Pope Denounces Gay Marriage

Speaking to an estimated crowd of 1.5 million, yesterday Emperor Palpatine told pilgrims at Spain's World Youth Day that marriage could only exist between a man and woman.

"The Lord calls many people to marriage, in which a man and a woman, in becoming one flesh, find fulfilment in a profound life of communion," he told the young pilgrims. "For this reason, to acknowledge the beauty and goodness of marriage is to realize that only a setting of fidelity and indissolubility, along with an openness to God's gift of live, is adequate to the grandeur and dignity of marital love." The Roman Catholic Church has condemned the sweeping liberal reforms brought in by Spain's Socialist government in recent years, including easier access to abortion, gay marriage and fast-track divorce.

Ill Papa was unable to finish his address because God decided to whip up a violent thunderstorm, knocking off Benedict's tiara and blowing over the tent on the stage. SRSLY.

SPAIN: Catholic Pilgrims And Anti-Papal Protesters Clash On Madrid's Streets

Thousands of protesters (including an apparently large LGBT contingent) clashed on the streets of Madrid with Catholic pilgrims celebrating the Pope's arrival for World Youth Day. Ill Papa will conduct a mass before an estimated two million people tomorrow.

Photo Of The Day

Temporary public confessionals have been erected in Madrid in anticipation of a papal visit. Who else can totally see this installation being repurposed come nightfall?



(Tipped by JMG reader David)

NEW JERSEY: Catholic Diocese Agrees To Pay $1M Molestation Settlement

The Catholic Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey has agreed to pay a $1M settlement to five men who were molested by the same priest while they were altar boys.

The settlements, announced today, bring to $1.3 million the amount the diocese has paid to alleged abuse victims of the Rev. Ronald Becker. Becker was removed from the ministry in 2002. He has since died. Becker molested the five boys at Incarnation parish in Ewing hundreds of times between 1972 and 1984, in spans that ranged from six months to four years, according to Mitchell Garabedian, the Boston-based lawyer who represented the men. The abuse occurred in the church, the rectory and on trips.

(Tipped by JMG reader Brian)

NEW YORK: Catholic Archdiocese Opposes Sex Education In Public Schools

It may be hard to believe, but sex education is currently not available to all public high school students in New York City. Each school is allowed to decide whether to offer the courses and only about half do. Bloomberg wants to change that, much to the outrage of busybodies from the Catholic Church.

In the first serious challenge to the city’s mandate, which was announced on Tuesday, a spokesman for the archdiocese said the church’s position was that parents, not the schools, should educate children about sex. “Parents have the right and the responsibility to be the first and primary educators of their children,” Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the archdiocese, wrote in a statement. “This mandate by the city usurps that role, and allows the public school system to substitute its beliefs and values for those of the parents.”

The Catholic League's reliably whacko Bill Donahue weighs in:

There is a sex-education program that could work, and it is one that is similar to the approach being used to discuss smoking. We don't tell kids not to smoke and then instruct them on the proper way to inhale. No, we show them horrifying pictures of a smoker's lungs. We tell them of the physical pain they are likely to endure by smoking. We tell them how it will shorten their life expectancy. We could do the same when discussing sexual experimentation at a young age. We could discuss how abortion affects the psyche of the mother who elects to terminate her baby. We could show pictures of what abortion does to the child being cut up into pieces. We could instruct them on the link between unwed motherhood and poverty. We could inform them of the greater likelihood of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease. In other words, we could teach the negative real-life consequences of sexual experimentation at a young age.

AUSTRALIA: 26 Suicides Blamed On Pedophile Catholic Priests

Even though 26 suicides have been attributed to the actions of pedophile priests such as Father Robert Best (above), local Catholic officials in Australia say that no inquiry is needed into the deaths. All of the suicides occurred at schools where Best taught. He has pleaded guilty to dozens of counts of child molestation.

Bishop Connors on Tuesday said not even revelations from Detective Sergeant Kevin Carson that 26 young men had killed themselves after being abused by priests and brothers in Ballarat convinced him that more would be learnt from an inquiry. "I think we've learnt a lot of things about what is appropriate behaviour and what's not appropriate behaviour," Bishop Connors said. "I think people are very well informed nowadays as to what's inappropriate approaches from a male." While conceding the abuse of children was wrong, he said that in the past it had not always been clear to everyone what was appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. "In the past a lot of ignorance was there on the part of lots of people. Parents didn't understand, sometimes bishops didn't understand. We have no excuse now."

BRITAIN: Catholic Anti-Pedophilia Staffer Busted For Producing Child Porn

An official with the Catholic Church has been busted for possessing and producing child porn. Ho hum, you say? How about if he was in charge of stopping people exactly like himself?

A child protection official for the Catholic Church has been caught with 4,000 pictures of child porn. Father-of-four Christopher Jarvis was arrested after uploading pictures of children being abused to a website. Married Jarvis, 49, a former social worker, was employed by the church following sex scandals about pervert priests. His job was to monitor church groups to ensure paedophiles did not gain access to children in the church’s congregations. But he was caught by police in March with more than 4,000 child porn images on his home computer and his work laptop. He admitted 12 counts of making, ­possessing and distributing indecent ­images when he appeared before ­magistrates in Plymouth and is likely to face jail when he returns to court for sentencing next month.