Adendum on the BBC's "Should the Pope Resign"

The very question is ignorant, but let's indulge in it for a moment longer. Shakespeare wrote, quite correctly, in his Henry V - Act4 Scene1:

“If a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him. Or if a servant, under his master's command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation: but this is not so. The king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. (…) Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.”

This has not changed and it holds to the particular situation of Pope Benedict XVI. The Pope and his Church do not purpose the ills of children when they purpose the good service of priests, and so he is not bound to answer for the particular sins of deranged men hidden amongst his tens of thousands of good priests.

If you say the Catholic Church needs to be purged of whatever evils still lurking in the shadows of churches, hospitals and schools, you'll get no argument from me. I agree with you and with Pope Benedict XVI, who declared he would rather have a smaller but truer flock of the faithful.

I see in him a man willing to go the lengths to clean-up the Catholic Church and reestablish its values wherever they have been compromised. He has shown himself more than willing to do it. What he needs is support, not a bashing.