Catholic Church pays off paedophile accusers

Tithes and Offerings

I have not been the most ardent adherent of Malachi's Gospel, just before the offertory in Church many a preacher has re-enacted the Garden of Gethsemane as pleadings become mendicancy and entreaty betrays desperation that the honesty, purity and spirituality of the message is lost to the quest for filthy lucre.

It is almost an in-joke to Nigerians that when a person opens a church, it is like opening a business where worshippers can be persuaded beyond stupefaction to part with the rewards of the sweat of their brow to fund the lavish lifestyle of the founder who must live and exude the excesses of the prosperity gospel.

But the people have kept the faith because beyond filling the House of God with food there is a promise to be fulfilled, the blessing that floods your beyond a deluge as God opens the windows of heaven - think Noah's flood of blessings and you had better have an ark to ride in.

Now, many might have their views about the work to which tithes and offerings are put to in the Church, I have never been involved in Church government or management, but there is no doubt that standard practices of auditable control are necessary lest the organisation falls fouls of the law.

The settlement

We now hear that the Roman Catholic Church and the one true Church according to a document that receives the blessing of Pope Benedictvs XVI (Another story) is through its Los Angeles Diocese settling child abuse claims to the tune of $660 million, just 6 short of the mark of the beast that should be emblazoned with a hot brand on the priests who have seriously abused the office, the trust, their calling and children.

People in positions of religious responsibility who hold moral sway over their communities and in whom too many repose trust to the point that they believe their children are safe in the company of religious tutelage only to find out that the child's innocence is stolen in sexual duress by trusted Father String Himup.

It is fine that the Church is paying up, but this would not repair damaged lives, it allows the Church to wipe the slate clean whilst not fully exposing to the law the extent of seriously criminal activity and the culpability of the clergy in conniving, concealing, condoning these acts when they should have been challenged - they were comfortable with harbouring and shielding addicted sociopathic unrepentant paedophiles who just happened to be priests.

Paedophiles they are

Unfortunately, paedophile is one word that has never been used to address the matter of Catholic priests abusing children and just to properly set our minds on the revulsion of these acts the definition of paedophilia in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is sexual perversion in which children are the preferred sexual object.

And now, the tithes and offerings of the faithful Catholic laity would pay to make child abuse less synonymous to paedophilia, over $2 billion has been paid out, this is seriously big business and money - No wonder religion remains definitely the opium of the people.