Author: Ophelia Benson

I’ll get back to the pope and the Vatican and secrecy and Crimen Sollicitationis – today was a bit rushed – but meanwhile, there is the related, large, vexed subject of suffering, and what to think of it, and what to think of what religion tells us about it and does about it. I did a piece on the subject for Comment is Free – but I didn’t say everything I could have (in a longer piece) or thought of.

I didn’t for instance say that it’s true (as one commenter mentioned) that suffering can teach us sympathy for other people (or it can get us to shut up inside ourselves – it all depends), and that it’s also true that we wouldn’t need sympathy for other people, and other people wouldn’t need our sympathy, if there were no suffering, so we can’t really say it’s good to have suffering because it teaches us sympathy when the sympathy it teaches us is parasitic on suffering.

And yet – I share the feeling, or intuition, that in some sense we would be worse off if sympathy just didn’t exist. What, even if suffering didn’t exist either? Yes, sort of. But the thing about that is, we are what we are, and what we are is an animal that is never immune from suffering, and that (obviously) shapes how we think about these things. So we’re trapped in this circle.

Anyway I don’t think sympathy is worth the worst kinds of suffering, which are all too common. And I don’t think we should make friends with whatever it is that makes suffering inevitable. Natural selection stinks. If you think God did it, you should think God stinks. We shouldn’t let God get away with the ‘suffering is necessary for compassion therefore it’s a good thing’ excuse. We can have doubts about life with no sympathy at all, and still think God stinks.

I didn’t say that at Comment is Free because I said other things. One can’t say everything, though commenters at C is F seem to expect one to. They also ask ‘Why didn’t you say what I would have said instead of what you wanted to say?’ I have great sympathy for them, but I cannot help.

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.