Breaking News! ... Vatican dispatching Cardinal Bernard Law to Penn State

By J. Thomas Duffy


Sources tell 'The Garlic', that after an all-night session, Pope Benedict XVI  is dispatching  Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major Bernard Law  to Penn State, to offer The Vatican's assistance in the burgeoning sexual abuse scandal.


 


Last night , Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier, and the school's legendary football coach Joe Paterno were fired by the Board of Trustees, over their handling of former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky's sexual abuse of, at least, eight young boys.


"Lights were burning all night ... Cars coming-and-going," offered one observer.


In a brief statement, Pope Benedict XVI said he "sympathized" with the Penn State officials, and is offering the Vatican's "complete playbook" on how to obfuscate and deny any knowledge or responsibility for sexual abuse.


"We know, and especially with this happening at a university, the Hippie Culture of the 1960's is to blame ."


The Pope added that "Bernie Law is just the guy they need at this time."


 


Unconfirmed reports say that Law is authorized to offer any, and all, Penn State officials caught up in the sexual abuse scandal, sanctuary at The Vatican, where they can benefit from the lack of Extradition, from any criminal charges that may come from this case.


More, as this story develops.





Bonus Riffs



Alyssa Rosenberg: The Shame Of Joe Paterno 


John Cole: Paterno Out 



Bob Ryan: Immediate removal was the correct step 


Eric Wilbur: State of idiocy 


My Boy Lollipop 


Beyond Repugnant 


Retro Garlic: "We Got An Eight-Page Layout With Viceroy ... The New Pope Is A Thinking Man ..."


Cross posted on The Garlic: All The Cloves Fit To Peel

Top Ten Cloves: Other Pope Tweets

By J. Thomas Duffy


News Item: Pope sends first tweet, launching new Vatican site


10.  Can't wait to see Transformers 3 ...


  9.  Anybody know how to upload some pics to FB? ... Shitass things won't take ...


  8.  Don't know bout this writer, but we doin fabulous with deals from Groupon ... Got this badass iPad with bomb of a discount!


  7.  Who looks better in his shorts, me or that Weiner guy?


  6.  Tell the Egyptians to "Get A Life!"


  5.  Follow Me! ... I want to make a run at Lady Gaga this month, for tops!


  4.  WTF NY? ... We'll have to reach out to our boy Pat Robertson, see if he can conjure up a hurricane or tornado ...


  3.  Here's a "Shout Out" to my boys in Philly ... Hang tough, we'll all get thur this (and use the Woodstock thing, it's the bomb)


  2.  I don't know about you, but I would $$ to see Bachmann and Palin mud wrestle!


  1.  Hey ChrisF on Haypi Kingdom, I'm cummin' after U MFer! ... U stole my crops!



Bonus Riffs


Blessed be thy tweeters: Pope issues praise in fewer than 140 characters


Know Thy Pope


Retro Garlic: "We Got An Eight-Page Layout With Viceroy ... The New Pope Is A Thinking Man ..."


Vatican Discounts "Bonfire Pope"; Says Flames "Not Hunched Over Enough"


Top Ten Cloves: Things The Vatican Has Done To Make Good Friday Even Better

Cross posted on The Garlic: All The Cloves Fit To Peel

Pope complains about sex abuse investigation in Belgium

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From the AP:

The pope on Sunday called the raids carried out by Belgian police investigating priestly sex abuse "deplorable" and asserted the right of the Catholic Church to investigate abuse alongside civil law enforcement authorities.

Pope Benedict XVI issued a message Sunday to the head of the Belgian bishops' conference, Monsignor Andre-Joseph Leonard, expressing his solidarity with all Belgian bishops "in this sad moment."

The June 24 raids targeted the home and office of a retired archbishop and also the graves of two prelates. The Vatican has slowly ratcheted up its criticism of the searches, with the Vatican No. 2 on Saturday complaining they were unprecedented even under communism.

On Sunday, Benedict took the criticism to a new level, issuing a personal message of support to the Belgian bishops for the "surprising and deplorable way" in which the raids were carried out.

I understand where Benedict is coming from -- it's called circling the wagons, and he wants to be in control -- but the Roman Catholic Church and its Dear Leader don't exactly have a great deal of credibility on this issue, or scandal, and can't exactly be trusted to conduct a proper investigation. If anything, all they'd find, and hand to civil authorities, are a few scapegoats. They are all about self-preservation, after all, not justice. (And don't tell me they're about divine justice. There's no need for any more nonsense, and the Church's historical myth of absolute righteousness is very much part of the problem here, with the Church essentially holding that it can do no wrong.)

