Speak Of The Devil And He Doth Appear!

Frequently I find that I have perfect timing. A couple of hours ago in this post about Pope Ratzinger ignoring a letter from the Milwaukee Archdiocese regarding a pedophile priest named Lawrence Murphy in its midst, I wrote, “I can’t wait to see what convoluted excuse Bill Donohue comes up with to explain away this one.”

It isn’t often that I watch daytime television, but when I just flipped the TV on MSNBC, sure enough, there was Bill Donohue telling David Shuster that the New York Times article never stated for certain that Ratzinger had seen the letters. This, despite the fact that Ratzinger was the head of the Vatican office to which these letters were sent. Donohue then said that not only should we not jump to any conclusions about Ratzinger, but insisted that there be no further investigation into the matter. But as this letter shows, Murphy himself later wrote to Ratzinger personally to ask him for leniency, which apparently means immunity from disciplinary action. Shortly after this correspondence was received by Ratzinger’s office, the Church’s investigation into the allegations against Murphy ceased at the direction of Cardinal Bertone in Ratzinger’s office. Are we to believe that Ratzinger, who headed this department, knew nothing of this horrendous scandal?

Donohue went on to say that “Catholics aren’t stupid,” and that they know that New York Times has a pro-gay, pro-abortion, “agenda.” Uh huh.

He also said that by the time Ratzinger’s office was apprised of the situation, Murphy was a sickly old man and had already committed his crimes.

So? Does this mean Donohue thinks that former Nazi war criminals should get reprieves because their crimes are behind them? Plus, there was no guarantee that Murphy had stopped molesting kids altogether. He should have been defrocked.

At this point we need to seriously ask ourselves whether the pope or the Catholic Church can do anything that will repulse Bill Donohue. My money’s on, “no.”

If I can dig up the video of the interview, I will post it pronto.

- Max

Ratzinger Ignored Pedophile Priest

His Unholiness

Pope Joseph Ratzinger ignored inquiries from concerned church officials about ongoing sexual molestations by priests. As the New York Times reported yesterday, in 1996 then Cardinal Ratzinger was apprised of the case of priest and serial rapist Lawrence Murphy, who admitted to church officials that he had molested children:

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations…

… In 1993, with complaints about Father Murphy [who died in 1998] landing on his desk, Archbishop Weakland hired a social worker specializing in treating sexual offenders to evaluate him. After four days of interviews, the social worker said that Father Murphy had admitted his acts, had probably molested about 200 boys and felt no remorse.

However, it was not until 1996 that Archbishop Weakland tried to have Father Murphy defrocked. The reason, he wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger, was to defuse the anger among the deaf and restore their trust in the church. He wrote that since he had become aware that “solicitation in the confessional might be part of the situation,” the case belonged at the doctrinal office.

It should also be noted that Weakland would later use $450,000 in Church funds as hush money for his former gay lover who was threatening a lawsuit.

I guess this is what the repulsive and obnoxious American papist Bill Donohue meant when he said the Church should be allowed to treat child rape as “an internal matter.”

It is difficult to discern which party displayed more shameful behavior in this travesty: the Milwaukee Archdiocese, which, when faced with the reality of a confessed child abuser in their ranks, thought it appropriate to contact Vatican officials instead of the local authorities in this, an obvious criminal matter; or Ratzinger and Bertone who swept the allegations under the rug as if they were no big deal.

But as Joe Biden would say, this is a big fucking deal. This is about the future pope, knowingly and willingly ignoring letters from officials within his own church saying that they have a rapist on their hands and that they—incredibly—are unsure what to do about it. In any sane universe, in any responsible organization, Ratzinger would be forced to step down in light of such allegations. But that’s not going to happen because the Church thinks it’s infallible.

I can’t wait to see what convoluted excuse Bill Donohue comes up with to explain away this one.

- Max

Bill Donohue Is A Disgrace

Nice shit-eating grin.

