Resign or Be Killed, I Guess

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the press has been attempting for over a week now to find something—anything—that mentions the pope in the context of the bishops’ deplorable and disgusting failure to act, for decades, on sexual-abuse charges.

The attempt to draw the pope into the scandal has now—officially, I believe—reached absurdity. The AP news service has just reported the views of Mehmet Ali Agca , under the headline “In Turkey, Pope Gunman Says Benedict Should Resign.”

Connoisseurs of headlineze will appreciate that “Pope Gunman” phrase, and, as it turns out, “The Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II says Pope Benedict XVI should resign over the Catholic Church’s handling of clerical sex abuse cases.”