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	Sorry, Holy Father, We Can't Forgive the Sins of Your Church By Rod Liddle Sunday Times March 21, 2010 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rod_liddle/article7069710.ece UNITED KINGDOM -- Has the time come for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to open the door to the many millions of British Roman Catholic worshippers who may be worried that their children are likely to be interfered with by priests? I think it's correct that young children are slightly less at risk from the Anglican clergy, although it would be unwise of Rowan to offer any cast-iron promises, just in case. Last year Pope Benedict XVI invited disillusioned Anglicans to join the Church of Rome if they were disapproving of, or merely bored by, women priests and homosexuals but fancied instead a few Latin incantations, rosary beads and the whiff of incense; this took the Church of England by surprise. Now is Beardo's chance to get his own back. He should strike while the iron is hot. Give the émigré left-footers free passage, one of those Christingle oranges and a DVD collection of The Vicar of Dibley — they can even cling on to transubstantiation, if they keep quiet about it. The Catholic Church is in crisis across Europe, apparently. Since the turn of the year, 300 Germans have come forward and said that they were abused by priests while they were children, and the chancellor, Angela Merkel, has called for a national investigation. Meanwhile in Ireland, the head of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Sean Brady, has admitted that he was present at meetings in the 1970s when children who were abused by a paedophile priest were forced, there and then, to sign a vow of silence. Brady now accepts that the church's response to this scandal has been "hopelessly inadequate" (although he hasn't yet used the words "criminal" and "totalitarian") but he will not resign over the business. This weekend Ireland's "faithful", as Benny the 16th puts it, have received a letter from him personally, which presumably included an apology somewhere along the way. Meanwhile, there have been similar scandals in Holland, Spain, Switzerland and Austria, although I suppose in the last case it is a moot point as to whether it is an exclusively Catholic problem, or primarily an Austrian problem, particularly if the offences were committed underground. Quite recently, the Catholic Church has either castigated or banned outright internet social networking sites, the oriental spiritual healing technique of reiki, books and films by Dan Brown and, its old favourite, witches. Now I know this seems a little presumptuous, but my guess is that Jesus Christ would probably prefer members of his flock to sit around a bubbling cauldron with a black cat, watching The Da Vinci Code while being spiritually attended to by a Japanese person and occasionally breaking off to tweet Stephen Fry, than being interfered with by a priest. As I say, this is only a guess. But the church still gives the impression that while its legions of kiddie-fiddling priests are probably, on the whole, a bad thing, they are not half as Satanic as stuff like condoms, socialism and gender equality. You suspect that it is the church's entrenched position within much of Europe that has enabled it to sidestep public abhorrence for so long, and thus to react with apparent insouciance whenever these scandals arise and remain immune to proper investigation. However, the public across Europe is becoming more secular and more questioning of those in authority. It is disinclined to believe in the infallibility of anyone, be it a politician, a pop star or a pope. And those new watchwords — transparency and openness — are not qualities that one associates with the Holy See. The problem, I suppose, is that when Catholics start to unpick the enormous damage occasioned by paedophile priests, they may begin to question the underlying cause — the priestly vow of celibacy. I don't think anybody in Europe sees the point of sexual abstinence these days and we are probably rightly sceptical of those who claim to practise it. I tried it once and it left me twitchy and forlorn. + On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your surprise that Tony Blair has trousered millions of pounds in contracts at least partly as a consequence of the illegal war he prosecuted on our behalf against Iraq — and then tried desperately to keep his deals secret? Were you utterly staggered at the naked greed, opportunism and attempted deception — or did you nod your head and mutter, yeah, that would be about right? This is a rhetorical question, really — and here's another: have we ever had a more shameless and grasping prime minister? Blair pocketed huge, if still undisclosed, amounts of dosh from advising the Kuwaiti royal family — the Al-Sabahs (do you know them? Absolutely charming people — you must have them over one evening. Black tie; no alcohol, poofs or women). And then even more money from a South Korean oil firm working in Iraq, where hundreds of British soldiers lost their lives. You have to say he has done rather better out of the war than the dead and maimed British soldiers or indeed the Iraqi civilians, those dead or alive. Shouldn't Gordon Brown condemn this venality? I'm sure he must be itching to. Doesn't it seem immoral? And if so, Gordy, why not say so? Totalitarian Tots R Us Should we dress our toddlers up as fascist megalomaniacs to instil in them a feeling of confidence and superiority? It's tempting. The Danish artist Nina Maria Kleivan photographed her young daughter Faustina dressed as Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic etc. I once tried dressing my young daughter Emmeline as Papa Doc Duvalier, but she became querulous and attempted to decapitate her fellow pupils at the Baydon Junior Crickets pre-school club with a stainless steel machete. So, worried, I then fitted her out as David Miliband, but that just made her cry all the time and act weird when she saw a banana. Still, anything to give them a leg-up in life. Massacre? Obviously we blame the gays A retired senior US general and former Nato commander, General John Sheehan, has blamed Dutch homosexuals for the massacre of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Serbian soldiers at Srebrenica in 1995. There has been criticism before of the ineffectual United Nations operation to defend the town but now we know the truth: it was because some of the Dutch soldiers were poofters. According to Sheehan the "open homosexuality" of the Dutch made them an ineffective fighting force. He told a US Senate hearing in Washington that the Serbs swung into town, handcuffed the Dutch soldiers to telephone poles and then sauntered off to kill the Muslims. He did not suggest, so far as I am aware, that the Dutch soldiers enjoyed being chained to the poles by burly, beefcake Serbs, or perhaps asked for this to be done. + Lord Tebbit may be prosecuted for kicking a dragon. The dragon "jostled" him during Chinese new year celebrations which he was anxious to stop because they were noisy. Tebbo was angry at being jostled and lashed out with his boot; the dragon complained to the old bill, because that's what dragons do these days, rather than incinerate you with their fiery breath. Next week Geoffrey Howe is questioned for having disturbed the nesting site of a phoenix and Michael Heseltine is accused of behaving inappropriately towards a wyvern. You just hope, for the sake of irony, that Norman's case is heard on April 23.
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