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You are here: Home / Politics / Religion / Religious Nuts 2 / But it’s truly, truly a sin

But it’s truly, truly a sin

by DougJ|  April 3, 20129:22 pm| 113 Comments

This post is in: Religious Nuts 2, The War On Women

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If this isn’t scorpion-on-frog action, I don’t know what is (via):

The controversy prompted Xavier President Michael Graham, a Jesuit priest, to review the health insurance plan offered to the university’s 935 employees. Graham announced this week in a letter to the faculty that the plan will cease to cover contraception on July 1.

[….]

The Catholic church considers artificial contraception a sin – and does not view pregnancy as an ill to be prevented – and the bishops have protested the inclusion of contraception as a mandatory benefit.

Surveys have shown that an overwhelming majority of Catholic women of reproductive age have used contraception at some point, despite the church’s teaching.

[…]

The controversy has jolted some Catholic college presidents into scrutinizing the health insurance plans offered to their employees, hunting for potential conflicts with church doctrine.

Cutting off your dick to spite your president. Purges will continue until attendance increases.

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Reader Interactions

113Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    April 3, 2012 at 9:26 pm

    This is depressing. I thought the Jesuits were the smart priests.

  2. 2.

    David Koch

    April 3, 2012 at 9:27 pm

    Funny how he didn’t have a problem with the insurance plan carrying contraception coverage when Bush was president.

  3. 3.

    beltane

    April 3, 2012 at 9:31 pm

    See, they only have a problem with artificial contraception. Natural forms of contraception, such as raping young children, are in no way problematic to the Church.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    April 3, 2012 at 9:32 pm

    Cutting off your dick to spite your president.

    That I could respect–it’s their efforts to cut of other people’s body parts that annoy me.

  5. 5.

    debg

    April 3, 2012 at 9:32 pm

    Uneffing believable. I know someone at St. Louis University who seemed a little surprised when I asked about health insurance for faculty. (As a professor in a state school at Kansas, it interested me.) No, no, of course contraception is not covered, he said. If I’d ever been offered a job at his school, I couldn’t have afforded to take it. (The job or the contraception.)

    Congrats to Xavier for potentially scaring away all male and female faculty of childbearing years who want to make their own decisions about when to have kids. I’d gloat about my own safety in a state school if Brownback weren’t governor.

  6. 6.

    Martin

    April 3, 2012 at 9:35 pm

    I have it on good authority that virtually all hospital gowns are made from two types of cloth. Best to cancel all critical care coverage. Wouldnt want to have to stone your own employees, ya know.

  7. 7.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 9:37 pm

    We all saw the news from Philly where the priest joked about raping three kids in a week.

    I fucking hate these people with a fiery passion. Burn it down.

  8. 8.

    West of the Cascades

    April 3, 2012 at 9:38 pm

    Cutting off your dick

    I do not imagine that is something that the priest at a college would miss, except for the days that students bring their prepubescent male siblings to campus.

  9. 9.

    cathyx

    April 3, 2012 at 9:39 pm

    @debg: No one is saying they can’t use contraceptives. They just have to pay the full retail price.

  10. 10.

    BGinCHI

    April 3, 2012 at 9:44 pm

    Excerpt from monthly Faculty Memo:

    “Don’t forget to fuck your husbands/wives this weekend, and remember to order gowns for commencement.”

  11. 11.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    April 3, 2012 at 9:48 pm

    I expected better from the Jesuits. My mistake.

  12. 12.

    Ken

    April 3, 2012 at 9:50 pm

    But does the plan still cover those pills for men whose names would put me in the spam filter? And if so, which faculty members and/or presidents have used that coverage?

  13. 13.

    Chris Wolf

    April 3, 2012 at 9:50 pm

    Purges will continue until attendance increases.

    Brilliant.

  14. 14.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    April 3, 2012 at 9:52 pm

    From the article:

    The birth-control mandate is tied to Obama’s broader 2010 healthcare law now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court. If the court strikes down the law, the mandate would likely evaporate. If the law is upheld, nearly all plans would have to cover contraception by August 1. Religious institutions will have an extra year to comply, though several have filed suit to try to block the provision from ever taking effect.

    Rutro. Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy, all Catholics.

  15. 15.

    dmsilev

    April 3, 2012 at 9:52 pm

    Because of course a bunch of (supposed) celibates are the logical go-to experts on reproductive health.

  16. 16.

    scav

    April 3, 2012 at 9:55 pm

    The controversy has jolted some Catholic college presidents into scrutinizing the health insurance plans offered to their employees, hunting for potential conflicts with church doctrine.

    Scrutinizing textbooks and classroom instruction is no doubt next on their busy agenda. Gotta keep those red beanie counter cardinals happy.

