The case of a Brazilian nine-year-old girl who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather has shocked many in that country and the world. However, there is a strikingly different view of the most serious elements of this crime. For the Vatican, the most shocking part is that the girl was given an abortion at the recommendation of doctors who said that she was too young to give birth. The Church has now excommunicated the mother and the doctors. It has decided not to excommunicate the step father.
Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho insisted that “God’s law is above any human law. So when a human law … is contrary to God’s law, this human law has no value.” He only briefly addressed the decision to retain the stepfather as a Catholic while excommunicating the mother and doctors. Cardoso simply said that while the stepfather committed “a heinous crime … the abortion – the elimination of an innocent life – was more serious”.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church’s Congregation for Bishops and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, said that the mother’s and girl’s crime was worse than the rape by aborting two twin fetuses: “Life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian church is unjustified.”
When the girl’s 4-month pregnancy was discovered, she told police that she had been sexually abuse by her stepfather since the age of six. The 23-year-old stepfather also allegedly sexually abused the girl’s physically handicapped 14-year-old sister. He has been arrested. Remarkably, however, in Brazil, the alleged raping of a child since she was six and the rape of a handicapped child will only bring a maximum sentence of 15 years.
For the full story, click here.
This is such a sad story.
That poor child was forced to put her body through an abortion, something which is mentally and physically damaging on a child.(and I don’t mean by fault of her mother or doctors, I mean it’s her stepfather’s fault).
I would have given him the death penalty. Give the mother a gun and let her shoot him. That would be fair
No child should EVER be put through such a horrid situation.
This is just one more sad case of the Catholic Church like many of the major religions, being a Boy’s club where only the boys get to make the rules. Here the Archbishipo excommunicates a 9 year old girl for the sin of being raped and being too young to deliver the babies. This is almost as sick as the Iranian law of stoning a woman to death for adultery but only giving 15 years for killing someone. These religions are biased against women and people need to call it what it is.
Another example of the Catholic Church’s twisted and sick policies designed to preserve patriarchal power and oppress the powerless.
Note: A blastocyst is worth more than a girl’s life. A man’s need to procreate is sacred and always to be defended even in matters of rape and Priests’ “misguided” sexual perversions. A girl’s life is worthless to the church, thus, a mother’s defense of her child is also worthless.
One has to wonder what the child’s “crime” consisted of under these circumstances. Since excommunication means eternal damnation to the faithful, one must also wonder why the well-being of her soul is of such little interest to the church fathers like Bishop Battista Re, who are divinely charged with protecting these “little ones” from those who would “offend” them. (Matt. 18:6-KJV) The decision to maintain the membership of the step-father with full rights and privileges seems perfectly in keeping with the Church’s predisposition to forgive rapers of children but not their victims. Like being drummed out of the Waffen-SS for conduct unbecoming, one has to wonder if the onus attendant to this pronouncement is on the individual or the organization.
Raf:
they arent anti-woman they are against humanity. If that story is true that is pure evil on so many levels.
Sally:
I am mentally editing your comment down to the first and last sentences. Everything in the middle makes no sense or is an appeal to vigilante justice which I am certain would inflict even more harm on this child by having her mother kill her abuser and then being carted off to jail.
Mespo…
You don’t understand that an abortion is physically destructive on a child’s body?
In support of Sally’s claim of religious, or at least Catholic, misogyny, this is the opening paragraph of an article from The Independent I found at Huffington Post:
By Miranda Bryant
Sunday, 8 March 2009
As International Women’s Day is celebrated, the Vatican had a novel message for the women of the world: give thanks for the washing machine. This humble domestic appliance had done more for the women’s liberation movement than the contraceptive pill or working outside the home, said the the official Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano……
rcampbell….
I’d give thanks for a dishwasher….
All my birth control did for me was put on 5 extra unwanted pounds
Sally
Your birth control likely also prevented putting on an additional 30-40 pounds for several months before losing that weight but keeping the enclosed 8lb 4oz bundle for 21 years.
This insane decision by the Catholic church is no more nor less misogynistic than the stoning of adulterous women in Islam. It might actually be even more reprehensible though, because the decision here was a strictly political one. I state this because it was made to protect the CC’s abortion stance. They have made it so absolute, that even in a case like this to condone it would give lie to the thrust of their anti-abortion arguments. The Archbishop has shown he is neither a pious man, nor one who has the compassion demanded by his religious beliefs. He is either a fanatic, bureaucrat/politician and/or both.
I differentiate this from the adulterous stoning in that those are cases of pure misogyny, that see all women as evil temptresses. This is no less an insane belief but my sense is it was made due to impassioned stupidity. In the Brazilian
Catholic bureaucracy I’m sure this was a decision discussed and made from a PR (a bad one of course)perspective.
I’m not a believer in heaven or hell and I’ll reserve any afterlife judgment for when I get there. If I’m wrong though and heaven and hell exist, the Archbishop’s soul, as well of those of his Islamic counterparts are going to find their eternal judgments to be quite uncomfortable.
That is true, Rcampbell!!
