Shed a tear for the sufferings of the Vatican
Un.Be.Lievable. They still don’t get it. They still think they are the victims. Still! Half the world has explained it to them with one voice, and they still don’t get it!
The Pope’s preacher today likened recent attacks on the pontiff over the Catholic sex abuse scandal to the “most shameful acts of anti-Semitism”.
Not ‘attacks by priests on children’ but ‘attacks’ meaning criticism by victims and observers on the pope who helped conceal and perpetuate those very attacks by priests on children – that’s what they’re comparing to anti-Semitism! It’s – it’s – it exhausts my capacity to revile it. The self-pity, the world-blotting egocentrism, the blank inability to grasp the misery of people outside their own circle, the moral imbecility – I lack the words to express my disgust.
Father Cantalamessa, noting that this year the Jewish festival of Passover and Easter fell during the same week, said that Jews throughout history had been the victims of “collective violence” and drew a comparison with current attacks on the Church over the scandal. Speaking during a ceremony at St Peter’s Basilica commemorating Christ’s Passion, he read to the congregation, which included the Pope, part of a letter that he had received from an unidentified Jewish friend, who said that he was following “with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the Pope and all the faithful of the whole world. The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”
Tell that to the Magdalens, to the little girls who tore up their hands making rosaries every day, to the children who were raped by the guy who was supposed to be (as Joseph Hoffmann tells us) ‘another Christ.’ Tell them you’re being treated the way Jews were treated in Poland and Germany and Russia from 1942 to 1945. Go ahead. We dare you.
The Catholic Church really should know better than to try pulling a Godwin like that.
Various Jewish organizations aren’t all too happy about it either… See for instance this BBC report:
The Vatican is already backpedaling, by the way, saying that the priest did not speak as an official of the Vatican. While preaching in the St. Peter’s Basillica. In the Vatican. In front of the Pope. Good luck explaining that to everyone.
“Last century we tried godlessness on a grand scale and the effects were devastating: Nazism, Stalinism, Pol Pot-ery, mass murder, abortion and broken relationships – all promoted by state-imposed atheism,” said the Catholic Bishop of Parramatta, Anthony Fisher in his Easter address. “[It’s] the illusion that we can build a better life without God.”
Last century, (and the one before and the one before that…) defenceless children by the thousand were pushed into trying theism, RC style, and had experiences that will haunt and plague them for the rest of their lives, with unknowable flow-on effects. Just one example: Adolph Hitler himself was raised a Catholic, and God only knows what caused him to turn out the way he did, but one can have a guess.
The child abuse scandal has shot the credibility of the RC Church to ribbons. One must always assume that when an RC cleric attacks the Devil, it is actually the Devil in the familiar black clerical powergarb doing the talking.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/02/2863269.htm?section=justin
“…the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”
So, are we to take it that antisemitism might be okay if it villifies Jews as individuals rather than as a collective, and if it is limited to its less “shameful” aspects?
And, somehow, I rather doubt that any Jew but an RC-concocted one would use the phrase “the faithful of the whole world”.
Then there’s this:
“Last week, the center-left daily La Repubblica wrote, without attribution, that ‘certain Catholic circles’ believed the criticism of the church stemmed from ‘a New York “Jewish lobby”.'”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/world/europe/03church.html
BBC News carries the story: ‘Outrage at anti-Semitism comparison by Pope preacher’ at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8601389.stm
Father Raniero Cantalamessa is clanking around St Peter’s with one foot in a bucket, of guess what.
The more they try to pass the buck and explain themselves away, the deeper in they go. For them it’s a no-win situation: damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
They should try to switch the topic of conversation to the weather. Or climate change maybe.
Oh, they ‘get it’ alright!
Just as when a Mafia Don claims to use non-violent persuaion techniques.
They are dliberately lying.
That has bee the practise for the last couple of millennia, and it ani’t about to change.
Expect more dissembling threats & fraud, much more, as the RCC crashes & burns.
More evidence that if the church were an individual ,it would have all the qualities of a dangerous psychopath-in this case a total inability to accept responsibility for one’s actions.
I wonder if anyone’s actually seen Cantalamessa’s letter from a “Jewish friend.”
I have this mixed in with SA politics on my blog – basically asking why evil people are so whiny.
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/expensive/2010/04/03/evil-and-whiny/
They’ve lost the plot. In fact they never had the plot.
This is Good News for Modern Man. For we are blessed.
The thing that worries me about the RCC’s apparent determination to destroy itself is that it may strengthen the hand of Islam.
To add to woes of the Catholics, Rowan Williams has given an interview to the BBC in which he says the Catholic Church in Ireland has lost all credibility.
The BBC report is here.
