The Catholic Church's Continued Viciousness and Hypocrisy

As most readers know, I was raised Catholic and it took years of therapy to undo the psychological damage that a Catholic upbringing did to me. Thankfully, the media is finally publicizing the hypocrisy and moral cesspool that is the Church hierarchy with stories that expose things ranging from the sexual abuse of nuns by priest, special policies for priests who father children, to the global cover up of an immense sexual abuse problem that has targeted children and youths likely for seven decades, if not centuries.   A recent piece in the New York Times looked at the plight of gay priests and the hypocrisy of their treatment by the Church hierarchy.  One can perhaps find little sympathy for them given that one can argue that they knew what they were getting into, yet the mental and emotional anguish they describe in many ways describes what everyday LGBT people unfortunate to be born into the Church experience.  The fear of discovery, self-loathing, and fear of rejection are only too real and can be soul killing.  What is perhaps more instructive to the masses of the Church laity about the moral bankruptcy of the Church leadership is the viciousness that the Church directs towards non-clergy individuals who rightly or wrongly worked for the Church's institutions to help others.  A column in the New York Times looks at the witch hunt for LGBT Catholics within the Church.  Here are excerpts:

Pat Fitzgerald, 67, has long loved being a Catholic, and the part he loved maybe most of all, for the past quarter-century, was his role as a spiritual mentor at retreats for students at a church-affiliated high school in Indianapolis, where he lives.

But he has been told that he’s not wanted anymore. His crime? He publicly supported his daughter, a guidance counselor at the school, after its administrators moved to get rid of her because she’s married to a woman.

The school’s treatment of Shelly Fitzgerald, 45, was a big local story last summer that went national; she ended up on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” in September. It was one of many examples of Catholic institutions deciding almost whimsically to exile longtime employees — not priests or nuns but coaches, teachers, counselors — who had long been known to be gay but were suddenly regarded as liabilities.

That’s what happened to Shelly Fitzgerald, and her 14 years of fine work at Roncalli High School no longer mattered. Only her 2015 marriage to her longtime partner did. She was told that she could stay on if she dissolved the union. She said no thanks and was kicked off school grounds in August.
 The aftershocks still complicate the lives — and faith — of people around her: her students, their parents, her dad.
 But there’s no peace for the Catholic Church here. It’s too mired in its own hypocrisy. The tension between its official teaching and unofficial practice — between the ignorance of the past and the illumination of the present — grows tauter all the time.
Most Catholics support same-sex marriage, in defiance of the church’s formal position, and many parishes fully welcome L.G.B.T. people. Yet there are places, and times, when the hammer comes down.

Church leaders know full well that the priesthood would be decimated if closeted gay men were exposed and expelled. Yet the church as a matter of policy bars men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” and considers gay people “objectively disordered.”
Catholics are supposed to show compassion. Yet Shelly and her dad were shown anything but.

There is, by many accounts, profound anger and hurt at Roncalli. As it happens, Shelly was one of two directors of counseling there; the other, Lynn Starkey, 62, is in a same-sex civil union and in November filed her own charge of discrimination with the E.E.O.C., claiming a “hostile work environment” in the aftermath of Shelly’s departure. For now she remains on the job.

Many students started an L.G.B.T. advocacy group, Shelly’s Voice, that also attracted parents and other adults in the community. A related Facebook page, Time to Be a Rebel, has more than 4,500 members.

But one parent told me that students who question Shelly’s dismissal fear repercussions. “Seniors are being told that if they speak out, they take the chance of not being able to graduate,” the parent, who spoke with me on condition of anonymity, said.
 [A] small cluster of Roncalli students were invited last month to a lunch with Archbishop Charles C. Thompson of Indianapolis, only to have him stress that homosexuality is a disorder and its expression sinful. One student called it an ambush.
 Shelly pointed out that the Catholic Church isn’t generally going after teachers who flout its rules by using birth control or divorcing or having sexual relations outside marriage. “They’re going after L.G.B.T. people,” she said. “They’re going to die on this hill.”

And they’re going to hurt people — like Shawn Aldrich, who attended Roncalli, just as his parents and his wife and her parents did. He has two children there now. What has happened to Shelly astounds him.

He and his wife plan to end their family tradition. They won’t send their third child, now in seventh grade, to Roncalli. “And that breaks our hearts,” he said. “That absolutely breaks our hearts.”

Shawn Aldrich has made the only decision that perhaps over time will force change and the end of rank hypocrisy within the Church leadership: walking away.  If enough decent and moral Catholics walk away, schools such as Roncalli will close as will parishes and the toxic hierarchy will have to decide between allowing the Church to wither away (at least outside of ignorant and uneducated parts of the world) or leaving its 12th century dogma.  For me, walking away was one of the most positive things I have ever done. 

Is an Overdue Reckoning Coming for the Catholic Church on Sexual Abuse?

For centuries the Roman Catholic Church has been allowed to be above the law, especially in nationals like Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Germany, but so too in America.  Politicians have deferred to Church prelates and law enforcement officials rarely dared take on the Catholic Church establishment.  This thankfully began to change in 2002 when the Boston Globe blew the lid off of the sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston.  Similar stories have since swept the globe, with the Church going into a free-fall in Ireland and major government investigations like that done in Australia that lead to the first criminal convictions against members of the hierarchy for their role in the cover up of crimes against children and youths.  Now, the U.S. Attorney's office in Philadelphia has announced it is launching an investigation of seven of the eight dioceses in Pennsylvania.  Meanwhile the Attorney General of the District of Columbia is launching an investigation of the Washington Archdiocese.  Since the Vatican and bishops and cardinals have failed to date to come clean and clean house, some are hoping that a long overdue reckoning is about to overtake the Church.   I was never abused by priests, but I know those who were.  The hypocrisy of the hierarchy has been stunning as has the indifference towards crimes against children and youth.  A piece in Rewire looks at what may be coming.  Here are excerpts:

I remember the moment when the gravity of the Catholic hierarchy’s long-term cover-up of rampant sexual abuse within the priestly ranks was driven home to me. It was in 2010, and I was conducting an interview for my book Good Catholics with the noted Catholic feminist theologian Mary Hunt. We were discussing her reflections regarding what had, at that point, been a decades-long adversarial relationship with the powers-that-be in the Catholic Church, dating from when Hunt was one of the leaders of an effort in the mid-1980s to assert the validity of a pro-choice position in the face of an increasingly authoritarian Vatican.

