Popey guy caught with dress up, again

Evil popey guy.

There's a story today in the NYT about the Vatican's response to the Irish prime minister's scathing accusations against the popey guy's crime headquarters in Rome. I found it hard to believe what I was reading. There's obviously no distinction between right and wrong in the Roman Catholic church. (For background, I wrote about this story here and here.)

Here's the part that amazed me:

The Vatican response noted that at the time, in the mid-1990s, there was no law in Ireland requiring professionals to report suspected abuse to police and that the issue was a matter of intense debate politically. In fact, Ireland has never had a law explicitly making the failure to report suspected child abuse a crime, but is planning to draft one now in the wake of the Cloyne report.

"Given that the Irish government of the day decided not to legislate on the matter, it is difficult to see how (the Vatican's) letter to the Irish bishops, which was issued subsequently, could possibly be construed as having somehow subverted Irish law or undermined the Irish state in its efforts to deal with the problem in question," the Vatican said.

Can you believe that? It's the sort of nonsense lawyers trot out as a distraction during a trial. On the world's most pompous stage, the popey guy's stooges ignore the immorality at the core of this situation and focus instead on an absence of legislation! The abuse doesn't matter to the Vatican; failure to report the abuse to the police doesn't matter; all that matters is that the Vatican can point to a lack of legislation on the matter in Ireland -- and skitter away to the shadows, unscathed. I could not believe my eyes when I read this. It's a total abdication of any moral stance -- which is fitting when you consider the source.

So the popey guy once again throws up his dress and moons the world's sense of morality. Welcome to today's Roman Catholic church.

Great NYT article on Irish Catholic child abuse

Prime Minister Enda Kenny

This is a terrific article with no pulled punches. Ireland is socking it to the popey guy, bigtime. Here are two excerpts:

For the first time, an Irish fact-finding inquiry found the Vatican culpable in promoting the culture of cover-up. 

and:

The Irish are broadly lauding this week's thunderbolt from Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who denounced the Vatican's role in the past 17 years of abuse scandals. He accused the Holy See of downplaying "the rape and torture of children" and hiding behind its status as a sovereign state with its own secrecy-obsessed canon laws.

See? Good stuff. Go read it.