Oh, that crazy Pope ...

Pope Benedict can't keep his message straight. He loves traditionalists, and wants to "heal" the church. But healing means re-admitting Holocaust deniers and dealing with "deeply spiritual" leaders who didn't quite manage to keep every last vow.

As usual, American Catholics wring their hands and hope the Pope will navigate through these rocky waters. And they'll find some way to excuse him -- "he's bookish, not a politician," etc.

What I find hard to understand, as an outsider, is why on Earth any Catholic with a passing familiarity with the Bible can offer allegiance to his or her own local priests, let alone the allegedly Holy Father.

The gospel of Matthew is fairly clear:

"Don't call anyone on earth your father. All of you have the same Father in heaven. None of you should be called the leader. The Messiah is your only leader. Whoever is the greatest should be the servant of the others. If you put yourself above others, you will be put down. But if you humble yourself, you will be honored."

Yet Catholics call every priest "father," in direct contradiction of their Messiah's teaching, and the higher a priest's rank, the fancier his garb. When you see the "Holy Father" in those red robes, sitting on that throne-like chair, is "humility" the first thing you think of?

This guy first decided to be a priest "in 1932, when Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, the archbishop of Munich, visited the small town in which the Ratzinger family lived, arriving in a black limousine. The future pope, then five years old, was part of a group of children who presented the cardinal with flowers, and later that day he announced he wanted to be a cardinal, too. 'It wasn't so much the car, since we weren't technically minded,' Georg Ratzinger told a reporter from the New York Times. 'It was the way the cardinal looked, Pope Benedict's bearing, and the garments he was wearing that made such an impression on him.'"

Ah, that's nice. It wasn't service he was after. He saw the garments, the fancy car, and he thought, "The life of a cardinal for me!" Well, we'll try to be glad for him, that he reached his goal.

Jesus said, "If you put yourself above others, you will be put down. But if you humble yourself, you will be honored."

It's hard to humble yourself in fancy robes and cars. So if Jesus was right, looks like the Pope's heading for a humbling ....