FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Catholic priesthood just got a whole lot sexier! Recently, the Reverend (reverend — from the Latin “reverendus,” or “to revere”) John Geoghan was sentenced to 9 to 10 years in prison for fondling a 10-year-old boy. That might seem a bit harsh. Ten years for pulling down a kid’s swim trunks and squeezing an under-developed penis? Hell, I’ve let worse happen to me for a candy bar. But I was in my thirties; this kid was ten and scared.
Still, ten years?
But wait, there’s more, as there most always is. Reading on, you learn that this guy has over 80 civil lawsuits pending against him. 80! More than 130 people have brought claims against this particular priest of molestation or RAPE. This guy must have thought he was invincible or something, maybe even divinely inspired. Perhaps protected by some like-minded force that would reward the good and punish the wicked.
So then you find out that the charge of rape was thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired.
(THERE’S A STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS ON RAPE?) Hmmm, it’s not like you got ripped off by some online service and then you spent the next ten years thinking about whether you wanted to deal with all the hassle of reporting it and bringing it to trial. Rape is, perhaps aside from being tied up and forced to watch your children being eaten alive, one of the most life-altering acts of violence that can be perpetrated on another human being.
But fuck that, if that kid doesn’t have the balls to make a formal charge and it takes him fifteen years to get his “shit together,” then fuck him, he’s a pussy. The raper walks. So now one thing has beautifully led to another and cases of abusive pedophiles wearing clerical collars, offering salvation and a golden ticket to Heaven, are popping up across the country faster than you can say “Father, what are you doing?! That’s my special place!” But what about the non-molesting priests, what actions did they take out of their deep sense of moral outrage? Well, instead of turning the rapist into the police, they just sent Ol’ Sticky Fingers from one parish to another. Sweet, dude … fresh meat!! It seems this “brotherhood of man” has covered up, coddled, and relocated known pedophiles all across the country, often replacing one molester with another. Can you imagine the relief you’d feel at knowing that the “bad man” is going away, only to have it replaced with horror when the nice new priest tries to see you alone in his office so that he can show you his collection of international lubes? And it’s not just Catholics, either. No, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Mormons, Jews, and Muslim clerics have all been caught with their hands in the nookie jar. There’s a certain across-the-board kind of egotism that accompanies so many of those who are anointed God’s very own spokespeople. Just ask any dominatrix how many of her clients are Orthodox Jews and rabbis.
It’s certainly no secret that many priests are hypocrites, and that one of their favorite ways of demonstrating this is by molesting little boys. And really, what better way to unwind after an angry, vitriolic denunciation of the evils of homosexuality?
Some people revile these priests as monsters, preying on the innocent and gullible (and I will not be dragged into that age-old polemic about how anyone who is religious should automatically be considered gullible — put a sock in it, Bertrand Russell!), using the powerful blackmail of entrance into heaven as a way to cow the fearful. But I see them as humans, meaning fallible. Human beings who are the products of a confounding, medieval, intolerant religion based on superstitious nonsense and hearsay that tolerates no dissent and is so proudly out of step with even the most basic tenets of modern civilized thought that it all seems to resemble a game of Magic: The Gathering gone awry. Don’t forget, when the various Bibles were written, people were even dumber than they are now! Think about that for a minute, they were even dumber than we are. Go outside, take a look around … then come back inside because Celebrity Boxing is about to come on.
I guess the lesson to be learned (from the church) is that while homosexuality is a sin against GOD, molestation and rape, well … they’re just sins against a child.
DAVID CROSS
