Why I despise the Catholic Church especially

As you probably know, I generally think religion, on the whole, does more harm than good for society, which is why I am opposed to it. That’s another discussion. This is why I especially despise the Catholic Church. (Here I must add it is the Catholic Church as an organisation, not necessarily individuals who count themselves as Catholic).

The Catholic Church's worldwide, systematic raping of children, and the cover up of this that they perpetrated is the main reason that I hate the Catholic Church so much.

I know that it is not a prerequisite of becoming a Catholic clergyman to be a peadophile, and that, of the clergy the vast majority are not peadophiles (just under 10% of ordained priests from 1970 onwards were peadophiles, based on the Vatican's own reports). However, the reason I hold the entire organisation accountable is due to how they dealt with the problem: They utterly failed the children in their care when they discovered what was going on. 


Here I quote Sam Harris from the The Moral Lanscape (footnote 14 of chapter 1):

“The evidence suggests that the misery of these children was facilitated and concealed by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church at every level, up to and including the prefrontal cortex of the current pope. In his former capacity as Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict personally oversaw the Vatican’s response to reports of sexual abuse in the Church. What did this wise and compassionate man do upon learning that his employees were raping children by the thousands? Did he immediately alert the police and ensure that the victims would be protected from further torments? One still dares to imagine such an efflugence of basic human sanity might have been possible, even within the Church. On the contrary, repeated and increasingly desperate complaints of abuse were set aside, witnesses were pressured into silence, bishops were praised for their defiance of secular authority, and offending priests were relocated only to destroy fresh lives in unsuspecting parishes. It is no exaggeration to say that for decades (if not centuries) the Vatican has met the formal definition of a criminal organization devoted – not to gambling, prostitution, drugs, or any other venal sin – but to the sexual enslavement of children.”

 Take this case:

“In 1979, an 11-year-old German boy identified as Wilfried F. was taken on a vacation trip to the mountains by a priest. After that, he was administered alcohol, locked in his bedroom, stripped naked, and forced to suck the penis of his confessor. (Why do we limit ourselves to calling this sort of thing "abuse"?) The offending cleric was transferred from Essen to Munich for "therapy" by a decision of then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, and assurances were given that he would no longer have children in his care. But it took no time for Ratzinger's deputy, Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, to return him to "pastoral" work, where he soon enough resumed his career of sexual assault.”

Ratzinger's crimes do not stop there:

"Very much more serious is the role of Joseph Ratzinger, before the church decided to make him supreme leader, in obstructing justice on a global scale. After his promotion to cardinal, he was put in charge of the so-called "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" (formerly known as the Inquisition). In 2001, Pope John Paul II placed this department in charge of the investigation of child rape and torture by Catholic priests. In May of that year, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop. In it, he reminded them of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the rape and torture. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church's own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated "in the most secretive way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and everyone ... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office … under the penalty of excommunication." (My italics). Nobody has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offense could get you into serious trouble. And this is the church that warns us against moral relativism! (See, for more on this appalling document, two reports in the London Observer of April 24, 2005, by Jamie Doward.)" 

The peadophiles were discovered, not stopped, and were able to move from parish to parish raping children as they went, and those in the know were discouraged from getting the police involved.

Not one parish in Belgium escaped this abuse. Indeed, when the Belgian police raided the Catholic HQ in Belgium as part of their investigations, they were criticised by the Vatican. In Ireland, the abuse of boys (but not girls) was endemic. The problem isn’t isolated to a few countries, it’s world wide. This graph shows the confirmed cases of sexual abuse by American Catholic priests (of which about 4,000 have happened whilst I've been alive):

It’s impossible to know the entire toll worldwide, but it’s a six figure sum. It might even have hit 100,000 in the US alone (and that's not the highest estimate).

The scope of this is horrific and nauseating. 


Of course, I have other objections, but I've written about them before, as have others (do read that link), and right now I've had quite enough writing about this profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution.

The human mind being what it is, we tend to care more about individuals than large numbers of people, so I’ll leave you with this: