Monday 14 July 2008

Pope TV

SBS will be covering the welcome service in Sydney, when the 120-year-old Pope falls asleep, live of TV, Tuesday 3:30pm.

Protesters who find the Catholic church's regime oppressive and bigoted, and want to express their god-given democratic right to share their message of the truth, can be arrested, under draconian laws bought in especially for World Youth Day events.

If people "engage in conduct that causes annoyance or inconvenience", they can be arrested and fined up to $5,500, under the World Youth Day Act. Heil Iemma!

I expect his forced sexual abuse apology will be very bland. What is needed is a total admission that any sexual abuse from their clergy is totally unacceptable, instead of these half-arsed responses we hear every few months. Such reactive to such crimes would no be tolerated in any other organisation.

It was rather icky watching Bishop George Pell, who fell down the ABC well last week, in a staged media explosion about his appalling mis-management of sexual abuse by Sydney priests. It's institutional the way the church deals with such issues. It still amazes me, after the same story was played out a few years ago with the Anglicans, where the church hierarchy denied the victims where abused.

Hollingworth, then Governor General and head of the church said is was consensual. Pell used exactly the same script, under a recorded phone call from the abuser was released the second night of the interview. The really don't get it, and I wonder if they ever will.

Meanwhile, gay Anglican New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, is on a mission to change the church in the US. "Just like people of colour and women were excluding, now is the time to embrace everyone," he says.

Oh, they are such a loving and inclusive bunch, those churchy folk.

To think that I was once a Catholic altar boy when I was just a lad. That's me on the left, all but chopped off! My three brothers were all part of the family ritual as well, along with the Irish chain-smoking aggressive Father Mikhail.

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