This is how the Pope's declarations harm women and children.

This needs to be said: the Pope's declarations harm women and children. An African mother who is a practicing Catholic faces the following dilemna: If she requests that her husband use a condom when having conjugal relations, she is going against the Pope's edict, even if she is trying to protect herself and any potential child that she might carry to term from HIV infection. If her husband is a devout Catholic, he may refuse to use a condom.

If this woman decides to not allow sexual intercourse, her husband may beat her, sexually assault her or abandon her and their children. Her priest, if he obeys the Pope's edict, will consider that she sinned.

But if she becomes infected with HIV because she submitted to sex without protection, who will care and take responsibility for her children when she dies of AIDS? The Catholic Church?

Some countries were quick to take action, in response to the Pope's medieval ideology.

Spain said Wednesday it will send one million condoms to Africa to fight the spread of AIDS, one day after Pope Benedict XVI's controversial remarks that they aggravated efforts to battle the disease. "The objective is to advance the prevention of this epidemic, which affects 33 million people all over the world, two-thirds of them in Africa," the health ministry said in a statement. "Condoms have been demonstrated to be a necessary element in prevention policies and an efficient barrier against the virus, according to laboratory studies," it added.

Good for Spain, I hope that other Catholic countries follow its lead in demonstrating compassion for Africans as well as support for medical science.

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.

How Low Will They Go?

In today's instalment of 'How Low Can They Go?', we have weeping fetus fetishist Dean Del Mastro calling Justin Trudeau a 'a bad Catholic'. Trudeau is rightly pissed.

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau says he is upset and offended by a Tory MP who publicly questioned his adherence to the Catholic faith and his suitability to speak to students at a Catholic school.

Dean Del Mastro, the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, said on Facebook last month that it was “outrageous” the Catholic school board in Peterborough, Ont. had invited Trudeau to speak for a second time in three years.

And what is really rich is that Del Mastro is not just tasteless, classless, and crass, he's a flaming hypocrite. (Yeah, I know, you're gob-smacked.)

Two years ago, Deanie got smacked down by a top honcho in the Catholic church. Thus:

A Roman Catholic in “good standing” must attend mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation, says the vicar general of the Diocese of Peterborough.

“There is nothing to stop a Catholic person from attending services elsewhere if he or she chooses to do so. However, Catholics are still required to attend Catholic mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation,” said Father Raymond Rick.

“You’re either a Catholic who is practising his faith or you’re not.”

Seems that while Deanie likes to parade his Italian Catholic heritage and play kneesies with Pope Maledict, he's a not very closeted fundy.

Del Mastro told The Examiner he’s been confirmed, and got married, in a Catholic church, but now attends Calvary Pentecostal Church. He said he attends Catholic mass “from time to time.”

“I bear no ill will to anyone at the Catholic Church,” Del Mastro said.

Yeah. Except Justin Trudeau.

Like I said: Asshat.

h/t for old story @CometsMum.

No-choicer bombast falls short of risking tax-exempt status.

In Colorado, a Catholic clergyman attacked US presidential candidate Obama and his running mate at the Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women dinner. Archbishop Chaput also took the opportunity to criticize liberal Catholic groups as well as the Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec who recently endorsed Obama.

Many members of Catholics for Choice in the US believe in a broad definition of pro-life which includes opposition to war and the death penalty as well as support for those principles associated historically with the Catholic worker movement: eradicating poverty and promoting social justice. Their president Jon O’Brien issued a statement:

“The fact sheet from the bishops’ lobbying arm, the Committee on Pro-Life Activities, reaffirms the US bishops’ desire to place themselves at the center of the political discussion on abortion. However, in doing so, they do not reflect the fullness of Catholic teaching on abortion, nor do they represent
what Catholics actually believe. It is simply not true that the Roman Catholic church’s position on abortion has remained unchanged for 2,000 years.

While members of the Catholic hierarchy have consistently opposed abortion, their reasons for doing so and the teachings they espoused to the faithful have varied continually. … It is also telling that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops omitted to mention that no pope has proclaimed the
prohibition of abortion an ‘infallible’ teaching. This means that there is much more room for debate than is usually thought, with opinions among theologians and the laity differing widely. In any case,
Catholic theology tells individuals to follow their personal conscience in moral matters, even when their conscience is in conflict with hierarchical views.

The reality that the bishops are trying to overcome is that the majority of Catholics do not agree with them on abortion, or on their role in political life.”

More at Catholics In Public Life.

