Catholic Church Controversy
Now I am a not a man who judges a person on the actions of his peers; stereotypes are often played too widely. Not all the Irish like alcohol, for example. Some Americans know that Austria is not just Australia spelt wrong, and some Englishmen don’t like a nice cup of tea after a game of cricket. So I am going to go out on a limb here and say not every priest is a paedophile. Most priests are just normal guys, but when you look at certain statistics you have to agree that some stereotypes contain a sliver of truth.
There is a report called the John Jay Report. Written in 2004 and commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops no less, it was based on the (voluntary) surveys completed by the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. This report was based on a study of 10,667 allegations against 4,392 priests accused of molesting children between 1950 and 2002. I’m sorry, but that is quite a staggering number. 10,667 assaults in 52 years? I did the math and found that is around 205 assaults a year. I’m sure some years had more or less, but that’s the mean number. There are only 365 days in a year and 205 of those were spent molesting. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for prayer does it?
I’m not saying that becoming a priest makes you a paedophile. It’s not like werewolves changing under a full moon. Still, there has to be some connection. An interesting fact in these assaults is that 81% of the victims were male, and I have a theory on why this is the case: the second you tell someone they can’t have something, they want it! I bet they were probably a bunch of heterosexual guys drooling over Will’s mum from Inbetweeners until they were told they weren’t allowed to be gay. Even though I’m straight, I bet if someone came up to me and said “James, you’re not allowed to be gay,” the first thing I’d probably do is nip down to the local gay club in my tightest PVC outfit and find me 230lbs of forbidden hairy meat to tuck into. It is called negative reinforcement, and it works like a charm! I reckon if God told Adam and Eve “You can take any fruit. That nice-looking tree over there has lots of good fruit to choose from. If you have any questions, you have my number...Alright, enjoy!” and left it there, Eve would have never of eaten that fruit. There were thousands and thousands trees in Eden, so chances are she wouldn’t have gotten around to that particular tree. Instead, God (apparently not knowing about human psychology at this point) said “That tree right there...don’t eat that fruit. It is forbidden and I’ll kick your ass if you eat from it.”
What was he thinking? He said that tree right there! That’s the naughty tree. Don’t eat that fruit, every other tree is fine but that one! Of course she was going to eat it. I would have eaten it too. It’s curiosity, it’s the unknown and the forbidden and we’re an inquisitive race.
But there is actually nothing wrong with homosexuality, it’s just that these paedo-priests (predos, I call them) are doing something very wrong in its name. What makes it even worse is they’re protected by their peers. I read about these bishops who facilitated quite considerable compensation payments to victims on the condition the allegations remained secret. Apparently the archdiocese of Boston secretly settled abuse claims against at least 70 predos from 1992 to 2002. I’ve got to point out that it is all just allegations and speculation, but come on...it definitely happened! And most of these are recent cases, but you just know predos have been doing this for centuries. Go back far enough and you’d be killed for speaking out against a man of God. I guess that was the golden age for them.
The hypocrisy of it all, telling people that homosexuality is a sin whilst covering the footprints of homosexual predators, is what makes their actions doubly offensive. A lot of these poor victims are just kids, and the damage done to them often goes untold in these cases. I wonder what the priest says to the boy after the assault, or even during it? I can just imagine it now, the dialogue between a young lad and the priest violating him.
Priest: Now I don’t ever want to see you do this. It’s a sin, okay?
Boy: Right...but the thing is, I’m quite young and impressionable at the moment. What I learn here today I’ll probably carry with me into adulthood, so there is a good chance that I’ll be doing something very similar in a few years. Maybe not exactly the same, but I think it is safe to say you’re altering my personality quite significantly here.
Priest: Oh...
Boy: Yeah...
Priest: Well...you’ll go to hell for that.
Boy: Yeah, I’m starting to get a flavour of what hell is like. Can I ask you a question?
Priest: By all means.
Boy: Are you going to hell by any chance?
Priest: No-no-no-no-no-nooooo no siree!
Boy: Why not? Just a few hours ago you were telling us all that homosexuality is a sin and yet here we are, sinning away like a pair of frisky monkeys.
Priest: But I’m going to repent.
Boy: Oh?
Priest: Yeah, it’s all taken care of.
Boy: How does that work, then?
Priest: Well you do the sin, whatever it may be, and then you repent and you can still get into heaven.
Boy: So let me get this straight. A man can murder and rape throughout his life, but if he repents he still gets into heaven?
Priest: You got it!
Boy: So...Jeffrey Dahmer repented didn’t he? Are you telling me he is in heaven now?
Priest: Umm...well...using that method of thinking...yes I suppose he is...
Boy: But a man who has lived a good life and has given to charity and all that but died not believing in God, he’d go to hell?
Priest: Umm...that is essentially what we teach, yeah...
Boy: Right...
Priest: Loopholes eh?
Boy: Mmm...
Shocking stuff. And most of these priests were protected, hidden and moved to different parishes to avoid being caught. Now normally when someone is found guilty of rape, we humans tend to get a bit ticked off with the offender, but not with these guys. They're men of God. They can just repent and be cleared of all charges, all swept under the hideous crucifix-ornamented carpet. They’re not possessed by demons; you can’t just pray or exorcise this shit away. It could be true that most of these guys were offenders before they joined up, and knew that daddy Pope and his crew would bail them out if they ever got caught.
But they don’t get off completely free though, this little hobby costs a lot! In 1998, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas paid $30m to twelve victims of one priest, a single priest racked up a bill of $30m, and in 2003 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville paid $25.7m to settle allegations against 34 of their gang. In 2007 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles shelled out $660m to more than 500 victims. Now you’d think that’d be the grand total of all money paid out wouldn’t you? Nope!
- Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange $100m in 2004
- Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego $197.1m in 2007
- Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland in Oregon $75m in 2007
- Roman Catholic ArchDiocese of Denver $5.5m in 2008
Think how much good that money could have done in Africa or somewhere, but instead it was used as bail money for a bunch of perverts. You’d think that the pope at the time would have had a meeting and told the rest of the guys, “Listen lads, do you mind not raping any children this year? It’s costing us a fortune, so maybe you could just I don’t know...touch each other up? Father O’Reilly has a lovely bottom for example. Just compromise until we got a bit more cash to throw around.”
And those were just US cases; imagine how much the Catholic Church has spent on a global scale. Probably enough cash to make Mark Zuckerberg look like MC Hammer. Now thankfully this little practice is dying out, but I don’t think it’s doing so because priests are becoming better people. I think it is dying out because of us. People who ask questions and are not satisfied with blow-offs and poorly constructed lies. I think the reason there aren’t as many cases recently as there have been is because we are simply too clever now, so the priests are tip-toeing, being careful not to land on any media-mines that could expose their perversity, although it does still occur even nowadays. We are watching you! God isn’t going to cover your naughtiness from us!
Okay, it is a serious subject, so I’ll end on a serious note. The damage done in these attacks are incalculable; not only is it rape, it is culture of rape being fostered under the veil of religion. It teaches its victims that what they are participating in is evil, even though they did not ask for it.
Being a homosexual is as normal as being heterosexual, and screaming at these normal people about sin and hellfire won’t stop their urges. It will only needlessly make them feel worse when they indulge in them. If the Catholic Church really wants to stop these incidents, my advice to them is to realise that homosexuality is natural, and to take a softer approach that will not isolate people.
Oh and just to be clear, I’ll reiterate that the vast majority of priests are not predos, so don’t look at them like that...but feel free to look at them as someone with an imaginary friend!