  17. 17.

    cathyx

    April 3, 2012 at 9:55 pm

    @Ken: Probably, but that pill helps make babies, not prevent them. The more catholics, the better, they say.

  18. 18.

    dmsilev

    April 3, 2012 at 9:59 pm

    And this is just the perfect crowning touch:

    “It seems unusual to change the healthcare plan in the middle of the year,” rather than wait until the open enrollment period when employees could sign on to a spouse’s plan or look for other coverage, Engle said.

    So, the choices are to either pay full retail price for contraception yourself, abstain from sex with your spouse until January 1st, or cross your fingers and pray to God.

    A lovely little ‘fuck you’ insult on top of the injury.

  19. 19.

    beltane

    April 3, 2012 at 10:00 pm

    @cathyx: That is assuming that the men using these pills are only having sex with women of childbearing age. I see no reason to make this assumption.

  20. 20.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    April 3, 2012 at 10:03 pm

    Stupak gave a couple of interviews basically admitting that the Bishops played him during the health care debate, they didn’t want to find a compromise, they wanted to stir up shit basically to prove they can (which he of course phrased as “both sides played politics on me!). Looks like they’re not done. Tweety said Chicago’ George is the big force behind this priestly meddling, and the new gomer in New York is an energetic crotch sniffer. Not to get all 11 dimensiony, but I don’t think this is good news for Romney.

  21. 21.

    Punchy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:06 pm

    @Just Some Fuckhead: it would be quite the irony if the law is upheld this year, but when this suit inevitably makes it to the USSC next year, they shoot it down. See, each side gets a victory! Moderate Judiciary!

  22. 22.

    BigHank53

    April 3, 2012 at 10:07 pm

    I do not think this will get them as much support as they think it will get them. Maybe if they clap harder…

  23. 23.

    Steve

    April 3, 2012 at 10:07 pm

    Gender discrimination.

  24. 24.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 10:08 pm

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): They’re definitely better, but there’s a war on. Ultimately, they are part of that army.

    ETA: There’s a war on in which if I say something that hurts the fee-fees of these assholes, it makes me the bad guy. Fuck all this noise. I’ll just remind myself that it is only Catholics that subject their children to these monsters, and if they don’t care, I shouldn’t.

  25. 25.

    dr. bloor

    April 3, 2012 at 10:10 pm

    @dmsilev:
    Faculty should start sending him their used condoms and tampons with notes saying “You lose, asshole.”

  26. 26.

    beltane

    April 3, 2012 at 10:11 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: When the Catholic hierarchy is of a mind to overreach, the only thing that will stop them is to get their hands smacked hard. Ask the Europeans.

  27. 27.

    Rita R.

    April 3, 2012 at 10:12 pm

    @efgoldman:

    This. They remade the church over the past three decades in their retrograde, medieval image. So women are once again either virgins, mothers or whores, and the last two aren’t mutually exclusive if mothers dare to use birth control.

  28. 28.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:13 pm

    is this Imitate Atrios Day at BJ? considering all the whines and wails from an earlier thread I would say, yes, yes it is.

  29. 29.

    David Koch

    April 3, 2012 at 10:15 pm

    On the bright side, Xavier President Michael Graham, a Jesuit priest, said he plans to distribute aspirin to all his child bearing age employees.

  30. 30.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:16 pm

    I’ll just remind myself that it is only Catholics that subject their children to these monsters

    CORSICANA – Many describe Gary Welch as a popular youth minister at Corsicana’s Northside Baptist Church. A man, church members say, who was just as eager to embrace a child as to counsel them.

    “Gary was always cool with us,” said Devan Putman, 15.

    She’s been a member of the church’s youth group for as long as Welch was its leader.

    “[He was] always giving us hugs and high-fiving us,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

    Late Monday afternoon, Corsicana police officers arrested Welch, 42, at the church on charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child. He remains in jail on a $150,000 bond.

  31. 31.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:18 pm

    A disturbing confession from a pulpit in Mississippi is reverberating all the way to North Texas.
    John Langworthy, a former youth music minister at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, admitted to molesting at least one of his young students in the late 1980s.
    While he was immediately fired, there are questions about whether Prestonwood church leaders tried to keep the incident under wraps.
    By most accounts, John Langworthy was a talented, spiritual, charismatic youth music minister at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Mississippi.
    At least three former students — two at Prestonwood and one in Mississippi — have privately told a different story to former Prestonwood staff member Amy Smith, who has been trying to warn anyone who would listen.

  32. 32.

    Keith G

    April 3, 2012 at 10:18 pm

    Fan-fucking-tastic. I am glad the masks are coming off. Let the theists show their cards, and their ugliness, now.

    I really try to not let these events lead me to be contemptuous of all things religious, but I fear it is a losing battle.

