24 April 2002

(Before anyone goes off on me, calling me a heathen, blasphemer, etc., bear in mind that I was baptized Catholic and attended parochial school and a Jesuit high school.  I believe in God, I believe in the existence of a higher place, and I believe that there is something in this Universe greater than ourselves.  I also believe and stand behind everything I say in this rant in regards to the Holy See and its activities since the dawn of Catholicism.  If you call yourself Catholic and honestly say that you have never questioned anything that the Vatican has ever done in the last couple of millennia, then you are a blind sheep.  The most dangerous thing you can have in this world is blind faith in anything, whether it is a person, a government, or your religious leaders.  They're just people.)

It's not as if any one religion is without it's "black marks," but it seems that the Catholic Church has cornered the market on the big ones over the last two thousand years.  Whether it is the hand they took in the assassination of Dagobert II, The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition (what a show), the concordat with Hitler's National Socialist government, or the mysterious circumstances surrounding Pope John Paul I's death, the Holy See can't seem to stay out of trouble.  These days, the latest craze is sexual abuse of children by priests.  Yes, for those of you who have been vacationing like Thor Heyerdahl for the last few months and didn't have a radio (or worse, DirecTV) on the Kon Tiki, there has been somewhat of a new uproar over these abuses over the last few weeks.  Not that we didn't know of incidents such as these in the past - accusations of sexual abuse by priests is definitely nothing new - but now it seems to have taken on an almost Salem-like hysteria.

Faced with a crisis that seemed to be gaining momentum exponentially, the pope, the little old guy with the funny little poledigger hat, summoned all U.S. cardinals (I don't think Tino Martinez and the boys were on the trip, although the way Tino is hitting, going to Rome for a few days couldn't have hurt) to the Vatican, something that has very rarely happened in the history of the Church.  After days of discussion on how to handle the scandal, the pope, who is 81 years old and makes Yoda look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, came out with the following statement:

"People need to know that there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young" ... "The abuse which has caused this crisis is by every standard wrong and rightly considered a crime by society. It is also an appalling sin in the eyes of God."

Yes, boys and girls, what you just read was that the pope said that fucking little boys and girls was bad, bad, BAD, and that God thinks you're bad if you squat-hump a twelve year old.

Well, thank the Lord for such wonderful insight.  He could have called any of us on the phone and got the same answer and saved all that airfare flying the cardinals in for a hand-slapping and a pizza.  Wait, you mean shoving my hand down an eight-year old boy's pants is a sin?  What, were all these priests on a field trip the day they went over this in the seminary?  "Well, today we're going to discuss that fucking little kids is bad.  And, since John Geoghan is on the trip that the other boys took to go see the kiddie porn exhibit, someone try not to forget to give them the notes..."  What could possibly have made these guys think, "Well, fucking little boys and girls is okie-dokie, I think"?  Did we all really need the pope to tell us this was really bad?  And how come all of us knew it, but the priests DIDN'T?

But wait, boys and girls, it gets better!  After declaring to all the world that sexual misconduct with children is naughty, the pope stopped short of a zero-tolerance policy for such actions!  Yes, that's right, don't fuck the children, but if you do, well, just don't do it again.

To further make a mockery of what was once a great religion, Francis Cardinal George of Chicago wavered on endorsing a one-strike-and-you're-out policy with the following statement:

"The difficulty lies in the diversity of behavior that we are talking about.  There is a difference between a moral monster like [Boston priest John] Geoghan who preys upon little children and does so in a serial fashion, and someone who, perhaps under the influence of alcohol, engages in an action with a 17- or 16-year-old young woman who returns his affection."

George said both examples would be crimes under civil law, but one suggested the priest be removed from the ministry immediately while the other opened the possibility of rehabilitation.

A "summing-up" statement of sorts said the following:

``Attention was drawn to the fact that almost all the cases involved adolescents and therefore were not cases of true pedophilia,'' the cardinals' statement said. ``Together with the fact that a link between celibacy and pedophilia cannot be scientifically maintained, the meeting reaffirmed the value of priestly celibacy as a gift of God to the church.''

OK, so wait, let me get this straight... a priest, who swears allegiance to a life of poverty and servitude in the name of God, who dedicates his life to helping people and teaching God's word and message, gets drunk with a 16 year old girl and, uh, gives her a private semen sermon, and that's open to the "possibility of rehabilitation"?  If I got caught with my crank in the high school girl down the block, I'd be locked up in a cell with twelve guys who would do the same to me for a pack of Camels.  But if you're a priest, well, you just sit in the corner and keep doing laps around the rosary beads until you've redeemed yourself.

And what, exactly, does the statement, "Together with the fact that a link between celibacy and pedophilia cannot be scientifically maintained, the meeting reaffirmed the value of priestly celibacy as a gift of God to the church" mean?  What kind of link would there be between celibacy (no fucking at all) and pedophilia (fucking children) in any sense, let alone scientific?  And hey, some fuckin' gift:  "Guess what I got you for your birthday."  "What?"  "No fucking ever in your life!"  "YEAH!  Just what I always wanted!"

While the cardinals are going to draw up a plan to have a special process to defrock any priest guilty of the "predatory sexual abuse of minors," those not deemed "notorious" would be handled less severely by a local bishop.  Hmmm... how many nine-year old boys would I have to fuck over what period of time to be deemed "notorious"?  Could I just fuck a little boy year, a young girl there, and just be reprimanded and open to the possibility of rehabilitation?

So, what have we learned from all this, boys and girls?  We've learned that, once again, the Vatican will continue its long-standing tradition of jerking around the people of the world, promising change while engaging in its own bureaucracy, making statement that are blatantly obvious to a six-year old (molested or not), and engaging in a lot of rhetoric, all the while looking to protect its own in what could arguably be called the grandest "good old boys" network of them all.  In the end, the furor will die down, something else will catch our ire in another part of the world, and people like John Geoghan will go back to their hobbies.

And people wonder why I never go to Church anymore.