In the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, one of the many phony conspiracy theories circulating in Trumpland was that Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager John Podesta, were affiliated with a child abuse/pedophile ring running out of a Washington D.C. pizzeria.
The whole hullabaloo, known as “Pizzagate”, was circulated on social media sites like Reddit and Voat and other right-wing wack-job websites like InfoWars. One white billy-bob from North Carolina drove all the way to D.C. and went inside the restaurant and fired off a rifle! The owners received numerous other death threats.
It was all bullshit, like so many other musings from Trumpland. But apparently pedophilia and child abuse had become very sensitive issues to Trumpians.
So it was quite surprising that there was complete silence from Trumpland when a grand jury in Pittsburgh recently released a report stating that over 300 priests sexually abused a minimum of 1000 children, “but that there were probably thousands more”, over the last 70 years in just 6 Pennsylvania dioceses. And the Catholic Church did (and is still doing) everything in its power to cover it up and keep it from the public. Where’s the outrage? Where’s the condemnation from Conservative America? Why aren’t parishioners fleeing the pews by the millions?
Perhaps Trumplanders are only outraged if the conspiracy involves Hillary Clinton. But here we have real, institutional child abuse and it didn’t even provoke a pepperoni burp from Trump supporters. I have still not heard the President of the United States mention so much as a word about it.
But this is not a blog about Trump or his blind, deaf, dumb and hypocritical supporters. This article is about the foul, disgusting, cruel and archaic institution known as the Catholic Church.
In addition to the Pittsburgh grand jury report, there were recent reports of mass abuses by the Catholic Church in Chile (70 clergy, at least 104 victims), Australia (dozens of clergy and over 4,000 claimants) and Ireland (“hundreds of priests and thousands of victims” per Wikipedia). Attorney Generals is New York, New Jersey and Missouri recently commissioned investigations into sex abuse allegations by the Catholic Church in those states. These are new cases, over and above the thousands of already-known cases that have plagued the Church for 40 years or more. (For a quick refresher, see the movie “Spotlight” (2015) about the journalists who broke the first major priest abuse scandal in Boston in 2002.)
The Catholic Church is complicit in the largest institutional case of child sexual abuse maybe ever. And to make it worse, they are equally complicit in the largest institutional case of sex abuse cover-up ever.
Bill Maher, the comedian and political commentator, said on his show recently about the Pittsburgh revelations: “If over 300 technicians at Jiffy Lube were found to have committed child sexual abuse, would you still take your car there?”
Or what about the company you work for? If over 300 of your current or former associates were convicted as child abusers, would you continue working there?
How about the school you send your children to? If you knew that over 300 current or former teachers, staff members or administration officials were child predators, would you still send little Sallie Lou and Bobby Earl to school tomorrow?
I’m going to assume you’ve answered “NO” to all of the above. If not, please stop reading this article, close my blog site and never come back.
Not only should you not attend, support, patronize or join such groups but any business, school, organization, club or religion with that track-record of abuse and predation should be shunned, marginalized and in the worst cases, eradicated. All participants, enablers, abusers and accomplices should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
The Catholic Church is guilty of abusing children and women not just for the last few decades, but for the last 1000 years or more. The Church fathers would like you to believe the current sex abuse crisis is strictly a modern phenomenon. In fact, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sanctioned a study in 2004:
“A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church’s sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were to blame.
Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s.
The ‘blame Woodstock’ explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI after it erupted in Europe in 2010.”
(Full article at: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/us/18bishops.html)
(Full abuse report at: http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/The-Nature-and-Scope-of-Sexual-Abuse-of-Minors-by-Catholic-Priests-and-Deacons-in-the-United-States-1950-2002.pdf)
The Church blamed the entire sex abuse scandal on “the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960’s and 70’s.” Now we can all rest assured that prior to the 1960’s, sexual abuse by clergy was practically non-existent!
What a bunch of crap! The only reason why they can pretend to get away with this ridiculous assessment is because the reporting of sexual abuse by clergy suddenly accelerated in the 1960’s and 70’s; so in their feeble minds, the abuses must have started then too.
Like a lot of religious hoo-ha, they have it all backwards. Social and sexual mores of the 1960’s and 70’s were responsible for bringing cases of abuse into the “Spotlight” so to speak. As women’s rights advanced they became more outspoken about sexual abuse of all kinds. Free Love never meant abuse was free too.
The 1960’s and 70’s brought priest abuse literally out of the closet. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist before. For centuries the Catholic Church has committed, permitted and covered-up systemic sexual abuse. Think about the power that priests, deacons and bishops held over the last 1000 years. When abuses took place, it was the victim’s word against the local authority from God’s own Church — someone who could ruin the victim’s life and even turn his/her own family against them. One can understand why the victims were too afraid or embarrassed to report it.
