Mt. Kersten erupts!
Mt. Kersten can remain dormant only so long, but then, without warning, it spews hot sulphurous gas, and poisonous ash and lava, over a wide area. It happened again this week. But as is often true with volcanos, the effluvium of Mt. Kersten resembled past ejections quite closely.
An examination of the seismic records reveals periodic eruptions by Mt. Kersten complaining about the picked on condition of the Catholic Church, the moral decay of society, the evils of gay marriage, and claiming that the Catholic Church remains as one of the obstacles to the triumph of the secular, “progressive” agenda.
Yes, my friends, Katherine Kersten wrote again on her favorite topics.
One of the points she makes is that the Catholic Church clergy sex abuse is no worse than anybody else’s. (But she writes later that we should look to the Catholic Church as the source of our moral enlightenment.) Oh? You might take a look at an 83 minute documentary by Frontline entitled Secrets of the Vatican, or perhaps another one entitled What is the State of the Church’s Child Abuse Crisis? (I can’t embed them here; sorry.)
The conclusion is inescapable that the Catholic Church tolerated child sexual abuse for decades, or longer, and then orchestrated an international — yes, international — effort to cover it up.
And why aren’t the cases against Protestant ministers, Buddhist priests, and Muslim imams also clogging the courts?
Kersten’s argument on this score simply does not add up. Nor does her claim that the Catholic Church, being such a good record keeper, is ripe for the picking.
One reason is that the Catholic Church’s unique institutional structure makes it an attractive target for headline-grabbing lawsuits. The Catholic Church is centralized, maintains detailed records stretching back decades and has “deep pockets.” In these ways, it differs greatly from other denominations, such as Baptist or Presbyterian.
I refer again to the Secrets of the Vatican documentary referred to above.
Truly, the Vatican’s records go back centuries, but since it considers itself sovereign — and for reasons I cannot comprehend, governments seem to agree — law enforcement officials from outside the Vatican have never touched a record in it.
Kersten is full of baloney or worse on this. And who hasn’t witnessed the foot dragging by the Church in the states, too?
The Catholic Church was starting to have to come to grips with the sex abuse issue long before the issue of gay marriage came up in Minnesota. To try to tie them together, as Kersten tries to do, is a libel on kids abused by priests years ago who are just coming forward now.
But Kersten winds up and throws the final spitball:
But there’s a deeper, ideological reason for the lopsided media focus on the Catholic Church. The church disagrees strongly with elite opinionmakers — our new priestly class — on the social/sexual issues at ground zero in the culture wars, including abortion, contraception, premarital chastity and same-sex marriage. It is one of the last and strongest institutions to oppose today’s fashionable catechism of political correctness, which holds that truth is relative and that freedom means living as we please and making up rules that are “true for us.”
The church dares to teach the opposite — that “there are moral truths built into the world and human beings: truths we can know by reason, and truths that set the boundaries within which we can live good and noble lives,” in the words of commentator George Weigel.
If church leaders’ past mishandling of clergy abuse can be used to undermine the moral authority of the church, one of the last remaining obstacles to the triumph of the secular, “progressive” agenda will have been removed.
[Amen]
We can know these things by reason? Couldn’t agree with you more, Katie. But I’m going to use my own reason, and my own sense of ethics, derived from religion, all right, but other things as well, including science. I am not prepared to have Bronze Age goatherds have the last word.
This, my friends, is called judgment, and it isn’t relativism; it’s thinking.
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