Frankie speaks

AP has a rundown of statements the pope made when he was merely Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He was asked for his take on gay marriage. Here's his response:

Gay marriage is "an anthropological step backward. If there's a private union, then third parties and society aren't affected. But if they're granted marriage rights and can adopt, there could be children affected. Every person needs a masculine father and a feminine mother to help them settle their identity." 

Yup, he's going to be a gay-hating pope -- just like the last guy. Well, I have a few friends who will be happy to hear this. They're not gay but they're atheists. They were upset that Pope Francis was acting like Jesus and getting cred with the public. They feared the man would raise Christianity in the eyes of the world. So much for that. This statement, along with the news that he has renewed the Vatican's attack on American nuns, will set everyone straight.

This guy wears different outfits but he's going to spout the same popeyguy nonsense. Argentina's gays pointed the way for us. I've often commented here about their distaste for Bergoglio. Now we know why.

Repulsive Cardinal to help elect new pope

Catholics United, a non-profit, non-partisan organization, says that former Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony should refrain from attending the papal conclave and recuse himself from voting. The petition launched last week had more than 5,000 signatures as of Tuesday representing a tiny fraction of the roughly one in four Americans who are Catholics.
"Please do not bring further scandal to our Church that has already been rocked by the sex abuse crisis by attending the Papal Conclave. You have been disciplined and you have lost your ability to have a voice within our Church," said the petition from the Washington-based group.

But Mahony has no clue he's dead meat. In fact, he's preparing to vote. This is such an evil notion and, as always, the church is tone-deaf. Do they never ask, "How must this look to Catholics and others?" The linked story states that Mahony is "attending the Vatican conclave to select a successor to Pope Benedict XVI". This means the new pope will be partially elected and tainted by a man who hid child rape and other sexual abuse by priests. Mahony's transgressions aren't a secret. The whole world knows the man is a verified beast. But the church doesn't give a damn.

Quite a fresh start they're getting over at the Vatican. What an appalling church this is. Over and over, the Roman Catholic church reveals that it has no moral center. None.

So that's why the church attacked US nuns

Found this at (blush) HuffPo:

Now it turns out that conservative American churchmen living in Rome -- including disgraced former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law -- were key players in pushing the hostile takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, or LCWR, which they have long viewed with suspicion for emphasizing social justice work over loyalty to the hierarchy and issues like abortion and gay marriage.

Vatican observers in Rome and church sources in the U.S. say Law was "the person in Rome most forcefully supporting" the LCWR investigation, as Rome correspondent Robert Mickens wrote in The Tablet, a London-based Catholic weekly. Law was the "prime instigator," in the words of one American churchman, of the investigation that began in 2009 and ended in 2011. The actual crackdown was only launched in April.

Law is the Cardinal who allegedly hid the sexual transgressions of pedophile priests in Boston, transferring them to other areas where they could prey upon more children. In the midst of this scandal, the popey guy promoted him to a cushy job in Rome. And he's the one who pushed the Vatican to attack US nuns?

This church is way beyond irony.

Popey guy hates him some snarky nuns

The popey guy.

You know what nuns need, don't you? A man to straighten them out, of course. The popey guy comes to the rescue.

AP: The Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog announced Wednesday a full-scale overhaul of a group representing most U.S. nuns and named an American archbishop to oversee the reform. 

(snip)

Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain will manage the five-year reform, which will include rewriting the group's statutes, reviewing all its plans and programs — including approving speakers — and ensuring the group properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual. 

Are you laughing yet? Talk about a tone-deaf Vatican. These guys are going to bring down the church within a decade, I swear. Everyone over here in the US knows the nuns are the only sane ones in the entire Roman Catholic menagerie. And that's why the popey guy has to stomp them out. He wants him a man in there. Because you can only count on guys. Women are just nonsensical creatures, fluff -- stuff you can just toss aside. Who needs women when you've got men, right?

Our rightwing world strikes again. There's a war on women from everywhere now, including the goddamn Vatican. (Mind you, the Vatican has always been at war with women but it seems they're coming out of their closet now, with guns loaded. Damn those nuns!)

