Why can’t the Pope do what is right?

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.