As feminists denounce pope Benedict XVI for affirming the male-only priesthood, and claim that the sex abuse scandal is proof that females must take on authority in the Catholic Church, “Bishop” Maria Jepsen of the Lutheran church, elected in 1992, has stepped down from her post for exactly the same problem.

Saying her “credibility has been put in question,” Jepsen does not think she can carry out her duties any longer. The suspicion revolves around a certain Lutheran priest in Ahrensburg who had been molesting children since the 1980s. Jepsen claims that she didn’t know about the priest until recently, but not everyone believes her.

Another German female church leader, Margot Kaesmann, resigned recently after being caught driving under the influence.

My own personal take on the feminist drive to put women in charge of the church is that their stated goals – to eliminate abuse is the latest excuse – are entirely disingenuous. Having been raised Catholic in possibly the most radically leftist archdiocese in the United States – Seattle – I know well that some of the most criminal priests were those most loved and favored by feminists and other assorted radical leftists. One in particular was supported with a great deal of money, and while his dalliances with boys must have been well-known, they were ignored, and possibly even covered up by his supporters.

Josef Ratzinger was actually tasked with dealing with my archdiocese back in the 1980s, and he ended up forcing the resignation of archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, who had tolerated, even appearing to encourage, a promiscuous homosexual subculture in the local church. Priests were dropping like flies from AIDS until the anti-retroviral drugs came out in the 90s (the euphemism of choice was “pneumonia”), and lesbians held weekly meetings in churches. Collections were taken up for the Sandinistas, pro-Soviet protests carried out at local military bases, etc.

So it hardly seems realistic that the current pope had anything to do with these scandals, which from all evidence I have seen emerged from this mass heresy that took hold and lasted for over a generation following Vatican II. If anything, he was one of the few officials dealing with it when the problem was at its worst in the 1980s. All I can say is that I don’t envy the job that man has; from my perspective it looks like a Sisyphean task.