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.

Funny NYT story today about the vatican

The evil popey guy.

Remember how Ireland's prime minister laid out the popey guy last week for encouraging priestly abuse with his shady rules? (I wrote about it here.) Well, there's an even funnier follow-up today. It made me roar with laughter. You really have to read it in full to appreciate it. Here are a few outtakes:

First, and I loved this, the vatican said it will issue a response to Ireland's charges of priestly abuse and vatican-controlled hiding of the abuse: "at the 'opportune time' but has not done so yet." Don't you love these guys? They don't care what anyone on the planet thinks. They've got god on their side, you know.

Today's new episode in the Colorful Adventures of the Popey Guy is that, in response to the dead-honest charges of the Irish Prime Minister, the vatican recalled its ambassador. Ooooh. Rough, huh? (And right off the bat, you have to love the fact that they have an "ambassador". What pompous twits these vatican fellows are.) The article says:

"The Vatican acknowledged that the recall of an ambassador was a measure rarely adopted by the Holy See, underlining the 'seriousness of the situation'." 

Are you rolling on the floor laughing yet? They abuse little kids and then hide it, and they have absolutely no problem with that. No-o. That's fine. But being called on it makes them pull their ambassador to underline "the seriousness of the situation". The "seriousness" is entirely about the vatican's reaction to being called on the carpet, not about the raping of kids. It's all about them, isn't it? They're always in the right. It wouldn't even matter if their priests raped little boys on live TV every night. They would still be in the right. And why? Because they literally can do no wrong.

Then, to cap it all off, a vatican operative named Ciro Benedettini actually expressed "some degree of surprise and disappointment at certain excessive reactions." Okay, I know you're roaring with laughter now.

Since you probably won't go read the whole article, here's a hefty piece of it to remind you what this tiff is all about:

A confidential 1997 Vatican letter — originally published by The Associated Press in January — instructed Irish bishops to handle child-abuse cases strictly under terms of canon law. It warned bishops that their 1996 child-protection policy, particularly its emphasis on the need to start reporting all suspected crimes to police, violated canon law.

Kenny said Catholic canon law had "neither legitimacy nor (a) place in the affairs of this country." He pledged to press ahead with new laws making it a crime to withhold evidence of child abuse — even if the information was attained during a priest's confession. The Catholic Church insists that the contents of confessions must never be revealed.

They will never ever admit the horrible things they've done -- and are apparently still doing. That popey guy's got a violent posse over there in his secret vatican headquarters. I wonder if they use special gang hand symbols when no one else is around. Probably, huh?

Don't you love news from the Vatican?

Evil popey guy

AP today:

BEIJING - The Vatican has excommunicated a newly ordained Chinese bishop, a move that is likely to exacerbate already frayed relations between the Holy See and China’s governing Communist Party.

The decision to formally announce the excommunication of the bishop, the Rev. Paul Lei Shiyin of Sichuan Province, came a week after China’s state-run Catholic church ignored the Vatican’s objections and went ahead with the ordination ceremony, which was attended by seven other bishops.

The Vatican said the bishops who took part in the ordination had “exposed themselves to serious canonical sanctions’’ and could face excommunication, according to the statement.

So, let's see. Ignore one of the silly church rules and you're tossed out of the church (and out of heaven). But rape a slew of young boys and that goes under the radar.

It's quite a "church" they've got there, isn't it? They act just like gangsters with their own rules and priorities, and the world be damned.

That popey guy's quite a guy!

Evil personified.

I saw this today in the NYT:

NEW YORK (AP) — A Maryland Episcopal parish will be the first in the United States to join the Roman Catholic Church under a streamlined conversion plan created by the Vatican.

Isn't that sweet? The popey guy has opened his fragrant arms to the most hateful Episcopal parishes that want to retain the "right" to act viciously toward gay people. The popey guy essentially said to them:

"If your church is becoming too humane and moral, come -- be with us! You can be as hateful as you want on our side of the street because it is the Catholic god's glorious mission to spread bigotry over the Earth. Rejoice!"

