Holy cow it's not a Palin post!

Yes I'm not blogging about the gift from the political humor gods and instead will discuss a gift from people who work for another god. You know, the churchy one. Specifically, the Catholic one. I've noticed this has been another of my favorite topics as I have several "foods that look like religious figures" posts, and even one about the "abuse-themed coloring book" those awesome Catholics put out last year. Well, in case that coloring book wasn't enough for you, I just got this story from CNN.com.

First of all, I know you can't see it in the hyperlink text, but if you clicked on it and read the URL address, I think you'll see that the first problem is that CNN decided to code name this article "churchabuse.garden." Sweet. As for the content of the article itself, basically what happened is that a church in California has decided to atone for priests' sins by building a special garden dedicated to remembering the sexual abuse that so many children suffered.

Where did they build this garden you ask? Next to a church. Yeah. Great idea. I'm sure all the sex abuse victims will be clamoring to get to a church for their garden. They say they took the victims' feelings of discomfort at a church into consideration when building this garden, and that's why it isn't inside the church. This is also why one of the benches faces away from the church to overlook a lake. Ok, maybe it's just me, but if something terrible like that happened to me, sure I wouldn't want to look at a church, but don't think I'd want to have my back to a building populated by clergy either.

Also, they have a nice little plaque to remind everyone why this garden is there. Here is the inscription: "This healing garden, planned by survivors, is dedicated to those innocents sexually abused by members of the clergy. We remember, and we affirm: Never again." Again, maybe it's just me, but "never again" should mean never again, not "You sexually abused children, let's transfer you to a different parish instead of firing you and having you arrested." Also, it isn't so much the church apologizing as it is victims pushing to get something done because clearly, without them, the church would still be actively ignoring the problem.

Finally, this garden is on a rooftop next to the church! Regardless of how victims feel going there, this is just poor planning! A) What kid doesn't want to go on a rooftop? and B) Why is this place so secluded and with so many view-blocking bushes? I would hate to think that it would happen, I'm just saying it's set up pretty well to hide potentially criminal activities. God forbid.