VATICAN CITY — The Vatican revised its in-house rules to deal with clerical sex abuse cases Thursday, targeting priests who molest the mentally disabled as well as children and doubling the statute of limitations for such crimes. Abuse victims said the rules are little more than administrative housekeeping since they made few substantive changes to current practice, and what is needed are bold new rules to punish bishops who shield pedophiles. Women’s ordination groups criticized the new rules because they included the attempted ordination of women as a “grave crime” subject to the same set of procedures and punishments meted out for sex abuse.
Anyone who’s been hanging ‘round these parts for any length of time understands that I’m no fan of the Catholic Church. ‘Taint the doctrine, silly wabbit; it’s the oppression and the corruption. If the Vatican is about the teachings of Jesus Christ, then I’m the Queen of England. The Catholic Church’s patriarchy cares about Christianity in the same way that Jeffrey Dahmer was a proponent of vegetarianism. The latest bit of offensiveness to issue from the Vatican is yet another confirmation of just how thoroughly corrupt and venal the Church’s self-interested patriarchy truly is.
Referring to the ordination of women as a “grave crime” is so far beyond offensive that I’m not even certain I possess anything in my vocabulary to adequate express my outrage. That the Pope and his evil minions can so blithely relegate one-half of the Earth’s human population to second-class status simply defies rational understanding and explanation. (I also fail to understand how Catholic women can so easily and meekly accept their subjugation, but that’s a rant for another time.) I may be a Buddhist, and a rank heathen, but I was raised Lutheran. I don’t recall any of the Sunday School lessons I was force-fed saying ANYTHING about women being less worthy or capable than men.
With it’s “sweep it under the rug” ethos when it comes to pedophile priests, and it’s abject hatred and repression of women, it’s a wonder the Catholic Church still survives. Why good and committed Catholics don’t speak out en masse is something I fail to understand. Then again, Catholicism is so predicated on blind obedience that I suppose I probably shouldn’t be surprised.
Catholicism isn’t the problem. I’m not Catholic, but I respect the faith and those who live and practice it. What I fail to understand or respect is the Catholic patriarchy that continues to treat followers like the sheep-like subjects of an oppressive dictatorship. What any of the Vatican’s doctrines and pronouncements has to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ or the well-being of Catholics is beyond me. Frankly, I think the time has come for Catholics to rise up and take back their church. Until and unless that happens, nothing will change in Rome…and until things change in Rome, the patriarchy will continue to treat the Vatican as their personal playground and Catholics as their puppets.
Somewhere warm and breezy, Jesus is weeping in his Dos Equis….
