This is the kind of garbage that the Times of London carries ... It's just a column but it's highlighted on all the searches for Benedict XVI news at this time .... The level of hyperbole is neither clever nor funny, just trying too hard to no avail!... And the columnist's trashiness can be judged by the item that follows his drivel about the Pope - some near-slanderous gossip about Tony Blair....
Sorry, Holy Father, we can’t forgive the sins of your church
Rod Liddle
Sunday Times (London)
3/21/10
Has the time come for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to open the door to the many millions of British Roman Catholic worshippers who may be worried that their children are likely to be interfered with by priests? I think it’s correct that young children are slightly less at risk from the Anglican clergy, although it would be unwise of Rowan to offer any cast-iron promises, just in case.
Last year Pope Benedict XVI invited disillusioned Anglicans to join the Church of Rome if they were disapproving of, or merely bored by, women priests and homosexuals but fancied instead a few Latin incantations, rosary beads and the whiff of incense; this took the Church of England by surprise.
Now is Beardo’s chance to get his own back. He should strike while the iron is hot. Give the émigré left-footers free passage, one of those Christingle oranges and a DVD collection of The Vicar of Dibley — they can even cling on to transubstantiation, if they keep quiet about it.
The Catholic Church is in crisis across Europe, apparently. Since the turn of the year, 300 Germans have come forward and said that they were abused by priests while they were children, and the chancellor, Angela Merkel, has called for a national investigation. Meanwhile in Ireland, the head of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Sean Brady, has admitted that he was present at meetings in the 1970s when children who were abused by a paedophile priest were forced, there and then, to sign a vow of silence.
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Brady now accepts that the church’s response to this scandal has been “hopelessly inadequate” (although he hasn’t yet used the words “criminal” and “totalitarian”) but he will not resign over the business. This weekend Ireland’s “faithful”, as Benny the 16th puts it, have received a letter from him personally, which presumably included an apology somewhere along the way. Meanwhile, there have been similar scandals in Holland, Spain, Switzerland and Austria, although I suppose in the last case it is a moot point as to whether it is an exclusively Catholic problem, or primarily an Austrian problem, particularly if the offences were committed underground.
Quite recently, the Catholic Church has either castigated or banned outright internet social networking sites, the oriental spiritual healing technique of reiki, books and films by Dan Brown and, its old favourite, witches.
Now I know this seems a little presumptuous, but my guess is that Jesus Christ would probably prefer members of his flock to sit around a bubbling cauldron with a black cat, watching The Da Vinci Code while being spiritually attended to by a Japanese person and occasionally breaking off to tweet Stephen Fry, than being interfered with by a priest. As I say, this is only a guess.
But the church still gives the impression that while its legions of kiddie-fiddling priests are probably, on the whole, a bad thing, they are not half as Satanic as stuff like condoms, socialism and gender equality.
You suspect that it is the church’s entrenched position within much of Europe that has enabled it to sidestep public abhorrence for so long, and thus to react with apparent insouciance whenever these scandals arise and remain immune to proper investigation.
However, the public across Europe is becoming more secular and more questioning of those in authority. It is disinclined to believe in the infallibility of anyone, be it a politician, a pop star or a pope. And those new watchwords — transparency and openness — are not qualities that one associates with the Holy See.
The problem, I suppose, is that when Catholics start to unpick the enormous damage occasioned by paedophile priests, they may begin to question the underlying cause — the priestly vow of celibacy. I don’t think anybody in Europe sees the point of sexual abstinence these days and we are probably rightly sceptical of those who claim to practise it. I tried it once and it left me twitchy and forlorn.
+ On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your surprise that Tony Blair has trousered millions of pounds in contracts at least partly as a consequence of the illegal war he prosecuted on our behalf against Iraq — and then tried desperately to keep his deals secret? Were you utterly staggered at the naked greed, opportunism and attempted deception — or did you nod your head and mutter, yeah, that would be about right? This is a rhetorical question, really — and here’s another: have we ever had a more shameless and grasping prime minister?
Blair pocketed huge, if still undisclosed, amounts of dosh from advising the Kuwaiti royal family — the Al-Sabahs (do you know them? Absolutely charming people — you must have them over one evening. Black tie; no alcohol, poofs or women). And then even more money from a South Korean oil firm working in Iraq, where hundreds of British soldiers lost their lives. You have to say he has done rather better out of the war than the dead and maimed British soldiers or indeed the Iraqi civilians, those dead or alive. Shouldn’t Gordon Brown condemn this venality? I’m sure he must be itching to. Doesn’t it seem immoral? And if so, Gordy, why not say so?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/03/2010 03:23]