Vatican Drag: The Inquisition Begins

The Inquisition, Let's Begin,

The Inquisition, Look out sin,

We know you're wishin'

That we'd go away,

But the Inquisition's here and its here to stay...

You could smell it in the last election when the American bishops sided with the Republican party, it in the selection of the Rat as pope, but now the Inquisition begins in earnest, not with a purge of pedohpiles or the church hierarchy which sheltered them, but of homosexuals. And not just practicing, but celibate, homosexuals aspiring to the priesthood.

The target, American seminaries, is, well, right on target. Often led by active gays, seminaries, journalist Jason Berry, have long been known for their bath house atmosphere. Novitiates are sexually harrassed by their peers and superiors. The most egregious illustration: "VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- A vast cache of child pornography and photos of young priests having sex has been discovered at a Roman Catholic seminary, officials said Monday, leading politicians and church leaders to demand a criminal probe and the resignation of the bishop in charge." It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes the church hierarchy (or at least Bishop Krenn, the guy charge) to call 40,000 pornographic images a "childish prank."

Seminaries may need investigation, but the problem is a wider sub-culture, which won't change, in part because the problem extends to church hierarchy. Aside from Bishop Krenn, one of JP2's intellectually challenged stooges (the list, evidently, is long), Bishop Dupre, of the Diocese of Springfield, holds the distinct honor of being the only bishop indicted for sexual abuse of minors. When allegations of his sexual relationship with two young boys, he fled to St. Luke's Institute in Baltimore. He is now in parts unknown.

(I can't believe it, but) I'm quoting the Washington Times here:

"the investigators [of homosexuality in seminaries], who were in Baltimore yesterday for a training session, are searching in the wrong places in terms of homosexuality," said Richard Sipe, author of the recent book Sex, Priests and Secret Codes."

"The church needs to start at the top because violation of vows of celibacy begins there," he said. "There are a great number of Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals who are sexually active. They're just scapegoating the homosexual priests."

Estimates of homosexual seminarians range from 25 percent to 50 percent. A 2004 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops investigation called for "a more searching inquiry" of homosexual seminarians "to help them with the challenge of priestly celibacy." Nevertheless, "The Vatican is snooping in the wrong closet by investigating seminaries," Mr. Sipe said. "They need to investigate the Vatican." Debbie Weill, executive director of Dignity, the Catholic homosexual caucus, called the apostolic visitation a "witch hunt." "The church is continuing to scapegoat gay priests for the sex abuse crisis in the church while failing to address the core issues of the crisis," she said.

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NOTE: Jason Berry, author of Vows of Silence, who helped bring the pedophile scandals to light in the early 90's, also reported of a gay sub-culture in seminaries in his book.

NOTE: Mr. Sipe is a psychotherapist and former Benedictine monk and priest married to a former Maryknoll nun, Marianne Benkert, MD., a psychiatrist at UCSD's Owen Clinic. For more than 30 years, he has been engaged in research on the institution and practice of priestly celibacy. http://www.dignityusa.org/convention03/sipe.html

And winner is...

A big thanks colleague Brother Ray and AP listserv buddy Kim for taking a step closer to the edge of the world.

Instead of being a voice in the wilderness known only to myself, I am voice acknowledged.

Validation, vindication, and wicked neat!

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Judicial Ethics & Kid Galahad

A venial, not mortal, sin?
A little tarnish on Kid Galahad's judicial in armor?

Yesterday, Judge Roberts fended off questions quoting guidelines for judicial ethics; today the L.A. Times quotes the judicial ethics he ignored when the Administration interviewed him as a potential SCOTUS nominee. The commentators say he should have recused himself in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld in which the President was a defendant.

Click the title, for the LA Times link. Judicial ethics can be found in the link below.
Judicial Ethics: http://www.abanet.org/cpr/mcjc/canon_3.html

But as LNILR points out, he's not alone: "neither of those legal constraints kept Justices Thomas and Scalia from making George Bush president in 2000. Thomas' wife worked on Bush's transition team (§ 455(b)(5)(iii)) and Scalia's son worked for one of the law firms representing Bush (albeit not directly involved; § 455(b)(5)(ii))." http://www.talkleft.com/

Confirmation

The Democrats, the one's I heard today and yesterday, were polite and reasonable, though some definitely sounded like lawyers, and strident Joe Biden never fails to sound irritated. Yesterday, they outlined their concerns; today they asked pointed questions. I heard who I think was Carl Levin, maybe it was Russ Feingold, ask informative respectful questions in a cordial exchange with Judge Roberts.

The Democrats are the minority party; the opposition: it is their responsibility to ask tough questions and, when necessary, oppose the Republicans. Party leaders failed miserably in this regard when we went to war, and it cost our party the election, our country its reputation, our military its efficacy, and our treasury bllions and billions of dollars. The American people deserved to hear the arguments against war, even if the country disagreed.

Roberts should be scrutinized, and the Democrats should oppose him as they see fit. A filibuster would be a political mistake, but they're not going to the mat on this one. He may not be the typical Bushie hack, breathing ideology out of one nostril and incompetence out of the other, but the Democrats needn't vote for him if they think he's the wrong man.

Democracy is about disagreeing, compromising, living with decisions you don't like. There's no battle here, and no reason to curl up and die.

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A lot of whistling...

While I work...

I've been slammed with homework for Retrieval and Review, affectionately known as R & R to those of us in the doctoral program: all weekend reading, Monday in the library, Tuesday on the online catalog, and Tuesday night writing it all up. I also had to make up a quiz on the reading. I did true and false questions, useful, but with a flair for the ridiculuous.

Busy day: meeting from 3 to 4, teaching Education 524 from 4-6:30, and R& R from 7-9:30.

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FBR: The President--Hear No Evil

I remember when I was a kid and someone had given my dad a ceramic bank scuplted into four chimpanzees. Each chimp gestured with his hands, and under each there was a caption.
One chimp covered his eyes: "See no evil."
One covered his ears: "Hear no evil."
Another covered his mouth: "Speak no evil."
The fourth monkey held his hands up in a shrug: "?"

Others have said that the President looks like a monkey, but he's looking more and more like my dad's bank. He overlooks the evils of his cronies like Karl Rove, won't listen to anything that contradicts his reality, and, in public, talks nice. I guess it comes as no surprise that no one in the White House wanted to tell him how the Administration had dropped the ball in New Orleans, another cause for delay on rescue efforts. If you had any doubts about the MSM finally turning a critical eye toward Bush and his administration, check out this article from Newsweek: "How Bush Blew It."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434/site/newsweek

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