Wendy Norris writes about the Bishop’s dinner screed for the Colorado Independent:

… Chaput was sure to point out that his remarks were offered as a private citizen and not as a representative of the diocese at the dinner for Catholic women. The Internal Revenue Service has been cracking down on clergy for breaching the law that prohibits tax-exempt religious groups from making statements supporting or opposing political candidates.

Indeed. So it may not require hell freezing over, more likely the icy gaze of the IRS to make sure a certain religious cleric refrains from meddling in election campaigns, for fear of having his status and privileges go kaput?

First posted at Birth Pangs.

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.

Sanctifying Mother Teresa is a PR stunt

to distract from all the scandals in the Catholic Church.  Also, she raised millions of dollars for the Vatican Taliban - which is actually why they're canonizing her, I suspect.

Here's the latest about her.

A study conducted by Canadian researchers has called Mother Teresa "anything but a saint", a creation of an orchestrated and effective media campaign who was generous with her prayers but miserly with her foundation's millions when it came to humanity's suffering.

The controversial study, to be published this month in the journal of studies in religion/sciences called Religieuses, says that Teresa - known across the world as the apostle of the dying and the downtrodden - actually felt it was beautiful to see the poor suffer.

This was posted at DJ! about Mother Teresa, in response to yet another drive-by smearing of Margaret Sanger by the usual bunch of lying antiChoice zealots.

The conclave to elect the new pope is scheduled to start Tuesday.  Meanwhile, Canada's very own Ayatollah Ouellet is performing for the Vatican Taliban: 

This media circus around the election of a new Church CEO diverts public attention from its sordid history of sexual violation and abuse of women and children that continues unchecked in many countries.

Very recently, this occurred at an Ontario school under the jurisdiction of a Catholic school board.

Some parents in two Durham region Catholic schools were shocked when their elementary schoolchildren came home bearing a letter from their parish priest that included provocative questions. The letter, a call to return to Catholic practices, came with a two-page “examination of conscience” and invitation to reflect on sins before going to confession.

Have I committed adultery or fornication?

Have I become intoxicated?

Have I been disobedient or disrespectful to my husband?

Have I taken active part in any non-Catholic worship?

Other sins included: “Have I done unnecessary servile work (physical labour) or shopping on Sunday?” and “Have I denied my spouse his or her marriage rights?” 

Catholics. Once upon a time in Ontario, pressure from Francophone communities and Catholic organizations led to the creation of *Separate schools*, which set a precedent, in allowing the establishment of other publicly funded religious educational institutions. 

There are now many French non-denominational school boards that offer education in French in all regions of Ontario without the religious indoctrination. 

The time has come to remove public funding from the Catholic schools, as the Church appears to consider them their own property. Let the Vatican support them financially, since they exploit them as an extension of their propaganda arm, the notorious Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  Let them direct their staff to do fundraising with the promise that if they succeeded as well as Mother Teresa did, they will be canonized too. 

ADDED: Someone retweeted this of mine. An apt reminder of the other disturbing aspect of Catholic School Boards, which is to authorize child abuse, and the portrayal thereof, when it suits an ideological agenda. It's okay if you're a *good* Catholic.

Please note the presence of a Knights of Columbus official in the background, not currently demonstrating against the purported abuse of zygotes, embryos or fetuses, by women or medical professionals.

Religion never at fault; women's deaths are collateral damage.

Two young women were crushed to death in a crowded frenzy to enter Coqueiros Stadium in Luanda where the Pope was about to have a meeting with Angolan youths as Benedict XVI pontificated about the evils of systemic corruption, witchcraft and discrimination against women.

There's something about that in the Gospels, is there not?

... And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? ... Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye, Matthew 7:1-5.

Absent a sense of irony, it seems the Pope floats in a bubble of sublime abstractions and religious ideology, isolated and protected from the harsh realities that Catholic Church followers confront every day.

... at a meeting with female Catholic groups ... He further emphasised “think about those lands where poverty abounds, zones devastated by war, in many tragic situations resulting or not from forced immigration, almost always women keep human dignity intact, they defend the family and uphold the cultural and religious values”.

Thus the top Catholic Church patriarch can patronize and deign to recognize women's contribution ... but upholds the ecclesiastical opinion that only male power reigns supreme in the clergy.

This imperious personal and Catholic Church position has deadly consequences for women in Africa.

