now I'm sorry that you have to begin by disagreeing with his grace um if you're going to be a serious grown-up person and appear to defend the Catholic church in public in front of an educated and literate audience you simply have to start by making a great number of heartfelt apologies and requests for contrition and forgiveness now you might ask you're fully entitled to ask brothers and sisters who am I to say that well in the Jubilee Millennium year of 2000 the Vatican spokesman Bishop Piero Marini said explaining the whole sermon of apology given by his Holiness the Pope that was supposed to cover the entire history of the church in its Jubilee year that our quote Bishop Marini directly said given the number of sins we've committed in the course of 20th centuries reference to them must necessarily be rather summery when I think Bishop Mourinho had that just about right I'll have to be summary too but I think he said just about the least of it his Holiness on that occasion it was March the 12th 2000 if you wish to look it up begged forgiveness for among some other things the Crusades the Inquisition the persecution of the Jewish people Injustice towards women that's half the human race right there and the forced conversion of indigenous peoples especially in South America and that followed a whole series of preceding apologies or apologies I would say of a Kind made by the late Pope John Paul who it troubles me not at all to say was a very impressive and serious human being um it followed no less than 94 94 count them uh public recognitions on his part of appalling crime and error and cruelty and stupidity and defenses to the free intelligence ranging from I shall be summary like Bishop mourinhi the African slave trade apologized for in 1995. uh the admission that Galileo was right about the relationship between the Sun and the Earth and other orbs which came in 1992 one might add no I won't say it's too easy to say better late than never here I said it to violence and torture legalized torture torture was legalized and institutionalized by the Roman pontiff during The Counter Reformation that came in 1995 and for silence during Hitler's final solution or shower as well as in 1999 coming in just under the Millennium Jubilee wire an apology for the burning alive in the main square of Prague of the great Czech Protestant Jan Huss um since that big Fiesta of forgiveness that began in uh well culmination I might say in 2000 Fiesta forgiveness Fiesta of asking for it the papacy's also asked to be forgiven for the sack of Constantinople and the massacre of Byzantine Christianity in April 1204 as part of The Fourth Crusade the anathema on all Eastern Orthodox Christians as unbelievers Heretics and people dwelling outside the health of the church was lifted only in 1964. I call your attention to that he also expressed sorrow about the murder and forced conversion of Serbian Orthodox Christians in the Balkans during the second World War and it doesn't end there there are smaller but significant equally significant of vowels of a very bad conscience these have included uh regret for the rape and the torture of Orphans and other children in church-run schools in almost every country on Earth from Ireland to Australia and I'm pleased to see that due reconsideration is now being given and May in fact have been given to the hellish I choose the word carefully doctrine of limbo Sage Augustine's cruel and stupid disposal problem solution to a non-existent problem that is to say the destination of the souls of unbaptized children up until now Catholic parents have been taught that's where they're unbaptized children went a form of torture that's sometimes worse than the physical now it seems that this piece of augustinian sadism is undergoing reconsideration as well but remember this is from a church that's on the whole Canada we still wait a more directed mission for example I give some suggestions of my own while we're at it I would like them to take back the Concordia made with Adolf Hitler the first treaty he ever signed giving the church a monopoly over education in Germany in exchange for the dissolution of the Catholic Center party to give the Nazi party a clear run I'd apologize for the latter unpacked with Mussolini myself also the first treaty ever signed by that fascist dictator I would also think I'd want to reconsider the fact that father tizo head of the Nazi puppet state in Slovakia was a priest in early orders that the Croatian fascist puppets State the ustaceous state of anti-pavlich was also operating Under full clerical protection and disguise as was the regime of General Franco and the dictator Antonio Salazar I'd also want I really think I would beg forgiveness for this I don't think the German church should have asked Hitler's birthday to be celebrated from the pulpit every year until he died he's a very serious matters they're not to be laughed off by references to the occasional work of Catholic Charities but I draw your attention not just to the apologies ladies and gentlemen but to the evasive and euphemistic form that they take Joseph ratzinger the current pope considered by some by Catholics to the Vicar of Christ on Earth says of Indians of the Indians who are massacred in the course of conversion in Brazil after the apology had been made to them he said nonetheless it must be remembered that before we came to convert them they were silently awaiting the arrival of the church I don't think that's a very genuine kind of apology to you in his comment one of the few he's made on the institutionalization of rape and torture and maltreatment of children in Catholic institutions he has said it's a very severe crisis which which involves us you said in the following in the need for applying to these victims the most loving pastoral care well I'm sorry they've already had that and to say that this is the responsibility laid upon you by the the horrific admission that you've already had to make is not accepting responsibility in any adult sense when I say child abuse was institutional how dare I say so how can I prove it how could I prove such a thing well I'll ask the I'll ask his grace where is Cardinal Bernard law now where is he where is the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston whose resignation was indignantly demanded finally by 50 members