Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Catholicism

Please know going in to this that I bear no ill will against practicing Catholics.  Like anyone else, they are following the path their heart calls them to, and I understand the kind old lady in the corner has no actual bearing on the stupidity of church officials.  If I can give the Catholic church credit for anything, it's for ignoring their followers and the conversations remain mostly one-way. 


Having said that, let's dig in, shall we?


Maureen Dowd wrote an awesome piece for the New York Times in which she questions the church and its priorities.  One line in particular jumps out at me, because it's something I have wondered about as well.  How can the church bark at women for being too busy helping and spreading the generosity of Christ, while proactively defending the child molesting priests that hide within?  In what screwed up world does that even approach common sense?  

It has become a habit for the church to go after women. A Worcester, Mass., bishop successfully fought to get a commencement speech invitation taken away from Vicki Kennedy, widow of Teddy Kennedy, because of her positions on some social issues. And an Indiana woman named Emily Herx has filed a lawsuit saying she was fired from her job teaching in a Catholic school and denounced as a “grave, immoral sinner” by the parish pastor after she used fertility treatments to try to get pregnant with her husband.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York recently told The Wall Street Journal that only “a tiny minority” of priests were tainted by the sex abuse scandal. But it’s a global shame spiral. The church leadership never recoiled in horror from pedophilia, yet it recoils in horror from outspoken nuns.  

Pope Benedict, who became known as “God’s Rottweiler” when he was the cardinal conducting the office’s loyalty tests, assigned Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle to crack down on the climate of “corporate dissent” among the poor nuns.

When the nuns push for social justice, they’re put into stocks. Yet Archbishop Sartain has led a campaign in Washington to reverse the state’s newly enacted law allowing same-sex marriage, and he’s a church hero.

Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic lobbying group slapped in the Vatican report, said it scares the church hierarchy to have “educated women form thoughtful opinions and engage in dialogue.”

Yeah, you read that right.  God's Rottweiler has assigned a task manager to keep those nuns in line, and make sure they only speak the words the church approves.  So the next time the church tries to say they have done all they can to stop the molesting of innocent children, or that they simply can't control the behavior of the priests, I think it's a fair question to ask for examples of them publicly denouncing the behavior and getting enforcers involved to stop them.  Then sit back and listen to the silence.