There's welcome news out of the U.K. this week: the government-established Charity Commission has ruled that the adoption agency Catholic Care must abide by anti-discrimination laws and therefore may not refuse to consider same-sex couples as prospective parents:

The Charity Commission... ruled that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is a "serious matter" because it "departs from the principle of treating people equally", and that religious views cannot justify such bias because adoption is a public matter.

..."In certain circumstances, it is not against the law for charities to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation. However, because the prohibition on such discrimination is a fundamental principle of human rights law, such discrimination can only be permitted in the most compelling circumstances. We have concluded that in this case the reasons Catholic Care have set out do not justify their wish to discriminate."

Predictably, Catholic Care is now planning to shut down, since as is abundantly clear by now, this church would rather see children go homeless than deliver them into the care of stable, loving families whose lifestyle the Catholic church disapproves of. Eleven other Catholic adoption agencies in England have all closed down already for the same reason, and this is the last one still in operation. If it closes its doors, that will be the end of Catholic-run adoption services in the country - and I say, good riddance.

The closure of Catholic adoption agencies can be likened to the disappearance of an industry because technology has provided a new way to do the same work more cheaply or efficiently. Yes, in the short run, this causes pain and dislocation for people who used to perform a job that's no longer required and are now out of work. But in the long run, it's better for our economy that obsolete industries vanish, because that portion of society's resources can be redirected into more valuable and productive endeavors.

Just so is the disappearance of prejudiced religious charities. In the short run, it may cause pain and hardship for the people those charities were willing to serve. But in the long run, it's better for society that they vanish, because that slack will inevitably be taken up by new groups that cater to everyone, without fear or favor, and don't arbitrarily exclude or refuse to help people who don't fit a narrow set of prejudices. (See this post for an example of how this has worked in Washington, D.C.)

This story is a classic example of why I asked how much good religious charities really do. Catholic Care's refusal to abide by pro-equality laws shows that their main priority isn't helping people in need, but enforcing religious discrimination, partitioning the world into sets of people whom they judge as worthy or unworthy of their aid. A group like this doesn't deserve the support of the public or the state, just as we wouldn't tolerate a charity that refused to serve black people. It's better that they disappear so that they can be replaced by an organization whose only goal is to do good, rather than one that sees doing good as a side effect of promoting their archaic and narrow-minded worldview.

In the past two months, the Catholic pedophilia scandal has largely dropped out of the headlines. But it was still simmering, and it looks poised to erupt into public consciousness again after this raid by police in Belgium:

The declaration to the police set off four raids in which the authorities seized hundreds of case files from the commission's current leader, detained a group of bishops for more than nine hours and disturbed the tomb of a cardinal where construction work had recently been done.

Well, how about that! I'm surprised - but very pleasantly surprised - that, for once, the police are treating the Catholic church as they'd treat any other organization under the same accusations. Let's not forget that Roger Vangheluwe, a Belgian bishop, resigned after confessing that he had molested a boy. And unless Belgium follows a completely different pattern than every other country where news like that has surfaced, where there's one abuser and one victim, there are certain to be more of both. (See this article, also, for an excellent and detailed account of the raid and its repercussions.)

The Catholic church has consistently acted as if the law is only a technicality and these crimes are minor matters of no public concern - that if they recite some rosaries and say they're sorry, then they've done enough. I'm very glad to see that there's at least one country where law-enforcement officials don't share that view. These aren't minor embarrassments that the church should be allowed to handle internally. They're crimes, despicable violations of innocent children, aided and abetted by a conspiracy of silence among higher-ups. And the people guilty of these crimes should be treated the same way as we'd treat any other gang of criminals, not given a free pass because they claim to talk to God in their spare time. This quote, from the New York Times article, is especially welcome:

Prosecutors are considering whether to expand beyond gathering evidence against abusers to encompass those who knew children were in peril but failed to protect them. "You have a part of a case that could be against the ones who committed the crimes and you also could have another part of the case against those who didn't help someone who was in danger," Mr. Meilleur said.

