By Joel Thurtell
King Louis XIV of France is supposed to have said, “Apres moi, le deluge.”
I wonder if the pope thinks that because he is anointed to serve as the Vicar of Christ for life, no earthly force can disrupt his reign.
Louis XIV’s descendant, the sixteenth of that name, learned from the blade of a guillotine that his grandfather’s postponed deluge could interrupt a monarch’s reign in a very terminal way.
Pope Benedict need not worry about guillotines, but nonetheless, he is thinking too much like a monarch of old. His Holiness needs to reflect on the history of sovereigns who thought they were beyond the reach of law.
The Vatican unveiled a grandiose gesture on April 9, 2010: Pope Benedict VI graciously consented to meet with victims of priestly predators.
The pope’s offer was immediately swept aside by a new wave of bad publicity as yet another story of priestly abuses broke with the kicker that once again the pope had protected a criminal. Not from Ireland, this time, nor from Germany, nor France, Spain or Wisconsin. This time the report came from California of a 38-year-old priest convicted of molesting kids who was protected by then Cardinal Ratzinger, the future pope. The pope thought the clerical criminal too young to defrock. The church needed its priests. He let the man stay on as a man of the cloth.
Or maybe I should say, a man of the uncloth.
My advice to the pope: Get out.
Resign.
Do it now, before things get worse, for both you, the Holy See and the Roman Catholic church.
You perpetrated a coverup, Your Holiness. You put the good of the church above the safety of human beings. You protected criminals as a matter of convenience and, yes, money. Keeping the lid on the criminal element in your own ranks would save the church paying out money damages to victims.
Or so you thought.
This mess is only going to get worse.
The parade of perpetrators connected to the pope will not end until the pope retires to some secluded monastery from which he can from time to time emerge to testify in trials of priests he tried to protect and, perhaps…
Maybe one of these days, a prosecutor in some place where kids were abused is going to discover that his or her jurisdiction has a law that calls for the indictment of people who remain silent or worse, actively try to cover up crime, despite their knowledge of sexual predation. I think the term is “obstruction of justice.”
A move to extradite the pope could come from any country, state, county shire, kreis or circumscription where such a protective law exists.
I know what the Vatican claims: The pope is exempt from prosecution because he has diplomatic immunity as the head of a sovereign state, which the Vatican claims to be.
That is a legal claim. Like all legal claims, it is subject to being tested.
It is a hurdle that a prosecutor would have to overcome.
It is true that the church has a powerful voice and might marshal overt and covert efforts to dissuade a prosecutor. But would it want to battle in open court to defend is sovereignty, when all the world would be watching it trying to save its own butt while kicking the victims?
It is hard to imagine such an indictment originating in the U.S., where the church is politically strong. Despite a theoretical separation between church and state, religious institutions — being tax free and able to raise huge amounts of money and legally able to deploy the cash for or against political figures or institutions — might seem invincible.
But the U.S. is not the only possible source of a prosecutorial move against the pope.
What if it came from a country where Christianity — not just Catholicism, but the entire Christian flock — were a tiny minority and without effective political power?
More than a few countries fit that description, from Asia to Africa.
It is not entirely impossible that such an indictment might originate in the West, even the U.S.
It could come from anywhere.
My advice to the Vatican: Search for a prelate untainted by any connection with priestly sexual abuse and, no matter how lowly his clerical rank, appoint him pope.
After Benedict retires.
Soon.
As in now.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
