The lefty blogosphere, as well as elements of the mainstream and international press, has been abuzz with investigations into the seedy details of Terry Jones and his tiny church in Florida. Has he been buying property on the church’s dime? Did he file his tax returns properly? Was he run out of Germany on the proverbial rail after trying to run a larger organization there like his own personal cult? (warning, the Spiegel Online piece linked there is a hell of a nasty hatchet job).

Even more startling than the press and blogging fixation on the backers of a tiny, non-violent form of political protest has been the level of governmental pressure, arguably even harassment, of the people looking to conduct it. The FBI showed up to interview the pastor. Immaculately dressed Florida Governor Charlie Christ called on Jones not to start a smaller fire than many people use to roast weenies over Haloween. Defense Secretary Robert Gates phoned Jones to try and stop the protest. Even President Obama felt the need to publicly condemn the harmless burning of a small pile of paper, putting a good boot into American Atheists while he did so.

And of course, foreign governments feel the need to meddle with an entirely internal American matter.

But wait; it gets better. The Vatican has a position!

Burning the Quran would be an “outrageous and grave gesture,” the Vatican said Wednesday, joining a chorus of voices pleading with a small Florida church not to burn Islam’s holy book on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Hmm, yes, those paragons of moral virtue at the Vatican condemned burning the Koran. Being good-natured I’ll leave the issue of their credibility vis a vis relations with the Islamic world aside (*cough*Crusades*cough*) for the moment.

Still, all this concern over a tiny protest at an even tinier church? All this poring over documents in search of financial irregularities because someone wanted to make a name for himself with a bonfire? Really?

Isn’t there any more important scandal in the world of religion we could be discussing?

How about, say, this one,with a hat tip to PZ Myers:

‘No Belgian church escaped sex abuse’, finds investigation
Child sex abuse by clergy or church workers has taken place in every Roman Catholic congregation in Belgium, according to an independent commission investigating paedophilia allegations.

Yes, that’s right, the global pedophilia network sometimes referred to as the Catholic Church has been exposed in yet another nation, this time Belgium, home of waffles, in which an investigation discovered that, and I swear I’m not exaggerating, every single solitary Catholic church in the country had at some point been home to the sexual abuse of minors by clergy or staff.

Every. Single. One.

This is of course only part of a far, far larger conspiracy to cover up, even facilitate the sexual abuse of children, going back many decades and reaching to the highest corridors of power within the Vatican.

Well, maybe it was just the Belgian branch of the church that was this deranged, right? Well, no… and in Ireland the sheer depth of the depravity found in the Catholic organization is rocking their society to the core.

Even the police aided and abetted the sexual abuse of children, deferring to the Church’s authority and refusing to pursue cases against molestors in robes. The moral exemplars in the hierachy, meanwhile, coerced children into taking vows of silence against their abusers.

Perhaps these cases are too distant for a direct comparison, though; I mean, the koran burning was to happen here, on American soil. That makes it our problem, right?

Fair enough. How about this example, then:

On the morning of January 14 in Seattle, Ken Roosa and a small group Alaska Natives stood on the sidewalk outside Seattle University to announce a new lawsuit against the Jesuits, claiming a widespread conspiracy to dump pedophile priests in isolated Native villages where they could abuse children off the radar.

“They did it because there was no money there, no power, no police,” Roosa said to the assembled cameras and microphones. “It was a pedophile’s paradise.” He described a chain of poor Native villages where priests—many of them serial sex offenders—reigned supreme. “We are going to shine some light on a dark and dirty corner of the Jesuit order.”

Don’t worry about it, though! The Church is on top of the matter (no jokes please). How seriously do they take it? Well, look how they deal with it under their own, precious, extremely harsh church law: raping a small child is every bit as serious as ordaining a female priest.

Yes, their priorities are clearly straight, and so are ours, when an international, decades long global conspiracy to aid, abet and cover-up the sexual abuse of children makes so much less news than one sad, attention-seeking man starting a tiny fire.

But hey – I hear that Terry Jones might have lied on his tax returns! News at 11! Let’s get that (not-quite) koran burner!

There’s really no other way to interpret this:

Obama said he was proud the country had rallied around the idea that we can’t be divided because of religion or ethnicity – and hopes that is something that can continue.