Recently I wrote a post on the absurdity of Guardian writer Andrew Brown’s reprehensible defense of the Catholic Church in light of the most recent revelations of child abuse. His argument that Catholic priests are no more likely than adults in other professions to rape children is tasteless and irrelevant, especially since it has been documented that Church officials in various parishes and archdioceses actively covered up the abuses.

Until the other day, Brown’s recycled defense of the Church’s child abusers was the worst opinion piece I’ve read about any of the Church’s scandals. But enter Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, and loudmouth windbag extraordinaire. For CNN.com, Donohue writes,

Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so.

Though this is starting to change, any discussion of employee sexual abuse that took place 30 and 40 years ago must acknowledge this reality. Thus it hardly comes as a surprise that Cardinal Sean Brady in Ireland did not summon the authorities about a case involving a priest in the 1970s. What is surprising is why some are now indicting him, acting as if his response was the exception to the rule.

Selective indignation at the Catholic Church is not confined to Brady. Why, for example, are the psychologists and psychiatrists who pledged to “fix” abusers treated so lightly? After all, employers from the corporate world to the Catholic Church were told over and over again that therapy works and to give the offender a second chance.

Where to begin? First off, Donohue is confusing sexual abuse with sexual harassment. It is true that employers often treat sexual harassment as an internal matter. Sexist jokes and unwanted physical advances—when reported—are generally met with disciplinary action, as they should be. The police are not usually called because although lewd jokes or even an awkward grope are tasteless, the victim generally does not notify the police. Suspension or termination may be enough to remedy the problem. Sexual abuse is an entirely different story. The children under the care of pedophile priests were not merely subjected to harassment; they were sexually assaulted. No one I know of, with the exception of Bill Donohue and KBR, would regard rape in the workplace as “an internal matter.” Victims are entitled to press charges, and they should in order to shed light on the sexual perverts who lurk in our places of business and elsewhere.

Bill Donohue thinks differently. If priests, or lawyers, or physicians, or indeed, even kindergarten teachers are believed to be raping children, Donohue says that their supervisors should handle it as “an internal matter,” as he says is the custom. And handle it that way they did. The former Cardinal of Boston, Bernard Law, handled it by simply shuffling accused child-fuckers from parish to parish where they kept abusing children. I guess this is what Donohue means we he says we should “give the offender a second chance.”

Donohue has made it his sole purpose in life to defend the Catholic Church against all enemies, real and imagined, no matter how corrupt, immoral, disgraceful, and discriminatory the institution behaves. Indeed, whenever a set of allegations arises accusing Catholic officials of child abuse, Donohue steps into the breach not to condemn the abuse, but to decry the “hysterical” reactions that inevitably follow, as if the level of indignation at the Church is unwarranted.

Amazingly, Donohue is not a fringe figure. He can occasionally be seen on the various cable news networks whining about perceived public insults to Catholicism, a hilariously ironic development given the ubiquitous and omnipotent presence the Church once enjoyed in the Western world. Clearly, much progress had been made if Catholicism’s defenders have been relegated to complaining about potshots at the Church which they can do absolutely nothing about. Still, Donohue is a minor nuisance despite his overall irrelevance as a cultural “warrior.” Thankfully, the sixty-two year old Donohue and those who think just like him constitute a literally dying breed. And for this endangered species, extinction can’t come fast enough.

- Max

If You Gave Bill Donohue An Enema, He Would Disappear

Not sure if Bill Donohue pissed off? Check his pulse. If he has one, then yes, he’s pissed off.

What do you call a loudmouth Catholic with nothing better to do than whine and issue press releases in response to perceived blasphemy against his religion? Why, a Bill Donohue, of course.

Donohue is head of the Catholic League, which, contrary to popular belief, is not an Italian soccer association. The League states that it is “for religious and civil rights,” but this is a crock because Donohue and the CL completely lose their shit every time some public figure or celebrity exercises free speech and disses Catholicism. As P.Z. Myers recently pointed out, Donohue is currently having a meltdown over an episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit! scheduled to air August 27 on Showtime.

