Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

I'm an old cowpoke from the river Po ...

Listen up! If you're gonna talk the talk, Your Holiness, you're going to have to walk the walk.

Here we go again with those troubling stories of priestly pedophiles and how their superiors were/are always trying to stuff them back into the nearest closet or classroom.

Back in the day when Pope Benedict XVI was a mere mortal Archbishop of Munich (There was an Archbishop of Munich Who hid little boys under his tunic....) he allowed a suspected pedophile priest to continue pastoral work. It took three years for the priest to finally be convicted of sexually abusing minors.

And in 2001 Der Papa sent a letter to all bishops advising them that all cases of sexual abuse of minors must be forwarded to his then-office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and that the cases were to be subject to pontifical secret.

At best, Cardinal Ratzinger (a/k/a Pope Benedict XVI) was sending, and probably is still sending, mixed messages on how to handle that problem of priests who like to play with little boys.