This year's Walter Duranty Award goes to Hilary Mantel

The sexual abuse of children is not a "Catholic problem."  It is a societal problem.  In point of fact, there has been far less less abuse within the Church than there has been across the rest of society.  See here.  Your children are much safer in the Church than they are in the public schools.

But you would never know this to listen to Hilary Mantel, the Booker Prize-winning author who was raised Roman Catholic and educated at a convent school.  According to the now enlightened Ms. Mantel, the Catholic Church "is not an institution for respectable people" because the sexual abuse scandals involving a tiny percentage of Roman Catholic priests have demonstrated the "cruelty" and "hypocrisy" of the Church. See here. In other words, because of the sinful and even criminal actions of a handful of men, in a Church comprised of more than one billion people,  everyone in the Church is deserving of condemnation: from the Holy Father down to the last little lady sitting in a pew somewhere.

And so Ms. Mantel left the Mystical Body of Christ thereby proving that she never belonged to our company anyway: "It was from our ranks that they took their leave - not that they really belonged to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have stayed with us.  It only served to show that none of them was ours." (1 John 2: 19).

The Church is not an institution for respectable people?  But such has always been our boast: "Brothers, you are among those called.  Consider your situation.  Not many of you are wise, as men account wisdom; not many are influential; and surely not many are well-born [read "respectable"].  God chose those whom the world considers absurd to shame the wise; he singled out the weak of this world to shame the strong.  He chose the world's lowborn and despised, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who were something; so that mankind can do no boasting before God..." (1 Corinthians 1: 26-29).

A few men betrayed the Gospel and engaged in cruelty and that's your reason for leaving the Church founded by Christ?  That's your reason for leaving behind the Eucharist - the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ?  Note how Ms. Mantel has also abandoned faith in the Eucharist.

There is absolutely no doubt that the human history of the Church, like all of human history, has its dark pages. But if anyone cares to take an objective look at this history, one must quickly acknowledge that the doctrine of the Church has always implicitly condemned abuses introduced by Her members.


In the words of Dr. Dietrich Von Hildebrand, "There were sinners in the Church yesterday and there are sinners in the Church today. But the Church Herself, in her divine teaching, emerges gloriously unspotted in a history stained by human weaknesses, errors, imperfections, and sins."

In the words of the great Cardinal Journet:

"All contradictions are eliminated as soon as we understand that the members of the Church do indeed sin, but they do so by their betraying the Church. The Church is thus not without sinners, but She is without sin. The Church as person is responsible for penance. She is not responsible for sins....The members of the Church themselves - laity, clerics, priests, Bishops, and Popes - who disobey the Church are responsible for their sins, but the Church as person is not responsible...It is forgotten that the Church as person is the Bride of Christ, 'Whom He has purchased with His own blood." (Acts 20:28).

Hilary Mantel prefers the company of "respectable" society.  You know, the sort of people who sip tea as they discuss the merits of abortion and the value of sodomite unions.  The sort of people who condemn the Church they never understood even as they embrace myriad evils.  For such "enlightened" souls, abortion is not cruelty, it is simply "choice."  And the millions of murdered babies discarded in trash bags is necessary to promote the "health" of women and the progress of human society.

And so, this years Walter Duranty Award for living in denial goes to Hilary Mantel, for proving that even the most "respectable" people can live a life of dim-wittedness and hypocrisy.  Please compare Ms. Mantel's photograph with the New Oxford Review graphic (featured in one of their ads) depicting the dumbed-down liberal "Catholic."

Is it just me or is there a resemblance?
Oh boy.