium in 1973. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest of the Oblate order and eventually began work as a missionary in the Arctic, where he served in several communities. According to court documents, Dejaeger pleaded guilty in 1990 to nine counts of sex crimes against boys and girls in Baker Lake, a small Inuit community...

More here.

Go to hell, go directly to hell.

Mr John Smeaton. Do not pass GO, do not collect any of the hundreds of indulgences you believe your slavering obsequiousness has gathered on your behalf.

We learn of Smeaton's odious and smarmy homophobic rant via Enormous Thriving Plants. It wavers between the shop-worn passive-aggressive style favoured by christian Brits and the prickish swagger affected by men hung like hamsters.

Smeaton, the top rent-boy at SPUNC, hits out at Elton John, gay parenting, IVF, and atheism whilst not missing an opportunity to disparage Tony and Cherie Blair.

The crux of his screed is given a magnificent whoopee! with his reference to "the 10th anniversary celebration of Stonewall, the UK’s main homosexualist organisation. Sir Elton's performace featured homo-erotic dancers dressed as Boy Scouts, in what seemed to me to imply the promotion of paedophilia."

Clearly those dancers should have been dressed as members of Pope Maledict's Vatican Taliban in order to make the connection to the catholic church and its promotion and tolerance of heterosexual pedophilia evident to all.

More shriEEEEking about Development and Peace - now with update.

I read in today's headlines that Development and Peace has helped finance a documentary called Operation Diablo about how a Peruvian priest who opposed a mining project became the victim of harassment. It was produced by Stephanie Boyd. Is this what parishoners had in mind when they gave money to the organization? Give a western woman money to produce a movie? Does this really help development in the Third World? One wonders.

One does indeed wonder why Blob Blogging Wingnut called this a 'headline'. HER link takes the reader to a specialised catholic radio network. Does SHE have "Development and Peace" on google news alert?

Given HERs and SoConOrNuts' obsession with the organization, that should be expected.

HER claims are rife with truthiness. The documentary was developed, filmed and distributed by the Guarango Association, in fact.

Nor is this the first documentary produced about the struggles of peasants and farmers fighting the mining companies who extract gold and devastate their communities, which leaves them without the means to feed their families, as well as poisoned by the metal exploitation techniques.

But it seems that Blob Blogging Whinger is fine with all that. From HER perspective, those are not victims worthy of HER compassion and support.

However, parishioners blindly giving money to the Vatican Taliban so they can whitewash the findings by conducting their own inquiry into pedophile priests and child abuse in Ireland? Now there's a project SHE can support.


Update: One could not make this s**t up - though there's synchronicity at work.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Bathurst, N.B., wants to be able to use money set aside to train future clergy to help compensate people sexually assaulted by a priest in the past. Rev. Wesley Wade, the bishop of the diocese, has asked the New Brunswick Court of Queen's Bench, which deals with such requests, to allow it to take money from a trust fund used to help educate people entering the priesthood. The trust fund consists of money left to the church over the years.

Got that? Years, possibly decades ago, parishioners willed money (kept in trusts) to pay for seminary costs and priests' training. Now the diocese wants to use the money to compensate victims of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of convicted pedophile priest Levi Noël. There appears to be a particular logic that applies, though I imagine it will provoke more shriEEEks from la SAINTENITOUCHE.

Catholic Church can be held accountable, says SCC.

A holdout compared to other provinces in giving sexual abuse victims the benefit of the doubt, Quebec courts will now have to think twice before throwing out cases where the alleged abuse happened many years ago.

In what experts are calling a “partial victory” for victims, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of Shirley Christensen, 37, a Quebec City resident who has been trying to sue the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Quebec for the abuse she endured as a young girl at the hands of a priest.

The priest, Paul-Henri Lachance, pleaded guilty in 2009 to several charges of sexual assault against Christensen. Nearing 80 years old, Lachance was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

More here. And here. Also here. Here, too.

I personally know several women who were sexually abused by priests when they were girls. Those clerics are not gay, but they certainly are pedophiles.