Hunt told me. “We thought we were dealing with people of good will.” But it’s what she said next that sent a chill down my spine. “What we didn’t know then was that we were up against criminal behavior—people participating in criminal behavior and ignoring criminal behavior.”

As last week’s move by the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the abuse of children and young adults by Catholic clergy (and the subsequent cover-up by bishops) makes clear, Hunt was prescient.

The news that former Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had been serially abusing young men and seminarians for decades was eclipsed by the damning Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed decades of abuse and cover-up in dioceses throughout the state. This in turn prompted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl as archbishop of Washington—Wuerl helped formulate the Church’s rules for preventing sexual abuse by priests—for his role in shuffling predator priests around the state when he was the head of the Pittsburgh diocese.

But the recently announced U.S. attorney’s investigation marks a major turning point and a potential moment of reckoning in the long-running and sordid sex abuse scandal that first burst into public view with the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” investigation in early 2002. The Justice Department investigation promises to fundamentally reshape the relationship between the U.S. Catholic Church and civil law enforcement authorities.

To date, no matter how messy the scandal became, civil authorities largely left the Church alone to clean up its own mess. While individual priests have been charged with crimes as the result of abuse, and culpable prelates like Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law were shuffled into retirement, the larger question of criminality on the part of the Church’s leadership has been off the table. It was, admittedly, an odd arrangement, with the U.S. government in effect deferring to the government of the Catholic Church, an arrangement neither codified in the Constitution nor available to any other religion.

But if this federal investigation does go forward—and it should be noted that it’s coming from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, so it could be impeded by higher-ups in the Justice Department—it would be a landmark moment as the federal government usurps the authority that Vatican has long claimed to police its internal affairs.

And the nature of the investigation reported by the AP, which spans seven of the state’s eight dioceses, suggests just how deep such an inquiry could go. According to the Washington Post:

The subpoenas seek years of internal records, including any evidence of church personnel taking children across state lines for purposes of sexual abuse, any evidence of personnel sending sexual material about children electronically and any evidence that church officials reassigned suspected predators or used church resources to further or conceal such conduct.

[T]he prosecutors could be planning a racketeering case against Church leaders: “Human trafficking, child pornography, the Mann Act—any of these could be the underlying crimes for RICO.”

The leveling of criminal conspiracy charges against members of the Catholic hierarchy would be a stunning denouement for men who, until recently, regularly met with U.S. presidents and influenced public policy on everything from women’s access to contraception to the simmering argument about transgender identity. It would signal that after a century of acquiescence to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church as a separate political structure operating with impunity outside of the U.S. legal system, U.S. civil authorities no longer consider the Church above the law.

As Emma Green notes in The Atlantic, the scope of the investigation “will test the Catholic bishops’ stated resolve to give secular authorities full control and transparency in abuse investigations, as the moral and legal stakes of the crisis continue to grow.” This will be especially important if subpoenas seek the contents of so-called secret archives that may hold previously unreleased information about efforts to cover up the activities of abusive priests.

And despite pledges of transparency, there are indications that the Church will not surrender without a fight. Even as bishops in Pennsylvania promised to cooperate with civil authorities in the wake of the grand jury report, behind the scenes the church fought tooth-and-nail to derail a popular measure that would have created an exemption to the state’s statute of limitations for sexual abuse suits.

Now the question becomes: Will the public—both inside and outside of Pennsylvania—stand any longer for the extraordinary dispensation that has been granted for so long to an organization that has engaged in what may prove to be a decades-long criminal conspiracy?

I continue to urge Catholics sickened by the sex abuse cover ups to vote with their feet and walk away.  The Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church offer good alternatives that are free from the thoroughly corrupt Catholic Church hierarchy. 

The Catholic Church's Decline in Latin America

As regular readers know, I was raised Roman Catholic, served as an altar boy for roughly a decade and rose to the level of a 4th Degree Knight of Columbus.  All of that preceded my "coming out" but more importantly, the sex abuse scandal that has continued to shock decent moral people around the world since it first exploded on Boston.  Since then, no part of the world has been exempt from stories of years of abuse and many decades of deliberate cover ups by bishops, cardinals and, yes, popes. Unlike countless altar boys globally, I was never sexually molested back in the days when women only entered a parish sacristy to collect soiled altar linens or to return fresh ones. I understand how easy it was for predator priests to groom and select their victims.  What I do not understand is the refusal of the Church from the current Pope on down to punish those who aided and abetted predators.  No bishop or cardinal has been punished and when Cardinal Law who became the face of cardinals who were derelict in their duties to protect children and youths died at the Vatican during the past month, Pope Francis attended his funeral. Why?  Was he blind to the message that his presence sent to Catholics and former Catholics trying to grasp the magnitude of the evil done?    The Church can on occasion still do good - I attended the funeral mass of a long time client and the service was beautiful and brought comfort to the grieving family. But until the stain of the sex abuse scandal is directly faced and the guilty severely punished, the Church's moral authority will continue to wither.  A piece The Americas Quarterly looks at the Church's plummeting influence in Latin America, once a bastion of Catholicism.  Here are excerpts:

When Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio was elected the first Latin American pope, he was expected to take the helm of a Roman Catholic Church severely weakened by sex abuse scandals and by a growing secularity, and strengthen its influence in the region.

Indeed, since March 2013, Pope Francis has prioritized Latin America. His first trip abroad, in July 2013, was to Rio de Janeiro. Although he has not yet returned to his native Argentina, he has visited nine Latin American countries, making six stops in the region during his 22 trips abroad.

Though there is a widespread perception that the pope has made progress with the faithful, there is also growing criticism of his wavering response to cases of sex and child abuse committed by members of the clergy. This was evident during his visit to Chile and Peru from Jan. 15 to 21, when he was greeted with far less enthusiasm than his predecessors – particularly in Chile.

This is, in part, because Chile itself has changed. It is a more developed and secular country. Unlike during Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1987, there is no oppressive dictatorship violating human rights, which made the pastoral visit by the leader of the Catholic Church far less salient in the national public debate. 

More than that, in recent years, Chile – and to a lesser extent and more recently Peru – has been shocked by revelations of sexual and child abuse committed by Catholic priests. Much of the papal visit was framed by the church’s limited official reaction to the scandal, and by the presence in all papal events of an active bishop who is accused of helping cover up the most notorious sex abuse cases.

The presence of the bishop of the city of Osorno, Juan Barros, 61, on the front lines of events and masses during the visit overshadowed the image of Francis for many Catholics, and marred his outreach and his message of repentance and reconciliation. . . . . Victims’ advocates demand his removal. Because Francis has not asked Barros to resign, many advocates allege that the Pope is not fully committed to combating what they call a culture of protecting abusers that still exists in the church.

