God knows it must be hard to be a Catholic Bishop these days. So much hypocrisy, so little integrity, why, it’s enough to make a grown man grope a little boy… Striking, isn’t it, how differently the cult can react in different circumstances:
In the case of pedophile priests the norm has been foot dragging, denial, cover-ups and generally *not* dealing with the matter at hand, even though by any moral and legal standard it’d be pretty obvious that something needed to be done, and fast. But for decades, it was a case of less-is-more: the less we do about these priests, the better.
Pope Panzerfaust himself appears to have been procrastinator-supreme in cases where bishops actively begged for the Vatican to take decisive action and kick out priests with a nasty predeliction for little boys. But he left even those clearcut cases lingering for years in his in-box, no doubt fiddling his rosaries in the hope that no-one would ever find out.
But then you have the case of Sister Margaret McBride from St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. She was faced with the difficult choice to authorize an abortion for a 27-year old woman, 11 weeks pregnant but suffering with a case of pulmonary hypertension that was likely to kill both her and the baby. McBride was promptly excommunicated by Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, prompting a WTF? moment of rather epic scale. Here’s a nun who chose to do the right thing under difficult circumstances, and she’s kicked out faster than you can say “Boys ‘R’ Us” without so much as a second guess, and yet when it comes to countless priests who have abused thousands of boys, there’s been nary a peep out of those in charge.
Indeed, had Sister McBride been a man and sexually assaulted some poor kid, the action — if any — from Bishop Olmsted would no doubt have been some foot dragging followed by some hemming and hawing, and then, perhaps, a one-way ticket to Africa to continue fondling the flock far from the limelight.
Nice cult. Can we at least take away their tax-exempt status so we’re not indirectly funding their shennanigans?
(image by Adam Zyglis found here)
