From the Catholic League’s full-page ad in today’s New York Times:
The refrain that child rape is a reality in the Church is twice wrong: let’s get it straight—they weren’t children and they weren’t raped. We know from the John Jay study that most of the victims have been adolescents, and that the most common abuse has been inappropriate touching (inexcusable though this is, it is not rape). The Boston Globe correctly said of the John Jay report that “more than three-quarters of the victims were post pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.” In other words, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia.
Sigh of fucking relief! It’s just those goddam homos again, causing problems like they always do. No damage done, move along, nothing to see here, you hysterical libtards:
What accounts for the relentless attacks on the Church? Let’s face it: if its teachings were pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and pro-women clergy, the dogs would have been called off years ago.
Because we all know being a pro-abortion feminist child fucking homo (err, I mean, child touching homo, sorry) is a goddam get out of jail free card. Hell, just the other day I saw a cop walk right by a 50 year-old man feeling up a teenage boy in his Prius with an Obama bumpersticker. He didn’t even bother to check that the guy was a Democrat, it was so obvious.
(via)
Ash Can
A full-page ad? In the NYfuckingT? And they put this shit in it??
These guys don’t know enough to stop digging, do they?
Paul in NC
“More than three quarters of the victims were post-pubescent…” What are the other quarter, chopped liver?
jah
is a catholic church/NAMBLA partnership in our future? their stances on sexual contact with those under the age of consent seem to be quite similar.
Villago Delenda Est
Good thing all those altar boys are over the age of consent.
Doesn’t change the fact that the Church has been actively covering up the crimes of small armies of priests.
dmsilev
I want to see that as a defense at trial: “So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Father Smith *didn’t* rape that boy, he merely groped the genitals of that teenager. No harm, no foul, right?”
dms
Mike in NC
Worthy of fine, upstanding Catholics like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum!
Mattminus
“It wasn’t child rape, it was mostly tween hand jobs. Lighten the fuck up, people”
jayjaybear
The Catholic League is, if anything, even more reactionary and conservative than the Church itself. This ad really does not surprise me. Bill Donohue is the worst kind of humorless, repressive, smothering reactionary…the man has no sense of proportion at all.
Elliecat
@jayjaybear: Yes, let’s not confuse the two. Most of the Catholics I know are pretty disgusted by the Catholic League in general.
Comrade Mary
Hey! All you predatory teachers, scout leaders, and clergy of any faith! It’s open season on the teens in your care! We’re gonna party like spring break at the Vatican.
Remember that rosaries make an AWESOME substitute for Mardi Gras beads.
Social outcast
Terrific defense. “Those molested boys weren’t 8 years old- they were 12!”
Hello, Protestants? You win.
Scott
The fact that William Donohue doesn’t get struck by lightning 20 times a day is the best evidence of all that the atheists are right.
Kay Shawn
I noticed at the bottom they call out Richard Dawkins as a kindred spirit…this is how they defend their faith.
"Serious" Superluminar
Well I saw the heading and assumed this was the open thread on Obama’s speech.
/firebagger
Exurban Mom
And….that is why I walked away. There is no frickin’ way they are getting their grubby hands on my kid. None.
Ash Can
@jah: What probably is in our future is a big drop-off in mass attendance and church membership. The Church is on shaky enough ground with this godawful stuff, and now, beginning in the last week of November, the wording of the missal is going to undergo changes that will, in effect, push the text back to pretty much what it looked like in the early 1960s before Pope John XXIII decreed that the words of the mass should be in local vernaculars — in other words, clear and easy for everyone to understand. When the text reverts back to the more ornate and stilted version of yesteryear, that will likely be the last straw for an awful lot of folks.
HyperIon
@Elliecat wrote:
yet i have never heard any of my Catholic friends denounce the Catholic League. makes you wonder, no?
EDIT: I’m trying to figure out what made you change your statement.
Comrade Mary
Catholics who don’t denounce Catholics are obviously secret Muslims. You haven’t seen their baptismal certificates, have you?
Comrade Mary
Catholics who don’t denounce Catholics are obviously secret Muslims. You haven’t seen their baptismal certificates, have you?
mistermix
@Mattminus: Winning.
Mudge
Priapus in a Prius.
Hell, bankers get “Get of of Jail Free” cards for stealing money through mortgages and crashing the world economy via greed and dishonesty..guess he feels all crimes have a class that suffers no consequences.