Despite the two formal apologies issued by the Pope for the sex abuse scandals – he apologized in his first statement in Chile, then again a day later in a public meeting with members of the clergy – this impression was reinforced when, in an impromptu declaration, Francis asked for proof of the controversial bishop’s involvement in the sex abuse case. Though the pope later apologized to the victims for his words, among many Chileans the dominant perception is that the church has not fully realized the magnitude of the crisis and how its image has suffered. For too many Chileans, Francis’ apologies came too late, were not enough, and worse, they were undermined by his candid remarks and his inclusion of Barros.

It is true that Chileans were not keen on Francis’ visit even before Barros took center stage in the public activities. In two of the three public masses held in Chile, attendance was far lower than expected. Even the biggest mass held in Santiago in the pope’s second day in Chile, attendance was below the one registered when John Paul II came in 1987.

To be fair, comparing Francis’ visit to that of John Paul II in 1987, when the country was still under the rule of Augusto Pinochet, is unfair. Today Chile is a buoyant democracy, and among the most developed countries in Latin America. Poverty in 1987 was over 40 percent; today, it is less than 5 percent.  Chileans then were in great need of a pastor who could give them hope. Today, Chilean society is far more secular, with fewer economic needs. Despite high levels of inequality, Chileans are hopeful about the future.

The country has become increasingly secular. Among those who are religious, the Catholic Church has lost ground to protestants and evangelicals. . . . . Protestants and evangelicals account for 20 percent of the population, 2 percent declare allegiance to other religions and 18 percent declare to be non-believers, agnostic or atheist.

[T]he Catholic Church’s response to the allegations of sexual abuse and its organization of the visit – along with the unscripted comments by Pope Francis himself – will be remembered largely as a valuable missed opportunity to reach out to many Chileans who no longer see the Catholic Church as a part of their lives.

Add Chile to the list of countries like Ireland where the sex abuse scandal has left a one time bastion of the Church now a place where the Church holds no moral authority, and the Roman Catholic Church is rapidly headed towards becoming a largely black, Africa based church.  Francis - and others in the hierarchy remain oblivious to the reality that until severe punishments ate meted out to bishops and cardinals (and the Church's 12th century understanding of human sexuality changes), parishioners will continue to quietly drift away, many joining the ranks of the "Nones."

Pope Francis Fails the Test on Sexual Abuse

Pope Francis' visit to south America has not been well received by many.  True, large crowds of lemming like Catholics have turned out for his appearances, but many are unmoved by Francis' crocodile tears and false pleas of sorrow for the rampant sexual abuse that the Vatican and the Church hierarchy have allowed for many decades, if not longer.  There has been no real repentance and no real action to punish those who allowed this attitude that sexual abuse was a case of droit du seigneur for the hypocrisy filled priesthood.  In Chile, as CBS New notes, violence greeted Francis:

Overnight three more Catholic churches were torched, including one burned to the ground in the southern Araucania region where Francis will visit on Wednesday to meet with Chile's indigenous peoples. While not causing any injuries, the nine church firebombings in the past few days have marked an unprecedented level of protest against history's first Latin American pope on his home turf.

Sadly, no reform will come from within the Church and decent people should walk away.  If the fail to do so and continue to support the Church, they are complicit in abuse and continued cover ups.   An editorial in the New York Times rightly takes Francis to task for his continued failure to take decisive action.  Here are highlights:

 Pope Francis arrived in Chile with the right message: He was “pained and ashamed,” he said on Tuesday, about the irreparable damage abusive priests have inflicted on minors. Yet he refused to meet with victims of the country’s most nefarious sexual abuser, and when pressed about his support of a bishop linked to that priest, he dismissed the accusations as slander.

For all his professions of horror at the revelations about predatory priests whose activities were covered up by the hierarchy — and for all his other admirably enlightened and pastoral actions — it seems the pope has yet to fully appreciate that the abuse of minors is not simply a matter of a few deviant priests protected by overzealous prelates but of his church’s acceptance of a horrible violation of a most sacred trust: that of a devout and questioning youth and a spiritual guide.

Acknowledging and regretting the damage is not enough. If the Catholic Church is ever to lift the deep stain of child sex abuse, the pope must take every opportunity to reject not only clear violations but also the slightest appearance of tolerance for such behavior.

He missed that opportunity by attending the funeral last month for Cardinal Bernard Law, the powerful former archbishop of Boston who resigned after revelations that he protected abusive priests for years and became, in effect, the image of a hierarchy that concealed and thereby enabled sexual abuse. He missed it in the failure of the Vatican so far to appoint a new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors after the commissioners’ terms expired in December.

And Pope Francis missed it again in Chile. One of Latin America’s most staunchly Catholic countries, Chile had been shaken by revelations about the sexual crimes of Fernando Karadima, once one of Chile’s most respected and influential priests. It took years for the church to act on complaints about him, but a Vatican investigation in 2011 finally found Father Karadima guilty of sexual abuse and restricted him to a life of isolated penitence. A Chilean judge later determined that the allegations against the priest were truthful, but the statute of limitations had expired.

Among those accused of turning a blind eye to Father Karadima’s behavior was a priest and longtime member of Father Karadima’s entourage, Juan Barros Madrid. Yet Pope Francis made him a bishop in 2015 and, despite protests from victims of Father Karadima and from many priests and laypeople in the diocese, Bishop Barros participated in the pope’s official ceremonies in Chile. When reporters raised the subject on Thursday, Pope Francis answered sharply that there was “not one single piece of evidence” against the bishop. “It is all slander,” he declared. “Is that clear?”

Victims of sexual abuse may have only their tortured memories as evidence, and these have been dismissed for far too long as slander by a hierarchy intent on protecting the church’s reputation. Pope Francis has repeatedly pledged action to end the abuse and the cover-up, . . . . . . But too often he and his church raise doubts that they’re fully committed.

