Friday, April 09, 2010

In Nomine Humanitatis

I have been trying to avoid commenting on the stomach-churning revelations about child rape which have been oozing out all over Ireland, Germany and many other countries of the Holy Roman Empire.

Like many people I suppose I have been waiting for the top knobs (oh sorry) in the Roman Catholic Church to come out and make some kind of statement which is not just an incredibly insensitive attempt to suggest the Church is the victim - yes, victim - of some crazed media campaign or put the blame on the parents for taking so long to complain about what some horrific anti-example of moral virtue (i.e. a priest) did to their vulnerable children or blame celibacy or argue that this is simply homosexual abuse because some of the children were over 12 or simply muddy the waters by saying child rape happens in other organisations too, so it's ok or that the children were asking for it anyway, etc, etc.

So when I saw a comment on the Pharyngula website which had in quotation marks:

"Members of my church have abused their positions and perpetrated abhorrent, abusive crimes against young persons in my church's name. There is no way to excuse this, and these priests should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and excommunicated from the church. The church does not condone this behavior."

I thought - as you are probably also thinking, "WOW! Who was decent, brave and honest enough to come out and say that?? Where's the link to the article???"

Well, the comment simply continued:

Would that be so hard for anyone to say? Anyone? Donohue? Benedict? Nobody?

Silly me...

1 comment:

Anji said...

So it's okay with children over 12??? Like you say it churns the stomach.

I had an interesting conversation with my long standing pupil who is now 80 and used to be a Catholic. She is aware that when she was young these things were not talked about, but everyone knew of a priest who preyed on vunerable women....