The Pope's Creative New Defense of Institutional Abuse

[Trigger warning for sexual violence, clergy abuse, and rape apologia.]

The Pope used the occasion of his Christmas address (there's no time like the holidays!) to present a new defense of the widespread sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy:

"In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children," the Pope said.

"It was maintained - even within the realm of Catholic theology - that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a 'better than' and a 'worse than'. Nothing is good or bad in itself."

Um. I'm no fucking Professor Seven Sacraments over here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not accurate that Catholics, nor the rest of the population, generally viewed pedophilia as "normal" in the 1970s.

And if I were one of the millions of clergy members who'd been serving the church in the '70s, who didn't abuse children, I'd be mighty pissed at the Pope's suggestion that I was incapable of discerning the morality of pedophilia.

(Aside: I guess that whole ephebophilia defense never caught on, eh?)

Having once again defended predator priests, the Pope naturally went on to talk about how horrible all this sexual violence is...for the church.

The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached "an unimaginable dimension" which brought "humiliation" on the Church.

Asking how abuse exploded within the Church, the Pontiff called on senior clerics "to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred" and to help victims heal through a better presentation of the Christian message.

Yes, "a better presentation of the Christian message" than child rape would be awesome.

Like any good rock star, the Pope likes to mix in some new material with his Greatest Hits, so following the classics "Rape Apologia" and "Waaaahhh the Church Has Suffered," he introduced his new single, "Blame It on Child Porn."

"We cannot remain silent about the context of these times in which these events have come to light," he said, citing the growth of child pornography "that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society" he said.

The Pope and I are both deeply concerned about pedophilia and child porn. The difference is that I'm not using their ghastly ubiquity to defend and contextualize the crimes of rapists.

[H/T to Spudsy. Commenting Guidelines: Please take the time to make sure your criticisms are clearly directed at the Catholic Church leadership and not at "Catholics," many of whom are themselves critical of the failures of Church leadership.]