    Maybe (someday) significant numbers of Catholics will become honest and brave enough to tell their church to change or to get lost….as my father did in 1957.

  33. 33.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:19 pm

    Rabbi Stanley Z. Levitt, a former religious studies teacher at the Maimonides School in Brookline, was indicted by a Suffolk grand jury two years ago after one of his students, Michael Brecher, told Suffolk prosecutors that Levitt molested him when he was an 11-year-old patient at Children’s Hospital Boston, and a second student said Levitt abused him in the shower of his Brighton home.

    Brecher, now 48, said yesterday that he has pursued his case against Levitt, 65, “to protect other innocent and vulnerable children from potentially suffering the unendurable life I have been suffering for decades.’’

  34. 34.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:21 pm

    Rabbi Stanley Z. Levitt, a former religious studies teacher at the Maimonides School in Brookline, was indicted by a Suffolk grand jury two years ago after one of his students, Michael Brecher, told Suffolk prosecutors that Levitt molested him when he was an 11-year-old patient at Children’s Hospital Boston, and a second student said Levitt abused him in the shower of his Brighton home.Brecher, now 48, said yesterday that he has pursued his case against Levitt, 65, “to protect other innocent and vulnerable children from potentially suffering the unendurable life I have been suffering for decades.’’

  35. 35.

    HelpThe99ers

    April 3, 2012 at 10:21 pm

    Employer-sponsored health insurance began as a way to attract workers – a fringe benefit that has evolved into a critical component of an employee’s salary and benefit package. Do employees have the right to attach restrictions on their employees’ compensation like this?

    Do employers have the right to tell their employees how they can or can’t spend their paychecks? Is that the next step?

    I can see it now: “This employment contract will prohibit you from purchasing abortion and/or birth control and/or family planning services – after all, money is fungible, and abortion is counter to our corporate moral values.”

  36. 36.

    sfbay

    April 3, 2012 at 10:22 pm

    “I thought the Jesuits were the smart priests.”

    Smart priest is an oxymoron. You’re either a member of the reality-based community or you’re not. This is why I fucking hate these people who say “Well I’m a Muslim/Catholic/Baptist/whatever but I’m pro-choice, liberal etc”. If you’re really so enlightened and liberal you’d leave the fucking church. Or at the very least keep going to church but don’t dare put even a penny in that collection plate.

    I hate to say it, but this is war and you’re either with us or against us.

  37. 37.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:24 pm

    I’ll just remind myself that it is only Catholics that subject their children to these monsters

  38. 38.

    Wilson Heath

    April 3, 2012 at 10:26 pm

    Purges will continue until attendance increases.

    The most apt, compact formulation of the pathology of the Catholic church.

  39. 39.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 10:28 pm

    @some guy: Yeah, a lot of them have this problem, but no one else has a bureaucracy that collects them on lists and shuffles them around and refuse to call the authorities as far as I can tell.

    I guarantee you that the Catholic Church is worse, if for no other reason than they have spent the last decade advertising to pedos that they will throw around the entire institutional weight of the Vatican to protect them. The smart pedos know the risks are lower in the Catholic Church.

  40. 40.

    shortstop

    April 3, 2012 at 10:30 pm

    Aaaagh. Linger on this topic all you want, but don’t ruin this song for me by associating it with these guys. Ah, honey, they just make me mad.

  41. 41.

    SuzieC

    April 3, 2012 at 10:31 pm

    @efgoldman:

    They can hold it between their knees.

    I hope all their female employees resign (sadly, won’t happen), and all their female students, if any, transfer.

  42. 42.

    shortstop

    April 3, 2012 at 10:32 pm

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): The majority of U.S. Jesuit universities and colleges do not cover contraception. This is an odd fact I just happen to be in on.

  43. 43.

    aimai

    April 3, 2012 at 10:35 pm

    Lets not forget the Irish Priest who just showed pornographic images to his stunned flock while trying to update them on confirmation proceedings. He doesn’t know how the images got onto his joystick. I mean, his memory stick.

    aimai

  44. 44.

    Some Loser

    April 3, 2012 at 10:36 pm

    @sfbay:

    Are you seriously implying all religious institutions are right-winged? That there are no liberal religious institutions? That you cannot be a part of the “reality-based” community if you are?

    Are you fucking retarded, or a conservative in disguise? The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but you know what I mean.

    Edit: Fixed now.

  45. 45.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 10:36 pm

    @some guy: Well this is a thread about Catholics so you could just fucking assume by “these monsters” that I meant the Catholic priests.

    Or you could assume I mean no other groups have these problems. Whatever the fuck. I hate these religious threads because you have to fucking caveat every goddamn critique of religion or you get this fucking bullshit all the time.

    What the fuck ever. Let’s pay them all loads of faith based initiative money to rape children. I’ll bring my kids to a secular institution with mandated reporters, thank you very much.

