Originally published by the Dissemination Committee on May 10, 2010.
The Roman Catholic Church is the world’s oldest concentration of power. Since 313 A.D, when Constantine made it legal to practice Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church spread its religious ideology across the earth. As history indicates, the Roman Catholic Church has not lived up to the values it intended to serve and embrace. It is common knowledge amongst anyone who has read a newspaper regularly during the last fifteen years, that it’s probably not a good idea to let your kid alone with a Catholic priest. In 2004, John Jay College released a report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops found 4.0 % of Catholic priests active between 1950 and 2002 were allegations of abuse. [1] The report also found the Vatican hierarchy was ineffective in dealing with cases of molestation committed by priests, which contributed much to the problem. The entire history of the Catholic Church has been a continuation of dehumanizing acts, justified by it belief in its own infallibility, to uphold and spread power, starting with the earliest popes, followed by the crusades and the inquisitions during medieval Europe. A case can be made the moral and spiritual authority the Catholic Church claim has never been legitimate.
The Holy See, meaning the Vatican, has always been reluctant to catch up with the world as it modernizes. Ask Galileo. It still doesn’t approve of contraception or homosexuality. Just yesterday, it was announced to the world Pope Benedict was taking control of the Legionaries of Christ Order, whose founder, Father Marcial Maciel, was first accused of sexual abuse in 1956. A recent ABC Nightline story uncovered how the Vatican was aware and did nothing about the sexual abuse committed by Father Marcial.http://blogs.abcnews.com/nightlinedailyline/2010/04/what-pope-benedict-knew-about-father-maciel.html
It’s only now, after the death John Paul II, a close friend of Marcial, plus the intense media interest surrounding pedophile priests, has the Vatican admitted wrongdoing. However, as reported in the New York Times, some praised the Vatican decision, but others, including former members of the Legionaries sect, said that appointing a delegate did not address the role of current Church leaders tied to the Father Maciel’s case.[2] Furthermore, on April 1st of this year, it was reported by the Associated Press a letter from 1963 shows then-Pope Paul VI was aware of sexual abuse committed by Church clergy in the United States. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9013300/print
The Maciel scandal and the letter Pople Paul VI received five decades ago give insight into how the Vatican, if with its immense wealth and political power, is an imperially corrupt theocracy, whose future is uncertain. With Evangelical missionaries now giving the Vatican competition and the amount of practicing European Catholics dwindling more and more, American Catholics perhaps could solidify the Vatican’s uncertain future.
With right-wing loud mouths like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League appearing on cable news and in the print media regularly, fallaciously accusing any critic of the Catholic Church as malicious and anti-Catholic, back in Rome the Vatican could secretly be pulling his strings, applying the strategy Karl Rove used in the Bush administration where the best defense is offense. Never is there an admission of guilt on the part of Donohue . In an ad letter to the New York Times last month, Donohue doesn't find any blame with the Church's hierarchy. He denies there is pedophilia problem in the church but a homosexual one. Donohue states: “The Times continues to editorialize about the ‘pedophilia crisis,’ when all along it’s been a homosexual crisis. Eighty percent of the victims of priestly sexual abuse are male and most of them are post-pubescent. While homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior, and most gay priests are not molesters, most of the molesters have been gay.”The Karl Rove method is nothing more than modern instructions from Machiavelli and explains why the conservative backlash of the so-called Tea Party groups to Barack Obama ignore or deny the tyrannical rule of the previous Bush administration and what it will be most remembered for: war crimes, election theft, economic diaster, the inhumane response to Hurricane Katrina, and the torture of prisoners. If the Tea Partiers, backed by their phony populist rhetoric and nonsensical arguments with a hole so big in its logic a New York City subway could be pulled through it, want to ignore the nightmare the world lived through during Bush's two terms, then it will not be surprising if Catholic Americans like Bill Donohue forget the crimes of their church.
1. http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2004_02_27_JohnJay/index.html
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/world/europe/02legion.html?scp=6&sq=father%20maciel&st=cse
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