Nine Years Old

Occasionally it becomes blindingly clear to me that nobody on this planet knows what the fuck they’re doing when it comes to what God thinks about anything:

The row was triggered by the termination on Wednesday of twin
foetuses carried by a nine-year-old allegedly raped by her stepfather
in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco.

The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced
excommunication for the mother for authorising the operation and
doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not
survive carrying the foetuses to term.

“God’s law is above any human law. So when a human law … is
contrary to God’s law, this human law has no value,” Cardoso had said.

He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the
church. Although the man allegedly committed “a heinous crime … the
abortion – the elimination of an innocent life – was more serious”.

Battista Re agreed, saying: “Excommunication for those who carried
out the abortion is just” as a pregnancy termination always meant
ending an innocent life.

(Insert too-easy cheap joke about how if the Vatican went around kicking out child rapists they’d have no one left to dust the gold dinnerware and the Renaissance art collection, occupy their spacious villas, and run the Christmas pageants at their elementary schools.)

(Insert donation to local women and children’s shelter in the names of these nameless victims here.)

(Insert seven-to-eight-minute interval for screaming and throwing of things, expressions of disgust with humanity as a whole, pouring of bourbon, and eating of chocolate frosting out of can so as to calm self down.)

Okay. One ofDependable Renegade’s commenters pointed this out:

You know, I absolutely agree that this is serious. This 9-year-old girl’s life has basically been ruined. I can’t even imagine her mother’s life right now. And at a time when this family could probably use the comfort of their faith community as at no other in their lives, their church has not merely reprimanded them in public but thrown them out into the street. Suffer the little children, indeed.

A.