Since I discussed what the pope had to say about other Christians in a postscript to last week's essay on the Latin mass, I will not go over the same ground this week. The pope approved a document released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (from 1542 until 1908, the agency was called the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition) reaffirming the church's traditional position that it is the only church to trace its origins back to Jesus and the twelve apostles.

Does anyone care, apart from theological bureaucrats defending their turf? Probably not. What is important about this pope's preoccupations is his obliviousness to certain real and disturbing moral issues (as distinct from nit-picking about who is or is not descended from the twelve apostles).

Just think about it: During the week when Benedict was issuing proclamations about the Latin mass and apostolic succession, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles--the largest Catholic diocese in the United States--was preparing to agree to a $660 million settlement with victims of sexual abuse by priests over a 70-year period. The purpose of the settlement, of course, was to keep the actual details out of open court in order to prevent the public from learning even more than it already knows about the ecclesiastical coverup of the activities of pedophile priests.

A real spiritual leader--as opposed to a dispenser of vainglorious dogma--would have been issuing heartfelt apologies to the victims whose lives were ruined by misplaced faith in the priests supposedly ordained by apostolic successors of Peter. Pope Benedict should have been on his knees to those victims, begging personally for their forgiveness on behalf of the church he heads, at a time when he was occupying himself with petty decrees about church ritual and church primacy.

If you doubt the importance of America's separation of church and state, consider the fact that the church was brought to account for these crimes--yes, crimes--mainly by the reporting of Catholic journalists in both Catholic and non-Catholic newspapers and by the willingness of lay Catholics to pursue their claims under American law. But most of the hierarchy, exemplifying the preoccupation with church power embodied by Benedict, fought accountability as long as it could, trying to invoke freedom of religion as an excuse for not answering to the legal system.

...And now for something completely different, as they used to say on Monty Python's Flying Circus.

I am usually grateful for all responses to my essays--whether you agree or disagree with me. However, last week's responses to the question about Benedict's encouragement of the Tridentine mass--a subject of particular sensitivity to Jews--produced a number of truly disturbing anti-Semitic diatribes.

Some accused me of following a "Judaic line." Others said that what the Roman Catholic Church does is no business of Jews. Some people speculated about my own origins and attributed my criticism of the current pope's actions to ignorance about Catholicism and Jewish bias.

One respondent even quoted from the Torah to prove that Judaism, in its original form, was just as violent as Christianity had been at various points in history. Now there's a shocker!

The ugly tone of many of these comments only serves to support the truth of my observation that the current pope is reaching out to right-wing elements within his church and that many of these elements are infected by anti-Semitism. I am not "anti-Catholic" but I strongly oppose the kind of Catholicism (and Christianity) embodied by this pope.

For the record, since there was so much uninformed speculation about my personal background, my mother was an Irish Catholic and my father a Jewish convert to Catholicism. (Yes, Jacoby, meaning "of Jacob," really is a Jewish name, although not all Jacobys are observant Jews today.) Both of my parents were liberal Catholics who welcomed the changes instituted by Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council during the early sixties. They would have been horrified by the increasing theological conservatism of the church during the past 25 years--as are the majority of American Catholics today.

I am an atheist and have been one since my teens. Since I do not believe in God, I do not believe in religious Judaism any more than I believe in Christianity or Islam. I judge the harmfulness or beneficence of particular religions by their openness to secular knowledge and their willingness to admit that they are not in possession of absolute truth.

By the latter standard, Pope Benedict is a terrible religious leader--an apparatchik who, had he been born in the Soviet Union under Communism, would have been in the business of justifying everything the Party did. While his actions appeal to fanatical Mel Gibson-style Catholics, they are likely to drive away the majority of American and European Catholics even farther from the church.

I am no fonder of ultra-Orthodox Hasidic rabbis, whose communities might as well be living in 17th-century Poland, or of Islamist clerics who believe there is no God but Allah and everyone who does not accept him is an infidel, than I am of far-right Catholics.

And there is no such thing as a "Judaic line." This idea is the essence of anti-Semitism and it is repellent. Those who use this expression should wash their mouths out with soap and open their brainwashed, prejudiced minds.

Far-right Catholics in this country are exactly like far-right Jews and far-right Protestant fundamentalists (in both a political and a religious sense).Right-wing Catholics love to pin the "anti-Catholic" label on anyone who disagrees with the current policies of the Vatican and its supreme pontiff. Right-wing Jews love to suggest that anyone who questions any policies of the state of Israel is either a bad Jew, an anti-Semite, or both. Fundamentalists label anyone who disagrees with them anti-religious, period. (Cal Thomas's harsh pronouncements about Hillary Clinton's faith are a case in point.)

If my negative view of the current pope means that I am anti-Catholic, then I am in the good company not only of my fellow secularists but of millions of Catholics who believe that compassion (whether it springs from religious or humanistic sources) is more important than apostolic succession.