Everybody's favorite pope since the last one has alighted on our shores to give spiritual counsel and serve a little Jesus-body buffet to New World Catholics in the flesh, so to speak. Jehovah's own consigliere isn't ducking hard questions from the media, either, expressing deep shame at the church's sex-abuse scandal and reiterating a zero-tolerance policy on pedophilia (the RCC courageously says "no goddamn way" to raping children). But that's not all. The Pope feels raped children's pain. "It is a great suffering for the Church in the United States, for the Church in general, and for me personally," he said. Benedict, as far from an intellectual slouch as one can be, is flat-out stumped about "how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing, to give love of God to these children." Christopher Hitchens responds:

[T]he Pontiff has utterly mis-stated the nature of the clerical pedophilia scandal. The scandal is not the presence of pedophiles in the church, but the institutionalization of child-rape by the knowing protection and even promotion (by non-pedophiles) of those who are guilty of it. The most grievous offender in this respect is Cardinal Bernard Law, currently an honored figure at the Vatican. This expression of contempt for the victims makes the Pope himself a direct accomplice in the very atrocity that he affects to denounce.

That's the right thought, but wrong on specifics. Bernard Law, the former ArchlizardPope Benedict: Totally mortified and really just red-faced about all the child-fucking of Boston, merely aided and abetted serial rape in greater Boston and environs. The church's policy of covering up rapes, stonewalling investigators, and moving rapists to new parishes with fresh supplies of seraphic young flesh (because who'd want to get a hold of a barely pubescent boy who's already been spoiled?) was catholic in scope, and came straight from John Paul II's Curia. Specifically, from the powerful leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the successor institution to the Inquisition, a certain Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose name mysteriously vanished from the broadsheets at just about the time Benedict was elected. (I'm pretty certain of that timing, but you can check Lexis Nexis if you don't believe me.)

Whoever he was and wherever he's gone off to, that guy was "the most grievous offender" in the church. Bernard Law was just the Oasis of enabling child-rape, to Ratzinger's Beatles. Still, Pope Benedict was nowhere near the scene at the time, so his bafflement over the whole affair is understandable.

The Vatican Runs On Solar Power: does your house of worship?This week the Vatican announced a list of new sins. Included in the corrupt collection are ominous warnings against polluting the earth and "causing environmental blight." These "ecological" offenses are listed alongside "New Forms of Social Sin," including excessive wealth, contributing to the growing gulf between the rich and the poor, and stem cell research.

At first glance this might look like a lame ploy by the Vatican to appeal to young people who are socially and environmentally conscious, but at least with the green initiatives, they’re backing up the rhetoric with real action.

Pope John Paul and successor Pope Benedict have made great strides in greening the Vatican: Vatican City has already teamed up with a Hungarian carbon offset company to plant the Vatican Climate Forest, which will cover 37 acres (Vatican City is only about .2 square miles, so it doesn’t take much to make it carbon neutral).

The papal audience hall is completely powered by solar panels installed in a rooftop garden. Planktos/KlimaFa--the carbon offset company working with the Vatican--has announced that it’s committed to helping them develop methods to calculate the carbon emissions of individual Catholic churches, and offer eco-restoration options to turn their carbon footprints green.

In his World Peace Day 2007 speech, Pope Benedict XVI said, “Disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence. There is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace among men.”

It’s a fairly humble beginning, but if a billion Catholics follow the Pope’s example on this issue, the world would be in a much better ecological state. Likewise, it would be great to see any of the branches of Judaism pushing a green agenda as enthusiastically as the Vatican has. Thus far, the Reconstructionist movement seems to be doing the most, including building some great green synagogues.

Cardinal Roger Mahony: LA Times' Steve Lopez says the settlement was all about keeping the cardinal off the stand

• Bill Maher on the Catholic Church shelling out $660 million in child molestation suits. [The Huffington Post]
• An archdiocese and 508 victims. [San Francisco Chronicle]
• It wasn't about those kids--the Church cared about protecting Cardinal Mahony. [The Los Angeles Times]
• Israel set to release 250 Palestinian prisoners on July 20th. [BBC]
• R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet," a soap-opera-soul-saga, to be continued...[Rolling Stone]
• Speaking of sagas, the latest from Washington on David “Diaperman” Vitter. [Wonkette]
• Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Hamid al Bayati, stays in Trump Tower for $22,000/month. [The New York Post]
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatens filibuster to move ahead with troop withdrawal plans. [Truthdig]