Naturally, the gilded hypocrites in Rome were furious that they're being treated as if they were subject to the law like the rest of us mortals. According to reports, the Pope summoned the Belgian ambassador to the Vatican to denounce the raids. Even more shocking, the church also announced that it's disbanding its own internal panel investigating sex abuse in Belgium, in a clear act of retribution for the raid. (Not that that's a great loss - according to that article, "The Catholic panel had been in existence for over a decade, but for most of that time it dealt with only 30 complaints [out of hundreds] and took no discernible action on them.")

Meanwhile, in America, there's even more surprising and welcome news. As reported by AU, the Supreme Court has declined to intervene in the case of Holy See v. John Doe, an Oregon man who sued the Vatican after alleging that he was molested by a priest in the 1960s. The church, with the backing of the Obama administration, argued that as a sovereign nation, it was immune from the lawsuit. But a federal appeals court rejected that argument, allowing the case to proceed; and the Supreme Court's refusal to grant certiorari means that that decision will stand.

I'm especially surprised by this because it only takes four justices to concur for the court to review a case, and six current justices are Catholic, including all the conservatives. Could it be that they recognized the conflict of interest and were anxious not to give the impression that they planned to do the Pope's bidding from their seats on the Court? Or is it possible that even the conservative Catholic justices are as outraged by Rome's arrogance and stonewalling as the rest of us?

One of the downsides of giving money to charity is that some of the groups I give to resell their donors' names and addresses. As a result, I get an amazing quantity of mail, most from groups I've never heard of, begging for money. It comes from an incredible range of organizations - symphonies, museums, political campaigns, environmental groups, humanitarian groups, animal rights groups, and more. Since I plan my giving in advance and don't respond to random solicitations, I throw these all out. I feel bad about it, especially since most of them are groups I'd like to support, and I deplore the waste of money that goes into sending all this junk mail - but I can't possibly respond to so many.

That said, I'm not upset about having cost the sender of this letter the price of postage:

Obviously, they had no way to know who they were reaching. Equally obviously, the assumption that the recipient is Christian is just a marketing tactic, designed to make the strongest possible impression on people who do fit that description. I'm not offended by that. (Although I think the "angel medallion" - a cheap plastic trinket - suggests that they're targeting the less educated and more superstitious among their potential donors who'd be more likely to believe it has magic powers, similar to the classic Jesus prayer rug scam.)

What offends me more isn't the message, but the organization behind it. Whatever humanitarian work CRS performs, it's more than counterbalanced by the real and serious harm that Catholic teachings do: teaching medieval, misogynist notions of female inferiority; exacerbating poverty, overpopulation and AIDS by opposing contraception; opposing abortion even for raped children, or when the alternative is the near-certain death of the mother; battling tenaciously against civil rights for gay and lesbian couples; trying to dictate to parishioners how they should vote; trying to stifle life-saving stem-cell research; and last but certainly not least, the conspiracy of silence among the hierarchy to protect and shelter child rapists and abusers worldwide. There are plenty of secular groups that do just as much good for the needy without spreading these poisonous memes.

It goes without saying that the Catholic church won't get any money from me. But since they took the time to contact me, I think I owe them the courtesy of a reply. Although the envelope is postage-paid, I'm not going to do anything immature like mailing it back attached to a heavy object. But since the letter specifically invites a response, I am going to send it back with a message explaining why I'm not enclosing a donation. My only dilemma is what to write in the limited space provided. Ideally, it should be irreverent, memorable, and to the point. Any suggestions?

Since I've written a fair amount lately about the child-rape scandal engulfing the Catholic church, it would be unfair of me to overlook any steps they've taken toward reform. Well, you all know I'm nothing if not fair, so I have to report on this tiny, hesitant step:

Last week, the Vatican for the first time issued guidelines telling bishops they should report cases of abusive priests to police where civil laws require it.

Marvelous! At long last, the Vatican has bravely decided that its employees should report criminals to the police to prevent them from committing more crimes. How stirring! How inspiring! Give them a medal for heroism!

