Defending Child Rape

The New York Times reports that the Catholic Church is harassing the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, an advocacy group that works to help victims of child raping priests:

Turning the tables on an advocacy group that has long supported victims of pedophile priests, lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church and priests accused of sexual abuse in two Missouri cases have gone to court to compel the group to disclose more than two decades of e-mails that could include correspondence with victims, lawyers, whistle-blowers, witnesses, the police, prosecutors and journalists.

And later:

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a church advocacy group in New York, said targeting the network was justified because “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”

Mr. Donohue said leading bishops he knew had resolved to fight back more aggressively against the group: “The bishops have come together collectively. I can’t give you the names, but there’s a growing consensus on the part of the bishops that they had better toughen up and go out and buy some good lawyers to get tough. We don’t need altar boys.”

Forgiving that last unfortunate turn of phrase, one wonders how the Catholic Church still maintains any legitimacy at all. An organization responsible for an international conspiracy to not only turn a blind eye while children were being raped by their clergy, but, once those crimes were discovered by secular law enforcement, actively worked to help the guilty avoid prosecution.

Now they’re going after a tiny organization with a non-existent budget to coerce them into backing off of their defense of the victims of pedophiles.

And this is the fount from which the whole of humanity is to receive instruction on living a moral life? No thanks.