Priests being sent away for “therapy” is a standard trick of the Catholic Church to try and cover up a priest’s history of sexual abuse.  In almost every case, the offending priest is sent away for therapy and reassigned when he has “successfully completed the program.”  He ends up in other Parishes where the community is not warned of his past actions and then goes on to abuse more kids.  Then he is sent off to “therapy” again. 

Am I surprised the Pope has done the same.  Not in the least.  To this day, Diocese refuse to disclose documents which show the long history of abuse in their parishes. They refute the honesty of victims and hire heavy-hitter PR firms to rehabilitate their image while slowly spinning victims’ desires for closure and healing as nothing more than attempts at extortion.

The Catholic Church loves to appear as the understanding, compassionate body who is “trying to right the wrongs of the past.”  But in reality, the Church does everything it can to avoid responsibility.

What I also find disturbing is that while so many people are very vigilant and outraged about sex offenders living in our neighborhoods, the Church often gets a “pass” when it is revealed that their priests—who are not only living in our neighborhoods, but actively teaching kids—are sexual molesters.  Instead, so many who are concerned about sexual predators don’t hold the church to the same standard.  These perpetrator priests are sexual predators.

Did Pope Benedict know about abusive priests when he was archibishop? Is the pope Catholic. In every country where sexual abuse by priests has become an issue the church hierarchy pleads innocence even in the face of overwhelming evidence. In Ireland the level of abuse and the connivance between the archbishops,  senior police officials and senior members of government is absolutely scandalous. there was no therapy, just a relocation where the abuse could start all over again in another innocent community. In one case a priest who sodomized a little girl with a crucifix was relocated from the horrified village to a rehabilitation hospital for children. It is almost impossible to comprehend such a move by the hierarchy without suspecting that they were, if not direct abusers, at least receiving perverse delight in imagining the activities of that priest in an institution full of utterly defenseless, sick and crippled children. In another case, the priest serving the Crumlin Children’s Hospital, was caught when a photo lab in England developed pictures he took of female patients. His bishop defended him by saying that taking pictures of little girls genitalia was not done for sexual reasons but because the priest was in awe of the god-given beauty of the female body.
It can be no coincidence that the Catholic Hierarchy in so many countries have behaved so consistently in the same manner when faced with abuse allegations. This indicates that direction is coming from higher up the command chain. I would not be surprised if the trail leads to Pope Benedict himself. He was an enabler in Germany and now has the power to direct the perverse antics of his minions. That the reaction of the pope and so many others in the church has been so lacking in any normalcy leads to further questions about their own sexual activities. It is not unimaginable to suspect that the church is one huge pedophile operation directed by the Vatican.

I frequently have bad things to say about Catholic hypocrisy, but let us keep focus on the larger picture which is Religion as a whole. Yes it can create strong social cohesion, but at what cost?

The disgusting thing about the Catholic churches reaction to priest abuse isn’t that it happens, which really is no surprise, but that they try and ignore or hide it and have for centuries ignored and even persecuted the victims.

Still even though the cracked idea of celebacy gives some pause, this is not just a Catholic failing. Amongst the Protestants we have very convoluted response to sexuality even though they are allowed somewhat normal sexual activity. It is obviously a human condition and what makes the antics of the religious newsworthy is the degree with which they try and persecute and ignore the sexual human condition.

Remember Jimmy Swaggart? He after defaming many was found to have tried to get his whore to whore her underage daughter to him and yet when it came time to take a time out and lose money from his ministery he went for the money. My favorite, which I can’t remember names or the year it happened was the two young people who having just married while attending a church college, decided they must admit their previous lives to each other and both admitted sleeping with the Relgious School Head. And, dirty magazines are bad for you? Maybe so are divines.