* the Vatican could very well be considered the largest pedophile and sexual abuse ring running on earth; Pope Benedict, the chief enabler of this corrupt ring, should be held responsible, and he should resign

Pope Benedict

Andrea Butler writes in Religious Dispatches …

• The recent news of sexual abuse cases in Ireland,Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Netherlands suggest that much like the scandal uncovered by the Globe reporters, the roots are deep, the crimes unimaginable, the secrecy and subversion of blame epidemic.
• The recent reporting on scandals throughout Europe could (I hope) prove to be the proverbial straw that breaks a very feeble Vatican back.
• The Pope’s involvement in the “hot potato” philosophy of moving bishops and facilitating sexual abusers has come back to haunt him in a very real and dangerous way.
• It is not simply a smear campaign, as Vatican insiders protest.
• The institutionalization of sexual abuse as a matter of course permeates the organization of the church. After all, the Vatican is the biggest don’t-ask-don’t-tell outfit in the world.
• Even more sinister, the Vatican could very well be considered the largest pedophile and sexual abuse ring running on earth. Interpol, are you listening?
• The bishops of Ireland moved pedophiles to America to get rid of them. If that’s not a sex ring, I don’t know what is.
• At the very least UNICEF should go after the Vatican for repeated rape and abuse of children.
• Make no mistake, the Roman Catholic church has been hiding a corrupt, morally bankrupt organizational structure that values position over the protection of children and adults damaged by abusive clerics.
• Who knows what revelations will be discovered that then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, shielded from the public and legal authorities? Now, while Pope, his own sins have been found out, trapping him in a web of his own making.
• The entrenchment of a theology of the body that honors a fetus but ignores the child who is raped and molested by spiritual authorities is reprehensible. It is not theology, it is a perverted practice, designed to paralyze people. Nothing, nothing is said about those in spiritual authority who rape and abuse children going to hell. The silence is deafening.
• The only thing that is going to bring this Pope to repentance and change are relentless reporters who will uncover his secrets. I
• t is time to start thinking about the Catholic church as not just a church, but as an organization that has been allowed to institutionalize rape and sexual abuse on a global scale, while attempting to hold its members hostage to its distorted views of sexuality and celibacy.

Anthea Butler is associate professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book is Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making A Sanctified World (UNC Press, 2007).

Read the entire article at … http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/2371/_training_god’s_rottweiler:_catholic_church_sexual_abuse_must_end