Ask me how dreadfully tired I am about hearing the Catholic Church via bishops and the pope talk about mercy. They have demonstrated that to them, as far as victims of clergy abuse go, it is only a word. Do I believe God is merciful? YES! Do I believe that God’s mercy has been extended to the victims of clergy sexual abuse by the Church? NO I DO NOT!

If I could say it in Spanish so that the pope could understand me, I would tell him; : “Fix the damn problem. Fix the shattered lives of victims. Fix the shattered lives of victims families. Fix the shattered lives of the faithful and stop making a mockery of God’s mercy.  Also stop protecting criminals.” Even in English most of the bishops in the USA do not understand.

The bishops, cardinals and the even the pope are making a mockery of the mercy of God. God will not be mocked. The eschaton, the four last things; death, judgement, heaven, or hell will not go well for these men unless they take this seriously. Empty words are just that empty and the men of the Church need to stop betraying the word mercy by only applying it to each others crimes. They need to use it for abuse victims too.

I’m also sick of one of the reasons for the bishops world-wide being given a justification for this rubbish. No one that I knew in the seminary with me, was actively homosexual or heterosexual. So to find such a thing out now only means that I did not really know them. No one I knew was having sexual relations with teenage boys. If they were I either did not know it or I was too obtuse to see. Either way they would not be who I thought they were or who I thought I knew.

I do not actually know that she said this, but Sharon Stone is given credit for it. Talking about show business it is reported she said, “You can only sleep your way to the middle.” Maybe in the Church you can sleep your way higher than the middle. And maybe that is part of the problem.