Seriously, while it's good that they've done this, it's not an accomplishment worth praising them for; it's literally the bare minimum. Let's be very clear that a step as astoundingly obvious as this - as announcing that Roman Catholic bishops will henceforth actually obey the law, rather than aiding and abetting child molesters - wasn't official church policy until April 2010. Yes, yes, the Vatican has insisted that this was its unwritten policy all along. That perfunctory assertion is hard to believe in view of the fact that there was apparently unanimous agreement among the bishops to keep these cases covered up. I'm not aware of a single case from the last five or six decades where a bishop who was informed of a predator priest went to the police. Instead, for the most part, they dealt with it by shuffling problem priests around so that they could abuse more children in new parishes.

And that's the real reason I'm not satisfied here. Yes, fine, the church has generously agreed to start turning in child molesters (as if they could have said anything else). What they notably haven't done is institute any kind of accountability or punishment for the bishops and cardinals who protected, aided and abetted those child molesters. That's no surprise, really, since the current pope is one of them.

But that's the real scandal here - not the relatively small percentage of predator priests, but the huge percentage of bishops who helped cover up their crimes and enabled them to continue abusing children. And it's clear that the church authorities haven't come to terms with their own culpability in this. One Irish bishop has resigned after being cited in an Irish government report on abuse in Catholic schools, and a Belgian bishop resigned after admitting that he himself abused a child (!), but nothing has been done about the many others, like the despicable Cardinal Bernard Law, who haven't stepped down voluntarily.

And if you want more evidence that the church has learned nothing, take this case in New Jersey. The church higher-ups are still fighting tooth and nail against statute-of-limitations reform and other legal measures that would let the victims have their day in court. (Read the link, it's quite astonishing - the church filed an amicus brief in a case it wasn't even directly involved in, arguing that non-profit organizations should be immune from liability even if their employees acted criminally to protect child molesters.)

Efforts like this show that the church's reforms are, at best, cosmetic. When faced with a tidal wave of bad publicity for actions no sane person would defend, they'll condescend to apologize - but only on their own way and in their own terms, and with the proviso that there be no punishment for anyone who did anything. Just as in the earlier child-abuse cases, they're more concerned with protecting their own assets and reputation than making any meaningful effort to repair the damage they've caused. And why should they do otherwise? Whatever hits their reputation has suffered, the scandal hasn't hurt their finances, according to this article:

After hundreds of incidents of priests sexually abusing their parishioners were disclosed in 2002 in the U.S., fundraising by bishops and parishes went up, said Harris, the author of "The Cost of Catholic Parishes and Schools," published in 1996 by Sheed & Ward.

..."Parish giving wasn't affected by the earlier scandal and I expect the same pattern to hold here," said Charles Zech, director of the Center for the Study of Church Management at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

The biggest obstacle standing in the way of real reform is that there are still millions of Catholic loyalists who support the church financially, regardless of what crimes it commits. They may even give slightly more in times of crisis, due to a circle-the-wagons mentality. As long as the church is being sustained by this steady stream of cash, it has no incentive to change its ways, and probably won't.

However, I'm not as pessimistic as that article would imply. As is usually true with religion, I think change comes about generationally. Younger people who aren't as set in their ways are seeing the crimes of the church and are turning away from it. This may not have a large immediate impact, but the biggest effect of this scandal isn't going to be in the present; it's going to be some years down the line, as elderly Catholic faithful die off and aren't replaced. We already know the church is fading, and this crisis can only accelerate its decline.

Every time I think we've seen the worst of what the Roman Catholic church and this pope are capable of, they come up with a way to sink lower still. Back in January, when Benedict reinstated a misogynist, Holocaust-denying bishop, I could never have imagined that that would be the least offensive and disgusting thing they'd have done this year - yet it seems like that may very well be the case.

