The country changes but the song remains the same:
A report about child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, based on victim accounts and released by the church this week, showed that priests carefully planned their assaults and frequently abused the same children repeatedly for years.
[…] The church’s credibility regarding its commitment to an impartial investigation suffered a fresh blow last week when the bishops canceled an independent study into the abuse scandal amid allegations by the independent investigator, Christian Pfeiffer, that the church was censoring information.
Also, too, rape babies are a present from God:
Germans were further outraged by reports this week that two Roman Catholic hospitals in Cologne had refused to carry out a gynecological examination on a 25-year-old suspected rape victim. An emergency doctor who had helped the woman told the newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that the hospitals cited ethical objections to advise women on unwanted pregnancies and on steps that can be taken to prevent them, like the morning-after pill. The Archdiocese of Cologne denied that the church refuses to treat rape victims. The hospitals blamed a “misunderstanding” and said the matter was under investigation.
RaflW
I continue, as always, to not have the slightest understanding as to why anyone, anywhere, thinks the Catholic church has any standing at all to make moral pronouncements on same-sex marriage.
Or any topic of the day.
f space that
Nice Mahler reference. What RaflW said.
Higgs Boson's Mate
“Ethical.” That word should turn to sand in their mouths.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: well, it’s possible that the nurses and doctors will be required to stone her if it turns out that she was raped within earshot of her neighbors, so I can see how simply not getting involved might save them from their own ethical struggles.
NotMax
Kinderschtuppenlieder?
Brent
@RaflW: Unfortunately I think we do understand it. It derives from their religious authority and and thats the bizarre thing about religious authority. It doesn’t have to make any sense. It doesn’t have to conform to even the most fundamental elements of human interaction and comity. Religions, the Catholic Church among them, have spent centuries, millenium really, establishing this absurdly unjustifiable authority within human societies. Its effect is, for sure, beginning to fade, but for the time being, it still retains a fairly firm grip on many communities. These sorts of incidents certainly diminish that authority but not nearly as much as they should.
Jeff(the other one)
Kinderfickenlieder is the grammatically accurate term, but who cares anyway?
geg6
I hate these people. And there’s not a person alive who is surprised by this disgusting display by these morally bankrupt criminal conspiracies perpetrated by the Catholic Church all over the world. It’s who they are and the fact that we are all unsurprised and wearily cynical about another story of pedophiles, coverups, and abuse of women is a sad commentary on how easy it is to give up and say it’s Vaticantown, Jake. There is nothing moral or ethical about today’s Roman Catholic Church.
Biscuits
What f space that said and RafiW also too.
Higgs Boson's Mate
This goes to show you how inattentive I am. I have read the Bible three times in my life and all three times I overlooked the Book of St. Pederast.
NotMax
@Higgs Boson’s Mate
Easy to skip by it as, like in the Senate, the pages are bent over.
Linda Featheringill
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I didn’t see the Book of St. Pederast, either.
I did find this though:
“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”
Never have I heard a sermon on this verse.
shortstop
These people are barely human at this point. Please do not post “You’re just now noticing that?” responses? The day I stop being knocked flat by this stuff is the day I call it a day.
Omnes Omnibus
I feel for the millions of people who find comfort in faith through the Catholic Church and the many priests who are not sick pervs, but I think there has to come a point where one accepts that there is a sickness in the organization and the hierarchy has chosen to shelter and protect it at the expense of the faithful. I know, master of the fucking obvious, that’s me. But, WTF? Can’t they see that this is killing their organization?
Amir Khalid
@Jeff(the other one):
With the plural nominative definite article, it’s “die Kinderfickenlieder”. But since mistermix is referring to a song in the singular, he should of course say “das Kinderfickenlied”.
Enough grammar pedantry. I simply don’t understand why these horrible cases haven’t led to defrocking and excommunication, criminal prosecution, and long jail sentences for these child-raping monsters. At least, the story doesn’t mention any such consequences for the guilty priests. Just what is the church waiting for?
Wag
OT but josh at TPM has a piece about armed guards at Sidwell school where the President’s daughters go to school and which the NRA is holding up as a model for school security nationwide.
There ar no armed guards at the school
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/01/yep_big_liars.php?m=1
Wag
OT but josh at TPM has a piece about armed guards at Sidwell school where the President’s daughters go to school and which the NRA is holding up as a model for school security nationwide.
There are no armed guards at the school
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/01/yep_big_liars.php?m=1
shortstop
@Amir Khalid: I think people understand that pedophiles, as monstrous as they are, are deeply ill persons. What people cannot and should not understand is how ruling members of the same organization who do not share the sickness will nevertheless protect their own guys over the well-being of children with whom they’ve been entrusted. They will always, always choose their own power over kids’ safety and the full — or, too often, any — punishment of priestly offenders. It doesn’t get any more depraved than that.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Amir Khalid:
The church will conclude that a misapplication of German syntax caused the priests involved to wrongly apply the phrase “suffer unto me the children.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Wag: Link doesn’t work.
@Wag: Doesn’t work second time around either.
Brent
@Amir Khalid:
But thats the point of the article. The Church isn’t waiting for anything. They are actively involved in covering up these crimes.
Amir Khalid
@SiubhanDuinne:
Go to TPM’s front page, where that post appears twice at the top of the Editors’ Blog column. The “Read More” link in the upper one works.
Todd
Clearly, a resulting rape baby means that the sex was enjoyed. Unfortunately, not every joyous forcible sexual union produces adequate evidence of sluttiness like a rape baby.
Polygraphs will be necessary to confirm the absence of physical pleasure reactions.
Johannes
Yeah. The problem actually dates back to the Middle Ages, when Thomas Becket and Henry II fought over clerical immunity from secular jurisdiction. Becket’s murder gave the Church a temporary win on the issue, and they have never let go of it–it was even enshrined in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which made cooperation with secular law enforcement against a member of the clergy a violation of canon law, punishable by excommunication.
