On molestation.....

Now I know why The Venerable didn't want us to attend Catholic schools... it wasn't about the money, my crazy maternal grandmother would have gladly, devoutly helped out financially. But it was all 'whispering in the background', I guess. Several years ago, it became public that there were over one hundred cases of molestation in the relatively small city I grew up in, and it was the same modus operandi... the predators just got shunted around when the fire got too hot, and there was this false moral thing, 'one' didn't mention that sort of thing, and it was wrong.

CNN did a three-part report on the scandal in Ireland. I found it very good... for a change....
In part one, there is a woman who tells of her experience of being molested in a hospital, and it really rang true for me... I was in the hospital, about twenty or so, but looked younger... It was a Catholic hospital. And this priest came in unannounced, unwanted by me, and asked if I needed solace, or something like that. I don't really remember, but I didn't like him on sight, and he wasn't old, he was just some guy in a collar. And he had the unmitigated gall to touch my hair, in a very inappropriate way, and tell me THAT was why I was ill, it was too long. (It wasn't, my friends had it down to their shoulders, hey... mine was sort of 'Beatle') My being sick was God's punishment for being vain, he said. He was a Jesuit, and had an Irish brogue.

He creeped me out to the max with that bullshit. And I was totally angry. And told him in a very supressed voice, but vicious, 'Get OUT of my room, and don't you ever dare come back here, evah!'

He was fairly non-plussed, and slunk out.

Dan Savage, a radio host and columnist recently said, 'In Miami, if there are two or three shark attacks, no one goes into the water. And there are thousands of sharks out there. But predators in the Church? They send their kids there.' Good analogy.

I'm not picking on them, but much is wrong with this picture, and it is time it gets fixed. Such things can make you agnostic if not atheist. And I know so many people who got so messed up with this 'religion', it can make me cry. For days. And many people who were abused in other ways by other people, but it cries to the high Heavens, and Jeebus is probably weeping, wherever the hell he is...