Contemplating Life Under the Protection of the Pope
As an institution, the Catholic Church is a strong and forceful advocate for life. Thus, abortion is morally reprehensible. Birth control is wrong. The death penalty is murder. As the protesters made clear when President Obama was speaking at the very Catholic University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana last week, life is what matters. Unless you are child in the protection of a Catholic orphanage or reform school in Ireland. Then your life is worth very little, in the eyes of the church. Last week, an Irish commission into the abuse of children by Catholic clerics released a report documenting the horrors inflicted by priests and nuns on children. Rapes. Scaldings. Beatings. Molestations. It seems that Dick Cheney's advocacy of waterboarding pales in comparison to the tortures inflicted by the religious on defenseless children. And the Catholic Church's torture of children went on for decades. The report covers the abuse that occurred from 1930 to...