The newest evidence of this comes via this story from the AP. I previously detailed a case where the current pope, back when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, assigned a known child molester to therapy and then washed his hands of the matter; and another case where Ratzinger ignored urgent letters from an archbishop requesting an ecclesiastical trial for a priest known to have molested as many as 200 deaf boys. But this story is the most direct evidence yet of Ratzinger's culpable neglect and stonewalling over cases of child rape.

Back in 1981, the diocese of Oakland wrote to Ratzinger, who was then head of the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, urging him to begin proceedings to defrock Rev. Stephen Kiesle, another confessed priestly pedophile. Kiesle had previously pleaded no contest to tying up and molesting two children in a church rectory, and the diocese wrote to Rome asking that he be defrocked (in fact, Kiesle himself requested to be defrocked). Ratzinger ignored multiple letters for four years. Finally, in 1985, he wrote back - but said that the case needed still more time, and that proceedings had to be slow and deliberate in order to safeguard "the good of the universal church" (!)

This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favor of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ's faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner. (source)

The young age of the petitioner - that is, the pedophile priest! Incredibly, Ratzinger was more concerned about the harm defrocking a child molester would do to the Church's public image than he was about the harm that the molester had already done and might still do to vulnerable children. As multiple commenters have pointed out, the young age of the molester (he was 38 at the time) might well have been a factor also. Ratzinger must be aware of the aging and dwindling priesthood and the paucity of new recruits; it's likely that he wanted to hang on to every ordained man as long as possible, regardless of the price.

Andrew Sullivan, himself a conservative Catholic, calls this outrageous letter "the third strike" for this pope:

It is a document designed to prevent dismissing a priest as young as 38. Perhaps the fast-aging priesthood was a concern and dismissing such a young priest was to be avoided. But it's clear that the age of the priest is of far more importance to Ratzinger than the age of the minors he raped. All the sympathy and concern is with the rapist, not the raped. This is a document about protecting the powerful even when they rape the powerless.

So far, the typical Vatican apologist defense has been to claim that Ratzinger was an ivory-tower type, so concerned with ponderous matters of theology that he couldn't stoop to deal with such mundane trivia as a man in his employ raping and molesting children. But in 2006, when an archbishop openly defied the Vatican's rule on celibacy by ordaining married men as priests, Pope Benedict excommunicated him six days later. Again, this is the same man who took four years even to respond to a letter pleading with him to do something about an active pedophile.

All of this has led to this announcement, by a British human-rights lawyer seeking to have the Pope put on trial for crimes against humanity the next time he visits the U.K. It's a good idea, although I'm not yet convinced that the Pope's culpability rises to the level of the criminal. Despicable as they were, it seems that his sins were of omission rather than commission - failing to do anything about pedophiles preying on children, rather than actively assisting them in doing so - though given the steady trickle of new details, I may have to retract that statement in the near future. And in any case, I'm sure the U.K. government would do everything in its power to preempt any criminal investigation (conservative Catholics are still an influential voting bloc). However, I think a civil lawsuit is a very real possibility and a legal avenue that should be explored.

Lastly, and in case there was any doubt in your mind remaining about the Catholic church's intentions, there's this story from Connecticut. The state legislature has proposed a bill that would lift the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases, and the bishops ordered a letter to be read during Mass urging their parishioners to lobby against it. This shows, more clearly than anything else possibly could, that the Catholic church is still concerned first and foremost with protecting itself, rather than seeing that justice is done. If they truly wanted to be sure that no molesters were left in their ranks, they'd welcome this bill - and the fact that they oppose it can only mean that they know of more cases of molestation that haven't yet come to light.

But if I had to pick one quote to sum up the depths of wickedness and hypocrisy displayed by this church, it'd be this one from the columnist Libby Purves, a former Catholic turned deist. She beautifully turns their own words against them by quoting the Penny Catechism she learned as a child:

Numbers 328 and 329 refer, making it clear that we are "answerable for the sins of others" when we share the guilt "by counsel, command, consent, provocation, by concealment, by silence..."

