Some will say that Grings is just some lunatic local bishop, but he's the Archbishop of Porto Alegre, one of the largest dioceses in Brazil. Also, he's just following the lead of the Vatican's #2, Cardinal Bertone, who blamed the gays a few weeks ago in Chile.
The AP reports (my comments are interspersed):
Archbishop Dadeus Grings — a conservative priest who has made controversial statements in the past — told the O Globo newspaper at a Brazilian bishops conference that society's woes are being reflected in the sex abuse scandal enveloping the Roman Catholic Church.
"Society today is pedophile, that is the problem. So, people easily fall into it. And the fact it is denounced is a good sign," Grings told O Globo.
Society "is pedophile." Does that mean that everyone is a pedophile? I'm confused. I thought only a very small percentage of people were pedophiles. Using your logic, Archbishop, we could also say that society is religious violence, because a minority of the world's believers kill in the names of their gods. We could even say venture to say that the Catholic Church is religious violence.
Grings denounced the abuse within the church, but he said internal punishment of priests guilty of abuse was sufficient and that police should not be involved. "For the church to go and accuse its own sons would be a little strange," he said.
Finally, an admission of guilt from an archbishop that keeping cases of sexual abuse from the civil authorities is the way the Catholic Church operates!
Let me get this right then, Archbishop: if the church handing its pedophile-priests over to the civil authorities would be "a little strange," what does that say about the church continuing to enable priests to mouth-rape thirteen-year-old boys or to rape and impregnate little girls?
The archbishop also said it was important to help children avoid homosexuality. "We know that the adolescent is spontaneously homosexual. Boys play with boys, girls play with girls," he said. "If there is no proper guidance, this sticks. The question is — how are we going to educate our children to use a sexuality that is human and suitable?"
And what does this say of all the gay priests in the church, who received the best Christian formation the church had to offer? Were they not "properly guided" within this holy system?
Maybe Grings is trying to tell us all that he played with boys in the past. The question is what age was the archbishop when "proper guidance" made him realize that sexually messing with boys was not proper?
Grings does as the right question, but cuts it short. His question should be: "How are we, the Catholic Church, going to educate our children to use sexuality that is human and suitable, when we are raping them in the sacristy closet?"
Grings also said the acceptance of homosexuality in society could pave the way for the acceptance of pedophilia. "When sexuality is trivialized, it's clear that this is going to affect all cases. Homosexuality is such a case. Before, the homosexual wasn't spoken of. He was discriminated against. When we begin to say they have rights, rights to demonstrate publicly, pretty soon, we'll find the rights of pedophiles," he said.
Again the outdated and scientifically disproved myth that homosexuality leads to/equals pedophilia. These bishops really need to embrace the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution if they want to be credible in this dialog.
Grings has balls, in that he openly admits that the Church discriminates against homosexuals and so should the state. And, he's proud of it, unlike his spineless American counterparts, who keep whining, "We're not bigots, we're religious."
In 2003, he argued that only 1 million Jews died in the Holocaust, though a few years later he recanted. Experts say 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. Last year, he outraged Jewish groups in Brazil by telling a magazine that "more Catholics than Jews died in the Holocaust, but this isn't known because the Jews control the world's media."
No wonder Pope Benedict likes this guy so much.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Archbishop Grings: ignorant, homophobic, antisemitic, priest-perpetrator-protecting Catholic, who has been ordained to preserve the succession of Jesus' apostles. Wouldn't that Jewish Jesus and his Jewish apostles be so proud?
