From the BBC:
A senior cardinal has said the Roman Catholic faithful will not be swayed by "petty gossip" about child sex-abuse allegations.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, made the remark in an unusual message of support to Pope Benedict XVI during Easter Mass.
Hmmm .. "petty gossip" ... didn't the pope use similar language recently in response to the ever-widening sexual-abuse scandal?
Why yes, he did:
From the Guardian:
Pope Benedict today risked inflaming opinion as he appeared to round on critics of the Catholic church over the widening sexual abuse scandal, saying he would not "be intimidated by ... petty gossip".
And:
(Reuters) - Attacks on the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict over a sexual abuse scandal are comparable to "collective violence" against Jews, the pontiff's personal preacher told a Vatican Good Friday service.
The sermon by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, a Franciscan whose title is "Preacher of the Pontifical Household", drew sharp criticism from both Jews and victims of sexual abuse by priests
That's right: According to this priest, the pope's suffering in dealing with the Catholic Church's systematic cover-up of and enabling of an epidemic of child-raping, pederast priests is on par with the attempt to exterminate an entire people in the Holocaust.
For fuck's sake, don't they even understand why people around the world are upset with them an frustrated over how they're handling this?
It is this bristling, these self-righteous, angry responses to this monstrous deed on the part of the church, that angers me. This pope and this Vatican are acting as though they should never have been questioned about this unquestionably criminal and monstrous practice in the first place.
Message to this pope and this Vatican: You do not get to systematically enable pederast-rapist priests by secretly shuffling them from one scandal-plagued church straight into a new one with a fresh supply of altar boys to rape and then claim the moral high ground and assert that your judgment is beyond question.