Even a casual reader of this blog will know that I’m no friend to organised religion. I’m an atheist and whilst I can see that organised religion does have its good side, in my opinion, it nowhere near counteracts the harm religion does to society in general.
I’ve been watching the latest and, in my view, the most damaging pedophilia scandal of the Catholic Church and have been biting my tongue. Sure, I can come up with a few disgusting jokes and very long rants about how evil this organisation is, but to my pleasure, I have seen many hundreds of people doing this already both online and in the mainstream media. I really haven’t felt an urge to add a blog post of my own on this subject.
That is until I read this fantastic opinion piece called ‘Pope must grovel and beg for our forgiveness’ by Chris Geraghty, who is a former Catholic priest, who has put so succinctly in writing the thoughts that have been stirring in my mind these past few weeks. Like nearly everyone else, I have been shocked by the Catholic Church’s reaction to this scandal. It has been so callous and cold that it almost defies belief. I just can’t understand why the Catholic Church can’t own up to the fact that they have made grievous mistakes in letting these vile priests continue to serve and keep abusing kids. Why can’t the Pope beg forgiveness from his followers and the rest of the world and bring together a taskforce to prevent this from ever happening again? It would be naive of me to say that more rules and regulation would completely wipe out paedophilia from the Catholic Church, there will always be sickos in their ranks, just like there are sickos in every single profession, but the Church can make sure that these sick deeds are never covered up and the sicko just quietly moved to another parish. They can de-frock him and make sure he stands trial for his actions. Why does the Catholic Church not want to do what is right?
Surely, there must be good men in the Catholic Church who are pushing for this change to occur. Why are they not speaking out against the Pope? Why are they not contacting their local media outlets to condemn this shameful turn of events? Why are they remaining silent on this? (it’s possible I have missed them and if I have, please send links!)
I think that is what saddens me the most about this scandal is that the grassroots members are not doing more to condemn this but instead are upholding the culture of keeping silent. It’s shameful, it’s wrong and it is not in keeping with their Christian beliefs.
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Rainbow of Chaos 
In my parish, St. John the Evangelist in Goshen, NY, the first major pedophile scandal materialized in the early nineties. The priest in question, “Father Ed” had been molesting boys in their early teens. To say that the parishioners were traumatized by this would be an understatement. They were devastated. Then something wondrous happened….
Father Ed was eventually replaced by Father Trevor Nichols. Father Trevor had been an Anglican in merrie old England when he converted to Catholicism. On becoming a Catholic was transferred to Saint John’s – WITH HIS WIFE AND TWO DAUGHTERS! A married priest! WITH TWO KIDS!
You want to hear the punch line? Our little parish did not implode. The sun did not fall from the sky. Huge cracks did not appear in the earth’s surface. In fact, it was nice having them. They were – and are to this day – deeply beloved by the people of St. John’s.
Allowing priests to marry would transform the Catholic Church. Having a married priest and his lovely family in our midst certainly transformed the people of St. John’s.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
I grew up catholic and left it. I don’t agree with the faith. People are sheep and they follow and they fear and if they were to go against the Pope, omg they are all damned to hell. Well at least that is what I am sure many think. It is sad and I agree, he was wrong, the faith is wrong for backing him, shame on all of them. Oddly enough my other thought while reading this is, Tiger Woods begged for forgiveness, why can’t the Pope. LOL
The Catholic priesthood has existed for so long in an insulated bubble where pedophilia was clandestinely accepted and winked at as long as you didn’t get caught, that now they can’t quite adjust to the fact of how genuinely horrified the outside world is by all this.
The Pope is a millstone which will not leave the Church’s neck, dragging it down, down, down. He will never grovel, never behave the way we would expect a normal human being to behave when confronted with proof of his own complicity. These men believe they are above the secular law.
The cover-up happened because they cared only for the Church’s reputation, not for the victims. So it’s appropriate that, now, it’s the Church’s reputation which is slowly being shredded by the endless drip of new revelations and by the hierarchy’s stonewalling.