| The Shifty Cardinal |
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| Written by Fervidvs Cynicvs | |
| Thursday, 24 September 2009 | |
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In light of the surprising [not] revelation that Cardinal Mahony had made another attempt at covering up for a priest, we felt inspired to write a piece of fiction. Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure stories in the 80s and 90s? Well, this is our own little Choose Your Own ------ Sitting in your office, you are staring at the computer screen, browsing through the innumerable emails and meeting requests. Sick of the bureaucracy and being the responsible person that you are, you casually ignore them. You lean back on your chair, letting that clichéd soothing morning sunlight bath you while you think about the borderline heretical sermon which you still have yet to write. Your mind then wanders to something else. The door knocks. "Come in," you say. A young lady opens the door and walks in with a tray. "Good morning your Eminence, your morning tea." Your secretary puts it down on your monolithic rosewood desk. Smiling, you say to her, "Thank you, Miss Carino." Your secretary walks out and gently shuts the door behind her. As you are about to take a small sip of the steaming hot tea, your desktop computer gives a gentle chime. Great, it's another email. The subject line reads: Complaint #63656: The Ranch family against Fr Gimpers For some strange reason, this fills you with a familiar sense of dread. After taking a few deep breaths, you open the email and realize that the complaint against Fr Gimpers is quite serious. In fact, it's so serious that you ignored it the first twenty times it was made. The email makes reference to some videotape which happens to be on your desk. You watch it on your 50-inch LCD and this half-naked boy is playing chess with Fr Gimpers. Most of the time, they appeared to be just playing chess. Later on in the footage, however, Fr Gimpers and the boy stop playing chess and you never realized a drink bottle could squirt water so far. It's not the worse thing you've seen but this is certainly not good. What do you do? Do you conveniently shove Fr Gimpers off to anywhere but here and hope all this goes away? Try to settle this matter out of court? Or even dare to wait and eventually go through the courts?
If you decide to suspend Fr Gimpers, turn to page 2. ------ You suspend Fr Gimpers "for the sake of the diocese" and so that the "internal investigation may be carried out without any bias"; but really you just want to transfer the guy to somewhere else to save yourself some trouble. The other excuse you give, depending on the audience, is that his sister is terminally ill. After all, suspending Fr Gimpers may seem like an admission of guilt. You have to protect him, which in turn protects you; that is, as long as people don't find out... Well, in time, your investigation turns up some rather interesting details. For example, you initially hired the guy despite his questionable history. Naturally, you destroy the file along with the tape. A few months later, you are in court as a witness... The prosecutor asks, "Having received a complaint against Father Gimpers, why did you not investigate him?" "I did," you reply confidently. "According to the logs on the computer, you accessed his file but there was no investigative process initiated by you the first twenty times." "Was that a question?" you ask. "Where is Father Gimpers?" "He is unavailable." "That's right, according to one public statement you made, you suspended Father Gimpers. Is that true?" "I don't remember the details but probably." "But according to other records, he took some leave. Did he?" "I don't remember. Probably that too. The two doesn't necessarily contradict each other." "Maybe. The explanation, according to these records, is that Father Gimpers had a sick sister who needed his attention." "I don't recall exactly, but that sounds about right," you reply. "Father Gimpers doesn't have a sister," the prosecutor states boldly. "Oh... Well, I don’t really remember either way." "The point is," the prosecutor continues, "you did not do anything to investigate these claims against Father Gimpers." "I don't recall." "And then there's the videotape with Father Gimpers and the victim." "What tape? I don't recall there was any tape." "Yes, the tape that is conveniently missing from your diocese records but a backup exists. Shall we watch it?" You're stuffed and everybody knows it. In the end, a settlement is imposed on the diocese. You close a few parishes and a few monasteries, all worth millions. And of course, you are charged with perjury.
The End ------ You decide to try to settle this out of court. Due to numerous previous "arrangements", the diocese doesn't actually have that much money. The category in the budget that is aptly named Hush Money - which in recent years actually makes up for most of the budget - is running low. To appear unbiased and sensible, you tell Fr Gimpers to go on paid leave until things quieten down. Immediately, you start a fundraiser without actually using the word "fundraiser". As part of this so-called fundraiser, you invite a bunch of liberalists, atheists, humanists and dissenters as guest speakers. When you think about it, this situation is almost a blessing in disguise. Without the case, you would have not had the opportunity to sow heresy on church grounds on this scale. Even on a good day you could not cram that much humanist rubbish in one of your sermons. Needless to say, everyone knows what the money is really for. Still, some people dig deep and give anyway. You are quite pleased with yourself. It looks like one parish could be saved from all this cash. Nevertheless, you are still hated as you end up selling quite a few parishes and monasteries to pay for the settlements. You manage to avoid the courts, for now...
Months later, after Father Gimpers' paid leave have run out, you send him on leave without pay on some rehab course. It is called "reductive and repetitive technique". Basically, you lock them in a room and let them sin all they want until they get sick of it and do it no more. After a month of that, you release him and put him back on the job, but at some other diocese, of course. You also burn his files.
The End ------ For now, you ignore the complaint but just to look responsible you start a campaign for "awareness". You release coloring books and comic books telling kids to keep an eye out for sexual predators. Parents accuse you of shuffling off the responsibility to kids instead of you taking care of the problem by dealing with bad priests. Of course, you don't care since you have been shuffling off responsibility ever since before you were even ordained. Months later, you are summoned to court but coincidentally, some really popular Cardinal flatlines and could not be revived. Yes, saved by the kicked bucket. What a grand opportunity for you to avoid court by conducting the funeral. On the day of the funeral, everyone is somehow invited. Not just the faithful and some of the clergy but everyone, including godless politicians, pro-abortion groups, pro-gay-'marriage' groups, some really weird cross-dressing folk and masons who were all good buddies with the late Cardinal. You conduct the funeral with the most inclusive humanist pluralist language you can think of and everyone was happy (except for the traditionalists due to your celebration of the Novus Ordo and all the other indiscretions). And by the way, you really liked the group young dancers in thin outfits dancing around you during mass as well.
Days later, you are in court as a witness... "Your Eminence, you didn't suspend Father Gimpers. He was working still. Why?" the prosecutor asks. "Err... no, it would seem like an admission of his guilt," you answer plainly. "So you knew he was not guilty?" "Well, no, but I had to presume he was innocent until proven guilty." "Fair enough but wouldn't it have been better if he was taken off active duty? - given the nature of the accusations." "Well, it was important for him to continue his duties and besides, by not suspending him, he could be easily reached." "Why did you not initiate an investigation?" "I thought I did. I don't remember." "There is no evidence of an investigation on behalf of the church hierarchy." "Well, I initiated an awareness campaign." "That has nothing to do with Father Gimpers' case," the prosecutor insists. "Also, I have in my possession a videotape of Father Gimpers and the victim. You had this. Why did you not attend to this given the evidence?" "Did I have the tape?" you ask. "Yes, the records show you received it," the prosecutor insists. "A videotape itself is not conclusive. Besides, I don't remember much." "Do you remember that there was a half-naked boy." "Not really, I remember a half-dressed boy. And he was playing chess." "He was playing chess with the accused. You also hired Father Gimpers despite his history." "I don't recall. I've processed many clergy." "Cardinal Bent, who just passed away - I am sure you remember that, you just conducted his funeral - was also one who had many complaints against him and yet in the past you swept it aside too. Am I meant to believe you now?" You honestly didn't see that one coming. You stupid git.
The End. |
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