Disgrace

Could someone help Joey Ratz find his forever home?

On March 10 (2010), the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican," and that "when one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia." This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good material explanation.

Concerning the most recent revelations about the steady complicity of the Vatican in the ongoing—indeed endless—scandal of child rape, a few days later a spokesman for the Holy See made a concession in the guise of a denial. It was clear, said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, that an attempt was being made "to find elements to involve the Holy Father personally in issues of abuse." He stupidly went on to say that "those efforts have failed."

He was wrong twice. In the first place, nobody has had to strive to find such evidence: It has surfaced, as it was bound to do. In the second place, this extension of the awful scandal to the topmost level of the Roman Catholic Church is a process that has only just begun. Yet it became in a sense inevitable when the College of Cardinals elected, as the vicar of Christ on Earth, the man chiefly responsible for the original cover-up. (One of the sanctified voters in that "election" was Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, a man who had already found the jurisdiction of Massachusetts a bit too warm for his liking.)

I truly do not wish to relive the stench of the Church in this matter of pedophilia. It might be enough that this pope takes to his grave, and to the hottest Hell he believes in, the eternal shame of a life filled with evil and cloaked in piety. From his childhood in the Hitler Youth all the way to the present day, Pope Benedict XVI has absolutely no claim to the grace of God.

If there is a God, that is.

Not even the Onion's account makes this matter amusing.

The RCC is in greater need of a reformer than any other institution on the face of the Earth. It would give great hope to its legions of believers if the next pontiff were African, or Latino, but that might be too much to ask of the Cardinals. We'll just have to wait for the holy smoke to see.

In the meantime, those of us non-Catholics can hope for something that at least looks like progress. This pope was never intended to represent that.

Good riddance to bad, bad rubbish.

Both jobsanger and Socratic Gadfly have more.