Diddling in Perspective

Did you notice how easily the Church was able to pay its bill of half a billion dollars their priests have burdened them with for all that diddling? Sold a few buildings in L.A. and moved on. Like stopping at a Texas stop sign – slow to 40, build a new cathedral, and resume speed.

Now if they had just posted a sign on the rectory. Free rectoring. (Donations always accepted.) That way it would be voluntary and you’d know what you were walking into. Instead, the church had to get all sneaky.

Very unseemly for the institution that owns the truth – no other denominations need apply.

Well, some denominations are OK.

Tens and twenties are favored denominations.

Somebody’s got to pay for the diddlin. Can shuffle those diddlers from Peter to Paul just so long.

And speaking of shuffling…

At least we don’t have priests working for the government, as in the days in Argentina when government used to pull folks from their beds in the night and disappear them. Drop them from planes while fully alive into the ocean. After checking with the church to be sure they were using torture methods that were “Christian…and less violent.”

The Church, as always, was happy to comply. Appointed Father Christian Von Wernich to the post of Chaplain to the military and security forces.

For a while there he got away scot free, because after the government fell, they implemented an amnesty and got down to reconciliation. Didn’t work. Somehow people whose family members had been dropped from planes didn’t feel all that much like reconciling, and the law protecting these priests and others was lifted. Von Wernich, still a priest, was using the name González, and administering the sacraments in Chile.

Christian Von Wernich is on trial in Buenos Aires as we speak. A trial referred to by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as "a slanderous persecution of the institution." Remember Bergoglio? He was on the list of "papabili" ("popeables") this last time.

Maybe we ought to count our blessings. Here in the U.S.A., the worst they do is hide Diddlers and lie about the Diddling. Beats advising the military on Christian forms of torture.



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1. Source for:

To find a Christian and less violent form of death… (“para buscar que fuese una forma cristiana y poco violenta” de muerte)

and

a slanderous persecution of the institution ("una persecución calumniosa a la institución")

Página/12 Web :: Buenos Aires, Argentina, domingo, 08 de Julio de 2007, “El rol de la iglesia católica en revisión” http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-87812-2007-07-08.html

2. The Von Wernich story: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38468

3. See also the trial watch on the subject: http://www.trial-ch.org/en/trial-watch/profile/db/legal-procedures/christian-federico_von-wernich_456.html

4. Other sources (some in Spanish only, unfortunately) include: Maldito Tú Eres, by Hernan Brienza, the journalist who found Von Wernich’s hiding place; and Ezeiza by Horacio Verbitsky, well-known Argentine journalist (at Página 12) and author of
The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior, and The Silence, an extract of which is available at http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-protest/catholicchurch_2709.jsp

5. Or type in “Horacio Verbitsky” at Amazon.com for a list of books available.