The sickening "morality" of Roman Catholic bishops

Ireland's Roman Catholic bishops say the public should lobby lawmakers to reject a bill that would allow abortions to save the life of the mother.

The bishops in a statement Friday say the bill represents "a dramatic and morally unacceptable change to Irish law." 

Raping children is fine but saving the life of a woman is "morally unacceptable". That's Roman Catholicism for you. The priests speak of morality all the time but have no understanding of what the word means.

The cognitive dissonance of the Vatican

So the popey guy is trying to rein in the troops after the "sanctity" of his trust in his personal assistant took a shot to the chin. I swear, this pope has no clue how his words sound to the world.

Benedict gave a pep talk of sorts to a group of prelates preparing to serve the Holy See abroad in diplomatic posts, telling them that their work "should make you grow in closeness to the pope, a closeness marked by interior trust." 

Hmmm, "interior trust". Would that be what those Catholic kids had just before they were raped by priests? It's amazing how differently the Vatican treats violations of trust, according to who was violated. The popey guy tells us he feels terribly hurt by the violation of trust that occurred when his papers were stolen. How does he think those kids feel? Seriously, do you think the Vatican held even one meeting to discuss the terrible violation these kids suffered, and how they might help them heal? I guarantee this never happened. If it had, we'd see changes -- and we don't.

But the popey guy is taking the violation of his sanctity very seriously:

A three-cardinal commission is investigating the leaks alongside Vatican police. 

One wonders if a similar panel was set up to look into what happened to the children raped by priests. I suspect not. That was only about the violation of the kids' trust. This time it's about the popey guy being violated. Big difference, to them. Another excerpt:

The leaks scandal has convulsed the Vatican for months, exposing episodes of political infighting, intrigue and accusations of corruption and homosexual liaisons going on under the watch of the 85-year-old Benedict.

Jeez. Just think: gay sex in the palace of the popey guy who attacks gays all over the world. I say it all the time: that's some church they've got there. Jeez.

Popey guy laments world's "amnesia" about god

Oops. I missed this last week. During his fabulous trip to Spain (which I'm sure involved frequent, exciting costume changes), the popey guy forgot all about the 34 dead boys and the mad transferring of pedophile priests that took place under his watch. Oblivious to irony, he complained that the world had "amnesia" about god.

Here's the lede:

MADRID (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI complained Friday that modern society has a certain "amnesia" about God as he lamented the dwindling of the faith during a visit to Spain, a once staunchly Catholic country . . .

Indeed. We have amnesia, eh, popey guy? You only wish. Then maybe we'd forget about your priests raping all those children. What gall. It's very GOP, don't you think? When you call a Republican on something, he just turns around and accuses you of doing the same thing. This is straight out of the GOP playbook.

So here's the popey guy, chastising the world for its amnesia -- as the world watches in horror while the church claims amnesia about the pedophile priest scandal. They don't remember doing anything bad. That's pretty much been their defense all along. As usual, there is startling hypocrisy in the popey guy's words.

By the way, popey guy. It's not that we've forgotten god; it's that there is no god. See? There's nothing to forget.

Funny NYT story about the vatican today

Remember how Ireland's prime minister laid out the popey guy last week for encouraging priestly abuse with his shady rules? (I wrote about it here.) Well, there's an even funnier follow-up today. It made me roar with laughter. You really have to read it in full to appreciate it. Here are a few outtakes:

First, and I loved this, the vatican said it will issue a response to Ireland's charges of priestly abuse and vatican-controlled hiding of the abuse: "at the 'opportune time' but has not done so yet." Don't you love these guys? They don't care what anyone on the planet thinks. They've got god on their side, you know.

Today's new episode in the Colorful Adventures of the Popey Guy is that, in response to the dead-honest charges of the Irish Prime Minister, the vatican recalled its ambassador. Ooooh. Rough, huh? (And right off the bat, you have to love the fact that they have an "ambassador". What pompous twits these vatican fellows are.) The article says:

"The Vatican acknowledged that the recall of an ambassador was a measure rarely adopted by the Holy See, underlining the 'seriousness of the situation'." 

Are you rolling on the floor laughing yet? They abuse little kids and then hide it, and they have absolutely no problem with that. No-o. That's fine. But being called on it makes them pull their ambassador to underline "the seriousness of the situation". The "seriousness" is entirely about the vatican's reaction to being called on the carpet, not about the raping of kids. It's all about them, isn't it? They're always in the right. It wouldn't even matter if their priests raped little boys on live TV every night. They would still be in the right. And why? Because they literally can do no wrong.

Then, to cap it all off, a vatican operative named Ciro Benedettini actually expressed "some degree of surprise and disappointment at certain excessive reactions." Okay, I know you're roaring with laughter now.

Since you probably won't go read the whole article, here's a hefty piece of it to remind you what this tiff is all about:

A confidential 1997 Vatican letter — originally published by The Associated Press in January — instructed Irish bishops to handle child-abuse cases strictly under terms of canon law. It warned bishops that their 1996 child-protection policy, particularly its emphasis on the need to start reporting all suspected crimes to police, violated canon law.

Kenny said Catholic canon law had "neither legitimacy nor (a) place in the affairs of this country." He pledged to press ahead with new laws making it a crime to withhold evidence of child abuse — even if the information was attained during a priest's confession. The Catholic Church insists that the contents of confessions must never be revealed.

They will never ever admit the horrible things they've done -- and are apparently still doing. That popey guy's got a violent posse over there in his secret vatican headquarters. I wonder if they use special gang hand symbols when no one else is around. Probably, huh?