A Less Than Good Friday

Today is Good Friday, which commemorates a hippie getting the death penalty a really long time ago. In ancient times, the Romans crucified most folks by tying them to a cross. Since Jesus Christ was considered such a monumental pain in the ass to the future Italians, nails were used on him. And, as most Catholics will tell you, it left a mark.

Things have pretty much gone downhill for Catholicism ever since. When the One True Chuch wasn't conquering the known world through genocide during the Inquisition and the Crusades, it was quietly supportive of it during the Second World War.

Oh, and the Catholic Church has this thing with kidfucking, by which I mean that they like it. A lot. That's hardly a secret, particularly after lawsuits against the diocese of both Los Angeles and Boston cost them hundreds of millions of dollars.

Essentially what would happen is this; a priest would feel a kid up and when the Church found out about it, they would force the kid to sign a non-disclosure agreement and transfer the priest into the loving arms of new and exciting kids. And they did it for a long time.

The only problem is that, in most of the civilized world, that kind of behaviour constitutes obstruction of justice and a criminal conspiracy to molest children. This is the kind of thing that the FBI once accused the Branch Davidians of without any serious evidence at all, but are circumspect at best about regarding the Catholic Church, despite thousands of pages of civil discovery materials out there waiting to be investigated.

Before I go further, I should explain my relationship with the Church.

I was baptized and raised Catholic. However, by the time I was twelve years old, I understood that I agreed with virtually nothing that the Church stood for. From the concept of papal infallibility on down, I think it's nonsense. In fact, the pressure that the Church places on Catholic office holders to tow the party line makes me incredibly reluctant to vote for Catholic candidates because I don't think that it's fair for me to force someone to choose between their faith and their office. The Know-Nothings may have indeed known something.

Unlike most fair weather Catholics, I couldn't bring myself to spout nonsense like "Well, the Church is misguided on certain issues, like pre-marital sex, birth control, the place of women in the Church, war, the death penalty and homosexuality."

Horseshit. The Church is their clubhouse and they had their rules long before I - or any other living Catholic - was around to disagree with them. Moreover, I don't have the time, energy or inclination to try to reform an institution that precedes me by some two thousand years.

So I did about the only thing that I honestly could do: I refused confirmation when I was in the seventh grade and have strived for excommunication ever since. I refuse to pick and choose the things out of Rome that I happen to agree with, ignore the rest, and call myself devout. And if you're not devout, you have no business calling yourself a Catholic. Period. I strongly believe that if you can't live by the rules, you shouldn't wear the varsity jacket. To do otherwise dishonours both yourself and the Church.

There's also my belief that the Church as a whole should be prosecuted under racketeering laws for a continuing conspiracy to molest children to consider. I suspect that that sort of thing wouldn't make me the most popular guy at Sunday Mass.

In the last several weeks there have been multiple stories that have implicated not only Vatican City, but also the current Pope, in obstruction of justice and conspiracy, especially under American law.

Allow me to clarify. Having a minor, outside of the presence of a parent, guardian, or legal representative sign anything requiring him or her to not report a crime is an obstruction of justice. If a parent, guardian or legal representative were present, everyone would be guilty of obstruction. Covering up a crime, under any circumstances, is still a crime. And inducing someone to do so constitutes a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Then there's the broader conspiracy. American conspiracy laws are especially sneaky. They don't require a co-conspirator to even know that a conspiracy is afoot to make a case. For a conspiracy to be proven, there has to be what is called "an act in furtherance." If, for example, you want to blow up an airplane, but fuck it up, the government can prosecute you for conspiracy, even if you act alone. The travel agent's booking your flight, it can be argued, makes him or her an unknowing co-conspirator, because the purchase of the ticket is an act in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Now let's say that a parent goes to a bishop and says that the parish priest has been fucking the parent's child. If the bishop gets the parent to sign a non-disclosure agreement and moves the priest to another parish, being aware of existing allegations, that constitutes a clear conspiracy to both obstruct justice and molest other children. At a minimum, it constitutes criminal negligence. Try giving your car keys to someone who's clearly drunk and explaining to the cops that it isn't your fault that he killed a few folks with your car.

There is no morally defensible position for the Church to take in this case. Not one.

So they went for a completely indefensible position.

Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher on Friday likened accusations against the pope and the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal to “collective violence” suffered by the Jews.

The Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa said in a Good Friday homily with the pope listening in St. Peter's Basilica that a Jewish friend wrote to him to say the accusations remind him of the “more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”

What. The. Fuck? I think we have a new record-breaker in ballsiness.

Firstly, the Church sort of invented anti-Semistism. If you accept that, for a long time, Christians believed that Jews killed Christ, you have to accept that the accusation came from somewhere. Well, for centuries, the Catholic Church was the only Christian game in town. And the Church only retracted that slur in ... get ready for it ... 1962. You might think that Mel Gibson is a nut, but most Catholics wouldn't have as recently as 50 years ago.

Let's also explore for a moment what the “more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism” actually are. They have included slavery, Inquisition, mass-deportations and the stripping of citizenship from - at various times - England, France and Germany, massive and repeated murderous pogroms throughout Europe, and ... the Holocaust.

I'm not aware of Catholics ever suffering anything even remotely close to the "“more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism" and neither are you. The Jews have been accused of the most ridiculous shit in human history, while the Catholic Church has demonstrably has been involved in aiding and abetting kidfucking for at least decades.

There's just no compassion. None whatsoever. And to suggest that there is might itself be anti-Semitic. If nothing else, it's fucking obscene.

There's a case before the courts in Kentucky now where the plaintiffs would very much like to depose Pope Benedict XVI. The Vatican is defending the action by suggesting that the pope enjoys "Head of State Immunity," which I intend to argue in a later post is utter nonsense.

After all, it's Easter!



Update: Oh, how I miss the old-fashioned priesthood.