The United Nations magazine, Africa Renewal, quotes an expert who participated in a UN survey of AIDS' impact on young African women. She described the conditions under which most young African women contract AIDS as follows:

"[They] are not in a position to abstain. They are not in a position to demand faithfulness of their partners. In many cases they are in fact faithful, but are being infected by unfaithful partners...A woman who is a victim of violence or the fear of violence is not going to negotiate anything, let alone fidelity or condom use ... Her main objective is to get through the day without being beaten up."

The Pope is correct in saying that AIDS cannot be eradicated by condom use alone. Clearly, when young women are raped or otherwise forced into sex against their will, the men abusing them will not commit to use condoms. But instead of offering these women useless verbiage, the Pope could have offered the vast resources of the Church to distribute anti-viral foam to young married women in AIDS-infested areas. Foam is the only form of AIDS prevention that young wives completely control and can use without their husbands' permission.

From here.

The photo-montage is from this blog.

But, but, but ... the feminists are oppressing ME - Shrieeek!!!

Blob Blogging Wingnut turns HER defense of Catholic patriarchs' refusal to respond humanely to criticism about Church tolerance and protection of pedophile priests, into a cause banale. As usual, it's all about HERSELF and how SHE is being persecuted.

SHE finds it hilarious.

"Oh woe is me. I'm so happy and fulfilled being Catholic. How can I be so blind to my own oppression? Fundamentalist men made me do it! They FORCED me to be Catholic by saying nice stuff about me. The nerve! Pushing me into the Catholic faith against my own will. Hilarious."

It's indeed hilarious. Here is someone who spends a MASSIVE amount of time disseminating religious propaganda and claiming that Abortion Is Murder©™ and that family is sacred.

Yet, as the Vatican Taliban feels the heat of criticism, it unleashes whatever odious weapons it can to preserve its most valued and cherished assets: power and wealth.

Not its Catholic families, betrayed by centuries of prevarication. The sexual exploitation of a child by a priest - someone said to be the official representative of God - is a physical assault that will damage that individual's mental, emotional, social and spiritual self for years to come. But the harm is not limited to the thousands of girls and boys who experienced sexual abuse at the hands of pedophile Catholic priests. Families have also been affected by recurring problems such as substance abuse, suicide attempts and other mental conditions caused by the trauma.

Sexually defiled children became adults who perpetuated the cycle of violence: priests, parents, educators, coaches, doctors who abused the children in their care. Research done into this phenomenon has investigated the profound and multidimensional impact of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse and the betrayal of trust by religious leaders on individuals, families and communities by their refusal to accept responsibility and deal with the pedophile priests.

Catholic Church fathers determined centuries ago that its clergy would be above the authority of “man-made” laws. This question divided Henry II and Thomas Beckett: "The clergy have Christ alone as King and under the King of Heaven; they should be ruled by their own law." It is now 2010 and the Vatican Taliban perseveres in following medieval principles and maintaining that its ecclesiastical rules are the only ones that are God-given and irrevocable.

As a result of this MASSIVE sense of entitlement produced by centuries of intellectual inbreeding, Pope Maledict and his Vatican Taliban could be taken down by the collective grief and anger of families.

For more about the Catholic Church ongoing stonewall, check out Canadian Cynic's Arrogance from yesterday and today, ... and then I hit my daily word limit, gosh darn it. which demonstrates how the Family Values©™ branding is really an empty rightwing religious zealot political tactic.

Does the Catholic Church foster a Culture of Pedophilia?

When 'incident' after 'incident' such as this one* occur, a pattern emerges. And where there exists an ideology that sanctions or tolerates the physical, mental and sexual abuse of children and adolescents, there will be an institution that will furiously use all and every mean to defend itself, to cast blame elsewhere and to evade accountability.

These events are not haphazard. The Catholic Church has a long history of actively or passively encouraging violence against specific and strategic targets, often women and children.

Imagine an exchange whispered in a confessional setting, multiplied thousands and thousand of times across centuries and countries, between a priest and an adult male. The man confesses his sin of lusting after a girl to whom he has access: a family member, a neighbour's child, a student. He is chastized by his priest and told to renounce such thoughts; to act upon them would be a greater sin.

Then the man learns the priest who confessed him has been sexually abusing altar boys. The putative representative of Christ on earth, anointed by the bishop, is thus allowed to behave in this manner with impunity? That certainly sends a message to Catholic men.

Here's more about the malevolent Catholic Church tradition of implicitely or explicitely encouraging harm towards women and children, still enforced by Pope Maledict and his gynophobic ruling clergy.

This may be the next outrage that will confront the sanctimonious blather publicly bloviated by powerful old men in their luxurious trappings.

