Dammit, why did you do it, reptiles, why?
There was the pond with its Sunday meditation planned, relieved at the thought it wouldn't have to deal with the Devine, Akker Dakker or prattling Polonius, and then you went and leaked Polonius into the ether, and the pond knew at once that other pleasures had to be foresworn and duty called … even if the tedious old prattler was humming a tune the pond had heard a thousand times or more …
The immediate reaction to this predictable carry-on might take the form of a tweet ...
Or it might even be an extended tweet ...
Or that much loved yarn by nattering "Ned" might be recalled in context, way back in 2012, and what do you know, there's Polonius in the sidebar, still yammering on about Aunty in the sidebar …
He never shuts up, he's a classic psychological study of the nit-picking obsessive pedant … even Charles Dickens would struggle to make him a believable real character, and would head off into satirical caricature ...
Oh it's a much loved and much clipped and circulated column, verging on the status of a meme ...
The pond has no idea if nattering "Ned" has any shame or a sense of contrition or the need for confession, with his dismissal of the Royal Commission as gesture politics …
But speaking of confession, and in direct contradiction to what Polonius said, on page 220 of the pdf here of an RMIT report in to Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, the casual reader might stumble on this ...
There's a lot more about the arcane, abstruse, meaningless rituals of the confessional, not a whit, or jot of which can be found in the bible or in Christ's words, but the pond can stand only so much, even on a meditative Sunday …
Some more pedantic than the pond might quote that fisher of men as reported in the lizard Oz itself…
The same pedant, if worried about the accuracy of the quotes, might head off to the Graudian here, and read ...
An empathetic person might wonder what it would be like to be a child molested by a priest back in the day and head off to the confessional to confess the experience to another priest (assuming they didn't live in a country town where there was only one priest on the beat, so to speak)…
What would the reaction be? Would the priest spring to attention and advise the child that luckily, for him or her, the secrecy provisions of the sacrament of penance did not prevail, and so dear child, you and I, the caring priest, shall immediately hie forth and take ourselves to the police, where we shall dob in the recalcitrant criminal priest …and see him sent down for a very long time…
The very last thing you will see dear sweet child is the priest walking off to court with one of his own as a defiant gesture ..
But allowing that this might have happened a few times, please allow the pond to reassure the troubled child.
Please bring forth evidence of the remarkably caring and theologically correct - according to Polonius - Polonial approach… please, show a few reassuring examples from the historical Catholic record …
Uh huh.
In lieu of the sound of crickets, it's time for the rest of the Polonial prattle, which of course will be a stout-hearted defence of the Catholic church, because you see others did it too, and that makes it okay for Catholics and priests, who are being singled out and persecuted … merely for asking suffering children to come unto them … for a little more suffering, or sex, or whatever ...
Would it have been simpler for Polonius simply to note that pedophilia is a crime that has been committed by many people and many institutions, and that arguing about who did it more is roughly akin to working out who might molest the most angels clustered on the head of a pin?
But that's the way it goes with blind, irrational loyalists, devoted forelock tuggers and apologists.
That's how you get nattering "Ned" shamelessly scribbling in favour of a cover-up, so that the churches and the pedophiles might keep on going about their business unmolested, and that's why you get Polonius shocked and outraged … at the ABC surprisingly being against pedophilia, even though there's no doubt the odd pedophile that has also been employed by that institution …
But that's more than enough of Polonial double-think and tortured defensive double-speak, why not end with another semantic exercise, celebrated by the one true Pope, with more papal encyclicals available in a better gallery format here ...
The thing with Polonius though, is that he completely resists the idea that there's anything special about the Catholic Church, that there's any possible reason why the only Church whose leader's pronouncements are personally edited by God, and is the only Church that actually worships the one and only God, and is outspoken in attempting to dictate public beliefs and human morality, has any special role to play.
ReplyDelete"Everybody else is just at least as bad as we are", says Polonius.
However, I am intrigued by Polonius' frequent assertion that: "Offences by Catholic clerics in this area are overwhelmingly historic crimes of the late 1960s, 70s and early 80s."
Does anybody know of any actual evidence on this point ? That there's basically been little or no abuse by Catholic clerics since about 1985 ?
And what about abuse by Catholic non-clerics ? By teachers in all those Catholic schools for instance. And by 'lay' Catholics who comprise nearly a quarter of the Australian population. Is it of no concern to Polonius that believers in the one and only true religion may be responsible for about 25% of all the non-clerical abuse of children ?