Protecting the Unborn and the Molesters of the Postborn
It's a rare event that I bother to read Maureen Dowd, more the less that I'll actually agree with here. It happened in today's Op-Ed, Dowd comments on the pervasive crisis caused by the Church's global protection of pedophiliac priests, a practice that runs straight to the present Pope. I don't find this pope's actions, as an archbishop or as the doctrinal hammer in his days as cardinal, all that surprising. As Dowd says, news like this is shocking, but not surprising. As a colonial Latin Americanist, I can attest to the long history of the Church overlooking acts it morally condemns in order to protect its power- jurisdictional, political, economic. And, this Pope is well versed in the practice.
The sin-crazed “Rottweiler” was so consumed with sexual mores — issuing constant instructions on chastity, contraception, abortion — that he didn’t make time for curbing sexual abuse by priests who were supposed to pray with, not prey on, their young charges.
American bishops have gotten politically militant in recent years, opposing the health care bill because its language on abortion wasn’t vehement enough, and punishing Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights and stem cell research. They should spend as much time guarding the kids already under their care as they do championing the rights of those who aren’t yet born.
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