Doctors Are Supposed To Save Lives? Ha! Tell It To Satan Brother

OK now look, we've been giving the catholic church a little heat lately for some less that churchly pronouncements, but hey, like the apologists...er...bible...no...Bill O'Reilly...well, somebody who should know says, the people who make up the earthly church are not really the "church," they just rent space. Or something.

Anyway, when Ironicus is wrong, Ironicus is the first to admit it, after everyone else does, and we're here to tell you that we've just heard that the catholic church has stepped up to the plate and brought all its forces to bear to mitigate a terrible tragedy concerning the rape of a nine year old girl by her stepfather. The rape resulted in a pregnancy, and showing a level of compassion, sympathy and understanding we didn't think they were capable of, the church was right in the forefront of the healing process.

A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church's Congregation for Bishops, told the daily La Stampa on Saturday that the twins the girl had been carrying had a right to "grow up and become tithers. Look, have you read the ARIS survey? We need everybody we can baptize. Say, what's your affiliation?"

Now, before you get all huffy about the church excommunicating everybody who happened to be in the hospital that morning, wait until you hear what they did to the stepfather, right Cardinal Re? Tell them:

*sound of crickets*

*wind in the trees*

*Distant barking dog*

OK, Cardinal Re will get back to us on that. In the mean time you should know that getting excommunicated isn't such a big deal anyway. It's like getting up to the checkout at the grocery store and finding out your coupons are expired.

The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced excommunication for the mother for authorizing the operation and doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not survive carrying the fetuses to term. "Well it's not like she didn't have a few months to bulk up," Sobrinho told reporters. "Hey, anybody here thinking about converting? You get a nice fruit basket with every baptism."

President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva hit out at Sobrinho's decision, saying: "As a christian and a catholic, I deeply regret being a catholic. The doctors did what had to be done: save the life of a girl of nine years old," he said, adding that "in this case, the medical profession was more right than the church."

Hey, come on President da Silva, that's a little harsh. The girl was nine years old after all. She could have asked her stepfather to use protection.

One of the doctors involved in the abortion, Rivaldo Albuquerque, told Globo television that he would keep going to mass, regardless of the archbishop's order. "I mostly sleep through it anyway," he said.

Later Sobrinho said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed "a heinous crime ... the abortion - the elimination of an innocent life - was more serious. The destruction of the innocence of the nine year old girl? Ah, she'll get over it."