Eighteen years ago, she tore up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live. Her reasons for doing so seem much more understandable now, especially considering she was sent to one of the now-infamous Magdalene Laundries as a teenager.
Benedict’s infamous 2001 letter to bishops around the world ordered them to keep sexual abuse allegations secret under threat of excommunication — updating a noxious church policy, expressed in a 1962 document, that both priests accused of sex crimes and their victims “observe the strictest secret” and be “restrained by a perpetual silence.”
Irish Catholics are in a dysfunctional relationship with an abusive organization. The pope must take responsibility for the actions of his subordinates. If Catholic priests are abusing children, it is Rome, not Dublin, that must answer for it with a full confession and in a criminal investigation. Until it does, all good Catholics — even little old ladies who go to church every Sunday, not just protest singers like me whom the Vatican can easily ignore — should avoid Mass. In Ireland, it is time we separated our God from our religion, and our faith from its alleged leaders.
There’s an interesting article here, which I would prefer to re-title “3 Reasons the Pope still doesn’t get why what he did was wrong”.