Should There Be an Inquisition for the Pope?

The Roman Catholic Church's much deserved PR disaster continues unabated as we move into the height of Holy Week. Last night sitting in the Richmond Marriott with Michael Moore, the boyfriend and Mike's dad and friend, in the background I could see Larry King Live and noted that the Catholic League's William Donohue - who looked so worked up I expected him to keel over - was among the people being interview, as well as a number of priests (surprisingly, a couple were quite hot looking). Obviously, the Vatican's efforts at spin and whining that it's a victim of a hostile main stream media, is not taking traction and the allegations of abuse just keep on spreading like wild fire. Now the Copenhagen Post is reporting on new abuse allegations. Of note is the fact that as more stories of abuse arise, the more global the Church's calculated effort to cover up sex crimes against children and youths seems to have been orchestrated from Rome. With Pope Benedict XVI right at ground zero over the last 20 some years, first as head of the Department once known as the Inquisition and later as Pope). Now, Maureen Dowd, who was raised Catholic like I was, has a on point column in the New York Times that is on the money. Here are some highlights:
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It doesn’t seem right that the Catholic Church is spending Holy Week practicing the unholy art of spin.
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Complete with crown-of-thorns imagery, the church has started an Easter public relations blitz defending a pope who went along with the perverse culture of protecting molesters and the church’s reputation rather than abused — and sometimes disabled and disadvantaged — children.
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The church gave up its credibility for Lent. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are now becoming Cover-Up Thursday and Blame-Others Friday.
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This week of special confessions and penance services is unfolding as the pope resists pressure from Catholics around the globe for his own confession and penance about the cascade of child sexual abuse cases that were ignored, even by a German diocese and Vatican office he ran.
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And now the church continues to hide behind its mystique. Putting down the catechism, it picked up the Washington P.R. handbook for political sins.
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First: Declare any new revelation old and unimportant.
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Second: Blame somebody else — even if it’s this pope’s popular predecessor, on the fast track to sainthood.
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Third: Say black is white.
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Fourth: Demonize gays, as Karl Rove did in 2004.
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Fifth: Blame the victims.
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Sixth: Throw gorilla dust.
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And finally, seventh: Use the Cheney omnipotence defense, most famously employed in the Valerie Plame case.
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Vatican lawyers will argue in negligence cases brought by abuse victims that the pope has immunity as a head of state and that bishops who allowed an abuse culture, endlessly recirculating like dirty fountain water, were not Vatican employees.