Maureen Dowd suspends her blitzkrieg on Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church today and—because the all-boys network apparently is unable "to take a woman’s voice seriously"—turns her column over to her conservative, creche-collecting, "Vatican-II-made-me-wince" brother, Kevin. But a Dowd is a Dowd, and the Church, though "dying from a thousand cuts," is shown no mercy.
"The church I grew up in was black and white," the male Dowd writes in the New York Times, lamenting its liberalization with Vatican II, which nevertheless left in place its "most outdated" rule: celibacy. That "ended up shrinking the priest pool and drawing men confused about their sexuality who put our children in harm’s way." The resulting coverup "has cost a fortune and been a betrayal worthy of Judas," Dowd says, arguing that while it's time to get back to basics, "married priests are not going to destroy the church." He concludes: "We take our religion on faith. How can we maintain that faith when our leaders are unworthy of it?" (More Pope Benedict XVI stories.)