An interesting article from our local daily newspaper

The abuse crisis is rightly in the news and the Church and its leaders must take firm and decisive action to do all possible to provide acknowledgement and justice to those who have been harmed in any way by those in ministry. Today this article apperared in our local town newspaper.

ARRESTING IDEA TO COLLAR PONTIFF IS SERIOUSLY FLAWED.
Michael Coren, QMI Agency. Niagara Falls Review, Monday 19th April 2010.

Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Stalin and Mao. Some of the all time great comedy duo acts. Now we have Hitchens and Dawkins. The critics love them. This from the Daily Atheist: “Upper class twits with all the arrogance and pomposity that years of in-bred priviledge and expensive private education can provide, these two jokers are guaranteed to give you laugh after laugh, even when they’ve done the same routine for years.”

Richard Dawkins is the straight man. Wandering around like some aged uncle searching for lost marbles, he stares out into the distance as the plebs read his books and think them so terribly clever. Unfortunately, the serious reviewers think them embarrassingly facile.

Christopher Hitchens is the comic relief. “I say, I say, I say,” he says to his buddy Dawkins. “My dog’s got no nose.” Really, replies Dick, that must be the fault of organised chrisitianity because we know the Pope used to cut the noses off dogs as a sacrifice to the Virgin Mary – and on and on and on. “No, no,” shouts Hitchens, “You’re supposed to ask me how it smells and I say awful.”

But the money also rolls in for Hitchens, who seems terribly concerned when young people are abused by Catholic priests, but oddly indifferent when Palestinian or Iraqi children are blown apart by rockets.

Now the guy’s have promised to arrest the Pope when he visits Britain because of his crimes against humanity. They mean the abuse scandal in which between 1.5 and 4% of priests molested mostly adolescent boys three decades ago. Pope Benedict has been tireless, in his words, in “cleansing the filth out of the Church,” but why let truth and justice get in the way of another Hitchens and Dawkins show.

To apply their logic, we would need to do alot of arresting. The vast majority of sexual abuse occurs in the family. The next highest amount comes from teachers. These two groups account for more than 75% of all charges, compared to less than 2% for the Church. Next are sports coaches, with some horribly infamous cases in hockey. Secular youth groups such a Scouts also experience abuse, as do synagogues, mosques and Protestant churches.

In fact, a Catholic church today is arguably the safest place for a young person to be. The reason evangelical atheists and fundamentalist anti-catholics like the Hitchens and Dawkins act won’t be consistent in their arresting fantasies is partly because they are hippocrites, but also because, they implicitly know that the Church is special. They expect more of it because it is righteous, right and godly.

Well said boys, well said