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Thanks for posting the links William - I missed the programmes so good to catch up! It is unfortunate indeed that so many people are under the impression that the Pope is infallible. None of us are perfect and that includes the Pope! However, most of us don't have millions of people following our every word and living according to it - nor do we have the consequences of that thankfully! Karma -karma - karma chameleon! sing along now..... :-)

If the Pope doesn't know anything (or enough) about it all, and someone is covering it up before it gets that far, then there's something seriously wrong with the heirarchy of the Catholic Church. It's a major event and, as the ultimate head, the Pope needs to know as much as possible.

If he does know about it, and is doing nothing, then that implies he's as guilty at covering it up as everyone else and as such should be prosecuted by which ever law he's subject to.

And, I might be wrong, but isn't the Pope only infallible when he's making specific proclaimations about Catholic theology from a specific chair? I might be getting confused there with something else though... Maybe with Jim'll Fix It.

Natman

You're right about Jim'll Fix It.

Eunice - he's certainly got a "red, gold and green" thing going-on in William's photograph.

Papal infallibility does not mean that the Pope is generally or personally infallible; so far as I am aware Ratzinger has not made a single pronunciation that Catholics would be bound to consider infallible during his whole pontificate. Papal declarations are only deemed infallible when made following certain very precise forms, as Natman suggests. The chair is metaphoric.

I haven't yet seen the documentaries but the Stewart Lee clip is very good. Rather reinforces the other Will's insight "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain" - Wojtyla only differed from Ratzinger in his presentational skills - he was a man who did know how to sell a contradiction.

Is his favourite band Showaddywaddy?

Eunice - infallibility doesn't protect the Pope from sin - when you said "none of us is perfect" - it protects him from imposing as dogma that which isn't true.

In the midst of all the makeyuppy anti papal media stuff, I found a rather nice souvenir magazine "The Pope's State Visit 2010" published free by the Daily Mirror.

A comment on Slugger this morning is very interesting - third comment down

It lists huge numbers of sex offending politicians in Britain. Presumably the media will now pursue this story relentlessly with ongoing references to "paedophile politicians", theories about how this is a result of power, cultures of secrecy, and late nights in the council chamber.

Or maybe they'll ignore it the way they ignore mostly abuse stories that aren't connected with the Catholic Church.

Parrhasios: and no doubt the red shoes wil be shining too!

Parrhasios and MCC: re infallibility - points taken, I was referring to the programme in which it showed people in the Philipines who do consider the pope and his words to be infallible. So in the example given a woman would not use contraception because of what she was told by the bishops/pope even though she would like to as she has 8 children, 3 dead and one on the way and they cannot afford to look after any more children or even the ones they do have. So even if he has not made 'infallible' statements - people across the world are taking his words to be infallible albeit erroneously.

MCC - your link does make interesting reading alright. There was another just a wee bit below that one which had a link to the numbers in each country abused by the Catholic church as well. It's not a competition - we all know that abuse goes on in ALL spheres of society....but when people are reported in other spheres they may go to prison etc and do not have the luxury of the cover-up system and silence of the church - who should know better!

here is that link I mentioned

In the light of these revelations, it is time for Roman Catholics to abandon, the Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, the Mass, holy orders etc, and seek for salvation and peace with God through Christ alone.

What did the Pope know?

At least once a week when he was head of the CDF he reviewed clergy sexual abuse cases which landed on his desk (at his instructions.)

He famously referred to this weekly ritual as his "Friday penance."
(Zenit 9/9/10)

Glad that people like Sinead O'Connor are not allowing Benny to get away with trying to distance himself from the cover up of abuse - again.

He tried it when the Irish Bishops were ordered to Rome. He tried it again in his letter to the Catholics of Ireland and he tried it again yesterday in his prepared speech to the world's media on the inappropriately named, "Shepherd One."

Things would be so different if he just started a sentence regarding the clergy abuse of children with the word, "I".