Miscellanea Agnostica

The moral bankruptcy of the Roman Catholic Church continues to be revealed incrementally. The latest revelation comes from the memoirs of the former Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (WebCite cached article):

Weakland says he didn’t know priests’ abuse was crime

In the early years of the sex abuse scandal in Milwaukee, retired Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland says in his soon-to-be released memoir, he did not comprehend the potential harm to victims or understand that what the priests had done constituted a crime.

“We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature,” Weakland says in the book, “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church,” due out in June.

Weakland said he initially “accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember or they would ‘grow out of it.’”

Let me get this straight: A Roman Catholic archbishop didn’t know that child abuse is criminal? Really??? Does this guy honestly expect me to believe that?

This is unreal! And it’s absolutely inexcusable.

Weakland has more than a few skeletons in his own closet, independent of the priest-pedophilia scandal itself:

Weakland retired in 2002 after it became known that he paid $450,000 in 1998 to a man who had accused him of date rape years earlier.

How wonderful. He managed to remain in his office as archbishop for four years after paying off one of his own victims. How did the Vatican not know about this when the payment was made in 1998? Of course the Vatican knew … and it nevertheless left him there until he resigned of his own volition. This makes the Vatican nearly as culpable in his (mis)conduct, as Weakland was himself

Here’s a challenge to any and all Roman Catholics out there who may be reading this: What in hell are you thinking? How can you remain connected to this organization as it stands? If you want to stay in it, but reform it, what exactly are you doing to accomplish that goal (other than merely saying you’d like it to change)?

Or do you think that the Roman Catholic hierarchs are always right, no matter what they do, and that all their actions are automatically moral, merely by virtue of the office they hold?

If you accept that what the RC Church is doing is wrong, but do not remove yourself from it or work to change it, then you are in collusion with its immorality. If you accept that the hierarchy is always right, by definition and by office, then you are as morally bankrupt as they are. Either way it’s not a good reflection on you — and that makes me even prouder to be a lapsed Catholic (and therefore an apostate) myself.