Pope Benedict XVI is seen here in his former garb as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, slapping away a reporter’s questions about Father Maciel. Today it has been revealed that Maciel, founder of the order Legionaries of Christ, fathered a child, in addition to the countless accusations of sexual abuse of seminarians that led to his removal from ministry in 2006.

So, what does this have to do with the other Vatican scandal dominating headlines worldwide _ the welcoming of a Holocaust-denying bishop into the church?

Andrew Sullivan says it’s clericalism run amok.

Moneyquote: “The authoritarian, unaccountable, reactionary hierarchy that the last two Popes have constructed is beginning to collapse in on itself. It has solved no core questions; it has advanced no deeper, lasting ideas; it has led to the implosion of the Church in Western Europe and forced many American Catholics into a provisional relationship with their own church authorities. Maciel and Williamson are symptoms of this disease. But John Paul II and Benedict XVI are its enablers.”