For once Williams was easy to understand. I think it was payback for the Pope trying to poach all the Bigots from the Church of England.
The remarks about anti-semitism seem particularly offensive and insensitive given the role of the church in promoting anti-semitism in the past.
I’m not quite sure of the exact definition of “irony”, but the Catholic Church mentioning the “most shameful acts of anti-Semitism” must set some kind of record.
I mean… well…
Spoing! as Jesus and Mo would say.
Unsurprisingly there’s been an absolute rebellious furore in Germany.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7086293.ece
This is better than my comment:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/vatican-%27really-didn%27t-know-about-the-holocaust%27-201004032614/
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin states that Ireland is traumatised by what Archbishop of Canterbury, said. I say: cead mile failte, Ireland, to the daily world of victims-survivors of institutional abuse – there’s a welcome on the big black trauma mat. We can now surely start afresh in listening to each other properly, seeing we are now on a level playing trauma field.
http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/national-news/archbishop-stunned-by-comments-2124316.html
Given that anti-Semitism and child fucking are both long standing traditions of the Catholic Church, there is a certain element of truth to the claim.
“Archbishop of Canterbury said to the Beeb; “I was speaking to an Irish friend recently who was saying that it’s quite difficult in some parts of Ireland to go down the street wearing a clerical collar now.’
Dr Williams is so correct. There are some clerics who do take their dog-collars off whenever they go out of their own territory, for fear of being accosted Dog-collars are not always a very spiritual becoming sight anymore – only a symbol of cover up of child abuse.
Some clerics would also not like to be caught dead reading publicly a book such as “Beyond Belief” by Colm O’ Gorman. It would bring about a kind of fear akin to that of being caught red-handed flipping through a porn book.
You know there was a time in the past when the priest went around rural areas with his hawthorn stick lashing away at young people who were holding hands. The priest also clung for his dear life on to the tender ears of youngsters who were deemed by him to be horse-playing. Has not the wheel gone full circle now that the priest is so utterly ashamed to be seen wearing his religious regalia in the same areas for fear of backlash. They are now getting as good as they gave.
Of course they think they’re victims! After all, if you’re right, but people keep telling you you’re wrong, then you must be being victimised. It’s just that simple. They will never get the point. Infallible people can’t.
Not only victims today but thoughtful and helpful teachers in the past.
Here is a piece of sick priestly rationalization to ruin your breakfast, about the ordained felon who worked w/deaf students in Wisconsin US. From Sat Apr 3 NY Times:
Father Murphy sought boys of a certain profile: medium build with black or blond hair, loyal and in need of affection or attention, sexually ignorant and lacking in social skills.
“It was sex education for them,” Ms. Walter quoted Father Murphy as saying in her notes. “They were confused about sex. There was rampant homosexuality among the older boys. I fixed the problem.”
Twisted. Then twisted again. Then thrice twisted. My head is starting to explode.
He fixed the problem!!
Oh I get it – he fixed the problem by putting them off sex for life. Generous fella.
“Twisted. Then twisted again. Then thrice twisted.” was also the perpetrator of heinous crimes of handicapped boys in Cork. I encountered some of them in the past at Dublin’s Aislinn Centre, which is run by Goldenbridge survivor – Christine Buckley.
The religious protect them to the grave. They should be defrocked by the Vatican – but they are not.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/belgium-will-be-asked-to-take-jailed-paedophile-cleric-317563.html
Where is St Tony – king of his very own solitary Abrahamic Faith Foundation – when he is desperately needed this Holy Week in the boxing ring to restore equilibrium, thus illuminating the hearts of these princes of Christ in time for the resurrection of Christ Jesus. Surely to goodness he should be in the middle of the fray trying to sort out the two archbishops and their ‘credibility’ argument – when one says “only some damage has been done to the church and his opponent on the other hand contradicts that in maintaining that all credibility is lost in the church.
Never mind the real victims in all of this me lords.
I suppose that next, the Pope will claim that he’s being persecuted just like Galileo.
I foresee a new bumper sticker:
Catholic Priests — Not Perfect, Just Forgiven
Yes, St Tony is uncharacteristically quiet lately, isn’t he? Second thoughts, maybe?
Good one, Sastra. And all too plausible.
Adorning a Middle-Eastern tan and sounding a touch American of late – tells me, he must be obviously having dinner and breakfasting with his prospective Blairite Faith Foundation followers. Too busy to bother with trivial one dimensional god-bothering stuff.
Sarah AB: that was my thought exactly! I guess the Church knows so much about anti-Semitism because it created so much of it, huh?
Let me lay out the difference for the confused Catholics out there: Jews were falsely accused of ritually abusing Christian children. The Catholic Church actually did that. See?
A palpable hit.
There’s your Easter egg, Joe!