Gather ’round, children, and listen to a tale of the Good Old Days, as told by Pope Benedict nee Ratzinger. He’s a Man of God, so he obviously wouldn’t lie! You’ll remember that when we left off, he was about to tell us that
paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.
“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.
BY WHOM?
[By the way, it should tell you how stung the Catholic Church is over its loss of moral authority when the Pope is making excuses, in his Christmas address, for the fact that the corporation over which he is the CEO has become, in the words of Sara Benincasa, "the world’s oldest and largest child-fuckery concern."]
Moving on…
“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”
When, pray tell, was this taught in any orthodox corner of Christendom? Please, senile former Hitler Youth child-rapist protector man in flowing robes and pretty headdress, ‘splain some more how back in the good old days, child rape was simply ”not the best option,” but certainly not evil.
The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.
I know, I know, it’s so embarrassing when people find out about this huge child raping problem the Church has, I mean, it was such a surprise and all, not least of which to the Pope. Oh wait. My memory’s not failing me completely yet, so let’s all remember another story.
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a priest in Wisconsin named Lawrence Murphy! He used his position of power to rape over 200 children, but there’s a twist! These children were deaf. When the abuse came to light, at least in the inner sancta of the Roman Catholic Church, they of course defrocked him immediately and made sure he was never near a child again. HA HA, JUST KIDDING:
Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.
The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.
The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.
The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.
But, you see, it only became shocking, embarrassing and humiliating in 2010. Why? Because the child-rapists got caught, and Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope, is having to answer for the fact that he, in an official capacity, did everything in his power to protect what is apparently the holy right of priests to have sex with the kids in their parishes.
Here’s what the Church is doing in Wisconsin to make amends for distract local Catholics from the inconvenient facts about the 200 deaf children and the rape and whatnot:
Well, the Vatican has finally found it in its black (but gold-plated!) and shriveled husk of a heart to do something for Wisconsin: they’ve blessed a ghost sighting as genuine. Woo hoo! That’ll fix everything right up!
The church has declared that a sighting in 1859 of a blond Mary hovering between two trees was real and worthy, and the local Catholic church is now busily expanding their parking lot to cope with the expected influx of
gullible suckerspilgrims who will flock to the site to imagine a floating cheerleader for Jesus.
No really. What had happened was:
…[O]n October 9, 1859, the Queen of Heaven manifested herself to Adele Brise in Champion (Robinsonville), Wisconsin, USA.
[...]
“As they approached the hallowed spot, Adele could see the beautiful lady, clothed in dazzling white, with a yellow sash around her waist. Her dress fell to her feet in graceful folds. She had a crown of stars around her head, and her long, golden, wavy hair fell loosely around her shoulders. Such a heavenly light shone around her that Adele could hardly look back at her sweet face. Overcome by this heavenly light and the beauty of her amiable visitor, Adele fell on her knees.
” ‘In God’s name, who are you and what do you want of me?’ asked Adele, as she had been directed.
“ ‘I am the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received Holy Communion this morning, and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession, and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them’
“ ‘Adele, who is it?” said one of the women. ‘O why can’t we see her as you do?’ said another weeping.
“ ‘Kneel,’ said Adele, ‘the Lady says she is the Queen of Heaven.’ Our Blessed Lady turned, looked kindly at them, and said, ‘Blessed are they that believe without seeing. What are you doing here in idleness…while your companions are working in the vineyard of my Son?’
Oh, for god’s sake. The woman was either hallucinating or lying. Or on drugs. She certainly wasn’t laying the foundations for the the Vatican to, 150 years later, distract all the faithful morons from the fact that 200 DEAF CHILDREN WERE RAPED BY A PRIEST. PZ Myers ties this little fairytale up with a bow:
That settles it. It must have been a magical manifestation if it was invisible. Invisible and blond, just like I always imagined a Middle Eastern Semitic peasant woman. And the statement that you’re blessed if you believe without seeing is pitch-perfect Catholicism.
Dear, dear Catholics: Stop. Just stop. I know many of you are fervent in your desires to change the Catholic Church from the inside out, but until and unless the entire patriarchal institution — the celibate priests, the secretive power structure, the lack of women in any positions of power, and all the rest — is changed, this will continue.
As it stands, the Church, for this and many other reasons, is one of the most evil forces on God’s Green Earth, and no one with a sense of morality or dignity should support it.
The idea that this is something, in some way, “new” is absurd.
