As a former (nonabusing) priest educated at the Pontifical College Josephinum (1953-1963), as a schoolmate for six years with Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston who engineered the shocking US molestation cover-up, and as the analytical gay author of many queer books including "What They Did to the Kid: Confessions of an Altar Boy," I can attest as an eyewitness from inside the Catholic Church that homophobia and child abuse in the Church will continue forever until the Church actually moves forward its medieval stand on 21st-century human sexuality, because---and this is my theorem---how an institution treats its women, children, and homosexuals tells everything about that institution's evolution, intent, responsibility, and morality. A pope who apologizes for child sex abuse on the same visit that he denounces gay marriage, married clergy, and female priests is not a sincere pope, and should not be treated as a serious person on the world stage of human morality. Like Michael Winters, I too, want a kind priest with me at the end.

Jack Fritscher, why are you lumping the issues of Gay marriage, married priests, and priestesses, all together? The three issues are unrelated, except for the fact that they are the pet issues that dissidents within the Church constantly whine about. At the end of the day such dissidents need to either accept the teaching authority of the Catholic Church or leave.

Also, having read numerous books by Joseph Ratzinger I doubt that as Pope Benedict he would have denounced anything. More likely he would have given a calm and reasoned argument as to why certain things cannot be accepted by those who belong to the Catholic Church.

Joe, I think there is a common thread, a patriarchical perspective that scorns the feminine. Homophobia then is a consequence of the threat that feminine men offer to a male-dominated patriarchal power structure that is at the core of the past millenium of western religion, not just Roman Catholicism. Women in the priesthood also threaten the power structure. The Church has been slow to move away from the patriarchal, but move it will and doubtless be the better for it.