The Christian churches are the conscience of our country
Lawrence Lessig notes that the pope told victims of priestly rape in Malta last week that the church “was doing all it could to investigate abuse accusations and find ways to safeguard children in the future.”
But it’s not, Lessig says. In fact it’s doing the opposite. It’s defending a New Jersey statute immunizing charities against negligence even if their employees acted “willfully, wantonly, recklessly, indifferently — even criminally.”
What was truly astonishing was the appearance of the New Jersey Catholic Conference in the case. As its Web site explains, the conference “represents the Catholic bishops of New Jersey on matters of public policy,” because “the Catholic Church calls for a different kind of political engagement: one shaped by the moral convictions of well-formed consciences and focused on the dignity of every human being, the pursuit of the common good and the protection of the weak and the vulnerable.”
Yet the “well-formed consciences” of the conference had not entered the case on behalf of the weak and the vulnerable. The Catholic Conference had filed a brief in support of the insurance company, to defend a rule that would have left institutions — like the church — immune from responsibility even if employees “criminally” protected an abuser.
Meanwhile in New York state there is an effort to reform the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse, which currently gives victims all of five years after turning 18 to sue.
At the core of the opposition to this bill is heavy lobbying by the New York Catholic Conference; according to published reports, the conference has hired top-dollar lobbyists to kill the bill. At least one bishop is reported to have threatened to close schools and parishes in legislators’ districts if they vote for the bill. And as Marci Hamilton, a law professor at Cardozo University, has written, bishops “publicly rail against statute of limitation reform as though it were the equivalent of mandatory abortion.”
Once again we find that there is no bottom to this story. It just keeps going farther and farther and farther down. The Catholic church is a sanctified Mafia, which means it is a Mafia with enormous political power and clout. It is a Mafia that gets to veto women’s rights in the US by writing health care legislation to exclude abortion. It is a Mafia that exhales endless fraudulent rhetoric about its concern for the weak and vulnerable, all the while grinding the weak and vulnerable to powder.
Gordon Brown however is still telling us that
The Christian churches are the conscience of our country, always ready to bear witness to the truth and to remind us of our responsibilities to what the Bible calls ‘the least of these’. I am incredibly grateful for all that you do to ensure our public square is more than a place of transaction and exchange and remains always, as it should be, a place of shared values and social justice.
No bottom in sight; bullshit all the way down.
This kind of thing simply makes me sick, and yet Britain thought it had to apologise for a “pretend” FO plan for the pope’s visit, which addressed many of the moral issues that the roman catholic church (I will never capitalise this again) ducks and dives over. As you say, it’s bullshit all the way down. These people are not truly moral. The rcc represents an absolute moral ideology that its leaders believe (falsely) is founded in revelation and natural law, but they will do anything to protect from practically any crime the institution that supposedly represents this law. It’s vile and should be repeatedly and publicly denounced as such.
In Canada, at the moment, the government, composed chiefly of fundamentalist christians, both catholic and protestant, an aid package for women’s health is being mandated – neither proposed nor justified in the Commons – which would exclude any program which includes abortion. This is what christians do, if anyone needs reminding. They carve out little moral islands for themselves, and then sit on them, as if impregnable, though the sea threatens to flood them with justice and mercy. Religion is not just the problem. Religion is the enemy of all things good and human. I spit on all things religious.
[…] Lawrence Lessig notes that the pope told victims of priestly rape in Malta last week that the church “was doing all it could to investigate abuse accusations and find ways to safeguard children in the future.” But it’s not, Lessig says. View full post on christian – Google Blog Search […]
The FO memo perhaps showed how the rank and file view the pope, whatever the mandarins might find it convenient to pronounce.
Meally-mouthed semi-apologies on the one hand, vicious counter attacks on victims on the the other. Pious claims to have reformed, fighting tooth and nail against real reform. I keep asking myself how low they can get. I guess I always knew that the answer was, ‘Lower than you can possibly imagine.’
Eric,
Somehow reminded of my favourite old hippy, Roy Harper.
Can’t find a YouTube clip, but
http://www.lyrics007.com/Roy%20Harper%20Lyrics/The%20Spirit%20Lives%20Lyrics.html
Well, Don, since I have no choice about the ‘old’ bit, I am somewhat mollified by the hippy characterisation! And I’m rather taken with this from “The Black Cloud of Islam” (only I think the cloud stretches just a bit farther):
That’s possibly overstating it, but anyone who ends up subject to any religious organisation in the absolute way that such organisations normally demand might well wish to be six feet under the sod instead of walking bound upon it. New Hampshire’s got it just about right.
Obviously didn’t format that quote right!
OB: Bullshit all the way down, with a sanctified Mafia sitting on top of it. Please accept this Concept of the Week award, with grateful appreciation. And may I add a corollary: the higher the pile of bullshit you sit on top of, the more likely you are to drown in it.
I was just reading this morning the late Fred Halliday’s 2007 piece entitled ‘The world’s twelve worst ideas’. Here is the one he rated the very worst of all:
“Number one: The world’s population problems, and the spread of Aids, can be solved without the use of condoms
“This is not only the most dangerous, but also the most criminal, error of the modern world. Millions of people will suffer, and die premature and humiliating deaths, as a result of the policies pursued in this regard through the United Nations and related aid and public-health programmes. Indeed, there is no need to ask where the first mass murderers of the 21st century are; we already know, and their addresses besides: the Apostolic Palace, 0120 Vatican City, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC. Timely arrest and indictment would save many lives.”
The idea that there is a benign Big Old Man in the sky who created everything and that the Catholic Church is his principal agent on Earth, doing good all over the place and to whatever it touches (!) is the biggest turd in the pile. The reality is that the CC is corrupt from the top down, and even eclipses fundamentalist Islam for the gong as the most Satanic force on Earth.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization/worst_ideas_4228.jsp
‘Sanctified mafia’, a deliciously apposite term.
Thanks Ian.
I think I may have linked to that Fred Halliday article at the time – I’m pretty sure I remember reading it at least.