The Pope has recently accused the Media of mounting an attack upon his Church. His complaints come in the wake of the latest round of Media attacks timed to coincide with Easter and orchestrated in the US and Europe. The substance of the attacks is not new for it is once again focused on the sexual abuse of children and young people by Priests and Bishops and all of it is about past abuse. I have no doubt that such abuse is continuing, though probably not to the degree that it once was, for the power and influence of the Catholic Church has greatly waned. Sexual exploitation of children is usually the consequence of adults having unaccountable power over them.
Peggy Noonan, the bitter old Regan speechwriter now grasping for a place of influence since being passed over by the Bush Presidencies, has an article in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. Noonan’s puffed-up pieces have until recently contained much pandering to Obama, no doubt satisfying her need to repay George Bush. They have mostly not been worth reading but recently she has also turned on Obama and regained a little credibility. My guess is that she is hard-pushed to find a line of argument that will resonate both with the Washington elites and be of interest to the conservative readers of the WSJ. I assume she is an Irish Catholic for she believes she has the necessary qualifications to write about the Catholic Church and politics and so this weekend she has inserted herself into the attacks on the Church and the Pope. Her article attempts to please the Church’s enemies whilst appearing to offer the Pope some advice. Briefly, she writes that the sex scandals will greatly damage the Church and that the Media, which deserves great praise for uncovering them has until recently, tiptoed around them. Like all the rest of the Media pack she fails to deal honestly with the Media’s role and motives.
The first thing that needs to be said – and will not be said by the Mainstream Media (MSM) – is that the vast majority of cases of sexual abuse by Priests involve boys. Usually adult males come forward to accuse Priests who regularly seduced and sodomized them when they were young and placed in vulnerable positions by trusting parents. We should not be surprised by these modern-day eruptions of scandal which have often ended in Priests being retired or defrocked and occasionally prosecuted. Many Priests were dead before their crimes were brought to light. Also, not surprisingly, Priests against whom complaints were made were often quietly moved to a distant place by Bishops who shared their homosexual appetites and who were happy for them to continue abusing. I have lived a long time and it has always been common knowledge that a significant number of Priests were ‘keen’ on young boys. The same was once true of many scout masters, choir masters (of all denominations), teachers and even sports coaches. Sexual predators, both hetero and homo, have always infiltrated activities that offer easy access to victims. Predators are often skilled at hiding their intentions, being patient and gaining trust. It is part of their modus operandi. It is also the case that some people become predators because they find themselves with opportunity and then cannot resist despite the dangers. This is why in the wiser past before political correctness (madness?) took hold, society kept male teachers away from teenage girls, the Boy Scouts tried hard to keep homosexuals out, and alert parents warned their kids to beware of choir masters. Despite all efforts at prevention, some predators always evaded detection, at least until it was too late for the victims. This is hard luck on those many Priests, teachers, scout masters, choir masters and other ‘carers’ who are wholly innocent. Sadly, the group of children who were most vulnerable (those in ‘Care’ because they lacked caring parents) were those in Children’s Homes, both public and private. Many predators made a beeline for such institutions where they enjoyed enormous power over emotionally needy kids without champions.
The Catholic Church was always likely to attract many homosexual predators. I suppose the idea of recruiting only unmarried men into the Priesthood took root for two reasons. One was that Jesus and his Disciples were, according to the sketchy records, unmarried. The other was that since they were following a revolutionary and dangerous messenger, the Disciples had to be young men without family responsibilities. Most led an itinerant life and met a cruel death as did those who followed them. It was unlikely that, given the risks, any but the truly devoted opted to become Priests of the Christian Faith. But times change and as the dangers receded and Seminaries offered both material security and same-sex companionship, the sickness of same-sex sexual relationships became endemic in the Church. The Protestant Churches largely dealt with this by encouraging their Priests to marry but the Catholic Church is nothing if not traditional. And so Catholic Seminaries, where Priests are trained, have long had a reputation for sodomy, as have Convents for lesbianism. Some Seminaries have been controlled by perverts and not surprisingly a network of perverts has flourished within the Catholic Church mostly in those countries where the Catholic Religion has not been persecuted and the worries of danger and persecution have been set aside so that the sins of the flesh can be enjoyed.
In the Twentieth Century the Catholic Church has been harshly persecuted under Leftist and totalitarian regimes and consequently thrown up great leaders (and flourished). Paradoxically at the same time it has enjoyed official status and material comfort in Democracies (where it has declined). Those Priests who have endured religious persecution under Socialism and have not succumbed to modernist notions of ‘moving with the times’ seem to have taken control of the Vatican. Thus they have reinforced the Christian message on abortion, sodomy, divorce, family and other ‘conservative’ values and disappointed many Catholic leaders in the comfortable West who are desperate to ‘move with the times’. Moving with the times involves accepting the agenda of the ruling Media Class and readers of this website will know what that is.
And so we come to the latest Media assault on the Pope, timed for Easter, of course, when Christians celebrate the greatest event the World has experienced. I write this without reservation for Jesus Christ and his teachings have provided us with our civilization. The windy Peggy Noonan has written that the “scandal was dug up and made famous by the press. This has aroused resentment among church leaders who this week accused journalists of spreading ‘gossip’, of going into ‘attack mode’ and showing ‘bias’.” “But,” she continues, “this is not true, or to the degree it is true, it is irrelevant. All sorts of people have all sorts of motives, but the fact is that the press – the journalistic establishment in the US and Europe – has been the best friend of the Catholic Church on this.” She then argues that the Media has done the Church a favor by forcing it to confront its problem.
The Media Class has a dilemma when dealing with the Church’s big scandal of sexual abuse but no dilemma when reporting anything that otherwise damages the Church and its current Pope. The Media Class detests this Pope and those who support him for he has been un-ambivalent about abortion, divorce, and most importantly, same-sex marriage. For the Media Class, the Catholic Church under this Pope is a major obstacle to the completion of the revolutionary new amoral society it craves. The problem for the Media Class is how to employ the current scandal without suggesting that sex between men and pubescent and teenage boys is beyond the pale. Consequently Media report after Media report refers to ‘sexual abuse’ without ever mentioning that almost all of the victims are boys. Sex between men and boys, and women and girls, both highly prized by homosexual activists (Don’t believe me? Read their literature), is camouflaged by the word ‘pedophile’.
The next demand of the Media Class and its constituency of homosexual activists will be the abandonment of the age of consent and particularly the indoctrination of young boys with the ‘attractions’ of sodomy and transgender activities in school. Indeed these items on the Media Class agenda are already being quietly pushed forward by the Obama regime and its Leftist allies. The legislation necessary to implement these without the consent of parents is well advanced.
In my opinion, the Catholic Church would be well-advised to encourage a married Priesthood for I think only that would flush out the perverts, but that is their business. In the meantime we should all denounce the sexual exploitation of children by adults and defend the Pope from the attacks of those Media people who have a hidden agenda.
The news that the BNP is experiencing yet another internal struggle amongst its leaders is bad news. I am reminded of the endless purges that the UK’s Trotskyist movement experienced in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I am sure these regular eruptions of denunciations and expulsions are the product of ‘democratic centralism’. This is the Marxist term for a leadership that selects members for promotion from the bottom and propels them upwards. It is not at all democratic for it prevents the base from electing the Party leaders or criticizing the leaders’ policies. The consequence is that dissenters, whether well-intentioned or not, can only plot.
The weather here in central California is both damp and chilling. Not a sign of global warming, yet here we are in Spring