of the church and by the whole laity of Massachusetts who also demotted his prosecution for the promotion and protection and covering up and apology for and defense of uh people whose crimes against children are too revolting to specify and he's not in the jurisdiction of Massachusetts now as perhaps you know he's the Supreme Vicar of the Church of Santa Maria Marjorie in Rome personally appointed by the pope to that as well as many other important cynicals and in 2005 this man a fugitive from Justice and from and from complicity in the filthiest crime that it's possible for a human being to imagine was one of those voting in conclave to decide who the next Vicar of Christ on Earth will be I don't know I think I think I'd like to hear a bit more Shame about this I think I'd like to see a bit more confrontation with the with the with the reality of the business now this is a a serious question as I've said and Whitaker can very often rightly in my opinion attacks the climate of moral relativism and if anything goes that can very well be the handmaiden of post-modernist hedonistic culture I very often I'm glad that she points these things things out but the rape and torture of children is not something to be relativized it's not something to be excused as a few bad priests it's certainly not to be excused by the hideously false claim made by some Catholic conservatives that this wouldn't have happened if queers hadn't been allowed into the church sorry to say that queered him in the church is an old story too and it's worse it's much worse than pornography and it's much worse than bad language on TV and it's the crime that cries out for punishment it's the thing that if we were accused of on this side of the house we would die rather than admit and if we were guilty of it we'd kill ourselves and it's the one thing the church has decided to excuse itself for under this papacy the same euphemism comes in the term some Christians that is used in all the apologies about the Crusades the inquisitions uh the anti-semitic programs and all the rest of it it said some Christians fell into error some Christians allowed themselves to be to be uh deceived in this way and to act against the gospel well anti-Semitism was preached as an official doctrine of the church until 1964. do you think that might have something to do with public opinion in Austria and Bavaria and Poland and Lithuania that the Jewish people were accused collectively as a people of deuside of the crime of the murder of God in the figure of Jesus of Nazareth and that that anathema on them was not lifted until 64 well after the perpetrators of the Holocaust had stood trial in secular courts and been rightly punished for their actions how can this church say it has any moral superiority it has difficulty catching up to what Ordinary People regard as common moral and ethical sense and it still can't make itself apologize properly and I'll tell you why because and I'll quote again from the encyclicals it is said of the Crusades of the complicity with the Holocaust of the political and diplomatic alliance with fascism of all of these things it is said well violence was committed but I'll stress this I'll underline it I'll quote directly in the service of the truth so how is an apology possible how is any understanding or undertaking or firm purpose of amendment to be allowed when the original sin so to say the Radix malorum the Fong's at Oregon the problem in the first place is the belief on the part of this church that it does possess a truth that we don't have and it does have a god-given right a warrant a Mandate of Heaven to tell other people what to do not just in their public but in their private lives and until that has changed until that fantastic and Sinister and non-founded claim is changed these crimes will go on repeating themselves being partially denied partially admitted when it's too late to do anything else and covered up behind all these crimes and miseries is the denial of what we on this side of the house affirmed which is that the only little candle of hope that our species does possess are our poor bear forked primate mammalian species of whom you have two such Splendid examples on this side of the house and not bad on the other tonight um is the is the unfettered intelligence the method of free inquiry and philosophy and in science and the the refusal to admit that any one person can tell you not to do that it's the one thing I might say I think is if not sacrosanct or sacred is shall we say essential and the church has always stood and still stands against it now in the little time remaining to me I'll just propose a few more apologies that we might hope to hear uh in the immediate future because it will come a time when the church WIll issue apologies and explanations and half-baked appeals for forgiveness for things it's still doing the readmission as a bishop of Roger Williamson a member of Marcel lefevre's fanatical hysterical Breakaway sect so-called Society of Saint Pius X Roger Williamson found hiding in a reactionary quasi-fascistic establishment in Argentina has long been a believer that I'll put this shortly that the Holocaust did not occur but the Jews did Kill Christ in other words in other words genocide no deicide yes he was quite rightly excommunicated some years ago along with several other members of his rap bag organization but Joseph ratzik has invited him back in to the communion because to him having this man this liar this fraud This Racist in the church is more important because it's Church Unity than the things that he said and done and continues to stand for is this not a crying scandal I think that there will be an apology for what happened in Rwanda the most Catholic country in Africa one of the most Catholic countries in the world um where priests and nuns and Bishops are on trial for inciting from their pulpits and on the church's radio stations and newspapers the massacre of their brothers and sisters and the papacy was silent on this appalling occasion and everyone in Rwanda knows it and there hasn't yet been a properly written apology for that disgrace staying in Africa I think it will one day be admitted with shame that it might have been in error to say that aids is bad as a disease very bad but not quite as bad as condoms are bad or not as immoral in the same way