Well, this is a colossal fail:
A Catholic Church child safety co-ordinator who was in charge of investigating sexual abuse allegations was jailed for 12 months today for internet peadophile offences.
Christopher Jarvis, 49, a married father-of-four, investigated historic claims of child abuse, interviewing the victims when they were adults.
He was responsible for child protection at 120 churches and parish community groups for nine years.
The
UK Guardian adds:
The revelations that the church hired a peadophile in a key child protection role will add to the controversy surrounding the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales over its handling of sexual abuse.
Ya think?
Good thing they're holding the line on that whole "gays are destroying families" thing. Lord knows what awful things could transpire if homosexuals had access to children.
Undeterred by this breaking news Pope Benedict XVI deigned to throw some stones from his fabulous glass house on Monday. In his State of the World address His Holiness lectured the world on proper values and called gay marriage "a threat to humanity's future."
From Reuters:
He told diplomats from nearly 180 countries that the education of children needed proper "settings" and that "pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman."
"This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself," he said.
The Vatican and Catholic officials around the world have protested against moves to legalize gay marriage in Europe and other developed parts of the world.
Hilarious that anyone listens to the pope on the topic of what's in the best interest of families. He might familiarize himself with the latest scientific study out of the Williams Institute that concluded lesbians make terrific parents.
Let's see if we can find a study on how safe children are in the care of the Catholic Church?
In light of this latest of embarrassing scandals related to the Church's leadership on crimes committed under their watch, maybe we should all be glad Massachusetts "forced" the Catholic Church out of the child services industry.
Gingrich
(Gage Skidmore/Wikicommons)
What's that? Turns out that
Newt Gingrich is running around telling a big, fat lie when he says the Catholic Church was "forced out" of the adoption business, when in fact, they chose to leave voluntarily?
The truth is:
The organization voluntarily ceased doing adoptions after the state’s four Catholic Bishops got wind that gay parents had been adopting kids through Catholic Charities from an October 2005 Boston Globe (pdf) story.
I'm not holding my breath waiting for the mainstream media to fact-check Gingrich on that.