Vacating the Vatican

Now that the annual movie industry festival of self adulation and fulsome self promotion is over, a world that likes to speculate can't help but turn its attention to the scheduled departure of Pope Benedict XVI this Thursday -- and the reasons behind it.  Yes, of course he's 85 and it's quite possible his heart is failing in the metaphorical and medical sense, but with the apparently never ending story of child molestation and cover-ups and lawsuits and more cover-ups, one can't help entertaining  the suspicion that what we have is a Ratzinger leaving a sinking ship.  Is the resignation of Scotland's Archbishop  Keith O'Brien now embroiled in another sex scandal and the moving up of his scheduled departure from March 17 a hint that there is something going on below the surface, like the base of a huge iceberg?  We'll have to wait.

"The Lord is calling me to go on top of the hill, to dedicate myself once more to prayer and meditation," 

said the Pope at his final public prayer yesterday.  As with all such calls, nobody but he can tell us about it and nobody but God can tell us why. I don't think he will tell me.