The crisis of religious abuse in Africa and India was brought to Rome's attention in 1998 when a four-page paper titled "The Problem of the Sexual Abuse of African Religious in Africa and Rome" was presented by Sister Marie McDonald, mother superior of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa. A March 2001 National Catholic Reporter article detailed McDonald's claims, which included accounts of sexual abuse by priests and bishops. [...]

All of these public allegations fell on deaf ears. Neither Rome nor the world cared to demand justice for the nuns also sexually victimized by Catholic clergy. Like news stories of wives in burqas being stoned to death in Islamic strongholds, tales of nuns raped by priests and bishops did not even merit a sound bite on the evening news and were soon forgotten.

Once more, there appears to be MASSIVE dissonance between the official Catholic Church propaganda and the actual actions of its clergy members.

*The current news coverage around the story was originally blogged by JJ at unrepentant old hippie here.

Conspiracy uncovered! Shrieeek!!!

Today is the day that Notre Dame University, that US bastion of Catholic higher learning, bestows a honorary degree upon President Obama who will then deliver the commencement address.

Conservative Catholics have opposed the university's awarding of a degree to the President, whose views on abortion and stem cell research conflict with the teachings of the church. Their intolerance has provoked a backlash and made this cohort even more Catholic than the pope!

As Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne pointed out, "To the dismay of many conservatives, the Vatican's own newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, offered what one antiabortion Catholic blog called 'a surprisingly positive assessment of the new President's approach to life issues'." The reaction was so positive that a spokesman for the National Right to Life Commitee criticized Pope Benedict XVI's newspaper! Furthermore, two-thirds of Catholics approve of Obama's performance in office and, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 50 percent of Catholics think Notre Dame was right to invite the President.

Thus it's no surprise that fundamentalist Catholics claim to have uncovered a 'secret' conspiracy or connection that explains why Notre Dame is being led down the road to damnation.

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame, sits on the board of Millennium Promise, an anti-poverty organization which reportedly supports the distribution of condoms and encourages the establishment of abortion services where legal.

“Any Catholic university that supports a program to reduce poverty by eliminating poor children has a serious problem. No Catholic should be taking a leadership role in an effort that distributes contraception or promotes abortion," said Patrick Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. ...

Millennium Promise works to raise funds from the private sector for “Millennium Villages,” a group working with under-privileged African villages. While these “villages” seem to have laudable goals, a Millennium Villages handbook explains that "family planning and contraception services are critical to allow women to choose family size and birth spacing, to combat sexually transmitted infections, including HIV infection, and contribute to the reduction of maternal morbidity and mortality."

ShriEEEKKK!!!

No wonder those fundamentalist Catholic zygote zealots are going into shrieking paroxysms. It is a well-documented fact that the Vatican Taliban would rather uphold medieval ideology than save the lives of African women and children. In their rabid religious fanatical view, only embryos and fetus are worth saving.

Selling the sizzle cuz the steak is putrid.

Yesterday's blogpost was written about heterosexual pedophile Catholic priests.

Today, it's all about the Vatican Taliban cranking up its propaganda machine.

First, go watch "Catholics Come Home" advert at Feminist christian socialist and read what Luna has to say. She nailguns the propagandists to the wall.

Then, consider Pope Maledict's dilemma regarding the Legion of Christ:

As sex abuse scandals rock the Vatican, the results of an investigation into a rich, ultra-conservative and secretive Roman Catholic order founded by a priest accused of pedophilia and incest are due to be filed in Rome on Monday.The sordid story of the Legion of Christ, whose late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, was a close ally of Pope John Paul II before being forcibly retired by the Vatican in 2006, is a microcosm of the crisis currently enveloping the church.

Rich and ultra-conservative. Key words. Do you think a poor and progressive faith movement within the Catholic Church would have been allowed to thrive? Would its leader have been praised and anointed by the previous pope?

"Maciel was a sexual criminal of epic proportions who gained the trust of John Paul II and created a movement that is as close to a cult as anything we've seen in the church," said author Jason Berry, one of two reporters who broke the Maciel story in 1997 [...]

Interviews with former members of the Legion and Regnum Christi paint a chilling picture of Maciel as a sociopathic master salesman who knew how to charm the upper echelon at the Vatican as well as enlist the wealthy and elite to his fast-growing order, all while using cult-like techniques. Two of the most visible priests in America are Father Thomas Williams, a movie-star-handsome CBS News analyst, and Father Jonathan Morris, who is sometimes referred to as "Father Knows Best" on the Fox News Channel. They belong to the Legion of Christ but rarely identify themselves as such on camera.