The irish reports go back for many decades.
You find mention of having to cuury favor with boys to get anywhere in the church mentioned in Boccaccio and chaucer.
Karen Liebreich’s excellent book, Fallen Order”, details a major scandal in Italy in the 16th century. the same old thing. the priests molest the boys, the higher ups either cover up or somehow just don’t know a thing about it.
“The world’s oldest and largest child fuckery concern,” just like Sara said.
They claim that 1) Jesus is god’s only son and 2) “we” are all god’s children. How does that make sense? Are all of god’s non-Jesus children girls, i.e. daughters not sons? We are all Jesus’ sisters whether we have vaginas or not? Is that what’s meant?
M’kay. So child buggery is acceptable but gays are “intrinsically disordered” and atheists are responsible for all the evil in the world. Why does anybody take this guy seriously any more?
This above story is exactly why at the age of 8, I let everyone around me know that I hated religion (especially the catholic church), and from that point on rejected anything,and everything, to do with christianity !!! An evil religion !!!
Oh my Goddess! This man is now trying to make pedophilia look less bad than it really is? Is there no depths to which he will not sink? He is the saddest excuse for a “man of God” I have ever seen.
Umm, this seems like an implausible statement, even coming from Papa Ratzi. So, a transcript from the vatican website (conspiracy theories aside) reveals:
“In order to resist these forces, we must turn our attention to their ideological foundations. In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. This, however, was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a “better than” and a “worse than”. Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist. The effects of such theories are evident today. Against them, Pope John Paul II, in his 1993 Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, indicated with prophetic force in the great rational tradition of Christian ethos the essential and permanent foundations of moral action. Today, attention must be focussed anew on this text as a path in the formation of conscience. It is our responsibility to make these criteria audible and intelligible once more for people today as paths of true humanity, in the context of our paramount concern for mankind.”
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2010/december/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20101220_curia-auguri_en.html
Quote mining much?
He’s still deflecting the blame onto other people (and secularists in particular) using lies and strawmen about moral relativism (in catholocism even? Oh PLEASE!) and how it apparently made child porn A-OK to the popular masses, or some such s**t, and how everything will be made a hundred percent better if we just let the foxes run the henhouse.
No quote mining involved. Ratzi still gets an F- in humanity.
“Ratzi still gets an F- in humanity.” Agreed, although his utter fallibility certainly makes him human (despite any papal magic).
However, while you *could* interpret this as an implicit stab at secularists, he explicitly blames priests
“[The Church's] garment is torn – by the sins of priests.”
Note that the Church, in this context, doesn’t mean the Catholic church. It means *everyone* (abusing Wikipedia: “The phrase is intended to set forth the four marks, or identifying signs, of the Christian Church—unity, holiness, universality, and apostolicity—and is based on the premise that all true Christians form a single united group founded by the apostles.”)
You should probably read “All Christians are devastated, because of the sins of priests.”
My point is, that his statement is more nuanced than it’s being portrayed, certainly not worth the level of hysterics. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty to criticize of course (is uberconservatism going to fly in and save the day?), but really, allcaps doesn’t cut it.
That’s because he would be a moron if he pretended that the priests did absolutely nothing wrong. All he’s doing is saying that the priests are just as guilty of sin as everyone else — which is another really shitty thing to say, by the way, because there isn’t much that compares to taking advantage of children — and then blaming society and secularists and everyone else for leading the poor pitiful priests astray, and prescribing that we all go back to trusting the church as an absolute authority to make it better.
Foxes in the god damned henhouse.
As for “hysterics” (really?), loaded words aside, you don’t think it’s worth getting upset over that a nasty gremlin is flaunting his authority as a churchleader to pass the buck (again) on eons of child molestation by other people in authority, which HE employs, while suggesting that it’ll all be okay if we shut up the dissenters and go back into the loving arms of the poor, weak priesties, who don’t mean to hurt all those poor kids, but if we’d only just accept their authority as absolute there’d be no upset?
Not to mention, being blamed unjustly through lies for the ills of the world and the worldwide buggery of children is a pretty good reason to be “hysterical” — if by “hysterical” you mean pretty damned indignant and pissed off.
It’s not a mere interpretation, by the way. Ol’ Ratzi and his cronies just love harping on how nasty atheists and secularists are by making strawmen out of moral relativism (because we just plum have no morals, what with not following the Christian bible and all), and how we’re totally going to be the downfall of humanity with our nasty unbiblical thinkings.
