Meanwhile, he is one of those rare people whose life is their work. Several of his obsessions — the conservative counterrevolution in the post-Vatican II Catholic Church and the separation of church and state — are bound up in the Catholic Church's sex scandals, and as an attorney, he has the power to fight to effect change. (As an out and proud gay man, he also has issues with some of the church's teachings on homosexuality.)

And perhaps his fondest wish is to see the current Pope put on a witness stand or even arrested. It saddens him that this country — the proud home of the First Amendment — probably won't be the one to do it, nor will he be the lawyer to grill the man he loves to call plain old Joseph Ratzinger.

Shea says one of the first questions he wanted to ask Ratzinger was if he would be willing to clarify the words of one of his underlings, auxiliary Bishop George Rueger, with whom Shea once had the following courtroom exchange:

Daniel Shea: I'm trying to get a sense of this idea that if a cleric becomes involved in sexual conduct with a minor, that somehow this is a sin committed obviously by the cleric, but with the minor, that the minor is sinning along with the priest. I think you've indicated that frankly you believe that that may or may not be true, but it's possible that that could be correct; is that right?

Rueger: "He is sinning with a minor, the minor is his accomplice. What the gravity of the minor's culpability is is hard to say."

"They truly believe these children are accomplices," Shea says in wonder. "That's the sworn testimony of a bishop, and he says it without hesitation."

And he came so close...Even after Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, Shea's case was still grinding along in Judge Lee Rosenthal's federal courtroom on Rusk Street. After his election, Shea and co-counsel Khan Merritt knew that the jig was up, and not long after the conclave, a Vatican diplomat sent word to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking her to invoke Ratzinger's immunity.

Rosenthal was evidently unimpressed by the stature of the man in her case. In a remarkable order of hers signed on June 23 (more than ten weeks after he became Pope Benedict XVI), Rosenthal referred to Ratzinger by the name his mother gave him and told his Holiness in no uncertain terms exactly what she expected of him.

"Defendant Joseph Ratzinger must file a memorandum in support of his motion seeking dismissal based on head-of-state immunity no later than 30 days after the United States Department of State's suggestion of immunity is submitted to the court," the order read in part. Later, Rosenthal went on to decree that "Defendant Joseph Ratzinger" was to "file a report by July 29, 2005 and every 30 days thereafter informing the court of the status" of his request for immunity.

"For the first time in Western history, you've got a Pope who's been under the jurisdiction of the United States, and a female Jewish federal judge telling Joseph Ratzinger, who also happens to be Pope, that he's gotta do this and that before he's let out of her lawsuit," marvels Shea. "That's a watermark in United States history and in the history of the United States Constitution." (Rosenthal's court did not return a phone call from the Houston Press asking her to clarify her thought processes in its crafting.)

In August of 2005, Rice's office sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler informing Keisler that the Department of State recognized and allowed Benedict's immunity. The letter went on to stress the "particular importance attached by the United States to obtaining the prompt dismissal of the present proceedings...in view of the significant foreign policy implications of such an action against the Head of a foreign state."

And that was that.

Until very recently, when the sex scandals — in Germany, Wisconsin and California — flared anew. While Shea's case isn't being reopened, there are others in places like Germany. He thinks that the Germans might just have the nerve American officials lack. "They are more secular and less tolerant of this bullshit," he says. "I have forwarded the German Justice minister my documents, and the feedback I've been getting makes me believe that they see them the way that [FBI agent] did."

He rails against the Vatican's diplomatic immunity. Why stop with the Vatican, he wonders. "If you recognize the papacy, why not go out to Salt Lake City and draw a map around the Mormon temple square, and we'll call it Temple City, and we'll make the Head Brouhaha of the Mormon Church a head of state, and the same thing with the Southern Baptists. Maybe we could draw a circle around Baylor University.