    Here’s a funny joke

  46. 46.

    Punchy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:37 pm

    Id love to know how many years (decades?) their policy covered BC without them knowing. Or should I say without them “knowing”? How convenient they “discover” this in an election year….

  47. 47.

    Mouse Tolliver

    April 3, 2012 at 10:37 pm

    Speaking of Catholic hypocrisy…

    An Irish priest accidentally showed parents and one child 16 x-rated images of naked men while giving a powerpoint presentation on Holy Communion. The pictures were on a memory stick that he brought to the meeting. Parents said he got flustered and bolted out of the room, but came back 20 minutes later to finish the meeting as if nothing happened. Guess he left the room so he could pray away the embarrassing memory of gay.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-17582542

    I suppose we should all be relieved that his porn stash has pictures of naked men, and not young boys.

  48. 48.

    mcd410x

    April 3, 2012 at 10:39 pm

    How can Romney only be halfway to the nomination? This race has been going on for a thousand years.

  49. 49.

    Surly Duff

    April 3, 2012 at 10:40 pm

    See, two non-married people fucking in a dorm room; totally cool, unless they are fucking while using protection. That’s totally wrong.

  50. 50.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 10:40 pm

    @Mouse Tolliver: Dude, the exhibitionism is part of his kink. Flash the porn to families then go wank. Come back 20 minutes later, and you won’t be too nervous about that public speaking gig.

  51. 51.

    DougJ, Head of Infidelity

    April 3, 2012 at 10:42 pm

    @shortstop:

    Down for you is up.

  52. 52.

    Nikki "trex" Haley

    April 3, 2012 at 10:45 pm

    @shortstop

    The majority of U.S. Jesuit universities and colleges do not cover contraception.

    Women don’t care about contraception, the media does. Women care about Obama’s birth certificate and ACORN and voter fraud by minorities (except Sikhs) and tax breaks for hard-working millionaires.

    Women decidedly DON’T care about contraception, tax fraud, or allegations of adultery by a candidate for governess.

  53. 53.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:45 pm

    @aimai:

    Hardcore Gay Porn For Me, But Not For Thee

    loved that squib

  54. 54.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    April 3, 2012 at 10:46 pm

    @Gex: I agree they are, but I’d also forgotten that the best Jesuits were run off by the Polish and Nazi popes, as efgoldman noted above.

  55. 55.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 10:46 pm

    @efgoldman: He learned it from “There’s Something About Mary”.

  56. 56.

    Keith G

    April 3, 2012 at 10:46 pm

    @efgoldman:

    Most people don’t send formal resignations..

    Maybe more should, if they truly are concerned about the community that is their church. The Bishops need to personally experience push back as do the parish priests.

    The excuse I hear from my friends is, “My parish is okay and Father … is very laid back. All that other stuff is just noise from the hierarchy.”

    My words to them (before the subject gets changed) is that if they are not opposing it, they are supporting it and they are part of the problem. If the bishops are to blame, so are the parishioners.

  57. 57.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:48 pm

    @efgoldman:

    actually, Gex was implying a bureacratic totality of pedophilia to the RC Church, and my response was that no one religous institution has a stranglehold on pedophilia (or immorality, or political servitude, etc etc etc)

  58. 58.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    April 3, 2012 at 10:49 pm

    @aimai: there was a similar case in Montana just a couple weeks ago .

    A Roman Catholic priest in Montana has been charged with felony sexual abuse of children after sexual images of naked children were found on his Nintendo DS gaming console and personal computer.

    And while looking for that story, a priest in Philly was arrested for the same thing last month

  59. 59.

    SectarianSofa

    April 3, 2012 at 10:51 pm

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
    Well, fuck the Jesuits. They would know better if they weren’t so busy failing and being shitheads.

  60. 60.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:52 pm

    but no one else has a bureaucracy that collects them on lists and shuffles them around and refuse to call the authorities as far as I can tell

    yes, that is telling.

    sounds like how Muslims Hate Freedom
    Mormons Hate Protestants
    Jews Hate Christians
    Baptists Hate Methodists

    and everyone hates the bureacrats

  61. 61.

    Punchy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:53 pm

    @efgoldman: “probably”?

  62. 62.

    Some Loser

    April 3, 2012 at 10:53 pm

    @efgoldman:

    I am fine when people criticize or attack religious people who actually do this bullshit. Religious institutions that insert themselves into the public sector and try to influence policies need to be criticized and attacked when necessary; religious institutions that engage in illegal behavior needs to be criticized too.

    Mocking and criticizing organizations that engage in this behavior is fine with me.

    But that is not what sfbay did. S/He made a blanket statement about all religions, religious institutions, and religious people. And that “reality-based” community bullshit. I am okay with trashing people on their actual positions, but saying religious people are not part of “reality-based” community because they are religious is bullshit.

