The Pope sticks his nose where it doesn't belong
Pope Benedict gave an address in Washington today in which he derided our country's founding principle of separation between church and state. Our nation's firewall between clerical and legal authority really seemed to bother him. Arguing for an even more aggressive intrusion of religious dogma into the sphere of public policy, he actually said this:
"Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted," he said.
Someone needs to remind Mr. Ratzinger that we fought a revolution precisely to get out from under people like him. He needs to be reminded that the Enlightenment (which he must have slept through) permanently cast aside the foolish notion that temporal and legal authority were the divine rights of kings, emperors, and popes. Someone should take him down to the National Archives and show him the founding documents of this unabashedly secular nation.
One of those documents famously begins with the preamble "We the people ... do ordain and establish this Constitution;" it does not say "With the permission and blessing of the pope." The ordination of this country's charter by the people specifically rejects the ridiculous, medieval notion that government must be blessed by a man wearing a dress and a pointy hat to have legitimacy.
Meanwhile, Ratzinger continues to provide sanctuary in Rome for that criminal Cardinal Law, beyond the possible reach of US law enforcement. If harboring criminals is his idea of meshing public policy with religion, we'd do well to ignore the "Holy" Father's suggestion.