Pope Benedict XVI said the Catholic Church must reflect on what is wrong with its message and Christian life in general that allowed for the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests. "We were going to go with 'the devil made me do it,' but that was already taken," the pope told reporters. "Turns out using god as an excuse to do whatever we want really seems to have a downside."
While accepting responsibility for the scandal, Benedict said the abuse must also be seen in the broader social context, in which child pornography and sexual tourism are rampant, and where as recently as the 1970s pedophilia wasn't considered the absolute evil that it is today.OK, now we're not lawyers or anything, but is, "it's my fault except for the part that isn't," and "it was all right in the 70's" really the best defense you can come up with?
The pope made the remarks to Vatican cardinals and bishops gathered for his traditional Christmas party, an eagerly anticipated celebration featuring semi-nude acrobats. "They were all above the age of consent," said one vatican official who asked not to be identified.
While stressing that most priests do good, honest work when they're sober, Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 reached "an unimaginable dimension" that required the church to accept the "humiliation" as a call for renewal. "It was like the freakin' wikileaks around here for a while," said a spokesperson for the Vatican Office of Diverting Attention.
"We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred without it costing too much money," Benedict said. "We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our cover-up, with our entire way of configuring the whole perverts for Christ thing, that allowed this to occur. We must find a new determination in deflection and obfuscation."
Benedict has previously acknowledged that the scandal was the result of sin within the church and that the church as a result must repent for it and make amends with victims. But Monday's comments suggested that there might be some intrinsic problem with the way Christianity and its message was understood in the modern world that allowed for the abuse to fester unchecked.Oh sure, shoot the message. It wasn't the message that was schlepping the holy rod of salvation to the kiddies your Pradaness, it was the people responsible for administering the message.
"We know of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and our corresponding responsibility," Benedict told the prelates gathered in the frescoed Sala Regia of the Vatican's apostolic palace. But he said the crimes of the priests also had to be looked at in today's context, where child pornography, drug use, sexual trafficking are to some degree considered normal even though an entire generation of children is being harmed.Yeah, normal. That's why perverts, druggies and pimps get arrested when they get caught. Hey your drapiness, when's the last time one of your deviants went to jail, huh?
He said the underlying ideology of such rampant excesses stemmed from the 1970s, when "pedophilia was theorized as something that was in keeping with man and even the child," where nothing was considered good or evil in and of itself but only relative to the circumstances.Hmm...didn't realize cadets in a seminary got a full curriculum of moral relativism and secular humanism, oh wait, it must have been that blasted disco. That stuff could make Chuck Norris gay right there.
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