Today I learned that Belgium is awesome. For quite some time I have been taken with the finer points of this fair country: waffles, beer, and chocolate come to mind. Throw in the legalization of euthanasia and gay marriage, the massive amounts of ecstasy consumed on the streets, and the highest proportion of households with cable television in the world (97%) and we are really on to something here (say nothing of the fact that In Bruges is maybe the most underrated movie of the past ten years.) And yes, this will be the topic of my next post – Grosse Pointe Blank anyone? For now though, I want to reflect for all of us how awesome it is that Belgium has decided to start bitch-slapping the Catholic Church.
My bad, Belgium.
Belgian police recently stormed into the Cathedral of Mechelen for apparently no reason (years of child abuse at the hands of the Catholic leadership in Belgium notwithstanding.) They didn’t exactly enter gracefully either (more Riggs than Murtaugh, if you will.) They brought drills, handcuffs, and a tornado of anger with them as they decided to confiscate computers and written files from psychiatrists employed by the church while using tactics that really “scared” the clergy. The drills were used to access the tombs of dead Belgian cardinals for DNA samples. (Fucking. Awesome.) You see, the Belgian police recently decided that crimes committed within the Catholic Church were something that warranted special investigation. They decided to attack without any real deference to the law and it is pretty clear that their lone goal was to scare the shit out of clergy who were present for the raid. They detained clergy for nine hours while drilling tombs and rummaging through offices, withholding food and water along the way.
Belgian police entered with hate in their hearts and they left having struck a swift, largely illegal, blow across the bow of the Pope’s sex abuse crusade. In response the Pope suggested that “justice will run its course,” later suggesting that people’s rights need to be protected.
The whole fucking thing is perfect, like, it-may-actually-be-a-rejected-Lethal Weapon-storyline-perfect. Why aren’t more countries doing this? Bring drills, crack skulls, detain folks for nine hours at a time and basically let your investigatory teams rip shit up in cathedrals all over the world. Meanwhile the Pope will complain of “justice” and no one will listen because the fucker continues to wear clown shoes and do nothing to help curb pedophilia.
Belgium: 1, Pope: 0
