[brianwspencer]

It's very long, but a blogger I like wrote quite extensively on this -- the entire post is worth a read, but I've knocked out my favorite part below that really speaks to what pisses me off so much.

I love how Giuseppe dalla Torre, head of the Vatican's tribunal...took a moment to note that the Catholic Church "is not a multi-national corporation." In case no one had noticed.

Q: Besides NOT PAYING TAXES, how can you tell the Church isn't a multi-national corporation?

A: If Microsoft, say, were discovered to have been covering up an international child rape ring among its ranks for (at least) decades, and Bill Gates were discovered to have authored a letter ordering members of his organization to keep it secret, and the Dublin office had been discovered to be conspiring with police to hide evidence and silence survivors, and employees who had been identified as child rapists were just moved to other offices, like pedophilia is all about location location location! and because the organization's reputation is more important than protecting children from known rapists, and Microsoft spent more time deflecting responsibility and blaming its gay employees (FOR ****'S SAKE) for the crimes committed by the sexual predators the organization had abetted and protected...Microsoft would be OUT OF ****ING BUSINESS.

Because no one would be making any goddamn excuses for any multi-national corporation, no matter how much other "good stuff" they'd allegedly done, if that organization had been found to be disproportionately staffed with men eminently capable of committing or concealing child rape, corruptible from guy in the local franchise straight to the CEO at the top.

That corporation would be DONE.

But claim to have a direct line to God, and suddenly everything's different.

That is Christian privilege of almost inconceivable proportions, right there: As long as you assert a belief in divine justice, you're more likely to escape human justice.

It's a particularly cruel irony that those who assert moral authority are given the most latitude to behave in immoral ways without the inconvenient bother of being held accountable for their crimes.

And when people who are decidedly unthrilled about the privilege conferred upon religious institutions, particularly in the midst of a worldwide crisis of sexual assault in which countless children have been victimized, challenge this privilege, they are dismissed as bigots, as wanton haters of the Church, or its adherents, or its doctrine—as if there is not a preponderance of evidence to warrant legitimate criticism, as if they are being unfair, as if standing up for children, vociferously and unyieldingly and despite knowing the shitstorm of accusations of bigotry to come, is somehow evidence of a "real" moral failing.

As if compassion for countless children being sexually assaulted is just a convenient excuse to criticize the Church used by atheists and secularists and feminists and other nefarious types.