Should the Pope be Removed?

Yesterday, I was asked by the BBC World Service whether I thought that Pope Benedict XVI should resign over the scandals involving pedophiles within the body of the Church.

My first reaction was to denounce the fact that our Society as a whole is currently afflicted by a great many abominations and perversions such as hedonism and pedophilia. This is not a monopoly of the Catholic Church as much as it is a sign that our Society is so afflicted by such atrocities that even in the Church we find them. We should be looking at this as a much wider problem than just deranged members of the clergy.

I'm sorry to say I do have enough contact with social workers and civil servants to know that this particular problem of child abuse is more frequent than we care to admit and that it happens even in the sanctity of home and family with harrowing assiduity. If we ask ourselves why this problem has become so frequent, we need only look around us to find how widespread pornography and eroticism are in Western Society.

Even so, there’s no excuse for child abuse and no admonishment harsh enough, so I won’t try to understand a pedophile’s mind. I’ll simply accept they exist and that they need to be restrained. Furthermore, it appears to me that the trust put in a priest is no greater or smaller than that placed in step fathers, uncles, cousins etc. Pedophiles are deranged; period. Whether they are priests or not is less relevant. That they are already NOT celibate is painfully clear. Marrying them won’t make them forgo their disturbed desires.

That having been said, the Church did fail to deal with the matter. The clergy should have been more objective and more assertive in removing these offenders and locking them up where they could be monitored, controlled and even lawfully punished.

Nevertheless, the Church and its Pope are not evil and calling for the removal of the very Pope who is actually striving to make things right and who is working towards purifying the Catholic Church is counterproductive. We should instead support Pope Benedict XVI in his endeavours to clean up the Church.

Do I trust him and my Church? Do I still have faith in them? Yes! Why? Because I grew up going to mass and studying in Catholic schools and I know first hand that for every rotten apple in the Catholic Church there are basketfuls of good apples.