But...he seems to be saying that it's a shitty thing that it appears to be becoming "normal." He talks about child sex trafficking as a tragedy. I mean, I'm not a big pope fan, but it seems as though he clearly thinks these are shitty things.

I mean, the quote: "Asking how abuse exploded within the Church, the Pontiff called on senior clerics "to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred" and to help victims heal through a better presentation of the Christian message."

Doesn't seem to be like he's saying this was ever a good thing. Not when he's calling it an injustice, and referring to the children as victims.

I'm going back to Suri's Burn Book. It's the only thing that makes sense in the world right now.

People at my job are trying to make my head explode enough.

I'd like to read the full statement, Allyson, and I will try, BUT I need to go to the post-office NOW, but:

"In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children," the Pope said...It was maintained - even within the realm of Catholic theology - that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a 'better than' and a 'worse than'. Nothing is good or bad in itself."

And the statement ""We cannot remain silent about the context of these times in which these events have come to light,"...the phrase "the context of these times" seems a but weirdly stated, and open for debate.

Like I said, I would like to read the complete statement, but as is stated in the articles, which does appear to have a bias, it doesn't seem like maybe the Pope is stating things as well as he should WRT sanctioned and church hidden child molestation, which persists in certain circles to this day.

From the statement, I can't tell if he is truly worried more about the humiliation of the church, because such a heinous thing happened, or because it's just a huge PR mess.

HAVE to go to post office NOW! ARGH. Interesting discussions are interesting!

I think it's intended to be an apology, but to say that pedophilia was thought to be normal in the '70s. and the church was sucked into a cultural shift that said nothing is evil in itself or good in itself is at best disingenuous. Isn't the whole point of being the one true church to set standards of good and evil? Abuses and coverups in the Catholic church started way before that. And if relative morality was the problem, why did the rest of society continue to prosecute pedophiles?

eta: I did read the whole statement. He apologized, then made lame excuses.

I wonder if his position that the Church needs to return to the good old days (one assumes, before the 1970s) doesn't play into that statement.

Looking into it further, it still looks like he was totally damn wrong, but for a whole other set of reasons. First, the speech was almost a year ago, so I have no idea why it's burbling to the surface just now. And second, he's not actually committing the grotesque sin of handwaving away pedophilia, he's committing the incredibly tiresome eyerolly sin of blaming free love and dirty fucking hippies and feminism and 70s pop psychology. Here's the full speech, relevant section starting with paragraph 11.

To be scrupulously fair to him, he isn't dismissing the seriousness of the violation of trust or the crimes against generations of children. That noted, it's still incredibly childish, whiny, and painfully ignorant of the details of Western European and American social history of the 1960s-80s (and, unsurprisingly, completely without specific citations), not to mention a spiteful takeback of what started out as a genuine-sounding apology, to say, "Sure, we let our pastors do incredibly shitty, cruel things to children and then we covered up for them and lied about it, but don't forget the context; we were all helpless beneath the Rasputiny mesmeric powers of those ... 70s pop psychologists!"

Still a dick move, but more a callous stupid-ass intellectually lazy dick move than an out-and-out victim-denying crime-erasing dick move.

Man, the Vatican should totally hire me as their number one PR flak!

eta: Or, you know, what Allyson and Ginger so eloquently said while I was bloviating.

I can't tell if he is truly worried more about the humiliation of the church, because such a heinous thing happened, or because it's just a huge PR mess

Yeah. My problem is that (a) he seems to be claiming that only now do we think child rape is a really bad thing, which I think is a way of minimizing the horror of what priests did for decades to the children in their care; and (b) he seems to be simultaneously claiming that society is now degraded and that's why we have child abuse and pornography.

Both of which operate to avoid accepting the Church's responsibility for the harm it has caused. I want the Church to accept that responsibility and change itself so that it never does such a thing again. The more the blame is cast on the demon of social change rather than the toxic way the Church protects its own and clings to moral authority, the more likely it is that this shit will just continue.

Or, you know, what everyone else said.

STOP PASSING THE BUCK, POPE.

I also think it could be read as part of the ongoing effort to discredit liberation theology.