Amir Khalid
@Johannes:
Thanks for the historical context.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: This the perfect summary. Absolutely perfect.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/01/yep_big_liars_2.php?ref=fpblg
Ted & Hellen
And yet millions will dutifully go to Catholic services tomorrow…
wtf?
Steeplejack
@Wag:
Linky no work. I fix: “Yep, Big Liars.”
Comrade Dread
They don’t. Until they realize that the proper response to allegations of child molestation and rape is to remove the offender from service, call the police, and cooperate 110% in the ensuing investigation while assessing how it was that your employee screening process and corporate culture allowed a child molester/rapist into a position of authority over children and then changing your culture to better safeguard against it in the future.
Also,too, the proper response to the victims is an apology, an offer to pay for counseling bills at a doctor of their parent’s choice, and, when sued, cutting them a large check without smearing the victims.
dave
True story: Several years ago I received a letter addressed to one of my neighbors. My address, his name. The sender screwed up one of the digits of the street address so it went to me. I said: the name is familiar but I don’t know which house is his, so I will use the power of Google to find his street address. So I typed in his name. I got hits, lots of hits to news stories about a Roman Catholic priest in the northeast who was in an “inappropriate sexual relationship” with a 16 year old boy. One of the news stories had the offender’s picture. I recognized my neighbor.
They’re everywhere. (And judging me when they should instead keep their mouth shut in shame.)
Origuy
Louis C.K. Learns About the Catholic Church NSFW
Gindy51
@Comrade Dread: Let me know when hell freezes over because that is about when the RCC will do any of what you suggest.
Roger Moore
@Johannes:
This. The core problem is that the Church places the power and prestige of the organization over the good of the parishioners.
SRW1
You left out the worst part about the child abuse by members of the Catholic church in Germany, namely that there is some evidence that some of the bastards were assisting each other in grooming young kids.
J R in WV
Well, the organization is also famous for using unspeakable torture to grow their population of contributors over many centuries.
Why would an organization, the roman catholic church, that still maintains the organization in charge of said unspeakable torture be expected to have ethics or morals?
In fact the CEO of the catholic church was previously the manager of the inquisition, the organization in charge of torture, before being promoted to holy father, aka pope of pederasts.
They have changed the name of the torture-management group from the original Inquisition to a more bland and less charged descriptive name, but it is the same group, with the same standards for questioning suspicious people.
They should all be in jail, in my book, from the top down. Anyone who joins management in such an organization (priesthood) is complicit in their horrific crimes over the centuries.
Xenos
@J R in WV: Magdeburg justice.
We are talking about people who committed genocide on a community of Lutherans, and celebrated it. I have my criticisms of Napolean, but he did us all a solid by extinguishing the Holy Roman Empire.
Petorado
Ratzi is killing the church. They have no moral authority anymore, and their whole operation is simply another political outfit that is more concerned with maintaining power for those in position and putting forth punitive decrees to those underneath. In didn’t always agree with JPII, but at least felt he strove for some sort of personal moral improvement. The current papal regime are simply wacko Republicans in funny hats.
AA+ Bonds
@Xenos:
You’re talking about the incompetence of a noble in 1631. It’s shocking history but the Catholic Church did not order the annihilation of Magdeburg and there is no lasting legacy of Lutheran-Catholic struggle in the region.
If criticizing the Church, I would not really dwell on the term “Magdeburg justice”, which was a term used by Protestants to justify the killing of Catholics who surrendered.
Overall this comes across as talking about Muslims as though they were defined by the Battle of Kosovo (1389), which a surprising number of Serbs still do.
Please: there are plenty of avenues to criticize (and, at best, prosecute) the Church’s leadership without attempting to revive the Thirty Years’ War.
AA+ Bonds
@Roger Moore:
I really 100% do not want to sound pedantic here but I think it’s necessary to keep one idea in mind if change is to ever happen: the organization is what places the power and prestige of the organization over the good of the parishioners. The Church is the Body of Christ.
A lot of Democratic-voting Americans will feel a little less shit on, and a little more likely to keep voting Democratic, if Democrats are able to separate the bishops from the Church. It’s so easy to just refrain from saying “the Church says so-and-so” and be specific about the council of bishops who have actually thrown in with the Republicans and traded in kind the bare minimum of Rerum Novarum (and I’m no huge fan of Leo XIII as you might imagine).
It’s much the same as how you don’t want to say “Islam says so and so” every time some Salafist opines about the proper way for women to wait in line for coffee or whatever.
muddy
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Petorado:
Samesame.
Lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
They were clearly just cuddling, amirite?
El Cid
Look, you have to have priorities.
Sure, these cases of molestation and such are often unpleasant, but it’s not a true evil that the Church must battle such as the invisible evil spirit which haunts the Earth or women who think they can do things which could affect if or when intercourse leads to a baby.
If it were a perfect world, of course you’d prefer to keep priestly molestation and pedophilic abuse to a more constructive minimum, but let’s not forget what’s really important here.
Bart
(disregard)
J R in WV
@El Cid:
Pretty good snark, Cid. Keep up the good work!
Chris
@El Cid:
I’m pretty sure that’s actually exactly how they justify it. Like, to each other and themselves. In a literal (in the literal sense of “literal”), non ironic way.
Thor Heyerdahl
I believe an overlooked term is “Kinderfickenluegner”
swbarnes2
@AA+ Bonds:
If parishioners want an organization that values them, paying to maintain the current one is an awfully odd and ineffective way of demonstrating that.
Sorry, but no one can plead ignorant anymore. You put money in the basket, you know where it is going, and that means that other people can call you out on that.