It's All Jimi's Fault

The Holy Church has decided that the ‘60s are to blame for all that sexual abuse. There was a study and everything.

If you haven't taken liberties with an altar boy, put your hand on your head.

The five-year study says the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and '70s.

At least they’ve officially laid off blaming the gays, which is a nice gesture and all, but they continue to deny that having an all-male, celibate priesthood might be a problem. And blaming the sexual revolution doesn’t go a long way toward explaining, say, Ireland, which as far as I know didn’t exactly have a Woodstock vibe going on in the orphanages that deviant Christian Brothers priests treated like a buffet, nor toward explaining the serial groper priest my dad and all his altar boy buddies knew to avoid as ten-year olds in a small town in Illinois. In 1957.

Now that we finally have the goddamn hippies to blame, bishops are being encouraged to cooperate with civil authorities in abuse cases. Not commanded, of course--let's not be hasty here--but encouraged. I’m sure these baby steps will be a great comfort to the victims. I know I’m quaking at the absolute integrity of the Magisterium.