Desperate days

Today in his Good Friday address, the Pope's personal preacher, the Rev Raniero Cantalamessa, compared the worldwide furor over abuse of children by Catholic priests to anti-Semitic attacks on Jews. That's a pretty far-fetched comparison, but it does show (a) how desperate the Vatican is becoming, and (b) how the Vatican hierarchy still doesn't get it.

Vatican spokesman have tried to argue that then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) acted aggressively against pedophile priests when he was Prefect (head) of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Unfortunately recent revelations suggest otherwise, as in the case of Rev. Lawrence Murphy, a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys.

More to the point, the Vatican has yet to discipline any Bishop or Cardinal who was involved in the cover-ups. For example Boston Cardinal Bernard Francis Law resigned in disgrace in 2002 for his part in a pedophile cover-up, but was subsequently given a spacious apartment and a prestigious post in Rome as archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major. Hardly a punishment for what he did. Clearly the hierarchy is intent on protecting its own. Those of you who like research will have no trouble finding more cases like his in the past few years.

Media exposures of these abuses and cover-ups hardly seems to me to qualify as equivalent to anti-Semitic attacks. Indeed, it looks to me like fully justified outrage at criminal and highly immoral behavior with our children, and the subsequent cover-ups.