It's Week 6 of Lent. As all good Catholics know, this is penultimate week when Satan will pull out all the stops to tempt your weak-willed ass. Everyday will bring with it another chance to damn yourself to eternal agony. What will it be? A bite of chocolate? A sip of wine? Getting a blumpkin from your best friend's wife while eating a steak on a Friday? So many ways to blow it. In the meantime, enjoy this week's edition of Lental Soup where we explore the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Get emotionally scarred after the jump.
A long time ago, the Catholic Church decided that priests shouldn't marry. It was in the early Middle Ages, or there about, when the Pope realized that priests and bishops were amassing great wealth and power in their parishes, which then was inherited by the family upon the clergyman's death. This was problem for Rome. Most of the revenues generated from a particular parish were staying put, or going to the bishop or priest's family. Meanwhile, the Pope's was living in abject poverty back in Rome.
What a shithole.So the Church, did what it does best: changed the rules. Citing the acetic life that Jesus was believed to have lived, the Pope declared that all clergymen should live similarly. The first thing on the chopping block was sex. Priests were to remain unmarried and celibate from here on out.
Now, all that regional money could flow directly to Rome, which was good news for the Pope since he was developing an increasingly costly Crusade addiction.
And that was it. The clergy accepted a life of celibacy, and proudly emulated the difficult but spiritually fulfilling life of their Savior.
"Child, please."Well, not quite. Like all the rest of the human race, priests need sex. It's natural. Deny people that need, and you can bet they'll find a way to fill it. For some of the clergy -- the Pope included -- that was the time honored tradition of keeping a mistress. For others, it manifested itself in some decidedly less healthy ways -- namely, diddling little kids.
While we don't have much historical documentation, the twentieth-century is a gold mine of priest sex abuse cases. In America, and most recently, Ireland and Germany, case after case refers to not only the rampancy of this despicable behavior but also the systematic covering up of these reports by the Church itself. So the put that more clearly, the Catholic Church has a pedophile problem that it willfully covered up for decades (or more) until they finally got caught, at which point, they pretty much denied any institutional culpability, and in many cases blamed the victims.
Yeah, that was our reaction, too.Let's paint a picture here: In the 1950s-1970s (and even earlier) there are a number of American dioceses reporting a disturbing amount of allegations about certain priests. Now, we all knew who these guys were; those creepy ones who showed up in too-tight shorty-shorts always volunteering to coach or take the boys on weekend retreats. You could spot these pervs a mile away.
But the church didn't do a thing. When someone does come forward, they hush them up, and move the priest to another parish where he has his pick from a fresh crop of nubile, innocent youngsters, starting the sick process all over again.
Then one day, little Timmy comes home from that rafting trip all despondent and melancholy. He starts drinking at 14, and ends up in rehab by 19. Then, 20 years later, after hours of therapy he finally opens up about his lost weekend with Father McFeely. His life has essentially been destroyed, and that sick fuck goes free. And the really sad part is that he has likely done this to a dozen others. And that's just one of them.
Now, at any time, does the Church step back and assess the situation? Do they consider revising the celibacy thing, or confront this scandal head on? No, instead they cover it up, arrogantly assuming that they won't get caught. But something else happened in the twentieth century; more and more people stopped giving a flying fuck about what the Catholic Church said. As the Church became less influential and people started to question its authority, their veil of secrecy was about as shredded as Father McFeely's cut-offs.
Defenders of the Church has argued that there should be a statute of limitations on people coming forward, and that the multimillion dollar lawsuits have bankrupted some dioceses. To that we say, tough shit. The real big problem for us isn't the individual's sin, it's the institutional sin of omission. Any organization will have people who fuck up, who do terrible things. It's then the responsibility of the organization to remove these people and repair the damage they have done.
Conversely, the Church not only created the circumstances that led to these abuses by not letting priests get laid, but then actively covered everything up and did nothing to stop these assholes from doing this again. For that, we have no sympathy. Bleed the motherfuckers for all they're worth. This whole ordeal is especially disgraceful when you remember that this is a religious institution, and as such, should hold itself to a higher standard. After all, wasn't the whole celibacy thing designed to get the clergy to live more like Jesus? Maybe, they should check their WWJD bracelet on their wrist next time their jerking off an altar boy.
At this point in the scandal, you'd think Rome would take a harder stance. But as recently as last week, Pope Benedict issued a tepid response to the Irish scandal, while remaining silent on the one in his homeland of Germany, where many of the allegations took place in his former archdiocese on his watch. Awesome.
Until the Church takes some real action, it is in no position to exercise authority over its flock, ask for mercy from the abused, or complain whenever people make fun of photos like this:
Maybe, you should just bend over and take it.
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