II - Response to Latest Speech by Pope Benedict

This is actually a re-posting of something I wrote on my Facebook profile which was technically speaking the first post in this series but it seems to serve a better second post in this place and now my head hurts. Anyway this is from a couple of weeks ago so it's not the most current of new stories but I am working on new material for next week.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=661965&f=110

Pope Benedict

How dare you stand in front of these people and in front of the whole world and proclaim that you do not condone the response of catholic church. Two months ago you and your council drafted and passed a resolution that officially declared women priests as "heinous sins" but you have done absolutely nothing to change the way the church operates when it comes priests raping young children. Most of these allegations occurred over a year ago now, you have had plenty of time to address this completely fucked up procedure.

Let’s tally exactly what you have done so far to address this complete betrayal by your church.

1. You have sent letters of apology to the nations involved. (See several of my previous rants)
2. You have expressed your outrage at the audacity of police departments who were performing their duty in searching property of the Catholic church and interrogating priests/cardinals/bishops/monsignors.
3. You have blamed the news services for “blowing the incident out of proportion”.
4. One of your top aides has compared this media treatment as equivalent to the horror inflicted upon the Jewish people during the Holocaust.
5. You sent a statement to your entire church stating that changes to the way the catholic church handles these cases MAY be forthcoming. (That was 10 months ago)
6. You have “criticized” your church for how it handled these cases.

That’s it.

You are the dictator of your nation-state. You are the leader of your church. To your followers you have literally been chosen by god to lead his church and through extension them individually. Your church on a daily basis tells millions of people what the “moral choice” is and imposes restrictions on your followers that would make some people in the dark ages go WTF. Your priests hold power over their congregations, your bishops and cardinals hold power over multiple congregations and entire nations, your monsignors hold more power than many countries on an international level and you sir are a completely undisputed dictator with millions of fanatical followers around the world.

You cannot tell us that with all this power at your finger tips you could not have stopped the practice of moving priests out of the affected countries, break the omerta of the catholic church or at minimum cooperate with the police forces investigating these crimes. The small things you have done have been nothing but an insult to the victims as well as your world wide congregation.

I got asked the other day what I would ask the pope if I had the chance to ask him one question. I realize that what I’m about to say is a complete cliché but it is also the single most fitting phrase I could come up with:

“Pope Benedict, at long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Because; at this point it isn’t a question of religion or god or even the corruption of organized religion, it’s a question of decency, of basic humanity.

To All Catholics:

You are the only people with influence over this organization. Do something!

Cya around the universe

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