I don’t understand why anyone would want to defend this shitfest for any reason. Ratzi is a monster and he’s beyond contempt, no matter how carefully he picks his words.
[...] Pope Says Back in the Good Old Days, Child Rape Was Not So Bad. Read more [...]
“That’s because he would be a moron if he pretended that the priests did absolutely nothing wrong.”
So are we going to pretend he did?
“All he’s doing is saying that the priests are just as guilty of sin as everyone else — which is another really shitty thing to say, by the way, because there isn’t much that compares to taking advantage of children — and then blaming society and secularists and everyone else for leading the poor pitiful priests astray, and prescribing that we all go back to trusting the church as an absolute authority to make it better.”
He agrees with you, child molestation is evil. His primary concern here in this part of the statement is to absolutely condemn those priests who deluded themselves into thinking they weren’t doing as bad a thing, I mean, they genuinely cared for those children right? He’s unconditionally condemning what they did. Because he can make this point within a framework of absolute morality, expecting him of all people to argue from a position of moral relativism for this purpose is unreasonable. Moral relativism has problems. Moral absolutism does too. Besides, moral absolutism doesn’t require religion anyway, see Platonism, no need to go back to trusting the church to have a slice of it.
“As for “hysterics” (really?), loaded words aside, you don’t think it’s worth getting upset over that a nasty gremlin is flaunting his authority as a churchleader to pass the buck (again) on eons of child molestation by other people in authority, which HE employs”
He emphatically points to the wrongdoing by priests (at very least), so saying he’s passing the buck (at least in this statement) isn’t true. The elephant in the room, of course, is covering up of the cases of molestation as well, but we’re addressing what he said, not what he didn’t say.
“, while suggesting that it’ll all be okay if we shut up the dissenters and go back into the loving arms of the poor, weak priesties, who don’t mean to hurt all those poor kids, but if we’d only just accept their authority as absolute there’d be no upset? ”
Again, from his statement: “We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred. We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen. We must discover a new resoluteness in faith and in doing good. We must be capable of doing penance. We must be determined to make every possible effort in priestly formation to prevent anything of the kind from happening again.”
Clearly, he’s not saying he wants everything to stay the same. Does he genuinely want to do this? Are his proposed solutions correct / practical? I think his approach has been appalling, but at least can we be honest about what he said in his statement?
“Not to mention, being blamed unjustly through lies for the ills of the world and the worldwide buggery of children is a pretty good reason to be “hysterical” — if by “hysterical” you mean pretty damned indignant and pissed off.”
Absolutely right, but taking one of his statements and misrepresenting it in an indignant and pissed off way only preaches to the choir (myself included). I’m fine with being pissed off with him, I’m constantly pissed off with him really, and he’s already hung himself in many other cases. There’s no need to turn this statement of his into something it’s not. It deflates the post, and I expect more from this blog. Headlines like “Pope’s child porn ‘normal’ claim sparks outrage among victim” or “Pope Says Back in the Good Old Days, Child Rape Was Not So Bad” are dishonest, sensationalist drivel.
“It’s not a mere interpretation, by the way. Ol’ Ratzi and his cronies just love harping on how nasty atheists and secularists are by making strawmen out of moral relativism (because we just plum have no morals, what with not following the Christian bible and all), and how we’re totally going to be the downfall of humanity with our nasty unbiblical thinkings.”
Fine, but in this case, he’s clearly focusing on priestly conduct, and the moral base for proper priestly conduct (in his view).
“I don’t understand why anyone would want to defend this shitfest for any reason. Ratzi is a monster and he’s beyond contempt, no matter how carefully he picks his words.”
Attacking this shitfest poorly is the best way of defending it.
Evan, I wish I could go back in time to when you were a little kid and f**k the s**t out of you, for Christ.
Frisky:
The statement is not more nuanced. Please stop the spin and serving as an apologist. The Pope tried to mislead people about attitudes in the 1970′s and justify the abominable behavior by priests. I was a kid in the 70′s and I distinctly remember child rapists were seen back then as evil. The Pope’s historical revisionism is laughable and tragic.
You show an inability to cut through the Pope’s nonsense and comprehend the essence of his speech. Indeed, you are clearly his target audience and one of those he helped to fool with his disgusting speech.
Reporting on the true meaning of his talk is not strip mining quotes, but an exercise in common sense and reading comprehension. This Pope should be on his hands and knees repenting, not trying to distort the 1970s and use the decade as an absurd alibi for his church’s evil deeds.
