The horrible evidence of a Catholic cover-up keeps piling up in these various sex abuse cases…what’s going on? Certain minds are certainly drifting towards conspiracy theories, evil attempts to bring down the church with a web of deception. And if that’s the case, who is behind it all? Isn’t it obvious? It must be…The Jews!!!
A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism, considering how “powerful and refined” the criticism is.
Unfortunately, the article is accompanied by a photo of the Pope…and this doesn’t necessarily reflect his views. It is the position of one rather cranky, old, and possibly senile priest.
Allegedly speaking to the Catholic website Pontifex, Babini, 81, was quoted as saying: “They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers.”
It’s probably also the view of Mel Gibson and a terrifying number of conservative Catholics. It’s also a position advanced by that important event in Catholic history, the Fourth Lateran Council, which also, curiously enough, established that whole celibate priests nonsense. You can trace a lot of the most horrible Catholic ideas right back to 1215, and we’re still suffering for their foolishness.
Or, hell, maybe it was the Jesuits.
Whatever form your favorite paranoia might take…
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
YOU GUYS. Either you’re being persecuted LIKE the Jews, or BY the Jews. Make up your minds and coordinate your crazy.
The Roman Catholic Church is like Jesus. Persecuted by Jews, but Jewish themselves. Or so they claim …
Personally, I favor the Reptoid explanation.
Don’t they munch on a Jew every Sunday? If I were a Jew, I’d be mighty pissed off. Bunch of cannibals!
According to the Pope’s No.2 homosexuality is clearly the cause of pedophilia…
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63B4TR20100412
really???
How do they keep walking with all the self-inflicted gunshot wounds in their feet?
We don’t even have to hand them the shovels. We can just sit back and watch.
BTW, does anyone have a copy of the JP II Catechism where it talks about the Jews? I seem to recall it saying that the Jews were no longer to blame for all the god killer accusations made by the church.
This guy doesn’t even know what’s in his own Catechism!
*spits* Apparently this guy didn’t think the catholic church did enough torturing and killing of Jewish people through the ages. What a vile, loathsome, ugly assclown.
It is the fault of Satan.
It is the fault of teenage homosexuals.
It is the fault of the children.
It is the fault of the Jews.
It is the fault of the New York Times.
It is the fault of MSM.
Who will be blamed next?
A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism, considering how “powerful and refined” the criticism is.
The fun part is that there’s no real reason for Zionist Jews, in particular, to be at the heart of the attack. After all, they’ve got land in the Middle East now, and the Vatican isn’t standing in the way at all.
The flailing around is getting interesting. It would almost be entertaining if they hadn’t spent so much time and effot protecting and providing prey for child rapists.
NE Bob:
You forgot that it’s the fault of secular decadence, or however they phrased it.
And the atheists, of course. I think someone’s already made that accusation, too.
Have they got to the Protestants yet?
How about the atheists?
Scientists?
They should be blaming it on satan. Except that would work both ways. The fundies already claim the RCC is the church of satan.
Let’s see, first Teh Gayz and now Teh Jyooz, and some still refuse to accept that Hitler was a Catholic? Sounds like he followed the book on RCC scapegoating procedures. Sorry for the Godwin.
No, no, that’s just a typo. Babini actually blamed “the Juice.” O.J. Simpson is leading the conspiracy against the Pope.
Hey, it makes as much sense as their other desperate excuses.
<image of the T-1000 walking through liquid nitrogen in Terminator 2>
He probably developed dementia at the beginning of the Second Vatican Council…
Some wacked-out dude c.2Kya showed ’em that holes in feet (and hands) isn’t a problem to worry about.
The celibacy forced onto Catholic priests is actually not nonsense at all and has a very specific purpose–it allows the Church to inherit their property when they die without a lot of wives and kids making claims to Daddy’s habits and rosary beads.
No (and that’s misleading), but his words and actions haven’t been of no concern, either:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/04/what_benedict_hasnt_said_about.html
(Yes, I’ve been linking to this for a while now.)
Of course, no statements of this sort, even if they reflect more general sentiments, should be of any concern to Henry Gee. Being Jewish, it’s not his to judge what goes on in Christian churches.
Pulitzer-Prize Winner Mark Fiore rounds up all the excuses in one convenient chant:
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/04/fiore-cartoon-pope-sex-scandal
Well, you know who won’t be blamed.
