Like John Paul II, his successor Benedict XVI, is a staunch conservative on matters both spiritual and secular and he has demonstrated his conservatism by the promotion of radical conservatives to the church leadership. The United States Council of Bishops has become nearly indistinguishable from its yahoo cousins in the right-wing Republican evangelical establishment.
Given the honorable history of the many Catholic affiliated social institutions in this country - educational and health related in particular - it saddens me to see these institutions fall under the oppressive yoke of ecclesiastical tyranny. How can any Catholic hospital provide 21st century care if it is subject to the arbitrary decrees of clerics living in the middle ages? Well, they can't - as demonstrated in Germany this past month. Although I believe it was a bit of a fudge in the end on the German case...
But I digress...
We can now put a fork into the reign of Benedict XVI. And to his credit he did resign. And even more to his credit one might infer that his resignation might maybe, possibly, conceivably be due to a recognition of just how dysfunctional the church has become.
Today Benedict XVI gave the bum's rush to Cardinal O'Brien of Scotland - the only cardinal from the United Kingdom who was eligible to vote for a new pope in the upcoming conclave. Allegations have been filed against the Prince of the Church from Scotland by several priests under his direct supervision through Vatican ambassadors suggesting that the cardinal made inappropriate advances upon them.
I found the article on this subject today from The Guardian most compelling:
If the allegations are correct, you would need a heart of flint not to feel some sympathy for the cardinal as well as for his victims. Celibacy is difficult and sometimes lonely for anyone. The traditional remedy for loneliness, in Scots and Irish Catholicism, involved medication with whiskey and manly bonding. If your inclination is in any case towards men this is not going to be very helpful. Getting drunk in an atmosphere of sentimental affection with the object of desire is a tough test in self-control. We should not be surprised if some men sometimes fail it.Couldn't have put it better myself. And in my tribute to creatures with red hats, I offer the following: Common Redpolls.
Journalists and Guardian readers who never get drunk and have regrettable sexual episodes are entitled to completely unalloyed joy at the spectacle of a moralist revealed as a hypocrite. The rest of us should temper our delight.
Of course, the real problem is that the Roman Catholic church expects an entirely unrealistic standard of continence from its priesthood. Some priests can manage celibacy. The evidence from all around the world is that most can't. They certainly can't always. In the developing world the problem is largely one of priests having unofficial heterosexual families, as Cardinal Tagle of the Philippines – an outside candidate for the papacy – pointed out last week. In countries where that isn't an available alternative, the priesthood becomes a refuge for gay men – especially in societies where homophobia is the public norm.
This fact adds irony to O'Brien's denunciations of gay marriage. You can't really expect better from a church that still hasn't come to terms properly with heterosexual marriage, as its position on artificial contraception shows. There are many great Catholic feminists, some of them nuns. But you would never guess this from the official doctrine, which still proceeds as if marriage were something in which a man took the initiative, rather than a partnership of equals. And a church that can't treat women as equals is certainly not going to be realistic about marriage between two men.
Da Boyz in da hood. The conclave.
You f***'n with me? Don't you be f***'n with me!
Bring it on....
Hah! Ain't life grand!
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