The Catholic Church . . .

Authortity always asks for acceptance of its errors. The Catholic Church never, ever, invokes "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." But caught--quite literally--with its all-male pants down--it suddenly remembers.

The woman caught in adultery is no great sinner. Consenting adults? There is nothing abusive about that, though there is perhaps a breach of trust, of faith.

But the clerical sex crimes are another matter. These are rapes: statutory rapes for the most part, the victims under the age of consent. For the victims beyond that age, it's a matter of "moral" authority used to commit crimes. And the Catholic Church lives on the "moral" authority of its clergy.

To look more largely at what the Catholic clergy's sex sacandal means is to ask, why does the Catholic Church exist? What does it have to do with Jesus of Nazareth? Anything?

He taught against greed, against the rich. What is the richest--and the greediest--organisation on the face of the earth? The Catholic Church. It not only has the biggest bank accounts, the greatest stock holdings, the most real estate; it glories in its wealth. Its churches proclaim wealth. Its Pope wears a triple gold crown, and parades around dressed in gold-embroidered vestments. Everything about it mocks Jesus of Nazareth.

So why does it exist?

The historical Jesus was a very good and noble man. He taught the same simple but profound goodness that Socrates taught. Because many people listened to him, and accepted with enthusiasm what he taught, he was deemed dangerous by the powerful people of his time, and brutally murdered.

Since then, the powerful people have been more shrewd. They have taken him over, pretended to admire and love him, have made a god of him--and have ignored everything that he said.

If the people who call themselves "Christians" thought--for one short moment--of what their Christianity amounts to, they would rise up and with one great decent voice begin to change the world. The wealth of the Catholic Church would be used to feed millions and millions of people, gaudy churches and cathedrals would house millions of homeless people, and freed from the Church's hypocrisy we might even begin to take care of each other.

Christians could indeed change the world. The first step toward than end would be the abolition of the Catholic Church. It has a long, long history of abuse: and the thousands of cases of sexual abuse of boys that have been exposed in recent years are just the perverse tip of nearly two thousand years of moral perversity--and the perversion of the teachings of one of the truly great men in human history.

The Catholic Church has responded to the crimes of sexual abuse by condemning the sin, but not the sinner. How clever! The pope apologises for the sins, but doesn't mention the sinners. One might think, from what the pope has said, that what has been exposed is a massive, world-wide ring of young masturbators, not a world-wide ring of vicious hypocritical child-molesters disguised as Catholic priests.