{"id":64,"date":"2009-01-16T22:31:36","date_gmt":"2009-01-17T03:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucepress.net\/?p=64"},"modified":"2009-01-16T22:31:36","modified_gmt":"2009-01-17T03:31:36","slug":"vaticans-measure-of-sin-shows-why-they-are-no-longer-relevant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brucepress.net\/blog\/?p=64","title":{"rendered":"Vatican's measure of sin shows why they are no longer relevant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apparently its big news to someone that the Vatican has a secret tribunal to deal with what they consider to be “the most heinous sins”.\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 Shocker.\u00a0 I thought the Vatican was all about transparency.\u00a0 You can read the Telegraph’s version here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Apostolic Penitentiary, or “tribunal of conscience”, has been shrouded in secrecy ever since it was established by Pope Alexander III in 1179 and until now has never provided details of the cases it scrutinises.<\/p>\n

They are considered so heinous by the Catholic Church that only the Pope can grant absolution to those who perpetrate them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, what might you consider “the most heinous of crimes”? Use your sickest fantasy of offenses against humanity and I guarantee you are not even close.<\/p>\n

While priests and bishops can deal with confessions of sins as grave as murder or even genocide, the tribunal is reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious.<\/p>\n

They include attempting to assassinate the Pope, a priest abusing the confidentiality of the confessional by revealing the nature of the sin and the person who admitted to it, or a priest who has sex with someone and then offers forgiveness for the act.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, the Vatican considers an “attempt” on the life of the pope a worse sin than genocide. A little self-serving, don’t you think?<\/p>\n

Oh, and you know what else is a worse sin than genocide and, apparently, rogering defenseless young children by a member of the clergy? Defiling the Eucharist. Toss a cracker and its papal forgiveness or you’re out.<\/p>\n

How can they not see how ridiculous this is? Why is time and breath wasted on this nonsense?<\/p>\n

With followers in the millions they squander their influence on petty, stupid dogmatic bullshit like this. It’s just sad.<\/p>\n

This is why we need separation of church and state.\u00a0 Can you imagine if capricious nonsense like this was the lay of the land?<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apparently its big news to someone that the Vatican has a secret tribunal to deal with what they consider to be “the most heinous sins”.\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 Shocker.\u00a0 I thought the Vatican was all about transparency.\u00a0 You can read the Telegraph’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[15,16,24,54,57],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6VK4T-12","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brucepress.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brucepress.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brucepress.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brucepress.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brucepress.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brucepress.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brucepress.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brucepress.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brucepress.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}