"Dan Brown got the wrong group," said Genevieve Kineke, an orthodox Catholic who was a member of Regnum Christi, the legion's lay movement, from 1992 to 2000 and writes a blog about her experiences. "The Legion of Christ is the scary cult embedded in the bosom of the mother church. Not Opus Dei." [...]

That misuse of sex and power was an undercurrent that helped fuel the growth of the order, according to several former members of the Legion and Regnum Christi. "Maciel always told me to recruit the most handsome boys from the best families," said Vaca. "They were trained to approach rich women. I'm not saying they had sexual relationships with these women but they did know how to charm them." Kineke and others also said Legion priests are notoriously successful in winning over women to the church.

"They are spiritual seducers," said another former Regnum Christi member. "They are the only priests I've seen who have swept people off their feet. These men woo women because they want access to our children and our husbands' wallets."

That is very strong language from someone who will be monitoring how the Vatican Taliban deals with the findings of the investigation into the Legion. More here about that, and also here.

What kind of reception did Maciel receive in heaven when he died? Surely someone who masterminded such a MASSIVE grift in the name of Jesus deserves to be seated to the right of Lucifer? Oh ... wait.

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.

Dump it or reform it?

The Catholic Church, that is.

In her NYT opinion piece, Maureen Dowd points out ways that Catholic fundamentalism ressembles Islamic fundamentalism.

I, too, belonged to an inbred and wealthy men’s club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity.

I, too, remained part of an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world.

I, too, rationalized as men in dresses allowed our religious kingdom to decay and to cling to outdated misogynistic rituals, blind to the benefits of welcoming women’s brains, talents and hearts into their ancient fraternity.

To circumscribe women, Saudi Arabia took Islam’s moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Muhammad; the Catholic Church took its moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Jesus. In the New Testament, Jesus is surrounded by strong women and never advocates that any woman — whether she’s his mother or a prostitute — be treated as a second-class citizen.

Negating women is at the heart of the church’s hideous — and criminal — indifference to the welfare of boys and girls in its priests’ care.

Dowd isn't resigned to spiritual and psychological abuse. To the contrary, she skillfully skewers the dogmatic intellectual inbreeding that has led to this sorry state.

Intellectual inbreeding appears to be at the heart of the problems that currently beset the Vatican Taliban. Unable to give life, Pope Maledict and his old boys' club continue the tradition of controlling female sexuality and reproductive capacity. In this, they are bestowing upon a decaying institution the kiss of death.

In Newsweek, Lisa Miller writes hopefully of tranformation, of the Church leaving behind the arrogance of those besotted with disembodied patriarchal power.

[...] in the Roman Catholic corporation, the senior executives live and work, as they have for a thousand years, eschewing not just marriage, but intimacy with women and professional relationships with women—not to mention any chance to familiarize themselves with the earthy, primal messiness of families and children. Indeed, it seems the further a priest moves beyond the parish, the more likely he is to value conformity and order above the chaos of real life. [...]

One parent in one room where a bishop was deciding the fate of an abusing priest would have saved countless families from a lifetime of misery. "It's a pretty good guess that we would not be in this same predicament were women involved," says Frank Butler, president of FADICA, a group of Catholic family foundations. "For sure."

It is a reforming moment, then, a time for the men of the Vatican to take the wisdom of their own words to heart. The Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s was an effort to better integrate the antique church with the modern world, and its documents overtly address the changing place of women. "The hour is coming," read the council's closing documents, "in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment…women imbued with a spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid humanity in not falling."

I made my choice years ago, as it became obvious to me the reigning clergy operated with principles far removed from the basic goodness of the faith that Jesus inspired. I left the Catholic Church. Many women stay, though. They feel they and their children have nowhere to go, and the daily contempt and manipulation they suffer from the Church fathers - while abusive - is familiar. And, like Dowd and Miller, they're hopeful that they can help them mature into humane beings.

I don't share their optimism.

It's okay if you're a heterosexual pedophile Catholic priest.

Once more, the Vatican Taliban is under scrutiny for implicitely condoning child sexual abuse.

JJ at unrepentant old hippie has been writing and posting links to news items about Pope Maledict and how he may have played a role in facilitating a pedophile priest's access to children. As a German cardinal he wrote in 2001 a church directive instructing bishops to keep abuse cases "confidential". Decades of dissembling about the issue of pedophile priests has become the standard procedure, not for protecting Catholic children, but for saving the Church from public embarassment.

