Benedict XVI Ignores the Facts of the Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis

In a prior post I vented on former Pope Benedict XVI's misguided and factually out of touch missive condemning the sexual revolution of the 1960's - and of course gays - for all of the sexual abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church.  Indeed, Benedict's version of the history of sex abuse within the Church is about as fact free as Fox News coverage of Donald Trump.  Facts and the truth simply do not matter with Benedict's main agenda being an attack of modernity and any theologians who do not embrace the Church's 12th century, ignorance based dogma on sex and human sexuality.  A piece in Religion News Service likewise focuses on Benedict's refusal to face factual reality.  Here are excerpts:

The recent essay on clergy sexual abuse by Benedict XVI shows why it was such a good idea for him to resign as pope. In the letter released last week, he shows how out of touch he is with the causes of the abuse crisis.

Fundamentally, Benedict lives in a Platonic world of ideas where facts don’t matter. . . . . sexual abuse was occurring prior to the 1960s [and Vatican II]. The church and America were just better at covering it up.

But Benedict also wants to blame sex abuse on contemporary moral theologians who challenged the church’s traditional, natural law ethics, especially as it applied to sexual ethics. Contemporary moral theology is less rule-based and, rather, takes a more personalistic and relational approach. Challenging the church’s opposition to birth control, as did most theologians, opened the floodgates to all sorts of sexual sins, including child abuse, in his view.

While he was prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005, scores of Catholic theologians were fired from seminaries, reprimanded or silenced. Others practiced self-censorship in order to avoid the wrath of Rome.

It is flabbergasting to hear him in his letter complain that respect for due process kept him from dealing with this infestation. Too many scholars bear the scars of his inquisitional approach to dissent in the church. CDF’s procedures — where it acted as accuser, judge and jury — had no concept of contemporary ideas of due process.

It does not matter that no moral theologian can be found who condoned the sexual assault and rape of children. Facts don’t matter.

It does not matter that abusers came not just from the ranks of liberals like Theodore McCarrick but also from conservatives like Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ.

It does not matter that most of the priests who abused in the 1970s were products of an old seminary system that existed before Vatican II, which isolated seminarians from the very men and women with whom they would work and serve. Benedict still considers this the ideal way of preparing priests. Alas, he still wants to blame post-Vatican II theology for all the ills of the contemporary church.

Most importantly, he passes over in silence the truly scandalous failure of the hierarchy to remove abusive priests from ministry where they could abuse again and again. The crisis is not just about the abuse; it is also about the coverup.

Benedict would have done well to keep silent or to have shared his views only with Pope Francis. His message is being used by those who oppose Francis to show what a real pope thinks about sex abuse.

First, you cannot muzzle former popes any more than you can muzzle theologians. All one can do is urge them to exercise prudence in what they say and then let the debate begin.

Second, the church needs to make clear that there is only one pope. A resigned pope should revert to his baptismal name and put aside the white cassock for a black one. He should not be called pope or pope emeritus. Ratzinger has a right to express his opinions, but they have no more magisterial weight than those of any other retired bishop.

Finally, since even dead popes are becoming rallying points for different factions in the church, we should stop canonizing popes so soon after their deaths, lest the canonization be politicized. Perhaps a good rule would be to delay consideration of canonization of a pope until after all the cardinals and bishops he appointed are dead.

John Paul II was hurriedly canonized despite his horrific record in dealing with sexual predators.  Indeed, he protected Marcial Maciel for many years despite volumes of reports on his sexual abuse of both males and females.  John Paul II was hardly saintly. 

Vatican Cardinal Guilty On Multiple Child Sex Charges

Pope Francis with Cardinal George Pell.

The already besieged Roman Catholic Church was just hit with a major earth tremor as Cardinal George Pell, formerly Australia's highest ranking cleric, and Vatican treasurer and adviser to the Pope, has been convicted on multiple charges of sexual abuse of minors.  The rot and cover ups truly go all the way up to the highest levels of the Vatican.  Pell like other sexual predators was elevated to the rank of cardinal by the far from saintly John Paul II, who the Vatican ridiculously fast tracked to sainthood under former Pope Benedict XVI who protected predators while launch a war against normal, well adjusted and non-predator gays and lesbians.  CNN looks at this damning conviction which hopefully will force Pope Francis to begin a long, long over due house cleaning of the ranks of the hierarchy.  If Francis fails to do this, it will be clear that his claims of ending the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy will mean nothing.  Here are article excerpts:

One of the most powerful men in the Roman Catholic Church was found guilty of multiple historical child sex offenses at a secret trial in Melbourne in December, the existence of which can only now be revealed.

Australian Cardinal George Pell, 77, is almost certain to face prison after a jury found him guilty of one charge of sexual penetration of a child and four charges of an indecent act with or in the presence of a child in the late 1990s.

The conviction of Pell, the Vatican treasurer and a close adviser to Pope Francis, will send shockwaves through the church, which is already reeling from accusations of sexual abuse committed by priests worldwide.

Pell is the most senior Catholic official to be found guilty of child sex offenses to date. His conviction brings the escalating international controversy around the abuse of children in Catholic institutions straight to the doors of the Holy See.

A court order banning media reporting of Pell's five-week long trial, which began in November 2018, was lifted by Chief Judge Peter Kidd on Tuesday.

The prosecution's case hinged on the testimony of one man, who said Pell sexually abused him and another boy in Melbourne's historic St. Patrick's Cathedral after mass one Sunday.

Pell has repeatedly maintained his innocence. His legal team confirmed on Tuesday they had filed an appeal against the guilty verdict.

The Vatican has yet to comment on the verdict. Pope Francis quietly removed Pell from his small council of advisors for "reasons of advancing age" in December, before the news of the cardinal's conviction became public.

Pell is due to be sentenced at a separate hearing in March.

Pell's conviction is a stunning fall of grace for a man who once ran the Catholic Church in Australia with an iron fist. . . . He was made Archbishop of Melbourne by Pope John Paul II in 1996. While in the post, Pell created a program to respond to the increasing tide of sexual abuse allegations against priests.

But Pell's "Melbourne Response" program was criticized for capping compensations to victims at just tens of thousands of Australian dollars. There were allegations people were advised not to go to the police.

In 2014, Pell moved to Rome after he was handpicked by Pope Francis to serve as treasurer of the Vatican and become one of nine advisers on the Council of Cardinals to the Pope. But Pell's fortunes began to sour after the Australian government announced a Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sex Abuse in 2012.

The damning report by the commission in 2017 found 7% of Australian Catholic priests abused children over the past six decades.

