I had the pleasure of dinner with another couple the other night. We ate at this Italian place that everybody loves, but I kind of find it to be a canned sauce type of place, but whatever. The other couple are young professionals, successful tech marketing people. All was going well until her boyfriend broached the subject of pedophile priests with a snarky comment. She let it go. But I piled on with another comment, lost to the garlic tinged wind. This was apparently too much for the Irish Catholic girl sitting across from me.

I thought a one-line zinger about grown men who molest children and then commit the further institutional crime of hiding the actions of these criminals by transfering them around, like they were playing spin the bottle with the nuns. They are using the Goodness and credibility of God and Jesus to take advantage of the most helpless members of our society in one of the worst ways imagineable. And the church secrets them off to isolated spots to do more damage. But, apparently it was my faux pas in following up her own boyfriend's comment with one of my own, and not that of her church.

She snapped at me, "don't you dare bring that up." Like I was the one molesting deaf kids. She turned the argument on me for criticizing a network of pedophiles operating within her church. Now Ratzenberger himself is severly tied up in this mess by his own signature, against the formal complaints and witness of another Cardinal from my hometown of Oakland. People that do this are labeled "Sexual Predators" outside the church. There's a show about catching them, they get raped in jail the hardest, they have to register as sex offenders... unless they happen to be priests. Then it's a few years in Ninuvut Province molesting brown kids. At what point is the leadership of this church so out of touch with morality (God) that people start to abandon ship? Start an anti-Catholic church where the men can marry and don't rape boys. Maybe this is another of those never-ending 'tests' God is putting on the church. Maybe the answer is to leave the church leadership. Throw them out, arrest them, replace them with moral people. And since they spend most of their time ministering to families, maybe they should have some of their own so they know what the fuck they are talking about.

Love always,

Your evil, Hellbound, sinful law-abiding atheist.