Vatican to pursue new legal strategy in U.S., lawyer says

(CNN) -- The Vatican will embark on a sweeping new legal strategy Monday in responding to allegations of sex abuse in the United States, CNN has learned.

Responding to a Louisville, Kentucky, lawsuit that seeks to depose top Vatican officials -- including Pope Benedict XVI -- the Holy See plans to file a motion Monday denying that the church issued a document mandating secrecy in the face of abuse allegations, as many victims allege, according to a Vatican attorney.

The Vatican's motion also will argue that bishops are not employees of the Holy See, exempting the Vatican from legal culpability in cases of alleged abuse in the U.S., said Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's U.S.-based attorney.

Talk about people that just don't get it!  It now seems that the Vatican, that's who runs the Catholic church, now tells us that never mind all that money flowing to Rome, never mind that the Vatican appoints local Bishops, never mind that the Vatican exercises direct supervision of those bishops, and never mind any of the other numerous ways in which the Vatican has tried to interfere in the various legal proceedings around the ongoing sex scandal - we, the Vatican, aren't culpable! 

What really offends about this latest move is that it says quite clearly that the Catholic church sees this scandal not as a moral issue, which it most certainly is, but purely as a legal issue.  Now it's not that the scandal isn't a legal issue, it is, but from a religious perspective it is more importantly a moral issue.  The current position says that the Catholic church is about legality not morality.  That is at the root of what's wrong with the church's position.  That's why the sucking sound the Vatican hears are Catholics turning and walking away from an increasingly out of touch and corrupt organization.

Common sense suggests that we need only wait a bit longer and the Catholic church, certainly in the United States, will become completely irrelevant.  Perhaps it's time for that for clearly the Catholic church is no longer focused on morality and the care of it's members!