In light of the pope's role in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, should he resign?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Here we go again. Time now for another chapter in the tawdry tale titled: The Pope and the Pedophile Priests.
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The New York Times reports that top Vatican officials - including the future Pope Benedict XVI - refused to defrock a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys.
Deaf boys? Doesn't get much sicker than that. This is despite the fact that several American bishops repeatedly warned the Vatican about this creep.
Church files show that although officials disagreed about whether the priest should be dismissed, their top priority was protecting the church from scandal. Of course.
This Wisconsin priest - the Rev. Lawrence Murphy - was never tried or disciplined by the church. He also got a pass from police and the criminal justice system. We all know the story by now... Instead he was "quietly moved" to a different diocese where he spent the last 24 years of his life freely working… ready? With children! He died in 1998... still a priest.
The Vatican calls this case "tragic" and says part of the reason the priest was never defrocked was his poor health and lack of more recent accusations.
Meanwhile this comes on the heels of a sex abuse scandal spreading across Europe - From the pope's native Germany to Ireland, Austria and the Netherlands.
There are other accusations against Pope Benedict that he didn't alert authorities or discipline priests who were sexually abusing children, when he was both an Archbishop in Germany and the Vatican's top doctrinal enforcer.
Critics say it's time for the pope to resign. But that's only happened a handful of times throughout history - and not for 600 years - so don't hold your breath.
Here’s my question to you: In light of the pope’s role in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, should he resign?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Are Republicans sore losers?
U.S. Capitol police officers stand watch in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. (PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
At the NCAA tournament, the basketball team that loses shakes hands with the team that wins. It's called sportsmanship.
You see the same thing at NFL games, the World Series and boxing matches.
But where you don't see it much these days is in Washington, DC. We have become so bitterly divided that people on the losing side of a political debate - in the case of health care reform, Republicans and their supporters - have taken to hurling insults, using names like Baby Killer and using the most vile racial epithets to refer to African-American members of the United States Congress, as well as our President.
These recent examples follow the beginning of this descent into schoolyard behavior when during the President's State of the Union address - a Republican congressman yelled out: "You lie!"
That followed talk of death panels and the government killing your grandmother.
This kind of behavior by our leaders sends a subliminal message that this kind of behavior is acceptable, and eventually you get to death threats and perhaps worse.
What exactly are we becoming here? Do members of Congress start punching each other and throwing furniture the way they do in some legislative bodies elsewhere in the world?
In fighting health care reform at every step of the way, the Republicans may have made the political miscalculation of the century. When Republican Scott Brown won in Massachusetts, the GOP figured it had the health care debate in the bag and they didn't even have to be nice about it anymore.
But they lost, and now the residue of the bile they spewed during the debate has left a nasty taste in everyone's mouth.
Here’s my question to you: Are Republicans sore losers?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
@jackcafferty on Twitter
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