Suffer the Children

Nope, this isn’t a #shareniger post but if you’ve not heard of it, I thoroughly recommend having a look and getting involved.

Nor is this a rant at the brutality in Syria, which saw 50 kids murdered systematically, which is still shocking me to the core weeks after the event.

This is a rant about the treatment of a 9 year old girl in Brazil. She’d been sexually abused by her stepfather for up to 3 years and found herself pregnant with twins when she went to hospital complaining of stomach pains. You can read about it in full in the Independent here. The story itself is terrible but the girls treatment, the treatment of her family and the doctors that basically saved her life by the Roman Catholic Church turn my stomach.

The girl’s mother and doctors were excommunicated for agreeing to the emergency abortion yet the Church has not taken formal steps against the stepfather. Apparently, with full support from the Vatican (or the Vatican’t), the regional archbishop has stated that whilst child rape is a heinous crime, it’s not as bad as abortion, which is “more serious”. So the paedophile, whilst facing a lengthy prison sentence, can still attend Mass, take confession to atone for his sins, and be part of a community that probably wont want him, but the victim’s own mother cannot. The very people the Church should be supporting are, pardon the metaphor, publicly crucifying them.

My mum is a lapsed Catholic and I attended a traditional Roman Catholic Primary School in the early 80’s, attached to a very traditional Roman Catholic church with a proper fire & brimstone Irish priest. There was a sense of community and belonging that was apparent to me as a child, even though I was somewhat of an outsider, never attending Mass outside of school.

At the heart of religion should be the family. Christianity has an emphasis on being members of Gods Family, so this just seems like a gross and insensitive perversion of that to me. I’d be interested to see what you think about it…

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