Child-rapists, or my friends? Choices, choices…
Luckily, the Catholic church is not that nutty. Yet.
I was radio surfing a bit in the car today and on EWTN I heard a new group to blame: psychologists and psychiatrists! It seems that in the 60s and 70s they were claiming that pedophilia was curable, so the bishops and archbishops were cajoled into “treating” the malefactors, rather than punishing them or turning them into the police, which of course, was their first instinct. In fairness, I will say that the guy putting forth this novel theory did admit that, in some cases, the church officials might have been guilty of covering up the crimes for less noble motives.
I never understood the idea of blaming the Jews for killing Jesus. The main reason Jesus was supposed to have come to Earth was to die for our sins. That was the plan. Besides, if anyone was to blame, it was the people in charge who supposedly carried out the execution. But those Roman Catholics never do blame the Romans, do they?
So first, pointing out that covering up pedophilia was like anti-Semitism, now they’re going to sink to actual, bona-fide anti-Semitisim?
Eh, the Catholics blamed the Jews for everything over the last 1,300 years. By this point, it’s a matter of tradition.
Wow, nobody could have forseen that one, eh?
I’m frankly surprised we haven’t seen more of this from all quarters lately, given that Jews seem to be the world’s leading brand of scapegoats for the last couple thousand years or so.
Now now. Don’t go tryin’ to make sense out of those kooky Christians. If it made any sense it wouldn’t be a religion now would it?
2000 years of Christian anti-semitism, and still they are playing that old card?
What’s next – the Blood Libel? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
Is the Church simply trying to generate controversy to distract people from the a growing realisation that the Church was complicit in the raping of thousands of children?
I wonder what those making the argument “religion encourages morality” would have to say about this ongoing scandal… I’ll take my godless atheism any day and proudly declare personal responsibility for my actions.
http://goo.gl/JdlG Arrest The Pope Facebook Page
Guacamole Bambino is an asshat.
Gotta love that “Zionist” non-sequiter that finds its way in there… as though the Jews might have thought that the Vatican was some kind of threat to Israel and decided to plant evidence of papal wrong doing to thwart it.
I think “Zionist” is what certain people are using these days instead of “kike” – as though they can use it out of context to describe unspecified jews and make it seem like their irrational hatred of the jewish has something to do with concern over the policies of Israel. I’m not going to defend all of Israel’s actions, or condemn all criticism of that state as anti-semitism, but certain uses of the word “Zionist” make my skin crawl.
Jesus was the first Jewish scapegoat used by Christians to get out of their own sins. He set a precedent really.
This same theory just showed up on UncommonDescent a few days ago. (Right before Easter, appropriately enough.) Nobody blinked an eye.
You don’t understand. There’s the “good” Jews, the folks who would never stoop to doing naughty, wicked, un-Christian things, and the “bad” or “Zionist” Jews who induce priests to rape children and force the pope to support and protect the rapists.
Someone will probably jump on me for offering this personal data point, but I’m committed to the truth even if it doesn’t jibe with the tenor of the thread.
I was raised in a Catholic family in the ‘burbs of Chicago, attended mass weekly (until I got to college and could stop with the charade), Dad did readings, my brothers and I were (serially) altar boys.
Never at home, at church, or during casual conversation with other Catholics did I catch a whiff of antisemitism. I’m sure there were individual antisemitic asswipes, but they didn’t get it from the church I belonged to.
My Dad said this more than once: when Jesus returns, the first place he’ll go is to temple, not church.
I used to hear antisemitic tirades from Br. Louis SM at least once a week when I was in 8th grade at a Catholic high school. We had one poor kid in the school who was Jewish. His life was hell because of all the antisemitism from the students and faculty. He left after a year.
You may have not known any antisemitic Catholics but I can assure you, from personal knowledge, they are quite prevalent in places like central Wisconsin and around St. Louis, MO.
I suspect even the current inhabitants of the region of Latera would rather not be associated with the magesterial council convened at Latera all those centuries ago.
