I've refrained from saying much of anything lately about the abuse of power and pedophilla/child rape that seems to have pretty much encompassed the Catholic Church. I am now longer a Catholic and have a feeling that I pile on enough about other awful stuff; Ratzinger is an asshole, the hierarchy is awful, the whole thing is about old white guys in dresses having power, and so on and so on. Not much to say...until now.
Now, if there is a god, and he is the god of the Church, he would have Michael and Gabriel and all the rest of the boyos visit Vatican City and go all BenAffleck/MattDamonic on these idiots. The torment of the Jews over 2000 years for the execution of Jesus ignored a lot of things. My Jewish buddy Frankie didn't kill Jesus. He died over 1900 years before Frankie was born. Frankie had nothing to do with it. The whole Christ-killer thing was irrelevant three days after he was crucified, if we buy into the thing. And, no crucifixion, no redemption, no redemption no church. Total bullshit -- if you buy that stuff, you need to buy it all, and the Jews, as people of the old covenant, are yearned for by God; the persecution of the Jews was a form of rape and murder. They didn't kill Jesus. Full stop. The current conspiratorial pig sty of officials in the higher reaches of the Catholic Church did all the things they are accused of and more. And Marvelous Mark chanted in Doonesbury about Nixon almost 40 years ago, "guilty...Guilty!...GUILTY!!!"
The contemporary leadership of the Catholic Church did in fact allow priests to abuse, torment and torture children. I recall lines from the New Testament where Jesus said things like, "Suffer to let little Children come unto me..." or "What you do to the least of these, you do unto me..." Morally, every bishop, archbishop, cardinal and Pope who did not act to protect the children first and always is in fact guilty. Since the church is a geriatric autocracy at best, the guys in power are the guys who were contemporaries, subordinates, and bosses of these degenerate slime. They knew, and they either yelled at the guilty for a while and then moved them to sin again, or they knew and they ignored it. You don't get to be Pope by being a saint; you get to be Pope by being a consummate bureaucrat or a compromise. John XXIII and John Paul II were compromises, one an old placeholder like John Paul I, the other a way out who in fact brought energy and vision to a moribund and static operation. I had my issues with Karol Wojtyla but, no one could ever doubt his humanity, courage or basic moral compass. You might disagree with his map, but not his desire. Of course, he was more mystic than moral theologian.
Ratzinger is an insult to his memory. I recall the line of Sahaladin to the King of Jerusalem in Kingdom of God -- You spent so much time with a great king, it's a shame you did not learn from him."
Ultimately, this is the descent from relevancy and moral leadership to being oblivious and ignored, if not arrested and convicted. Now, no preacher in the Papal Household would ever dare say anything that the Pope -- any sitting Pope, any preacher -- disagreed with. Father Whatshisface said what he said because he was told to say it and because he believed it. Benji the Rat is like a persecuted Jewish virgin, running from the Nazis...except, he was the Nazi. His brother, Harpo, was like a poor little Paschal lamb as he slapped and beat children who sang off key in the closter of Regensberg, (Which is one of my favorite German cities, and home of the Thurn und Taxis family and brewey...gorgeous Ost Bayern place going back to the Romans. Bar I frequented near the university by the old bridge supposedly dated back to the late empire...Marcus Aurelius' Praetorians may have hoisted a few in the there...) only to be tormented by the unfeeling masses.
Fuck them. Come on down, Christ and Moses, come on down, as Lenny Bruce chanted 50 years ago...
The Wiki entry for John Paul II says that there has been a movement to add the epithet "the great" to his name, making him Pope John Paul the Great...this would make 5 out of all the popes given that title. Possible, I suspect; but, Ratzinger should be then christened Benedict the Disastrous...the Silly...the Hypocrite.
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