    It is no better than what wingnuts regularly spew out.

  63. 63.

    Chris

    April 3, 2012 at 10:53 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    This is depressing. I thought the Jesuits were the smart priests.

    Jesuits aren’t smart, just open-minded, I think. From my recollection, they’ve basically produced everything from communists to fascists and every conceivable ideology in between them.

    But JP2 and Benny Palpatine put a lot of pressure on them (largely because of that), so maybe they’ve started moving back into line. Who was this priest speaking for, anyway? Was it supposed to be on behalf of the entire Society?

  64. 64.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:54 pm

    @efgoldman:

    Unitarians, what the fuck is up with their rejection of the Holy Trinity?

  65. 65.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 10:55 pm

    @some guy: I was implying no such thing asshole. The thread is about Catholics. I said at least only Catholics bring their kids to these people.

    Fuck you. Learn how to read.

  66. 66.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:55 pm

    @Some Loser:

    yes.

    /head nodding

  67. 67.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 10:57 pm

    @Gex:

    ETA: There’s a war on in which if I say something that hurts the fee-fees of these assholes, it makes me the bad guy. Fuck all this noise. I’ll just remind myself that it is only Catholics that subject their children to these monsters, and if they don’t care, I shouldn’t.
    Reply
    April 3rd, 2012 at 10:08 pm

    learn how to totalize, dolt.

  68. 68.

    Some Loser

    April 3, 2012 at 10:58 pm

    @efgoldman:

    Seriously. Read the post I was replying to. sfbay was definitely not just talking about Catholics. S/He was implying all religious institutions are conservative political machines like the Catholic Church. That is a bullshit claim.

  69. 69.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 11:00 pm

    It’s funny. I thought the topic of a post provided a context for the discussion in the context of those posts. Apparently not.

  70. 70.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    April 3, 2012 at 11:00 pm

    Surveys have shown that an overwhelming majority of Catholic women of reproductive age have used contraception at some point, despite the church’s teaching.

    This is the bit I don’t get. Why do people who ignore or defy the teachings of the Catholic Church continue to identify themselves as Catholics, and continue to remain active in the Church? If the HMFiC told me (for example) that I couldn’t use couldn’t use birth control because it was a sin and that abortion was also a sin, I’d tell the HMFiC to shove it and I’d take a walk. I don’t understand people who self-identify with a religion, but treat dogma and doctrine as if it were something they can pick and choose from. If the dogma and doctrine require obedience, and if a person doesn’t agree with elements of that dogma and doctrine and refuses to follow them, then that person should have enough integrity to walk away, and stop pretending to be a “believer”.

    I can understand people who can continue to follow a religion in the face of hypocrisy of church leaders, but I’m less patient with people who say “I’m Catholic/Mormon/Baptist, I just don’t follow all the teachings of the Church.”

  71. 71.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 11:00 pm

    @some guy: THESE is kind of a key word there, innit?

    ETA: As opposed to THOSE, for instance.

  72. 72.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 11:02 pm

    @Gex:

    actually, “only” is the keyword. learn how to totalize, dolt.

  73. 73.

    Keith G

    April 3, 2012 at 11:04 pm

    @efgoldman: They are human (technically) so if an action gets tied to a negative consequence, they will think about it. If they get heckled and chewed out by the flock and at the same time recites fall, the Bishops will have something to talk about. Their souls may need god, but their lifestyles need tithes and their sense of entitlement needs willing accomplices.

  74. 74.

    Some Loser

    April 3, 2012 at 11:06 pm

    @Gex:

    To be fair, your post was unclear. Can you not see how easily someone could come to the conclusion that you meant the Catholic Church was the only institution that shields or deals in pedophiles. Some Guy misread your post, but your post is not as clear as you seem to think it was.

  75. 75.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 11:11 pm

    @Some Loser: And continuing to go after me when I clarified that I meant only Catholics take their kids to the Catholic Church?

    Anyways, they’re the only one with the all expenses paid retirement to Rome. Just ask Bernard Law. Newly promoted Cardinal Dolan now has Vatican citizenship and when the Milwaukee stuff really heats up, he might get one of those too.

  76. 76.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    April 3, 2012 at 11:14 pm

    @Some Loser:

    Horseshit. Pedophilia is not limited to the Catholic Church, but the Catholic Church as an institution has provided a safe haven for pedophile priests, sheltering them from exposure, civil and criminal liability, and has enabled these same pedophiles for years by shuffling them from parish to parish.

    While some leaders from other religions have also been pedophiles, the other religious groups have not provided the same amount of cover to those pedophiles, certainly not on as well-organized and ongoing basis as the Catholic Church.