These cases usually come to light and provoke a public outcry when the victims are boys, since this highlights hypocrisy regarding two aspects of Church doctrine: obligatory clerical celibacy and edicts against homosexuality.

In Ireland, where MASSIVE numbers of girls and young women as well as boys were sexually assaulted by priests, powerful, upper-echelon clergy have refused to accept accountability for their actions. For example:

Ireland's senior Roman Catholic, Cardinal Sean Brady, said Monday he would not resign despite admitting he helped the church collect evidence against a child-molesting priest — and never told police about the crimes.

Brady, as a priest and Vatican-trained canon lawyer in 1975, said he interviewed two children about the abuse they suffered at the hands of the Rev. Brendan Smyth. He said both children were required to sign oaths promising not to tell anyone outside the church of their allegations.

Smyth went on to molest and rape scores of other children in Ireland, Britain and the United States before British authorities in neighboring Northern Ireland demanded his arrest in 1994. The Irish government of the day collapsed amid acrimony over why Smyth had not been extradited to Belfast.

Brady admitted his role in gathering evidence against Smyth because he has been named as a defendant in a Dublin lawsuit filed by one of Smyth's victims. Lawyers in that case unearthed records of Brady's involvement in gathering testimony from two Irish victims who said they were abused by Smyth — one a 10-year-old altar boy, the other a 14-year-old girl — around 1970.

Brady said it was the responsibility of his diocesan bishop, as well as the leader of Smyth's separate Catholic order of priests, to tell police. But he said the church didn't do this because of "a culture of silence about this, a culture of secrecy."

"Yes, I knew that these were crimes," Brady said. "But I did not feel that it was my responsibility to denounce the actions of Brendan Smyth to the police. Now I know with hindsight that I should have done more, but I thought at the time I was doing what I was required to do."

Things have reached the tipping point in Ireland. On one hand, the Catholic Church ferociously lobbies against contraception, birth control and abortion and bleats piously about the unborn. On the other, it has in deeds been complicit in allowing thousands of children to be physically and sexually exploited and damaged.

From the Irish Times:

The other key reason people focus on the church and its appalling record of child abuse and cover-up is, of course, that this organisation retains central power over the running of our education system, through which it maintains contact with the vast majority of children in the country.

Take Bishop Jones, for example. He directly appoints the chair of the boards of management in virtually every school in his diocese of Elphin, which spreads from Athlone northwards across Roscommon and Sligo. He has a veto over the appointment of each and every other member of the boards. He likewise chooses the interview boards for each teacher in the schools. And, last but not least, he is in charge of the ethos of his schools, which means that he controls the kind of instruction given to the children in what is right and what is wrong.

Given the views of Bishop Jones that we should cease focusing on the church and its failure to protect children against serial rapists like Brendan Smyth, it is entirely reasonable for the parents of children in the Elphin diocese (and elsewhere) to ask whether he is a suitable person to exercise such influence over the lives of thousands of youngsters through his control of the schools in his area.

In the religious world, people can vote with their feet and decide for themselves what, if any, church they wish to be part of, and how and when they wish to worship. That is no one’s business but their own.

In the secular world, however, it is our clear duty as citizens to question whether a religious organisation whose Irish leader so palpably failed to protect children from a rapist should have any role whatsoever in the governance of our schools. It is a recurrent question. It will arise again and again as each scandal of church cover-up emerges.

The Irish State and Government can allow this poison to ooze out gradually, but relentlessly. Or it can intervene and engage in the now desperately needed process of extending the Murphy Commission inquiry process to each bishop and diocese in the State.

In Canada, adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of priests have created organizations that provide mutual support and challenge the institutional denials of the Catholic Church, who refuse to acknowledge that clergy engaged in criminal actions. This is the experience of one member - it is not unusual or rare, as last year's news item about former priest Charles Sylvestre in Ontario reveals.

***Un grand merci to CC's blogpost That's gonna leave a mark, which directed us to the opinion piece in the Irish Times.***

They hate children, don't they?

Canadian Cynic: The Catholic Problem - pretty shaved ape has posted a cohesive and comprehensive round-up of the latest disclosures about the Catholic Church enabling and seemingly sanctioning the violence that members of the Roman Catholic clergy (or non-clergy under their authority) directed towards thousands and thousands of children in Ireland, as well the exalted bishops who rationalize somehow that it's not really evil but actually tolerable if you're a "good Catholic."

Go read it.