Forget the lordly authoritarianism which speaks of the "good of the Universal Church": that Church itself plainly states that concealing crime by silence is wrong, and that it is worse still to counsel and command others to commit the same sin of silence and concealment. Yet this crime, this sin, was being regularly urged on children, parents and parishioners by men in authority: the solemn clerical authority which purports to draw its privilege direct from the eternal Truth and to see into the depths of the heart. It is an all-male authority, too, in which the greenest young priest outranks an experienced nun or devout mother. It has been the perfect screen for wickedness.

Today, I'm excited to report that I have some breaking news to share with Daylight Atheism readers.

From a highly placed anonymous source inside the Vatican, I've received a letter containing proofs for a new advertising campaign that the Roman Catholic church has been developing for the past several years. The ultimate goal was to run these ads on billboards throughout the world. The bishops in charge described these ads as "the most compelling argument ever made for Holy Mother Church's supreme moral authority and sanctity", and anticipated that they would provoke millions of conversions to Catholicism in the first few days after they went up.

However, due to recent news events and the perceived sensitivity of some of the unfortunate facts thus disclosed, the ad campaign was delayed and ultimately dropped. The concept art and proofs, most of which were already finished, were shelved in a secret Vatican archive. They've never been seen by the world - until now. It's my privilege to be able to show them to you. I think you'll agree with me that they do indeed make a convincing case!

Lately, it seems that no matter how often I write about the ever-widening story of Roman Catholic bishops and the Pope protecting child molesters, new details keep bubbling up that demand another update. Well, I'm happy to oblige.

Here's what we know so far. Pope Benedict XVI, back in the late 1970s when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and archbishop of Munich, had authority over a priest, Rev. Peter Hullermann, who was known to be a child molester. At least three sets of parents had come to officials of the diocese to tell them that their sons had been sexually abused by Hullermann, including one case where he forced an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex on him. In response, Ratzinger assigned Hullermann to undergo therapy - without, I hasten to add, reporting him to the police for prosecution. Hullermann did finish the therapy, but to no apparent effect. A subordinate of Ratzinger's, Rev. Gerhard Gruber, approved Hullermann's return to pastoral work early in 1980. Several years later, he was convicted on molestation charges stemming from yet another such incident, and additional allegations from as recently as 1998 have come to light.

None of these facts are disputed. The Vatican's defense all along has been that the future Pope had no knowledge that Hullermann had been permitted to resume his duties (although the admission that he sent a child molester to therapy and then washed his hands of the matter, all by itself, paints him in a poor light). But we now know that even this flimsy defense is false: according to a report from the New York Times, Gruber copied Ratzinger's office on the memo stating that Hullermann was being allowed to resume his duties. This memo was written just five days after Hullermann had been sent to therapy.

This horrendous scandal is custom-made for the lawyer's phrase "knew or should have known". Even if Benedict ignored the memo that was sent to him - which seems unlikely, considering his reputation as a micromanager - how can it possibly be a defense to say that he didn't care enough to follow up on what had become of a known pedophile within the clergy? Hullermann was under his jurisdiction, and Hullermann's actions are therefore, inevitably, his responsibility.

As Ratzinger rose through the ranks, he continued to be involved with pedophilia cases, and the pattern of defending the predators at the expense of the children is clearly evident. In a case from America, another priest, Rev. Lawrence Murphy, was accused of molesting as many as 200 boys at a school for the deaf. Milwaukee's archbishop wrote directly to Ratzinger, who by that time was head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, requesting that his office look into the matter and consider an ecclesiastical trial. Ratzinger ignored these letters. When a different Vatican official ordered that a trial be held, the pedophile wrote to Ratzinger requesting mercy - and the trial was canceled!

Finally, there's De Delictis Gravioribus, a letter that Ratzinger wrote to all Catholic bishops in 2001 advising them how to handle pedophilia accusations. The most important point is that bishops report such cases to the Vatican in the strictest secrecy and tell no one else about them without permission from the Pope - or as Ratzinger put it, "Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret." As before, there was no instruction to the bishops to report any credible accusations of molestation to the civil authorities. (See also.)

