Not The Onion: Catholic Church Sells Pornographic Novels in Germany
November 5th, 2011Via: New Zealand Herald:
Germany’s biggest Catholic-owned publishing house has been rocked by disclosures that it has been selling thousands of pornographic novels with titles such as Sluts Boarding School and Lawyer’s Whore with the full assent of the country’s leading bishops.
The revelations made in the publishing-industry newsletter Buchreport concern Weltbild, a company with an annual NZ$3bn turnover and 6,400 employees. It is Germany’s largest bookseller after Amazon and wholly owned by the Catholic Church.
Buchreport revealed that Weltbild’s massive assortment of titles available to customers online includes some 2,500 “erotic” books with unmistakably lewd titles including Call Me Slut!, Take Me Here, Take Me Now! and Lawyer’s Whore, to name a few. The publisher’s website also pictures the titles’ lascivious dust jackets that feature colour photographs of scantily clad women in high heels and erotic underwear.
Yesterday, Carel Haff, Weltbild’s managing director, was quoted as saying that the revelations had provoked “a very intense and critical dialogue” within the company. He said discussions were under way about possibly limiting the assortment of titles that would be available in future.
Catholic bishops responded with a statement claiming that “a filtering system failure” at the publishing house had allowed the books to stray on to the market. “We will put a stop to the distribution of possibly pornographic content in future,” they said.
But Bernhard Mller, editor of the Catholic magazine PUR, dismissed the clerics’ reaction as grossly hypocritical. He alleged that the pornography scandal at Weltbild had been going on for at least a decade with the Church’s full knowledge.
Mr Mller said that in 2008, a group of concerned Catholics had sent bishops a 70-page document containing irrefutable evidence that Weltbild published books that promoted pornography, Satanism and magic. They demanded that the publisher withdraw the titles.
But their protests appear to have been completely ignored. Writing in the Die Welt newspaper, Mr Mller said most of the bishops refused to respond to the charges. “The sudden proclaimed astonishment of many church leaders that pornographic material is being distributed by their publishing house, is play acting – bad play acting,” Mr Mller said. “Believers have been complaining to their bishops about this for years.”
The Catholic Church bought Weltbild more than 30 years ago. The publisher has gradually transformed itself into one of Germany’s largest media companies with the help of millions in Catholic Church tax levied on believers. To increase its profits, in 1998 the company merged with five other publishing houses that market pornographic titles.
And why not? This is minisule in comparison to the many horrendous crimes of the Vatican, past, present, and without any doubt, future.
Seriously, it’s not as if one were deluded in any way that the Vatican were actually a bastion of any kind of real morality, or anything.
In medieval times the Church sold ‘indulgences’. Now they sell porn. It’s all the same. Money for the coffers.
I would expect the Vatican is up to their mitres in trafficking a great deal more sinister than porn.
Nothing surprises me about the Catholic Church anymore. NOTHING. Won’t surprise me if the Catholic Church on and up to the Vatican turns out to be the next MF Global.
Can’t even get the local parish priest to spend the money from the Cemetary Fund to plant grass on my Mother’s grave. When there is supposed to be over $50 K in the cemetary fund?(segregated funds supposedly)
When its bad on the local, can you imagine the global? Sure, I’ve been burned by the Catholic Church, and maybe its time to let it go. But I guess I’m not done with these freaks yet.
Selling porn, raping and killing children, they deserve my rath and much more.
I’ve got the unresolved psychological patterns of my parents alive in me, and they sure must have had a lot of issues with the Catholic Church because they are boiling up in me every time I read one more of these creep-shit stories where the holier-than-thou’s are nothing more than a money seeking charity cult that is long past its prime and should be put of business. And lots of these porn producing, child raping and killing perverts should be on trial and then put in jail.
Wonder whether Rick Perry would like to handle their sentencing?
P.S.
I meant to spell rath as wrath. And add another thought.
Maybe the Italian government should ask for an audit of the Vatican? Do they pay a dime toward the betterment of Italy? Italy is riding on a different ship, but is in the same boat as Italy.
I think it is time to take the Vatican down. To a level playing field at least. What I mean by that I don’t know.
But I sure like the idea of battering rams, seizure of records, girly-boys in their long skirts flying out of the place in a hissy-fit, and then without the teat to suck on, maybe transforming and becoming humans with empathy again.
Right now, they are locked in step with the neo-Christo, winner takes all, EVIL that pervades the entire religion, LET ALONE THE VATICAN.
I think its time to Occupy the Vatican.
I meant to say Italy was in the same boat as Greece. Sorry.
Can’t even get the local parish priest to spend the money from the Cemetary Fund to plant grass on my Mother’s grave.
My dad told me about the moment he figured it out re: the Catholic Church. He noticed that the wealthiest family in the church had padded kneelers, while everyone else had to kneel on wood.
“It was a small detail, but it explained a lot.”
“Did you mention it to anyone?” I asked.
He laughed, “I knew that I was going to have the crap beaten out of me for something. I didn’t want it to be for that. But I was on to those f*ckers from that point on. Everything else made sense.”
As he recalls it, he was about about ten years old. So this would have been early 1940s Wisconsin.
I had an ex-girlfriend who was Catholic and it constantly bent her out of shape that my dad hadn’t put us through the song and dance. That said, she had an IQ of about 160 and she knew that the church was as bogus as a three dollar bill. During moments of clarity, that is, after she’d knocked back a bottle of wine, she’d tell me how the local mob boss paid for the new roof on their church and how everyone knew the mob laundered money through the Church, etc.
I had another ex girlfriend who’s wealthy Catholic dad divorced the mom and somehow hid the money with the church so he wouldn’t have to pay child support! Anyway, I could, embarrassingly, go on and on but I’m sure I’ve written plenty already.
Re: Auditing the Vatican: That thing sits inside a sovereign city-state. The Pope is the head of state. Good luck to anyone who tries to get an accurate picture of their finances.
of the 3 axis powers post ww2, why did italy get off easier than japan and germany? vatican have anything to do with that? or just the officers fleeing to SA? and im sure the monetary resources of the vatican are nothing compared to their intelligence and human resources. not to mention “alternative” and “exotic” mechanisms of power and control available to the institution. *shudders*