I'm Sorry But... They Made Us Do It

When Pope Benedict spoke to the cardinals gathered in Rome, he actually had a few good things to say about the Roman Catholic clergy sex crime scandal. He told the cardinals the church needed to examine what was wrong in its teachings that it had "allowed such a thing to occur" and spoke of the church's responsibility to help the victims. I experienced a brief and fleeting moment of hope. I really should have known better.

He undid any good he might have done by casting part of the blame on that ole' devil, Secular Society. Secular Society looks lightly on pedophilia, you see.

"There exists a market of pornography regarding children that seems to be increasingly accepted as normal by society,” he said.

Accepted as normal? We must travel in different social sets, the pope and I, because I can't think of a single friend, acquaintance or business associate who would say s/he thinks child porn is "normal" or anything less than appalling.

As Margaret Kennedy of the Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors group, said, “He is trying to say that the modern world is corrupt and sexually rampant. It is blaming society for what is actually their responsibility,” she said. “No one in any age has ever thought that adults having sex with children is right.”


And he blames the '70s. Apparently there were some scholars in Secular Society who taught pedophilia was okay, and that's where it all started, this business of priests raping children and bishops covering up for them. Which tells me this pope is still not willing to tell the truth, because survivor blogger Kay Ebeling has printed many scanned documents that tell the story of Father Gerald Fitzgerald, who ran a center for pedophile priests in the '50s and '60s. Fitzgerald's center was, at one time, located on an island, Tortola, kind of a Guantanamo Bay for rapist priests. He wanted to keep them there indefinitely but was ordered to return them to a mainland treatment center in New Mexico. From there, they were funneled to more unsuspecting parishes located at great distances from where they had previously "served."

Fitzgerald's communications reached the highest echelons of the church hierarchy, so it's completely false to state this situation was caused by the wild and crazy '70s, or that they did not know it was going on. Heck, even Dante wrote about priests who raped youth, way back in the 1300s. In his classic work, "Inferno," there was a special circle of hell to which they (and the hierachy who enabled them)were consigned.

One can only hope.