P&T: Bullshit - The Vatican

[mastersantiago]

http://watchtvshowsonlinefree.info/penn-teller-bullshit-s07e10

Seems pretty accurate to everything I know about the Catholic Church at this point. I am curious to know what my friends who are Catholic think about P&T's treatment of this particular topic.

Comments

[cpxbrex]

I'm not Catholic, but I was, so I'm definitely gonna chime in, hehe.

That cyclical, about how to deal with priests and sexual abuse, is something I've read. The story was broke, I believe, by the Guardian UK and it says precisely what Bullshit says it says - that the victims of sexual abuse by priests are sworn to secrecy on pains of excommunication. And affirmation of that written by Cardinal Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict XVI - is also real. The Pope, himself, said that you can't talk about sex abuse cases until after the victim is well into adulthood on pain of excommunication. That's all just fact.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the Vatican has swayed one inch from this position. Right now, in Ireland, there is this huge row over a Catholic organization that raised orphans and committed . . . I mean, just atrocities. These kids were basically slaves, including sex slaves, of the people who ran these organizations, both boys and girls. The victims run into the tens of thousands. The Catholic Church is refusing to give up their information about this. here's one link so you can get a scale of the crimes. Six decades of abuse of thirty-five thousand orphans. But, y'know, the Catholic Church is protecting the criminals.

So, really, Penn and Teller were really being pretty gentle with the Catholic Church. I think it's fair to say that if any secular organization tortured thirty-five thousand orphans for six decades and then hid the criminals that it would be regarded as an international criminal organization and be destroyed. But because they're a religion, y'know, we hesitate to do what is obvious and stop them. We should investigate these crimes ruthlessly, and anyone - up to and including the Pope - who gets in the way should be prosecuted as interfering with an investigation (and probably crimes against humanity while we're at it). But I wouldn't hold my breath for that one. ;)