Tuesday, 8 June 2010

Are you a Catholic priest who's raped a child? Click here to learn about conscience

Another week, another revelation of abuse and cover ups in the Catholic Church. This week's Guardian Weekend magazine ran the account of a woman raped at age 13 by the priest living in her house, whose own mother chose to see her as the sinner. It takes a pretty big leap of faith to go for a perception quite that twisted, but if anyone can, a Catholic can.

The Pope's choice to run the UK inquiry into the whole horror, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, has blamed it all on the creeping menace of 'secularisation'. Unless that's the new term for sexual psychopaths, I'm confused. Out here in Secular World we generally believe child rape is wrong. We have not only a judicial system but also, most of us, a conscience. Clue for clerical rapists: that's the bit of you that tells you when you're doing something harmful to others, so that even when your own bosses don't hold you to account, you take responsibility yourself and stop. That way, when you somehow escape prosecution for a crime that in Secular World would put you in prison, you can still Do the Right Thing. See?

Of course, you'd think, being so big on Guilt and Sin and all, this lot would feel just a little badly about wrecking the lives of so many innocent children on a scale that amounts to psychic genocide, but that's the brilliance of their particular brand of DoubleThink. They are, after all, the people who helped promote anti-semitism by labelling Jews the killers of Christ, and supposed concocters of sinister, global conspiracies against nice, harmless Christians. Time to re-examine that one, I think. When it comes to international conspiracies, the Jews can't hold a seven-branched candlestick to these guys.