Tag Archives: Outrage

Apr 23 2010

And the beat goes on…

From CNN.com:

Belgian bishop quits over child sex abuse – CNN.com: Belgian bishop Roger Joseph Vangheluwe has resigned after admitting to sexually abusing a child, a spokesman for the Brussels bishop said Friday.

Is there an end it sight? Will the Pope and the church take the drastic actions that are truly necessary? Probably not. It’s time for a house cleaning, starting at the top. The college of cardinals should appoint a special independent investigator to look into all the allegations and take appropriate (meaning defrocking, handing over to authorities, excommunicating, etc.) actions on anyone found to be guilty of this sort of abuse, or of covering it up, which is actually the graver sin. As [[Roger Ebert]] said, the abuser is sick, the one who covers up for the abuser is evil.

Apr 5 2010

Young men who smoke have lower IQs

From Science Daily:

Smoking is dumb: Young men who smoke have lower IQs, study finds: A study led by Prof. Mark Weiser of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Psychiatry and the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer Hospital has determined that young men who smoke are likely to have lower IQs than their non-smoking peers. Tracking 18- to 21-year-old men enlisted in the Israeli army in the largest ever study of its kind, he has been able to demonstrate an important connection between the number of cigarettes young males smoke and their IQ.

Hmmm…. I’ve always maintained to my daughters that anyone that starts smoking today, with all we know, is a moron. I’ve even gone out of my way at times to point to the teenagers out in front of the movie theater and exclaim as much. Now I have scientific proof to back me up.

Thankfully, they understood, and never started. Now, if we could only reach the rest of the impressionable youth.

Mar 23 2010

Time for a new Pope?

From The London Evening Standard:

Pope ‘led cover-up of child abuse by priests’: The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight.

In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church’s interests ahead of child safety.

The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.

If this actually happened (and given the recent issues that have surfaced, I think it likely), there’s no choice for this Pope but to resign.

They let Cardinal Law get away with it nearly a decade ago, and that was troubling enough. But now the Pope?!? It’s time for a complete overhaul of the church hierarchy. This cannot go on, and cannot be ignored.