Blaming The Victims
In case anyone was assuming that having a Pope who had been a member of the Hitlerjugend would make the Catholic hierarchy somewhat more reticent to Godwin any criticism of the Church, you would be wrong. A senior Vatican priest today said that the grilling the Church is taking over sex and physical abuse scandals led him to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.
I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. The Onion pretty well predicted the Church's reaction back in 2002: "Pope Forgives Molested Children."
posted by QueensGuy @ 1:01 PM
2 Comments:
Classic case of people only talking to other people who agree with them. I'm sure that sounded like a great argument around the table at the Curia
Actually there was no discussion at the "curia" about this, since this was said during a sermon given by one priest (Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa). He was (or claimed to be) reading this from a letter he had received from "a Jewish friend".
I certainly agree that, even if this was in a letter, Cantalemessa was pretty dumb not to realize that (1) this analogy is indefensible and (2) this analogy is going to offend a lot of people, including but not limited to Jews and victims of abuse. And maybe priests who preach in the churches in Vatican City should run their sermons past a bureaucrat in some Vatican office. But in fact they don't.
And Cantalemessa is Italian and was never a member of the Hitler Youth.
By the way, that's not even the dumbest part of his sermon. The dumbest part is "By a rare coincidence, this year our Easter falls on the same week of the Jewish Passover...."
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