At Patheos – on the Catholic Channel – there’s a blog called Headlines from the Catholic World. On that blog there’s a post with the teasing title “Catholic Church the only body ‘effectively acting to eradicate pedophilia’.” There really is; I’m not making it up.
A former Vatican spokesman has written, against the backdrop of the house arrest of a former nuncio being investigated for abuse of minors, that the Church is the only international body acting effectively against pedophilia.
In an op-ed published in the Italian daily “La Repubblica” Sept. 25, Joaquin Navarro-Valls commented on the house arrest in Vatican City of Jozef Wesolowski, the former apostolic nuncio to the Dominican Republic who was laicized earlier this year. He faces criminal charges under Vatican City’s civil laws.
The house arrest of Wesolowski “is a very important penal action,” stressed Navarro-Valls, who was head of the Holy See press office from 1984-2006.
What?
The Vatican (or the church) arrests one guy, and that makes it the only international body acting effectively against pedophilia? Why would that be the case? Other bodies arrest child-rapists. Does the Vatican get lashings of extra credit because it’s arrested so few (like, zero) in the past?
Navarro-Valls emphasized that “the Holy See was legally fit and morally ready” to handle such an “extreme and shameful crime” thanks to a “legal rigor the Church has been maintaining against pedophilia for 20 years, ever since abuses first came to light.”
No. No it hasn’t. It hasn’t been doing that. It’s been protecting the rapists and sending them from parish to parish, instead of doing that.
Anything to feel better, eh?