The only element missing, as the coup-de-farce would be the pope granting a MASSIVE pardon to the sexual predators who "regret" their actions.

As for those malevolent Catholic Church clergy and administrators who derived moral satisfaction from the savage physical, emotional and spiritual violence they inflicted upon the children in their care, they were merely enforcing religious doctrine, that is, they were faithfully "following orders".

Ratzy vs. the Nuns

So, did you hear the one about the Catholic nun who volunteers as an escort at an abortion clinic?

No, really.

Local pro-life activists say that they recognized the escort at the ACU Health Center as Sr. Donna Quinn, a nun outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, after seeing her photo in a Chicago Tribune article.

SHRIEEEEEK!

She's in favour of legalized abortion, but why would she act as an escort?

Sr. Patricia Mulcahey, OP, Quinn's Prioress at the Sinsinawa Dominican community, said in an email response to LSN that the nun sees her volunteer activity as "accompanying women who are verbally abused by protestors. Her stance is that if the protestors were not abusive, she would not be there."

So, in the opinion of a Catholic nun, the abortion-clinic stalkers are not the peaceful, prayerful 'witnesses' they claim to be. They're abusers.

Sr. Donna Quinn is a member of the National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN), an interesting group, in favour not only of abortion, but of female ordination.

Which brings us to a recent article that Maureen Dowd is taking some crap over. It's called 'The Nuns' Story'.

In 2004, the cardinal who would become Pope Benedict XVI wrote a Vatican document urging women to be submissive partners, resisting any adversarial roles with men and cultivating “feminine values” like “listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.”

Nuns need to be even more sepia-toned for the über-conservative pope, who was christened “God’s Rottweiler” for his enforcement of orthodoxy. Once a conscripted member of the Hitler Youth, Benedict pardoned a schismatic bishop who claimed that there was no Nazi gas chamber. He also argued on a trip to Africa that distributing condoms could make the AIDS crisis worse.

The Vatican is now conducting two inquisitions into the “quality of life” of American nuns, a dwindling group with an average age of about 70, hoping to herd them back into their old-fashioned habits and convents and curb any speck of modernity or independence.

Nuns who took Vatican II as a mandate for reimagining their mission “started to look uppity to an awful lot of bishops and priests and, of course, the Vatican,” said Kenneth Briggs, the author of “Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns.”

The church enabled rampant pedophilia, but nuns who live in apartments and do social work with ailing gays? Sacrilegious! The pope can wear Serengeti sunglasses and expensive red loafers, but shorter hems for nuns? Disgraceful!

One of the two Vatican inquisitions investigations is on general 'quality of life' of American nuns and one is specifically on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a benign-looking outfit -- as opposed to those radical feminuns in NCAN -- that claims to represent 95% of American nuns.

Ah, the Mother Church and its psychosis over actual women.

'Insensitive, Incomprehensible and Lacking in Mercy'

From women's rights flowing from washing machines, to excommunicating doctors who saved the life of a raped nine-year-old, to undermining decades of AIDS work in Africa, the Catholic Church is on a heckuva roll.

A mess of world leaders, scientists, and AIDS activists are all just seething with anti-Catholic bigotry.

Even the New York Times saw fit to slap His Poopiness:

Pope Benedict XVI has every right to express his opposition to the use of condoms on moral grounds, in accordance with the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church. But he deserves no credence when he distorts scientific findings about the value of condoms in slowing the spread of the AIDS virus.

But this has really got to smart:

There were also some signs of dissent within the Church.

"Anyone who has AIDS and is sexually active, anyone who seeks multiple partners, must protect others and themselves," said Hans-Jochen Jaschke, Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Hamburg in the pope's native Germany.

To my mind, Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said it best (on the excommunication fiasco):

"Unfortunately the credibility of our teaching took a blow as it appeared, in the eyes of many, to be insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy."

Everything you wanted to know (or likely, not) about Thomas Euteneuer

but were too disgusted and creeped out to ask.

Pharyngula did the heavy lifting.

Euteneuer was an up-and-coming star of the Catholic priesthood: he was a charismatic fellow who appeared on radio and TV and other media to fight for the dogmatic Catholic position on just about everything. He was a crusader against homosexuality, against sex outside of marriage, against contraceptives, against abortion. He was also an official Catholic exorcist ...

Euteneuer was also the president of Human Life International, that anti-abortion, anti-birth control, fetus-fetishizing lobbying organization that is MASSIVELY admired and parotted by Blob Blogging Wingnut.

More here.

