[The Pope’s brother,] Georg Ratzinger, 86, said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir in the 1964. He also said he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir but did nothing about it.
Child abuse in the Catholic Church. Nothing new here. But when I was reading the Guardian’s coverage on this story I came across Andrew Brown’s blog, where he rehashes an old argument about child fucking/hitting by priests. Titled “Catholic abuse in proportion,” Brown wonders, “Many Catholic priests...have abused children in their care. But is the church's record worse than the world’s?”
A more absurd or irrelevant question would be hard to formulate. Brown actually attempts to defend the Catholic Church by citing murky statistics on child abuse before concluding, “I think that objectively your child is less likely to be abused by a Catholic or Anglican priest in the west today than by the members of almost any other profession.”
Wow. And to think that for years I have railed against pedophile priests, condemned the Church for covering up their heinous abuses, and have attacked the practice of celibacy for priests, lest their biological urges to engage in sexual intercourse manifest themselves in such assaults. What have I done?
Please. These are priests, not plumbers. If the Catholic Church and its ministers are going to present themselves as the personification of piety and god’s representatives on earth, they ought to expect to be held to a slightly higher standard than the rest of the general population. Indeed, if, “We’re no more likely to fuck your kid than your stockbroker” is the best defense the Church and its apologists have to offer, color me unimpressed. If the leaders of Catholicism are just as moral or immoral as everyone else, which is most certainly the case, what is it for?
- Max
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