It’s been a bad week for Pope Benedict. From Italy to Belgium to Washington DC, courts everywhere seem to be taking a hard look at some of the activities of the Catholic church, and they’re not liking what they’re seeing. Worst of all, from Benedict’s point of view, is that the events of the last eight days are but a foretaste of the weeks to come.

How DARE the Belgian police act like the Church was full of bankers?

Beyond the sensationalist clash between theists and atheists, a more fertile and less dramatic third way is appearing. Apatheism (accent the first syllable) isn’t concerned with whether there might or might not be gods. If there are, they don’t show themselves in any persuasive ways. Meanwhile, there is life here and now, which can be lived fully and well with or without belief in deities.

Over the past few weeks, the Catholic Church has found itself mired in controversy, plagued by an ever-growing sexual abuse scandal unfolding in Europe. The pope himself has come under substantial criticism, to such an extent that a leading German magazine titled a report, “The Failed Papacy of Benedict XVI.”

Yet the media’s growing chorus of criticism reveals as much about itself as it does about the mishaps of Pope Benedict XVI. It reveals much about how the media thinks about itself, and about the media’s worldview of what society ought to be like.

A current list of everyone so far that the Vatican, its spokesmen, and other Catholic officials have blamed for the priest pedophilia scandal

The Catholic Church, like its famed universities’ football teams, thinks the best defense is a good offense. In football, though, truth is not the goal or a casualty of bad playing.

This Easter Sunday, the group that brought you the inquisition and the crusades (imagine how those little pageants would have played out in a nuclear era) gives you a man who presided over- and gave his blessing to- decades of institutionally approved rape and pedophilia: Pope Benedict.