Ratzinger gave his old job to an American when he (Ratz) was bumped upstairs. Cardinal William Levada now heads Ratzinger’s old Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This week he expressed his sorrow and sympathy for what the church has enabled priests to do to generations of children by…writing a long article saying how awful the New York Times is.

He starts by singling out Laurie Goodstein.

Only after eight paragraphs of purple prose does Goodstein reveal that Fr. Murphy, who criminally abused as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school in the Milwaukee Archdiocese from 1950 to 1974, “not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got

Un.Be.Lievable. They still don’t get it. They still think they are the victims. Still! Half the world has explained it to them with one voice, and they still don’t get it!

The Pope’s preacher today likened recent attacks on the pontiff over the Catholic sex abuse scandal to the “most shameful acts of anti-Semitism”.

Not ‘attacks by priests on children’ but ‘attacks’ meaning criticism by victims and observers on the pope who helped conceal and perpetuate those very attacks by priests on children – that’s what they’re comparing to anti-Semitism! It’s – it’s – it exhausts my capacity to revile it. The self-pity, the world-blotting egocentrism, the blank inability to grasp the misery of people outside their own circle, the … Read the rest

Would you believe it – Gordon Brown is saying Catholicism is often the conscience of the UK. He’s saying it in a new magazine with the rebarbative title “Faith Today.” He’s also spitting on secularism while he’s about it.

Asked if religious faith is essentially “a private, personal pursuit” or has a role in the wider community, he says: “Our common realm is not and cannot be stripped of values – I absolutely reject the idea that religion should somehow be tolerated but not encouraged in public life. Our equality bill is specifically designed to protect religion and belief on exactly the same terms as race or gender or sexuality.”

God, what a dog’s breakfast. First he conflates religion … Read the rest

At last, at last I get to go to a conference, yee-ha. I feel so included. Plus it will be so much fun – networking, and drinks in the bar, and staying up all night, and sexual gossip, and putting disgusting things in people’s beds, and singing, and sitting around the campfire – wait, I think I’m getting confused. This will be all grown-up and serious, not like summer camp. Which is good, because I hated summer camp – both day camp and go away for two weeks camp. Sending me to camp was I think part of a half-hearted effort to make me more normal and extroverted, but it never worked. If anything it made me less extroverted, … Read the rest