It’s time the Catholic Church came out of the Closet

This programme was aired a couple of weeks ago on ABC’s 4 Corners, but it demonstrates how out-of-touch the Catholic Church is, not only with reality, but with community expectations. More than anything else, the Church lets down its own followers, betrays them in fact.

This deals specifically with a couple of cases in Australia, and it’s amazing that it takes investigative journalism to shine a light on them. Most damning for the Church, is evidence that protecting their pedophilic clergy and their own reputation was more important than protecting members of their congregation.

The most significant problem, highlighted by the programme, is the implicit belief, held by the Church and evidenced by their actions, that they are literally above the law that applies to everyone else.

This is an institution that claims to have the high moral ground on issues like abortion, therapeutic cloning, gay marriage, euthanasia, to nominate the most controversial ones, when it so clearly lacks any moral credibility. Most people in the West simply ignore the Catholic Church’s more inane teachings regarding contraception, but in developing countries, the Church has real clout. In countries where protection against AIDS and birth control are important issues, both for health and economic reasons, the Church’s attitude is morally irresponsible. The Catholic Church tries to pretend that it should be respected and taken seriously, and perhaps one day it will, when it enters the 21^st Century and actually commits to the same laws as the people it supposedly preaches to.