Highlighting repeated cover ups of child rape = "petty gossip"

At least, if you're the Pope anyway.

So, a little over a week ago now the Vatican issued a more than belated apology for the growing number of cases of child abuse by priests and their cover up by the Church (more of the former, less of the latter, in the letter). He did at least manage to actually use the word 'sorry', which appears to be a step forward for these people who don't really think they've done anything wrong.

Now though the Pope has managed to undo even the little bit of good the apology did. The very public anger and horror, the questioning of the Vatican's versions of events, the calling for people to be punished for what they did and are doing, the continued insistence on honesty and the truth - this is not 'petty gossip' as Ratzinger would have you believe. The Pope apparently knows that God leads "towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion."

Yes, the Pope won't be intimidated by people pointing out his and his churches involvement in the covering up of child abuse because doing so is 'the petty gossip of dominant opinion' and nothing more. Ironically he also pointed out that man sometimes falls to "the lowest, vulgar levels" and sank "into the swamp of sin and dishonesty." Which, of course, perfectly sums up his and the Catholic churches actions over this and the Catholics doing the abusing.

As PZ said, could he have possibly trivialised this anymore? I mean, we know that is what he wants to do, make all these scandals go away by pretending they are not that big of a deal because they are just gossip after all, but really. What a cock.

You couldn't make this shit up, and if you did Catholics would be outraged at the offence you'd caused them.

Where's their outrage over the reality however?

The anthropic principle and Intelligent Design. And some other stuff

Careful - put the kettle on and get a brew, this is going to be a big one!

So, recently an anonymous commenter (that had better change - pick a name and use that to post with) has come by to defend Intelligent Design and offer up their evidence for it.

Nothing new or that hasn't been seen before, and the usual tactics employed I'm afraid. Since there is a lot to reply though I thought I'd write a new post dealing with it rather than spread a response over several comments on the original thread - and I'll probably use this tactic from now on whenever someone suggests some evidence in the ID post - I'll separate it into a post purely dealing with that evidence and link to it from the ID post.

Since our anonymous commenter didn't give themselves a name I'll pick one.

Comment Policy change warning - no more anonymous comments

Alright, I'm going to be switching off anonymous commenting because I am getting tired of trying to keep track of just which anonymous IDer has said what.


If you don't have the guts or the time to put even a made up pseudonym with your comments, maybe you shouldn't be making them.

This will go into effect by the end of today (22nd March).

EDIT: OK so I had a change of heart, I would rather people didn't have to register somewhere just to post a comment so here's the deal, if you want to post then pick a user name and post under that - I will give one warning to anonymous commenters and if a name isn't attached to the next comment then I will delete it and subsequent ones.

If you don't have the conviction to identify yourself, even anonymously over the internet, with comments you've made you should probably not be making them.

Cardinal Sean Brady: liar, hypocrite, coward

Up until yesterday I had left the scandals surrounding the Catholic church in Ireland alone because they had plenty of coverage elsewhere that I wasn't going to add anything too by blogging myself, but the case of the cowardly Cardinal Sean Brady has left me with plenty to say, and the more I look into it the more I have to say.

So whilst re-reading this BBC article, the one that got me started on this, I noticed a quote from Brady that highlights just exactly why his half arsed apology was so utterly and shamefully worthless, insulting and meaningless.

You see, back in December 2009, Brady apparently told a reporter that:

he would feel obliged to resign if any act or omission on his part "had allowed or meant that other children were abused".

So did his morally bankrupt actions (or lack thereof) allow further children to be abused? Yes.  However now Brady insists that he will resign only if asked to by the Pope. I do like a man of conviction.

Brady is a disgrace to humanity. He is a coward lacking any moral courage or character. The only morally acceptable action he could have taken was back in 1975, and he did not. He allowed a serial child rapist, who it has emerged had been abusing chilrden since the 1940s (in three countries no less) and had first come to light as a rapist in 1968, to continue to rape children. Brady apparently said that if that was the case, he would feel obliged to resign. The only morally acceptable action he could take now would be to resign, and he won't. Spotting a pattern of moral cowardice and hypocrisy yet?

