Just when you thought the blundering stupidity from the Vatican couldn't get any worse, it does.
The Vatican's second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, made the comments during a news conference Monday in Chile, where one of the church's highest-profile pedophile cases involves a priest having sex with young girls.
"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true," said Bertone. "That is the problem."
I wonder what little bird "recently" told him this. Perhaps it was a carrier pigeon sent by ever-wrong Bill Donohue. It is, of course, fallacious. Many pedophiles don't even have a gender preference. They simply prefer children. The recently discussed Kiesle case comes to mind.
In another stunning turn of events, a firestorm has broken out over retired Bishop Giacomo Babini who may or may not have blamed Jews for Catholic woes.
A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a "Zionist attack" was behind the criticism, considering how "powerful and refined" the criticism is.
The comments, which have been denied by the bishop, follow a series of statements from Catholic churchmen alleging the existence of plots to weaken the church and Pope Benedict XVI.
Allegedly speaking to the Catholic website Pontifex, Babini, 81, was quoted as saying: "They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers."
This could seriously damage all the bridge building with the Jewish community. There was real progress in healing wounds from things like the Inquisition and questionable ties to the Nazis during WWII. It could also damage all the bridge building with the gay community that has never happened ever.
Addenda:
Andrew Sullivan has an excellent write-up on the Vatican cover-up of prolific, serial abuser Marcial Maciel which implicates both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In addition to molesting many church youths, Maciel lived a double life. He took a false name and fathered children whom he then molested. The sickness is deep.
The New Yorker has just published a slick overview of “the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in Church history.”
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