Raymond Leo Burke, who I freely and publicly accuse of being a criminal, specifically of being a depraved bystander and of being an accessory to rape, is described by http://www.bishop-accountability.org in less than flattering terms:
If cases of clergy sex abuse were few and far between [in St. Louis] it was because Burke was a master at keeping a lid on them. Several victims who claim they were abused by priests in La Crosse tell Riverfront Times they were stonewalled by Burke, who declined to report their allegations to local authorities. And while some of his fellow church officials nationwide were reaching hefty settlements with victims, Raymond Burke was unyielding in his refusal to negotiate with victims' rights groups. He declined to make public the names of priests who were known to have been abusive, and he denied requests to set up a victims' fund. Most strikingly, Riverfront Times has learned, while bishop in La Crosse Burke allowed at least three priests to remain clerics in good standing long after allegations of their sexual misconduct had been proven -- to the church, to the courts and, finally, to Burke himself.And most disturbingly:
His critics say Burke's ability to conceal the diocese's dirty laundry was abetted by Wisconsin's unique civil code, which makes it virtually impossible for someone to sue the church for the actions of an individual priest.The US government has proven incredibly incompetent in prosecuting the rampant pedophilia that defines the Catholic Church's modern public image. Even amid declining Mass attendence and the increasingly shrill irrelevence of the sniveling Inquisitor's doctrinal genocide that ought to embolden prosecutors who might be wary of public backlash, state and federal governments have proven remarkably reticent in actually prosecuting sex offenders who wear certain kinds of collars. John Geoghan is the only famous name that comes to mind who actually went to prison (and was later murdered by an inmate), most of the judicial retribution coming in the form of much-deserved but ultimately inadequate civil lawsuits. Even the architect of the elaborate network of ratlines for known pedophiles, Bernard Law, was allowed to get away with a mere public shaming and resignation. He should be behind bars.
And now a well-known accessory to rape who has shown a horrifying disdain for the victims of his underlings' insatiable sexual appetites is in charge of the Vatican's highest doctrinal court. To me, this is just one more example of why the Catholic Church deserves the decline it is experiencing: it is so inflexible that, even after the Pope visits the country hardest-hit by the horny pedophiles with magic powers, he refuses to amend Vatican doctrine to accomodate the obvious fact that Catholic priests are on average more morally deviant than secular people.
In other news, it appears that Texas hates the mentally ill (something I guess we've actually known for a while). Just this morning, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that exorcisms are protected by the first amendment, and so a girl named Laura Schubert who was physically assaulted, burned, and entered psychosis as a result of an exorcism cannot sue her attackers.
Just so you know, this is the same ultra-reactionary theocratic court that ruled that numerous substantiated accusations of nonconsentual incestuous pedophilia don't count as sufficient grounds for removing children from a household.
Exorcism is the practice of ritually humiliating, debasing, and often seriously injuring the mentally ill on the grounds that mental illness is caused by "demons," which are invisible evil magic things that fly around and hurt people and are also invisible. Even though exorcism has a 0% effectiveness rate and there are many, many, many stories of exorcism hurting or even killing the victim, the Texas Supreme Court has just looked down its nose on secular government and poo-pood the prosecution for not taking the Christian sensibilities of the poor, oppressed Pleasant Glade Assembly of God into account.
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