Through Our Most Grievous Virtue

Christian humility is always a wondrous thing to behold. While the Synod of the Anglican Church has tried to take its mind off sex by voting on whether the Saviour's orders to sacrifice one's property to the less fortunate are correct or not, the Vatican too has been morally resurging after its accustomed fashion. The Pope has rounded off a four-day summit on the sexual abuse of children by noting that everybody else does it too, and claiming that it reminds him of human sacrifice, as practised by such evil pagans as Jephthah the Gileadite. His Holiness was gracious enough to grant that child abuse happens within the Church as well, but the cloak of humility slipped a bit when he proclaimed that any scandal thereof derived purely from incompatibility with the Church's "moral authority and ethical credibility." There may be a beam in the Vatican's eye, but evidently the only reason anyone need worry about it is that the Vatican's eyes are better than everyone else's.