“We are all Americans, we stand together,” Obama said. “I think it is absolutely important now for majority of Americans to hang onto that thing that is best in us: a belief in religious tolerance. We have to make sure we don’t start turning on each other.”

“We are one nation under God. We may call that God different names, but we are one nation.”

He really, really doesn’t want to know the names I’ve called his God. I’ll make a point of coming up with a few more later this morning, right before I blaspheme and break some commandments.

(Maybe coveting, that one’s easy. I could make an idol to worship for a day before I toss it in the trash, which is the natural home for religious materials in my home anyway. I did find some modeling clay in the storage room this afternoon… maybe make a calf statue, slap some gold paint on it, go all Old Testament for a lark.)

Reading this tripe was a fine way to cap off a lousy week of listening to people bleat about what a terrible tragedy it would be if someone burned a book, ostensibly because it might make someone else mad at our troops somewhere. Glenn Greenwald’s done yeoman’s work on that particular load of nonsense; suffice it to say, I think he’s right that the the Islamic world maybe, just *maybe* is angrier at us for slaughtering their family members by the tens of thousands than they’ll get for an impromptu paperback BBQ in Florida.

Still, I guess it was time for the periodic pro-religious unity propaganda, to put us silly non-believers back in our place.

As PZ Myers said:

Tolerance is a good idea. But Obama has just divided the nation, forgetting all of his previous brief, superficial mentions of non-believers, into those who are part of his one nation under God, and the rest of us, who are…what? Not part of the nation?

Thanks for reminding me where I stand in the glorious American experiment, Obama. I’m so glad we elected a Constitutional ‘scholar’… albeit one who apparently never read the First Amendment.

I’m so glad I keep tequila in the house.

And just to be absolutely clear; I am an American and part of this nation, but I am under no one’s god. Not now, not ever.

(A response to this comment at Fire Dog Lake, which may be the worst Godwin’s Law violation in human history)

They came first for the Koran, and I did not care because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for the dictionary, and I did not care because it was online.

Then they came for Dean Koontz books, and I did not care because he’s a hack.

Then they came for Watership Down, and I did not care because I’m not a rabbit.

Then they came for Canterbury Tales, and I did not care because olde English hurts my eyes.

Then they came for Catcher in the Rye, and I did not care because I hate Holden Caufield.

Then they came for War and Peace, and I did not care because it’s 460,000 words long.

Then they came for ‘Go Dog Go’, and I did not care because I’m not six years old.

Then they came for the coffee table books, and I did not care, because nobody reads them.

Then they came for ‘Dracula’, and I did not care, for I am not a goth.

Then they came for Great Expectations, and I did not care, because the ending is a nonsensical deus ex machina.

Then they came for Oliver Twist, and I did not care because I have the musical on CD.

Then they came for Animal Farm, and I did not care, because I was busy eating bacon with breakfast.

Then they came for 1984, and I did not care because it’s 2010.

Then they came for the thesaurus, and I did not care, because I still had my glossary, language reference book, lexicon, onomasticon, reference book, sourcebook, storehouse of words, terminology, treasury of words, vocabulary, and word list.

Then they came for The Invisible Man, and I did not care for I could not see him.

Then they came for Naruto, and found out it has over 40 volumes, so they left briefly, then returned with a large grocery bag to carry them in.

Then they came for The Joys of Yiddish, and I did not care because it’s meshuggah.

Then they came for Peanuts, and I did not care because Calvin and Hobbes is better.

Then they came for Agatha Christie, and I did not care because I was interrogating the major in the drawing room.

Then they came for Sherlock Holmes, and I did not care, for I had recently slipped down a waterfall.

Then they came for Douglas Adams, and I did not care because I still had my towel.

Then they came for Emily Dickinson, and I did not care because I’m not a shut-in.

Then they came for Edgar Allan Poe, and I did not care because this raven keeps quoting him.

And then, at last, they came for me, only I am not a book, I am a human being, and so they did nothing.

Then I came to realize how monstrous it is to compare even the forms of free expression most odious to me to the deaths of millions of innocent people in concentration camps.

Then I felt ashamed.

(Poem by John J Sears and Andrew Leal. Special thanks to thesaurus.com, and to SouthernDragon for providing the inspiration)