Watta guy! So now the Episcopal church can continue to act as immorally as they want -- because the popey guy's got them covered. Hooray!

In other church news today:

"Three current or former priests and a former Roman Catholic school teacher in Philadelphia are rejecting a proposed plea offer to serve 7 1/2 to 15 years on child-rape charges."

Wikileaks speaks

The precious Doctor Vito.

This morning I had an hourlong video-chat with Julian Assange. The news is grim. Doctor Vito is indeed imprisoned -- and you won't believe the route his imprisonment has taken. Read on if you think you can stomach the news.

Popey guy's not even hiding it anymore.

I've got to get one of those popey guy hats

Splendiferous, no?

I would only wear it for special occasions, of course -- like sitting in the yard, working out at the gym, going to mass, the supermarket, etc. I wonder if my local haberdasher has one for sale. He must, right?

I hardly have the energy to write about the inane report issued by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (gotta love that) yesterday -- the one that blamed priestly sexual abuse on the hippies. It basically said how could those nice, ethical priests be expected to maintain their moral standards when there were hippies in the world!? Impossible, they said. So the priests raped a lot of kids in direct response to the presence of hippies in the cultural zeitgeist. Makes tons of sense, huh? Those poor, sweet priests had no conscious knowledge of what their penises were up to. They knew nothing, do you hear me!?

Sorry, guys but that doesn't hold water for anyone other than the people who wrote the report and the Vatican that cheered it on. And let us note that this report is based on information supplied by the Vatican. As for the report's authors, I dare say some or all of them know exactly how bad the report is. They would have to be braindead to be unaware of this.

They didn't even look at the harboring of pedophiles by the church. That doesn't count, apparently. After all, why should the fact that the upper echelons of the clergy knew exactly what was happening and pushed a policy of hiding the offenses and transferring offending priests from parish to parish and country to country be taken into account? Doesn't matter at all, right? Therefore it's left out of the report -- never rears its head once, I'm told.

Nice work if you can get it, John Jay. You just caused your institution's reputation to sag horribly. I, for one, will never look at your college in the same way again. Say, did Bill Donohue of the Catholic League go to your school?

Popey guy's fingers all over Doctor Vito

The popey guy! Ft, ft, ft, etc.

I have completed my analysis of the emails sent me by the many Libyan fans of this blog. It seems Doctor Vito's disappearance was indeed the result of foul play -- of the foulest kind.

It is now confirmed that the popey guy had a hand in it! In fact, his hand was the only one in it, and that hand was all over Doctor Vito.

Although my analysis of the Libyan emails is now complete, and it shows a clear trail of holy wafers leading directly to the evil Vatican and its popey prince, I am awaiting even more conclusive evidence. An organization much larger than the Vatican is looking into this now.

Wikileaks is on the case! Julian Assange has assured me he will find out exactly what happened to this grand man, this hero, this Doctor Vito. The moment I have the news in hand, I will pass it on to you, dear readers.

In the meantime, there is something each of you can do to help Doctor Vito. This suggestion comes directly from the Doctor Vito Institute (TM). They have asked me to request your aid. Here's the deal:

Go to a public place at 5PM each and every day, and look up into the sky and applaud with all your might for Doctor Vito. As you do this, you must chant "Free Doctor Vito! Free Doctor Vito!" This call is going out around the world. Soon there will be video on all the TV stations, showing good-hearted people everywhere, clapping at the sky and demanding Doctor Vito's immediate release. Because of our dedication -- and our tremendous numbers -- we will focus the world's attention on the plight of this great man, this philosopher extraordinaire, this Doctor Vito.

I -- and the Doctor Vito Foundation -- ask that you gather in His name (Doctor Vito's) and take photos of yourselves and your friends applauding the sky -- and then send them to me toute suite. Let's post them here and on every blog so the world knows we will not sit by idly as this travesty takes place.

Free Doctor Vito! Free Doctor Vito! Free Doctor Vito!

For new readers, the backstory can be found here, here and here. (Plus, "ft, ft, ft" in caption explained here.)