Tag: pontifigate

Pontifigate: Flanders Ignites!

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Mary Valle: It was a holy card from the bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, to the niece of his nephew with a message inside “on the importance of a healthy childhood” that so enraged his abuse-victim nephew; a close friend of his threatened to “email messages to all of Belgium’s bishops” spilling the beans. Vangheluwe, who resigned abruptly in April, is the first European to resign for abusing a child. He tersely acknowledged his molesting a “boy in my close entourage.” Maybe this is a translation problem, but suggesting that a prelate has an “entourage” which includes young boys is gamy at best. Also, the nephew had tried to bring attention to his abuse for nearly 25 years, enlisting the help of retired priest Rik Deville, who was “berated” by Belgium’s cardinal for bringing it up 14 years ago. De affaire Vangheluwe has kicked off a firestorm of “almost 500 people” complaining of abuse at the hands of priests; The bishop has retreated to a Trappist monastery, where awkward moments are most certainly now the norm. Continue Reading →

They Had Stuff to Do, Give Them a Break!

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Mary Valle: A huge New York Times piece on the Ratzinger-led Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s role in the “sexual abuse scandal” (or, as I like to call it, Pontifigate) by Laurie Goodstein and David M. Halbfinger draws the trail of crumbs ever closer to the Vatican. Indeed, they say “it was Cardinal Ratzinger who might have taken decisive action in the 1990s to prevent the scandal from metastasizing in country after country, growing to such proportions that it now threatens to consume his own papacy.” Hmm. Cancer metaphors? Where have we heard this before? John Dean in the Oval Office, uttering the infamous “cancer on the Presidency” line. We all know how that ended. Continue Reading →

Pontifigate: The Flaccid Sword of Priestly Justice

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Mary Valle: Rapist priests! Good news! You can rape, abuse and lie all you want in the great lag time when your case is sent for review, investigation, further inquiry, empanelation and cooling on a desk in Rome somewhere. You may even be shuttled from parish to parish, which is convenient if you are a predator. New victims come to you! However: If you’re a nun and you authorize an abortion of an 11-week-old fetus to save a woman’s life, when the stated outcome of not performing the abortion would be death for all? Automatic excommunication for you, little missy. Maybe we should just start calling children “ambulatory fetuses?” Continue Reading →

Insidious and Dangerous

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Mary Valle: There’s a battle of miter-wearers today in the HuffPost. In one corner, we have Mary Glasspool, the first openly lesbian bishop ordained in the Episcopal Church of America. In the other, Pope Benedict, calling gay marriage “insidious and dangerous.” The American Episcopal church (most of it) is stepping up its support of gay rights, causing tension within the worldwide Communion, with warnings coming from Canterbury regarding American ordinations of gays. Papa Benedict, meanwhile, is trying in vain to deflect attention from Pontifigate (as the NYT calls for revocation of the NY state child-abuse statute of limitations), using some ill-chosen words to describe the activities of consenting adults who actually want to play by society’s rules. Point: America. Continue Reading →

Pope Suffers On Tour

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Mary Valle: Pope Benedict recently touched down at the shrine at Fatima, where the Virgin Mary appeared to children and advised them about hell, Russia and a white-clad figure who would appear in a field of martyrs. Pilgrims still flock to the shine to pray to Mary for help with their ailments. The Pope himself spoke to the gathered, urging them to “overcome the feeling of uselessness, of suffering which wears people down and makes them feel like they are a weight around the neck of others, when in fact suffering, lived through Jesus, leads to salvation.” Continue Reading →

The Field of Martyrs

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Mary Valle: Wow! Rachel Donadio reports in the New York Times that Pope Benedict has proclaimed that “sins inside the church” are the greatest problem in his organization; and that “forgiveness does not substitute justice.” These are Benedict’s strongest words on Pontifigate: encouraging! However, he was somewhat vague on the cleanup (which is a sort of human oil spill: ongoing, resisting easy solutions, far, far worse than you expected) offering that the church has “to relearn ‘conversion, prayer, penance.'” One wonders if they’ll take Vatican exorcist Fr. Gabriele Amorth up on his offer to exterminate the devil in St. Peter’s. It couldn’t possibly hurt at this point: why not give a Vatican exorcism a try? Continue Reading →

The Longevity Loophole

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We’ve seen how, in general, great crimes can go unpunlshed (a la George Monbiot) far more easily than the little ones. Here’s a new wrinkle in the annals of deviltry, so to speak. Apparently, you can rape your little, uh, heart out as a priest, as long as you make it to your golden years, at which point, you are just too old to be punished for your crimes. Continue Reading →