Now that the world has received the news about pope Ratzinger’s resignation, I thought I’d take a moment to discuss why this welcome development is so devastating to the Catholic church.
Let me first say that this, for once, isn’t directly tied to the horrifically criminal behavior of the church. It isn’t the inquisition, the crusades, or the genocidal actions of the Conquistadors. It isn’t because of the forced conversions, the burnings at the stake, the witch hunts, and the oppression of women. It isn’t because of the church’s alliance with every single fascistic regime in Europe and south America in the 20th century –including the Third Reich. It isn’t because of the church’s blatant antisemitism that, up until the 1960s, still held the Jews (not just some jews, but THE Jews) responsible for deicide. It isn’t because of the church’s responsibility for the deaths of millions of Africans by spreading the lie that AIDS is bad, but not as bad a condoms. It isn’t because of its aiding, abetting, harboring, concealing and relocating clergy members who raped and tortured countless children. It isn’t because of the church’s excommunicating women for trying to become priests, while never excommunicating even a single child raping clergy member, or the church’s excommunicating doctors for performing abortions on rape victims, while never excommunicating a single member of the Third Reich for crimes against humanity (around 25% of the SS were confessing Catholics). It isn’t even because Joseph Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth, or because he personally wrote and signed church instructions on how to conceal and aid child raping priests.
No, the reason why Joseph Ratzinger’s quitting is so destructive to the church is because it completely exposes just how man made this entire religion is.
This, of course, has long been known to many people, but the difference now is that more and more previously credulous Catholics are gradually catching on to this as well.
Many Catholic apologists have long defensively admitted that churches are indeed man made constructs for humans to get closer to god. And yet, the Catholic church has always maintained its authority on the grounds that it is the one and only intercessory path to salvation – headed by god’s anointed vicar of Christ on earth, the bearer of the keys of St. Peter – his holiness the pope.
Ordinarily, the succession of such an “exalted being” is brought about by god collecting one pope to heaven and guiding his followers on the selection of a new one. What makes Ratzinger’s resignation so important, therefore, is that it exposes the human factor behind all of this. All of a sudden, the sacred veil is drawn – exposing the papal “Wizard of Oz” to be the sad little old man that he is. And once this happens, the rest of the charade, with all its authoritative salvation and miracles and sanctity, collapses on top of it like a house of cards. “One cannot be just a little bit heretical”, as Christopher Hitchens so eloquently said, “One rent in the fabric, as usual, threatens to tear the whole thing apart (or to make it into something simply man-made and woven..)”
More and more Catholics are beginning to realize the preposterous self contradiction in a church that recants and apologizes for its past atrocities – all the while still maintaining the exact same infallibility it had when it committed them – and canonizing clerics like Thomas More who would have had the very same people who made him a saint burned at the stake for the “crime” of owning a bible in English.
More and more Catholics are unable to square the circle and listen to popes reverse the edicts of previous popes, while still complaining – as Ratzinger just did – about the moral relativism of the world outside the walls of the Vatican. More and more Catholics are tired of being morally and sexually criticized by a sexually repressed clutch of child raping old men. And more and more Catholics are forced to realize that it was only a group of sad old men that elected the sad old Ratzinger to be an infallible wizard, and after the sad old Ratzinger decided to quit, no more than another group of sad old men will elect another sad old man to be the new wizard.
How many more palaces must be built, how many more gold ornate pieces of furniture must be displayed and how much more diamond encrusted silk must be draped over withered old shoulders in pointless attempts to affirm the incredible and to sanctify the overrated mammals that run this man made organization? Slowly but surely, more and more Catholics are beginning to catch on to the fact that the self righteous racket that is the Catholic church is exactly that – a cynical man-made con.

Postscript:
Please raise an objection every time you hear yet another media outlet politely describe the systematic rape and torture of children as a “sex scandal”. A sex scandal is what Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky.
Nor should the brutal rape of countless children be euphemistically called “child abuse”.
When a woman is brutally raped and tortured, no one calls it a “sex scandal” or an “abuse scandal”, it is a brutal rape and torture.
No more politeness and euphemisms – brutal child rape and torture is brutal child rape and torture.