February 18, 2004
Desecration My Ass!
VIA Peter of go_wade_in
Desecration? Dedication! by Anna Quindlen in the Feb. 23rd issue of Newsweek:
In a recent sermon, Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, who somehow managed for a long time to contain his public outrage at pedophiles in the priestly ranks, decried the notion of same-sex marriage and referred to "the desecration of something sacred." The marriages we're talking about are civil marriages, which are so short of being sanctified in the eyes of the church that it will scarcely recognize their existence if you are Roman Catholic. And in a secular nation, why should church leaders be required to acknowledge civil marriage or, for that matter, be attended to when they pass judgment on what they will not acknowledge? Let them police the rites they have the right to regulate.
[deleted] profane rant against Egan, pedophile co-conspirator [/deleted]
Posted by ronn at February 18, 2004 11:31 PM
Its amazing how soon they forget and how quickly they rush to pick up a stone to toss.
That's why they're going to hell wearing gasoline panties!
Why do you censor yourself?
Jimi: It's not so much censoring myself, but keeping calm and rational. Something I wish the Religious Wrong would do at least once. I also didn't want to use a broad brush to paint all religious people as bigots for the relatively few assholes abusing biblical verses like there's no tomorrow.
If you peruse my archives, you can see that I lost my cool a few times. It's not pretty, nor necessary.
Jeez, I was raised Catholic and I can still remember when the Catholic church used to stand for something. But we should remember a couple of things. First, the church hierarchy is as homophobic as they come. The bishops who are closet cases are the worst because their self loathing knows no bounds.
And second, many of these priests accused of sexual abuse come from a generation where the priesthood was seen as an option for a young gay man to try to "cure" himself of his homosexuality, which of course only made things much worse. Most of the abuse at the hands of these priests have been young men in their mid teens, and the priests themselves were often in their early to mid thirties, so it does not strictly qualify as pedophilia as much as an abuse of power. You see now how many of these accused priests are in their 50s and 60s and beyond. They paid a terrible price in their own lives and the church did nothing to help them but bury them even deeper in the closet by hushing the abuse up for decades.
The priests themselves bear responsibility to be sure, but bishops and cardinals like Egan are scum in the purest sense of the word
don: I should have used another word instead of "pedophile." Conjures up too much of the rhetoric that gay-bashers use to try to discredit us. Read somewhere last year that there are tons more girls and young women abused by priest than boys; you'd never know with all the hysteria caused by recent uproars -- of course, I can't and won't excuse the outcry because even a single abused child or young adult is one too many.
Before the Religious Wrong tries to save marriage, they should save themselves.