Australia Survey: 2 Out of 3 Say Religion More Harmful Than Good

In Australia a battle is ongoing over legalizing same sex marriage.  True to form the Australian equivalents of America's Christofascists are pulling out all the same lies and anti-LGBT propaganda fine tuned by American hate groups.  Meanwhile, a years long sex scandal is engulfing the Roman Catholic Church in which the senior most cardinal is under indictment for sex crimes.  Never bowed by its own hypocrisy, the Catholic Church has loudly and viciously opposed marriage between consenting same sex adults after decades and decades of cover ups of sexual assault by its clergy against non-consenting minors.  Not surprisingly, many Australians are over with religion in general.  Indeed, a new survey revealed that two out of three Australians view religion as a net evil causing more harm to society than good.  Joining Australia in its dim view of religion are Canada, India and a number of European countries where, like India, centuries of bloodshed over religion are part of the national history.  Sadly, I have to agree with the conclusion of  63% of Australians.  A piece in the Sydney Morning Herald looks at the survey results.  Here are excerpts:

A bigger share of Australians than respondents in most other countries think religion does more harm than good in the world, new polling has revealed.

But we are also more comfortable with religious diversity than the international average.
The survey of more than 17,000 people across 23 countries by polling firm Ipsos found opinion is evenly divided about the influence that religion has in society.

It showed 49 per cent of respondents across all countries agreed with the statement "religion does more harm in the world than good".

But the proportion of Australians agreeing with that statement was well above the international average at 63 per cent.

"Australia is one of the more negative countries regarding the perceived harm that religion does," David Elliott from the Ipsos Social Research Institute said.

Only Belgium (68 per cent) had a higher proportion than Australia who agreed religion does more harm than good, while Germany and Spain were on par with Australia.

Australia had an above-average share who felt "completely comfortable" being around people with different religious beliefs to their own (84 per cent).

"While many of us do not have a positive view of religion, we are not translating this negativity to fear or dislike of individuals who have different beliefs to our own," Mr Elliot said.

"In this regard, we are among the more tolerant nations globally. This tolerance may reflect our multi-cultural society or maybe driven by beliefs that negative impacts of religion are more an issue globally than locally."

International opinion was also split when it comes to the importance of religion to a nation's "moral life". Half of those across the 23 countries surveyed agreed with the statement "religious practices are an important factor in the moral life of my country's citizens". Only about four in 10 Australians concurred with that statement, a much smaller share than the two in three Americans who agreed.

The share in the United States who think religion does more harm than good in the world was also well below the international average at 39 per cent.

With Der Trumpenführer's regime busy establishing special rights for Christofascists, one has to wonder if American opinion will change as more and more citizens find themselves targeted for discrimination or see Christofascist views imposed upon them.  I for one hope that such is the case. The hate, division and extremism of religion has caused the death of millions and millions over the centuries - and such is still the case if one looks no farther than the Middle East.  

Victims Of Pedophile Priests Claim Pope Francis Ignored Warnings About Predator Priests

Despite a few seemingly LGBT -supportive comments made by Pope Francis, his actions during his reign so far have shown that things at the Vatican remain largely "business as usual" with gays continuing to be viewed as inherently disordered and inclined toward evil to quote the writings o the Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI.  One other thing that has apparently not changed despite rivers of crocodile tears from the Vatican and disingenuous statements by Pope Francis himself is the Vatican's and papacy's willingness to turn a blind eye when it comes to warnings about predator priests who continue to prey on children and youths.  A piece in the Latin Times reports allegations that Pope Francis deliberately ignored warnings about a predator priest shuffled to a different parish where he could prey on innocent victims.  Here are highlights:

Sexual abuse in Catholicism has been a sticky topic over the years with many priests being subjected to rumors and some proven to be guilty of crossing the line with children. While the Vatican has been made of aware of the recent allegations, more troubling news is coming to surface with many people demanding answers.

According to FOX News Latino, alleged victims of Rev. Nicola Corradi said they wrote a letter to the pontiff in 2014 warning him that the purported pedophile had been reassigned to the South American country.

The site reports that the victims' families contend that the Vatican knew about him since at least 2009, when he was publicly accused of abusing students at the Provolo Institute in Verona, Italy, where he then worked.

We recently reported that Argentine police arrested 82-year old Nicola Corradi, priest Horacio Corbacho, 55, and three other men at the Antonio Próvolo Institute, a school for youths with hearing disabilities in the northwest of the country for sexually abusing the children.

Corradi, and Corbacho were arrested last month along with three employees for the alleged abuse of at least 24 deaf children who attended the Antonio Provolo Institute, in the city of Mendoza.

The victims are now speaking out saying that nothing was done then nor later in 2014, when they told Pope Francis in a letter that Corradi was living in his native Argentina.

"From the pope down ... all of the Catholic Church hierarchy is the same. They all knew," one of the victims told The Associated Press through a sign language interpreter.

Another victim said the priests would rape again if released.

"This happened in Italy ... it happened again here, and it must end," the victim said, insisting on speaking anonymously. "Enough!"

Pope Francis and the Vatican have yet to speak publicly about the accusations and the investigation.

Sadly, it is the same story we have heard over and over again since the Boston Globe broke the story of the Catholic Church's cover ups of predatory priests in 2002. In truth, nothing has really changed which brings up the question I have asked before: how can any moral person remain a Roman Catholic? Thankfully, the last of my family members who had continued to attend mass finally woke and has walked away.  Now, no one in my family who was raised Catholic remains an active member of the Catholic Church, including children and grandchildren.  Three generations have walked away in disgust. Others need to do likewise.

Quote of the Day: The Vatican Is All About Money

As many news outlets have reported, including The Guardian, the Vatican has sought to ban Catholics who choose to be cremated from having their ashes scattered or kept in family homes in urns, etc. A blogger friend, Tony Adams who is a former Catholic priest who once served at the Vatican gets to the heart of what truly motivates this move, and its not points of theology:

Want to know why the Catholic Church is mandating that cremated remains be placed in a consecrated cemetery? When I was a brand new assistant pastor of a Connecticut parish, my pastor advised me to choose a parish that owned a cemetery when it came time for me to become the pastor of my own parish. He said cemeteries are huge money-makers. Current increase in cremation and private disposition of ashes cuts off a revenue stream that the Catholic Church has enjoyed for ages. It's always about the money.

Money - and the power to control the lives of others - have always been the true twin gods of the Vatican and the Catholic Church hierarchy.  One of the many reasons I left Catholicism. 