@idiotiddidit#5116d #34: I assure you that Mel Gibson’s hatred of Jews was in fact official dogma within the catholic church, perhaps non-official dogma around the time of Gibson’s birth, and officially indirectly abandoned at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. A lot of the folks I’ve known born in the 19th and early 20th century had a conditioned hatred for Jews, even if many of them wouldn’t recognize a Jew if one came up in tassles and yarmulke, bit off their foreskin and shouted “Oi vey!” (well, OK, maybe not that since Yiddish is a dying language). Just because the cult in your particular region may not have explicitly promulgated such bigotry does not mean that the church did not actively and officially promote that bigotry for hundreds of years.
… the Fourth Lateran Council… of … 1215…
Oh boy – big octocentennial coming up!
Will there be cake?
@MAJeff: Shhh, using the actual meaning of “Zionist” is blasphemous!
@#4
Ha! I’ve got to remember that one! :-))
I get the feeling that these people in the ossified Catholic hierarchy don’t get such a bright media spotlight very often. It’s like we’ve turned a rock over and ewwww.
“Unfortunately, the article is accompanied by a photo of the Pope…and this doesn’t necessarily reflect his views.”
The operative word being “necessarily”.
@blog “Fourth Lateran Council… 1215”. Interestingly, they spewed their decrees the same year the Magna Carta was issued (assuming no one’s calendar was f’d up). Hmm, which has served mankind better?
Hitler: “Everything is the fault of the Jews!”
Moshe: “Yes, yes! Everything is the fault of the Jews and the bicyclists!”
Hitler: “Why the bicyclists?”
Moshe: “Why the Jews?”
Totally agree w/Dawkins and Hitchens. Let’s posthumously try JPII too.
Hande hoch, Herr Ratzinger!
http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2010/04/hande-hoch-herr-ratzinger.html
In my expirience, Protestants and Catholics are both harsh against Jews.
After nearly 2000 years, you’d think they’d drop that theory.
#14 – wrong juice. It’s the Kiddy Juice. Just like the 456 (get yer Dr.Who reference here!) they get high on an extract of terrified child.
Anti-semitism in the Roman Catholic ChurchTM is alive and kicking.
I think you’re all missing something here. As a Jew, I take that as a compliment… According to this nutjob, we Jews are only people who could conceivably lounch not only any old attack on the church, but a “powerful and refined” one!
Suck on that, the rest of the world: if its “powerful and refined”, it must be zionist!
Who haven’t they blamed yet? The hindus? The Bhuddists? Have they blamed the atheists yet?
When are they going to blame astrology, or paganism, or the mormons, or the planet Jupiter?
How fast can the vatican self-destruct?
Seriously, can’t they see that the longer this goes on, and the more blame-games they are trying to play, the worse things are going to be for the Vatican?
Is it a sign of how far we have come that Mr. Babini actually denies having made the alleged remarks? Only a few decades ago he’d have been happy to repeat them at top volume!
Unfortunately, the article is accompanied by a photo of the Pope…
Is it an old picture of him in his Hitler Youth outfit?
Well, one thing’s for sure, the only group that definitely isn’t to blame for the Catholic Church’s actions is the Catholic Church. I mean, that would be plain ridiculous.
I coulda sworn it was the Italians who killed that dude.
I am sure there will be a retraction coming and a letter from the RCC saying this isn’t the sentiment of the church. I can’t wait to be 81 and say whatever I feel like saying with no recourse. I wonder…was he wearing his pants during the taping of the statement?
On a side note, did anyone hear the “This American Life” segment a couple of weeks ago about the RCC turncoat? It was a rebroadcast from 2003 but it was really good and fitting, plus there was an update about the defrocked priest and his changed view of the church.
Not that I’d recommend the mixed message, but they’re can technically have it both ways.
The Palaestinians are persecuted like the Jews by the Jews after all. (Or course, the state of Israël is different from the religion of Judaïsm is different from the Jewish ethnicity, but let’s not get bogged down in details.)
Babini’s statements deserve to be read in full and widely exposed. The Guardian article omitted the part where the Bishop blames the Jews themselves for the Holocaust. Google search for “sionista” at http://www.pontifex.roma.it: Babini’s statements are still up, and Google translate will render them in English:
Re: #41
Not only that, but the then pope also declared Magna Carta void.
From Wikipedia:
@#56 Interesting, thanks, 1, 2, 3, let’s all feign surprise. It has that stink of cover-our-asses all over it – a foretelling!
Being a God Killer sounds pretty awesome. Wish I were Jewish.
I mean, if you can kill God, how badass does that make you?