Year: 2010

We need an expert in Vatican jargon, or Catholic doctrine, or Jesuitical Vaticanesque doctrinal legalistic jargon. Hamilton Jacobi alerted us in a comment on ‘The pope invited the bishops to explain’ to the possibility that the pope’s 2001 letter didn’t mean what The Observer reported it to mean. I took a look at the English version* and I’m not at all clear on what it’s saying. It’s not unmistakably saying ‘Bishops must hide clerical sex abuse of children from the police’ and it could well not be saying that at all – so I have to withdraw some of what I’ve said on that subject in the last few days about the coverage of the pope’s scolding the Irish bishops. At least provisionally, I have to withdraw it. The first part of the letter looks as if it at least could be saying that 1) sex abuse by priests is a ‘delict against the sanctity of the sacrament of penance’ and 2) as such it is a church matter, and that that part alone is what is church business and no one else’s. It looks as if it could be consistent with meaning it’s also a criminal matter…although it also looks as if it could be consistent with the church refusing to do anything about the criminal matter because to do so would violate the putative ‘sanctity of the sacrament of penance’ – which would pretty much leave the pope back where he was, and I would withdraw my withdrawal.

Farther down it gets even more ambiguous, and I’m just not at all clear what it’s saying.

The church might say we don’t have to be clear what it’s saying, it’s none of our business, it’s the church’s business – but of course that’s just what’s at the heart of this: it isn’t just the church’s business, obviously, and if the church thinks it is, the church needs to get its priorities straight.

So what do you think? Can you figure out what it’s saying?

It must be noted that the criminal action on delicts reserved to the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith is extinguished by a prescription of 10 years.(11) The prescription
runs according to the universal and common law;(12) however, in the delict perpetrated
with a minor by a cleric, the prescription begins to run from the day when the minor has
completed the 18th year of age.

What does that mean, for instance? I can’t make head or tail of it.

I don’t suppose any lawyer theologians read B&W regularly…but if any do…how about a little exegesis for us heathens?

*Catholicism is a global religion, so it seems fair to take translations as no less official than the Vatican’s Latin version, unless of course they’re just bad translations.

This is disgusting! I can’t say anything more coherent than that – it’s just a showy display of complete abject belly-crawling disgustingness. The BBC is dribbling all over itself with ecstasy because that reactionary theocratic bastard Joseph Ratzinger might consent to give its poxy theocratic patronizing stinking Thought for the Day. What is the matter with everyone?!

The Pope is in negotiations to appear on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day slot after Mark Thompson, the BBC director-general, made a personal approach to the Vatican. The planned broadcast on the Today programme would be timed to coincide with Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain later this year and would represent a coup for the corporation.

A coup? A coup? Why? Because he’s famous? Because ‘the pope’ is a household name so he’s a total hot celebrity and nobody else can get him so the BBC will be a really big deal if if gets him? Are they really that pathetic?

Details of the approach were disclosed by Mark Damazer, the Radio 4 controller, who said securing the Pope for the daily faith slot was a long-held personal ambition. The Pope is on Mr Damazer’s “fantasy wish list” of contributors to the station, alongside Sir Mick Jagger and Bruce Springsteen.

That answers that; yes, they are really that pathetic.

God people are stupid. This is the guy who tells Africans not to use condoms, who told the bishops to shut up, who tells the UK to knock it off with all this equality bullshit. This is not some nice old geezer in a white dress – this is a horribly powerful man filled with evil ideas.

Ad maiorem dei gloriam.

It really is extraordinary how deferential the news media are toward the Vatican and how completely they are letting the pope get away with pretending to be outraged by the fact that the Irish church concealed sexual abuse of children when in fact the pope told them to do exactly that less than a decade ago. It really is extraordinary the way journalists simply fail to point that out. One is tempted to think they’re not doing their jobs properly.

Pope Benedict spent two days in one of the Vatican’s sumptuous marble audience halls closeted with 24 Irish bishops who both individually and collectively confessed to him their shortcomings and omissions in the paedophile clergy scandal which has shocked the entire Catholic world…Pope Benedict did not spare his words in addressing his Irish bishops. He said that child abuse was a “heinous crime” as well as a “grave sin”. He lambasted the bishops for failing to act effectively over cases of sexual abuse of young people. Seated at two long tables, the red-clad bishops were invited by the Pope to describe individually – in interventions limited to a maximum of seven minutes each – how they had dealt with cases of priestly paedophilia in their own dioceses, and to explain why so many cases had been systematically covered up during a period of decades.

Why? Why?! Because you told us to, that’s why! Because you told us to, you sanctimonious buck-passing white-robed sack of shit!

The BBC article doesn’t mention that. It has been reporting on this meeting for days, and I have yet to see it mention the 2001 letter to all the bishops in the church – the letter from Joseph Ratzinger. David Willey is the Beeb’s Vatican correspondent, yet he writes this long piece without mentioning the letter. That must be BBC policy rather than correspondent policy – and it’s pathetic.