  77. 77.

    shortstop

    April 3, 2012 at 11:17 pm

    @DougJ, Head of Infidelity: That bassline is now playing in my brain as a sort of wallpaper to the evening. It’s very pleasant.

  78. 78.

    lamh35

    April 3, 2012 at 11:19 pm

    OT: So it seems that Obama may have locked up the geek vote with just one picture. For all the sci-fi geeks/Star Trek fan out there:

    “Live Long and Prosper

  79. 79.

    Some Loser

    April 3, 2012 at 11:19 pm

    @Comrade Scrutinizer:
    What is horseshit about my post again?

    The part about Some Guy misreading Gex initial post, or the part about Gex’s post not being as clear she or he thinks it is?

    My post did not mention the validity of Gex’s point. I only mentioned the clarity of said point.

    @Gex:

    Um, I just looked through the thread a second time. You were the one who continued attacking after you made your point.

  80. 80.

    DougJ, Head of Infidelity

    April 3, 2012 at 11:20 pm

    @shortstop:

    Such a sad song though.

  81. 81.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 3, 2012 at 11:21 pm

    @sfbay: As an agnostic/non-believer type, I will simply say that is not a particularly helpful remark.

  82. 82.

    scav

    April 3, 2012 at 11:23 pm

    @Comrade Scrutinizer: Don’t omit that they’ve done this on an international scale and for decades (certainly back to the 40s). They have form.

  83. 83.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 11:23 pm

    @Some Loser: I was being attacked and fighting back. Either way…

    I am sorry, some guy. I obviously wasn’t very clear and then it got worse when I got angry.

    I still believe the Catholics are much much worse.

    8000 unreported cases in Milwaukee. It infuriates me.

  84. 84.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 11:24 pm

    @Gex:
    Anyways, they’re the only one with the all expenses paid retirement to Rome.

    The Brooklyn DA recently arrested an astounding 85 Jewish Orthodox men on charges of child sex abuse. Back in 1985 a Hasidic “therapist” was indicted for abusing five boys, but police suspected he abused more than a hundred. Avrohom Mondrowitz fled to Israel, where he remains to this day a free man. Those nice guys who shoot rock-throwing Palestinian children refuse to extradite him. Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes now has to tread carefully. Fifty rabbis have signed a public announcement in Yiddish denouncing the Hasidic family who went to the cops. They asked—now get this—for any believer to kill the family that informed “on fellow Jews.” So what will happen to the 85 perverts? All I know is the Times has not published a word, whereas when the Catholic Church sex scandal broke, it led the news in the front page for months. There is something very evil when rabbis who hate the non-Jewish world can dictate to an abused child’s parents whether or not to talk to the mostly non-Jewish fuzz. If some parent were to go and firebomb the Times, we might see it appear on the back pages.

  85. 85.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 11:26 pm

    Wow. How big of you.

  86. 86.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 3, 2012 at 11:27 pm

    @Gex: It did, but, as usual, the topic morphed.

  87. 87.

    Gex

    April 3, 2012 at 11:28 pm

    @scav: They get more defense from Catholics here than in Ireland. Ireland has just about had it.

  88. 88.

    shortstop

    April 3, 2012 at 11:30 pm

    @DougJ, Head of Infidelity: Yes, but I’ve always loved it. I bought the 1969 live album in 1983 or 1984 (because I was a tiny girl in 1969) and I remember my then-boyfriend and I lying on our backs in the grass on a summer night, listening to that song drifting out the window. We’d take turns going inside to move the needle, pad back outside, flop down and listen to it again…and again.

  89. 89.

    Mnemosyne

    April 3, 2012 at 11:30 pm

    And every single one of those 935 employees is a Roman Catholic, right? Because otherwise this looks a whole lot like the university dictating religious practice to its employees regardless of the employee’s religious beliefs.

  90. 90.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 11:31 pm

    rome vs. jerusalem.

    opinions differ on which city pedophiles find more comfortable

  91. 91.

    shortstop

    April 3, 2012 at 11:33 pm

    Er, some people are bein’ rather jesuitical in their arguments here, what?

  92. 92.

    shortstop

    April 3, 2012 at 11:34 pm

    @shortstop: I have no idea why I said that in the voice of Lord Peter Wimsey.

  93. 93.

    Martin

    April 3, 2012 at 11:34 pm

    @some guy: Was only one vacancy on the nominating committee. Something had to give.

  94. 94.

    scav

    April 3, 2012 at 11:34 pm

    @Gex: Even the Italians and the Spanish have essentially had it. And those † were on paper the stalwarts of their European camp.

    ETA: † meaning, the 3, including Ireland.