The Corruption of the Vatican’s Elite Has Been Exposed

A previous post looked at a new book, In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, that looked at some of the moral rot and rank hypocrisy that is the Vatican.  The picture wasn't pretty, but Andrew Sullivan's new review gives a much more detailed picture that is utterly shocking and makes me wonder how decent, moral Catholics will remain in the Church.  Yes, there are some who will always blindly follow the Church hierarchy since the seemingly need someone to tell them what to think and what to do so they can avoid making moral decisions on their own (we see the same in the Southern Baptist Convention where many will ignore the sex abuse bombshell that went off two weekends ago), but many Catholics have drifted far from the blind obedience that was more the norm in my childhood and teens. Given the immense damage the Church and its 12th century dogma on sexuality and the subordination of women has done over the centuries and today's 24/7 access to information, hopefully will find itself faced with fury over the widespread hypocrisy that seemingly is the norm and an inability to hide its very, very dirty laundry.  Some, such as a piece in National Review have  sought to dismiss the book:

The book is trash. The supposed justice meted to McCarrick amounts to a cover-up. The pope’s summit is trash and a coverup. These men do not fear the justice of God or men. All their training in theology, and their great insight about man’s depravity, is the schoolyard taunt “Whoever smelt it, dealt it.” To hell with them all. 

Yet, the book appears to be consistent with stories of a blogger friend who was once a priest stationed at the Vatican.  Power with no accountability of any kind in most instances is corrupting and here, the corruption is off the charts. When I think of the 37 years of self-hate and trying to "pray away the gay" because of what these hypocrites preached, it enrages me.  Even more maddening is knowing that young lives continue to be harmed by these foul individuals all across the globe through the toxic dogma of the Church. Here are excerpts from Sullivan's lengthy piece in New York Magazine:

It’s a bewildering and vast piece of reporting — Martel interviewed no fewer than “41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignori, 45 apostolic nuncios, secretaries of nunciatures or foreign ambassadors, 11 Swiss Guards and over 200 Catholic priests and seminarians.” He conducted more than 1,500 interviews over four years, is quite clear about his sources, and helps the reader weigh their credibility. He keeps the identity of many of the most egregiously hypocritical cardinals confidential, but is unsparing about the dead.

The picture Martel draws is jaw-dropping. Many of the Vatican gays — especially the most homophobic — treat their vows of celibacy with an insouciant contempt. Martel argues that many of these cardinals and officials have lively sex lives, operate within a “don’t ask, don’t tell” culture, constantly hit on young men, hire prostitutes, throw chem-sex parties, and even pay for sex with church money. How do we know this? Because, astonishingly, they tell us.

So much of the information in the book comes from sources deep within the Holy See. Named and unnamed, they expose their fellow cardinals and bishops and nuncios as hypocrites, without perhaps realizing that their very targets are doing the same to them.

Among the named sources: Francesco Lepore, a brilliant young gay Latin translator and priest. He soared through the ranks, directly serving Popes Benedict XVI and Francis, until, as a gay man, he found a way to quit his post because he couldn’t abide the double life he was forced to lead, or the rancid hypocrisy of the whole system.

I’m no naïf when it comes to the gayness of the church. I’ve lived in it as a gay man for all my adult life, and my eyes are open. And so the book did not surprise me, as such, but it still stunned, shocked, and disgusted me. You simply cannot unread it, or banish what is quite obviously true from your mind.

[A]s Martel probes deeper and deeper, one theme emerges very powerfully: “Homosexuality spreads the closer one gets to the holy of holies; there are more and more homosexuals as one rises through the Catholic hierarchy. The more vehemently opposed a cleric is to gays, the stronger his homophobic obsession, the more likely it is that he is insincere, and that his vehemence conceals something.” It’s a lesson I learned reporting my own recent essay on gay priests.

And so it’s not that huge a surprise to see how influenced Paul VI was by gay Catholic writers of the time. And it’s highly predictable that John Paul II’s pontificate, which launched a new war on homosexuals, turns out to be the gayest of them all — and the one most resistant to any inquiry into stories of sex abuse. His right-hand man and successor, Joseph Ratzinger, (the future Pope Benedict XVI) personally received notification of every claim of sex abuse in the church under John Paul II, ignoring most, and made the stigmatization and persecution of sane, adjusted non-abusive gay people across the globe his mission instead.

As for America, Martel notes what is already in the public record:

“Cardinal Wakefield Baum of Washington, recently deceased, lived for many years with his personal assistant … Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington, … was well known for his ‘sleeping arrangements’ with seminarians and young priests whom he called his ‘nephews’ … Archbishop Rembert Weakland was ‘outed’ by a former boyfriend … One American cardinal has been banned from the Vatican and sent back to the United States for his improper conduct with a Swiss Guard. Another American cardinal, the bishop of a large city in the United States, ‘has lived for years with his boyfriend, a former priest’, while an archbishop of another city, a devotee of the Latin mass and a man much given to cruising, ‘lives surrounded by a flock of young seminarians’, a fact confirmed to me by Robert Carl Mickens, an American Vaticanologist familiar with the gay lifestyle of the senior Catholic hierarchy in the United States.”

Some of the most conservative clerics concede the truth of the book on the record. Or take Martel’s interaction with the Swiss Guards, one of whom vents: “The harassment is so insistent that I said to myself that I was going straight home. Many of us are exasperated by the usually rather indiscreet advances of the cardinals and bishops.” Or the prostitutes who keep elaborate records of their clients, and have already caused huge scandals in Italy.
 But critics of the book — and the defensive dismissals of it as mere salacious gossip are already out there — have to argue that Martel is a liar, a fabulist, a con artist, who faked these remarkable interviews. I don’t buy it.
 I’ve offered just a glimpse of the revelations in the book. I urge every Catholic to read it, however difficult that may be. It will also be fascinating to see how the various factions within Catholicism will respond to it. . . . . But if the Catholic right wants to weaponize the book, they’ll have to take on their own icons, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and a whole range of their closest allies in the church. And the core thesis of the book — which is that it is the hypocrisy of the closet that is the real problem — is not one the right will be able easily to absorb.
 There can be no meaningful reform until this closet is ended, and the whole sick, twisted syndrome is unwound.

How do you do that? The crisis is so profound, the corruption so deep, the duplicity so brazen that only a radical change will help. Ending mandatory celibacy is no longer an option. It’s a necessity. Women need to be brought in to the full sacramental life of the church. Gay men need to be embraced not as some manifestation of “intrinsic moral evil” but as human beings made in the image of God and capable of mutual love, care, and support.

