The Coach and the Pope

[mgc1961]

"There is only one religion although there are a hundred versions of it."
-- George Bernard Shaw, Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant

Penn State and the Vatican have some things in common (although there’s been no talk of shutting down the Vatican whereas a few curmudgeons suggested Penn State shut down its football program for a year; nor is there any talk at the Vatican of firing its head coach, Benedict XVI, whereas Penn State fired both its president, Graham Spanier, and its head coach, Joe Paterno.) The Vatican and Penn State each has formal reports describing the errors of the institution’s ways. Penn State has a grand jury report detailing sexual abuse by Jerry Sandusky and the Vatican has four formal reports detailing multiple accounts of sexual abuse by assorted priests in Ireland (to mention only one of many countries with such reports.) The last two pertaining to Ireland were the Murphy Report in 2009 and the Cloyne report in 2011.

The Murphy Report examined more than 300 abuse claims in the Archdiocese of Dublin between 1975 and 2004. (The Murphy for whom the report is named is not Father Lawrence Murphy who abused more than 200 deaf children in Wisconsin between 1950 and 1974. Father Murphy did not write a report detailing his activities and those who did, did so in letters describing his activities to top Vatican officials including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now known as Pope Benedict. The letters were ignored.) The Murphy report said that rather than being concerned about the children, the Church was concerned about “the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets.” In response to the Murphy report, Pope Benedict sent out a pastoral letter on March 19, 2010. In that letter he said he shared “in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them. . . .”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/19-1

[Peace Patriot]

1. I'm glad somebody said it. I certainly thought it--that the Catholic Church and Big Football behaved

in very similar ways--sacrificing children to heinous and lifelong-traumatizing crimes, to preserve their powerful and profitable institutions.

In both cases, the institutions have become gigantic, bloated, sick albatrosses on the original desires of human beings, whether to improve their lives through spiritual understanding or by physical cultivation and games. Both desires are deeply rooted in human culture and both have been grossly exploited by these money machines.

It is no accident that both acted to cover up the abuse of children, and cared more for their own power and wealth than for the lives of children, the law and common decency. Both claim moral superiority, each in their own way--whether it's "We're the only ONE, true, universal Christian church" that speaks for God or "We're No. 1!"--training ground for the mentality that slaughters others for their oil and is waging war worldwide for U.S. corporate/war profiteer dominance.

Did you know that Obama ordered troops to Uganda? Uganda! Where will it end? And those U.S. troops are staying there until they kill some warlord that somebody doesn't like. Kill him! Not try him. Not bring him to the World Court! EXECUTE him! Where was the public discussion of this? What has happened to our democracy that we are executing people all over the world, by fiat?

Am I blaming football for this? Yes, in part. Not the game, an innocent enough sport in itself--but the arrogant, powermongering wealthy institution that makes "winning" everything, winning a game or becoming rich. It is a sickness. And it very clearly parallels the sickness of the male hierarchy of the Catholic Church who have many more centuries of rough practice at dominating others.

The corporatization of football and other sports--and of everything else, including the very counting of our votes--is weirdly similar to that land and wealth-greedy Medieval institution with its lust to be "No. 1" among Europe's many religions, wedded its power to the monarchical state and proceeded to torture, oppress and exterminate all dissenters within Christianity ("heretics") and "non-believers" (those with different religious beliefs). Is this not what the U.S. Corporate Rulers are doing to "non-believers" in corporate greed and heretics who oppose the "We're No. 1" warmongering of our once great democracy? Believe me, they are not just executing warlords (if he is one) in Uganda or bad guys with bombing civilians on their mind. They are executing trade unionists, teachers, human rights workers and peasant farmers in Colombia. They are executing pro-democracy protestors in Honduras. They are executing all kinds of civilians in their USAF drone-bombings around the world, from Colombia to Libya to Pakistan. And they are plotting against the good democracy leaders all over Latin America, as we speak.

Football--as it has become, no longer merely a game, no longer even fun, for the most part, but an ugly, driven symbolic and real enactment of predatory capitalism--has NO ETHICAL grounds except FOR WAR. It may once have been a sport. It is now a religion in which we worship the "winners" and despise "the losers," and utterly corrupt our youth with the notion that "greed is good."

It is no wonder that one of these billion+ dollar football machines permitted sexual molestation of the very children they claimed to be helping, and acted with the greatest dishonor and callousness in permitting it to continue and covering it up. And it is no wonder that the Catholic hierarchy did exactly the same thing. Both have lost their souls.