The Catholic Church will soon have to face its victims and atone for its sins.
By: E.L. Daniels
April 18th, 2010
In the year 1780, the French writer Guillaume Raynal warned that, after decades of unrestricted plundering of new lands and unchecked slavery, rape, and torture of their indigenous people by European colonizers, the “impending storm” was soon to come. Writing a mere a decade before the Haitian Revolution, Raynal lived to witness the fulfilment of his prophecy. In 1791, the oppressed, exploited, raped, enslaved, violated, masses of Saint-Domingue rose up against their oppressors in a frenzy of violence and vengeance in a revolt that eventuated in the establishment of what is now Haiti.
Just as Raynal, cataloguing the sadistic and brutal conduct of the colonizing powers, predicted the coming storm, it is possible for nearly anybody nowadays, taking a quick glance at the despair and devastation wrought by the Roman Catholic Church, to make a similar forecast. Accusations of child rape and torture have plagued the Church for many years now (and for good reason). The general reaction of the Holy See has been to bribe or coerce people into silence, throwing in the occasional apology here and there, and to wait for everything to “blow over”. However, we now find ourselves simultaneously disgustedly and delightedly in the possession of a letter, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (more commonly known nowadays as Pope Benedict XVI), advising inaction in the case of a Californian child rapist and Catholic priest. It would be damning enough if inaction were all that Mr. Ratzinger was guilty of - some readers may recall that Dante reserves a special spot in Hell for those that remain passive in times of injustice - but torpid swamp of corruption only deepens. We now know that Ratzinger, who ran the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (once known as the Inquisition), instead of using the tried and tested, honed and (dare I say it?) sharpened tools of the Church to bring these priests to justice, actually resisted attempts to investigate. In a letter from 2001, addressed to bishops, Mr. Ratzinger made references to the heinous crime of speaking out against the Church and reporting cases of sexual abuse to the authorities. Ratzinger mandates, in this letter, that all cases of child rape must be handled with secrecy and silence. In legal terms, this is more commonly referred to as “obstruction of justice”. The penalty for displaying basic human decency and refusing to stand idly by as elderly sadists rape young children? Excommunication. It is with great pain and greater sadness that I remind the reader that Reverend Lawrence Murphy, the priest guilty of raping over 200 children in a deaf school in Wisconsin (as if pre-pubescence, pre-adolescence, and a child’s innocent naivety were not sufficient disabilities) was not excommunicated, indeed was allowed unfettered access to children in parishes, and died, still a priest, in 1998.
The purpose of this essay is not to catalogue the multitude of sins committed by the Catholic Church over the centuries. Nietzsche warns us “… if you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you”. Assuming Nietzsche is correct, it seems advisable to turn away from such a task. My motivation for writing this, rather, is to draw attention to the crimes of the Holy See, as well as the revolting nature of said crimes. Fortunately, justice is making a long overdue appearance in the coda of this whole nauseating affair. There is now a coalition of highly capable, highly trained, highly passionate, and highly intelligent men and women set on purging the Catholic Church and prosecuting its clerical criminals. At the fore-front of this crusade are, to name but a few, Christopher Hitchens, Geoffrey Robertson, Richard Dawkins, Mark Stephens, and the countless unnamed, raped victims of the Holy See.
The Bible reminds us over and over again (to the point of tedium) of the punishments for sin, though perhaps never as memorably as it did when describing Sodom and Gomorrah. As God obliterates the twin cities with a maelstrom of fire and brimstone, he warns Lot and his family not to look back. Lot’s wife did so, unfortunately for her, and was turned into a pillar of salt. Onlookers needn’t worry, as the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Vatican is deracinated and scoured by the forces of humanism, secularism, and justice, about being turned to salt, but then again, there will be very few onlookers. Most of humanity, at least the portion with any inkling of morality and decency, will be united as it tears down the walls of silence surrounding the Vatican and bring its maladjusted inhabitants to justice in courts of law. The Pope himself may very well be asked to appear at the International Criminal Tribunal for crimes against humanity. Signs of the impending storm are clear; the Church will soon be made to pay for its innumerable sins, for years of torture, violation, and rape. Can the Holy See confess to its sins and pray for forgiveness and atonement? By all means. Can centuries of institutionalised sadism, corruption, and pederasty be forgiven? I think not.
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