As for me, someone who has wrestled with the question of homosexuality and Catholicism for much of my adult life, this book has, to be honest, been gutting. All the painful, wounding Vatican documents on my “objective disorder” that I have tried to parse and sincerely engage … I find out they were written, in part, by tormented gay men, partly to deflect from their own nature. Everything I was taught growing up — to respect the priests and hierarchs, to trust them, to accept their moral authority — is in tatters.
 [I]n my view, the last drops of moral authority the Vatican might hope to have evaporate with this book. It is difficult to express the heartbroken rage so many of us in the pews now feel.

Unlike Sullivan who has remained Catholic - a form of masochism in my view - I left the Church when I came out and even had my name stricken from the membership rolls for the Diocese of Richmond. The remainder of my siblings and nieces and nephews have left the church.  Any who remain Catholic in my extended family will likely find it difficult to remain in the Church with the revelations of this book. 

Catholicism: The Sins of Celibacy

I often write about religion and Christianity because since the 12th century conservative Christianity has been the nemesis of LGBT individuals, with homophobia spread by Christian missionaries like a plague across the globe. Countless LGBT lives harmed or even snuffed out during periods that gays were executed, often by burning, give rise to the pejorative "faggot."  Women too have suffered from the blame placed on Eve, a mythical figure, for induce her mate, Adam, to eat of the forbidden fruit.  All of this persecution and subordination of women based on 12th century knowledge and lack of understanding of normal human sexuality.  Sparking and leading this misogyny for centuries is the Roman Catholic Church, an institution wracked with dishonesty and hypocrisy and the cover up of crimes against children and youths.   A piece in the New York Review of Books looks at a new book entitled "Sins of Celibacy" that traces the current crisis in the Catholic Church and the global sex abuse scandal to celibacy and the Church's refusal to reject 12th century ignorance and adjust to modern knowledge and, indeed, modernity itself.  The premise is consistent with what I have long argued and which is set out at length in "The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relationships in Human Societies" which I have referenced in past posts.  Here are lengthy excerpts from the review:

On August 25 Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published an eleven-page letter in which he accused Pope Francis of ignoring and covering up evidence of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and called for his resignation. It was a declaration of civil war by the church’s conservative wing. . . . He was the central figure in the 2012 scandal that involved documents leaked by Pope Benedict XVI’s personal butler, including letters Viganò wrote about corruption in Vatican finances, and that contributed to Benedict’s startling decision to abdicate the following year. Angry at not having been made a cardinal and alarmed by Francis’s supposedly liberal tendencies, Viganò seems determined to take out the pope.

As a result of Viganò’s latest accusations and the release eleven days earlier of a Pennsylvania grand jury report that outlines in excruciating detail decades of sexual abuse of children by priests, as well as further revelations of sexual misconduct by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., Francis’s papacy is now in a deep, possibly fatal crisis. After two weeks of silence, Francis announced in mid-September that he would convene a large-scale gathering of the church’s bishops in February to discuss the protection of minors against sexual abuse by priests.

The case of Cardinal McCarrick, which figures heavily in Viganò’s letter, is emblematic of the church’s failure to act on the problem of sexual abuse . . . . . Despite explicit allegations that were relayed to Rome, in 2000 Pope John Paul II appointed him archbishop of Washington, D.C., and made him a cardinal. Viganò speculates that the pope was too ill to know about the allegations, but does not mention that the appointment came five years before John Paul’s death. He also praises Benedict XVI for finally taking action against McCarrick by sentencing him to a life of retirement and penance, and then accuses Francis of revoking the punishment and relying on McCarrick for advice on important church appointments. If Benedict did in fact punish McCarrick, it was a very well kept secret, because he continued to appear at major church events and celebrate mass; he was even photographed with Viganò at a church celebration.

Viganò’s partial account of the way the church handled the allegations about McCarrick is meant to absolve Pope Francis’s predecessors, whose conservative ideology he shares. Viganò lays the principal blame for failing to punish McCarrick on Francis, who does appear to have mishandled the situation—one he largely inherited.

The greatest responsibility for the problem of sexual abuse in the church clearly lies with Pope John Paul II, who turned a blind eye to it for more than twenty years. From the mid-1980s to 2004, the church spent $2.6 billion settling lawsuits in the US, mostly paying victims to remain silent. Cases in Ireland, Australia, England, Canada, and Mexico followed the same depressing pattern: victims were ignored or bullied, even as offending priests were quietly transferred to new parishes, where they often abused again. “John Paul knew the score: he protected the guilty priests and he protected the bishops who covered for them, he protected the institution from scandal,” . . . .

Benedict was somewhat more energetic in dealing with the problem, but his papacy began after a cascade of reporting had appeared on priestly abuse, beginning with an investigation published by the Boston Globe in 2002 (the basis for Spotlight, the Oscar-winning film of 2015). The church was faced with mass defections and the collapse of donations from angry parishioners, which forced Benedict to confront the issue directly.

“I feel badly for Francis because he doesn’t know whom to trust,” Father Doyle said. Almost everyone in a senior position in the Catholic Church bears some guilt for covering up abuse, looking the other way, or resisting transparency. . . . . Francis may have hoped that the problem would go away and feared that a true housecleaning would leave him with no allies in the Curia.

Much of the press coverage of the scandal has been of the Watergate variety: what the pope knows, when he found out, and so forth. This ignores a much bigger issue that no one in the church wants to talk about: the sexuality of priests and the failure of priestly celibacy.

In his letter Viganò repeats the finding in the John Jay Report that 81 percent of the sexual abuse cases involve men abusing boys. But he ignores its finding that those who actually identify as homosexual are unlikely to engage in abuse and are more likely to seek out adult partners. Priests who abuse boys are often confused about their sexuality; they frequently have a negative view of homosexuality, yet are troubled by their own homoerotic urges.

Viganò approvingly cites Sipe’s work four times. But he ignores Sipe’s larger argument, made on his website in 2005, that “the practice of celibacy is the basic problem for bishops and priests.” Sipe also wrote, “The Vatican focus on homosexual orientation is a smoke screen to cover the pervasive and greater danger of exposing the sexual behavior of clerics generally. Gay priests and bishops practice celibacy (or fail at it) in the same proportions as straight priests and bishops do.”

Viganò believes that the church’s moral crisis derives uniquely from its abandonment of clear, unequivocal, strict teaching on moral matters, and from overly permissive attitudes toward homosexuality in particular. He does not want to consider the ways in which its traditional teaching on sexuality—emphasized incessantly by recent popes—has contributed to the present crisis. The modern church has boxed itself into a terrible predicament. Until about half a century ago, it was able to maintain an attitude of wise hypocrisy, accepting that priests were often sexually active but pretending that they weren’t. The randy priests and monks (and nuns) in Chaucer and Boccaccio were not simply literary tropes; they reflected a simple reality: priests often found it impossible to live the celibate life. Many priests had a female “housekeeper” who relieved their loneliness and doubled as life companions. Priests frequently had affairs with their female parishioners and fathered illegitimate children. The power and prestige of the church helped to keep this sort of thing a matter of local gossip rather than international scandal.