Bullsmith
The lack of basic remorse and accountability is stunning. Gee, it’s not like the priests had any moral authority over these non-children they were (barely) touching. Not like they could blackmail these largely-grown tempters with eternal damnation, excommunication, social shunning or anything. No no, it almost the same thing as consensual sex. The bad part is the homo, not the not-rape.
If there is a hell, I wonder if they separate the apologists from the abusers.
McFrank
And, of course, the female victims of “inappropriate touching” don’t count!
Joe Bauers
First off, I think Donohue is the Catholic League. Sorry, but one bigmouth asshole does not a league make. So sayeth the Joe Bauers Army.
Second, fuck that guy to death. If I had a magic lamp with a genie granting three wishes, my three wishes would be:
1) Feed Donohue feet first into a wood chipper
2) Bring him back to life
3) See wish #1
jibeaux
Whew, it’s a good thing the legal age of consent in all states is “post-pubescent”!
Bokonon
This is the classic bad guy defense from Scooby Doo: “Everything would have been FINE if it weren’t for you MEDDLING KIDS!”
Substitute “left wingers and political enemies”, and there you are.
BobS
@Ash Can: I actually thought the mass in Latin was kind of cool, along with the smoke and costumes. It made it all mysterious and exotic. Fortunately for me, I was never an altar boy, so I ended up getting my first hand job from a girl.
My guess is the Church is cringing at that ad. The average person can’t read it without feeling disgust, which is how I’ve felt whenever I’ve seen Donahue.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
Right. Because then you wouldn’t have been a bunch of fucking hypocrites.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
@McFrank:
They practically were begging for it, what with those short parochial schoolgirl skirts they’re always wearing …
Ufficio
The best part is the more adolescents they abuse, the higher that number gets. So they actually are mitigating their crimes by raping/molesting more post-pubescents. Amazing.
Origuy
From http://www.catholicleague.org/about.php
Board of Directors
Raymond Arroyo
Nunzio Cardone
Ann Corkery
Kathleen Hunt
Richard Kerins
William Lindner
Marilyn Lundy
Jerome Murphy
Frank Salas
Joe Thompson
Theodore Vargas
Kenneth Whitehead
Rev. Philip Eichner, Chairman
William Donohue, President
Bernadette Brady, Vice President
David Gregory, General Counsel
Board of Advisors
Hadley Arkes
Brent Bozell
Gerard Bradley
Linda Chavez
Robert Destro
Keith Fournier
Laura Garcia
Robert George
Mary Ann Glendon
Dolores Grier
Alan Keyes
Stephen Krason
Lawrence Kudlow
Robert Lockwood
Thomas Monaghan
Michael Novak
Kate O’Beirne
Thomas Reeves
Patrick Riley
Robert Royal
Ronald Rychlak
Russell Shaw
William Simon, Jr.
Joseph Varacalli
Paul Vitz
George Weigel
Comrade Dread
This is insane.
Sorry, unless they were older than the age of consent, any sexual congress is rape.
Now kindly do the Catholic Church a favor and stop trying to argue that somehow betraying your vows, abusing your authority, and preying on vulnerable charges in your care or flock is better because some of them were adolescents and it’s all the gays’ fault.
Seriously, you know what would have stopped people from being upset?
If the church had taken the allegations seriously, turned over offenders to civil authority, and did everything in their care to purge the church of this horrible sin and offer restitution freely toward victims as a sign of deep conviction and repentance.
Cris
Bill Donohue: objectively pro-teen-rape
Villago Delenda Est
Sorry, Bill, but lame Jedi mind trick attempts do not work on me.
What a fucktard Donohue is. All that fucking hand waving that has nothing at all to do with the criminal behavior of his precious Catholic Hierarchy.
BDeevDad
Their taking cues from these guys:
joeyess
Brought to you by the Cretins For A Catholic Christ leader Bill Donohue.
Villago Delenda Est
@Origuy:
Plenty of fascist filth on that board of advisors.
Patrick
And the Catholic League says “I am not a witch!”
RalfW
Wow. The desperation, as well as the unmitigated evil, just oozes off the page of these Catholic League ppl, doesn’t it?
Major homosexual panic going on. No wonder the Catholic church in America is hemorrhaging members.
HyperIon
OK, so it was “teh gay” that did all the molesting.
why didn’t the incredibly homophobic catholic church throw their asses out?
this analysis makes no sense.
