In the New Testament, the apostle Paul had a big argument with the apostle Peter: “I opposed him to his face”, he said.[1] There is, however, nothing to suggest that Peter (in Catholic teaching, the first Vicar of Christ, or Pope) ever trod on his own toes. We’ve had to wait till the 21st century for that. Former Pope Benedict XVI (who was allowed to retire rather than wait to die in office) is poking his nose into the business of his successor, Pope Francisco. And that is to go where angels fear to tread, and Benedict seems to have stumbled into the paths of foolishness. What he has done is lay the blame for paedophilia among priests on “the revolution of 68”, reports Le Monde,[2] because, according to Benedict, it made paedophilia “something that was permitted and appropriate” (of all the ills blamed on 1968 I don’t think I’ve heard that specific one before – but I may have lived a sheltered life). But back to Benedict:

Why has paedophilia attained such proportions? At the end of the day, the reason is the absence of God … [A] world without God can only be a world without direction and therefore a world without a notion of good and evil.”[3]

But remember, we’re talking about the Catholic Church. Benedict must surely believe that God is present in the Church. He has to believe that, if only to justify his salary and his robes and cassock allowance when he was in office, and his pension since. And it is paedophilia tolerated, denied and covered up by the Church that concerns his successor today.

But if Benedict is right and all this happened while God was absent from the world, what was God doing to stop the abuse, the denials and the cover-ups in the domain in which he was uniquely present, the Church. Not a lot, it seems.

And Benedict? He is now trying to limit the damage the scandal has done to the Church by blaming 1968, and he says that “paedocriminality” became severe only after the second half of the 1980s. This claim, says Le Monde, is particularly questionable because “there have been numerous revelations that go back to at least the immediate post-Second World War period, as in Ireland, for example.” But what was he doing in “the second half of the 1980s” anyway when, he says, paedophilia was raging? “Before succeeding Jean-Paul II [as Pope]”, reports Le Monde, “Cardinal Ratzinger [Benedict’s real name] was fighting hard to change canon law in order to allow the guilty to be kept out of harm’s way” (i.e. protected, their crimes covered up).

Perhaps Ratzinger now regrets not resisting the temptation to interfere. Too late now though. The cat is out of the bag. Or the toothpaste is out of the tube. But I don’t think the shit will hit the fan: he’s 92, he’ll get the sympathy granted to the elderly, he’s Pope Emeritus, he won’t go to jail. But there’s not much merit in that.

[1] Galatians 1:11.

[2] Le Monde, 11 April 2019: https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2019/04/11/benoit-xvi-attribue-la-pedophilie-dans-l-eglise-a-mai-68-et-a-l-absence-de-dieu_5449019_3224.html

[3] Ibid.