The position of the Catholic Church with regard to clerical child sex abuse has become as absurd as the Kama Sutra page 129 (very sore on the thumbs).

Details have emerged of plans to "sexually profile" applicants for the priesthood in the US in an effort to identify seminarians who are either potential child-abusers or gay.
Among the questions asked are: ‘When was the last time you had sex?’ and, ‘What kind of sexual experiences have you had?’ Candidates will be also be quizzed about masturbation fantasies, consumption of alcohol, relationships with parents and the causes of romantic break-ups. Depending on the answers, the interview may move on to, ‘Do you like children?’, ‘Do you like children more than you like people your own age?’, ‘Do you take cold showers?’, ‘Do you go for long runs?’
A Church spokesman explained that questions on showers, long runs and suchlike are intended "both to gather information and to let screeners assess the candidate’s poise and self-awareness – or to observe the tics and eye-avoidance that may signal something else."
The possibility that tics and eye-avoidance might signal sudden anxiety brought on by the thought, "What sort of fucking lunatics am I dealing with here?" appears not to have occurred to Church leaders.
Since there is no evidence of any kind of a link between sexual orientation and a propensity to abuse children, the purpose of screening applicants for gayness can only be to exclude gay men. Fr. David Toups, director of the secretariat of clergy for the US Conference of Bishops, reckons the Church is successfully weeding them out. Personally, he relies not on profiling but on his own gaydar: "It’s more like one of those things where it’s hard to define, but I know it when I see it."
What a pity Fr. Toups hasn’t developed a similar facility for spotting paedophiles.
Dr. Robert Palumbo, in charge of screening candidates at the NY Cathedral Seminary Residence, is confident that, "We have no gay men in our seminary at this time".
The seminary’s director of vocations, Rev. Kevin J. Sweeney, says: "A priest can only give his life to the church in the sense that a man gives his life to a female spouse. A homosexual man cannot have the same relationship."
Women, of course, gay or straight, cannot have the appropriate relationship full-stop.
The Church is exposed as a sepulchre of sin and sexual depravity knowingly maintained by the highest authorities, even unto to the Pope, and its reaction is to keep the women out and get rid of the gays.
No surprise, I suppose.

Is it a Jewish conspiracy?
How come Israel gets away with kidnap, land-theft, massacre and piracy? Why does the US set its face against even the most muted expression of mild disapproval of the commando attack on an unarmed flotilla?
The UN, at American insistence, imposes sanctions on Iran for refusing to abandon an engineering programme which might enable it to make a nuclear device at some point in the future. But not a shimmer of concern about Israel’s actual possession of nuclear devices – despite the fact that Iran has not invaded another country for a thousand years while Israel invades its neighbours any time it feel the itch.
How can this be explained other than by positing some sinister organisation able to reach into the White House and tug the puppet-strings of government?
In fact, the reason America rides shotgun for Israel as it rampages across the region is that it’s in the American interest to do so: in the interest of the rulers of America, that is. The White House isn’t in hock to a Jewish lobby. It’s in hock to big oil.
The president who first put unconditional defence of Israel at the heart of US foreign policy was Richard Nixon – an anti-semite who neither sought nor enjoyed Jewish support at the polls. But among his big backers were the oil barons.
Thus, while it might seem an oddity, it’s not, that Republicans are more strongly supportive of Israel, but Democrats are more strongly supported by Jews. The negative correlation contradicts the notion of Jewish conspiracy.
Ronald Reagan explained: "With a combat experienced military, Israel is a force in the Middle East that actually is a benefit to us. If there were not Israel with that force, we’d have to supply our own, so this isn't just altruism on our part."
Or, from the other end of the political spectrum, Noam Chomsky: the US needs Israel for its role in "helping encase the region in a military structure which would protect Western oil supplies."
If America decides to make war on Iran, it will, at least in the first instance, be Israel which goes to war on its behalf.
Thus, self-interest, not subservience, explains why the US clasps Israel so close to its bosom. This is, too, the key to understanding the flip-flopping of Sinn Féin for example – heartily welcoming Israel’s UK ambassador to Stormont last May, now demanding the expulsion of the ambassador from Dublin. Or the Dublin Government expressing outrage at the attack on the flotilla while facilitating the acceptance of Israel within the EU "favoured trading" arrangement.
It isn’t Israel the parties are reluctant to offend, but the US.
The US does what’s best for the US. Jewish conspiracy has nothing to do with it.