Alex
The Catholic League isn’t to be taken seriously. It’s just a vehicle for Bill Donohue to turn fauxtrage into fat paycheck.
Alex
The Catholic League isn’t to be taken seriously. It’s just a vehicle for Bill Donohue to turn fauxtrage into a fat paycheck.
Redshift
And the girls that were molested don’t count, so it must be the fault of Teh Gay.
maus
With all this “ephebophiles are not pedophiles” argument, I’d have thought I was in an anime convention, not listening to the Catholic Church.
Tony J
@HyperIon: @HyperIon:
From what I saw on Buchanan’s AmCom site back when the revelations about abuse in Ireland started hitting the headlines, the basic theory is that evil homosexuals infiltrated the Church and got elected to positions of power where they could cover up their unnatural crimes, and everything that’s come out is their fault.
How this happened, and why the Church didn’t do anything about it, is put down to “PC Gone mad!”. The current Pope, when he was Vatican Number Two and responsible for hiring and firing – tried – to expose it, but those evil homosexuals were too powerful.
I’m not joking, that’s the argument I saw presented. It’s all a Big Gay Conspiracy to make the Church look bad. If only the Church was ‘allowed’ to be anti-gay in its hiring practices, the children would have been safe.
YMMV as much as mine, but I have to come down on the side of “No. That’s just fucking crazy.”
Paul in KY
@Joe Bauers: I’d prefer to stake him out near a fire ant mound with a ever so small line of honey from him to the ants.
Bulworth
They really have the Sermon on the Mount stuff down to a science, don’t they?
Paul in KY
@Origuy: What a list of slimeballs. I bet though, that this ad causes a few of them to part ways with ‘The Donahue League of Dickheads’.
Silver
Those little faggot kids would be touching themselves if the priests weren’t there to lend a helping hand, and masturbation sends children to hell.
It’s a value added service of the Catholic church. Altar boy gets a handjob, and his soul is safe. You people should show some gratitude.
beergoggles
I was thinking the NYT wouldn’t publish the libeling of an entire class of people, but then again their old habits die hard. I really hope they choke behind their paywall.
HyperIon
@Tony J wrote:
Thanks for your explanation.
But…when did they start hiring priests?
Paris
Sex with underage kids is statutory rape. R-A-P-E.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
so we have warped past cafeteria catholics, and now we are into used car lot catholics..
“ok, we always say no sex outside of marriage, and even then, (looks around conspiratorially) my manager says, only with 1 penis, and one vagina, no oral, not even for spit lube…now, i don’t do this for just anyone, but i can see, you are a shrewd negotiator, so here is what i am going to do for you.(looks around, again)please don’t tell them i gave you this deal, because the man upstairs in the gm’s office will have my lunch, but…i can let it all go for…
if there is grass on the infield, play ball!”
Cat
Shorter:
“Except for the unfortunate instances of child rape, no catholic priests raped children.”
RSA
“Your Honor, three-quarters of the hostages I took did not die, meaning that my actions did not constitute murder.”
NonyNony
People should demand that the Vatican denounce the Catholic League.
I doubt they would do it – but a very vocal demand that the Church distance itself from Donohue’s whack-factor would at least bring to head the question of whether or not the Church actually approves of his message.
The Voice
Or as it is called in the Covington Diocese of Kentucky:
The Father Earl Bierman Defense
Linkage
Not a get out of jail free card for Bierman or Donahue
greenergood
‘Oranges and Sunshine’ is a film that’s just been screened in the UK about a British woman who tracked down lots of children, supposedly orphans and homeless, who were sent to Australia in the 1950s and 60s to help with the Australian lebensraum – i.e., push out the Aborigines and keep out the Asians. Many of these children were sent to farms, businesses, etc. run by the Catholic church. In one notorious case, bets were laid on which priest would rape one particular boy for the hundredth time.
It’s no use the Catholic church arguing that ‘other people do it, so what do you expect?’ You set yourself up as a moral arbiter, censoring other people’s sexual (and other) activities: you better behave yourself, and if you don’t, you get the book (the ‘Good Book’ AND the law book)thrown at you. Anything else is reprehensible.
PaulW
Quick question: how many of the priest sex abuse cases INVOLVED LITTLE GIRLS?
Is it still Homosexuality when it’s Guy Priest-on-Catholic Schoolgirl?
It had been the exposure of priests fondling little boys that had been the attention-grabbers, but the truth is girls got sexually abused as well. Prove me wrong.
