The rat runs to shelter and finds protection in the Big House. Unable to be arrested in the UK by claiming diplomatic immunity the rat resigns and retreats to the country within a country and finds more immunity there.

“His continued presence in the Vatican is necessary, otherwise he might be defenseless. He wouldn’t have his immunity, his prerogatives, his security, if he is anywhere else,” said one Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

No more vacations to the beach or the sunny Med. No more travels to South America or Africa to plunder pagan souls there. No more trips to crooks and sinners, uhhh, saints and priests, in foreign lands.

“It is absolutely necessary” that he stays in the Vatican, said the source, adding that Benedict should have a “dignified existence” in his remaining years.

Dignified? Did not the imprisoners, immolators, and gasifiers of Jews flee to South America and still were pursued that they might be brought to justice, even as they neared death. Justice has no age limit!

Vatican police, who already know the pope and his habits, will be able to guarantee his privacy and security and not have to entrust it to a foreign police force, which would be necessary if he moved to another country.

Worried that an international bounty hunter might sneak in and claim his wasting and near-fetid carcass to justice? That he might be tried so history cannot claim his crimes as allegations?

“I see a big problem if he would go anywhere else. I’m thinking in terms of his personal security, his safety. We don’t have a secret service that can devote huge resources (like they do) to ex-presidents,” the official said.

Has the priest class not sequestered sufficient funds from avoiding taxes, running money laundering schemes, or pillaging gold from land not yours to pay for security? “Vatican Force 1.” I can see the movie now. An intrepid cast of international security mercenaries clad in white silk and gold braid, surrounding and protecting the pope as hordes of justice seekers make their way through the protecting mourners of his unredeemed downfall. Aaah, there’s Bruce Willis now running though the crowd, he sees a nuclear handgun about to go off. Whew, safe at last, the young boy is caught and taken to jail for “further questioning.” An internal affair. Look, there’s Vin Diesel leaping onto the mule in Nicaragua, snatching away the canister of nerve gas before it explodes onto the retinue.

Maybe if the pope hadn’t had to carry the sins of the past, attempted world domination by Catholicism, he would not need security. Maybe if he had helped the people or if Catholicism had brought peace to the world, he could walk among us all on a path of rose petals, smiling benignly as he greeted death in peace. Maybe if we, as humans, did not have to bear the punishment of their original sin through every generation the people wouldn’t need to worship a religion that praises the death of a man as highest good.

Another consideration was that if the pope did move permanently to another country, living in seclusion in a monastery in his native Germany, for example, the location might become a place of pilgrimage.

That’s the real reason. The pope is so popular with the people. No place other than the Big House is safe for him. Like rats clamoring to their perishing Rat King they seek more spiritual food in the sewers of their destitution. Yes, the pope is the biggest star in the sky and no other place can secure his invincibility like home. There’s no place like home, the underbelly of a church machine that sold souls to heaven, raped natives for conversion, shared their worship of pain, flagellating their sins as they cried out, as self love, screaming “I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy, forgive me.” The magic words that wash all responsibility and accountability away. “Judge me not here as god will wreck havoc on me in his own might,” while smirking that they still made it to salvation and the rest of us did not.

Is it any wonder Catholics flee the church unable to bend the boundaries of credulity any further? Is it any wonder Catholics sigh when they purchase their birth control in some small act of defiance and self autonomy in a church that has hated women  from its inception, where the best stories of female heroes are those where women prostitute themselves for good because all that a woman has to offer is her sex and virginity? Come here boy, I am weak, that I might have you suck me for I cannot fornicate and I find your girlish demeanor pleasing?

Yes, the great men of oppression smile as where else, what other organization run by barbarians, can claim men who have raped and abused tens, no hundred of children, thousands upon thousands all told, and gotten away with it. Catholic psychologists smile and say but of course a sex-denied priest, confidante to boys, would stray–wouldn’t you, wouldn’t anyone? How grand they at least sought their own gender? How liberal? We plebes, mere citizens, are simplistic in our attempts at abuse. The most expert abuser might achieve 10 or 20 in a lifetime but these professionals could do a hundred or more. What grand machinery of ecclesiastical abuse. No wonder the women hide and seek birth control. Mums the word.

Yes, let us not forgive your base sins and not forget the libraries you burned, the books and manuscripts you allowed to rot, the knowledge you ignored that you might only study and learn how to be closer to god, only. Let us not forget the sins of the past and praise how after 1500 years of  cloistered darkness knowledge crept forward because of the reintroduction of books and manuscripts that had been first cast aside by you. But then a few intrepid souls sought more. And when they shared that knowledge they buried the goodness in fidelity of god in all things. They could not even be honest in what they learned fearing for their life. May the pope understand now what house arrest means!

The Vatican has consistently said that a pope cannot be held accountable for cases of abuse committed by others because priests are employees of individual dioceses around the world and not direct employees of the Vatican. It says the head of the church cannot be compared to the CEO of a company.

Though the pope signed the letters and the pope knew of the events he could not do anything about it because he is not like a CEO of a company? So the owner of a franchise can’t take a stand against abuse within a company of the franchise. Does the pope want to admit that he has no control of his flock? Is the shepherd not only blind but lame? The highest spiritual leader is really a fraud that can only suggest what to do, though he writes and supports canons that determine whether or not one is saved. Though he can create inquisitions that wreck havoc to millions throughout the world by creating a simple Doctrine of Faith in the Big House?

As Pontius Pilote was castigated for saying it was the people’s choice to crucify Christ, the pope hides behind the same wall and says it wasn’t my fault, the dioceses allowed it. At least Pontius was fulfilling an actual crime. Jesus was a crook.

First, the Jews had raised their ilk by claiming to be the chosen people and tearing down the pagan idols so popular in Rome and insisting there is only one god and every boy should be circumcised to show to god, and everyone else, that they are going to salvation and no one else. Then Jesus, according to myth, comes and tries to reform Judaism and long after his death a new priest class rises and says no, not only is pagan worship wrong, not only is there not a Jewish god but the Messiah you Jews seek has already come, his name is Jesus and we shall make him god on earth.

This priest class conquered the world, in spite of the upstart, copy-cat Islam, and now after 2,000 years, some of us regular people are waking up and saying wait, this isn’t right, and the rat runs to his Latern hole and whines that he can’t come out. Run rat run!

I do not hate the pope. I hate all popes and the horrors they wrought. I would not blame the whore that turns a trick to make some pittance of money in a market that disabuses her autonomy. I would blame the John who knows to pay to abuse because he can get away with it. Where even the pleasures of sex are ruined in cruel power. Who creates sado-masochistic torture, games, with her that she might even in this small moment of triumph understand that she is less than he. Run rat run!

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com