Catholic Church shielded pedophile priests

Yeah, this certainly isn't a surprise, but it's always good to get additional documentation:

Roman Catholic Church officials in Milwaukee vigorously shielded pedophile priests and protected church funds from lawsuits during a decades-long sex abuse scandal, according to hundreds of newly released documents.

The documents include letters and deposition testimony from Cardinal and Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan who, during his time as archbishop of Milwaukee from 2002 to 2009, appealed to Vatican on numerous occasions to help address the ongoing fallout from the scandal.

The 6,000 pages of documents related to eight decades of abuse cases showed in great detail the Milwaukee archdiocese regularly reassigned priests who were accused of sexual molestation to new parishes and Dolan himself asking the Vatican permission to transfer $57 million to a trust fund to protect it against court action.

So we can't be moral without 'God,' huh? Well, maybe churches should demonstrate that they can be moral with God. I'd stack my own morality up against that of the Catholic Church any day of the week!

If a priest can behave like this, you have to wonder what their god can do for ordinary people, don't you? But more than that, this demonstrates that Catholic officials care more for the church itself than for the church's members.

Well, those celibate old men have given up everything for the Catholic Church, haven't they? They don't have families, and they're not supposed to have a sex life. The church is not just a job, but their home, their family, their everything. What are someone else's children compared to that?

This is the problem with valuing an organization over people. If you'll move pedophiles to unsuspecting parishes in order to protect the institution, not caring at all about raped children, what won't you do?

Yeah, I know. This isn't your religion, right? (Or maybe it is. For some reason, Catholics stay Catholic, despite all this.)

But even Christians can't all agree on what Christianity is. Christians can't even come to a consensus on their own religion, let alone all the other religions in the world. That's because religion is faith-based, not evidence-based, so you just believe whatever you want to believe (almost always, what you were raised to believe).

If Christians had a good reason to believe what they believe, they wouldn't need faith. (And if they had a good reason - even one - they'd be quick to point it out to us atheists, too.)

So don't try to tell me that I can't be moral without God. And before you try to convince me your religious beliefs are true, maybe you believers should first get together and agree on what's true and what isn't. If you can't even come to a consensus among yourselves, why should I take you seriously?