The Cardinal of evil

Timmeh. Ugh.

I had to break radio silence today because there's a great editorial about Timmy Dolan in the NYT this morning. Here's a taste:

Tragic as the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church has been, it is shocking to discover that Cardinal Timothy Dolan, while archbishop of Milwaukee, moved $57 million off the archdiocesan books into a cemetery trust fund six years ago in order to protect the money from damage suits by victims of abuse by priests. 

Cardinal Dolan, now the archbishop [sic] of New York, has denied shielding the funds as an “old and discredited” allegation and “malarkey.” But newly released court documents make it clear that he sought and received fast approval from the Vatican to transfer the money just as the Wisconsin Supreme Court was about to open the door to damage suits by victims raped and abused as children by Roman Catholic clergy. 

“I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability,” Cardinal Dolan wrote rather cynically in his 2007 letter to the Vatican.

The Catholic church and Timothy Dolan: a twosome from hell. Let's see Timmy lie his way out of this one. By sucking up to power and conveniently forgetting the difference between right and wrong, Timmy may have earned himself a nice, long stay in prison. I certainly hope so. Since there's no such thing as hell, prison is where this destructive man belongs. 

What a filthy creature Dolan is. It's not surprising that his second job, after hiding money and protecting pedophile priests, is to launch relentless attacks against gay people in the United States. He is evil personified. (And there was talk of this fool becoming the next pope! That's quite a religion they've got there.)

The conflicted soul of Cardinal Mahony

There's a story in the NYT this morning about Cardinal Roger Mahony, the now-retired head of Los Angeles' Roman Catholic community. He seems to be a very conflicted character. On the one hand, he was the embodiment of liberal reforms:

In an increasingly conservative Catholic Church, he was known as one of the last relatively progressive prelates, embracing the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and encouraging increased participation of women and laypeople.

But he also hid the crimes of pedophile priests:

Internal church personnel files released this week as part of a civil court case reveal that he and his top adviser knowingly shielded priests accused of child sexual abuse from law enforcement.

Apparently his allegiance to the church was greater than his ability to care for the children of his parishioners. Read the story for more. It made me sad. How can a seemingly good person do things like this? It's as if the children did not exist.

The cognitive dissonance of the Vatican

So the popey guy is trying to rein in the troops after the "sanctity" of his trust in his personal assistant took a shot to the chin. I swear, this pope has no clue how his words sound to the world.

Benedict gave a pep talk of sorts to a group of prelates preparing to serve the Holy See abroad in diplomatic posts, telling them that their work "should make you grow in closeness to the pope, a closeness marked by interior trust." 

Hmmm, "interior trust". Would that be what those Catholic kids had just before they were raped by priests? It's amazing how differently the Vatican treats violations of trust, according to who was violated. The popey guy tells us he feels terribly hurt by the violation of trust that occurred when his papers were stolen. How does he think those kids feel? Seriously, do you think the Vatican held even one meeting to discuss the terrible violation these kids suffered, and how they might help them heal? I guarantee this never happened. If it had, we'd see changes -- and we don't.

But the popey guy is taking the violation of his sanctity very seriously:

A three-cardinal commission is investigating the leaks alongside Vatican police. 

One wonders if a similar panel was set up to look into what happened to the children raped by priests. I suspect not. That was only about the violation of the kids' trust. This time it's about the popey guy being violated. Big difference, to them. Another excerpt:

The leaks scandal has convulsed the Vatican for months, exposing episodes of political infighting, intrigue and accusations of corruption and homosexual liaisons going on under the watch of the 85-year-old Benedict.

Jeez. Just think: gay sex in the palace of the popey guy who attacks gays all over the world. I say it all the time: that's some church they've got there. Jeez.

Timmy Dolan pays huge bonus to abusive priests

It's a wonderful story. Dolan pays off pedophile priests, lies about it and then won't talk about it. He's quite the Cardinal, isn't he? Makes you wonder about those rumors that he'll be the popey guy one day. It must be true. He's showing all the right colors.

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee. .

Questioned at the time about the news that one particularly notorious pedophile cleric had been given a “payoff” to leave the priesthood, Cardinal Dolan, then the archbishop, responded that such an inference was “false, preposterous and unjust.”