Pope Francis Can Begin By Apologizing For His Own Hateful Words

I have been highly critical of Pope Francis' statement that the Catholic Church needs to apologize to gays for they way the Church has mistreated them (he also named other groups mistreated by the foul old men in dresses at the Vatican).  I will take another swing at the issue in my July column in VEER Magazine.  Over at Huffington Post, Michelangelo Signorile has a great column that takes Francis to task for not just for the Church's past demonetization of - and at times out right murder of  - gays but also for his own misdeeds while Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina.  I will not be holding my breath for a real, heartfelt apology  from Pope Francis.  Here are highlights from Michelangelo's column: 

Last week the media gave a lot of attention to Pope Francis agreeing that the Catholic Church owed an apology to gays. But his statement, while positive on its face, deflected from horrendous remarks Francis himself made in the past and which he can and should personally apologize for right now. Before diving into that, however, let’s review Francis’s journey on the issue of homosexuality since he became pope in 2013.

Francis stayed silent as country after country in Europe and the Americas legalized marriage for gays and lesbians over the past few years, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Pope Benedict, who railed against Spain when it was out front on marriage equality in 2005; he even traveled there to speak out against it. And then came Francis’s “Who am I to judge?”response to a question about a gay priest, and several other comments that indicated his emphasis would be different.

Like an artful politician, however, Francis has seemed to play to his audiences. Six months into his papacy he told a fellow Jesuit interviewer for a Jesuit journal that he is not a “right-winger” and criticized those in the church who had become “obsessed” with gay marriage and abortion. But then in January of last year it was Francis who seemed obsessed with the issue while speaking to an audience in the Philippines, a traditional Catholic country, suggesting that gay marriage threatens families.

And now these new comments from the pope last week have reverberated after he was asked about a German cardinal’s opinion that, in light of the Orlando mass shooting at the Pulse LGBT nightclub in Orlando, the church should apologize to gays.

Francis agreed that the church owed an apology to gays, and it drew headlines around the world. He repeated his “who are we to judge?” line, though was was careful to add in that the church should apologize to a lot of groups, which mitigated his statement somewhat . . . . Nonetheless, it was a major statement — enough to drive anti-LGBT forces into a frenzy. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League emphatically said “No!” when asked if he agreed with his pope that gays deserved an apology.

LGBT Catholic groups, however, were right to criticize the pope for saying nothing of church doctrine that condemns homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered” — and pointed to the fact that young people, including LGBT people, are taught this from a young age and that teachers in Catholic schools are fired if found to be gay. Francis referred to the catechism to back his stance that gays shouldn’t be discriminated against, yet it is that same catechism that condemns homosexuality — and it needs to be re-written.

That’s an immense undertaking that he likely doesn’t have the will for — if it could even be done at all in the current climate at the Vatican.  One thing, however, that the pope could easily do is apologize for his own harsh and, yes, violence-inciting words about gays when he was Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina in 2010.

As the Argentine government was moving to legalize marriage for gays and lesbians, Bergoglio was quietly lobbying for civil unions instead, having spoken to at least one gay activist, realizing that the rights gays were deprived of were real and knowing that he and the church couldn’t support marriage.

When that didn’t work, and the government made it clear it was moving forward on marriage, Bergoglio did what the Vatican expected of him and which, like a politician, he knew he likely had to do if he were ever to have a shot at becoming pope in Benedict’s Vatican: He issued an ugly, earth-scorching attack against gays, equating gay marriage and adoption by gay couples with the work of the Devil, and declared that gay marriage was a “destructive attack on God’s plan.”

Those kinds of words are the kind that killers of gay people take solace in. Those are the words that empower those who bash gays, and those who fire gays from their jobs. And those are the kinds of words that Francis clearly is saying the church must apologize for. If it’s not those words, after all, then what exactly is Francis referring to?

So, Francis didn’t have to say the “church” should apologize, and thus distance himself from an institution that, though he leads it, he likely rightly sees as difficult to change. All he had to do was say, “I apologize” for the harsh words that “I’ve made,” in the name of the church by equating gay people with evil — words that inspire those who would do harm to LGBT people.

Rather than wait for “the church” to make the apology for which he called — which could take eons — he could still make that personal apology himself right now.

Pope Scraps Tribunal To Prosecute Bishops Involved in Coverups

The Vatican has sent yet another signal that no action will be taken against bishops and cardinals who aided and abetted and covered up for sexual predator priests who preyed on children and youths.  Pope Francis has now scraped the tribunal that was purportedly going to try cases of bishops and cardinals involved in cover ups or worse.  In its place, Francis has outlined a supposed new rule that would allow bishops to be removed from office - a power that Francis and his predecessors have always held but failed to use. The take away?  Expect nothing to be done and more crocodile tears. Talking Points Memo looks at the development.   Here are excerpts:

Pope Francis on Saturday scrapped his proposed tribunal to prosecute bishops who covered up for pedophile priests after it ran into opposition and instead clarified legal procedures to remove them if the Vatican finds they were negligent.

The new procedures sought to answer long-standing demands by survivors of abuse that the Vatican hold bishops accountable for botching abuse cases. Victims have long accused bishops of covering up for pedophiles, moving rapists from parish to parish rather than reporting them to police — and suffering no consequences.

But the new law was immediately criticized by survivors of abuse as essentially window dressing since there were already ways to investigate and dismiss bishops for wrongdoing — they were just rarely used against bishops who failed to protect their flocks from pedophiles.

Analysts suggested the new law was much ado about very little.

The main U.S. victims' group, SNAP, said it was "extraordinarily skeptical" that the new procedures would amount to any wave of dismissals since popes have always had the power to oust bishops but haven't wielded it.

"A 'process' is helpful only if it's used often enough to deter wrongdoing. We doubt this one will be," SNAP's David Clohessy said.

In the law, Francis acknowledged that the church's canonical code already allowed for a bishop to be removed for "grave reasons." But he said he wanted to precisely state that negligence in handling abuse cases counted as one of those reasons.

In the law, Francis said a bishop can be removed if his actions or omissions cause "grave harm" — physical, moral, spiritual or financial — to individuals or communities. The bishop himself doesn't need to be morally guilty. It's enough if he is purely lacking in the diligence required of his office.

The procedures call for the Vatican to start an investigation when "serious evidence" is provided that a bishop was negligent. The bishop can defend himself. At the end of the investigation, the Vatican can prepare a decree removing the bishop or ask him to resign.

Any decision to remove the bishop must first be approved by the pope, who will be advised by legal experts, the law says.

