Counter Punch
By SAUL LANDAU
How does the new Pope connect to Catholic kids persecuting me as a child, especially during Halloween, obstructing justice and shaping US politics?
At age six, growing up in the Bronx, a gang of Irish Catholic kids jumped me and beat me.
As they punched, I asked why.
"You killed our Lord, kid," said a freckled boy of about eight. "We're getting even." ...
I wonder if those kids who beat me up became priests, bishops and cardinals. They might have become close associates of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) at the time that the Vatican decided to distract attention from the Church's decade-long sex abuse scandal.
As the world became aware of pedophilia in the priesthood, Ratzinger took command of the Vatican's counter offensive, a course that interfered with justice for the victims of priests' abuse and also with US politics. How to direct the public away from the fact that hundreds of priests have taken advantage of kids in their parishes? In the 2004 elections, the Church weighed in on the side of George W. Bush and other candidates who opposed abortion and gay marriage, issues most likely to divert attention away from the scandal.
On August 11, 2004, less than three months before the elections, Ratzinger sent a directive to US Bishops. "The Church teaches that abortion or euthanasia is a grave sin" Citing previous Church doctrine, he warned Catholics. "In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law or vote for it." Christians have a "grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God's law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil. ,,,This cooperation can never be justified