Donohue is calling for Showtime—a subscription-based channel owned by CBS Corp.—to fire the comedy duo because he claims that the upcoming episode will defame Catholics. He says this because the show’s website contains a warning about the upcoming program that states, “Graphic Warning, Adult Content.” And he’s probably right about this, but who cares?

In his cute little press release titled, THIS IS THE FINAL STRAW (his all-caps, not mine), Donohue’s words drip with an indignation that would impress Bill O’Reilly:

“This is not the first time Showtime has featured a vile Penn & Teller show. In 2005, Mother Teresa was called ‘Mother F---ing Teresa,’ and her order of nuns were branded ‘f---ing c--ts.’ The year after, Jillette said on his CBS radio show that Mother Teresa ‘got her [sexual] kicks watching people suffer and die.’

“Just recently, Jillette took after me again in his usual foul way. That doesn’t matter, but what matters greatly is his pathological obsession with bashing Catholics and their religion. There is no legitimate place for this kind of frontal assault on any demographic group.”

Waaa, waaa. A couple of comedians are picking on Catholics. Boo hoo.

Somebody get Donohue a pacifier to suck so he’ll shut up. Or a dick. I don’t care which.

Since we’re talking about Catholicism, I’m going to make a confession. While I love blasphemy and religion-bashing in general, I particularly relish “this kind of frontal assault” on the Catholic Church about which Donahue is speaking. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I was forced to go to C.C.D. (Catholic indoctrination) for ten years, but my main reason for this is a bit nobler.

As I mentioned in my letter requesting that I be excommunicated, the Church essentially owned most of Europe for centuries. The Vatican enjoyed vast resources and political power, could make or break kings, and pretty much went hog-wild. Pope after pope demonstrated an unyielding desire to punish seemingly anyone whose opinions or actions went against official Church dogma. And by punish I mean utilize some of the most fucked up methods of inflicting maximal amounts of pain the world will ever see. In fact, the holy inquisitions ushered in a golden age of torture devices which are now, thanks to the relative impotence of the abominable Church, curious relics of a bygone age of incomprehensible Catholic sadism. During this period, the Vatican scared the ever-living shit out of everyone and cast a dark fog over the European continent that stymied intellectual development and non-torture related technological innovation.

No thanks to the alleged god who watched these monstrosities unfold, the party has been over for some time and the Church has been defanged. Nowadays, the pope has been relegated to some sort of advisory role, admonishing the increasingly skeptical faithful not to do this or not to do that. Prominent Catholics are no longer the beneficiaries of preferential treatment, but must be content to bitch and moan about getting disrespected. A crotchety papist ass-hat such as Donahue—who was probably Torquemada in a previous life—is so bloated with self-righteous BS and subconscious Irish guilt, he doesn’t see the irony in crusading against mere verbal assaults that are in opposition to an institution which has caused more pain, suffering, death, and general misery than Satan would ever even want to.

So pardon me for relishing in some sweet Catholicism-bashing every now and then. I don’t believe in the divine, but if I did, I would certainly regard the Church’s dramatic decline over these past few centuries a form of divine justice. It isn’t often that massive historical injustices get rectified, and even if they do, the victims are hardly ever around to see the perpetrators receive their comeuppance. However, this heretic considers himself a sort of heir to those brave men and women who dared to say “no” to one of the most terrible, sadistic, and murderous institutions, and who paid quite dearly for it. They may not be around to enjoy the increasing irrelevance of the Church and the flak it gets, but I am. It’s true that the Catholics and other Christians of today hadn’t anything to do with the atrocities of the past, but the Church certainly did.

When I lay my head on the pillow tonight, I will close my eyes and let my mind wander back through the annals of time and keep my ears open to see if I might catch a faint echo of the gut-wrenching screams of those long-forgotten oppressed and tortured victims of the Vatican. I will then wander back to the present, and recall the petty grumblings of the politically impotent Bill Donohue. And then I’ll see if I can enjoy a little sardonic chuckle before drifting off to pleasant oblivion for a few short hours.

- Max