Those sex abuse victims – and yes, Donahue you asswipe, they ARE victims it’s called STATUTORY! – ought to start filing defamation suits against that League of Catholic Fear. This is indefensible.
Mary
Oh man…I actually clicked through and skimmed the whole statement. There’s so much that is wrong with it that I can’t even be bothered to begin.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Ash Can:
Meh, I’m about as far left as you can get on religious matters, and *I* support the changes. I’ve never been comfortable with the dumbed down liturgy-maybe having grown up Episcopalian and then being a convert to both Orthodoxy/Eastern Rite Catholicism sorta made me appreciate godliness and a bit of reverence. More reverent language just sounds more appropriate for church.
Holden Pattern
I think what people are missing about Donohue and the Catholic League is that Donohue purports to represent the Catholic Church, which, unlike many other religions, has a clear hierarchy — we know who runs the Church globally and in every single diocese.
If the Catholic hierarchy wanted Donohue to stop, to be discredited, they could make him stop by denouncing him publicly (or even saying publicly that he doesn’t represent the Church’s views) and instructing the faithful not to support his efforts. They haven’t done so, and it’s not because the Catholic Church has been shy about politics in the last decade or so.
Donohue is doing the hierarchy’s work here. There’s really no doubt about that.
Aurolyn
From the ad in question:
“A priest who uttered an inappropriate word or made a single imprudent gesture is treated in the same way as a serial rapist.”
Except that serial rapists sometimes go to jail. Unless they’re priests.
“Quite frankly, it is more acceptable in our society today to defend the rights of Gitmo detainees than Catholic priests.”
In that case I imagine the beleaguered priests would be happy to switch places with the Gitmo detainees (who, from what I hear, are spoiled rotten, and get free room and board too).
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
But they weren’t over the age of consent. The ad creepily is trying to suggest that “post pubescent” means that the boys were really asking for it, maybe even they were the ones seducing innocent priests.
Let’s try this: Roman Polanski having sex with a “post pubescent” girl makes it all right.
Nope. Still rape.
Alan in SF
Not all of the victims were actually raped, and only a quarter of the victims were actually children. So lay off already, huh? Jeez.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Brachiator:
ssshhhh, next letter, will be donohue saying, c’mon man, it was the 70s, in many cases, you know, things were different….
WereBear
Technicality is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Jay C
@Origuy:
That the Catholic League is, at best, an astroturf front for a relatively small group of hardcore clericofascist cranks shouldn’t really be news to anyone: about their only positive trait is a remarkable ability to garner publicity well above their weight: the 42 names on Origuy’s list above is probably the bulk of their membership right there (they claim “thousands” of members: if there are more than a single-digit multiple of that list, I’d be surprised). But it’s not all that surprising, either, that the Times would publish this dreck: if they turned it down, Donahue and his gang would simply find some other fishwrap (the NY Post, frex) to print it, and then go on another well-publicized tear whining about “anti-Catholic” attitudes at the NYT to bolster their pathetic need to look like martyrs, and wax self-righteous about the abuses against Holy Mother Church (abuses BY H.M.C. are another matter, as we notice….)
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
It was snark, man.
The entire Catholic League ad is purest bullshit.
Brachiator
@Aurolyn:
Wow. What crap. The priests who were serial rapists are treated like, well, serial rapists.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
No, I was remarking more on the sentiments in the ad and issues raised by your remarks. I’ve talked to people who have tried to babble shit about supposed “age of consent.”
However, fury, not snark, is appropriate here.
It’s ridiculous, but an ongoing tactic has been to try to minimize what was done, or play games of misdirection.
Bill Section 147
Hell only a few thousand children were raped. The VAST majority were only felt-up after puberty. And even then vast majority of feeling-up was man on teenboy stuff.
Catholic Church has a sad so can we be forgiven?
Thank you Catholic Ad in the NY Times I am comfortable with your transgressions now. I will stop my relentless attacks on the Church and I will continue not feeling-up teen boys and not raping even one child – secure in my faith.
I also didn’t know…
… that a priest who who uttered an inappropriate word or made a single imprudent gesture was just transferred to another diocese and his records hidden. THAT IS HARSH.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
Well, I was attempting to use sarcasm to make a point.
I’m sorry you didn’t feel it was direct enough at making the point.
But, like I said, the entire ad is crap. As is Donohue.