How a church shouldn't respond to a scandal, Pt. 2

If you think that the original post I made with a similar title had some batsh*t material in it, consider this fun bit of fingerpointing from an Italian bishop:

Who is to blame for the sexual abuse affairs in the Catholic Church? The Jews, at least according to an Italian bishop, which suggested that Jews were behind the current criticism of the Church's record on tackling clerical sex abuse, British newspaper The Guardian reported Sunday.

An Italian website quoted Giacomo Babini, 81, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a "Zionist attack" was behind the criticism, considering how "powerful and refined" the criticism is.

Babini was quoted by Catholic website Pontifex as saying: "They do not want the Church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers."

Excuse me for saying this, but doesn't the preceding rant go strongly against policies enacted during the Second Vatican Council that say precisely the opposite concerning the blood libel? OTOH, more than a few people who posted to the Comments section of Dispatches From the Culture Wars have stressed that Pontifex doesn't seem to have got the message: it's chock full of antisemitic and antimasonic conspiracy-mongering. Why Babini chose to open his trap there is beyond me.   

Oh. Wait. It's also entirely acceptable to compare the Pope to Jews when it's needed! Imagine that! 
 
This is just another indication that the Vatican seems to be in full panic mode about all of this: as far as I can tell, they've blamed the secular media, Satan, homosexuals and Jews for this scandal and will probably get around to blaming space aliens next week. 

Care to guess who's entirely missing in the blame game, though?

The perpetrators. And the superiors who covered up for them.

Singh wins libel suit

In a victory for science journalism in the UK and (probably)-everywhere else, the British Chiropractic Association has thrown in the towel in its libel suit against Simon Singh. Details here.

Old SF convention hotels never die...they just sit there

For some weird reason known only to me (morbid curiosity, perhaps?), I decided to google a few of the now defunct hotels that used to host Chicago cons and got these results:

The Wyndham O'Hare (Windycon, 2004-7; Reactor, 2009) is now being peddled by Molinaro Koger, though they really might want to make sure that the pipes are thawed by now.

The Sheraton Chicago Northwest (Capricon 1988 and 1999-2001 as the Arlington Park Hilton and 2002-8 as the SCN; Anime Central, 2001-2; it also hosted Chicago Gamer's Conclave, at least one Doctor Who-themed con and a few others) continues to be an ex-parrot, although one of their former business partners continue to wave goodbye from the safety of their web site.

The Purple Hyatt (Capricon 1985-7 and 1989-91; Reactor 2005-6; it also supposedly hosted a Duckon sometime last decade and an Elfquest-themed convention [since elfquest.com provided the image of the hotel entrance used in the chicagoist.com link]) may soon end up being a pile of lavender dust if the village fathers of Lincolnwood have their way. Since this was the first place I attended a legitimate, fan-run SF con (Capricon 5 in 1985) I'll be sad to see it go, but it hasn't been open for over three years now. Maybe my goal of obtaining one of the purple bricks, encasing it in Lucite and slamming it down on a table at a future con and triumphantly shouting "BRICK!" is finally near. Ah, memories.