If you take a look at
The New York Post,
Fox News, and
The Weekly Standard, you'll get a pretty good sense of who Rupert Murdock is and what he cares about.
Now imagine one very powerful figure is the CEO of three competing companies, each with thousands of administrators, tens of thousands of employees, and millions of investors. All three of these companies have global reach into every corner of power and influence, from the smallest village to the largest cities. And every one of them routinely, consistently, and unapologetically abuses children sexually.
What can we conclude about this CEO?
Despite their war-generating differences, Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam share a strange and shameful propensity to abuse children.
Coming on the heels of revelations about thousands of children abused by Catholic priests in the U.S. in recent decades, Ireland is now reeling after a government commission concluded that students at more than 200 Catholic schools were molested and/or subjected to sadistic punishment for some sixty years, while "a culture of silence" protected the abusers and perpetuated these crimes against the innocent. Same story as in the U.S.: abusers shuffled around to new schools when/if parents dared to complain.
"Extreme punishment was a feature of the boys' schools. Prolonged, excessive beatings with implements intended to cause maximum pain occurred with the knowledge of staff management," the report says.
Over 12,000 people have already been compensated by the Irish Government, with thousands more cases in process.
The American Jewish community has its own child abuse scandal (and cover-up). Also unresolved are issues surrounding the traditional Orthodox practice of removing post-circumcision blood from the infant's penis by sucking it away – a practice that has led to several infants in New York contracting herpes from the mohel – with at least one of them dying as a result.
Whatever your thoughts concerning male circumcision, it's hard to argue that it's not abusive in the sense that circumcision is certainly (in most cases) unnecessary surgery performed without the consent of the patient. Some recent
research suggests there may be some protective effects to male circumcision (less likely to contract HIV and genital herpes), but I know of no such claims regarding the clitorectomies common in many parts of the Muslim world.
It's worth thinking about why the sexual victimization of children is shared by (at least) three of the world's major religions.