In his apology Brady said he was sorry that in the past he had not upheld the values he proclaimed, yet he isn't doing so now either. That makes his apology utterly worthless and insulting to the victims of abuse that he allowed to continue through 35 years of inaction, incompetence and immorality. He clearly didn't mean a word of it, as I sarcastically predicted myself yesterday.

The 'decent people of Armagh' should be ashamed of themselves. Brady should be ashamed of himself. Of course, thanks to his actions in 1975 and his actions now, we know that isn't the case. Shame, ironically for a Catholic, appears to be something Brady is incapable of.

His actions allowed a known child rapist to continue to prey on children for 20 years, and he won't even resign from his job. Can you imagine what the outcry would be if this was any institution other than the Catholic church? A congregation APPLAUDED him for letting a child rapist get away with it for 20 more years and then pretending he was sorry for it.

Cunts.

Acupuncture and infection

Remember how all those alternative medicine advocates like to complain about the side effects and dangers of modern medicine? Remember how they either imply or flat out claim that there are no such dangers from alternative medicine? Well, not surprisingly, it turns out that when people look at this kind of claim critically and scientifically the alties are not exactly correct.

Catholic clergy, ashamed? Fuck off

Cardinal Sean Brady recently made some mealy mouthed apologies for his role in the institutionalised and state protected rape and physical abuse of children by the Catholic church in Ireland. If you haven't seen what he said, here's a quote from the BBC:

"I have listened to reaction from people to my role in events 35 years ago.
"I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologise to you with all my heart.
"I also apologise to all those who feel I have let them down.
"Looking back I am ashamed that I have not always upheld the values that I profess and believe in."

For those of you who don't speak Catholic, allow this reformed one to translate for you:

"Unfortunately those children whose abuse I helped enable wouldn't keep their bloody mouths shut and now everyone knows what a complete cunt I was 35 years ago when I helped force some children who had been raped to keep quiet about it.
"I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by my complete lack of integrity, moral courage,  honesty or compassion that I now have to pay lip service to contrition. Because, after all, if I was really sorry about any of this I could have done something about it at any point in the previous 35 years, couldn't I? Instead though, since what I thought would remain hidden has come out now I have to at least make it look like I feel sorry for it. After all, we all know that if this had stayed secret I would never have a said a fucking thing about any of this to anyone before I died or done a damn thing about any of it. I mean really, is anyone going to buy this apology since it was only forced out of me by the fact that I actually got caught? Do you really think I would be 'fessing up to this shit if it was still a well kept church secret? Fuck off! And you've only seen the parts that have come to light, boy if you only knew what other shit I've gotten away with.
Anyway, in order to try and take the heat off the Pope I now have to pretend that all along I have felt sorry for this and just never done anything about it up until now, when it became public.
I apologise to all those who feel I have let them down. And by that I mean the Vatican and for me not helping to bury this shit so deep it would never have come to light.
Looking back I would have done everything all over again, only this time made sure I didn't get caught because if I had ever at any point felt real shame or horror, if I was ever at any point anything even approaching a man, I would have done something long before I was caught, wouldn't I?"

Clearly morality is the purview of the religious. Why is this pathetic excuse for a human being not being prosecuted for witholding this from the police? Oh yes I forget, he's a religious man and he didn't actually do the abusing. He just knew who was. And kept that information from the police (who it seems may not have acted on it anyway).  And then enabled the abusers to keep abusing.And helped keep it a secret for 35 years.

Cunt.

Sub Command: Missile Test mission

Something almost completely unrelated to my usual stuff today, but it is the reason I haven't posted for a while. If you aren't even remotely interested in program debugging or computer games you might as well stop reading here and go do something far more interesting instead, life is too short to read stuff you don't care about!

I recently took up playing/learning the subsim game Sub Command by Sonalysts Combat Simulations but only got three missions into the campaign when I hit a snag, I couldn't finish a mission successfully even though I had fulfilled all the mission criteria. So I did a Google search for the same problem and found there were a lot of other players with the same problem. Unfortunately there didn't appear to be a fix even though patch 1.05 was supposed to have addressed the problem. I even found a forum entry from one of the developers who said there was a problem with the goals system on this mission and that was what had caused Sonalysts to adopt scripting for the missions in their next game Dangerous Waters.