Irish singer Sinead O’Connor says she’d help Jesus destroy the Vatican if she could. “If Christ was here, he would be burning down the Vatican. And I for one would be helping him,” she said. O’Connor made the statement via a letter to the Irish Independent in response to Roman Catholic Bishop, Denis Brennan’s recent plea to his congregation for funds. Brennan oversees the Ferns Diocese in County Wexford, Ireland. His plea for funds came in the midst of a recently exposed decades-old sex abuse scandal that has seen the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland receive a publicized rebuke from Pope Benedict XVI and paying out millions to victims of sexual abuse at the hand of priests. So far, Brennan’s diocese has paid €8 million ($10 million/£7.5 million) to settle 48 civil lawsuits. According to the London Times, “Dr Brennan is the first bishop to give details on how much compensation has been paid to victims. He said that his official residence had been remortgaged to cover nearly €2 million in legal fees. A request for financial help from parishioners was not about sharing blame, he said, but about ‘asking for help to fulfill a God-given responsibility.’” O’Connor said, “[Brennan's] statement attempts to dictate to us — in the same way the Inquisition did — how Christians should behave. It says directly that it would be anti-Christian of us to feel that the church should pay its own bills for its own abuse with its own billions that it throttled from our grandparents, whom it also abused, physically, emotionally, psychologically and sexually.” “How an organisation which has acted, decade after decade, only to protect its business interests above the interests of children can feel it has the right to dictate to us what Christians should do is beyond belief.” “From the Pope on down, through the Vatican and therefore through the lower echelons, the whole organisation, in my belief, is utterly anti-Christian and evil, as proven by centuries of torture, bloodshed, burnings, terrorism, and coverings-up of “the worst crime” known to man.” O’Connor is no stranger to criticizing the Roman Catholic Church about sexual abuse. On the Oct. 3, 1992 airing of Saturday Night Live, during which she appeared as a musical guest, O’Connor sang an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War,” during which she protested the sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church by changing Marley’s lyric “racism” to “child abuse.” At the end of her song, she tore up a picture of former pontiff, John Paul II after the song. O’Connor was heavily criticized for doing so. NBC, which owns Saturday Night Live, has refused to rebroadcast the musical performance. |
You are subscribed to email updates from The Underground To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 |
Posted via email from The Underground-- Not Your Average Christian Mag
No comments:
Post a Comment