Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger is a popular guy, especially amongst the portions of his international congregation who carry very traditional value systems. Raised in Lower Bavaria, the Pope’s father was a policeman and his mother a cook. His parental models were, happily, a male authority figure and a homemaker.

But of late there have been signs of both rebellion, and a growing scent of systemic moral compromise amongst his supposed followers. Joe is also a man, you see, a very powerful male, and he knows his place in the biological order of contemporary culture.

For that minor transgression, the fellow enthroned in the Vatican has been faulted. Rather like the way US Representative Todd Akin has been faulted, espousing a culturally-altered version of reality. But the beloved priest has a better speechwriter than the abhorred representative. Italian, you see. He has a much better intellect. German, of course. And he has much, much better lawyers. American, as you might expect.

His Holiness Benedict XVI is the 265th of his sort to hold court from a small autonomous piece of extremely valuable real estate embedded in the heart of the city of Rome. By extension from that center he radiates a powerful influence into almost every corner of the globe. In the last few weeks a large concentration of Vatican moral authority has somehow centered itself in the American Pacific Northwest, with both lawyers and church officials vigorously dueling two precedent-setting questions that primarily involve the law and sex.

The odd thing is that in the two cases, the Church is separately arguing the opposite sides of each question. Again, sex has everything to do with it. Sex and money, that is.

A few weeks ago, the Vatican directly ordered Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle, Washington, to summarily dismantle the women’s organization that represents eighty percent of American religious nuns, the women delineated in his marching orders as being directly subjugate to the Vatican in all things.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that on 20 August the Vatican’s counsels won a judgment in U.S. District court in Portland, Oregon, that legally affirms that its all-male priests are not in truth controlled by the pope. The Post affirmed that “The original lawsuit was filed in 2002 by a Seattle-area man who said the Rev. Andrew Ronan repeatedly molested him in the late 1960s.”

US District Court Judge Michael Mosman ruled that “There are no facts to create a true employment relationship between Ronan and the Holy See.” The new definition of employment shelters the Pope from the monetary consequences of lawsuits rising from the actions of a molester priest.

Coincidentally, nearby and just a week earlier, the Rev Angel Armando Perez, a Roman Catholic priest from St. Luke’s parish in Woodburn, Oregon, was accused by parents of drunkenly fondling a sleeping 12-year-old boy’s genitals with one hand while taking cell phone pictures of the act with the other, and then, clad only in his priestly underwear, chasing the escaping boy down a public city street.

Increasing the relevance exponentially is the fact that in the above case, just four days prior to the district court’s decision that priests are not in the employ of the Vatican, The Oregonian confirmed that “The Archdiocese of Portland offered an open-ended loan to the Rev Angel Armando Perez to cover the legal fees of Marc Blackman, according to archdiocese spokesman Bud Bunce.” Mr Blackman is one of the best, and most expensive, criminal defense attorneys in Oregon. So, the archdiocese is funding the defense of an accused child molester priest, but that priest is not in the employ of the Church, so even if he is convicted they are not responsible for what he did. Most convenient.

Three days before the judgment, the Vicar-General of the Portland archdiocese agreed to formally apologize to a Portland woman who said she was abused by a local Roman Catholic priest thirty years earlier. Monsignor Dennis O'Donovan then apologized from the pulpit of St John the Apostle in Reedstock, Oregon on 26 August.

According to Oregonlive.com Attorney Gilion C. Dumas, who represented the victim in a lawsuit against the diocese and the Rev. Edward Alstock said that “The public apology, which O'Donovan will make on behalf of Archbishop John Vlazny, is a rarity.

As far as we know," she said, "this is the first time that they are going to make a public apology in the parish where the abuse occurred."

But while non-employed priests in the Pacific Northwest are abusing both males and females, the Vatican has sent its hired gun archbishop from neighboring Seattle to make sure American nuns adhere to its own hard-line dogma. They, supposedly, ARE still employees, and imminently subject to Vatican rule.

The Boston Globe printed a lengthy story about the “US Nuns under Vatican Rebuke”:

American nuns described as dissenters in a Vatican report that ordered an overhaul of their group said Friday they will talk with church leaders about potential changes but will not compromise on the sisters’ mission.

The Church’s actions caused The Washington Post to ask: "Do the American nuns have a future?"

Even The National Catholic Register had to step up to back the women religious:

“This is a historic moment in the lives of Catholics,” said Jim FitzGerald, executive director of Call To Action. “As faithful people we have been called to work for justice—a message that Catholic sisters in this country have taught us for decades but are now being criticized for doing so by the Vatican.”

Further muddling the law, morality and politics, and to both conceal what it is doing and to validate its position, the Vatican has shown an eager willingness to get in bed with… the Republican party. The same party that just adopted a no-exception rule to its abortion policies.

Of course, the Republicans had no problem with throwing the aforementioned Representative Akin to the wolves when it suited them. Even the man who came up with the “no-exception” abortion rule cut Akin. This from the Daily Kos:

Tommy Thompson, Republican candidate for Wisconsin's open Senate seat, jumped on the bandwagon condemning Todd Akin this week. Like Romney, he had to sleep on it and see which way the political winds were blowing, but he got there eventually. On Monday he said it was up to Akin and the voters of Missouri, but by Tuesday he was demanding Akin step down. He called Akin's comments "ignorant at best and outrageous," and also said, "Regardless of gender or party, we all have a moral responsibility to come together in opposition to crimes against women and support exceptions for abortion in the abhorrent situations where rape is involved."

The official Catholic Church’s position is in lock-step with the Republican platform. Though Mitt Romney is supposedly not. The day after Akin’s “legitimate rape” remark, Romney publicly backed off and said the Republican platform is not the Romney platform, and he would allow exceptions for rape and physical harm. His Vice-Presidential partner moved to his side on the issue, though The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Ryan’s opposition to abortion is consistent with Akin’s “No Exceptions” mentality:

Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has cosponsored 38 anti-abortion measures, including some that make no allowance for rape.

This might make one wonder what position will prevail: that of the Republican party itself, the disavowal/hedge-bet of the Republican presidential candidate, or the underlying/underground beliefs of the heartbeat-away-from-the-presidency Republican vice-presidential candidate.

And then there are the governing opinions of the head of the Roman Catholic Church. And his ideas about what men and women should do, can do, and cannot do.

The New York Times reports that this past week presidential candidate Mitt Romney further snuggled between the tea-stained sheets of church doctrine by confirming that Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the influential and ever-so-conservative president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, one of the point men in charge of shutting down the aberrant American nuns, will deliver the closing prayer at the Republican National Convention next week.

And so it is that Bavarian Joe Ratzinger’s Roman Catholic imprimatur is now firmly attached to a Massachusetts Mormon.