Contrary to the Vatican's nonspecific denials, it's clear that Ratzinger is not only personally involved in the Catholic pedophilia scandal, he's as tainted as any of the bishops who kept these cases under wraps. He, too, is guilty of participating in the Catholic hierarchy's shell game that shuffled predators from parish to parish while pressuring past victims to keep silent, ensuring that more children were raped and molested. He, too, is complicit in the church's damnable crime of trying to protect its own reputation above all else, even at the expense of countless shattered lives.

Doubtless, many faithful Catholics will refuse to accept this. The threat to their self-image, to their entire worldview, would be too great if they were to accept that the Pope himself - the heir of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the man they believe to be literally infallible when making pronouncements on faith or morals - was directly involved and complicit in the systematic rape of children. (Credit goes to a few rare exceptions, like the National Catholic Reporter, which demanded that the Pope take direct questions about his responsibility in the matter.)

But for the rest of us, the evidence is damning, and the conclusion is clear. The Catholic church is a den of gilded hypocrites, and it's now being led by the worst hypocrite of them all. All their pomp and pageantry can't conceal the revolting evil which they helped to perpetuate. They are guilty, guilty, guilty - and they deserve not the smallest iota of our sympathy or our support. Those who enabled and covered up these acts ought to be prosecuted and punished like the criminals they are - and those who merely defended the guilty ought to be treated as having forever forsaken whatever credibility or moral authority they ever had.

When I reported on the emerging Catholic sex-abuse scandal in Germany, it crossed my mind that the Pope is German. But I hadn't ever imagined that he'd have any personal connection to the allegations and confessions now being made there.

Well, it looks like I was wrong:

A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

...a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but how does it exonerate the Pope to say that he wasn't the one who allowed the accused priest to resume his duties? Shouldn't a priest accused of sexual assault be turned over to the police, not assigned to therapy? Maybe the Catholic church has grown so used to behaving as if they're above the law that this didn't even occur to them, and thought the defense that they sent a sex predator to therapy should be perfectly sufficient.

In any case, I would be very surprised if there was any concrete evidence that the Pope allowed a known sex offender to resume his clerical position. If he did play a role in that decision, the church would most likely protect him by finding a subordinate to take the blame and fall on his sword. At least one source in the Times article thinks that's just what happened here:

There was immediate skepticism that Benedict, as archbishop, would not have known of the details of the case.

The Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, who once worked at the Vatican Embassy in Washington and became an early and well-known whistle-blower on sexual abuse in the church, said the vicar general’s claim was not credible.

“Nonsense,” said Father Doyle, who has served as an expert witness in sexual abuse lawsuits. “Pope Benedict is a micromanager. He’s the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he’s trying to do, obviously, is protect the pope.”

The Catholic church would obviously like to dismiss this whole vortex of scandal as a minor distraction from their really important work (such as telling AIDS-stricken Africans that condoms don't prevent the spread of HIV). Unfortunately for them, the headlines haven't been so cooperative, and we keep getting this steady drip of news that shows just how high in the church hierarchy the rot has spread. Just think - we've now reached a point where it's completely plausible that the Pope himself was personally involved in the cover-up. (And that's not even to mention the letter he wrote telling bishops to report allegations of abuse directly to Rome and keep them under a seal of pontifical secrecy.)

Clearly, what we need are some tape recorders in the walls of the Vatican. Maybe then we'd get a clearer idea of just how intimate Benedict's involvement in this matter has been. The church has proven itself more than willing to deceive, lie, and dissemble: in the absence of such evidence, how can anything else that they say be believed?

A few weeks ago, I mentioned briefly that the Catholic church had threatened to pull out of Washington, D.C., ending the social services they provide for thousands of people, if the city council passed a law recognizing same-sex marriage. Well, the council did pass the bill, same-sex marriage is now legal in D.C. (congratulations!), and the church looks set to keep its promise, starting with the termination of their foster-care program. They've also decided to end spousal benefits for all employees, including terminating the benefits of existing employees, rather than give those benefits to same-sex partners.

