Unholy
: Should I be disturbed at Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds’ posts today on the Catholic pedophilia scandal (first, second, third, fourth)? He finds a moral and legal difference between priests having sex with children and having “underage sex.”
I don’t.
Priests having sex with minors (of either gender) is patently wrong on every level — it is wrong for adults to have sex with minors of any age (the adults are responsible for controlling themselves); it is especially wrong for clergy to abuse their trust with young people and families in this way (for Christ’s sake!); it is also wrong, incidentally, for priests to violate their own vows of celibacy. I happen to think the vows are wrong but I’m not the one taking and breaking them.
The wrongs are then multiplied with their supervisors knowingly hide these activities from the authorities, aiding and abetting the crimes and obstructing justice and failing to protect the children in their care.
I smell a bit of the libertarian laissez faire view of sex here: If they’re merely underage and consenting, what’s the sin? Same problem with Libertarians’ odd and disturbing defense — no matter how reluctant — of incest.
This is not about freedom.
This is about responsibility. This is about crime. This is about sin. This is about laws of man and God. This is about right and wrong, pure and simple. And sexually exploiting and abusing children is dead wrong by any standard. Dead wrong.
Don’t look up
: The Feds are planning to end F-16 flights over America to guard against terror jets. Says the NY Times:
They said stricter airport security, stronger cockpit doors and more federal marshals on flights had sufficiently reduced the threat of attacks to allow the military to scale back patrols.
HA!
And if things are so safe, why are they continuing the flights over Washington but over no other American city?
: Kathy Kinsley agrees.
No taxation withour representation
: The Times of London is going to start charging just foreigners for access to its content. That not only hurts those of us who like to read and link to the Times, it doesn’t make much sense. We can’t even buy the daily Times over here; our reading online does not cannibalize print sales; so why pick on us?
Hot under the collar
: More on New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan and his behavior regarding pedophile priests while he was bishop of Hartford. From the NY Times:
Cardinal Egan never took the allegations of abuse to law enforcement officials, even though there has been a law in Connecticut since at least 1971 requiring members of the clergy to report cases of abuse of minors.
From the Hartford Courant:
The Courant reported that Egan failed to thoroughly investigate abuse allegations, did not refer complaints to criminal authorities and – as recently as 1999 – allowed priests to continue working years after allegations of sexual molestation had been made against them.
It was also reported that Egan refused to believe multiple sex-abuse claims against a half-dozen clergy, and testified in sealed court documents that one priest’s 12 accusers “have never been proved to be telling the truth.”
