Pope Benedict

Poor Pope Benedict! How dare the press hound you the way they’ve been doing?! All you really did was protect Mother Church! So what if a couple of hundred deaf kids got schtupped up the ass by a pedophile priest? So what if you allowed another priest to continue working with children for years after being informed that he was sexually abusing them? The Church is more important than a bunch of whiny kids, isn’t it? That’s certainly what you suggested back in 1985, according to a recently uncovered letter written when you were still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

In it you stated that the “good of the universal church” should be considered against the defrocking of an American pedophile priest who had had sex with two boys. Who could argue with that? Fuck the kids! Literally! Of course, referring to these stories as “petty gossip” may not have been the wisest move. After all, a lot of people think—for some strange reason—that raping young children is a serious crime, not something you’d normally refer to as “petty.” Then again, you are infallible, right? You’re in direct communication with God. So if he told you to say it, well, who are we to argue? Btw, Your Assholiness, is God a child-fucker too? (Just askin’.)

You know, things might not be so rocky for the Roman Catholic Church if you didn’t have a bunch of screwballs working under you, sir. Like that Italian exorcist guy, Father Gabriele Amorth, who claims the devil is responsible for media coverage of the sex-abuse scandal. “There is no doubt about it,” Amorth told the Catholic News Agency. “Because [Benedict XVI] is a marvelous pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the devil wants to ‘grab hold’ of him.” Amorth also said “the devil wants the death of the Church because she is the mother of all the saints.”

And what’s this about the Jews being to blame for your problems, Benny? According to the April 3, 2010, edition of the New York Times, “Last week the [Peruvian] center-left daily newspaper La Republica wrote, without attribution, that certain Catholic circles believed the criticism of the Church stemmed from a New York ‘Jewish lobby.’” Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga—the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and a leading candidate to replace Pope John Paul II until you got the job—has been blaming the Church’s pedophilia scandals on the Jews for many years. Maybe it’s just us, but isn’t it a little odd to be blaming Jews and newspapers because so many of your priests are child abusers?

What we’re getting at is, wouldn’t it just be easier to stop fucking children? Ya think? No one can say with certainty how many pedophiles are in the Catholic Church, but there certainly seems to be a lot of them. One gets the impression that every young male Catholic who is in denial about his homosexual tendencies flees into the arms of the Church with its injunction to be sexually abstinent. What a terrific way to avoid confronting those unwanted urges. But, darn it, what do these aspiring priests find when they enter the inner sanctum? All those cute, little, vulnerable altar boys. It’s so unfair. Who could possibly expect them to resist such temptation?

Just look at all the pedophilia cases filed against the Church worldwide. There have been scores throughout Europe, including at least 94 cases in your native Germany and hundreds more in Ireland. Italy’s numerous cases are kept secret because of an immunity agreement with the Vatican. Then there’s the United States, where 80% of all reported cases have occurred. We’re talking about 11,000 allegations involving more than 4,000 priests in dozens of cities. Yeoooww! Who put the Viagra in the holy water, sir? Haven’t you guys ever heard of masturbation? Oh, wait! According to Church dogma, that’s a sin too.

A point of clarification: Self-gratification is a sin, but engaging in oral sex with a child isn’t? Do we have that right? Ya know, given the foregoing, we’re thinking that somewhere between 25% and 50% of the priesthood are pedophiles.Whatever the number, wouldn’t all the other prelates of the Church have to be considered coconspirators? Surely they knew what was going on. Don’t tell us it wasn’t whispered about in the hallways of the Vatican or in local vestries here and abroad. Assuming we’re correct in our assessment, doesn’t that make the Mother Church a sewer of pederasts and enablers? How holy is that?

But here’s the deal, Benny: We know that, at a minimum, you repeatedly dragged your heels when it came to giving the heave-ho to sexabusing clergy. Moreover, it seems clear that you covered up those heinous crimes. That’s why many believe you are indictable under existing conspiracy laws. Given that, you may want to refrain from stepping outside Vatican City ever again. Nowhere you go will be a haven from the long arm of the law. The Roman Catholic Church has been totally disgraced by the mounting charges of priests who abuse children. So do the honorable thing: Resign!