  95. 95.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 11:37 pm

    it is only Catholics that subject their children to these monsters,

    So far, about 38 cases in the Brooklyn D.A.’s Project Kol Tzedek — which the [New York] Post translates as Hebrew for “voice of justice” … — have been closed, with just under two thirds resulting in the perps walking free. Many pleaded to lesser changes, with the Post claiming that some got off mostly scot-free because “victims or their parents backed out under community pressure.” (see here)

  96. 96.

    Chris

    April 3, 2012 at 11:39 pm

    @Gex:

    “Among the best traitors Ireland has ever had, Mother Church ranks at the very top, a massive obstacle in the path to equality and freedom. She has been a force for conservatism… to ward off threats to her own security and influence.”

    Bernadette Devlin McAliskey.

  97. 97.

    some guy

    April 3, 2012 at 11:42 pm

    “Jacob” is also typical of many Mondrowitz victims. [Avrahom Mondrowitz is the non-extradictable rabbi mentioned by Taki who has lived happily in Israel since 1984. According to Lesher, Mondrowitz “sodomized or otherwise abused hundreds of Orthodox Jewish children in the early 1980s.” The only reason he was caught was because he began preying on Italian children who eventually went to the police.] He is bitter when he describes how Orthodox rabbis, fearful of the sort of publicity Mondrowitz’s arrest and trial would have brought to Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, worked behind the scenes for decades to prevent Mondrowitz’s prosecution. …

    “Why do you think,” he asks, “that it took so many years for him to be reported to the police in the first place? While he was abusing kids the whole time. You think nobody knew? Plenty of rabbis knew. But he only got in trouble when he went after the Italian kids on his block. . . . Our community never wanted him reported.” …

    it is only Catholics that subject their children to these monsters

    learn to totalize, you fucking Dolt

  98. 98.

    sfbay

    April 3, 2012 at 11:56 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: You’re part of the damn problem too, calling yourself “agnostic”. I’m sick of hearing people describe themselves as agnostic when they are clearly atheists who have been cowed by those who wish to make atheist a dirty word. Unless there is a deity that you explicitly believe in you are an atheist by definition, so that includes you “agnostics”. I know that many people mean well and/or just don’t know any better, but it’s annoying nonetheless.

    I won’t speak for Unitarianism or Buddhism, but the past month or so has so clearly exposed the Catholic Church to be an enemy of democracy, freedom, human rights, and the female sex that I feel damn comfortable making all the blanket statements about these fuckers that I feel like. If you are a Catholic and you are offended by that, don’t get mad at me, get mad at the corrupt, morally-bankrupt, mean-spirited troglodytes running the show. If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.

  99. 99.

    scav

    April 4, 2012 at 12:03 am

    The whizzing noise that some guy is missing is the concept of scale and international organization. It isn’t a surprise that other so-called holy people fail utterly to live up to their protestations of holiness, nor that they are protected by people with vested emotional interest in the continued pretense of holiness. It’s pretty much why family members get away with the same behavior and don’t get turned in; nobody wants the shame or the fuss, so things are tidily tucked under rugs along with the kids. But, so long as you think that selling weed behind the school and running an international drug-smuggling operation are merely exactly equivalent examples of the same thing . . . I’m not quite sure what some guy wants everyone to agree to, everybody prostitutes their kids to religious or football institutions so it’s all good? But now with sfbay refusing to believe in the possibility of being uncertain about something, the whole thread has degenerated into the usual nonsense.

  100. 100.

    sfbay

    April 4, 2012 at 12:18 am

    I’m not refusing to believe in uncertainty, I was saying that all agnostics are by definition atheists and we need more people on the left to be radicalized and unafraid of calling a spade a spade like DougJ is always saying. What makes people so uncertain anyway? “Well, there’s precisely zero empirical evidence for any gods existing anywhere ever, but gosh darn I’m still uncertain”. If someone asked you if you believed in Neptune would you say “I’m agnostic”? I mean there’s technically a non-zero chance that the whole universe was squirted out of a giant mustard bottle, so are you “agnostic” to that possibility too?

    At some point you need to face the odds.

  101. 101.

    Mnemosyne

    April 4, 2012 at 12:29 am

    @sfbay:

    What makes people so uncertain anyway?

    Personal experiences that cannot be explained another way, but also don’t fit neatly into any existing religious tradition.

    But, yes, I realize that I am The Enemy because I’m unwilling to ignore my personal experiences and go with what some guy on the internet tells me I should believe.

  102. 102.

    Gex

    April 4, 2012 at 12:30 am

    @some guy: That makes 8000 pale by comparison, I agree.

  103. 103.

    Gex

    April 4, 2012 at 12:32 am

    8000

  104. 104.

    Gex

    April 4, 2012 at 12:36 am

    I’ll laugh my ass off if we’ve got one of NOM’s paid bloggers here mucking up these threads. Odds are pretty good.