Why would adult women want to sue the catholic church for harm and damage? For start, church authorities have demonstrated over and over again they are complicit in perpetuating clerical pedophilia when they cover up, lie and exculpate these sexual predators by blaming the girls for the priests' criminal actions.

Is it crying time again?

Please shed a tear or two for poor persecuted pope Maledict and his Vatican Taliban.

According to this, catholic church officials are "perplexed and amazed" that their private banking institution have come under criminal investigation. It is also reported that they are "in shock" because the state has frozen accounts.

An update:

The Vatican says the seizure by police of €23 million ($30 million) from a Vatican bank account and the investigation of two top bank officials is due to a misunderstanding that should be clarified quickly. [...] Italian financial police seized the money as a precaution Tuesday and Rome prosecutors placed the bank's chairman, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, and his director general, Paolo Cipriani, under investigation for alleged mistakes linked to violations of the norms.

Just a misunderstanding. Say, isn't that the same excuse used for decades to justify clergical obstructiveness with regard to preventing the criminal investigation of priests' pedophilia?

More:

[...] the Vatican bank had neglected to communicate to financial authorities where the money had come from. The reports stressed that Gotti Tedeschi wasn't being investigated for laundering money himself but for a series of alleged omissions in the transactions. [...] Gotti Tedeschi has said he was "humiliated and mortified" by the probe but that the transfers in question were for perfectly normal transactions.

It's simple. Just tell the secular authorities where the money originated, Gotti. Shouldn't the chairman of a financial institution, likely paid a 7 digit salary + benefits, know about such regulations?

More USELESS blathering from Blob Blogging Wingnut

SHE who sits in judgment upon all those who do not share HER religious beliefs has decreed that protests against pope Maledict's presence in England and Scotland are USELESS.

"Naturally, there will protests against the Pope on his State visit to the UK.

Can someone tell me what exactly the purpose of these protests are? What exactly will these protests accomplish?

Do these protesters genuinely expect the Church to change her stance on birth control and homosexuality? In any future century?

Don't hold your breath."

Nobody's holding their breath SUZIE CAPS-ON, but many are holding their noses shut while Benny Ratzo spews his rank and fermenting doctrine.

So, why is Maledict not visiting Ireland? Such a catholic country ... would protests regarding the Vatican Taliban's shameful record in allowing the clergy to perpetrate decades of child physical and sexual abuse be EMBARRASSING?

Nonetheless, protests in North America have proven useful for disclosing thousands of cases of priests' pedophilia, and forcing the catholic church to deal with the grievous harm their clergy has done to families and children.

Like a horse and carriage - with dog (update)

We demonstrated there's little, if any, solidarity among the Lakritzes, the Kays, the Blatchies, the Somervilles except for their common delight of piling on feminism and feminists.

I thought Blob Blogging Wingnut would run to the defense of Sara "My Choice, My Childcare" Landriault.

But then Sara may have been well rewarded for providing the media with a shiny new distraction and thus moving the spotlight away from the Cons' cancellation of the long-form census questionnaire and the violence against peaceful protesters at the G-20.

There's some MASSIVE whining at Blob Blogging Wingnut's place where info from other blogs and news items can be spun to suit HER zygote-zealot-shrieking and Vatican-Taliban-fluffing agenda. SHE tossed off a homophobic screed that concluded with a favourite religious fundamentalist rightwing aphorism: Marriage protects women.

Like the catholic church protects girls and boys from pedophile priests, SUZY CAPS-ON?

Won't someone think of the children?

And why do anti-feminists hate women?

Update: This news item brought to our attention by TWFDS, is likely to cause jubilation for Pope Maledict. Using Stockboy Day's sampling and census-taking techniques, the Vatican Taliban can now declare a church that ordains women goes to the dogs.

BTW, Erika Ritter has produced a well-researched book on the woven mythologies of humans, dogs and religious institutions - The Dog by the Cradle, the Serpent Beneath.