Category: Let's talk
Award winning writer John Patrick Shanley who won a pulitzer prize for his play Doubt, about paedophile priests,has spoken out against the pope he says some of his polices on birth control are criminal.
"He was extremely conservative in his papacy and at times very irresponsible" Shanley told Reuters "to discourage condom use in South Africa where AIDS is endemic is criminal"
He criticised the pontiff for reversing precious efforts to loosen church dogma ,for ensuring female clergy members would never achieve equality and for appointing a sucession of conservative cardinals.
..........................................
He cited the elevation to Rome of Cardinal Bernard Law,the former Boston archbishop forced to resign for protecting paedophile priests as an example of how the chatholic church fails to properly deal with its own deviant clergymen.
.....................
"I have been very surprised there has not been a more enthusistic prosecution within the church,for committing the very serious crime of sexually abusing a child!"
Shanley 54,grew up in New York's burgh of the Bronx ,where he attended, and was thrown out of, several catholic schools similar to the school depicted in his play Doubt..which is set in 1964 .