Otherwise, this is just typical, the same old unwillingness to accept responsibility for what has happened in the Church, and for the horrors that priests have inflicted, mostly on young boys. And, lest we forget, sex abuse is a crime, and civil authorities have every right to investigate and prosecute.

If Benedict really wants to see what's deplorable, he need look no further than the actions of some of his own priests, not to mention the actions of those higher up who have covered up the abuse.

Headline of the Day (Pope Benedict XVI edition)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I couldn't help but chuckle when I read this one at the BBC today:

Gay groups angry at Pope remarks

Really. You don't say.

Now, these "gay groups" have good reason to be angry not just at the pope's remarks but at the pope himself:

Speaking on Monday, Pope Benedict said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was as important as protecting the environment.

The comments were "irresponsible and unacceptable", the UK's Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) said.

Vladimir Luxuria, a transgender former Italian MP, called his words "hurtful".

What Pope Benedict said -- and the BBC has the "key extracts" here -- was that any blurring of the man/woman "order," including any efforts at "human auto-emancipation from creation and from the Creator" (whereby humans make themselves on their own), is "against the truth." It seems to me that this has more to do with transsexualism than with homsexualism, but the pope's point is clear: In nature, and by God, there are men and there are women and there is an order to gender and sexuality, namely, that gender is fixed (or ought to be) and that, sexually, only a man and a woman ought to copulate (and reproduce), each according to his natural, God-given purpose.

Now, I'm with the "gay groups" on this, more or less, whatever my concerns about humanity's efforts to conquer, by overcoming, nature. We are all little Nietzscheans now, perhaps, but that's not necessarily a good thing. What I recognize, unlike the pope, is that nature is flexible and that it is part of our nature, as rational creatures, to seek to shape it according to our desires. And the fact is, gender and sexuality are rather complex. (I'll defer to our co-blogger LindaBeth on this.) There aren't just men and women and we aren't all straight.

But here's why I couldn't help but chuckle: What did these "gay groups and activists" expect? This is the Roman Catholic Church we're talking about. It may be more "modern" than it used to be, but it's not exactly a bastion of progressive thinking on anything, let alone on gender and sexuality. And the head of the Church is Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, hardly a liberal. (Even the liberals in the Church are pretty conservative on such matters.) It's a wonder his remarks weren't much harsher.

So, fine, they're angry. I suppose they have a right to be, and I suppose I applaud their efforts to protest what is the Church's (and the pope's) "irresponsible and unacceptable" positions. Maybe one day, if it still exists, genuine liberals will take over the Church and bring it forward into Enlightenment. In the meantime, all we're going to get is more of the same from the same old narrow-minded fools and bigots (sorry, "true believers"). They're far too influential to ignore, but they're also far too ridiculous to take too seriously.

An un-"holy" alliance

By Carl


WTF?:

The diplomatic chess game around Iran's nuclear program includes an unlikely bishop. According to several well-placed Rome sources, Iranian officials are quietly laying the groundwork necessary to turn to Pope Benedict XVI and top Vatican diplomats for mediation if the showdown with the United States should escalate toward a military intervention. The 80-year-old Pope has thus far steered clear of any strong public comments about either Iran's failure to fully comply with U.N. nuclear weapons inspectors or the drumbeat of war coming from some corners in Washington. But Iran, which has had diplomatic relations with the Holy See for 53 years, may be trying to line up Benedict as an ace in the hole for staving off a potential attack in the coming months. "The Vatican seems to be part of their strategy," a senior Western diplomat in Rome said of the Iranian leadership. "They'll have an idea of when the 11th hour is coming. And they know an intervention of the Vatican is the most open and amenable route to Western public opinion. It could buy them time."

Did someone say Ahmadinejad is crazy?

Not so much, it appears. One had to wonder at the alternating hot and cold rhetoric he was spewing, and now we have a big clue as to how he felt he could get away with it.

Not only would a Papal intervention make Americans sit up and take notice, it would immediately bring to bear pressure from all of Europe, South America, and much of Russia. Knowing that, to risk an invasion of Iran, Bush would have to carefully calculate whom he could count on to defy the Pope (not many European nations would dare do that).

