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" At 2 p.m. Eastern time today, Benedict XVI hangs up the ol&amp;#039; pallium and takes it to the ranch, which happens to be a palace at Castel Gandolfo. He is probably too old to get a gig commenting on Church matters at ESPN, but I wouldn&amp;#039;t be surprised to see him turn up as an MSNBC political analyst, because it seems that everybody else in the world is these days. (Also, not for nothing, MSNBC, but if your only special correspondent on all matters Vatican is going to be George Weigel, an conservative Catholic activist who happens at the moment to be plugging a book about conservative Catholic activism, you&amp;#039;re only getting half the story. Have you noticed that the Church has been in a little internal, ah, turmoil recently? You wouldn&amp;#039;t consider bringing out only, say, Michael Steele to comment on the New Hampshire primary. Why is the election of a pope any different? Inquiring minds etc, although Carl Bernstein is showing some possibilities. He started talking about a male celibate priesthood and I thought Chris Jansing, who&amp;#039;s gone completely native, might faint.) In his farewell address, Benedict assured us all that he wouldn&amp;#039;t be leading any uprisings against his successor and that all was not sunshine and rainbows during his papacy. &amp;quot;There were also moments in which the waters were agitated and the wind contrary,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;The Lord seemed to be sleeping.&amp;quot; More likely, He was remaining silent on the advice of counsel. (Talking with my man Chuck Todd, Weigel explained that this really was the pope&amp;#039;s way of upbraiding us for being insufficiently faithful, the way Jesus got all up in the grills of his disciples because they thought the boat was going down in the Sea Of Galilee. It really is all our fault)  The winds, alas, remain contrary. It&amp;#039;s becoming generally apparent that, in terms of moral credibility, the Church would do better to hand the decision of choosing the next pope over to 100 randomly selected punters from the clubhouse turn at Aqueduct than to the current Clan Of The Red Beanie. You usually can&amp;#039;t assemble this large a collection of bagment without a grand jury. They include cardinals from Belgium, Chile and Italy. They include the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, who is accused of taking large monetary gifts from a religious order, the Legion of Christ, and halting an investigation into its founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel - who was later exposed as a pathological abuser and liar. They also include cardinals reviled by many in their own countries, like Cardinal Sean Brady, the primate of All Ireland, who survived an uproar after government investigations uncovered endemic cover-ups of the sexual and physical abuse of minors. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s so many of them,&amp;quot; said Justice Anne Burke, a judge in Illinois who served on the American bishops&amp;#039; first advisory board 10 years ago. &amp;quot;They all have participated in one way or another in having actual information about criminal conduct, and not doing anything about it. What are you going to do? They&amp;#039;re all not going to participate in the conclave?&amp;quot;  Perhaps Judge Burke should get a little run on the electric teevee over the next month or so. She could ask that same question, to which the only possible Christian answer is, &amp;quot;Yes. They should all be run out of any office of spiritual authority and sent to an island somewhere on which they can turn to cannibalism.&amp;quot; This is enough to make you seek solace in the past, so why not hang for the moment with Leo IX, the first pope to directly cite the Donation Of Constantine, a preposterous eighth-century forgery, to assert Rome&amp;#039;s primacy over the entire church, thereby setting it on the road to the great schism between east and west. With its customary discretion, the Catholic Encyclopedia points out that there may have been a language problem here, and that Germans may be disposed to be suckers regarding eighth-century forgeries, &amp;quot;The first certain use of it at Rome was by Leo IX in 1054, and it is to be noted that this pope was by birth and training a German, not an Italian.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17648/daily-pope-2-28-13/>