sparkindarkness | No, really, this defence is NOT HELPING.

Post below has also been cut to protect those who may be triggered by the current abuse scandal in the Catholic church

Bill Donohue, self-appointed defender of all things Catholic (and doing a really bad job of it) has apparently hit upon a plan to take some pressure of the Catholic church for raping children, covering it up and then dismissing the pain

His plan seems to be to try to… well, seem so objectionable that the horrendous things the pope has said (and the horrendous inaction and cover up from the Vatican) will be less noticed.

See, we’re all being mean picking on the Catholic church. We’re horrible people persecuting the church with such spurious and shocking claims. And to announce this he is speaking on every damn news programme that will have him (dear media – STOP THIS! Then man is a crank, a hateful, bigoted crank. Why, in the name of all that is holy, are you giving him such a forum to spread his hate?) and has also taken out a full page article in the NYT

And it makes me rage to read

He denies that it’s a paedophile crisis – quibbling over whether the victims are children or not. He refers to SNAP (a charity to help those who have suffered at the hands of priest abusers) as a “Greasing professional victims group”. He defended the church ‘s internal cover up – comparing it to employers not acting on sexual harassment in the work place. And of course he had to lash out at the Jews – citing cases of sexual abuse in the orthodox Jewish community. Remind me again why this is relevent? How it compares in scale? How this happening there makes it acceptable for the Catholic church to cover up their huge sex abuse scandal?

And guess whose fault the whole abuse case is anyway? Yes, the gays. Yes, it’s really the gays fault that there is widespread child abuse in the Catholic church. Oh why am I not surprised? I mean, it’s not like the disgusting religious bigots haven’t tried to blame their own evil rape of children on us before, before they were forced to back away from that hateful lie

This defence? Is NOT HELPING. Really really isn’t. It is making the church and its defenders (and Donohue probably should have checked with the church’s media people before setting himself up as a defender because he seems to have done even more harm) look more heatless, more evil, more outright disgusting with every word uttered.

And, on a related point:

I can’t stand Benedict, I despise the man – he is a truly vile and unpleasant hateful, bigoted and arrogant creature. And he deserves every ounce of blame we can stick to him for his role – both personally and institutionally – in covering up this evil

BUT the blame is NOT confined to him. Do not give the organisation, the hierarchy, the other higher ups in the church a pass while aiming for Benedict. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that getting rid of Benedict would make it all ok – it wouldn’t, not even close. He may be the chief force behind the cover ups -but he wasn’t the only one

And while considering that, remember that these terrible acts happened during the last pope’s rule. I have seen a lot of nostalgia for John-Paul running around – but the Catholic church under him was very much involved in covering up child abuse, protecting child abusers and, in short, doing all the evil we are now outraged about.

I despise Benedict, I really do – but this evil is not the work of one man – and the others shouldn’t be free from blame.