While all theistic religions have demonstrated incredible corruption, moral vacuity and predatory behavior, Catholicism leads the way in many categories. But Christianity started out so differently. 
In Jesus’s ministry, women played an important role and may even have been Apostles with equal standing. (Notice who is sitting to Jesus’s right in the Last Supper by DaVinci at right).The first of Jesus’ disciples to notice his empty tomb and to see him in a ‘resurrected’ form, were women. Later, Paul’s letters mention women who were leaders of their respected church groups.
However by the 2nd Century CE, the role of women had greatly diminished. By then, virtually all Church leaders or inspirational voices were male. None of the Apologists (2nd-4th century defenders of Christianity) were women. In my opinion, it is because of the influence of Paul on church doctrine. (Yes, I mean St. Paul, but I never thought of him as much of a Saint). Paul was a fanatically rigid religious zealot, and, from his own writings, a blatant misogynist. (1 Corinthians 7:7-14, 11:7-25, 14:33-38, 1 Timothy 2:9-15, amongst others.) He orders that women be barred from even speaking in church much less leading the services. He also councils that celibacy is a purer form of devotion than marriage.
Centuries later, after the fall of Rome (approx. 500 CE), the Church became the central authority in Europe and its largest landowner. There was no other governmental authority aside from an often distant Prince or King. But most villages had a church whose priest served as the arbiter of local disputes and disagreements. Who then could stop or prosecute an abusive priest?
It was during this time that monastic and covenant orders became popular throughout Europe and N. Africa. These orders attracted devout men and women who believed that the Church as a whole was inherently corrupt and, in particular, that urban society was the most corrupting influence. Hence, by retreating from society, monks and nuns could live more religiously pure lives, completely centered upon devotion to Jesus. But even those conditions could not immune the most devout Christians from the sin of sex and sexual abuse:
“In the ninth century, … many convents were brothels in which babies were killed and buried. Since the end of the Roman Empire, historians say that infanticide was probably not practised in the West on any great scale except in convents. 
The Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in the year 836 openly admitted it. As to the sex-starved secular clergy, they were so often accused of incest that they were at length forbidden even to have mothers, aunts or sisters living in their house. Children, the fruits of incest, were killed by the clergy, as many a French prelate put on record.” [DeRosa, 404]
“A council at Aix-la-Chapelle [Aachen] denounced certain convents for practicing infanticide in order to dispose of the evidence of their inmates’ sexual activities.” [Wilson, 17]
(both quotes from 666christiancrimes.com)
This was Catholicism 1200 years ago! Don’t tell me this current rash of priest abuse is an anomaly. Widespread sexual abuse and sexual crimes against scripture in the Catholic clergy have always been as commonplace as sacramental wine!
Ultimately a second, sex related, issue emerged. Married clergymen were passing privileged and powerful positions in the Church to their male offspring from generation to generation, regardless of the heir’s qualifications and temperament for the job.
To this end, Pope Leo IX (1049-54), a Reformist-minded monk from the Benedictine monastery at Cluny, France, started the final successful push to force celibacy on all Catholic clergy. His reforms were canonized in two later Councils (1123 and 1139) which prohibited ordained clergymen from entering into marriage.
No other monotheistic faith has so centrally and authoritatively banned marriage (and especially intercourse) among its priesthood.
Sadly, this not just about celibate men. Yet another recent report coming out of the St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington Vermont reminds us that forced celibacy among women is equally unsustainable. “More than 100 former residents of St. Joseph’s have charged in recent years that they and others were beaten and molested, tormented and humiliated.” (https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2018/08/27/nuns-recall-abuses-st-josephs-orphanage/1108459002/)
And Catholic corruption isn’t always about sex. There has, for centuries, routinely been corruption at the very highest levels of the Church – the Pope himself. Here’s a sampler from the 9th and 10th centuries:
After Pope Nicholas (858-867), the papacy became nothing more than a prize over which powerful families and royalty fought. According to Justo Gonzalez in “The Story of Christianity Vol. 1” one pope was murdered in his bed by a blow to the head with a mallet. In 904 CE, there were three men, all of whom claimed to be the rightful pope. Sergio II emerged as the sole pope by incarcerating and killing the other two. Another pope was captured by rivals and suffocated with a pillow. Benedict VI was strangled. John XIV died of poisoning or starvation. Benedict IX was 15 years old when he became pope and was later paid to abdicate. He eventually changed his mind and competed with the two other claimants to be Pope. King Henry III of Germany formed a council that decided to strip all three popes from the office and appointed Clement II in their place.
All this took place over 175 years! This is just one ancient snapshot of the farce that is the Papacy. It has never stopped.
