Pope urges church to reflect on sex abuse or The 70's; Everyone's diddling so Priests should too!

Pope Benedict XVI told Vatican officials Monday that they must reflect on the church's culpability in its child sex-abuse scandal, but he also blamed a secular society in which he said the mistreatment of children was frighteningly common. (notice that whenever the church makes any sort of apology there is always a very big BUT blaming the rest of society for their criminal behaviour?)

In his traditional, end-of-the-year speech to Vatican cardinals and bishops, Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” that required the church to accept the “humiliation” as a call for renewal.

“In the 1970s, pedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the pope said.  (In other words. It was okay to rape and molest children back in the good old days)

“We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen,” the pope said.

Benedict also said, however, that the scandal must be seen in a broader social context, in which child pornography is seemingly considered normal by society and drug use and sexual tourism are on the rise. (I don't know ANYONE who would agree that child pornography is considered normal).

“It is fundamentally disturbing to watch a brilliant man so conveniently misdiagnose a horrific scandal,” said Barbara Blaine, president of the main U.S. victims' group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

She said the scandal wasn't caused by the 1970s but rather by the church's culture of secrecy and fixation with self-preservation in which predator priests and the bishops who moved them around rather than turn them in were rarely disciplined.

“Whenever the pope tires of talking about abuse and starts acting on abuse, he should focus on taking immediate, pratical steps to oust those who commit, ignore and conceal clergy sex crimes first,” Blaine said.

Story Source: The Star