Here’s a link to the AP story about the Vatican’s recent take on the recent tide of backlash against the Catholic Church in the wake of the revelations that even more priests in even more countries committed even more sex crimes with male children that they found themselves in positions of authority over.

Here’s the quote I will proceed to snark on:

Vatican Radio on Tuesday quoted Italian Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, a Holy See official, as saying the church must pardon its attackers for what he called “hatred against the Catholic church.”

"Hatred" is a strong word, indeed.   That noted, in a case where you have a group of men purporting to be direct spokesmen for an omniscient, omnipresent "God" (capitalization, theirs), and proceed to use that excuse to molest and rape young boys, it is a word that is apt and that I can understand completely, regardless of whether or not the group of men in question will pardon me for feeling that way or not. I don’t give any thought to how pedophiles and their accomplices feel about my hatred for them.

But of course, the Vatican doesn’t quite see it that way:

Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, who heads a Vatican disciplinary commission, says the pope is being attacked because of his stands against abortion and same-sex marriage.

You can be as backwardly ignorant as you want to be about gay rights and abortion. Feel free to stand up and say the most hateful shit you can think about either issue. And after you throw your tantrum, you will have to admit that no matter how evil or twisted you might think homosexuals or abortionists are, they don’t claim that god wants them to to sexually molest your children.