Father Guido Sarducci, who once said "If you no playa the game, you no maka da rules".

Why should Hitch care what the Pope or Catholics think. He thinks it's all nonsense anyway. For someone who does not believe in God or religion, CHRISTopher sure does spend a lot of time bloviating about it.

Lighten up, and have another drink. It will help you take your mind off of standing on the precipice of the eternity of death, and the universe of nothingness that awaits you.

Man, what am I saying, I need to lighten up. Pass the bottle.

Why would you encourage someone, athiest or no, to ignore conspiracy to cover up child rape cases?

Maybee because they are still in denial about the church's complicity in systematic child rape.

Or they just want to pretend that the world is nice happy place where these things don't happen.

or they think that if they ignore the problem that it doesn't happen and probably wasn't a big deal in the first place.

of course in all these instances they would be dead wrong.

my $.10

If I'm not mistaken, it was the inimitable James Watt, Secretary of Agriculture for Nixon and Ford, who uttered that line.

It took third place in his list of greatest hits.

Second place was talking about "little Chinamen" in a speech at some farm-belt state fair attended by the rulers of China--ruthless men who controlled the largest army in the world and had their fingers on the nuclear button.

First place was a racist comment that need never be repeated. It resulted in Watt being bounced from Ford's cabinet.

I have no doubt you are correct about a church cover-up of some priestly pedophiles. Much of it is very well documented. But if you knew the entire truth, you might actually be just as concerned with your own school districts, youth organizations, day care facillities, and other religious clergy. You may find that such occurrences and resulting cover-ups are all too common. School Districts and Teachers Organizations, in a somewhat less organized way, have sent countless pedophiles on their way to some other unsuspecting communities/school districts, rather than deal with the legal and PR issues that accompany trying to prosecute these freaks.

It's not just a Catholic thing.

It's actually an old Italian ethnic joke (ie a joke about Italians, not a joke by Italians) that certainly predates Watt, and it was certainly never said by Sarducci, or anyone with any taste or an even slightly sophisticated sense of humor.

Oh, and as to...

First place was a racist comment that need never be repeated. It resulted in Watt being bounced from Ford's cabinet.

Watt was never in Ford's cabinet. The cabinet he got canned from (technically resigned) was Reagan's.

The fatal remark was that his staff consisted of "a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple." I have no idea why you think it can't be repeated.

The man, in addition to being a convicted criminal, was perhaps the biggest idiot ever to serve in a cabinet-level position. He banned the Beach Boys from playing the National Mall in 1983, because such hard rockers would bring in and undesireable element, don't you know. After leaving office, speaking before a cattleman's association meeting, he suggested that environmentalists be shot.

You are right, Watt did not reach cabinet level until Reagan. I looked it up. Thanks for correcting my faulty and inferior memory. I am abashed on my failure to know exactly the biography of such an important embodiment of foolishness in our world.

I'm looking up Pauli Shore, Dennis Rodman and Dick Chaney immediately after I'm done here. Don't want to be caught flat footed again.

However, I think you may have the fatal joke wrong. It was a racial slur directed at African Americans (something about three things Blacks care about: two of which are vulgar and "loose shoes") and was reported by John Dean, then acting as a journalist...as I remember; but my memory is far from perfect so I just offer it to you as a possibility not an assertion of certainty.