Our Daily Bread

The Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles just paid a $660 million dollar settlement to quiet claims of sexual abuse. One of the dominant social institutions of our civilization is in fact a pedophilia mill. Regretfully I write these words.

I was an altar boy. (No, nobody ever tried to molest me). I went to church every Sunday (against my will -didn't we all), my mother was a CCD teacher. I forget what CCD stands for but it has something to do with inflicting Irish Catholic guilt upon your children.

My parents never had air conditioning. It wasn't that hot then anyway. Everything made sense. No one asked questions like they do today because there were no McMansions, only MacMahons. There was no bullshit to distract you from your goals. It was "either you're with the Commie's or your against them." Not a tough choice given the times.

Anyway, I wonder how it is that an institution as rich, powerful, and old as the Catholic Church exists, relatively unchanged, and relatively unscathed, in a world that claims to prize justice as much as it does its children. When that institution has been exposed, again and again as a refuge for sexual perverts and hypocrites of the worst kind.

Our nightly news programs engage in unsanctioned crusades against monstrous child molesters, stirring up fear and hatred amongst neighbors and friends, and yet the devil is in our midst, and no one dare speak his name.

Everyone's so afraid that the pillars of White Christian Suburbia will come crashing down that we won't acknowledge that there is a systemic, deep rooted, history of child molestation hidden like an unwanted erection, beneath the frocks of our beloved Catholic priests.

Given the public record, the sexual crimes perpetrated by prominent members of the Catholic Church rivals that of the organized rackets of the Mafia of the Twenties and Thirties.

Unchecked, and unprosecuted, those institutions held great sway over their respective communities. The times of unacountability have long since passed for the Mafia and it is time for the Catholic Church in America to come to the same realization.

In other words, somebody (like the President of the U.S.) needs to straight up ask the Pope, "What the fuck is going on?" And then investigate the shit out of them.