Before I launch into this, first a disclaimer: I am an ex-Catholic. I was raised in the church, started having problems with Christianity in general in the third grade, stopped believing as a young teenager, and quit going to mass — or any other religious service — around the time I went to college. I haven’t looked back, don’t miss it, and don’t have a need for religion in my life.
That said, I have no problem with those who do believe, as long as they are sincere in their beliefs, are consistent about them, and don’t try to force me to follow their rules (a tall order in our increasingly fundamentalist society).
On to the pope, the Catholic Church, and the tragedy of what they’ve done regarding pedophile priests.
It’s bad enough that the church has been systematically protecting pedophile priests by refusing to report their crimes to civilian authorities so the offenders could be properly punished. It’s bad enough that the church hierarchy deliberately moved priests to other parishes to help them escape prosecution. It’s bad enough that the parishes these priests were sent to were often poor and isolated, which meant the offending priest could continue his molestations without fear of being reported. It’s bad enough that then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) apparently looked the other way or ignored reports of abuse until it was too late for anything to be done. It’s bad enough that the church never defrocked any of these priests, including one heinous bastard who molested several hundred deaf boys at a special school he was charged to run. This clown made a personal plea to Cardinal Ratzinger to let him die in peace — a request Ratzinger honored.
But on top of all those horrendous things, when the church’s crimes came to light — and let’s be clear about this, these are crimes — and the pope’s personal pastor had the gall to say that criticisms of Benedict are “akin to anti-Semitism,” then it’s obviously too late for this institution. These men are too far gone with worries of protecting their reputations and the reputation of the church to matter any more. They are no longer not just irrelevant, they are actively dangerous.
The current hierarchy of the Catholic Church needs to be abolished. It can’t or won’t function as it should, and won’t reform itself. Because of that, it needs to go.
Please understand I’m not advocating the destruction of Roman Catholicism. Not in the least. I’m saying that the institutional hierarchy of the church has become so dysfunctional that it is beyond repairing.
And it’s better in the long term for the church itself — the church these evil men are claiming to protect — for the men at the top to go. The scandal is so huge, the taint so enormous, that an entire generation of Catholics might just wash their hands and move on. And who, other than pedophiles (who seem to get preferential protection) would want to become a priest in this climate?
It’s better for everyone for the institutional structure that allowed this to happen, again and again and again, to come to an end.
– written on my iPad
