YOU KNOW WHO seems to be trying to associate me with the scandal rocking the Anglican Church centering on what the ex-Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby seems to have known but did nothing to stop the long term sadistic sexual abuse of boys by the barrister John Smyth. In other words, that Justin Welby did what the late criminal hell spawn Cardinal Bernard Law and a number of other male Catholic clergy and hierarchs did. If you want to see what I've said about Bernard Law, his crimes and the way that John Paul II shielded him from consequences when he should have ordered him to stay in the United States and answer for his crimes, you'll find I've written about that and I've never had anything good to say about Law and just about nothing good to say about JPII or, for that matter, his equally culpable side kick Benedict XVI back when he was Ratzinger. I will note that he did try to do better when he was in charge, though he was a uniquely ineffective reformer even as he was an autocrat when it was a question of what really mattered to him, and it wasn't the welfare of his flock.
I'm not answerable for what a conservative Anglican Archbishop did than I am what a Canadian-Brit barrister who was part of what I now read is a long-standing conservative, "muscular Christianity" outfit who sadistically abused boys. How the fact that he was a right-wing barrister doesn't seem to have led to much soul-searching by those in the profession - what he was doing was illegal as well as immoral - a man who apparently brought a private prosecution against the gay press in Britain on behalf of Mary Whitehall. I am entirely opposed to that kind of evangelical "christianity," which is a complete and total heresy as far as I'm concerned. Jesus walked a lot and must have been in good health, as must have been those who walked with him but they didn't play rugby or football or even marbles. I pretty much reject and dislike everything to do with "muscular Christianity." It is capitalistic, nationalistic, brutal, competitive and anti-intellectual. It is, decidedly, male supremacist and, as I said, a heresy against the Gospel, the Epistles, The Law and the Prophets. And it is just so emetically upper-class Brit.
If Christians who reject all of that, everything up to and including the rape of children, is responsible for what those who we have nothing to do with doing those things, then anyone who listens to rock and roll must share the guilt of the BBC serial child rapist who got away with it, Jimmy Savile or anyone who has anything to do with the legal profession has to do with John Smyth or, in fact, the American lawyers who have done their best to keep rich serial rapists out of prison where they can do it again or, in fact, the free-speech-press types who have no problem with the reality that a lot of the First Amendment permitted porn is actually an encouragement of child rape, not to mention the obvious, a lot of it is actual filming and photographing of child rape. Much of that is part of the mainstream of Hollywood movie making and TV shows in a watered down appeal to the sexualization of even very young children and those who can be presented as children on screen. You can look back at the movie Pretty Baby which was soft-core child porn, though it was defended by the likes of Susan Sarandon, who was in it, and the bizarrely sainted Roger Ebert, it so obviously presents a 12-year-old girl as a sex object and it's certainly many straight men who watched it took it as that. But it's art, don'tcha know. Some times I think there's more than a little of Trump in all the free speechy guys. And gals, too.
It is really, really telling that the standards of blanket culpability for this apply in one and only one area of life, religion, and that that blanket culpability is especially true for Christianity WHEN THAT STANDARD IS APPLIED IN NO OTHER PLACE, NOT EVEN FOR GROUPS WHO FACILITATE OR REFUSE TO STOP OR PUNISH THOSE WHO ENCOURAGE AND PROFIT FROM THE RAPE OF CHILDREN. The difference is that anyone who believes in Christianity is supposed to accept that the rape of children or anyone is a serious sin whereas secular culture has little problem with it under "free speech-press." The contemporary Christian theological criticism of rape extends to pointing out that it is sanctioned in both Genesis and Judges, where first daughters then daughters and the innocent concubine of a Levite are offered to a rape mob. In history, the apparently ubiquitous prostitution of children and young women in pagan temples was not practiced by Jews or Christians and, in fact, it, as well as legal infanticide, were ended only when Christianity took hold in the Roman empire and elsewhere.
I have no problem with a culpable Archbishop of Canterbury being forced out or held answerable for his sins of omission in covering up and not reporting a serial child rapist over decades. Just as I thought and have repeatedly said Bernard Law should have been arrested and made answerable for his crimes in the United States. I have no problem with any religious figure being fully held accountable by the law, a law which has yet to really punish the most pagan of American presidents for his sexual crimes who is, in fact, about to become our dictator thanks in no small part to the irresponsibility of American lawyers, judges and "justices."
I think that the pornography that promotes child rape and, in fact, consists of the filming and photographing of child rape to be totally suppressed and those who are as guilty in that as Bernard Law or Justin Welby or John Smyth being imprisoned for the rest of their lives and sued into ruin by their victims. I think it should be an iron rule that whenever any institution deals with children, especially young children, no adult should ever be alone with them without other adult supervision. Men, especially, should never be trusted to be alone with children because it would seem that the minority among us who rape and abuse children routinely benefit from that kind of trust. As this goes on there seem to be few instances where such isolated interaction between men and children happen routinely, where there aren't instances when such men as who rape don't do it and children are abused.
That's the real question that never seems to be pushed, almost all of this is exactly that, men raping and, given the percentage of those actively involved with organized religion is a minority in Britain and, probably now, in the United States, religion certainly isn't the most common venue for such abuse to happen . Why aren't all men held accountable, including those deputed to be men who tried to bring me into it?
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