After scrutiny by the magazine’s legal team, a heavily edited version of this piece was originally published by Sabotage Times in March 2013. In the interests of contributing to a much wider debate on the Catholic Church, an institution I strongly believe to be utterly rotten and corrupt to the core and one that acts as a break on the progressive development of humanity, I’ve posted the unedited version below. It is hoped readers will feel free to make their own contributions to a matter than concerns anyone with an interest in how we move towards a better, more egalitarian and more compassionate world.
There can surely be few institutions that compare to the Catholic Church in terms of sheer superstitious backwardness. That it is bigoted, reactionary and medieval is beyond doubt. From its inception it has orchestrated and or played a decisive role in the systematic torture and murder of women, the slaughtering of entire swathes of those with an alternative view, amassed in the most corrupt fashion staggering and obscene wealth while pontificating (excuse the semi-pun) to the most poverty-stricken and deprived in the most hypocritical manner imaginable.
Its oppression and discrimination of women and the sickening emotional blackmail it uses to guilt-trip them into becoming little more than Christian baby farms, is positively barbaric. Its much-vaunted championing of the ‘unborn child’ and its ‘pro-life’ stance extends, clearly, only to the point the child emerges from the womb. Thereafter it can starve while the Vatican’s privileged elite live in the kind of opulence its poverty-blighted congregations the world over can only imagine.
Its leaders, not least the out-going Pope, a former member of the Hitler Youth, have systematically colluded with paedophiles, those guilty of the institutionalised mass-rape and buggery of children all over the world, in running a sophisticated cover-up operation. Ratzinger has defied the authorities and aided his pervert-priests not only to evade justice but to set up shop in pastures new so the whole rotten cycle may continue, untroubled and untouched by such distasteful concepts like law, decency and humanity. His resignation, and self-imposed exile inside Vatican City, is widely seen as nothing more than an opportunist ploy to avoid extradition and questioning in connection with the disgusting litany of crimes in which is he is implicated. Certainly, Richard Dawkins’ infamous description of Ratzinger as ”…a leering old villain in a frock” seems not unreasonable.
Now, of course, there is a new man in charge. Already his intolerant bigotry on the question of homosexuals has been raised with the following protest at gay marriage appearing in many news reports: “Let’s not be naïve, we’re not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”
Where women are concerned, too, there can little doubt that Pope Francis upholds the very best Vatican traditions of misogyny, sexism and discrimination against women, observing, as he did that “Women are naturally unfit for public office. Both the natural order and the facts show us that the political being par excellence is male; the Scripture shows us that woman has always been the helper of man, who thinks and does but nothing more.” No doubt, there will be further choice quotes from the man, in the weeks ahead, as journalists contrast his previous utterances with the desperate attempts of the Vatican machine to paint their new boss as a paragon of progressive and social values.
We might also dwell on his alleged support for the murderous Argentinean junta which, at a conservative estimate, was responsible for the murders of some 30,000 human beings. It has further been alleged that he served up two of his own priests to the junta during the Dirty War of ‘76. The unfortunate clerics, after dismissal by the now Pope, were kidnapped by the military and the subsequent legal wrangling painted a very sordid picture indeed.
So much for the leadership, then; however, a question that no one appears to be asking is this: how far beyond the pale does an organisation have to go before we hold accountable its wider membership?
Many ordinary Catholics, the vast majority, one would certainly hope, in no way condone their Church’s outrageous involvement in the mass child abuse of which we are all now painfully aware. But, equally, given the scale, scope and numbers involved, no one could claim, with any credibility, that the wider flock are merely dealing with a few bad papal apples.
So how do people who are part of an organisation get to absolve themselves from the things their organisation does? At what point is it reasonable to start pointing the finger at the lay membership and demanding they accept a share of the responsibility for the sins and crimes of their Church?
In the case of political parties, it’s deemed perfectly reasonable for members of those parties, from top to bottom, to be held responsible for its actions. Even football clubs face a much harsher degree of accountability for the behaviour not just of their players and staff but that of their fans as well. Examples of hooligan minorities earning their clubs hefty fines and lengthy bans from competitions and other sanctions are legion. Why not in the case of religions? Yet again the Church, it seems, is allowed to operate with a breathtaking and arrogant disregard for the norms of decency that govern the rest of society.
The incontrovertible truth is that any organisation can only survive and prosper with the consenting active support of its membership. Surely there be can nothing contentious in pointing out that if the Catholic Church’s billion-strong faithful continue to do nothing then they are as morally culpable as the priests carrying out the abuse?
If everyone with even a shred of basic human decency turned their backs on this loathsome and repugnant coven, it would collapse. We’d see no more institutionalised homophobia, misogyny, racism, bigotry and child-rape from these degenerate hypocrites because there simply wouldn’t be the apparatus to sustain them.
It’s long overdue ordinary Catholics, many of whom are actually victims themselves, stopped making excuses for their deviant and manipulative coreligionists and stood up and were counted. If they do not then the world is entitled to judge them as culpable in the ruination of children’s lives as those carrying out the abuse themselves.
And as far as the new Pope is concerned, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Harry Paterson
