SIN

The Pope is not taking a stand, or making any statement, or taking any action with regard to Stephen Kiesle, a former priest-pedofile, who was finally defrocked after years, many delays by Cardinal Ratzinger, before he became Pope Benedict XVI.

Kiesle, charged with 13 counts of child molestation, pleaded no contest to a felony charge of molesting a young girl in 1995, was sentenced to 6 years in jail. Today, as a registered sex offender, Stephen Kiesle lives in Walnut Creek, California.

Fran, my blog coach, and closest friend, said, "It make my blood boil." She sent me a links to Andrew Sullivan, an award-winning blogger, who is boiling over about Pope Benedict's involvement in the Catholic Church avoiding the problem, not taking action in this case for 26 years.

Molestation, rape of children makes my blood boil. What the Pope did is bad and wrong, but I mostly shrug it off. My boiling point has to do with what's happening with Barack Obama, working to get the world to limit the production of nuclear weapons. That's a life and death issue that's threatening my life.

The Catholic Church, the Pope, and Catholics who believe in him, and Fran who is an ex-Catholic -- she's a woman with strong religious, moral beliefs, and my other friends and relatives who have deep religious beliefs, are fortunate ... actually I mean "lucky"-- to have their churches, preachers, leaders and beliefs to sustain them.

My husband, John Cullum, played Cardinal Law in "'SIN." (JC was nominated for the Drama Desk "Best Actor in a Play" award for his portrayal of the guilty Cardinal). Back in the days when John Paul II was the Pope, Cardinal Law was in the same position as Pope Benedict XVI, (Cardinal Ratzinger), is in now.

Of course I was moved. "SIN" is a powerful play. The SIN that's happening now with a Pope (who didn't seem to me to be the right choice when he was voted in by the committee of Cardinals in Rome, in 2005), doesn't shock or surprise me. It was politics in the church.

The ugly. painful politics of today, Obama's efforts to fix life and death problems here, and inhumanity in Africa, China, Israel, Pakistan ... the list goes on and on. For me, it overwhelms the sin and sinfulness in the Vatican.

What actually can Pope Benedict do, for the warped, injured, perhaps permanently, emotionally-crippled adults, who were abused by priests? Maybe there will be new laws, new policy, other ways of stopping them.

Sin -- "an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law" -- is a glorious man-made concept . Nuclear weapons, invented by mankind, can destroy everything that is glorious on earth.