The Roman Catholic Church is a Gawddamned Cesspool

From CNN.com: "I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the church in Ireland, particularly by priests and religious," the pope wrote.

Absolute bullshit.

Pedophilia is so pervasive in the Catholic church that it's pretty clear abusing children is merely one of the "perks" of being a priest. The rape of children is institutionally embraced by the Catholic church, from its highest levels.

"The Vatican instructed Catholic bishops around the world to cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church."

They won't throw out pedophiles -- the Catholic church will throw out those who refuse to protect pedophiles.

Pedophilia is institutionally accepted, propogated and protected by the Catholic church.

If it was anything but the abuse of children, I'd be happy to watch the church's death throes go on through a protracted, humiliating, ignoble devolution. But people's lives have been ruined. Kids raped, abused, used, handed around like a bottle at a frat party.

Now, the wounds are opening in a country that I love as much as the one in which I was born -- Ireland. To the point where a headline on CNN.com reads: "'Ashamed to be Irish' -- Abuse angers nation".

The Irish have nothing to be ashamed of. The Church of Rome has been a blight upon the earth since its inception, and it was its priests who have perpetrated these crimes; its priests and bishops and cardinals (and pope) who have covered up these crimes. This is a Roman Catholic plague, not an Irish one.

My family knew a hapless, fatherless, only-child Irishman in the 1950s with the unlikely moniker, Pug McCluskey. He was the original Ne'er Do Well. He never worked, but spent his mother's pension cheques drinking at local watering holes.

One day he approached an uncle of mine, asking if he'd co-sign on a new suit of clothes for him. The anniversary of Pug's father's death was coming up and it was long-suffering Mrs. McCluskey's wish that Pug attend his father's anniversary funeral mass. Pug got his suit -- he never made a payment on it, so my uncle the co-signer ended up paying for it -- and was in the bar the day of his father's mass.

At some point, the bartender said, "Pug, aren't you supposed to be somewhere today?"

"Ah, Christ, sure I am," Pug slurred and lurched out of the bar.

Mr. McCluskey's anniversary mass was halfway finished by the time Pug kicked open the door of the church. The priest was giving his homily, and watched with dawning horror as Pug slumped down the middle aisle.

Mrs. McCluskey looked up and there may have been a moment of relief, of inchoate joy that, for once, Pug had not let her down. If there was that moment, it was fleeting.

Pug slouched past the row in which his mother sat and came to a stop about fifteen feet from the priest's podium. And there, in front of the dozen people who occupied the cavernously empty church, Pug looked at the priest and raised a quivering finger at him.

And addressed him thus: "The Roman Catholic church is a gawddamned cesspool!"

Then he turned and left the church, returning to his bar stool down the street.