The Catholic Church is undergoing a controversy of such proportions and complications that no one can even agree on the facts or how to interpret them on a basic level. Maybe you’ve heard of it.

According the The New York Times, a priest named Lawrence C. Murphy abused over 200 boys at a deaf school, and, in an unconventional turn for molestation cases in the 1950s, many of the abused actually spoke out: “They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney.”

But no one listened.

The Church probably would have handled this scandal like it always does, claiming a lack of knowledge about the incidents and offering a muted apology to the victims. But documents have surfaced recently, claiming that when Pope Benedict XVI was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he received a letter from Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, Wis. informing him of Murphy’s actions and asking for a “healing response.” The Church never acted on his case. When Murphy died in 1998, he was still a priest.

Defenders of the Church argue that the now-Pope never received this letter, that the media has been demonizing the Church by relentlessly sensationalizing the issues, that the abuse is bad but that the victims never told them about it until it was too late, or that the Church as a whole is not at fault.

I’m not sure what the facts are, exactly, but I do know that something is wrong with the Church system as it is currently designed. Abusers should not be able to get away with practically murder. This scandal shouldn’t be happening.

If the Pope was President Obama, Republicans would be calling for his impeachment. The difference between politics and religion, however, is that God Himself does not appoint the leader of the free world.

The Church’s response to the scandal has been belligerent and focused on denying the problem, rather than acknowledging it in its full iteration. The Church has been acting as a political organization, trying to minimize the spin and denying that it has a pedophile problem, instead of fulfilling its obligation as a Christian organization and trying to fix the damage.

I’m not just trying to rant against the Catholic Church; this a complicated problem without an easy solution. The Church in its current form, though, has refused to change the policies that may have contributed to the problem (i.e. doctrine requiring celibacy, prohibition against women being priests) and there is no reason to suspect that anything will change even as a result of this scandal, as our current Pope is of a hyper-conservative breed.

Changing religious policies is fundamentally different than political ones. Doctrine, once accepted as the word of God, is carved into the stone of the Catholic Church. If antiquated religious rules are stone, though, antiquated political rules are twisted into a flexible Etch-a-Sketch that someone, not God Himself, has the power to change if public opinion supports it.

In an ideal world, Pope Benedict would actually acknowledge the suffering parishioners have received from Catholic priests, would acknowledge the extent of the problem as at least partially a matter of church structure and pledge to fix it. But he cannot rewrite policy; nor would he want to.

According to the New York Times, “As archbishop, Benedict expended more energy pursuing theological dissidents than sexual predators.”

Shift your focus please.

In the words of comedian Jon Stewart, “If any other organization had done anything close to what the Church is being accused of, they’d be done! The Church is barely showing any contrition: for God’s sakes, look how sorry Domino’s was just for their shitty pizza! They had a bad sauce recipe, [and] they’ve been out there nonstop. ‘Oh, we’re so sorry. Here, have some Crazy Bread!'”