Vatican to protect Pope from Arrest in Retirement!

The College of Cardinals have updated their methods

 I go on vacation and slack off my blog, and what happens? The Pope resigns. Then this morning I get up thinking of what I'm going to write here, I look at the news, and I realize my plans have been dashed today. Headline from Reuters:

Pope will have security, immunity by remaining in the Vatican

 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict's decision to live in the Vatican after he resigns will provide him with security and privacy. It will also offer legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world, Church sources and legal experts say.

The Holy Shit has hit Lucifer's Fan. The Roman Catholic Church hasn't actually said the soon-former-Pope is guilty, but they're admitting that arrest is (for some unmentioned reason) likely, if not imminent. The worldwide sexual abuse scandals that have been racking the church for sixty years now -- and which show no signs of abating-- look to reach all the way to him and his better esteemed predecessor, the over-hyped, over-revered Pope John Paul II. Both of them look to have covered for a rather high profile pedophile, who just happened to be one of the Church's most prominent holy men,  Rev. Marciel Maciel, the founder of the conservative order, Legion of Christ, who was a rainmaker for money and coverts:

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict, headed the office that received their complaint in 1998, but it took the Vatican eight years to sanction Maciel for the crimes, while the accusers were branded as liars and discredited by the Legion.

Maciel, meanwhile, continued to enjoy Pope John Paul II's highest regard as the founder of one of the world's fastest-growing religious orders, able to attract money and vocations to the church despite the mounting accusations against him. John Paul admired the Legion's orthodoxy and discipline – qualities which set it apart from many other religious orders and made it attractive to many of Mexico's political and financial elite who sent their children to the Legion's schools and seminaries.

Benedict took over the Legion in 2010 after the order finally admitted Maciel had molested seminarians and fathered three children with two women. A Vatican investigation determined Maciel, who died in 2008, was a religious fraud who had built an order based on silence and obedience that allowed his double life to go unchecked.

(I knew of priest pedophile cases in the 1980s, and had no idea that the scandals had started to come out at least twenty years before that. They appear to be as old as the Church, and they don't appear to be slowing down.)

That's not the only scandal, oh no. Benedict's See has reeled from one scandal and embarrassment to another. There was the  Vatican Bank scandal, and a gay prostitution scandal. There was the butler who knew too much, and revealed all the worms under the rocks. Apparently, one last scandal related to gay network within the Vatican was "part" of the reason for Benny's resignation. Age was a good excuse. It appeared that the fires were starting faster than Pope Benny's old legs could stamp them out.

Now, the Vatican mentions casually that one good perk of his retirement plan is his immunity, pretty much telling all the nations wanting to question or even indict him to suck it. I wonder how often Dick Cheney and George W. Bush will visit?

I remember when Pope Benny ascended to the papacy and immediately blundered by insulting Muslims. I said he wasn't a John Paul, or even a George Ringo. He was best at his most wicked, in the nefarious role of Grand Inquisitor (now known as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Church changed its name because Inquisition had gained such a negative image, for some reason.) It seemed the Peter Principle dogged him on St. Peter's Throne.

For charisma, Pope John Paul II would have been a hard act to follow for anyone, but for Cardinal Ratzinger (AKA, the Red Rat), an academic enforcer who looked like Darth Sidious, there was no way.

Some call it holy. I call it creepy.

However, it looks like more was wrong with him than merely the superficial. He appears to have been incompetent, if not downright corrupt himself.

When I was a Catholic, (it seems like a time before I reincarnated now) I would have never imagined this. I had thought that the Church had exorcised its demons, as it were, and it was ready to lead in the modern era. How hopeful, and how indoctrinated I was. I'm glad I woke up.

Modern Catholics tend to think that either the bad old Church was just misunderstood, or that Vatican II fixed it, if only they also got rid of those troublesome liberals, too. They're as wrong as I was. The only thing different from the Roman Catholic Church now and the one in the Middle Ages is a matter of power. If the Church had the power now that it did then, it would behave in the same way.

May Benny enjoy his retirement. He'll have a better nursing home than most people get now, and free from stress and worry.

Except for missing his p-p-precious papal ring.