Happily, as AU reports, this story has a positive ending: Since Catholic Charities has shut down their foster-care and adoption program, the service they used to provide will now be offered by other groups, including the National Center for Children and Families, that will get the public funding the Catholic group used to receive. Well done, Washington, and shame on this despicable, bigoted church that would apparently rather see children go parentless than have to provide health insurance to gay people.

On a similar note, there's this story of a 5-year-old who was expelled from a private Catholic preschool because his parents are lesbians:

In a statement sent to 9NEWS, the Archdiocese said, "Homosexual couples living together as a couple are in disaccord with Catholic teaching."

..."No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parent(s) subscribe to the school's philosophy and agree to abide by the educational policies and regulations of the school and Archdiocese," the statement said.

Editorial note: Does this school plan to expel all students whose parents are divorced? Maybe they should also send around a questionnaire asking parents if they use birth control so they can expel the children of the ones who answer yes. Of course, since something like 90% of American adults, Catholics included, use contraception, this might lead to a fairly steep dropoff in those all-important tuition checks. It seems politically safer to only target members of relatively small minorities for persecution, rather than actually try to apply their own rules consistently.

On the positive side, it seems clear that the staff who run the school were appalled by the open bigotry and hatred of their church superiors - another clear sign that American Catholics are more progressive than their benighted hierarchy:

School staff members, who asked to remain anonymous, say they are disgusted by the Archdiocese's decision.

...Staff members said they were not allowed to discuss the decision after it was made. Some of them said they were disheartened to work at a school that preaches peace and love, but also makes this decision.

A memo to these staff members: As this and the previous story make clear, Roman Catholicism does not preach love - at least not in the unconditional, universal sense we generally think of when using that word. It preaches conditional, selective love - love only for people who are willing to submit to its insane dictates and obey the orders of the pompous frauds in charge - and that's a different animal altogether.

The church's shameless bigotry against gays and lesbians is all the more outrageous considering its own continuing crimes and hypocrisy. I wrote in my last post on the Catholic church that, given the sex abuse scandals in America, Ireland and Germany, it was a statistical inevitability that more stories of child rapists among the clergy would appear in other countries as well. Now similar allegations have been made in the Netherlands. More amusingly, there's this scandal in the Vatican itself:

The Vatican was today rocked by a sex scandal reaching into Pope Benedict's household after a chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting.

Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him.

And lastly, less amusingly, there's this story. The Catholic church in Ireland has racked up a $14 million bill for victim compensation after letting sexual predators in the clergy run rampant for thirty years, and the Bishop of Ferns, Denis Brennan, is asking his parishioners to pass the collection plate to cover the costs. As the Independent puts it:

In other words the Roman Catholic Church in Ferns is asking the victims of its own bitter failings to pay the price for the crime -- it is a request which beggars belief.

At this point, the church's callousness and hypocrisy has been demonstrated ad nauseam, so this no longer shocks me. The only thing that still surprises me is that a den of vipers like this one still thinks it has the authority to instruct the rest of us how we should treat our fellow human beings. Personally, I think the Pope and his hirelings ought to turn over all the remaining predators to the police, sell off the treasures of the Vatican to pay their court costs, and spend a few decades in sackcloth and ashes before they should even think of venturing an opinion on moral topics again.

Postscript: Although it's not a sex scandal, there was one more story that came out just after I wrote this that I couldn't omit: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has banned voluntary end-of-life measures in the more than 600 Catholic hospitals and nursing homes around the country. In other words, Catholic institutions will no longer honor patients' living wills stating that they don't wish to be kept alive by feeding tubes if they're irreversibly comatose or terminally ill.

