The church isn’t giving an inch – on the contrary, it’s fighting like a starving tom cat.

The Catholic Church is being unfairly singled out for criticism of sexual abuse of children by priests and will not tolerate campaigns to discredit it, the powerful head of Italy’s bishops said on Monday.

Oh right – it’s all so terribly unfair. The church sets itself up as a moral arbiter for the entire world, and then it’s surprised and wounded when we get cross with it for its settled habit of hiding priestly child-rape from the police. Yes indeed, that is like so unfair. And it ‘won’t tolerate’ – what does it mean it won’t tolerate? What’s it going to do? What’s … Read the rest

From the Murphy Report:

In addition to their clerical education, many of those in authority in the Archdiocese had civil law degrees or occupied prestigious appointments in third level education…Despite their participation in civil society, it was not until late 1995 that officials of the Archdiocese first began to notify the civil authorities of complaints of clerical child sexual abuse. In this context it is significant, in the Commission’s view, that every bishop’s primary loyalty is to the Church itself. At his consecration every bishop, as well as making a profession of faith, must take an oath of fidelity to the Apostolic See. [p 7]

1.27 Most officials in the Archdiocese were, however, greatly exercised by the provisions of … Read the rest

Madeleine Bunting again, as with the Ryan report last year, almost gets it, but then she drops the ball at the end.

There will be plenty celebrating the Catholic church’s plight, and it is hard not to agree in some part with MacCulloch, that hubris has played a huge part in this institution’s history and its current crisis. But it is also important to acknowledge that this is more tragedy than anything else. For the victims, their families, their congregations – many of whom see no cause for celebration despite their need for truth – and for those causes on which the church has proved a trenchant champion, stirring lazy consciences on the arms race, global inequality and capitalist

You have to wonder sometimes, you know?

95,000 descendants of the prophet Muhammad are planning to bring a libel action in Britain over “blasphemous” cartoons of the founder of Islam, even though they were published in the Danish press. The defamation case is being prepared by Faisal Yamani, a Saudi lawyer acting for the descendants, who live in the Middle East, north Africa and as far afield as Australia.

They’re teasing us, right? They’re not serious. I mean, they’re serious about doing it, sure, but they’re not serious about the ‘descendants of the prophet Muhammad’ bit. They’re being ‘ironic,’ they’re playing to our expectations, they’re parodying their own reputation for believing silly things. Right? They don’t really think it … Read the rest