A Sean Elias Audio Interpretation:

His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI released the following statement:

Since announcing my retirement, scurrilous rumors have surfaced surrounding possible reasons for my stepping down from the papacy. I hereby deny a connection with Cardinal Mahoney being relieved of all duties last month because thousands of files were made public revealing the Cardinal’s conduct in protecting priests accused of sexually abusing minors. However, I am critical of the timing of the release of Cardinal Mahoney’s autobiography, Pedophiles-R-Us. That title shows a lack of sensitivity, and compassion for the real victims of this tragedy – those few members of the clergy who might have been wrongly accused of sexual misconduct but were nevertheless suddenly uprooted in the middle of the night and shipped off to other parishes, God-knows-where, around the world. My heart aches for them.

With only a few hours left in my papacy, I don’t wish to pull rank by reminding the world of my infallibility, but does Pedophiles-R-Us really tell the whole story of the modern Catholic Church?

I would hope not.

Let’s not forget that as Cardinal Ratzinger, I was solely responsible, in 2003 and 2004, for investigating some 3,000 cases of sexual abuse and formulating the Church’s response before I was kicked upstairs, in 2005, into the Isolation Booth of Infallibility. Was sexual abuse and cover-up systemic  and epidemic throughout the Church? And was the Pope’s office tainted by that abuse?

Well, I say now emphatically – while still cloaked with infallibility –  as I summarily concluded in 2004,

“I would hope not.”

And, please, let’s not dignify reports of blackmail and a powerful gay conclave within the Vatican. Shame, shame on the press.  Yes, I have seen pictures of priests, some dressed in drag, others performing gay sex acts.  But who hasn’t? The question is not whether these pictures exist but did they compel me to resign?  No, they did not. QED. So, let’s move on.

So what have we learned through all these scandals? I mean really, does anybody have any idea?  I’d like to know; I mean, really, I’d like, for once, to be in the loop.

To my flock, I say this: If we would all just stop using condoms and other means of contraception; if women everywhere would just resign themselves to their subservient position within the Church and society and return to the kitchen; and if all those pedophiles and homosexuals and lesbians would just stop-it, wouldn’t this be a better happier world?  Doesn’t anybody but me miss 1952?

Lastly, much has been made of the fact that no Pope has resigned the papacy for six centuries. I’m eighty-five years old.  I’m tired. Maybe the Church could use some new ideas, some new blood – dare I say it: some diversity – as we march into the 21st Century. Maybe, just maybe, the Church ought to clean house once every six centuries.

Well, I would hope not.