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.
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?
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.
However, although not excommunicated, the young girl will be a social and religious pariah if she remains associated with Catholicism.
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.
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.
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 is every bit as appalling has playing “Hide the Child Molester”. At least they’re consistent.
I agree with sally, this man should not be alive. I wish we could give child molesters and rapists the death penalty.
That is true, Rcampbell!!
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.
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.
rcampbell….
I’d give thanks for a dishwasher….
All my birth control did for me was put on 5 extra unwanted pounds
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……
Mespo…
You don’t understand that an abortion is physically destructive on a child’s body?
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.
Raf:
they arent anti-woman they are against humanity. If that story is true that is pure evil on so many levels.
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.
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.
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.
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.