Opposing priestly marriage and contraception placed the church on the conservative side of the sexual revolution and made adherence to strict sexual norms a litmus test for being a good Catholic, at a time when customs were moving rapidly in the other direction. Only sex between a man and a woman meant for procreation and within the institution of holy matrimony was allowed. That a man and a woman might have sex merely for pleasure was seen as selfish and sinful. . . . Priestly vocations plummeted.

Conversely, the proportion of gay priests increased, since it was far easier to hide one’s sex life in an all-male community with a strong culture of secrecy and aversion to scandal. Many devout young Catholic men also entered the priesthood in order to try to escape their unconfessable urges, hoping that a vow of celibacy would help them suppress their homosexual leanings. But they often found themselves in seminaries full of sexual activity. Father Doyle estimates that approximately 10 percent of Catholic seminarians were abused (that is, drawn into nonconsensual sexual relationships) by priests, administrators, or other seminarians.  This problem is nothing new.

Priestly celibacy was not firmly established until the twelfth century, after which many priests had secret wives or lived in what the church termed “concubinage.”

The obsession with enforcing unenforceable standards of sexual continence that run contrary to human nature (according to one study, 95 percent of priests report that they masturbate) has led to an extremely unhealthy atmosphere within the modern church that contributed greatly to the sexual abuse crisis. A 1971 Loyola Study, which was also commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, concluded that a large majority of American priests were psychologically immature, underdeveloped, or maldeveloped. It also found that a solid majority of priests—including those ordained in the 1940s, well before the sexual revolution—described themselves as very or somewhat sexually active.

Sipe, during his decades of work treating priests as a psychotherapist, also concluded that the lack of education about sexuality and the nature of celibate life tended to make priests immature, often more comfortable around teenagers than around other adults. All this, along with a homosocial environment and the church’s culture of secrecy, has made seminaries a breeding ground for sexual abuse.

There are possible ways out of this dilemma for Francis. He could allow priests to marry, declare homosexuality to be not sinful, or even move to reform the patriarchal nature of the church—and to address the collapse in the number of nuns, which has decreased by 30 percent since the 1960s even though the number of the world’s Catholics has nearly doubled in that time—by allowing the ordination of women. But any of those actions would spark a revolt by conservatives in the church who already regard Francis with deep suspicion, if not downright aversion.

Since the French Revolution and the spread of liberal democracy in the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church has been torn between the urge to adapt to a changing world and the impulse to resist it at all cost. Pope Pius IX, at whose urging the First Vatican Council in 1870 adopted the doctrine of papal infallibility, published in 1864 his “Syllabus of Errors,” which roundly condemned modernity, freedom of the press, and the separation of church and state.

John XXIII, who became pope in 1958, saw a profound need for what he called aggiornamento—updating—precisely the kind of reconciling of the church to a changing world that Pius IX considered anathema. John XXIII was one of the high-ranking church leaders who regarded the Nazi genocide of the Jews as a moral crossroads in history. An important part of his reforms at Vatican II was to remove all references to the Jews as a “deicide” people and to adopt an ecumenical spirit that deems other faiths worthy of respect. After Vatican II, the church made optional much of the traditional window-dressing of Catholicism—the Latin Mass, the elaborate habits of nuns, the traditional prohibition against meat on Friday—but John died before the council took up more controversial issues of doctrine.

Both radical change and the failure to change are fraught with danger, making Francis’s path an almost impossible one. He is under great pressure from victims who are demanding that the church conduct an exhaustive investigation into the responsibility of monsignors, bishops, and cardinals who knew of abusing priests but did nothing—something he is likely to resist. Such an accounting might force many of the church’s leaders into retirement and paralyze it for years to come—but his failure to act could paralyze it as well. As for the larger challenges facing the church, Francis’s best option might be to make changes within the narrow limits constraining him, such as expanding the participation of the laity in church deliberations and allowing women to become deacons. But that may be too little, too late.

The longer the Vatican refuses to clean house and reject ignorance based dogma, the larger the defection of educated western Catholics and the further the concentration of Catholicism in the ignorant, least educated parts of the world.  

Over 200 Boys in German Catholic Choir Said to Have Been Abused

As the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal continues to explode in Australia, a new bomb shell has gone off in German involving the Regensburg Choir which for 30 years was under the leadership of Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI's brother, Rev. Georg Ratzinger.  Indications are that Georg Ratzinger was aware of the abuse that is said to have involved 200 boys in the famous choir. The moral stench and bankruptcy of the Catholic Church hierarchy seeming goes on unabated.  Meanwhile, too many Catholics simply close their eyes and continue to bankroll a thoroughly corrupt institution.  The New York Times reports on this new bomb shell.  Here are excerpts:

At least 231 children who sang in a boys’ choir led for 30 years by the brother of former Pope Benedict XVI were abused over a period of almost four decades, a lawyer investigating reports of wrongdoing said Friday.

The lawyer, Ulrich Weber, who was commissioned by the choir to look into accusations of beatings, torture or sexual abuse, said he thought that the actual abuse was even more widespread.

At a news conference in Regensburg, Bavaria, where the choir traces its roots to the year 975, Mr. Weber estimated that from 1953 to 1992, every third member of the choir and an attached school suffered some kind of physical abuse.

He attributed the beatings and other mistreatment mostly to Johann Meier, director of a lower school attached to the choir from 1953 until his retirement in 1992. Mr. Meier died suddenly later that year, Mr. Weber said. A 1987 investigation of reported abuse did not prompt the choir’s leaders to remove Mr. Meier or take other action, the lawyer said.

Asked whether Benedict’s brother, the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, who conducted the Regensburg choir from 1964 to 1994, had known of the abuse, Mr. Weber said, “After my research, I must assume so.”

Mr. Weber noted that, as conductor of the choir, Father Georg Ratzinger sat on a three-person supervisory body, along with the directors of the high school and the boarding school attached to the choir, that was supposed to oversee the lower school where Mr. Meier worked.

He said at least 40 of the 231 abuse cases also involved sexual violence, “from fondling to rapes.” Most cases are too old for legal action now, he said.

The first accusations of physical punishments and sexual abuse in the choir surfaced in 2010, in connection with other reported abuses in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, Belgium and Austria. The Diocese of Regensburg last year spoke of 72 victims and offered about $2,700 in compensation.

Mr. Weber said that after his report Friday, at least eight people who had not previously come forward with accusations of abuse had contacted him.

