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  Church Crisis Stems from the Very Top

Herald
April 3, 2010

http://www.herald.ie/world-news/church-crisis-stems-from-the-very-top-2124218.html

IRELAND -- I was young and wandering around Umbria, St Francis' country, when I came across the cathedral of Orvieto.

I was puzzled to see a mural by Signorelli. In the right foreground, Jesus stands on a plinth, wearing the usual flowing robes and long hair. Yet all around him are scenes of war and chaos which he seems unwilling to stop.

I examined the painting more closely. Muddy brown colours make Jesus look sinister and unholy.

Then I saw him! Almost hidden behind Jesus on the plinth, whispering in his left ear, is the naked horn-headed figure of Satan. I was looking at the greatest-ever painting of the Antichrist.

For decades, senior members of the Roman Catholic regime served the Antichrist by showing contempt for Christ's little ones. Don't bishops hate sex abuse? Certainly they do.

But they hate far more the harm done to their regime. That's why they connived at, or turned a mole's eye to, the sexual holocaust of children. Any good they did was buried in a landslide of filth. What would Jesus and Mary make of this?

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin wants the whole truth to come out at once. It's not possible. During 60 years of criminal cover-ups, the sexual torture of children was so widespread, thousands of horror stories will keep emerging from Europe, then Africa and Latin America.

Legions more victims are waiting to speak. Many priests with hangman's hands abused more than 100 victims each.

Conspiracy

Bury bad news and one day fireworks will shoot out of the graves. Likewise, the truth will burst out of diocesan and Vatican archives lighting up the long, black conspiracy to cover up the evil done to children.

It began where even Dr Martin dared not look: the papacy. Germans have a proverb: God is everywhere except where his Vicar is. Fewer than four in 10 German Catholics now trust their Pope. Their top magazine, Der Spiegel, asks why, with his authority eroded, Benedict remains in office.

Our Irish shepherds loyally laid down their sheep for their lives; and now Pope Benedict blames them for obeying the orders of Cardinal Ratzinger.

A British Sunday cartoon shows a skeletal Pope holding aloft a cross with a crucified child. Within the fiery folds of his robes priest abusers kneel with their terrified child victims. This is the Church's worst-ever crisis. The Pope calls it petty gossip.

I apply lines of an old Irish poem to the clerical regime: "You have taken the Future and the Past from me. You have taken the Moon, You have taken the Sun from me. And my fear is great that you have taken my God from me."

This Holy Saturday, from his tomb, the Crucified says to all his fellow victims: Look only to me, for I have died for you and in you. And tomorrow I will rise in your innocent hearts.

 
 

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