Catholic blame-shifting (and blogospherics)

The Catholic Church has been quite busy with damage control regarding this never-ending pedophilia cover-up scandal. I just wanted to point out the various conflicting suggestions the Church has made over the past few weeks:

Education Secretary Alonso Lujambio told reporters that public-school sexual education texts “seek to make our boys and girls responsible, to take responsibility for their actions, and for that they need information.”

Lujambio said the programs are careful to avoid “hurting any social sensitivities.”

On Thursday, Bishop Felipe Arizmendi said that “when there is generalized sexual licentiousness, it is more common to have pederasty.”

“In the midst of the invasion of so much eroticism, it is not easy to remain faithful in celibacy, or in respecting children,” Arizmendi, the bishop of the San Cristobal de las Casas diocese in Chiapas state, said at a meeting of Mexican bishops.
source

The cardinal, who is known for his blunt and sometimes tactless manner, made the remarks at a televised press conference in Chile’s capital Santiago.

He said: “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and paedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia. This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms. The behaviour of the priests in this case, the negative behaviour, is very serious, is scandalous.”
source

Who is to blame for the sexual abuse affairs in the Catholic Church? The Jews, at least according to an Italian bishop, which suggested that Jews were behind the current criticism of the Church’s record on tackling clerical sex abuse, British newspaper The Guardian reported Sunday.

An Italian website quoted Giacomo Babini, 81, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism, considering how “powerful and refined” the criticism is.
source

No longer did priests accused of child abuse face a canonical trial and the possibility of “defrocking”.

Instead, and with disastrous consequences, they were sent for therapy and then, “cured”, they were reassigned to ministry.

The bottom line is that if canon law had been used properly, fewer children would have been abused. Civil authorities would still not have been informed, but priests found guilty of child abuse under Church law would have been punished and likely removed from ministry making it more difficult for them to offend again.
source

Speaking to News Mediaset in Italy, the 85-year-old exorcist noted that the devil is behind “the recent attacks on Pope Benedict XVI regarding some pedophilia cases.”

“There is no doubt about it. Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the devil wants to ‘grab hold’ of him.”
source

Get that? Sex education, gays, Jews, therapists, and the Devil are why Catholics feel the need to bugger kids and why their infallible emissary from God feels the need to cover it up and obstruct real justice. Either that, or they’re just why everyone is apparently fibbing about how dire their crimes are, just to try to get them in trouble for stuff they didn’t do. Yeah, tell that one to the victims.

Some blog meta below the fold.

On another note, I honestly don’t understand the recent attempt by a semi-frequent commenter at implying that I’m on some sort of anti-Catholic crusade, because of my support for the attempt at bringing Pope Ratzinger to justice. Given that proof has come to light that he directly facilitated the cover-up of crimes wherein children were molested, and given that the Catholic Church is guilty of innumerable other detrimental activities toward humanity (e.g. women’s rights, throwing gasoline on the fire that is the AIDS epidemic in Africa, etc), I do not feel at all unjustified in suggesting that the Pope should answer for this, nor do I feel any pang of regret that the institution as a whole will suffer as a result of any justice that is meted out.

Whether the Pope is merely humiliated and proven fallible, or put in jail for abetting in an epidemic of crimes against children, it almost doesn’t matter at this point. All that matters is that he not get away with claiming this issue should be dealt with internally. If he doesn’t answer to the laws of men, he won’t answer to anything at all.

You should probably read this if you think anyone — ANYONE — involved in this is merely going after the Catholic Church out of some misbegotten grudge against religion. Please do so before trying to make such an allegation again. Likewise to the skeptics that think you should tread carefully around this issue because it might hurt the cause of skepticism — here’s a post for you.

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Catholic blame-shifting (and blogospherics)
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