Vatican gets it wrong again.

Cardinals claim opposition to gay marriage, abortion fuelling 'hate' campaign.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the Pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the Pope and the Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.

"The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.

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Well... you could put it that way... or, better still, you could say that people are attacking the Catholic Church because their employees abused hundreds of thousands of children all over the world and they were never punished and often protected. I know! It sounds amazing.

At Vatican Service, Persecution of Jews Is Invoked

ROME - A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church - which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI's oversight role in two cases - to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican's counterattack.

Link: NY Times

A leading advocate for sex abuse victims in the United States, David Clohessy, called comparing criticism of the church to persecution of the Jews "breathtakingly callous and misguided."

"Men who deliberately and consistently hide child sex crime are in no way victims," he said. "And to conflate public scrutiny with horrific violence is about as wrong as wrong can be."

Hey Vatican! Dig Up!

These people are ridiculous. They just cannot get it. Their arguments from moral authority are totally worthless and useless. They took their moral authority and flushed it down the toilet when they enabled child rapists year after year then showed no sign of remorse. They have this model in mind that you can take a pedophile, pray at him for a while and his sexual drives will magically go away.

The Great Catholic Cover-Up

On March 10, the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican," and that "when one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true-including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia." This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good material explanation.

Link: Slate

The Hitch is about his important work again. :)

Vatican chorister and usher in gay prostitution scandal

Ghinedu Ehiem, a Nigerian, was dismissed by the Vatican from a prestigious choir after his name appeared in transcripts of police wiretaps.
In the wiretaps, Mr Eheim is allegedly heard negotiating over the procurement of male prostitutes.

The wiretaps were carried out in connection with a probe into corruption in contracts to build public works, including the planned venue in Sardinia of last year's G8 summit.

Among four people arrested last month in the corruption probe was Angelo Balducci, an engineer who is a board member of Italy's public works department and a construction consultant to the Vatican.

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Same story. Just good to see it's getting some coverage.

Gay prostitution ring linked to Vatican

VATICAN CITY - One of Pope Benedict's ceremonial ushers and a member of an elite choir in St Peter's Basilica have been implicated in a gay prostitution ring, in the latest sexual scandal to taint the Vatican.

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My favorite question: Is this religion teaching people how to be good?
These horrible, hypocritical people presume to tell us we should listen to their instruction on correct moral behaviour. Come on!