As the Vatican is entirely within the city of Rome and Rome is the capital of Italy, we tend to forget that the Vatican is, technically, an independent nation. I was reminded of that today when I read the news report about the Vatican recalling their ambassador to Ireland, archbishop
Protector of Pedophiles
Giuseppe Leanza.
The thing is, the Irish government wanted to ask him some questions about this little priests-molesting-little-boys foofaraw which has been happening for the last 2,000 years. The Vatican said their ambassador would answer questions “at an opportune time,” which is a fancy way that professional diplomats have of saying “never.” Perhaps being Catholic, they don’t want to say “when Hell freezes over.”
Just like when George Bush didn’t want to answer any questions from the 9/11 commission, I became convinced that he had something to hide. I don’t think he was actually involved in the plot to destroy the World Trade Center (why tell the stupid guy?), but I think Cheney was, and Cheney just wanted Bush to keep his mouth shut about everything, because questions lead to questions.
But, I digress. The question is, just how widespread is pedophilia among Catholic priests? My suspicion is that it’s very widespread and it’s been going on a long, long time. We’re just finding out about it now because people are not so reticent to speak about sex. Openness is the enemy of secrecy.
The reason I think it’s been going on a long time is that whenever anyone, priest or politician, gets busted they say that it happened to them as a child. I believe them. And I believe that it happened to the adults who molested them, and the adults who molested them, back to the beginning of the human race, long before the existence of the Catholic Church. It’s not the prettiest aspect of human nature but it’s human nature, nonetheless. Some human’s nature.
My question is whether this was a deliberate part of the Catholic hierarchy from the beginning – that is, was the Catholic Church actually established as a haven for pedophiles -0r whether things just sort of worked out that way.
In either event, when part of a job is a vow never to have sex with women, it’s pretty obvious that that job is going to attract men whose sexual tendencies are in some way out of the mainstream.
I hope this article doesn’t offend any of my Catholic friends who are reading it. I am not saying that all priests are automatically pedophiles. But I think a lot of them are. Way, way more than we would like to believe.
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