  105. 105.

    scav

    April 4, 2012 at 12:49 am

    @sfbay: There’s still the verdict of unproven as a state distinct from guilty or innocent. World isn’t tidily binary and things unproven to exist may yet be swimming about the planet, let alone universe. There may or may not be dark matter or the yeti, or the Higgs boson. There are undoubtedly agnostics that are attending church services doing the traditional hedging of bets or perhaps hoping to find evidence there. To insist they are by definition atheists is neither entirely true nor fair, no matter your need for more spades in your hand. Given a weather prediction of thunderstorms, there seems to me at least to be a wide variety of bringing or not bringing various types of rain gear and rearranging plans to lump everybody into the RAIN! or NO RAIN! camps without exception. As to the agnostic about the giant mustard bottle, I’m pretty sure about it not being the yellow stuff but would rather enjoy the stone ground variety being part of the Big Squirt. Alas, I probably won’t be bringing my umbrella (unbeliefella? paramustard?) against that prediction but I would have enjoyed choosing one of the correct strength and color.

  106. 106.

    Kinky Beats

    April 4, 2012 at 1:11 am

    Am I seeing a Velvet Underground reference in the title of this blog post?

  107. 107.

    nastybrutishntall

    April 4, 2012 at 2:20 am

    @sfbay: well, the whole something existing instead of nothing, and that something producing life capable of contemplating that something… ooh, it makes you wonder.

    oh, and fuck off. that’s pretty certain, that you should do that.

  108. 108.

    Bago

    April 4, 2012 at 2:35 am

    8000 is not over 9000.

  109. 109.

    Marcellus Shale, Public Dick

    April 4, 2012 at 3:52 am

    maybe it actually is a savvy plan to increase enrollment. i mean theoretically even homeschool fundies have to go to college somewhere. amirite?

    so, if the catholic leaders can show they are just as batshit and out of touch as the fundies, healing the schism or whatever, they can draw in the fundie kids who can choose someplace other than bobby jones, or regent. even if the reputation of the catholic colleges fades over time, there is still enough of it left for the forseeable future to appeal to fundies who are looking to break the fucknutz ceiling that keeps them stuck in the bible belt.

  110. 110.

    Kathleen

    April 4, 2012 at 5:03 am

    @BigHank53: I think the key word in the linked article was “donor” and the catering to thereof. Mike Doyle, a former priest who at the chruch’s behest investigated sexual abuse of children in the 80’s, once noted that the church would protect the child rapists (my words), but the minute a priest put his hand in the till he was gone, no questions asked.

  111. 111.

    Schlemizel

    April 4, 2012 at 7:50 am

    Here is a link to a story about the local thugs trying to indoctrinate kids at a Catholic High School in Minneapolis – sounds like it didn’t go so well 8-{D Money quote, : Mike O’Keefe, a spokesman for the school, said that other students were mad that some of the students spoke out and thought that some of them were “rude” to the visitors from the archdiocese.

    http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/146031865.html

  112. 112.

    Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)

    April 4, 2012 at 9:25 am

    If this isn’t scorpion-on-frog action, I don’t know what is.

    It took me a minute to catch the reference. At first I thought Rick Santorum had been going on about the evils of gayness again, but I couldn’t find any reference to kinky sex in the story.

  113. 113.

    Interrobang

    April 4, 2012 at 1:08 pm

    @some guy: Okay, so when you can demonstrate that Hasidic communities have been systematically covering up for pedophiles by, say, moving multiple pedophiles to multiple places for over 50 years, you might have something. Then you’d have to show that Hasidic rabbis had gone on record claiming that they didn’t go to the authorities because they “knew it was a sin, but didn’t know it was a crime” and so on.

    Then you’d have to demonstrate that it was happening simultaneously in multiple countries all over the world, and that the conspiracy to make sure that pedophile Hasids got safely away to Israel went all the way to the worldwide leaders of Hasidic Judaism, then you might have a point.

    Given that there IS NO JEWISH ANALOGUE TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BECAUSE JEWS DO NOT HAVE THAT KIND OF CENTRAL WORLDWIDE AUTHORITY STRUCTURE, your analogy fails. Holy fuck, how dense do you have to be not to see that? (Yes, there are Hasidic rabbis who lead subsects of Hasidism, but they’re nothing like equivalent to the Pope or the church hierarchy, given that even other Hasidic Jews think they’re not worth listening to. Goddamn.)

    Nobody is saying that other religions don’t have pedophiles, or pedophile coverups, but everyone has been saying, repeatedly, over and over again for years, that the Caholic Church’s problem is that the corruption is worldwide and goes to the highest levels in the Vatican, and shitheads like you for some reason KEEP NOT GETTING THAT PART because you’re so in love with either the Catholic Church or the Golden Mean Fallacy that you just won’t.

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