When I visited Australia last year, the media was all gaga over the idea of an Australian saint — the Catholic church was going to canonize Mary MacKillop (the people I hung out with while I was there, though, didn’t give a good goddamn for the nonsense). Well, now there’s some ironic news going around: during her lifetime, Mary MacKillop had been temporarily banished from the Catholic church and thrown out on the street. What had she done, you might ask.

Go ahead, guess.

A hint: she had complained about and reported some priests in the church. Can you guess what they had done?

Sure you can. Catholic priests doing something wrong, getting angry for being reported? It’s the same old story as always.

Yep, they’d been raping children, nuns made complaints to the Catholic hierarchy (apparently not to the secular authorities), and the church responded as it always does…by transferring the offending priests to a new diocese, a fresh hunting ground.

This was all in 1871.

It’s as if child-rape is a hallowed tradition within Catholicism.