It's Time to Man Up, Benedict

Maureen Dowd's column never rests on Sundays, and she takes this Easter to continue her full-on assault of Pope Benedict, this time eviscerating the Vatican's chief exorcist's assertion that the New York Times' unfavorable coverage of the sex abuse scandal has been "prompted by the Devil." "The Devil didn’t make me do it," she writes. "The facts did."

Unrepentant, Dowd demands that the Church repent, taking particular exception to the exorcist's defense of priestly pedophilia as falling "into temptation" ("falling into temptation is eating cupcakes after you’ve given them up for Lent," not "rape and molestation of children.") And with Benedict's own preacher comparing the wave of negative publicity to anti-Semitism, Dowd wants the Vatican to stop defending itself and just cop to its role: "It is in crises that leaders are tested, that we get to see if they succumb to their worst instincts or summon their better angels. All Benedict has to do is the right thing." (More Pope Benedict XVI stories.)