The New Inquisition

Hot off the press...or more accurately...recently received via the internet machine...  It's the Urban Cowgirls!

My nose is HUGELY out-of-joint due to my failure to attend the Big Island festivities of the past week.  Golf, dinners, brunches and now horse back riding by some of my best friends.  And they seem to be enjoying themselves.  WITHOUT ME!

Exemplia gratia:

I got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle

They said "oafs" not "oats" you four-legged fools!   

In other news, my resentment about not being in Hawaii with my pals is compounded by the weather forecast which is truly crappy.  Tomorrow we are slated for southeast winds to 45 mph with rain - heavy at times.  This is an OCTOBER forecast for god's sake....

So, time to vent.  And I've been building one up...

I have, from time to time, said some pretty nasty things about the Catholic Church.  I have done so - always with trepidation - because I have immense and genuine respect for many Catholic affiliated institutions that provide critical and very high quality services to all Americans.  Church affiliated health care and education has always been part of the backbone of American life.  And I have many devout Catholic friends who validate their faith by acts of kindness and volunteerism.  A good number of them put me to shame in that regard.

Nevertheless, I find the Church leadership disgusting and absurd.

I bit my tongue last month when the Pontiff threw American nuns under the bus and appointed an Inquisitor to root-out the disobedient.  As near as I can tell from the press accounts, the disobedience consists primarily of endorsing our nation's new health care law and not being sufficiently abusive of homosexuals and women who seek family planning services.

What put me over the top, however, was the story I read yesterday in the New York Times regarding Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland.

It is my strongly held belief, based on everything that I have read on the subject, that Cardinal Brady is representative of a very large portion of the Catholic clergy ordained prior to the VERY late years of the past century - most of whom  had very concrete reasons to know or suspect that the rape or other sexual abuse of children by priests was an all too common occurrence.

Some are calling on Cardinal Brady to resign.  His particular public relations problem is that as a young priest he served as scribe (some say this understates his role) at a 1975 internal Church inquiry regarding a pedophile priest who was subsequently passed around the country from parish to parish to continue to rape and abuse children.   The future Cardinal Brady, like virtually every other Church official in Ireland at the time, didn't think there was anything going on here worth reporting to the secular authorities.

All the principals of that particular case are dead or have signed confidentiality (settlement) agreements with the Church.

This is all depressingly familiar.  BUT WHAT GOT MY GOAT was the immediate reaction of the Vatican to the calls for Cardinal Brady's resignation:

Following the program, the church was quick to defend the cardinal. In a statement it said that in 1975 “no State or church guidelines for responding to allegations of child abuse existed in Ireland.”

On Wednesday, a Vatican official, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, told Ireland’s national radio RTE that Cardinal Brady had “fulfilled his duties well.” He said the church in Ireland needed leaders who had “learned the hard way and are determined to protect children.” He qualified this afterward, saying: “They have learned because they have realized that you have to act immediately.” 

 So there you have it, no state or Church guidelines about reporting CHILD RAPE AND MOLESTATION so no foul. And since he's so familiar with CHILD RAPE AND MOLESTATION he now realizes it's important.

I can well understand why the Vatican cannot allow Cardinal Brady to resign because his resignation might well call into question the legitimacy of the ENTIRE Church leadership.  

It's not my place to hold that leadership accountable (if it was, they'd have been under the bus a long time ago).

Accountability is the job of my Catholic friends or God.  And I don't believe in God.