Unfor­tu­nately, I have not had the time to stay as cur­rent as I would like on the Pope’s alleged com­plic­ity, when he was a car­di­nal, in the Church’s cov­er­ing up and pos­si­bly enabling of the sex­ual abuse of boys by priests in Ger­many and the United States, and so I have not been able to write about it in an informed way. Nei­ther the sex­ual abuse of chil­dren nor its being swept under the rug such that per­pe­tra­tors are able to con­tinue abus­ing chil­dren is unique to the Catholic Church, of course, but, as a sur­vivor of such abuse myself, it is impos­si­ble for me not to iden­tify with the anger con­tained in this car­toon, which I found on Cagle Blogs.

ETA April 2, 2010: As Robert pointed out to me on Alas, the image of the priest on the right con­forms to neg­a­tive stereo­types of both priests and gay men and by post­ing this image with­out com­ment­ing on that fact I implic­itly endorsed that stereo­type. So let me say here that while I con­tinue to iden­tify with the anger in this car­toon, I think it is unfor­tu­nate that the anger found expres­sion in such a stereo­typ­i­cal image. Clearly the same point could have been made with a dif­fer­ent image.