Frisky said “Note that the Church, in this context, doesn’t mean the Catholic church. It means *everyone*.”.
That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve every heard anyone claim. The majority of people on the planet have nothing to do with “the church” or any church. To say “the church” refers to everyone is profoundly stupid.
Frisky, your concern (trolling) is noted.
The pope ain’t blaming the priests and asking that the church improve itself. If he did, he wouldn’t have covered s**t up like he did for all those decades, nor would he have gone, “Oh, the priests made a mistake, but it’s because society is so eeeevil and everyone loves child porn and they’re just going with the times! We’re sooooo sorry! Come back, please? I promise we won’t hurt you anymore! We can’t get better unless you love us!”
If the pope were using this rhetoric in a personal relationship, it would send up ‘Abuse’ red flags all the f**k over the place.
Your apologetics aren’t making anything better. It’s just making it obvious that you’re a concern troll and that the pope’s weasely logic apparently does fool people.
Wayne,
I don’t consider finding a totally implausible intention behind his statement to be “[comprehending] the essence of his speech”. Why the hell would he bother trying to be “clever” in a way which utterly destroys any credibility he might have had? Benedict isn’t an idiot. He’s not a Porno Pete or a Bryan Ficher, no matter how much easier that would make our lives.
Sadly, this isn’t about us, at least not in this instance, although we certainly end up doing very badly as a result (because his destructive vision of moral philosophy is obviously hostile to LGBTs).
He’s addressing first and foremost, top vatican officials (“christmas greetings to the roman curia”). What he’s saying places great emphasis on internal church politics, how the Roman Catholic Church sees itself, and what he envisions for its future.
Benedict has, even before the scandal *really* broke, been trying to turn back the clocks on what he sees as progressive taint within his church. Here’s a column from the NYT back in 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/weekinreview/29fisher.html?_r=1
The mistake I’m trying to point out, is to assume that he wants to keep numbers up at all costs, any cost. Especially relevant, is a quote from 1997 where Benedict says: “Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intense struggle against evil and bring good into the world – that let God in.”
He wants a more orthodox church, and if the church shrinks, so be it. He’d like to avoid it, but he feels that the cause is noble enough. Popes are, however, limited by the Church’s historical inertia, so the author of the article wrote (almost prophetically): “Some experts question whether there is much any pope can do – apart from some seismic, and highly unlikely, reorientation of the church – to scare off large numbers of worshippers.” … How far we’ve come since then.
In this context, I see a man who has been offered an ugly, entirely unwanted, but ultimately useful way of getting what he wants. He has a blunt instrument with which to say that the precious little progress that the Roman Catholic Church has made since Vatican II is a corruption, or at least should be treated with deep suspicion. At worst, he’s wielding it cynically and consciously. At best, he’s saying “I told you so”. The problem, according to him, is that his church wasn’t Roman Catholic enough, look at it now! Fortunately, he’s been working on a solution all along. He’s going to weather the storm and steer the church to a new, squeaky clean orthodoxy as he sees it.
In this speech, he isn’t trying to excuse the pedophile priests at all. He’s not accusing them of a relative evil, he’s accusing them of an absolute evil, and the conceit of ever thinking that it could be anything but absolute!
If anything he’s using them as a way of pulling down progressive elements in the church as the ultimate cause of the immorality. The fact that he’s pulling down secular progressive elements is entirely incidental (again, in this particular speech). Why else would he pull “even in the realm of Catholic theology” into it otherwise? If the church shrinks, the bits that remain are going to be the ones he wants to hang around.
What I’m saying may not be entirely the case, but I hardly consider it to be a failure of comprehension, or not taking into account the political climate in which the speech was made. Much less worthy was it worthy of your STFU. I’m pointing out that assuming his actions are all about damage control is a terrible oversimplification.
Sara, I wish you could too. Sincerely. But only because you’re you.
Thanks for sharing your point of view Frisky. Happy New Year.
Frisky said “Benedict isn’t an idiot.”.
He most certainly is. Only an idiot would try to place blame for priest child molestation on secular society instead of the priest themselves. Only an idiot would expect the public to be fooled by this pathetic attempt to shift blame away from the perpetrators.
Sara said “Evan, I wish I could go back in time to when you were a little kid and f**k the s**t out of you, for Christ.”.
Evan said “Sara, I wish you could too. Sincerely. But only because you’re you.”.
What the hell??