Pope Springs Eternal—But Why?

And then there was the pedophilia-in-the-church scandal, which blew up in 2002 after decades of hush money payoffs and the transferring of accused child molesters to different parishes the way you'd move a rotting vegetable from the fridge to the freezer. The priesthood has long been a place for ashamed gays to hide (along with the truly devoted). In the old days, you usually couldn't make your Catholic family proud by coming out, but you certainly could do so by stuffing your sexuality, marrying God, and becoming a man of the cloth. The church loved the deception too—so much so that it turned a blind eye to the twisted intergenerational acts these self-loathing closet cases perpetrated while abusing their power. When it all finally exploded, the media erupted in GLAAD-protested reports that gleefully equated gay with evil, triumphantly playing right into the church's long-held theory that homos are bad people.

I'm certainly not rejoicing that the pope has passed on—I'm not a big fan of human suffering and death, even if it brings one closer to God. Still, it's hard to forget that John Paul's love of society's fringe characters always had a big but attached. You know, we care for PWAs, but they're in this predicament because they're sinners. We denounce gay bashing, but—according to official doctrine—"the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered." Oh, yeah? Well, I think a lot of your moral decrees were disordered, O holy Father. I certainly loved you for the sanctity and uplift I kept hoping I could turn to you for. But . . .