Give Benedict a Break

For one thing, it's his birthday. For another, all the people who want to protest the Catholic policy of celibacy and bachelorhood for priests should consider the alternative. We can point them right to it, in the Texas compound of the FLDS. However mundane the actual reasons for imposing the policy, the Catholics may have made the right call, given how easily monotheist patriarchs succumb to the temptation to polygamy. It's a genuine point of credit to Jesus that, to our knowledge, he never claimed this typical patriarchal privilege, which we find among his Hebrew precursors and his Muslim and Mormon successors. Whatever his messianic claims, this is a remarkable and admirable bit of modesty on his part. I don't mean to say that polygamy or polyamory are intrinsic evils, but yoked to patriarchy and monotheism it's usually bad news for wives and children. Catholicism is innocent at least of that sin, though the absence of one may go unnoticed on such a long ledger ...