Remember that priest who said he identified with the Jews because of all the warrantless persecution Catholics have been feeling recently? Well, we can now top that. There’s a bishop claiming that it’s all the Jews fault.
According to the Guardian: 
A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism, considering how “powerful and refined” the criticism is.
The comments, which have been denied by the bishop, follow a series of statements from Catholic churchmen alleging the existence of plots to weaken the church and Pope Benedict XVI.
Allegedly speaking to the Catholic website Pontifex, Babini, 81, was quoted as saying: “They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers.”
Um, where to start? I suppose it’s important to note that Babini now denies having said this stuff, so it could be made up, but really, it has the ring of truth to it, doesn’t it? There is a bishop out there who thinks that thousands of Catholic kids being molested by priests was all the Jews fault. This is not particularly surprising.
Here’s where I get confused: Were we, like, dressing up as priests and molesting kids under the guise of Catholicism? Or are we now egging on the critics of the church too much? Because I haven’t seen many Jews (other than myself) jumping into the fray. And the negativity that I’ve developed towards the Catholic church has only come up in the past few weeks, and it was mostly because they keep dragging my entire religion into their horrifying brouhaha.
This whole thing is deeply deeply disgusting.
The last time I wrote about the Catholic church I also included an excerpt from James Franco’s insane short story in this month’s Esquire. I think that’s going to be my tradition. This excerpt doesn’t have anything to do with Judaism, but it’s bad enough to be funny, so I think it works for comic relief:
I think about the little dragon that the bong is and I so wish that dragons were real, because it would mean that none of this shit was the end of everything, because even if you were high, this world only let you escape a little bit, it let you escape enough that you knew that there could be something better, but it wouldn’t let you into that place; like standing on the cloudy threshold of heaven and seeing something so bright and tantalizing and warmy-womby-feeling but not being able to enter, just feeling the heat a little on your face, and you want to cry and smile, but instead you just stare and you can’t do anything.
Here’s hoping the Catholic church starts feeling the “bright and tantalizing and warmy-womby-feeling” soon.