Decent, moral Catholics need to walk away from the Church and not go back until there is a complete house cleaning of bishops and cardinals who knew of and covered up abuse.  As for Benedict, he needs to be kicked out of the Vatican.

What Pope Francis Didn't Say About Gay Marriage

Conservatives - okay, let's call them what they are, extremists - are trying to find anti-gay condemnation in Pope Francis' statements to date during his papal visit to the United States, the reality is that he has said nothing.  And when he has talked about the family, he did not use any of the favorite phrases of the Christofascists and parasitic professional Christian crowd such as "one man and one woman" or "children need a mother and a father."  Even some anti-gay Catholic bishops may be flummoxed that Francis missed his golden opportunity to condemn marriage equality.  Michelangelo Signorile looks at Francis silence on the issue most important to the anti-gay crowd and the bottom feeders of the GOP presidential candidate pool. Has Francis changed official Church doctrine?  No, but compared to the Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI, he was downright conciliatory through his silence.  Here are highlights from Huffington Post:

The United States this past June did something that the Catholic Church and the Vatican have for years railed against: granted marriage equality to its gay and lesbian citizens.  Yet, Pope Francis had nothing to say about it. Not then and not now. 

Considering that Pope Benedict often vocally expressed harsh condemnation of marriage equality -- even traveling to Spain to speak out against it when that country was among the first to legalize marriage for gays and lesbians and called it a "threat to the future of humanity"-- it's astonishing how silent Francis is on the issue. I've noted in the past how he had no comment as country after country in Europe legalized marriage for gays and lesbians. And then this past June, he had no comment after the U.S. Supreme Court decision.

And yet, while some of the American media noted the significance of his non-mention of the issue during his address to Congress, others were determined to read into his comments something that simply was not there.

All of this seemed to be part of an insistent mainstream media narrative that the pope, on his trip to the U.S., is making comments that "both sides" -- mostly meaning Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and progressives -- will be happy about. This is simply not true. The pope spent little time in his address to Congress on abortion -- without mentioning the word -- while going full force against the death penalty and emphatically using the term. From climate change to immigration, his passions are clear. Even conservatives are noting that on abortion and gay equality, the pope was subdued.

No mention of marriage being between a "man and woman" or children needing a "mother and a father"? Really? No mention of passing laws that could inhibit marriage for gays and "protect" those opposed to it, like the Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis? That, again, is astonishing. Francis was, after all, speaking to the legislative body that could do something about it -- and which is trying to, with Republicans having introduced the odious First Amendment Defense Act, which would allow clerks like Kim Davis and bakers and florists and others to deny services to gay and lesbian couples.

Also sitting right before Francis during his address to Congress were three of the five Supreme Court justices -- a majority of the majority -- who ruled for marriage equality in June: Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Kennedy. The pope had his big chance to be clear and emphatic about the terrible thing they'd supposedly done and he blew it? Maybe he just didn't care all that much.

The pope's main concern about the family, according to what he said in his comments to Congress, is that people -- children in particular -- seem to be "disoriented and aimless, trapped in a hopeless maze of violence, abuse and despair." That sounds more like someone promoting social programs to help the poor and stop gun-violence than someone trying to end same-sex marriage.

Francis may still be more emphatic at the conference on families he's attending in Philadelphia after his trip to New York. We'll know for sure in a couple of days.

But so far, the pope at best spoke in code -- as when, during his address at the White House, and sounding like Republican political candidates, he talked of defending "religious liberty" in the context of also protecting people against discrimination -- and at worst (for anti-gay conservatives, of course) he completely dodged the issue during his address to Congress, focusing instead on other forces plaguing the family. Whether or not it's all calculated, and though it represents no change of any kind in the doctrine of the church, it's still a win for LGBT people and an angering loss for anti-LGBT forces in America.
 

Vatican Diplomat Convicted of Sexual Abuse and Defrocked

While the Vatican continues to do nothing to punish bishops and cardinals who covered up and aided and abetted predator priests around the globe, in a positive move it has convicted former Vatican ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski of sexual abuse and defrocked him.  There is no word yet on if and when he will be turned over to civil authorities to face criminal prosecution - something Dominican authorities say is most justified.  I suspect that there are many other bishops who should join the ranks with Wesolowski given the attitude of droit du seigneur attitude the priestly cast toward molesting children.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

A former Vatican ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, has been defrocked and is likely to face criminal prosecution at the Vatican after a church inquiry convicted him of child sexual abuse.

Wesolowski, who is originally from Poland, was removed from his post in the Dominican Republic and recalled to the Vatican in August amid claims that he had abused boys in Santo Domingo.

The 65-year-old envoy is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be investigated for sex abuse. He was found guilty after an inquiry conducted by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has jurisdiction over all sex abuse cases in the Roman Catholic Church.

In a brief statement released Friday (June 27), the Vatican said the verdict was issued “in the past few days” and the former diplomat was facing arrest due to the “gravity of the case.”

“Measures will be taken so he is in a precise restricted location, without any freedom of movement, since he has been found guilty of a serious crime and is awaiting further legal action,” said the Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.

A bishop from the Dominican Republic was recently reported to say that he was shocked to see Wesolowski walking freely on the streets of central Rome. Prosecutors in the Caribbean nation have said they have convincing evidence that the prelate molested young men.

He has also been accused of abuse in his native Poland. The Vatican rejected an extradition request from the Warsaw prosecutor’s office on the grounds he was “a citizen of the Vatican” and holds diplomatic immunity.

His case appears to be the most tangible demonstration of what Pope Francis called his “zero tolerance” for child sex abuse as he returned from the Middle East at the end of May.

At the time, the pope said three bishops were under investigation. While he did not name names, he was likely referring to Wesolowski; Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who resigned in 2013 amid allegations of improper conduct; and Chilean Bishop Cristian Contreras, who has been accused of abuse by other priests in his diocese.

In September, the Peruvian Bishops Conference defrocked Bishop Gabino Miranda on orders from the Vatican after he was accused of abusing children.

The real problem that Francis faces is that if he is going to punish those involved in cover ups, he needs to start with Benedict XVI who for over 20 years ran the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - a/k/a the Inquisition - which failed to prosecute sexual predator priest and their enablers.

