Priorities of the Vatican

There are crises in the Catholic Church. In Europe alone, headlines mentioning scandals and crime involving Catholic clergy are manifold. Hardly a week goes by, or there is another story in the media on an Irish priest abusing children. In the Netherlands, children who spoke up about being abused were castrated, to "cure them from homosexuality". I'm not sure it was because of these things, but either way, the Vatican sent a delegation to Ireland to assess the situation. And now they've published the report on that visit.

So what does it say? "This serious situation requires specific attention." Are they talking about child abuse? No! They're talking about that the Irish Catholics do what they think is right (which it isn't necessarily, I admit), instead of what the Vatican thinks is right (which I think it rarely is). So do they even mention child abuse? Yes, they do; they call it a "terrible phenomenon" for which forgiveness must be asked, and which should be avoided in the future. And one could hardly argue with that, but could they possibly have said anything less?

Lots of grief would be avoided if indeed the abuse would stop. For the innocents priests, who suffer from the stigma that kiddie-fiddling priests have brought onto the clergy as a whole, as the report points out. Oh, and for the children involved, of course. I'd almost forget.

Am I being too cynical? That report left a bad taste in my mouth. My suspicion that the Vartican is more interested in power and money than in the well-being of the lay isn't abated int he least by this report. I wish onto the Irish Catholics that they DO wrestle themselves from underneath the yoke of the Vatican, and do what they think is right themselves. That won't stop the misconduct, but it might very well make it a lot easier to appropriately deal with it...


ps and here we go again!