Is the Vatican Lying About Addressing Sex Abuse by Priests

With the Roman Catholic Church continuing to disseminate anti-gay lies and untruths, it seems only appropriate to continue to disseminate the truth about the Church and its continued refusal to act decisively to stop sexual abuse of children and youths and, more importantly, fire every bishop and cardinal who participated in cover ups.  True, the latter move would likely decimate the Church hierarchy, but absent such a severe move, don't expect anything to change the mindset of the bitter old men in dresses in Rome and bishoprics across the globe. Meanwhile, members of Pope Francis’s special Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors who are critical of the Commission's failure to act are being asked to take forced leaves of absence.  In short, nothing seems to be changing despite lip service to the contrary and the molestation of children and youths remains a form of droit du seigneur for Catholic priests.  The Daily Beast looks at the Vatican's refusal to take the steps that need to be done.  Here are article excerpts:

One might think that a commission designed to rid the Catholic Church of its predator priests and try to heal decades of suffering by sex abuse victims might actually be involved in, well, doing just that.

On the contrary, it would seem that Pope Francis’s special Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors that he created in 2014 is not exactly getting its hands dirty when it comes to actually teaching bishops how to deal with the problems it has been tasked to deal with.

It’s not clear whether there is just a lapse when it comes to integrating commissions and groups that actually do the work, or if it is because of a more intentional oversight. Before the commission started its meetings last week, they secretly gathered at the Santa Marta Domus, where Pope Francis lives, to watch the Academy Award-nominated movie Spotlight, about The Boston Globe’s stellar reporting on exposing the sex abuse scandal in the Boston diocese.

The news of the “unofficial screening” came out when Peter Saunders, one of two child sex abuse survivors on the commission, told the Los Angeles Times that he also wished Pope Francis might see it so he truly understood the full extent of the cover-up in dioceses like Boston.

“The film is extremely worrying about the cover-up of abuse in the Catholic Church, and I think it would be a good moment for the pope to see it,” Saunders said. The pope did not attend, and the next day, Saunders was asked to take a leave of absence from the commission. 

“It was decided” that Saunders would take a leave of absence to “consider how he might best support the commission’s work,” the Vatican said in announcing the move. Saunders held his own press conference and told reporters that he wouldn’t step down until and unless Francis himself asked him.

Saunders had been increasingly frustrated with the commission’s slow pace, telling the media that their work was futile. “The last meeting in October was a non-event,” he said. “I was told that Rome was not built in a day—but the problem is that it takes seconds to rape a child.”

Other survivors have expressed similar concerns. “The Pope’s abuse panel will issue recommendations. The Pope will adopt them. And nothing will improve. Why? Because there will be no enforcement,” says David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests, called SNAP. “Why? Because the church hierarchy is an entitled, rigid, secretive, all-male monarchy. No new protocols or policies or procedures will radically undo a centuries-old self-serving structure that rewards clerics who keep a tight lid on child sex crimes and cover-ups.”

Clohessy says the clear answer to this crisis remains outside of the church hierarchy “with victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers speaking up and with police, prosecutors and secular authorities stepping up.”  

But if the Vatican’s own special commission can’t even get a word in to help solve the problem, it seems an impossible dream that anyone else might have better luck. 

The Vatican and the Church hierarchy remain one large criminal conspiracy when it comes to the sex abuse scandal.  Decent people should simply walk away from the Church if they do not want to be accessories to sex crimes against children.

Spotlight: A Must See Movie

As long time readers know, I was raised Roman Catholic and once was a member of the Knights of Columbus and achieved the 4th Degree.  After the Boston Globe blew open the systemic, worldwide sex abuse scandal in 2002, I decided that I could be longer in good conscience be a part of such a corrupt and morally bankrupt institution.  In February 2002 I did a guest editorial in the Virginian Pilot in response a letter to the editor by then Bishop Richmond, Walter Sullivan's January 30, 2012, decrying a January 21 2002, editorial cartoon and claiming that the stories about the Church were "pure bigotry against the Catholic Church.''  The cartoon in question focused on the Catholic Church's track record in respect to pedophile clergy. Subsequently, I was attacked in letters to the editor, including a letter from a subordinate of Bishop Sullivan.  Time has proven the accuracy of the Globe story and sex abuse cover ups have been exposed virtually worldwide.  The ultimate hypocrisy is that subsequently Sullivan himself was implicated in the cover up of sexual abuse by a diocesan priest in the Diocese of Richmond that was among Sullivan's favorites.   The tenaciousness of a friend of mine and other victims of the priest in question finally resulted in a criminal prosecution against the priest and a plea deal.  

For me, the timing of the Globe bomb shell was especially unique because it occurred when I was coming out and trying to purge myself of the psychological poison that had been inculcated into me as a Catholic child and youth.   Seeing the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of an institution that preached anti-gay bigotry and which had fueled so much of my self-hatred was a huge part of my ability to finally find self-acceptance and comfort with my sexual orientation. 

Today, the husband and I went to see Spotlight, the movie that tells the story of how the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe exposed the truth and the opposition that they had to counter to tells story that desperately needed to be told.  The one of the big take away from the film is that no institution deserves unquestioning deference and that bad things happen when good people lack the courage to speak out.  Without the contrivance of attorneys, police officials, district attorneys, school heads and others, the Church would never have been able to so effectively cover up the sexual abuse of literally thousands and thousands of children and youth.  

What is also distressing is the reality that NONE of the bishops and cardinals who conspired in the cover ups of abuse has been removed from office and tossed out by the Vatican.  Even today Cardinal Law who figured in the movie holds a plum position at the Vatican where he is safe from extradition for criminal prosecution. 

This is a MUST see movie and those who most need to see it are the Catholics in the pews who (i) continue to bow and scrape to a Church hierarchy that deserves to respect or deference, and (ii) continue to support the criminal conspiracy orchestrated from the Vatican.  Pope Francis can shed crocodile tears and feign contrition, but until he removes ALL of the bishops and cardinals from office and who have participated in cover ups, his words will be meaningless.

For locals an added benefit is that Mark Ruffalo, a First Colonial High School (in Virginia Beach) grad has a major role.

Pope Francis Talks Out of Both Sides of His Mouth on Gays

The National Catholic Reporter - which is not controlled by the Vatican and one of the few sane Catholic news outlets - is reporting that Pope Francis has explained his "who am I to judge" statement on gays which, if one looks at only his words and not his actions, sounds positive.  Meanwhile, of course, the Church has opposed gay rights and supported the repeal of same sex marriage in Slovenia.  Sadly, Francis' duplicity and dis-ingenuousness is typical of the Church hierarchy.  Until the Church makes doctrinal changes and apologizes for centuries of homophobia and horrors inflicted on gays, Francis' words are meaningless, in my view.  Indeed, the word hypocrite springs to mind.  Here are story excerpts:

Interviewing Pope Francis in July, Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli asked the pope how he might act as a confessor to a gay person in light of his now famous remarks in a press conference in 2013, when he asked: "Who am I to judge?"

