Belgium Is Presumably Only One of Many Nations Where Priests Abuse with Impunity

[There are some fine priests and Catholic Churches, but as we know from our American experience, unmarried priests (and bishops) are a menace to young people of both genders. Presumably this is a widespread criminal phenomenon -- protected by Church authorities from prosecution. The Catholic Church needs a new Martin Luther -- it has a number of internal critics whom it silences. The Roman model simply does not work, as we see from the Belgian horrors. The Vatican has been violating human rights for many centuries -- all those thousands of burnings at the stake, wars between Christian countries, crusades, pogroms, and the Holocaust with its background of decades of anti-Semitic German biblical scholars. My grand father was one who studied in Germany (Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies at Yale eventually) who was horrified by his German scholarly colleagues who were setting the stage for Hitler.

I find it ironic that Benedict is now traveling in the highest circles in Britain.

What more can one expect of an ex Hitler youth?

Ed Kent]

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In Britain, Pope Criticizes Response to Abuse Crisis

GLASGOW — Pope Benedict XVI arrived Thursday in Scotland, offering his strongest criticism yet of the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of the sexual abuse crisis. He said that church leaders had not been “sufficiently vigilant” or “sufficiently swift and decisive” in cracking down on abusers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/world/europe/17pope.html?ref=todayspaper
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent [blind copies]