But a document unearthed during bankruptcy proceedings for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and made public by victims’ advocates reveals that the archdiocese did make such payments to multiple accused priests to encourage them to seek dismissal, thereby allowing the church to remove them from the payroll.

That's the paying and the lying. Here's the hiding:

Cardinal Dolan, who is president of the national bishops’ conference and fast becoming the nation’s most high-profile Roman Catholic cleric, did not respond to several requests for comment. 

He's always ready to show us the true nature of Catholic morality. He attacks gays, attacks women, attacks nuns -- and then turns around and pays a bonus to priests who rape kids. Thanks, Cardinal Timmy! Now we really know how to get to heaven!

Okay, it's ripe now

I wanted to wait until the latest scandal at the Vatican ripened before I dug in. Okay, it's ripe. The following are the unbelievably tone-deaf words of the Vatican's undersecretary of state, Archbishop Angelo Becciu. 

"I consider the publication of stolen letters to be an unprecedentedly grave immoral act," Becciu told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. "It's not just that the pope's papers were stolen, but that people who turned to him as the vicar of Christ have had their consciences violated." 

Can you believe this? He considers the leaking of Vatican letters to be "an unprecedentedly grave immoral act." Wow.

They pay little or no attention to the horrid things priests have done to innocent children all over the world, but they think this "scandal" is heaven-shaking. Here's more from AP:

The Vatican on Tuesday sought to put the widening scandal over leaked documents into a very different light, saying the stolen papers didn't just concern matters of internal church governance but represented the thoughts of people who in writing to the pope believed they were essentially speaking before God. 

Oh, well, now you're talking about truly important stuff: confidences divulged before the sky god. To the church, that's what's important, not raped kids. Never forget this.

The Roman Catholic church constantly reveals that it has no understanding of any moral issue. Absolutely none. Craven -- that's what they are, every one of them.

Irony alert

The Evil One.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI, carrying a tall, lit candle, ushered in Christianity's most joyous celebration with an Easter vigil service Saturday night, but voiced fears that mankind is groping in darkness, unable to distinguish good from evil.

We can't tell good from evil, huh? This from the man who invented the policy whereby the Roman Catholic church protected and enabled pedophile priests while casting aside child victims. And we can't "distinguish good from evil".

On the contrary, we recognize evil quite well. It's what you see in your mirror, popey guy. We're lookin' at you.

"Vatican insider" says popey guy not too evil

"Praise me!"

We start with this:

DUBLIN (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has been "relentless and consistent" in seeking to oust child abusers from the priesthood worldwide, the pontiff's new American envoy to Ireland said Sunday in his first homily here.

Indeed. And who is this fool who praises the evil popey guy? A NY Times article provides the answer:

Archbishop Charles Brown, a 52-year-old Manhattan native and veteran Vatican insider, was making his first public address since officially taking up his post as Irish papal nuncio three days ago . . .

Brown noted his own 17-year work as an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the powerful Vatican body that enforces church policies — including the removal of pedophiles from the priesthood. Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, oversaw the body from 1981 until his promotion to pope in 2005.

Ah, so you're the fellow who assisted the popey guy in his efforts to transfer pedophile priests and hide their crimes. As Cenk says, "Of course! Of course!"

What a filthy church this is. I almost vomited while watching the excessive coverage of glutton Timmy Dolan picking up his shiny red hat this weekend. They told him to become the fierce Catholic face of anti-gay hatred, and he came through in spades. You get a red hat for that. Congrats, Timmy. You stink to high heaven and they've rewarded you for it. As I often note: that's quite a church you've got there.

Even worse than we imagined

Evil popey guy.

From HuffPo today:

VATICAN CITY (RNS) A new report by the Irish branch of Amnesty International says the sexual abuse of children by Ireland's Roman Catholic priests "included acts that amounted to torture and inhuman and degrading treatment."

The 430-page report, released Monday (Sept. 26), "reminds us that Irish children were subjected to treatment that would be horrifying if it were done to prisoners of war, never mind little boys and girls," said Ireland's Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald, in Dublin.

The Roman Catholic Church is a child-raping, criminal enterprise. Never forget this.