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The news that the Belgian victims of abuse at the hands of Catholic priests are attempting to sue the Vatican should not surprise any of us. There have been various attempts over the years demanding that the church tries to put right the hideous crimes performed by its members, including a high profile effort to have the Pope arrested on his trip to Britain last year, headed by prominent atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. Their lack of success comes as no shock to me; the Catholic Church has, after all, built its defenses tall and strong, impenetrable to the opposition it faces.
What I do find shocking, and detestable, is the absence of support by those in power for the people who have been brave enough to stand up to the church. If you care to examine our own government, for example, you will notice that not only have they failed to provide anything resembling encouragement for those seeking justice, last year they actually rolled out the red carpet to the man at the centre of the scandal. All at the expense of the tax payer, of course.
How can we as a nation feel comfortable with this? How can we, on the one hand, send our troops to far off countries to emancipate those worse off than us from terrible tyranny, and on the other, show an unflinching solidarity with an organisation that fails to move away from its arcane beliefs in subjugation? The covering up of child rape and molestation is a heinous crime, which should be met with appropriate disgust and animosity. In this particular case, it does not seem to have elicited this response from those who could really make a difference.
What makes matters worse is that the rot in the Catholic Church that allows these crimes to continue has spread all the way to the top. It was, after all, the future Pope Benedict XVI who in 1985, whilst still a bishop, refused to defrock a Californian priest with a known history of sexually molesting children, citing “the good of the universal church” as his explanation. It was Pope Benedict XVI, this time in his current position, who offered immunity and safety in the Vatican to Cardinal Law, former head of the Archdiocese of Boston. Law resigned after it was revealed that he approved the transfer of Rev. John Geoghan to another parish under the knowledge that he had raped at least 7 boys. These are just two examples of the conniving that goes on amongst those who hold lofty positions in the Vatican.
Even if child molestation was the only issue towards which the church has displayed a loathsome attitude, the mutual friendship it has with governments of the world would surely cause us all to raise an eyebrow at the very least. The fact that these attitudes stretch across a manifold of issues make the respect it enjoys nothing short of nauseating. For example, the church preaches that people such as these disgusting paedophiles can, merely through the act of asking for forgiveness, experience an eternity of bliss in heaven after they die. The same generosity is not offered to those who experience love with someone of the same sex. This is viewed as, to quote from the famous Leviticus verse, an “abomination.” To see this as anything other than hateful babble is to surrender your own integrity as a moral human being.
The Pope, as an individual, deserves no more respect than the organisation he governs. I would ask you all to estimate how many lives you think have been ruined directly by the Pope’s stand on HIV, which as he has preached in the past “cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.” I would challenge anyone to come up with a more destructive, divisive statement. It has undoubtedly led to the deaths of thousands of people at the hands of this terrible illness. For a man who is meant to be a beacon of morality to those in need, the Pope certainly has a lot of questions to answer.
The church’s reluctance to budge from a set of archaic beliefs derived from a book written by second hand authors nearly 2000 years ago should give us pause for reflection. It has, in my opinion, become impossible for any self-respecting government to associate itself with this administration without experiencing palpable cognitive dissonance. It is not until we start to question the actions of religious leaders ruling as demagogues that we can truly start to claim we are moving in the right direction, and fighting for freedom the world over.
Update [23:30 – 12/06/2011] – The author Sam Horti has requested that the sub-headline be changed. The original sub-headline, which was chosen by the editors, read, "The Catholic Church is not a force for good in this world."
