as long as they're not offering contraception

religion poisons Mel Gibson

By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine:

This is extraordinary. We live in a culture where the terms fascistand racist are thrown about, if anything, too easily and too frequently. Yet here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church.....

..........."Yet I still saw a report the other day about a fan site where the members were just beginning to ask, 'What's with him?' Why is there this reluctance to call something by its right name? It's not as if Gibson was issuing a cry for help. On the contrary, what he is issuing is the distilled violence, cruelty, and bigotry—and sexual hypocrisy—that stretches from the Crusades through the Inquisition to the 'concordats' between the church and Hitler and Mussolini. Yet he's still reporting for work. When will Hollywood, and the wider society, finally decide to shun and spurn him utterly, both for what he is and for what he represents?"

It's the Jews' fault

Bishop 'blames Jews' for criticism of Catholic church record on abuse |The Guardian:

"A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a 'Zionist attack' was behind the criticism, considering how 'powerful and refined' the criticism is.

The comments, which have been denied by the bishop, follow a series of statements from Catholic churchmen alleging the existence of plots to weaken the church and Pope Benedict XVI.

Allegedly speaking to the Catholic website Pontifex, Babini, 81, was quoted as saying: 'They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers.'"

more abuse by the church

Claims of abuse flood Munich diocese: "The head of a task force set up to deal with sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the pope's former archdiocese in Germany has been inundated by a 'tsunami' of claims.

Reports have emerged almost daily of sex abuse cases involving Catholic clergy in several European countries. The controversy threatens to overshadow a letter the Pope is to release on similar scandals in Ireland.

Fresh claims have emerged that Benedict XVI failed to do enough to safeguard children from pedophile priests when, as Joseph Ratzinger, he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982. 'It's like a tsunami,' said Elke Huemmeler, the female head of the diocese's newly established Task Force on Sexual Abuse Prevention.

Yesterday, the body began reviewing about 120 cases of alleged sexual abuse. Around 100 involve a boarding school run by Benedictine monks at Ettal, in southern Bavaria.

The most damaging revelation is that the then archbishop allowed a priest accused of molesting an 11 year-old boy elsewhere to move to his diocese in order to undergo 'therapy' in 1980."

The pope's entire career has the stench of evil about it

Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine: "The Roman Catholic Church is headed by a mediocre Bavarian bureaucrat once tasked with the concealment of the foulest iniquity, whose ineptitude in that job now shows him to us as a man personally and professionally responsible for enabling a filthy wave of crime. Ratzinger himself may be banal, but his whole career has the stench of evil—a clinging and systematic evil that is beyond the power of exorcism to dispel."