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April 25, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
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by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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April 25, 2002
Politics and Wordplay
at the Vatican
Code
Red
by David Vest
Following two days of meetings at the Vatican,
and after a two-hour delay blamed on the fact that "we are
all wordsmiths" by Bishop Wilton Gregory, American Cardinals
released a couple of documents and staged a press conference
in Rome.
It was notable chiefly for the absence
of anyone the media wanted to talk to. Cardinal Law, possibly
the most hated cleric in America at the moment, was attending
to "other obligations." Those who did show up seemed
unclear what the new documents actually said.
The participants sent out to deflect
the heat were Gregory, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops;
Cardinal James Francis Stafford, an emeritus-class American who
is president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity at the Vatican;
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Vall, who had nothing to contribute,
he regretted, because he was not present at any of the meetings
that were the subject of the press conference; and genial Cardinal
Theodore McCarrick of Washington, who got things rolling by describing
his boss, John Paul II, as a man who is "turned on by children."
So much for trying to help. That the
good wordsmith appeared blissfully unaware of his incredibly
unfortunate choice of words only added to the impression that
the hierarchy was woefully out of touch with reality. Bishop
Gregory nattered on about how we have to "put all this in
the right perspective" by noticing what a great job many
archdioceses have been doing. (If they are all doing such a great
job, why was this meeting called? one wanted someone to ask.)
Only twenty-four hours earlier Gregory
had held forth on the duty to "make sure the priesthood
isn't dominated by homosexuals," one of the viler things
ever said in public by anyone wearing a collar.
That this whole sorry mess could lead
to nothing more than scurrilous innuendoes against gay men in
the priesthood is stupefying.
Neither the celibacy rule, nor the ban
on women in the priesthood, not the resignation of Cardinal Law,
were so much as discussed at the Vatican meetings, by all accounts.
Nevertheless, one of the new documents went out of its way to
declare that "a link between celibacy and pedophilia cannot
be scientifically maintained," raising the question of why
a declaration had to be made on a subject that was not an issue.
That the church leaders neglected to
observe that there is no greater link between homosexuality and
pedophilia than between heterosexuality and pedophilia spoke
volumes about the politics of it all.
In other words, it's all the fault of
the gays (but at least they aren't women). It's the fault of
American sexual permissiveness (i.e., women). It's the fault
of the media who have blown it all out of proportion because
they hate the church anyway. Maybe we were at fault too, mused
the clerics, but only in that we tried to take on too much by
ourselves, we didn't consult enough experts, etc. etc.
"There is no place in the priesthood
and religious life for those who would harm the young,"
said the pontiff.
Well and good, but he pointedly did not
say, "There is no place in the Catholic hierarchy for people
who shirk responsibility, who tolerate sexual harassment and
abuse, who cover-up wrongdoing and shuffle perpetrators from
one assignment to another."
To do so would be to raise the question
no one in the Vatican wants to answer: while Cardinal Law was
supervising the careers of serial offenders, who was supervising
Cardinal Law?
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He is a poet
and piano-player for the Pacific Northwest's hottest blues band,
The Cannonballs.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
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