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And, yes, I DO take it personally

Friday, September 17, 2010

Dark humor, kinda pathetic actually

does anyone else besides me see the tasteless, morbid irony captured in this picture...?

Photobucket
Pope Benedict XVI kisses the head
of a boy, as he arrives for a celebration
of Catholic education at St Mary's
University College, Twickenham,
London Friday Sept. 17, 2010. Pope
Benedict XVI is on a four-day visit,
the first-ever state visit by a Pope
to Britain.


otoh, i've always been both a fan and a practitioner of dark humor...

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Friday, April 02, 2010

Shameless, disgusting and perhaps the ultimate in pure denial

i can hardly believe words like this could come out of the mouth of a key figure in the catholic church...
Pope Benedict's personal preacher has compared criticism of the pontiff and Church over child abuse to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.

The Rev Raniero Cantalamessa was speaking at Good Friday prayers in St Peter's Basilica, attended by the Pope.

In his sermon, he quoted a Jewish friend as saying the accusations reminded him of the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism".

His comments angered Jewish groups and those representing abuse victims.

Father Cantalamessa said Jews throughout history had been the victims of "collective violence" and drew a comparison with recent attacks on the Roman Catholic Church.

He read the congregation part of a letter from a Jewish friend who said he was "following with disgust the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the Pope...

"The use of stereotypes, the shifting of personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," he quoted from the letter.

Father Cantalamessa, the preacher to the papal household, is the only person allowed to preach to the Pope.

the guy clearly not only doesn't get it, he doesn't display the slightest desire to get it... "getting it" means acknowledging that the hierarchy of the catholic church not only covered up decades of abuse, it actively enabled it to continue... the fact that people are upset over that fact has nothing to do with attacking either the catholic church as an institution or catholics as a group of people... what it does say is that people the world over are deeply disturbed that religious authority figures could be so unbelievably callous as to obviously conspire to protect themselves and allow physical and sexual abuse to continue... that's purely despicable and in no way can be compared to anti-semitism... for father cantalamessa to say it does tells me that the level of denial at the highest levels of the catholic church is beyond belief...

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Sunday, March 14, 2010

So, the Vatican claims there's no link between sexual repression, sexual abuse and sexual violence

ya, right...
The Vatican on Sunday denied that its celibacy requirement for priests was the root cause of the clerical sex abuse scandal convulsing the church in Europe and again defended the pope's handling of the crisis.

Suggestions that the celibacy rule was in part responsible for the "deviant behavior" of sexually abusive priests have swirled in recent days, with opinion pieces in German newspapers blaming it for fueling abuse and even Italian commentators questioning the rule.

Much of the furor was spurred by comments from one of the pope's closest advisers, Vienna archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who called this week for an honest examination of issues like celibacy and priestly education to root out the origins of sex abuse.

"Part of it is the question of celibacy, as well as the subject of character development. And part of it is a large portion of honesty, in the church but also in society," he wrote in the online edition of his diocesan newsletter.

[...]

In the days following Schoenborn's editorial this week, several prominent prelates in Germany and at the Vatican shot down any suggestion that the celibacy rule had anything to do with the scandal, a point echoed Sunday by the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

"It's been established that there's no link," said the article by Bishop Giuseppe Versaldi, an emeritus professor of canon law and psychology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

"First off, it's known that sexual abuse of minors is more widespread among lay people and those who are married than in the celibate priesthood," he wrote. "Secondly, research has shown that priests guilty of abuse had long before stopped observing celibacy."

sexual repression and sexual control have always been a hallmark of religions and nation states... it's the way to keep the population in line... why do you think the catholic church insisted on celibacy for priests in the first place...? why do you think the church is against birth control...? why do you think the church is against homosexuality...? simple... they and they alone have the right and authority to tell you how you can express your sexuality...

commenter mettle...
Rest assured, censoring sexuality in the media, causes sex to be supplanted with escalating violence. That then feeds on itself into a vicious circle and the violence ultimately spreads into war and the end game is accomplished: complete authoritarian control and wholesale population reduction through the violence.

Make no mistake about it: sexual repression breeds violence and ultimately war.

the vatican can protest all it wants... the truth will out...

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