Catholic Church Sex Abuse - Pope Francis' Huge Fail

I have said a number of times that the real test as to whether or not Pope Francis will bring real change to the Roman Catholic Church will be how he addresses the worldwide sex abuse scandal and those in the Church hierarchy that aided, abetted and covered up for predator priests.  And this test includes those at the very top, including the former Benedict XVI.  Sadly, it appears that we have gotten an answer to this question and it seems to confirm that while Francis is ushering in a more PR savvy papacy, nothing has really changed whatsoever.  Those responsible for decades of cover ups and the obstruction of justice on a global scale will go unpunished - including Benedict XVI who for over 20 years knew what was happening and did nothing.  Andrew Sullivan laments what we now know: 

The Acid Test For Francis - And he fails:

Speaking about the horrific abuse of children by priests, Francis said “the cases of abuse are terrible because they leave very deep wounds”.  Benedict XVI “was very courageous and opened a road, and the Church has done a lot on this route, perhaps more than all others”, he stated. He noted that the statistics reveal the tremendous violence against children, but also that the vast majority of abuse takes place in the milieu of the family and those close to them.  The Church is the only public institution to have moved “with transparency and responsibility”, he said; no one else has done as much as it, “but the Church is the only one to be attacked”.

This is more of the institutional defensiveness that has proven so devastating to the church’s moral authority and a bad omen for more thoroughgoing accountability and reform.

The UN Report on the Vatican’s role as a global conspiracy to enable, abet and cover up crimes against humanity is a vital reminder of just how hideous the Catholic Church has been in violating the souls and bodies of so many innocents.

It seems nothing every truly changes in the corrupt, morally bankrupt world of the Vatican.

Caption This

A friend sent out his weekly e-mail of jokes and cartoons and the image above was included in the mix.  Call me mean spirited, but I just could not resist posting it.  Readers can suggest the best caption.  Sadly, to me, it sums up what is probably an all too prevalent mindset among the bitter old men at the Vatican.

UK Cardinal Admits to Sexual Improprieties

I have long maintained that those most outwardly homophobic and who verbally attack gays are typically the worse self-loathing closet cases.  Indeed, a University of Georgia study founded that it was the homophobes, not the gays, who were most aroused when viewing gay porn.  And this rule  of thumb seemingly holds true both in and out of religious institutions.  One need only recall Virginia Congressman Ed Schrock who had one of the most anti-gay voting records in Congress yet dropped his re-election campaign after it was exposed that he was using a gay hook up site to arrange trysts with men.  Now we can add Cardinal Keith O'Brien to this list of self-loathing hypocrites and liars.  Until recently, O'Brien was the highest ranking Catholic in the United Kingdom.  That is to say that was until accusations were leveled by five past and present priests that O'Brien had engaged in sexual improprieties with them.  O'Brien quickly resigned and was barred from participating in the conclave to elect a new Pope.  Now, O'Brien has admitted that the allegations were true.  One can only wonder (i) how many in the Church hierarchy knew of O'Brien's improper actions and (ii) how many more O'Briens there are among the ranks of the Church's bishops and cardinals.  I suspect that the answer to both issues is that many knew and many others have engaged in similar actions.  Pink News looks at O'Brien's admission that the claims against him were true.  Here are excepts:

In the statement, released on Sunday, the Cardinal apologised, and asked for forgiveness, as well as admitting that, despite previously contesting the allegations, some were true.

It read: “In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.

“However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.

“To those I have offended, I apologize and ask forgiveness… To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologize.”  He concluded by saying that he would retire, and would have no involvement in the Catholic church in Scotland, going forward.

He said: “I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”

Also today, one of the priests accusing Cardinal O’Brien of inappropriate behaviour came forward to call for transparency within the Catholic church, which he said would “crush him” if it could, for speaking out. 

Last November, Cardinal O’Brien was named ‘Bigot of the Year’ by a gay rights charity due to his staunch opposition to marriage equality.

In 2012, he stated that same-sex relationships were “harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual well being” and compared equal marriage to slavery and child abuse.

In an editorial on Friday, British Catholic newspaper The Tablet said:“When Cardinal Keith O’Brien called gay marriage a ‘grotesque subversion’ and ‘madness’ it attracted widespread censure. No wonder the accusations of inappropriate behaviour as a younger man – strenuously denied – were so damning. If true, it made him look a hypocrite. For the church this was a public relations disaster.”

I suspect that the college of cardinals will elect yet another right wing, reactionary homophobe to replace Benedict XVI and that nothing will change within the Church.

Did Pope Benedict XVI Receive News of An Arrest Warrant Before Abdicating?

Two morally bankrupt criminals who deserve to be criminally prosecuted

Some lesser news blogs are reporting that Pope Benedict XVI's decision to abdicate yet remain living at the Vatican may have been prompted by the knowledge that criminal warrants against were about to be forth coming.  It's unclear whether the reporting is accurate or not, although it seems very clear that Benedict XVI was up to his ears in orchestrating the global conspiracy to shuffle around predator priests and protect the appearances of the Church rather than to protect children and youths from known child rapists. Here's a sampling from one such report:

On February 4, a week before Pope Benedict XVI's resignation, Vatican allegedly received a note from an undisclosed European government that stated that there are plans to issue a warrant for the Pope's arrest. Addicting Info reports.

With his resignation announced, the former pope will have a meeting with the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano on February 23 to beg for immunity against prosecution for allegations of child rape.

But for him this will not be easy as the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State calls upon the Italian President to deny help to Ratzinger. If the Italian President does cave there may be another venue to make sure he doesn't get away.

In addition to these alleged attempts by this European government to prosecute, a New York based organization, The Centre for Constitutional Rights, has accussed the Pope and his Cardinals of possible crimes against humanity for sheltering pedophile priests. The non-profit legal group has requested an ICC inquiry on behalf of the Survivor’s Network, citing the church’s “long-standing and pervasive system of sexual violence.”

Huffington Post is also reporting that there is a very real stagey behind the apparent decision to have Benedict XVI to remain residing at the Vatican after his abdication: enhancing his immunity from criminal prosecution.  Once again, the Vatican sees itself as above the law and not accountable to facing justice for horrific crimes against children and youth.  Here are article highlights:

Pope Benedict's decision to live in the Vatican after he resigns will provide him with security and privacy. It will also offer legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world, Church sources and legal experts say.

"His continued presence in the Vatican is necessary, otherwise he might be defenseless. He wouldn't have his immunity, his prerogatives, his security, if he is anywhere else," said one Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity.  "It is absolutely necessary" that he stays in the Vatican, said the source, . . . .

The final key consideration is the pope's potential exposure to legal claims over the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandals.

In 2010, for example, Benedict was named as a defendant in a law suit alleging that he failed to take action as a cardinal in 1995 when he was allegedly told about a priest who had abused boys at a U.S. school for the deaf decades earlier. The lawyers withdrew the case last year and the Vatican said it was a major victory that proved the pope could not be held liable for the actions of abusive priests.
Benedict is currently not named specifically in any other case. The Vatican does not expect any more but is not ruling out the possibility.