The Vatican and Vatican Bank were secretly complicit with the Nazi’s and the Holocaust in World War II. Then there were the banking scandals of the 1970’s (money laundering, embezzlement, and ties to the Italian Mafia). And again as recently as 2009 with the same accusations and charges.
How can a religion maintain its credentials and authority as the true, exclusive Church of God, when its trained clergy, up to the very successors of St. Peter — the people supposedly closest to God — can be so corrupt, superficial, hypocritical and easily manipulated?
The answer should be obvious to us today. All theistic religions are entirely human-made, not divinely bestowed. When such an institution displays all the weaknesses, frailties and trivialities of human beings, it is simply because it is a creation of the human imagination.
Religious believers often quip that “without religion, there would be no morality”. Yet, the evidence here is quite to the contrary. Religion is no more immune to immorality than society in general. If it was our prisons would be filled with atheists and all theists would be so inspiring and enlightened that people would flock to churches, synagogues and mosques around the country to be in their presence.
The result today is that people are abandoning religion in general, and attendance at formal religious services and parochial schools has plummeted. The fastest growing religious ideology in the U.S. is the “nones”: no affiliation, no formal god-worship, and, for a lot of us, an agnostic or atheistic non-belief.
The curtain has been pulled back and the Wizard has been revealed to be pathetically human. And not even a righteous or moral human. The Catholic Church has been a vile and corrupt institution for well over a thousand years. Its primitive beliefs on sex, male dominance, autocracy, fear-mongering, lies and subterfuge no longer have a relevant place in modern society.
For those who retort, “look at all the good the Catholic Church has done”, I can only ask that you answer this: How much good does the Church have to do to offset the rape of one child? How many people does the Church have to feed or provide comfort to cancel out its complicity with the Nazi’s? Name the worst, most monstrous dictator you can think of and I guarantee you they didn’t kill, subjugate or persecute a fraction of the people the Catholic Church has. Not to mention that Catholic goodness, aid and inspiration always comes with a catch: as a vehicle for recruiting new adherents, often from society’s most unfortunate, despondent and desperate souls.
The Catholic Church has the largest relief and aid organizations in the world because it is the oldest and longest running. Without Catholicism, other charitable organizations, both religious and secular, would eventually fill the void. Charity is human nature, it is not an exclusive province of religion.
It’s time to force the Catholic Church to come clean. Open your doors, your books, your computers, your vaults and crypts to law enforcement. Have all your living personnel testify under oath. Make it perfectly safe for every living victim or the heirs of victims to testify. In every state, in every city. Let’s see how big this really gets.
If every victim or their family sued the Church for millions of dollars each, we just might be able to bring the whole damn thing down.
The Church would be forced to liquidate its assets, just like any other fraudulent business that got caught with its pants down. (So to speak). One visionary comedian has already imagined the good that could be done if the Catholic Church were, for example, to sell the Vatican:
That’s Sarah Silverman from 2002, “Sell the Vatican, Feed the World”.
In the meantime, to all Catholics around the world: There is no longer any doubt that your religion is rotten to the core, filled with child molesters, violators of celibacy, enablers, conspirators, swindlers, liars and those that knew but covered it up. This corruption goes to the highest levels of the Vatican. And it’s been going on for centuries.
Near the end of the movie “Religulous”, Bill Maher asks, “If you belong to a political party or social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence and sheer ignorance as religion is, you’d resign immediately in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, where the true devils of extremism draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers. “
Now you know. Are you going to enable this cancer to continue to spread? Does your faith permit you to look the other way and still be righteous? As a Catholic, what is your culpability? How does enabling these crimes allow you to access heaven?
And don’t think for a moment that all of this will lead to some New Reformation. Will they let their clergy marry? With or without intercourse? Will women become priests, bishops, and who knows, maybe even Pope? (or Mope?) 
Will any of that even matter?
The Church has a thousand year history of abuse, corruption, dishonesty, malfeasance and criminal behavior. No Reformation is going to stop that.
The Catholic Church has an irremovable stain. The name and the institution is tainted. This clandestine, male-dominated crime network needs to put out of business.
Or perhaps, upon deep reflection, you’ll sadly realize that your faith has been vandalized by human weakness and perversion. It cannot be the One True Church of God. Your All Powerful God would never allow this. He supposedly destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah just because a few randy villagers wanted to have anal sex with His angels. How could He allow the Catholic Church to do the same to CHILDREN for over a thousand years???
The only righteous path for Catholics is to resign from the Church immediately. To remain “faithful” makes you an enabler of one of human civilization’s most corrupt and evil institutions.
“The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice.” Emma Goldman.
“As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.” Bertrand Russell.
La Resistance American 