Francis' reply appears in a new book The Name of God is Mercy to be released Tuesday.

"On that occasion I said this: If a person is gay and seeks out the Lord and is willing, who am I to judge that person?" the pope says. "I was paraphrasing by heart the Catechism of the Catholic Church where it says that these people should be treated with delicacy and not be marginalized."

"I am glad that we are talking about 'homosexual people' because before all else comes the individual person, in his wholeness and dignity," he continues. "And people should not be defined only by their sexual tendencies: let us not forget that God loves all his creatures and we are destined to receive his infinite love."

"I prefer that homosexuals come to confession, that they stay close to the Lord, and that we pray all together," says Francis. "You can advise them to pray, show goodwill, show them the way, and accompany them along it."

Keeping gays second class citizens, opposing CIVIL LAW marriage for same sex couples, and championing license to discriminate laws seems utterly inconsistent with Francis' statement that gays should not be marginalized.  If one is gay and Catholic, the best thing one can do is to leave the Church as quickly as possible and to encourage friends and family to do likewise.

Did Catholic Bishop Know Pedophile Priest Was Meeting Teens On Grindr?

As the Roman Catholic Church continues its anti-gay jihad - the latest example being the Church role in defeating same sex marriage in Austria and Slovenia - examples of the duplicity and hypocrisy of the Church hierarchy continue to explode, evidencing again an attitude that covering up sex abuse by priests is more important than protecting children and youth.  The latest example of this comes from Italy whereFrancesco Milito, the bishop of the Oppido-Palmi diocese, allegedly knew that Fr. Antonello Tropea, 44, was using the gay dating app Grindr to solicit teenage boys but took no action to stop it.  Repeatedly, we have seen the mindset of a Church hierarchy where molesting children and youths is some sort of priestly right - at least until the media gets wind of the sordid details.  Then the denials begin.  The International Business Times has details on this latest expose of the Church's disingenuousness and hypocrisy.  Here are details:

Italian police have arrested an alleged paedophile priest amid media accusation he was protected by the local bishop. Detectives allege father Antonello Tropea, 44, used gay dating app Grindr to groom teenage boys who he then paid for clandestine encounters in the southern Calabria region.

Tropea was held on 18 December at the end of a lengthy investigation that was launched after he was surprised by police while in the company of a minor inside a car parked in a secluded area near the deprived port city of Gioia Tauro. The boy later told investigators the priest had paid him €20 (£15, $21) for an oral sex act, a fee they had agreed on WhatsApp after having first met on Grindr.

Tropea allegedly posed as a scientific researcher in his thirties named Nicola, an alias he apparently drew from the patron saint of his own parish, the San Nicola di Mira church in the rural town of Messignadi. A police search of the clergy house reportedly revealed a trove of evidence, including child porn images and message exchanges with other teenagers. Investigators are also said to have also found 16g of marijuana, sex toys and a penis enlargement tool.

Tropea's boss, bishop of the Oppido-Palmi diocese Francesco Milito, had allegedly been aware of accusations against the priest for some time but did not take any action. According to court papers seen by local media confirming the arrest, two parishioners had warned the bishop of his subordinate's deviant tendencies as early as this summer.

But Milito dismissed the accusations as "nuns' chatter" in a phone conversation with Tropea that was taped by police, Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper reported. Moreover, as the clergyman was placed under investigation, the bishop was alleged to have openly advised him "not to talk with Carabinieri police" on the issue.

Homophobia and Hypocrisy at the Vatican

If one believes the Gospel stories, Christ challenged the hate, hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement of the  Jewish religious leader of his time and ultimately paid a high price on the cross. He rightly called out the self-anointed, falsely pious Pharisees and others who made the Jewish law into something ugly used to persecute and denigrate others, especially those who did not adhere to the legalism loved by the Pharisee crowd.  While by no means a Christ equivalent, Krzysztof Charamsa, a former official at Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — a/k/a the Inquisition has played a similar role and been booted from his position and attacked by the bitter old men who inhabit the Vatican, many of whom are closeted gays (or in some cases closeted until behind closed doors).  I applaud Charamsa's actions, although many gay Catholics do not.  Gay Catholics who in my view cannot let go of their own self-loathing and masochism that keeps them in an institution that despises them and denigrates them.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Charamsa's journey with which I can identify having been brought up Catholic and having remained in the Church far longer than I should have.  Here are article highlights:

Charamsa is unbowed. The church, he said, has deployed “Nazi words” against gays, and the time has come to respond. Referring to the 1969 New York riots that became a milestone in the American gay rights movement, he said, “The church needs a Stonewall.”

When Charamsa was young, the church’s teachings on homosexuality — something it calls an “intrinsic moral evil” — led him to personal torment and self-hate, he said. Today, he blames the church’s grip on largely Catholic Poland for a powerful strain of homophobia that still lingers there.
“It was the horrible problem of my life,” he said. “It was like hell. I prayed for years for God to take away this illness.”

His thinking had not changed, he said, when he began working at the Vatican in 2003, laboring in a mid-level administrative post and analyzing doctrinal papers. There are regular, if unofficial, social meetings of gay priests in Italy, including those from the Vatican, according to one gay priest who has attended them. But Charamsa says he was never part of that crowd.

Instead, until meeting Eduardo, he led a highly closeted life that allowed him to observe homophobia close up at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — once known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition. 

Inside its halls, Charamsa said, the issue of homosexuality “is only spoken about in jokes.” He compares it to the macho climate of, say, a sports team. Modern textbooks on human sexuality are rarely, if ever, studied. He said he saw careers destroyed after clerics appeared to get soft on gays. Suspicion of being gay, meanwhile, was reason enough to bar the promotions of priests to higher ranks.

Any move toward a more accepting stance, he said, was routinely stamped out. He recalls, for instance, an “internal persecution” of Bishop Piero Marini in 2013 after the Vatican official openly called for recognition of the moral value of same-sex unions. The Congregation, Charamsa said, insisted the bishop clarify true church teachings.

On the day in July 2013 when Pope Francis responded “Who am I to judge?” after being asked a question about gay priests, Charamsa said, there was an uproar within the Congregation. Its conservative prefect, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, had “only bad things” to say about the pope in response, Charamsa said.  The Vatican declined to comment on any of Charamsa’s allegations.

