• The personal preacher to the Pope has “likened accusations against the pope and the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal to ‘collective violence’ suffered by the Jews…” WHAT? Criticism of an organisation that covers up horrendous child abuse by some of its membership and makes it possible for the abusers to go on abusing for decades – is said to be akin to the ‘collective violence’ suffered by people of a particular religious persuasion?? (Verbal, justifiable criticism = the Holocaust?)

Wow, that’s a jump.

• In Australia, over Easter, the Catholic Church was busy blaming atheists for everything. It seems, according to the bishop of NSW, that atheists are responsible for “Nazism, Stalinism, Pol-pottery, mass murder, abortion and broken relationships…” Wow again. But not child abuse, I see. Atheists – you are in the clear on that one.

To me, that kind of thinking has the same twisted logic as Muslim = Terrorist. Or in fact, all Catholic priests = child abusers. If you don’t like people saying it about you, they maybe you shouldn’t say it about others.

• And here in Malaysia, a married, working mother of two young physically-disadvantaged children has a beer and as a direct or indirect result, loses her job, is divorced by her husband, is unable to look for another job because the religious authorities have kept her hanging for eight months waiting for the sentencing (of caning) to be carried out. At one stage she remarked that she wanted to be caned just to get it over and done with. Now the caning has been commuted to 3 weeks community service at a children’s home.

You know what? I doubt that this was a case where the ultimate result – eight months of loss of income; eight months of stress, publicity and humiliation; strains on a marriage resulting in divorce and single parenthood of two children needing special care – was punishment appropriate to the crime.
All that for a beer??
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