Arrogant, corrupt, secretive – the Catholic church failed to tackle evil

[Liberal_in_LA]

Arrogant, corrupt, secretive – the Catholic church failed to tackle evil

The Catholic church is finally losing its rearguard action

Fintan O'Toole The Observer, Sunday 21 March 2010

The cover-up of child sexual abuse by the Catholic church is not about sex and it is not about Catholicism. It is not, as Pope Benedict rightly argued in yesterday's distressingly bland pastoral letter, about priestly celibacy. It is about power.

The urge to prey on children is not confined to the supposedly celibate clergy and exists in all walks of life. We know that it can become systemic in state and voluntary, as well as in religious, institutions. We know that all kinds of organisations – from banks to political movements – can generate a culture of perverted loyalty in which otherwise decent people will collude in crimes "for the greater good".

In none of these respects is the Catholic church unique. What makes it different – and what gives this crisis its depth – is the church's power. It had the authority, indeed the majesty, to compel victims and their families to collude in their own abuse and to keep hideous crimes secret for decades. It is that system of authority that is at the heart of the corruption. And that is why Benedict's pastoral letter, for all its expressions of "shame and remorse", is unable to deal with the central issue. The only adequate response to the crisis is a fundamental questioning of the closed, hierarchical power system of which the pope himself is the apex and the embodiment. It was never remotely likely that Benedict would be able to understand those questions, let alone answer them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/21/pope-benedict-xvi-catholicism

[Warpy]

1. You forgot the worst parts: infallible and above civil law.

The upper reaches of the church hierarchy has been corrupt almost from the beginning, when it donned the trappings of what was left of the Roman Empire and set itself above the emerging aristocracy and their nation states.

The burden of infallibility has made it impossible for them to change.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. Excellent analysis!!!

[malaise]

8. 100% correct n/t

[FrenchieCat]

2. They've been too busy playing politics......

[Robeson]

4. It has always been corrupt...

...when Pope Alexander VI impregnated his own daughter, and it didn't go down well with his peers, he just turned around and blamed it on his son, her brother. And so it goes.

[MichiganVote]

6. No kidding.

[Kalun D]

5. Rome

Rome is one of the 3 city-states that are legally independent of the countries that surround them. The 3 are Rome, London, and Washington DC.

It's all about image

of course there's the images they don't want you to see.

[Kalun D]

7. Ha Ha Ha

""The Catholic church is finally losing its rearguard action""

LOLZ, there will be no more rearguard action for those rascally priests.

but father, I don't think that's what they meant by "thy rod and thy staff shall comfort me"

[upi402]

9. "rearguard action"

fade-in the slinky chunkachunk guitar.

ibtl