The New York Times may have been characteristically graceless in its initial coverage of Benedict’s decision to retire, as Mr. Pleszczynski noted the other day, but in France, the harlots were out in force to mock the good and saintly man’s dignified acknowledgment of God’s mysterious ways — they showed up in Notre Dame cathedral on Paris’s Ile de la Cité and got naked, as shown in a clip released by Le Monde, itself not exactly a Catholic organ but one that has traditionally maintained a respectful if not uncritical — newsreporting oblige — attitude toward the Church of which France, at one time, proudly called itself the eldest daughter. 

It is impossible not to notice that the same day the National Assembly passed hom*s*xual marriage legislation after a last-stand effort by the center-right UMP party, divided and weakened by a leadership battle in the wake of Nicolas Sarkozy’s failed re-election campaign.