Impeach the Pope

Robert S. McElvaine is a Professor of Arts & Letters at Millsaps College and in the Washington Post he has a great guest column that looks at the nasty record of Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI - and the larger Church as well - and makes a good case for why God's Rottweiler and much of the hierarchy need to be turned out of their positions. McElvaine holds no punches as he conducts an "Emperor's New Clothes" examination of the rot and perversion of the Gospel message that Benedict XVI and those like him within the Church should be held accountable. Regular readers of this blog know that I utterly disgusted with the fact that those responsible within the hierarchy for the cover up of the sexual abuse of minors have not been held the least bit accountable - and that includes the less than saintly John Paul II and Benedict XVI himself. Oh yes, Benedict XVI has feigned expressions of sorrow for the scandal, but meanwhile he and his minions continue to fight tooth and claw to avoid paying settlements to victims who can never be made truly whole. I do not know how people remain Catholic under this Pope - I would literally feel dirty if I had remained in the Catholic Church. Here are some column highlights:

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Amid all the justified outrage we all feel at Bernie Madoff and the AIG bandits, let us save some intense outrage for Pope Benedict XVI. After insulting Muslims by declaring in 2006 that Muhammad had brought "things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached," after reiterating (through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) in 2008 that the subject of the ordination of women is not even open for discussion and declaring that anyone involved with the ordination of women will be automatically excommunicated, after lifting in January of this year the excommunication of Holocaust-denier Richard Williamson, now Benedict XVI opens a visit to Africa by telling the people of a continent decimated by AIDS that the distribution of condoms "increases the problem" of the spread of AIDS.

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I am a Catholic and the idea that such a man is God's spokesperson on earth is absurd to me. There are, of course, no provisions in the hierarchical institution set up, not by Jesus but by men who hijacked his name and in many cases perverted his teachings, for impeaching a pope and removing him from office. But there ought to be.

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As I detail in my latest book, "Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America" (Crown), the cardinal sin of the Catholic Church -- a literally deadly sin, if ever there was one -- is its opposition to birth control.

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Why does the Church persist in such a manifestly immoral doctrine? One suspects that it must be the usual twisted thinking about sex and women. The Church's opposition to birth control is largely an outgrowth of its all-male composition and those males' attempts to degrade women's physical powers by asserting that women and the intercourse into which they supposedly tempt men are necessary evils ("It is well for a man not to touch a woman," Paul instructed the Christians of Corinth), the only purpose of which is procreation.

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And now for the pope to go so far as to indicate that condom use worsens the spread of AIDS -- there's an outrage that tops Madoff and AIG! Let's start a movement within the Catholic Church to impeach Pope Benedict XVI and remove him from office. While we're at it, let's replace him with a woman.