The sad thing is, we’re not really all that surprised. The Independent revealed on Saturday that Germany’s largest bookseller (after Amazon), Weltbild, has been selling pornographic novels. And that it’s owned by the Catholic church.

The company “has been selling thousands of pornographic novels with titles such as Sluts Boarding School and Lawyer's Whore with the full assent of the country's leading bishops.”

The church has owned Weltbild for more than 30 years. Carel Haff, Weltbild’s managing director, said discussions were underway about “limiting the assortment of titles that would be available in the future,” and Catholic bishops said that it was a filtering system that let the books “stray onto the market,” and they would put a stop to the distribution of porn … that their company has been doing.

Bernhard Müller, editor of the Catholic magazine PUR, essentially called BS on that. He alleges that the porn thing has been going on for decades with the church’s knowledge. The church tried to sell Weltbild in 2009 but didn’t get the price it wanted.