Pope Benedict goes paranoid with 'anti-hate' claim

Yep, that's the latest from the Vatican. Supposedly all the brouhaha over his cover-up of child sex abuse by Catholic priests, and all done so on behalf of his semi-sainted predecessor, John Paul II? It's part of a hate-based anti-Catholic plot.

Yes, non-Catholics hate the church for its anti-female, anti-contraceptive, anti-abortion, anti-gay-rights agenda.

Well, now, we learn, as of April 12, that it's not "everybody" that hates Catholics so much as it is ... those effing god-killing Jews.

A couple of months ago, supposedly, the Catholic Church was being persecuted like Jews in the Holocaust.

The Catholic Church is being persecuted BY JEWS.

(R)etired Bishop Giacomo Babini of the Italian town of Grosseto told the Catholic Pontifex website that the Catholic pedophile scandal is being orchestrated by the "eternal enemies of Catholicism, namely the freemasons and the Jews, whose mutual entanglements are not always easy to see through… I think that it is primarily a Zionist attack, in view of its power and refinement. They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God-killers."

What's that sound I hear from the Vatican? It's crickets, I believe.

Hey, Herr Ratzinger? Put the shovel down!

More seriously? I could give a rat's ass one way or the other about Catholic doctrine. OR about more liberal Catholics bitching about it. They can vote with their feet or their wallets. And, until they do, they can stop whining outside Catholic circles so much. Vote with your wallets, AND with an e-mail to your bishop, archbishop, etc. about a more liberal next pope, as well as a morth ethical one. (And, some antitoxin for John Paul III, since John Paul I obviously didn't have any.)

I do care if anybody breaks the law, especially something as egregious as child sexual abuse. I do care if people use positions of authority to help them break such laws. I do care if their compadres (pun intended, here) and superiors aid and abet their lawbreaking through cover-ups, stonewalling and similar actions. I do care if the world's only religious body to be recognized as an independent nation hides behind diplomatic law. I do care if it trivializes the Holocaust, which has roots all the way back in the First Pogram conducted by knights on the way to the First Crusade.

Beyond the child sex abuse scandal, Benedict Ratzinger has other problems back in his German homeland, anyway.

Uhh, Herr Ratzinger, when you get a chance, between child sex abuse woes and getting Jews mad, and speaking of that, you might want to tackle this:

A chapel built on a mountainside in Germany is turning into a shrine for neo-Nazis after it emerged that it was built with marble and grainte taken from the ruins of Adolf Hitler's luxury retreat.

A swastika was reportedly found carved into one of the wooden beams of the Wegmacher Chapel, which was built in 1997, while local residents claim a number of shaven-headed, leather jacket-wearing 'pilgrims' leave behind notes of praise to Hitler and candles burning in his memory.

It was only recently that the Bavarian government admitted that material from the wreckage of Hitler's retreat, the Berghof in Berchtesgaden, was used in the construction of the chapel.

Some of the stones are from the terrace of the Berghof - quarried by Jewish slave labourers in concentration camps.

Oh. My. Fucking. Doorknob. Why the German Catholic Church hasn't taken the simple solution and just razed this place to the ground, I have no idea.

Meanwhile, back to the sex abuse scandal. Plenty of Catholics in robes besides Herr Ratzinger need to put down their shovels.

First, in what is indeed appalling, the bishop of Tenerife, Spain, like U.S. rape case trials of 30 years ago, raises the old, ugly, "they were asking for it" angle, this time in relation to abused kids.

And, via Ed Brayton, George Neumayr, editor of Catholic World Report, claims that people like me really don't care about the kids. He doesn't go down the Vatican's Catholic-bashing angle; rather, he says, the non-Catholic secular culture is the real abuser of children.

Update, April 9: And now, we see Herr Ratzinger has real reason to be afraid. The AP has uncoverd a letter with Ratzi's on signature, opposing the defrocking of American priest Stephen Kiesle.

AP said the Rev Kiesle was sentenced to three years of probation in 1978 for lewd conduct with two young boys in San Francisco. It said the Oakland diocese had recommended Kiesle's removal in 1981 but that that did not happen until 1987.

Cardinal Ratzinger took over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases, in 1981.

Yeah, but Herr Ratzinger was too busy serving as John Paul II's attack dog on Catholic liberals to take the time to deal with this.

Update, April 14:From one canard to another: Now it's the old claim that homosexuality causes pedophilia. If you're a gay priest, keep your head very low.