Pat Oliphant for March 25, 2010

Wow, I didn’t know that Pat could be this over the top, but then what we are talking about is the rape of children, so maybe there is no “over-the-top” when it comes to a subject like this.

The comment by the small person in the lower left corner, states the postion of too many people in the Church quite clearly.

This is only going to continue. The Vatican leadership is more interested in covering up scandal than to deal with and prevent it. It’s all about preserving the power of the Church.

In Boston, their reaction was “yes, yes, now you need to shut up about this and listen to us. We’re authorities.” And they tried to make everyone go to special workshops, basically to reinforce their authority. WRONG! Authority and trust must be earned. The population of Catholic schools dropped by something like a third that year alone, and most of them don’t even have priests involved anymore. The irony here is that they ignored their own principles for atonement: simply saying you are sorry is not enough; you must do penance as well. Faith AND good works, as we Catholics say. There are many good priests, and some are friends of mine, but this is a shameful blot on the Church.

Its like crooked cops. Every presinct’s got one. But just like the cops they are a fraternity that does not rat each other out and quite frankly I find that to be disturbing.

Could the growing problem of priest pedophelia cause eventual problems for the church all the way to the top? COuld this be the third secret of Lourdes?

Well, I say progress has been made. At least the Catholic Church is no longer in a position to incite Crusades or hold Inquisitions. Nevertheless, their theology is still ludicrous and the institution is obviously reprobate.

qui autem scandalizaverit unum de pusillis istis qui in me credunt expedit ei ut suspenditur mola asinaria in collo eius et demergatur in profundum maris Matt. 18:6

I reckon erstwhile Nazis don’t parse their basic texts so well: mola does not mean “water wings”.

The crusades over? Not so much it seems. Just that the Catholic Church can’t claim very much of the credit anymore. Instead of the BVM we’ve had GWB to make a stinking mess of things.

At least Mr. Oliphant won’t be sent death threats for his ludicrous exaggeration. No fear of Catholic bashing here.

I wonder if we’re watching the results of the Peter Principle at work in religious organizations just like other big businesses.

You need to work on those OCD tendencies, howgozit.

This is CARICATURE at his finest ! The charge against the Roman Catholic Church is absolutely justified. Vatican is the land of hypocrisy. Great, solid and true statement. Great stuff : it is a masterpiece !

Bravo Oliphant,! c’est une vision très juste de l’attitude intransigeante, outrancière des membres de l’Église catholique : des gens qui ont utilisé le patriarcat comme moyen d’abuser des faibles et des petits pendant des siècles. Cet hypocrite de Benoit XVI devrait démissionner de son poste.

That ignominious pope should simply resign.

30th anniversary of what? Oliphant has been around since his Denver Post days in 1964…

When you only accept people willing to be celibate as clergy, you are asking for problems. It wasn’t always like this, the Catholic church imposed that rule so it could inherit churches owned by priests…The weirdest land-grab ever, and people act surprised at this outcome? The church’s growing problem is simply the lost taboo for speaking out.

The Pope wants to reinforce the concept of forgiveness and that is laudable, but the priest should be removed from priesthood and identified for prosecution to atone!!

I thought they instituted celebacy to combat nepotism. If you think it’s bad now, imagine when the criminal priest’s daddy was a bishop & grandaddy was a cardinal. If they say the church is their spouse, they should quit treating her like their whore.

And remember, these are the folks who are trying to dictate sexual morality to us! Not just dictate, they’re actually affecting legislation and referendums, as in the anti-gay marriage Prop 8 in California and the battles against a woman’s freedom to choose.

Canuck; I read “La Princesse de Babylone” (What are you gonna do? There are two things I just love to show off about me; my breasts and my brains) In that story, a prince from India travels around Europe and when the hero reaches Rome, Voltaire hints that the priests wanted to sleep with him.

Jesus was single; maybe they wanted to emulate him. Hmm, he DID have Mary Magdelin on the side.

I thought celibacy was to show that these men were above human frailities like having any desire for evil women. We all know that it is only women who tempt men (check out the garden of eden) so if there were no women present, men would behave right? Well they were wrong – they forgot that sex is one of the most powerful human drives. The church was ignorant and the people that followed it blindly were just as ignorant. And there isn’t any indication that anything has changed, so perhaps the use of past tense is premature.

Paul thought that marriage was a necessary evil, to be offered to those who didn’t have the fortitude to be abstinent. (“Celibacy” didn’t originally mean “not sexually active”, though, it just meant “not married”; St. Augustine prayed “Give me [sexual] continence, Lord, but do not give it YET.”)

And whether or not celibacy was designed to discourage nepotism, it never worked in practice. Church offices couldn’t be directly inheritable along patrilinear lines (at least, not to LEGITIMATE sons), but they were certainly distributed to the RELATIVES of various Popes (the word “nepotism” literally refers to “nephews”).

I agree with every thing I’ve read here.

