The deities of religion and money are timeless and both have been discovered to be deeply flawed. The bankers have lined their own pockets with ill gotten silk while the church has systematically covered up its failings. Indeed, failings is much too weak a notion to attach to the atrocities carried out by officers of the Catholic Church. Their actions are utterly shameful. And the worst of it is that the top brass contrived to protect the abusers. The local Bishop to the Village has recently admitted his part in the cover up of activities of some priests in the past. The suggestion is that these acts of obfuscation go right to the top, even to the Pope himself. There is talk of a citizen’s arrest when he visits Britain, but the likelihood is that state diplomacy will intervene and this will be avoided.
The general distaste felt for the church has even seeped as far as the Village. When the two Marys knocked on the door the other evening selling tickets for a raffle to raise funds for the refurbishment of the Church I parted with the fiver. They told me that they were getting a lot of doors slammed in their faces. The reasons are uncertain but could have something to do with a previous priest in the Village who left very suddenly a few years ago without explanation, leaving rumour and innuendo of sexual abuse in his wake. Or it could be Father John and the new house that was built for him. Father John arrived in the Village a short while after the mysterious departure of the previous priest. He was warmly welcomed. Now, while the parochial house needed updating in estate agency speak, and looked like it might have had the same designer as the priest’s house on Craggy Island, it was by no means in as bad a condition. However, Father John took one look at it and refused to live in it. The people of the Village had spent a few years of their lives running money spinning events to erect a new dwelling house Father John. They so wanted him to stay and be happy. In the Village the priest has a vital function. He comforts the sick, advises troubled souls and provides a moral compass. The priest and the church provide a sense of occasion and meaning to the important events in life – hatching, matching and dispatching. So, a house had to be rented for Father John while his new four bedroomed house was being built. So, it was little wonder then, that people felt badly let down, when just two weeks after taking up residence in the new house, Father John announced from the pulpit he was leaving the Village. The house has been vacant since and the Village has no full time priest.
I have progressed from being a lapsed Catholic to an occasional one and have followed the unfolding events and revelations with deep sadness for the victims of abuse and deep anger at the powers that be. That the Church is in complete disarray and chaos is without doubt. They have been contemptuous of the people and moreover thought that they would get away with it. While there are many good priests who are as appalled by the revelations as everyone the main body of the church are its people. I call for the immediate arrest of every priest, bishop, cardinal or pope who has been implicated in any abuse, no matter how long ago. Those who had any act or part in cover ups should be arrested for perverting the course of justice and be tried by a court of law set up by the state. We all live by the rules and pay taxes to the nation state and so should the church. But the church does not agree with state law on many issues, all related as it goes, to sex. And so they hide behind the curtain of Canon Law, whatever that is. The church does not permit abortion, divorce, contraception or homosexuality. And the deep irony here is that their crimes all relate to sex. Do these men lose all sense of reality in that rarefied male seminarian world of incense and flowing robes so shrouded in secrecy? Change has to happen. We have had Vatican 2. Reformation 2 is now long overdue. What the church needs to do is reflect life in the 21st century. Here are my minimum demands for the New Church.
Allow priests to marry
Allow women to become priests
Give homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals.
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