Pipeno Launch Contest

Let me just say, at the outset, that I am not a Roman Catholic.   Nor am I the readily combustible, unrepentant apostate that the Holy Inquisition once made charcoal from!   I stand on my own two protestant, reformed feet, born a son of the Presbytery; but more importantly, a son of parents who gifted me the freedom to roam a broad theological, spiritual and philosophical landscape.   I neither acknowledge the Queen as Head of my country, nor as Head of my Church.  The concept of a state imposed faith is alien to me.   My credentials are established then; I believe in religious tolerance and I have a broad, some might say expedient, concept of Faith!  

AND, sitting down, they watched Him there,
The soldiers did;
There, while they played with dice,
He made His Sacrifice,
And died upon the Cross to rid
God's world of sin.
He was a gambler too, my Christ,
He took His life and threw
It for a world redeemed.
And ere His agony was done,
Before the weltering sun went down,
Crowning that day with its crimson crown,
He knew that He had won.

G A  Studdert-Kennedy

The heartbreaking beauty of this poem is in how it places redemption through Christ in perfect context. The basic tenet of this faith is that Christ's brutal sacrifice buys us perpetual forgiveness and redemption for our sins, given we confess and repent.   Its a First party, fire, theft and murder insurance policy!   You see, the trouble is that whilst Christ knows that venal humanity only truly repents when in danger or in extremis, his representative on Earth is more naive.  I have enough to do in examining the cracks in my own church's feet of clay, to have the time to attack the Catholic Church.   However, the Papacy urging its believers to confess regularly and often; is a bit like the Management of TESCO asking us to pay at the bottom of every aisle, to avoid queuing at the checkout!

Patience, please, I am coming to the point!  I would imagine that most people who read this article would view child abuse on the same level as murder?   It certainly presents as a murder of childhood, a murder of innocence.   And we do differentiate between premeditated murder and "crimes of passion".   My question is  -Do child abusing Roman Catholic priests or prelates; who share with me the same basic faith, truly repent of their actions?   Do they commit these heinous crimes in passion and in the cold light of reflection confess and repent?   Or do they recognise the crime, yet deliberately deny or ignore this during confession. The latter truly deserve eternal damnation.   Yet it is the former who interest me.   They may well avoid hell for all eternity through Christ's redemption.   But that should not absolve them from punishment in this world.

But what about the Priests who heard these confessions?   What about the Hierarchy of a church who invoke spiritual immunity and the sanctity of the confessional as a shield against natural justice? Who are the true murderers of Innocence?  GOD KNOWS!!!