Today, he calls his highly public coming out a form of “protest,” one that came together recently after he accepted himself and came to feel that the church, not his sexual orientation, was the problem. He is now on a one-man mission to challenge its teachings — something he is doing in regular media interviews, a book he is penning, even a blunt letter to the pope in which he derided the church for its “diabolical instruction.” It is a series of decisions that have come with a high price.

Charamsa was evicted by the nun running the Rome convent where he had lived for years as a chaplain, he said. His brother’s children are being bullied at school, and his mother is facing pressure at her church in his native Poland, he added. The Vatican fired him on the spot, leaving him unemployed. And his bishop in Poland suspended him, stripping him of the right to wear the Roman collar and celebrate Mass.

Charamsa says that gay Catholics advocating less confrontational methods have thus far failed to produce results. He welcomes Francis’s more inclusive approach but also describes it as mostly “words.” Rather than being a product of his coming out, the lack of a new approach at the synod is the product of entrenched church thinking that needs to be more boldly challenged, he said.

I agree with him.  The Vatican needs to be strongly and aggressively challenged and efforts need to be made to convince gay Catholics, their friends and families to leave in droves, making it clear why they are leaving.  Similarly, any and all financial support of the Church and its affiliated entities needs to cease.  All of this will take time, but if one looks at the Vatican, one thing alone gets its attention and prompts change: loss of members and loss of revenues. The Millennials are leaving the Church in droves.  Others need to do likewise. The condemnation of the Church and its lies and hypocrisy also must not cease.

Are Anti-Gay Cardinals Trying to Torpedo Catholic Church Reform?

Cardinal Timothy "Porky Pig" Dolan

Any readers who have followed this blog for any period of time know that I am very harsh when it comes to the hypocrisy and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church and its despotic, anti-modernity hierarchy who oppose any change in the way women, gays and the divorced are mistreated by the church.  Many of these same despotic bishops and cardinals love to harp on the sins of others yet seem to have forgotten about the sin of gluttony given their own obesity.  Two such foul individuals are Cardinal Timothy Dolan - often referred to as porky pig on this blog - Bishop Francis DiLorenzo of Richmond.  Now sources are indicating that Dolan has joined with other reactionary cardinals seeking to sabotage much needed change in the Church as the synod on the family continues at the Vatican.  Here are highlights from Religion News Service:

Tensions already roiling a high-level Vatican summit spilled into the open on Monday (Oct. 12) with the publication of a letter allegedly sent to Pope Francis from 13 conservative cardinals — including Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York — warning of plots by progressives to hijack the proceedings.

In the letter, the senior churchmen said that if the reformers succeeded in changing the church’s approach to modern families it could send the Catholic Church down the path of Protestant denominations that abandoned “key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation.”

But within hours of the letter’s release four of the cardinals denied having signed the letter. . . . Meanwhile, a spokesman for Dolan said the cardinal declined comment.

The outright denials — from the archbishops of Paris, Milan and Budapest, plus an Italian cardinal who works in the Roman Curia — and uncertainty about who signed what, raised questions about the legitimacy of the letter, which was published by an Italian Vatican watcher, Sandro Magister, a persistent critic of Francis.

The mystery also fueled intrigue about the three-week meeting, called a synod. It also spotlighted increasingly bold efforts by traditionalists to thwart any changes to church doctrine or practices, in particular proposals to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion.

The Communion issue — as well as efforts to make the church more open to cohabiting couples and gays and lesbians — has become a focus and flashpoint for the wide-ranging synod of 270 bishops from around the world.

Catholicism has always been about exclusion rather than inclusion. In my youth we were told we were headed straight to Hell if we attended a protestant service.   Would I like to see the Church change and become gay friendly?  Certainly, because I want to see an end to the harm being done to so many LGBT individuals across the globe by the Church's poisonous teachings.  That said, the best thing gay Catholics and their friends and families can do is to walk away from the Church and make it known why they are leaving.  With membership declining in the West, the Church will ultimately change or become utterly irrelevant and the monies that support it will fall to a trickle.  Historically, nothing speaks louder to the foul hierarchy than a loss of money and members.  As I have said before, if one has a need to cling to the Church's rituals, the Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran Church provide sane and mentally healthy options.  If one is gay, the worse thing you can do is remain in a denomination that condemns and demonizes you.  WALK AWAY.

African Bishops Reveal Catholic Church's Hypocrisy

Anti-gay douche bag and hypocrite

With science increasingly confirming that sexual orientation is no more of a choice than eye color or skin color, the anti-gay stance of anti-gay religious denominations is becoming increasingly clear as to what it is: blatant discrimination conflated with a deliberate embrace of ignorance.  Hence why the Roman Catholic Church is only growing in backward and ignorant areas of the world such as Africa. Adding to the ugliness of such discrimination is the fact that homophobia in Africa was imported by Christian missionaries who rode rough shod over indigenous cultures.  Yet at the Vatican synod on the family, homophobic African bishops are demanding that they and their ignorant followers need “time to deal with” homosexuality and other “issues from our own cultural perspectives.”  That's akin to white Southerners demanding time to get over viewing blacks as inferior and wanting to maintain Jim Crow laws.  The Washington Blade looks at this batshitery.  Here are highlights:

Vatican Radio reported that and brutalize of Archdiocese of Accra said countries need “time to deal with” homosexuality and other “issues from our own cultural perspectives.” He also highlighted the need for “the dignity and rights of all God’s sons and daughters need to be upheld,” as Vatican Radio reported.

Palmer-Buckley’s comments come four days after he and other Catholic bishops began a three-week gathering in Rome during which they will vote on a document that specifically addresses the family. 

Leaked drafts indicate that it reiterates the church’s opposition to unions between gays and lesbians.

Davis Mac-Iyalla, a gay Nigerian man who received asylum in the U.K., was among the LGBT Catholics who gathered in Rome earlier this month ahead of the start of the bishops’ meeting.

Mac-Iyalla on Thursday noted to the Washington Blade the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of Nigeria has supported anti-LGBT measures in his homeland, including a 2014 law that punishes those who enter into a same-sex marriage with up to 14 years in prison. 

Mac-Iyalla added African religious leaders should “stop colluding with governments in persecuting LGBT people.” 

If  Archbishop Palmer-Buckley wants the freedom to discriminate against and brutalize gays, then lets grant white supremacists the same rights. There is really no difference. Both bigoted mindsets arise from ignorance and a fear of those who are different, so Palmer-Buckley needs to support anti-black bigotry if he wants to support anti-gay bigotry.  The man is a disingenuous douche bag.