How much influence does Benedict XVI wield?:

Last April's release of 15 British sailors held by Iran — a decision that Ahmadinejad called "an Easter gift" — came just a day after the Pope had sent a private letter asking for their liberation. "There was respect for the request of the Pope," said [Iranian Vice-Ambassador to the Vatican Ahmad] Fahima

Wow. That is stroke. If Bush or Blair had made that request, and I'm sure they did, it would probably have been laughed at.

Believe it or not, Iran has the second largest ambassadorial presence to the Vatican in the world. Only the Dominican Republic has a larger embassy staff.

How likely is the Vatican to side with Iran in any confrontation that might blow up into war?:

Though Vatican officials say they are concerned about Iran's development of nuclear arms, the pontiff is both doctrinally bound and personally inclined to pursue a negotiated settlement at almost any cost. In 2003, then serving as a senior Vatican Cardinal, the current Pope was firmly behind John Paul II's opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Indeed, many in Rome cite parallels between the current push from American hardliners to confront Iran and the walkup to the war in Iraq. "The Holy See hasn't forgotten what happened in Iraq," says one Vatican insider. "Seeing how that situation has developed, there is great, great prudence on the part of the Holy See. The judgment shown on Iraq weighs on the Iran situation."

So the Pope is a defeatist Democrat!

A difficult and complex situation has just taken a very interesting turn. Not only will America inflame the Muslim world with any invasion of Iran, that same invasion not only would spike oil prices and make Europe and China angry, it would also force the Pope to come out strongly against America, and Benedict is not particularly known for his soft diplomatic language.

You could almost say he was the Catholic Bush...

(crossposted to Simply Left Behind)

Condoms for everyone!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So President Bush II met with Pope Benedict XVI yesterday on his whirlwind European tour, protesters marching peacefully through the Roman streets, some clashing with police The Pope mentioned "the worrisome situation in Iraq," which may be one of the grossest understatements in the history of Roman Catholicism, and, although the details of the meeting are sketchy -- who knows what exactly was said privately? -- the President "made a point about U.S. efforts to fight disease and poverty in Africa," "recall[ing] that he had asked Congress to double the commitment for fighting AIDS in Africa, from $15 billion to $30 billion".

Sounds good, no? No.

As Think Progress reported back in January, following Bush's State of the Union address, there has been a good deal of criticism of Bush's hyped-up aid-to-Africa-to-help-fight-AIDS policy, much of it focusing on the fact that much of the aid goes to promote, as one might expect from Bush, abstinence, not prevention or treatment. Similarly, back in March, The New York Times reported that Bush's "plan to fight AIDS globally is seriously hampered by restrictions imposed by Congress and the administration" -- this from a prestigious panel of medical experts, the Institute of Medicine. One of the debilitating restrictions that, needless to say, affects Africa deeply: "The requirement that 33 percent of all money for prevention be spent teaching chastity and fidelity, even in countries where most cases are spread by drug injection."

This is not to say that the plan is all bad, and the Times notes that "the panel endorsed financing it beyond its 2009 expiration date". But it does put Bush's "point about U.S. efforts to fight disease and poverty in Africa" in perspective. Those efforts are not quite what he often makes them out to be.

Still, it's not as if the Pope would have objected to the President's convictions and restrictions with respect to how the U.S. contributes to the fight against AIDS in Africa. After all, they seem to think alike on homosexuality, birth control, and abortion, among other key issues pertaining to health, sex, and education. Indeed, what is amusing -- but not all that amusing when you think about the immense power these two men wield -- is the thought of Bush and Benedict talking about AIDS in Africa at all. Benedict is more extreme than Bush on these issues, of course, but these are two men who have contributed to Africa's struggle with AIDS precisely because of their views on birth control -- that is, because of their religious beliefs and moral convictions.

What Africa needs is effective leadership that provides workable programs, not regressive thinking rooted in theocratic moral absolutism. That is, what it needs is condoms, lots of them, not lectures on abstinence. And certainly not from these two.

A message of peace

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've been highly critical of Pope Benedict XVI (not to mention the Roman Catholic Church generally) in the past, but his Easter message managed to strike the right tone, particularly this line:

Nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees.

But it's not all so bleak, the "thousand faces of violence" notwithstanding. Benedict said there are "some signs of hope" in the Middle East, including "the dialogue" between Israel and the Palestinians.

"Peace is sorely needed" -- indeed it is.