Id Help Jesus to Burn down the Vatican, by Sinead OConnor, Irish Independent, March 4, 2010

I'd Help Jesus to Burn down the Vatican

By Sinead O'Connor
Irish Independent
March 4, 2010

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/sinead-oconnor-id-help-jesus-to-burn-down-the-vatican-2087994.html

IRELAND -- PLEASE allow me to express my astonishment upon reading the statement made on the evening of March 1 by the Bishop of Ferns, Denis Brennan.

His statement attempts to dictate to us -- in the same way the Inquisition did -- how Christians should behave. It says directly that it would be anti-Christian of us to feel that the church should pay its own bills for its own abuse with its own billions that it throttled from our grandparents, whom it also abused, physically, emotionally, psychologically and sexually.

Evidence of sexual abuse by clergy, according to the Murphy report, can be traced as far back as 320 AD and the first treatment centres for paedophile priests were created in 1940, named Servants of the Paraclete.

These centres were opened all over the world.

I would like to know exactly whose idea this latest plan was and from where were issued the instructions or permission for Bishop Brennan to make such a statement.

The statement and its attempted manipulation of good Catholic people could be described as unbelievable and stupid.

But in my opinion, the only word that does it justice is 'evil'.

How long do they expect us to restrain ourselves? We have put up with this bull dung for hundreds of years.

A true Christian is someone who, in any given situation, is supposed to ask themselves what would Jesus do, then try to do that.

How an organisation which has acted, decade after decade, only to protect its business interests above the interests of children can feel it has the right to dictate to us what Christians should do is beyond belief.

From the Pope on down, through the Vatican and therefore through the lower echelons, the whole organisation, in my belief, is utterly anti-Christian and evil, as proven by centuries of torture, bloodshed, burnings, terrorism, and coverings-up of "the worst crime" known to man.

And if Jesus Christ is to be seen in the vulnerable of this world, then all the church has done is crucify the man over and over and over again.

If Christ was here, he would be burning down the Vatican. And I for one would be helping him.