Matt Taibbi gets his rant on. Titled “The Catholic Church is a Criminal Enterprise”
Anyone who’s interested in losing his lunch should read the above-mentionedblog entry by New York archbishop Timothy Dolan in defense of Pope Benedict; the archbishop’s incredibly pompous and self-pitying rant is some of the most depraved horseshit I’ve ever seen on the internet, which is saying a lot. One expects professional slimeballs like the public relations department of Goldman Sachs to pull out the “Well, we weren’t the only thieves!” argument when accused of financial malfeasance. But I almost couldn’t believe my eyes as I read through Dolan’s retort and it dawned on me that he was actually going to use the “We weren’t the only child molesters!” excuse.
The problem of wide spread child molestation in the Catholic church first came to light around 35 years ago. It is still happening and the Catholic church is still covering up for it.
We don’t permit countries that harbor terrorists to participate in international society, but the Catholic Church — an organization that has been proven over and over again to systematically enable child molesters, right up now to the level of the Pope — is given a free pass. In fact the Church is not only not sanctioned in any serious way, it gets to retain its outrageous tax-exempt status, which makes its systematic child abuse, in this country at least, a government-subsidized activity.
Two questions:
- Why do they molest?
- Why do we not give them the full Virginia McMartin treatment?
I think the first answer is molesters become priests because that is where the kids are. Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. He is supposed to have said that he did it because that is where the money was. We do not give them the full McMartin treatment because the Catholic church has good lawyers and the lawyers are really connected.
But I think Matt has a point:
We don’t permit countries that harbor terrorists to participate in international society, but the Catholic Church — an organization that has been proven over and over again to systematically enable child molesters, right up now to the level of the Pope — is given a free pass. In fact the Church is not only not sanctioned in any serious way, it gets to retain its outrageous tax-exempt status, which makes its systematic child abuse, in this country at least, a government-subsidized activity.
The idea that men will not want to have sex is a foolish idea. At several hundred million sperm per ejaculate, men are designed to have sex.
Somewhere underneath all of this there is a root story that has to do with celibacy. The celibate status of its priests is basically the Catholic church’s last market advantage in the Christian religion racket, but human beings are not designed to be celibate and so problems naturally arise among the population of priests forced to live that terrible lifestyle. Just as it refuses to change its insane and criminal stance on birth control and condoms, the church refuses to change its horrifically cruel policy about priestly celibacy. That’s because it quite correctly perceives that should it begin to dispense with the irrational precepts of its belief system, it would lose its appeal as an ancient purveyor of magical-mystery bullshit and become just a bigger, better-financed, and infinitely more depressing version of a Tony Robbins self-help program.
Therefore it must cling to its miserable celibacy in order to keep its sordid business scheme going; and if clinging to its miserable celibacy means having to look the other way while children are serially molested by its sexually stunted and tortured employees, well, so be it.
Matt is right. This is religibusiness. The product they sell is self-satisfaction. But it only works if you can believe that it is not connected to this mortal plane.
It is time for them to be regulated just like any other business.