Although the law protects patients from being subjected to any medical treatment against their will, it's easy to see how this decision could be used by Catholic hospital administrators to coerce grief-stricken families and patients who may not be capable of expressing their desires. Even in the best case, it will almost certainly lead to more pointless suffering as patients who don't want to be kept artificially alive try to find another hospital to transfer to that will respect their wishes. We need to publicize the evil and tyrannical pretensions of the bishops, and I suggest this slogan: "If you want to have a feeding tube forcibly crammed down your throat or run through a hole cut into your stomach so you can be kept alive to suffer, then make sure you go to a Catholic hospital!"

It happened in America. It happened in Ireland. Now, it seems that another major Catholic sex abuse scandal is about to break open - this time in Germany (HT: Butterflies and Wheels).

As the German newspaper Der Spiegel reports, the pattern we're now seeing from abuse victims who've come forward is very much the same as we've seen in other countries - sexual predators among the priesthood whose proclivities were well known to the church higher-ups, but who were quietly shuffled from parish to parish rather than turned over to law enforcement, enabling them to continue preying on innocents:

For decades, German bishops tried to look the other way when their pastors engaged in sexual abuse, as well as to downplay the problem by characterizing it as isolated incidents. Now they are finally revealing their own figures, though hesitantly. According to a SPIEGEL survey of Germany's 27 dioceses conducted last week, at least 94 priests and members of the laity in Germany are suspected or have been suspected of abusing countless children and adolescents since 1995. A total of 24 of the 27 dioceses responded to SPIEGEL's questions.

...With at least 94 suspects uncovered nationwide so far, the church's official line that cases of abuse are just isolated incidents no longer holds water. The abusers include not only priests, but also include lay workers for the church, such as sextons, choir directors, employees of church charities and youth program volunteers.

As the article notes, the cover-up went straight to the top of the Catholic hierarchy - dating back to an order from the Vatican that sex abuse by priests be kept a secret and the matter be handled internally within the Church.

The guidelines, issued in the year of our Lord 1962, address a sensitive subject: sex in the confessional. The Vatican doesn't put it quite that directly, preferring to use more guarded terminology to describe what happens when a priest leads a member of his flock astray before, during or after the confession -- in other words, when he provokes a penitent "toward impure and obscene matters" through "words or signs or nods of the head (or) by touch."

...According to those guidelines, which remain in force today, potential cases of abuse must be reported to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The guidelines also forbid bishops worldwide from taking any steps beyond an initial investigation of accusations without direct instructions from Rome. The entire procedure is subject to "pontifical secrecy," the second-highest level of secrecy within the Holy See. Anyone who violates this code of secrecy without papal permission can be punished.

Ostensibly, this is to protect the sanctity of the confessional. But the actual effect is that the Catholic church acted as though it was above the law, refusing to contact the authorities even when there was evidence that a serious crime had been committed. Usually, the church didn't even enact any serious discipline of its own against the offender. In fact, it seems the only people who were punished in any way were the ones who tried to bring the matter to light:

"If you are forced, by virtue of your profession, to live a life without a wife and children, there is a great risk that healthy integration of sexuality will fail, which can lead to pedophile acts, for example," theologian Hans Küng wrote in SPIEGEL in 2005. "In addition to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it would make sense for Rome to establish a Congregation for the Doctrine of Love, which would examine every decree issued by the Curia to ensure that it is in keeping with the Christian concept of love."

His fellow theologian Eugen Drewermann writes of a "church structure that is repressive in emotional areas and on questions of love." Because of these and similar views, the Vatican has revoked both theologians' permission to teach.

As I wrote in a comment on Butterflies and Wheels, the laws of probability alone virtually guarantee that there are scandals like this waiting to come to light in many more countries. Perhaps prosecutors should begin investigating in France, in Italy, in Poland... It's almost impossible to believe that there's nothing else to be found.

But regardless, this story has punched another hole in the Catholic church's flimsy pretext of being able to speak with moral authority to the rest of us. They are a whited sepulcher, whose ornate facade conceals only moral rot and corruption within, and a cabal of wicked old men more concerned with preserving their own power than with any harm they allowed to be inflicted on innocents. They do not deserve the continued allegiance or support of any thinking person.