Perverse Fixations

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who plays secretary of state when the sixteenth Daddy Goodspeak plays at being a national leader, has blamed the paedophilia scandal on homosexuality, presumably in the hope that this will work a bit better than blaming it on secularism, the media or the Jews. Unfortunately, his remarks have unleashed "a plethora of outrage", according to the Independent's religious affairs correspondent, who does not know the meaning of the words peddle and bemoan. The general secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales claimed that, despite the objectively disordered nature of homosexuals, "there is no empirical data which concludes that sexual orientation is connected to child sexual abuse", and that paedophilia is the result of "the sexual fixation of the abusers, and not their sexual orientation". A Vatican spokesreverend was good enough to offer an interpretation of the cardinal's words which, like the words of the Saviour on martyrdom and money, are not to be taken as general affirmations; and then said that most of the abuse was carried out by homosexual priests. All in all the Church of Rome, in its own special way, appears to be having just as gay a time over homosexuality as its Anglican mutant offspring.