Pope Won’t Be “Intimidated” by “Gossip”

As the New York Times reported this morning, the Pope did not directly address the pedophile scandal in his Palm Sunday message yesterday. Pope Ratz said, “Jesus leads us toward the courage not to be intimidated by the gossip of dominant opinion.” I can’t imagine how Pope Ratz arrived at that interpretation of Jesus’s message as it relates to the mess Ratz has made for himself. But surely, even a spineless, pedophile-enabler such as Pope Ratz would not equate his recent richly-deserved humiliation over facts that have been uncovered, with the intimidation and crucifixion of Jesus. And surely, Pope Ratz could not have been referring to the teaching of Jesus in “The Sermon on the Mount” about “turning the other cheek” as related in the Bible in Matthew and Luke. Because the passage in Luke ends with “Do to others as you would have them do to you”, and that is a teaching Pope Ratz rarely has adhered to. The very idea that Pope Ratz would relegate all the facts that are being released about his culpability in the pedophile priests scandal to the category of “gossip” which he is not going to be “intimidated” by, shows how little the Vatican and the Pope care about the children who have been harmed by their inaction, obfuscation, lying and yes, about their intimidation of others. The Vatican’s position, as well as the Pope’s position on pedophile priests is indefensible. The Vatican told Father Brady in Ireland to force a 10-year old and a 14-year-old to sign secrecy oaths about being molested. The Vatican was wrong. Psychiatrist Dr. Werner Huth told the Vatican in 1980 that Father Hullermann could not ever be trusted around children. The Vatican let Hullermann minister to children for decades. The Vatican was wrong. No matter how it backs and fills and reinvents history and defends itself, the Vatican was wrong. And the world needs to hear the Vatican admit it was wrong. If the Pope as Archbishop and as Cardinal did not know what was going on in his diocese, it’s no excuse...he should have known. If he gave a damn about children as much as he cared about doctrine and dogma, he would have known. Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger was wrong. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was wrong. Pope Benedict XVI is wrong. The Vatican has been wrong and is wrong and there is no getting around it. Today, NYT columnist Ross Douthat says that Pope Ratz may have been wrong about the first charge against him (that he allowed a pedophile priest to return to ministry while archbishop of Munich in 1980); but the second charge is unfair. The second charge was about Father Rembert Weakland in Milwaukee and it was about a case 20 years after the last allegation of abuse. That’s bogus. The Vatican, the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope, the pedophile priests have all been unfair to the children in the Roman Catholic faith. Get a grip, you RCC apologists! We’re talking children here. We’re talking about priests forcing children to engage in sex acts. We’re talking about the Vatican hiding all this stuff for decades! You want unfair? While the Pope dissembles and talks about not being intimidated, he should think about the two boys in Ireland who were forced by the Vatican to sign an agreement that they would not rat out the Roman Catholic Church. How’s that for unfair and intimidating? What do you suppose Jesus would think about that, Pope Ratz?