Vatican Outlines Path to Restoring Faith in Church - NYTimes.com

Bullshit

by tristero

The Times says this new comment from the Vatican is a "conciliatory statement" which is is " striking for [its] different tone."

Bullshit. They are still minimizing the extent of the problem within the Catholic Church:
The debate on sexual abuses, not only among the clergy, proceeds ...
And there's this:
“We probably must create a deeper experience of events that have so negatively marked the lives of people,”
Probably?

And get a load of this fucking sick garbage (in case it isn't obvious, the Church's disgusting evasions make me very angry):
While the tones were measured, Father Lombardi repeated the church’s analysis of what caused a profusion of abuse cases of past decades: the “sexual revolution” and a general secularization of society, and said pedophilia in the church should be seen in the context of a broader problem in society.
That's right. Liberals, by insisting that it is perfectly moral for two consenting adults to love each other are, in the Vatican's opinion, caused priests to rape children.
As for news coverage, he said journalists have been softer on the subject in countries where the church is stronger.
Translated: We have to gain better control of the press.
At the same time, more attention should be paid to the question of child abuse in the United States, where, he said, “in only 2008,” 62,000 such cases have been reported, “while the group of Catholic priests is so small as not to be even taken into consideration as such.”
As if that makes a fucking bit of difference. These are priests, for crissakes! They are authority figures for Catholics, they are supposed to be above reproach. And they have shamefully, shamefully abused that trust and created serious, lasting damage to their victims.

And then:
Supporters of the pope, he said, will continue “responding with patience to the drip-drip of partial or presumptive ‘revelations’ that seek to wear down his credibility or that of other institutions and persons of the church.”
Very slowly, because the Vatican is apparently overrun by morons and malicious misfits these days:

The only people wearing down the credibility of the Catholic Church, the pope, and the Vatican are the raping priests, their superiors who failed to punish them, and the Church hierarchy who conspired to cover it all up. If that includes the pope, and all indications are that it does, then the pope is a moral midget and a criminal. As anyone who knows Church history can tell you, he would hardly be the first.

Nor does it show the slightest disrespect to characterize Benedict that way if he participated in the coverup of rape. Again, it would be Benedict who has shown the most vulgar, blasphemous disrespect for his religion by behaving in this fashion.

Regardless of whether the pope was personally involved, the wholesale rape of women and children by Catholic priests and the coverup of their crimes has been going on for decades, if not longer. Until the Vatican stops stonewalling and blustering, it behooves the media to double down, that is, they should both report their cynical excuses and denials AND also further abuse revelations.

In that spirit, here's one more recent example of child rape by a Catholic priest:
In May, the leader of central Norway’s small Roman Catholic population unexpectedly resigned with little explanation. The Vatican on Wednesday said why: He sexually abused a boy in the early 1990s.

It was the latest case to emerge in a clerical sexual abuse scandal that has been churning through Europe in recent months, putting the Vatican on the defensive and forcing bishops across the continent to confront the issue.

The bishop, Georg Mueller, 58, who left his diocese in June, has since undergone therapy and “no longer carries out pastoral activity,” according to a statement by the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.
Translated: this rapist is still a priest, and still goes by the honorific "Bishop.".

Oh, and:
The newspaper also reported that four other child sexual abuse cases involving Norwegian priests had come to the attention of the church, dating from the 1950s and the 1980s.
Sick. Really, really sick.