I agree with sally, this man should not be alive. I wish we could give child molesters and rapists the death penalty.
This is every bit as appalling has playing “Hide the Child Molester”. At least they’re consistent.
This is a good thing not a bad thing. It helps illustrate how ridiculous church is. This type of act should be applauded and encouraged and bit by bit the church will fade away……
On second thought, burning people at the stake for centuries and facilitating whole-sale pedophilia hasn’t turned too many people off so this must really be the TRUE religeon; sign me up.
This decision is a moral, theological and human outrage. The Church seems hell-bent on stemming the inroads of the Protestant evangelical movement in South America and elsewhere by adopting the most extreme views of so-called “right to life” doctrinaires. Eventually we may see a de facto merger between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam-victims of rape will be required to bear the products of rape, and will then be stoned for adultery.
First, so no one thinks that I am in anyway supporting the Catholic Church, I think the whole case is appalling, and the archbishop should be put in jail with the rapist.
That said, I do need to point out that the nine year-old girl was not excommunicated, only her mother and the doctors.
However, although not excommunicated, the young girl will be a social and religious pariah if she remains associated with Catholicism.
IMHO, there is not much difference between Cardinal Giovanni Battista and the reich-wing so-called religious leaders in this country, including the republican politicians who use their so-called religious base for exploitation.
Holy crap, look at this . . .
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03092009/news/columnists/perv_group_puts_10g_hit_on_andy_158663.htm
Why isn’t NAMBLA under surveillance?
Former Fed,
Well said. The girl will not only be a pariah, she had to go the sequence of being villified by the church due to the fact that her mother was excommunicated for protecting her child. And Dpeifer, you have forgotten that the rapist was not excommunicated.
Meanwhile, Catholics in Connecticut are distracted from important matters such as this because a priest within their own parishes are convicted of financial misdeeds which include buying a swanky seafront condo in which to entertain his boyfriend.
And people wonder why protestant congregations are attracting so many disaffected Catholics.
Well the good news is . . .
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29585222/
The ranks of former Catholics are increasing all the time.
A Pew survey showed that their church had lost 30 million members in the last half century. Thirty million!
(Absolute numbers have not decreased only because of the infux of first generation immigrants. Experience shows that the second and third generations will fall away also).
One in ten Americans is in the category variously described as ex-catholic, fallen-away catholic, grateful recovering catholic, or rational human being. This is one of the largest religious bodies in the country.
The Protestant and other churches are teeming with former Catholics who are seeking religion that is not nonsensical.
To be fair, the church doesn’t always discriminate against women. They are just as supportive of little boys being raped as they are of girls being raped.
The Catholic Church is the world’s largest pedophile organization, (NAMBLA comes in second).
The mother did the right thing, having the baby would have killed the already born child.
They should consider themselves lucky to be out of the clutches of the Catholic Church who after excommunicating them, probably had themselves an orgy with kindergarten boys.
Anyone who places more value on the spawn of a rapist over the safety and wellbeing of the nine-year-old victim of said rapist is as big, if not bigger, a monster than the rapist.
The girl went through a horrible thing not only with her step-father but also going through the abortion, who cares what the church is saying or doing, I use to be a Catholic but I left that behind me a long time ago, just because of the way they see things. The girl has only to worry about God he is the one and only that can judge her not the church and believe me after what she has gone through, I asure you the lord has forgiven her. The church has never had the right to judge anyone, only God.
If it’s any consolation, this has really backfired for the Pope.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29645316/
And by “this” I mean the strategy of dogma over the will of the people.
More insanity committed in the name of God.If we thought John Paul II was a Neanderthal, and he was, this Prada-wearing pontiff is a throwback to the Dark Ages.Before he became pope he proudly silenced some of the most progressive thinkers in the RCC.His assault on all compassionate and rational people shows no sign of abating in the near future.
http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/may-you-rot-in-hell/
Why should we be surprised
If it threatened her life, I’m all in favor. Self-defense.
The girl wasn’t excommunicated, though.
I don’t know how the Pope and all his outdated cronies can be so inhumane towards this poor child and her family. Who gave the Pope the right and authority to decide that those concerned with her termination were no longer worthy of God surely only God himself can judge a person and another little thing… didn’t Jesus preach forgiveness to all mankind and his sins or am I missing something here? It should be the Pope and all his perverted clan that should be cast into the fires of hell along with the step father.
I am a Christian but thank the Lord I am not a catholic, it seems to me that the Vatican are the patron saint of paedophiles. Lets face it the Roman Catholic church has repressed and down-trodden it’s followers for centuries.
This girl and her family deserve much better than that and I am sure that God will support the family and the doctor concerned and lead them to the path of true Christian values as those poor people are worth more than what the catholic church has done to them. God bless that little girl and her family.
This would be why I am NOT Catholic. The step-father SHOULD be RAPED & MURDERED!!! The hell with the “Catholic” ppl. They ALWAYS cover-up their priests’ crimes, that of molesting INOCENT children. I saw the documentary of that on the NEWS!!! I would drag HIS name thru the mud befor I worry about “religion” or “Catholic” for that matter!!!!!!!!!!!