The archbishop is miffed. He’s irritated, he’s annoyed, he’s wounded, he’s upset. He thinks it’s all a mistake. He can’t understand, he just can’t understand.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has accused the Government of treating all religious believers as “oddities” and “eccentric”. Dr Rowan Williams said ministers were wrong to think that Christian beliefs were no longer relevant in modern Britain and he criticised Labour for looking at religious faith as a “problem” rather than valuing the contribution it made to society.

But whether religious beliefs are ‘relevant’ or not is not the only issue, nor is it necessarily the most important one. ‘Relevant’ is notoriously a weasel-word anyway – it’s really just a stand-in for majority will. Christian … Read the rest

The victims of the Catholic church also see the pope’s eyewash as self-serving and beside the point – and above all as a gross evasion of accountability.

Marie Collins, who was abused in 1960 by a priest when she was a patient at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children…pointed out the statement “doesn’t deal with the past. No one has taken responsibility for what went on in Dublin. There is no accountability.”…Andrew Madden, who was abused by Ivan Payne when he was an altar boy in Dublin’s Cabra parish…[said it was] “self-serving nonsense”…and he for one, as a survivor, hadn’t asked for prayers. “And they say they listen to survivors?” The statement was “an attempt to deflect attention away from

Really. Really. There is a limit.

After meeting Ireland’s most senior Catholic clerics in Rome, Pope Benedict said he shared the outrage, betrayal and shame felt by so many of the faithful in the country.

Don’t insult us. Don’t insult everyone over the age of two. Don’t insult the victims of your horrible tyrannical authoritarian unaccountable church. Don’t talk self-serving self-flattering nonsense. Don’t pretend you’re all shocked and upset and distraught now when this crap has been going on for decades upon decades! Don’t pretend you’ve only just found out about it. Come on, Ben – you know we know that’s ridiculous – so don’t insult us.

The Vatican said ‘the Holy Father was deeply disturbed and distressed.’ … Read the rest