Tuesday, July 06, 2004

These guys make me sick

The Portland Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church announced today that they are taking the rather worldly step of filing for bankruptcy because they can't afford the cost of all of the of sex abuse lawsuits that have become pandemic recently. Yup, yup, here in progressive Portland we're way ahead of the rest of the country on the social issues. How these people can even pretend to have some 'higher calling' when every month there are more allegations of kiddy-fiddling is beyond me... there seems to an inordinately high amount of physical ministrations going on for an organization that claims to tend to the spirit.

The Archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today to forestall the current civil trials involving the late Rev. Maurice Grammond, who was accused of molesting more than 50 boys in the 1980s. And he's just one of the priests on trial. This one Archdiocese has already paid more than $53 million to settle 130 previous molestation claims, and the two lawsuits active right now are asking for $160 million. And that's just one Archdiocese... there are similar cases all over the country.

This bankruptcy filing is the first of it's kind, but other dioceses are considering doing the same. Chapter 11 bankruptcy frees an organization from the threat of creditors' lawsuits while it 'reorganizes'. The Diocese of Tucson, the Archdiocese of Boston, and the Archdiocese of Santa Fe have all either taken steps to file for bankruptcy or pillaged church resources to handle abuse claims.

The Roman Catholic Church has spent the last 1400 years using guilt and fear as advertising tools to swindle the sheep with the promise of 'salvation', building up an economic base that rivals many governments. And now some parts of their organization can't afford to continue to exist because too many of their priests took the 'laying on of hands' thing a bit too literally. The dumbfucks should have stuck to their prayers... they're going to need them now.