After he resigns, Benedict will no longer be the sovereign monarch of the State of Vatican City, which is surrounded by Rome, but will retain Vatican citizenship and residency. That would continue to provide him immunity under the provisions of the Lateran Pacts while he is in the Vatican and even if he makes jaunts into Italy as a Vatican citizen. 

The 1929 Lateran Pacts between Italy and the Holy See, which established Vatican City as a sovereign state, said Vatican City would be "invariably and in every event considered as neutral and inviolable territory".

 Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan notes what is happening to the Church in the Western world:

My niece – now as brilliant a teen girl as you can imagine – memorized the vows and was a ring-bearer. My sister could not explain or defend. To hear the shameless protectors of child-rapists mount a campaign against her own brother’s chance to love and be loved was too much. They have all drifted away.

Without women, the Church will die. One of the more obviously radical things Jesus does in the Gospels is to treat women as complete equals. Yet the Church that was constructed after Him was based on male supremacy and eventually male segregation in the priesthood – forbidding by celibacy even the influence of wives and daughters. Of course this creates a circular, hermetically sealed worldview. But I’ll tell you this: if women had been priests or priests had ever had kids, the child-rape scandal would have been stopped in its tracks. The criminals would have been busted, not protected.

If the hierarchy still refuses to get this, if it does not shift on women and married priests, it will, in the West, lose the mothers. And once you lose them, the church is all but over.

Quote of the Day: Gary Wills on The Hopelessness of Hoping for a Reformer Pope

As a ruling model, the Roman Catholic Church is based on the governing structure of the Roman Empire or a feudal monarchy with the king/emperor at the top, the cardinals and bishops as the equivalents of the feudal lords sworn by fealty to the king/emperor and the laity the equivalent of the serfs. Serf who are to obey their lords and financially support the entire structure that caters to the whims and conceits of the rulers.  And under the last two Popes, the system seems to have become even more disdainful of the laity/serfs.  Gary Wills has a piece in the New York Times that looks at the futility of hoping that somehow a reformer Pope could be elected by the coming conclave of cardinals who earned their positions by obsequiousness and sycophancy.  Here an on point excerpt:

[A] new pope will be elected by cardinals who were elevated to office by the very popes who reaffirmed “eternal truths” like the teaching on contraception. They were appointed for their loyalty, as were the American bishops who stubbornly upheld the contraception nonsense in our elections. 

Will the new conclave vote for a man who goes against the teachings of his predecessors? Even if they do, can the man chosen buck the structure through which he rose without kicking the structure down? These considerations have given the election of new popes the air of watching Charlie Brown keep trying to kick the football, hoping that Lucy will cooperate. 

As this election approaches, some hope that the shortage of priests, and their damaged reputation and morale, can be remedied by adding married priests, or women priests, or gay priests. But that misses the point. Whatever their sexual status, they will still be priests. They will not be chosen by their congregations (as was the practice in the early church). They will be appointed from above, by bishops approved for their loyalty to Rome, which will police their doctrinal views as it has with priests heretofore. The power structure will not be changed by giving it new faces. Monarchies die hard. 

In 1859, John Henry Newman published an article that led to his denunciation in Rome as “the most dangerous man in England.” It was called “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” and it showed that in history the laity had been more true to the Gospel than the hierarchy. That was an unacceptable position to Rome. It still is. 

The claim of priests and popes to be the sole conduits of grace is a remnant of the era of papal monarchy. We are watching that era fade. But some refuse to recognize its senescence. Such people will run peppily up, like Charlie Brown, to the coming of a new pope. But Lucy, as usual, still holds the football.  

Like the GOP which it parallels in many ways (e.g., denying scientific realities), the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy will cling to power and refuse all meaningful change until the church structure literally begins to collapse around them.  My prediction is that in the not too distant future the Catholic Church will become a black African denomination.  As it advances economically and socially, Latin America will follow the path of Europe, not Africa wher it will take many more generations to escape the ignorance and simple mindedness that are now prerequisites for the Church to thrive.

Catholic Church Leaders Sought to Hide Sex Abuse Cases from Police

Cardinal Roger Mahony, seen at a 2007 trial of a case involving sexual abuse by priests, wrote memos in 1986 and 1987 that offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by archdiocese officials to shield abusers from police. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times / July 16, 2007)

Cardinal Roger Mahony, seen at a 2007 trial of a case involving sexual abuse by priests, wrote memos in 1986 and 1987 that offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by archdiocese officials to shield abusers from police. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times / July 16, 2007)

The foul cesspool that is the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy seems to be becoming even more vile and stench ridden.  Or more accurately, with every passing day we simply learn more about the past strenuous efforts to obstruct justice and protect predator priests by high members of the Church hierarchy.  All orchestrated no doubt from the Vatican.  One has to truly wonder when criminal indictments will finally be handed down.  Likewise, one has to wonder when rank and file Catholics will open their eyes and stop financially supporting a criminal conspiracy.  The latest bombshell is from the Los Angeles Times which is reporting that  some fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal in Boston exploded, Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top adviser plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement officials.  If you or I did this, we'd be on our way to prison.  Here are highlights on the latest revelations which I personally find to be confirmation of past suspicions: 

Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement, including keeping them out of California to avoid prosecution, according to internal Catholic church records released Monday.

The archdiocese's failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese's chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation's largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders' own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.

In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.

One such case that has previously received little attention is that of Msgr. Peter Garcia, who admitted preying for decades on undocumented children in predominantly Spanish-speaking parishes. After Garcia's discharge from a New Mexico treatment center for pedophile clergy, Mahony ordered him to stay away from California "for the foreseeable future" in order to avoid legal accountability, the files show. 

[I]n a letter to Mahony about bringing Garcia back to work in the archdiocese, Curry said he was worried that victims in Los Angeles might see the priest and call police.  "[T]here are numerous — maybe twenty — adolescents or young adults that Peter was involved with in a first degree felony manner. The possibility of one of these seeing him is simply too great," Curry wrote in May 1987.

Garcia was never prosecuted and died in 2009. The files show he admitted to a therapist that he had sexually abused boys "on and off" since his 1966 ordination. He assured church officials his victims were unlikely to come forward because of their immigration status. In at least one case, according to a church memo, he threatened to have a boy he had raped deported if he went to police.

Curry did not return calls seeking comment. He currently serves as the archdiocese's auxiliary bishop for Santa Barbara.

The confidential files of at least 75 more accused abusers are slated to become public in coming weeks under the terms of a 2007 civil settlement with more than 500 victims. A private mediator had ordered the names of the church hierarchy redacted from those documents, but after objections from The Times and the Associated Press, a Superior Court judge ruled that the names of Mahony, Curry and others in supervisory roles should not be blacked out.

