Even Fr Z...

...gets how stupid a move this was.

I have to agree with the guy who called it "a so-far-unheard-of insolence."

And also the guy who said:

"They're sitting in the papal palace, they're experiencing a little discomfort, and they're going to compare themselves to being rounded up or lined up and sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz?" he said. "You cannot be serious."

How delusional are these clerics?!? They maybe get their feelings or reputations hurt a little, and they're such histrionic cry babies about it. Even though the outrage is deserved.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again now, if the Pope wants to save his job, he needs to submit to a public scourging. Henry II didn't kill Becket. According to the story, he didn't even order it directly. But it happened on his watch, "his" men did it as partisans of the State in that fight...and so he had to take the fall. Exact same thing here. If the Pope wants to claim the right to appoint bishops, then the papacy is institutionally responsible, in some degree, for everything that happens under their watch.

Anti-semitism? I'm sorry, but I've seen no one generalizing the accusations to all Catholics. I've seen people critiquing the institutional structures and behavior of an organized institution (ie, the clergy).

That people throw around "anti-Catholic" makes me mad enough. There is nothing anti-Catholic in disagreeing with a religion or mudslinging with a political enemy (as we are for liberals and they are for us). Imagine if the Democrats accused Republicans of being "anti-Democrat" or the Republicans accused the Democrats of being "anti-Republican." It's ridiculous, ideological opposition is simply not an "anti-ism."

But now, on Good Friday of all days, Cantalamessa has the gall to compare critique of child molestation, it's cover-up, a weak indecisive initial response, and a defiantly defensive reaction to the reaction...to the sufferings the Jews have experienced through history?!?

Now, I think the comparisons to Christ's sufferings were worse. Blasphemous even. But that doesn't carry as much political weight. That's an "inside" reference, as it were, so they could get away with it. But now they've done something so bumbling, so incompetent...as Fr Z asks, did no one vet his speech?! I thought they had no credibility left, and yet somehow they keep losing more and more of it, prodigally even!

These men do not know how to handle themselves. They just don't get it. They are showing the depths of their defiant insolence. They are proving everything everyone has accused them of in the way they are handling this. The arrogance, the naive being out-of-touch, the feelings of special privilege or exemption from the normal rules, the persecution-complex, the lack of empathy, the cowardice, the lack of conscience, the megalomania even.

Just Un. Be. Lievable. Disgusting.