RCC Playbook III – The Church is the Real Victim!

The Church is the Real Victim

There is nothing more offensive to me personally as the defensive tactics embraced by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.  In this installment of the “Playbook,” we will take a look at how the RCC spins the sexual crime crisis to make the RCC look like the victim.  Ignore the RCC  sex crisis, banking crisis,  involvement in murders and kidnappings, Vatican leaks, gay witch hunts, reprimand of nuns to deflect attention away from the sex crisis, loss of parishioners, the arbitrary closing of parishes, insensitive detached and out of touch leaders.  Ignore it all!   The real victim here is Catholicism.   (Adjust your sarcasm dials and buckle in.)  And the ALLEGED victims of sexual abuse are the source of all the woes of the church.

1. Alleged Victims are hell-bent on the destruction of the church.  The hierarchy of the church and the ultra-conservative groups that support it are painting the goals of survivors being solely focused on the destruction of the church.  They contend that we will not be placated until the Bishops’ Chryslers, their summer houses, and their extravagant lifestyles are destroyed.   They want to tell the faithful that victims of abuse want to tear down schools and churches, destroy parishes and bankrupt the church until god (lower case intended) is banished from society.

Groups like the Catholic League spit out statistics in support of such claims on a regular basis.  Those statistics, for the most part, are unsubstantiated.  When I wrote to the point of contact at the Catholic league to fact check a particularly virulent rant from Bill Donohue (Catholic Hater in Chief), there was just no reply.  I guess when you are spinning propaganda to support your local Archbishop the truth is not required.

2. The media is picking on the Catholic Church.  You hear this everywhere a church leader or the head of some ultra-conservative church organization or group of church apologists get together in front of a microphone. This is all a vast left-wing conspiracy. The best article I have read in this vein is by John P. Martin called “Church scandal hits close to home.” The article stands on its own merit.  I first read this article while keeping up with Susan Mathew’s Blog,  Catholics4Change.  It first appeared on Philly.com.

Bloggers Note:  Do you think if the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and it’s shills would be getting negative media attention if they were not so wholly inept, involved in protecting predator pedophiles, running corrupt banking systems, punishing nuns for doing good work, covering up kidnappings of teenagers and funding the extravagant excess of the princes of the church?

3. Trial Lawyers are keeping this issue alive!   If you read the Catholic apologists’ blogs and press releases from groups like the Catholic League, you would discover that the “scandal” is being perpetuated by the likes of Jeff Anderson and Marci Hamilton. Their spin is that the trial lawyers and scholars are trying to keep the scandal alive for their own personal enrichment.   “There is really good money in those settlements.”    Anyone look at the stable of lawyers, PR guys, media consultants and risk management types in the employ of various dioceses, religious orders and Catholic organizations lately?  By some accounts, the cost of defending Monsignor Lynn ran upwards of $11 Million!  I think, in fact, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is keeping Trial Lawyers (and PR guys and media consultants) alive.  Just a thought…

4. These crimes are the work of homosexuals bent on the destruction of the church.  Let’s just blame it on gay priests.  I have covered this before.  Simply put, just before you are gay, does not mean you are a pedophile.    The church would like you to believe that the “gay subculture” in the priesthood is from where this deviant behavior emanates.   But, if this was true, can someone explain to me about the priests who have preyed on girls?  You see, with the excuse generators that operate in many of the Chancery buildings around the world it is really true that the devil is in the details.  I would imagine that there are gay priests in the church who are doing God’s work and looking after parishioners without trying to slide their hands inside an altar boy’s cassock.

5. The behavior of these pedophiles is a direct result of the excesses of Vatican II and the liberalization of Catholicism.  Once again the boys in the curia are counting on the gullibility of parishioners that blindly follow their roman collared handlers.    People, if there are documented cases of pedophilia in the church dating back before Vatican II, which ran from 11 October 1962 until 8 December 1965, how can blame the “liberalization of the church”?  Put down the church bulletin and the letter from the bishop on the annual fund drive and think.  Canon law has articles covering crimes against children by clergy going back hundreds of years.   This crisis is not a post-Vatican II product.  This kind of behavior and the cover-ups by the church have been going on for centuries.  It is built into the fabric of the clergy to protect their institution and avoid scandal at all costs.   Even if it is at the expense of a child.  The big difference today is that we have social networks that can reveal the true nature of those who will commit heinous crimes against children and those institutions that will protect those predators.

The next installment will cover the methods employed by the bishops of the church to keep priests one step ahead of the sheriff or two steps outside of the jurisdictions that could prosecute them.