Rachel Maddow talks to Sinead O'Connor about the Catholic Church's abuse scandal. As Rachel noted in the previous segment:

MADDOW: Last month, Pope Benedict issued a pastoral letter of apology to the Catholics of Ireland. But the church took the extraordinary step of actually having the letter read aloud at Sunday mass all over Ireland.

Sinead O‘Connor, for one, is not accepting the apology. In a “Washington Post” op-ed last month, she wrote this, quote, “Benedict‘s apology states that his concern is, above all, to bring healing to the victims.”

“Yet he denies them the one thing that might bring them healing, a full confession from the Vatican that it has covered up abuse and is now trying to cover up the cover up. He suggests that Ireland‘s victims can find healing by getting close to the church, the same church that has demanded oaths of silence from molested children.”

“As Ireland withstands Rome‘s offensive apology, I ask Americans to understand why an Irish Catholic woman who survived child abuse would want to rip up the pope‘s picture. And whether Irish Catholics, because we dare not say, ‘we deserve better,‘ should be treated as though we deserve less.”

Transcript of the interview below the fold.

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From The Cafferty File -- Catholic Church's child sex abuse linked to homosexuality?:

The Vatican claims to have it all figured out when it comes to the sexual abuse of children at the hands of priests in the Catholic Church.

The pope's number two - Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone - insists the abuse is linked to homosexuality... and not celibacy.

Gay rights groups are outraged - saying it's a "perverse" strategy by the Vatican to "shirk its own ethical and legal responsibility"... and they're right.

To top it off - this official made the ludicrous claim in Chile, where one pedophile priest had sex with young girls - impregnating at least one teenager. One of his victims says when she told priests about the abuse at confession "they just told me to pray and that was it."

Meanwhile - as the church says it's overhauling its rules on how it handles accusations of sexual abuse, the Associated Press may have a smoking gun that proves Pope Benedict refused to do anything about this when he had the chance.

They report on a letter written in the 80s by then-cardinal Ratzinger, in which he resisted pleas to defrock a California priest who had sexually abused children. After sitting on the request for several years, Ratzinger eventually did nothing - instead asking the Oakland bishop to consider the "good of the universal church."

It eventually became the eleventh commandment in Catholicism: "Protect the church at all costs - to hell with the children."

Here’s my question to you: Is the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church linked to homosexuality?

Jack's viewer responses he read weren't much kinder to the church than he was for this nonsense. Apparently Jack's been reading Maureen Dowd's latest -- Worlds Without Women.

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April 01, 2010 FOX News

Heather:

More ranting and raving from Bill Donohue in defense of Pope Benedict. He makes the bizarre analogy of comparing the Pope knowing about the pedophile priests to President Obama, our "commander in chief" knowing whether "two soldiers groped each other in a fox hole". This man really should not be allowed to continue to pollute our airways.

Stephen has a solution for the Catholic Church:

If the pope is responsible for a sex abuse cover-up, the Catholic Church needs to reassign him to a religion where nobody knows him.

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I guess one evening of gay-bashing from Bill Donohue wasn't quite enough for CNN. Rick Sanchez invited him on to clarity the remarks he made on Larry King's show the previous night. All he did is reaffirm his statements from King's show.

As Think Progress noted, The Catholic League responded the op-ed by running an ad in the New York Times criticizing the paper for its editorial and blaming the scandal on homosexuality.

This was another really horrid interview by CNN. Sanchez didn't challenge Donahue's assertions and their other guest Michael Bayly was not in studio but on a really bad phone connection instead. I have a hard time believing could not have found someone to come in studio and challenge Donohue's hateful rhetoric face to face. It's really pathetic they're giving him any air time at all.

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John Amato:

Bill Donohue seemed very proud of the fact that most child molesting priests weren't actually pedophiles in his words, but only guilty of abusing children who had achieved puberty. Doesn't that make you feel better about the Catholic Church scandals? Facts are facts. And he was very concerned that the Pope had been libeled because he said there was no proof in the case in Wisconsin that the Pope knew anything. Here's a good story about the case.

You be the judge. Either Cardinal Bertrone is covering up for the Pope or Ratzinger just couldn't be bothered knowing the what was going on around him. That seems to be the story the Vatican is sticking with. Everywhere the Pope served he really didn't like to be bothered by the small stuff.

As archbishop, Benedict expended more energy pursuing theological dissidents than sexual predators. Already in the early 1980s, one could catch a glimpse of a future pope preoccupied with combating any movement away from church tradition. Vatican experts say there is little evidence that Benedict spent much time investigating more than 200 cases of “problem priests” in the diocese, with issues including alcohol abuse, adultery and, now under the microscope, pedophilia.

Earlier in the show Donohue proclaimed that everybody could learn something good from the Catholic Church now that they are all cleaned up. Hey, they look like all those handsome priests from the Legion of Christ now. Nice and young with their hair parted just right. Larry King's panel was dumbfounded by Donohue's statements as any normal person would be.

Roberts: Bill is good but you cannot link homosexuality to a pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church.

Bill Donohue: It’s not a pedophilia… most of the victims were post pubescent…

Roberts: You know…

Donohue: You’ve got to get your facts straight. I’m sorry. If I’m the only one that’s going to deal with facts tonight so be it. The vast majority of the victims are post pubescent. That’s not pedophilia buddy. That’s homosexuality.

Roberts: Bill, I don’t think as a person of faith that you really know what you’re talking about when it comes to a victim and a survivor. (crosstalk)

Donohue: It’s not of my opinion. Take a look at the social science data. I never said that most homosexuals are that way.

Roberts: No you just said that cut down homosexuals… (crosstalk).

Donohue: Yes! Practicing homosexuals.

--

O’Conner: Sorry Larry, at what age does somebody become, you know, post pubescent in America as a matter of ages?

King: What is the age?

Thomas: Ah… I don’t know. Let’s ask Bill. He seems to be the authority on post pubescency.

Donohue: 12, 13 years of age. Look, all I’m saying (crosstalk).

King: We’re out of time. We’ve just touched the surface. Now we’ve got Anderson Cooper coming on.

Heather: Good grief. Larry King really has been a worse wasteland than usual these last couple of nights. Tonight's show ended with Larry King allowing Bill Donohue to get away with saying this to a man who was molested by a priest as a teenager.

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November 27, 2009 BBC World

DUBLIN, Ireland — Police officers, government officials and bishops of the Catholic church in Ireland have been harshly censured in a report on clerical child abuse over three decades in the Archdiocese of Dublin. Coming just a few months after an equally harsh report on the ill-treatment of children in Church-run industrial schools, the latest revelations have shocked Catholics and non-Catholics alike throughout the island.

An official commission investigated 320 allegations against a sample of 46 out of 183 priests from 1975 to 2004. It found that several cardinals and bishops protected criminal priests while taking no action to protect children.

Responding to the report, Ireland’s Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said that “the era where evil people could do so under the cover of the cloth, facilitated and shielded from the consequences by their authorities, while the lives of children were ruined with such cruelty, is over for good.” He added: “The bottom line is this: A collar will protect no criminal.”

In one of the most telling comments, the religious affairs correspondent of Irish national broadcaster RTE said on the main evening news that the report “represents the failure of civil Ireland, in the independent republic of Ireland, to stand up to the royalty of Ireland, the Catholic Church.” Deference to the clergy in this once devoutly Catholic country caused the police to conclude that the crimes of the Catholic Church were outside their remit.