The records show that sex abuse allegations were handled almost exclusively by the archbishop and his vicar. Memos that crossed their desks included graphic details, such as one letter from another priest accusing Garcia of tying up and raping a young boy in Lancaster.

There is much more in the article that is worth reading disgusting as it may be.  It is crucial that the Church hierarchy be criminally prosecuted for the horrors that they aided and abetted.  It is also crucial, in my view, that the Catholic laity be forced to face the reality that they are financing a criminal enterprises.  They need to cease all further financial donations to the Church in any form until the hierarchy is completely rid of all who participated in these criminal conspiracies, including the current Pope and many sitting cardinals.  Catholics who don't cease financing these monsters are little better than monsters like Mahony and Curry.

Italian Supreme Court Holds Gay Parents Equal to Straight Ones

In yet another blow to the Catholic Church's anti-gay agenda, the Italian Supreme Court ruled literally in the Vatican's own back yard that same sex parents are as good as heterosexual parents.  One can just imagine the gnashing of teeth amongst the bitter old men in dresses at the Vatican which issued a statement condemning the Court's ruling.   Italy's highest court handed down the ruling in a custody dispute where a heterosexual father had brought a case against his former partner who was now living with a woman.  Of note was the Court's recognition of the reality that there is zero scientific evidence that heterosexual parenting of children is superior to that provided in same sex couple households.  Gay Star News has details.  These are highlights:

The Supreme Court of Italy has ruled that same sex couples can be as good parents as opposite sex couples.

According to APF the court made the ruling on Friday, stating ‘There is no scientific certainty or concrete evidence but only prejudice [to say that] living in a homosexual family is damaging for the growth of a child.’

The ruling was on a custody dispute where a heterosexual father had brought a case against his former partner who was now living with a woman.

The ruling was welcomed by Italian LGBT rights group Arcigay.  ‘Once again an Italian court [has found in favor of a] family made up of people of the same sex,’ said Arcigay president Flavio Romans.  ‘The Supreme Court reiterates … that a child grows up in a family of a mum and mum or dad and dad in exactly the same way as a child growing up in a family men and women does.’

As noted, the Vatican is REALLY pissed off with the Court and issued a disingenuous, spittle flecked statement reported by the Miami Herald:

The Vatican is pressing its opposition to gay marriage, insisting Saturday that children should grow up with a father and a mother after Italy's high court upheld a lower court ruling and granted custody of a child to his gay mother.

In its decision Friday, the Court of Cassation said there was no "scientific certainty or experience-based data" to support the father's claims that the child's development was being damaged by living with his mother and her female partner. Such an argument was "mere prejudice," the court said.

On Saturday, bioethicist Adriano Pessina sought to downplay the significance of the ruling, writing in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that children often grow up in less-than-ideal circumstances and turn out fine.

Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2013/01/vatican-criticizes-court-ruling-on-gays-children.html#storylink=cpy

He echoed the pope's recent insistence that no one has a "right" to a child and that children should be raised by a mother and father.  "Monogamous families constitute the ideal place to learn the significance of human relations and represent the social and anthropological environment in which the best type of growth is possible," he wrote.

Of course, if the Vatican really gave a rat's ass about children, there would be a thorough house cleaning of the priesthood and the Church hierarchy of every predator priest and every bishop and cardinal who aided, abetted or covered up for child rapists (yes, I know - that means Benedict XVI would need to be thrown off the throne of St. Peter for his own cover up activities).  Until such a house cleaning happens, the Vatican's shrieks and moans are simply hypocrisy of the highest order.  

ttp://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2013/01/vatican-criticizes-court-ruling-on-gays-children.html#storylink=cpy

Indeed, the only argument against gay parenting - like the arguments against same sex marriage - boil down to one thing: religious based bigotry, hate and prejudice.

Vatican Newspaper Likens Gay Marriage to Communism

Sometimes it seems as if the Vatican truly struggles to find things sufficiently offensive with which to compare gay civil law marriage.   From the Vatican's perspective, it is impossible to sow enough anti-gay animus even as lip service is given to opposing violence against gays.  Like so many of the "godly Christian" crowd, the Vatican has blood on its hands for the needless deaths of gays at the hands of gay bashers not to mention suicides encouraged by the constant disparagement and bullying made acceptable by the pious folk.  In its latest effort to paint gays as a threat to civilization, the Vatican Newspaper has compared the passage of marriage equality with the evils of communism.  The Vatican newspaper, somehow never seems to mention the sex abuse scandal that is continuing to explode around the world or the role played by the Church hierarchy and the current Pope in enabling and covering up for predator priests.  Recognizing the love of committed same sex couples threatens civilization while the rape of children and youth is fine unless the media finds out about it.  The State Journal-Register looks at the Vatican's latest hypocrisy laden anti-gay offensive.  Here are highlights:

VATICAN CITY — Faced with recent setbacks in the United States and in Europe, the Catholic Church has intensified its increasingly uphill battle against gay marriage.

The latest salvo came with a front-page article in the Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.  Historian Lucetta Scaraffia compared proponents of gay marriage, with their championing of “marriage equality,” to 20th-century communists who wooed millions with their promise of perfect social and economical equality.  For her, the idea of gay marriage is a product of the same “egalitarian utopia that did so much damage during the 20th century … deceiving humanity as socialism did in the past.”

In November, voters approved gay marriage in three U.S. states, while Spain’s Constitutional Court rejected a bid to repeal the country’s same-sex marriage law. France and Britain are in the process of legalizing gay marriage.   The church has lobbied hard in all these countries. But it has also tried to present its position in a nonreligious way, as a defense of traditional family that can be embraced by believers and nonbelievers alike.

In her L’ Osservatore Romano article, Scaraffia echoed and developed Benedict’s argument. To equate a traditional marriage between a man and a woman with a union between homosexuals amounts to a “negation of truth,” which would undermine “one of the basic structures of human society, family,” she wrote.

In the long run, she concluded, societies will end up paying “a very high price” for destroying family, “as it happened in the past with the attempts to create a complete social and economical equality.”

Fortunately, as the article notes, some are calling out the Vatican for its lies and hypocrisy:

Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, agreed that “marriage and family are sacred institutions that deserve the support of both civil and religious communities.” But, she added, “these institutions are not limited by the sexual orientations of their members. Love and commitment transcend gender.”

The Vatican’s arguments against gay marriage, she said, are based on “patently false beliefs about human nature” and represent “a cruel and un-Christian attempt to incite fear and division.”

Would that more civil and governmental authorities had the courage to take on the church and conduct investigations into the Church's criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice and protect sexual predators.  The successful prosecution and conviction of bishops and cardinals would do wonders in educating the public to the Church hierarchy's utter moral bankruptcy.