The Roman Catholic Church is again paying through the nose for trying to maintain the fiction that its priests are somehow distinguishable from satyrs. The spate of lawsuits that originated in the U.S. is continuing abroad. An Englishman, now schizophrenic and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, has just been awarded £635,684 ($1.1 million). According to the Scotsman, this is thought to be the biggest award of its kind ever in the U.K.

Meanwhile, I missed a tale from Austria back in September. William Kole reported,

Austrians are leaving the Catholic Church in droves in disgust at two high-profile sex scandals involving child pornography and allegations of the molestation of young boys, Church leaders said yesterday.

More than 10,000 people have left the Vienna archdiocese in the last few months, with thousands more leaving parishes across the country.

No surprise there. But this is what caught my eye—

In overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Austria, people are automatically registered as Church members when baptised as infants. They must apply to the government to leave the Church under guidelines established by Adolf Hitler during the country’s Second World War Nazi occupation.

Never let it be said that Hitler did not have the interests of the Church at heart.

If this ugly European trend continues, the only place left where the clergy can feel free to have sex without fear of reprisal will be the Vatican.

Related posts
New Pope explains priestly sex scandal (4/20/05)
In ecclesia Romae nolite quaerere, nolite dicere (4/23/05)