Those of us growing up “catholic” in the 40’s-60’s knew this was going on all around us, even if it didn’t happen to us personally - lots of jokes about being careful in the locker room; the priest sneaking up behind altar boys when they were getting their albs on, etc. There’s a reason masturbation was the main topic at retreats and the heavy breathing behind the confessional screen. The collapse of the institutional church would be a blessing for all, and those who still want to be part of spiritual community, which was the way it all started we’re told, could do so. As Hitch said, there is a stench of evil surrounding this pope.

Arrest the Pope and Cardinals for Obstruction of Justice.

Some guys says that a guy in the middle named Malachy predicted this was the last pope and that after him, an evil one would come.

…One can start to wonder if he wasn’t right.

v cover said, 1 day ago

30th anniversary of what? Oliphant has been around since his Denver Post days in 1964…

——–

And a decade longer than that in Australia, where he started out on Adelaide’s The News, Rupert Murdoch’s first newspaper and the one which gave the name to News Corporation.

Frog said “…One can start to wonder if he wasn’t right.”

No, he would have been right if he said that about John Paul. THIS is the evil pope. He was in charge of investigating and covering up the long term child molestations that was occurring world wide. He personally met with some of the worst offenders. He did nothing to bring them to justice. He’s more interested in maintaining the power of the church than he is in its parishioners.

riko:That guy is not a comedian. The first criteria for being a comedian is to be funny. He’s just an atheist preacher.

My greatest wish is that one day, instant euthanization and or castration laws will be instituted to prosecute all these disgusting pedophile priests and the people who “cover” for them. Because really…..of what use are these people to society when they’ve DESTROYED the lives of innocent young boys and girls and pay no consequence? The people raped and molested are traumatized for life: this usually results in SEVERE emotional and psychological problems that lead to various forms of addiction and self hatred and sometimes suicide. All the while…these disgusting perverts get away with their deviant perverse acts and live their normal life. If Jesus Christ came back today and saw what a colossal mess humans have made out of his name and the many churches surrounding his name who “claim” to have the only truth…he’d take a flame thrower to all of them.

“Could the growing problem of priest pedophelia …” This is not a growing problem. It is a problem that has always been there. Only now has it been coming to light. Just like teen pregnancy is an epidemic of the last couple decades; according to records, teen pregnancy rates are same as they were 40-50 years ago. We just didn’t talk about it back then.

Also, Jesus was not a carpenter. Accoridng to the scrolls, he was a “tecton”, which is more like a general laborer and much lower position than carpenter of that time. Which makes sense, since God always said he would raise the low to on high.

Read the writings for yourself, and God’s truth will start coming to light. Stop listening to the money changers. The greatest trick the Devil ever played in this age wasn’t making people think he doesn’t exist, it’s making people think he is a man of God.

Priests chasing after babies…I love Pat sometimes…

“Hypocrisy is better than having no standards at all.”

– William Bennett

ChukLitlGenius_badge said, “If they say the church is their spouse, they should quit treating her like their whore.”

You have it backward. The Church IS their spouse. But like certain current celebrities, they think it’s OK to cheat on her.

Jase99 said, “THIS is the evil pope. … He’s more interested in maintaining the power of the church than he is in its parishioners.”

Unfortunately for him (and maybe for The Roman Catholic Church), his idea of how to accomplish that appears to be as antiquated as his views on the role of women in The Church. In this age of social networking via the internet, he cannot successfully sweep this scandal under the rug. In spite of the short attention spans attributed to the twitter generation, many of the victim’s have been waiting decades for the chance to be heard, and they’re not going to quickly lose interest and become silent.

The Vatican is the Enron of morality.

Every priest is not a pedophile, but it seems like everyone in the hierarchy was involved in covering it up.

For evil religion to triumph, it is necessary only for good religion to stand by and do nothing.

When Ghandi was getting grilled by Parliament (then worried about his rising popularity/power in India), a member asked him what religion he claimed.

He replied “I am Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist , Taoist, Hindu…

Another member of Parliament insisted he could not be all those religions, he could be only one!

Ghandi replied that he believed ALL religion is a search for truth, based in love.

[The above isn’t verbatim]

Religion is the best and worst that humankind can be…

You are on target with your admonition to Pup, Doc. ‘Tis a slippery slope when one claims knowledge of the heart and mind of God, one could even argue a damned slippery slope.

I don’t have a religion myself, but I have an ethos. Most religions have an ethical framework of some sort, and I think that an ethical system is good to have (although I may disagree with the particulars of a given religion’s ethical teachings). I agree with, say, C.S. Lewis that humans (in general) have such a thing as a “Moral Sense”, although I believe it’s developed over time rather than innate.

Someone (I forget who) once said “Your religion is better than my religion to the extent that your religion makes you a better person than mine makes me.” “Better” being non-specific, of course, but that’s the general idea.

For some people, having a religion makes them “better” people than they would be without one. For other people, belief in the same religion makes them worse.

I’m now a buddhist, used to be a catholic. Most catholics I know (like 80 percent if my town) still believe in catholicism. Few, if any at all, still believe in the clergy.

And yet clergy in Acadia is quit progressive.