One wonders what the priest's connection to Pope Maledict and the Vatican Taliban might be, as it appears that Euteneuer has successfully evaded any criminal charges for his sexual predation involving adult women.

P.Z. Myers really has their number, though:

Which brings me to the really weird part. Everything I'm reading about this situation contains these insistent declarations that the act involved an ADULT! WOMAN! Even the Catholic bishop's statement about the case emphasizes this.

Euteneuer has been undergoing intensive evaluation and counseling to address admitted inappropriate crossing of adult heterosexual boundaries on the occasion of carrying out his priestly ministry.

See? ADULT! and HETEROSEXUAL!

This bugs me. It's like they're saying, "At least it wasn't gay sex, and it didn't involve a child." They're trying to reduce the magnitude of whatever perversity was committed. And it's as if they're reassuring everyone that it wasn't that awful homosexuality was committed.

And weirdest of all, it's as if they're saying that because a woman was the victim, it wasn't so bad. Women are the designated victims; oh, sure, it's not good that he was abusing a woman, but it would have been even worse if a man was hurt.

They're above "man-made" laws, don't you know?

For many people who are unfamiliar with the ideological premise of canon laws, the resistance of the catholic church with regard to accepting accountability for pedophile priests is a mystery.

In this blogpost, we provided a short explanation for the Vatican Taliban's sense of entitlement and privilege.

Today when police raided the Brussels headquarters of the catholic church in Belgium, the home of a recently retired cardinal and the offices of a commission established by the church to handle abuse complaints in order to search for documents, shrieeeks of outrage were heard. According to the NYTimes:

“The police came in and said the house would be searched because there were complaints about sexual abuse on the territory of the archdiocese,” he [Eric de Beukelaer, a spokesman for the Belgian archbishop] said, adding that he was present during the raid and that the police had temporarily confiscated his cellphone. The search continued past 7 p.m., Mr. de Beukelaer said.

No arrests were made, and no charges were announced. The Associated Press reported that the bishops had been prevented from leaving and even from making phone calls.

The authorities are investigating accusations that Belgian clerics sexually abused children, according to officials. Hundreds of such claims have been raised since April, when the bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, admitted to molesting a boy and resigned.

This sort of activity “is extremely rare, very rare, especially in the house of a cardinal,” said Andrea Tornielli, a Vatican expert at Il Giornale, an Italian daily newspaper. “It’s enormous.”

Yes, one might even say it's a MASSIVE step for non-religious, civil authorities to refuse to play along with Pope Maledict and his minions' rules. Few of the news reports include comments from survivors of alleged sexual abuse by Catholic priests, with the exception of the NYTimes:

Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said in a statement that the raid was “precisely what’s needed, not just in Belgium but in other church offices across the globe.” Ms. Dorris added, “Police and prosecutors need to step up, and promptly and thoroughly investigate allegations against predator priests and corrupt bishops, and use their full powers to gain access to and control over church records that likely document the crimes and cover-ups.”

Indeed, documentation regarding the MASSIVE cover-ups, obfuscation and misdirection by catholic clergy complicit in these crimes against children and families needs to be examined.

But, but, but ... Planned Parenthood! Shrieeekkk!!!

In the combox after Does the Catholic Church foster a Culture of Pedophilia? Steve left this comment -

Planned Parenthood is no better, frequently covering up rape. See one example below :http://www.socon.ca/or_bust/?p=6510 What you won’t see this on the cover of the New York Times. Don't drink the Kook-Aid.

That would be blogger Steve who, in his own words says he will "accept all the teachings of the Catholic Church and I look to the Pope for my marching orders".

Steve got his speaking points from SoConAndNutz. Take notice that he doesn't answer, refute or challenge a single word about the culture of pedophilia in his religious institution.

It's quite the claim, considering it originates with Lie-Là Rose's production company, by way of the National Cash Catholic Register.

This edited video recording is touted as "The New Sex Abuse Scandal - All Caught on Tape". It displays a time code that reads 2005.10.23 - although the content of the 'news release' at LiveAction suggests this a new undercover sting operation. (Earlier posts about Lie-Là Rose here.)

So. It's recycled and re-purposed material - a diversion tactic intended as a distraction from the evull New York Times' coverage of the obfuscation campaign the Catholic Church patriarchs are deploying to evade responsibility for the decades of harm that their pedophile priests did.

Sweet tap-dancing Babeee Jay-Zeus. Are there any straws left for these lying liars to clutch, in their frenzy to defend the Vatican Taliban?