I wonder if Ave Maria, Florida will be full of this kind of hypocrite?

Remember that scene in that Lethal Weapon movie (I think it was the third one), in which the diplomat from South Africa is revealed to be the bad guy, and in his gunfight with Danny Glover, spits out why Glover can't shoot him: "Diplomatic Immunity!"

Well, as Michael at Americablog points out, something very similar to this scene is being played out in Rome, with Pope Benedict XVI in the role of the baddy diplomat:

Lawyers for Pope Benedict XVI have asked President Bush to declare the pontiff immune from liability in a lawsuit that accuses him of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys by a seminarian in Texas, court records show.

The Vatican's embassy in Washington sent a diplomatic memo to the State Department on May 20 requesting the U.S. government grant the pope immunity because he is a head of state, according to a May 26 motion submitted by the pope's lawyers in U.S. District Court for the Southern Division of Texas in Houston.

Joseph Ratzinger is named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit. Now Benedict XVI, he's accused of conspiring with the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston to cover up the abuse during the mid-1990s.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Gerry Keener, said Tuesday that the pope is considered a head of state and automatically has diplomatic immunity.

Now, how on earth can any self-respecting Catholic look to this guy as some kind of spiritual leader? Here's the bottom line, folks: The Pope is the head of the Roman Catholic Church, and he aids and abets child molesters -- then begs off on the grounds of diplomatic immunity. I'd like to see someone who's Catholic justify this.

I know that the fundie nutballs think you can do anything you want -- molest children, cheat on your wife, kill people, butcher them, and enjoy their cooked remains with fava beans and a nice chianti -- as long as you give lip service to the sentence "Jesus died for my sins and I am forgiven". But in Catholicism it's different. You're supposed to confess your sins, and then go forth and sin no more.

Somehow I don't think Pope Ratso even regards this as a sin. And THAT'S why his church has absolutely no credibility, as far as I'm concerned.