The list of things which the Catholic Church has blamed for the pedophile proest scandal grows ever longer and more bizarre.
They have so far blamed:
- An increasingly liberal and secular society.
- Satan possessing priests.
- Jews.
I've probably missed a couple: there have been so many.
The lastest one has to be the most bizarre, though. Apparently, the people who should be punished for these horrific crimes, committed by a minority of priests are.. all Christians.
Yes, the Pope, in his wisdom, is calling on Christians to do penance. From The Times article I linked to above:
[The Pope] added: “Now, under attack from the world, which talks to us of our sins, we can see that being able to do penance is a grace and we see how necessary it is to do penance and thus recognise what is wrong in our lives”. He said that “pardon and purification” were the keys to “renewal”, which was “the work of divine mercy”.
Or, to put it another way: "we committed various disgraceful crimes. Blaming others hasn't worked, so while we're not going to admit what we did, we're asking everyone to forgive us."
One thing is for sure: we know that the Vatican continue to absolutely rule out both celibecy and the persistent covering up of offenders and allowing them to re-offend.
Because those two things could not have contributed in the least. Obviously.
