I was baptized a Catholic in June of 1952. My Aunt Gloria held her godson before the fount, as I cried incessantly, as the priest called for my renouncement of Satan and all his works. Auntie Gloria answered for me.

“Yes, I thereby renounce Satan and all his works.”

No one said anything about the evil of the Holy Roman Church.

Nothing about the Inquisition, the Laundry schools in Ireland, the Crusades, the burning of midwives at the stake, the persecution of atheists and heretics, the assistance to the Nazis, or the chronic sexual abuse of young boys and girls by the priests throughout the diocese of their empire.

Last week Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation on the grounds that he was too old to discharge the duties of the Papacy. The last pope to quit his office was Pope Gregory XII to end the Western Schism in 1415.
On the weekend my younger sister phoned to ask, “You’re a good conspiracy theorist. Why do you think that the Pope resigned?”

“I don’t have a good grip on this other than to say that an institution as ancient as the Church never acts in haste, but there are two prime possibilities; the first being his involvement with the criminal child abuse endemic to the Church.”

“You mean he was one of them?”

“You don’t get that high in the Church without getting the right dirt on you. Remember that these priest considered the abuse to be a rite of the Church.”

“No way.”

“You might not remember, but thousands of priests and nuns left the Church after Vatican II and I think a good number of those departures were a result of the silence demanded by the abusers. The good nuns and priests had no choice. As Cardinal Archbishop of Munich the present Pope was responsible for rooting out this evil and nothing really happened. You know a certain government is seeking his arrest.”

“Which one?”

“It can only be Germany, because he has failed to protect the Nazi wealth in the care of the Vatican. All the child abuse forced the offending priests to obey the dictates of the banks.”

“Getting back to the financial?” My sister was a lawyer. She could follow my unorthodox thinking.

“HIs butler snitched him out to the Italian authorities. A man as faithful as that does not betray the Papal trust without good reason. The mounting law cases against the Church could force it into bankruptcy.” I would be happy to see its demise, but my mother was a devout Catholic and I said, “I was never touched by the priests. I knew of no one who was touched by them. They gave me an excellent education and I am grateful for this gift.”

“Maybe you could be a character witness for the Pope.”

“I don’t think so.” I had worked twenty years as a nightclub physionomiste and my eyes were trained to seer into the soul. “He is not a man I would want to know.”

“Me neither.” My sister had abandoned the Church for some Protestant faith a little west of agnosticism.

It was a good place to be at the end of the time of evil.