Quotes of the Morning: Rope a Pope

“Ok.. I hate doing this. I was raised Catholic and still have that instinctive notion that the Pope just can’t be an idiot sometimes, but, to be fair, I can’t give him a free pass. He’ll just have to be infallible some other day. Sorry.”
-Skippy

"I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offences among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower. In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1% of priests are guilty of acts of this type . . . Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the Church. It is a logical and well-founded conclusion."
-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), December 2002

“Sweet Jesus.. can you imagine if a full 1% of priests are child molesters? Between 1950 and 2002 there were about 110,000 priests in the United States. A mere one percent would be about 1,100 pedophile priests (or an average of 22 in each state). Let’s hope that we can do better than that. Priests are supposed to be held to a slightly higher standard. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be what was found.”
-Skippy

“About 4 percent of Catholic priests have been accused of sexually abusing minors over the past half-century, according to a draft of the first comprehensive study of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in the United States. The percentage is higher than many people, including church officials, had anticipated.
The draft of the study, done by John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, found that 4,450 of the 110,000 priests who served between 1950 and 2002 were accused of sexual abuse of minors, according to CNN, which reported yesterday that it had reviewed the draft.
The number of alleged perpetrators given in the draft study is higher than the tallies by news media outlets, including the Associated Press and The New York Times, that have tried to count reported allegations nationwide.
The number is also higher than that projected by church officials. A top Vatican official, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said in 2002, according to the Catholic News Service: ‘In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1 percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type.’"
-Boston Globe, February 17, 2004

“The [sexual child abuse] accusers say Vatican-based Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who heads the Vatican office to safeguard the faith and the morals of the church, quietly made the [internal church] lawsuit go away and shelved it. There was no investigation and the accusers weren't asked a single question or asked for a statement.
He was appointed by the pope to investigate the entire sex abuse scandal in the church in recent days. But when approached by ABC News in Rome last week with questions of allegations against [Father Marcial] Maciel, Ratzinger became visibly upset and actually slapped this reporter's hand.”
-ABC News, April 26, 2002

“And.. lest we assume that the whole overarching scandal that the new Pope helped cover up is well behind us..”
-Skippy

“A jury Wednesday awarded nearly $5.8 million in damages to three men and a woman who were childhood victims of sexual abuse by a Roman Catholic priest.
The archdiocese acknowledged at the start of the trial that although church officials knew in the 1970s that the Rev. Joseph Pritchard had been accused of molesting young parishioners in San Jose, the church did not investigate the allegations and took no steps to protect the children.”
-Associated Press, April 21, 2005

“Please take note: This is not a critique of the Catholic Church. Despite my conversion to agnosticism, I have nothing against the Roman Catholic faith, nor do I have problems with those priests who take their duties seriously. I respect both quite a bit. I do have problems with pedophiles, and I sure as Hades have trouble when the church tries to cover them up. Nuff said.”
-Skippy