So what's to explain? Why do sexually rooted failings somehow totally discredit you, but sins rooted in power and violence don't? Why must we take those sins "in historical context," which essentially means rationalizing them?
What's prompted this mini-screed? Oh, maybe the fact that the Spanish bishops are trying to re-introduce Queen Isabella's cause for sainthood:
The country's Roman Catholic bishops' congress has argued that, despite a fondness for burnings at the stake and an obsession with religious and racial purity, Isabella I of Castille should be beatified as a step towards canonisation.
"Our intention is to reactivate her beatification process," the bishops said in a statement on Friday.
That process was started in 1958, at a time when the Spanish church's doctrine coincided wholeheartedly with the dictator General Francisco Franco's brand of extreme rightwing ideology, "national catholicism".
Isabella was one of the icons of Franco's regime - who better to represent the mixture of racial purity and religious piety that Franco himself dreamed of, than the person who finished the 700-year Christian reconquest of Spain in 1492?
The Vatican, however, eventually put the 27 volumes and 800,000 documents sent to them by the Archbishop of Valladolid in a bottom drawer, froze the beatification process and forgot about her.
Now, with the Spanish bishops and some of their South American colleagues backing her once more, experts have predicted that Isabella could be elevated to the rank of saint within two years.
Who's next? Clovis, because he threatened the Franks with either baptism or death and is, therefore, "responsible" for the acceptance of Catholicism in Gaul?