Pope: “Pornography And Prostitution Are Crimes Against Humanity”

Pope Benedict XVI railed against pornography, prostitution, sexual discrimination, materialism, and other social issues in a conversation with the Bundestag, Germany’s legislature, as the Pope received the new German ambassador to the Vatican, Reinhard Schweppe. Just last week, Ireland recalled their ambassador to the Vatican, amid frosty relations.

“But the Pope’s strongest words were reserved for the ‘sexual discrimination against women,’ pornography and prostitution, likened to ‘crimes against humanity’,” reports the Vatican Insider. “They are the consequence, says the Pope, of the ‘materialistic and hedonistic tendencies’ that are spreading above all in the ‘so-called Western world,’ that is, the sexual discrimination against women.”

“Every person”, admonished Benedict XVI, “whether man or woman, is destined to exist for the others. A relationship that does not respect men and women’s equal dignity, constitutes a grave crime against humanity. It is time to make a vigorous effort to stem prostitution, as well as the widespread diffusion of material with erotic or pornographic content, also on the Internet”.

Regarding this point, he assured, “the Holy See will see to it that the commitment of the Catholic Church in Germany against these evils is brought forward in a clear and decisive manner”.

The Pope’s reference to the issues are anything but coincidental: last week, the weekly “Die Welt” accused the German Church of making money through the sale of pornographic books, through the publishing house Welbild, one of the largest in Germany, and which belongs to several German dioceses.  The publisher’s catalogue includes some 2,500 erotic titles, with covers that are anything but modest. The scandal had already been pointed out in 2008 by a document prepared by numerous faithful, but without effect.

The hypocrisy is astounding. For a decade, the Catholic Church in Germany, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, a $2.3 billion bookseller named Weltbild, has been selling what they now demand to be classified as “erotica,” although many have called it pornography, to the tune of more than $300,000 in annual sales.

To add insult to injury, last week, after reports spread worldwide of their selling “erotica,” the Catholic Church threatened lawsuits against publishers who had called the 2500 titles, with names like, “Fuckable,” “Lawyer’s Whore,” and “Sluts’ Boarding School,” pornography, insisting they were “erotica.” Which is kind of like the Catholic Church insisting its priests don’t molest children at a higher rate than the general population does.

How can the Church rail against “erotica” and preach moral values, as it has demonstrated it has stores full of one and a total lack of the other?

In related news, in September the Pope himself was accused of crimes against humanity by two groups representing sex abuse victims in a complaint filed at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.