Ten Goals of Pope Francis With a Family Synod Now & US Elections in Four Weeks, by Jerry Slevin, Christian Catholicism (October 4, 2014)

Ten Goals of Pope Francis With a Family Synod Now & US Elections in Four Weeks

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
October 4, 2014

http://christiancatholicism.com/ten-goals-of-pope-francis-with-a-family-synod-now-us-elections-in-four-weeks/

The unprecedented ongoing crisis, of bishops and priests who sexually assault children with impunity, presents Pope Francis with a fundamental choice — Francis can either try to save the coercive top-down papacy and thereby risk losing the hierarchical Church to prosecutors from the USA, Australia and elsewhere, or he can try to restore a consensual bottom-up Church, like the one that Jesus’ original disciples, including some women, left behind.

Only a Church with independent and effective lay oversight will ever convince enough prosecutors at this point that children are safe from clerical predators’ lust. The Vatican has permanently lost its moral authority, as well as the trust of Catholics (and political leaders) worldwide.

So far, Pope Francis has mainly followed the top down script that ex-Pope Benedict and Cardinal Sodano apparently offered him last year as a pre-condition to his becoming Pope. This is evident from the ten strategic goals described below , in detail, that Francis now appears to be pursuing vigorously.

Popes have, of necessity, had political strategies for almost two millennia. For the initial three centuries, as the small Christian movement spread widely, popularly selected popes usually tried quietly to peacefully coexist with political leaders. Constantine and his successors changed that beginning in the 4th Century, increasingly pushing top-down imperial papal selections. Since then, popes’ main priority has often defensively been to maintain a close working relationship with the most powerful political leaders they had to deal with.

Pius XI and XII sought this relationship mistakenly with powerful fascists, Mussolini, Franco and Hitler, while Paul VI unsuccessfully sought peaceful co-existence with the Soviets and the West. In the American Century, the last three popes, including Francis, have sought to exchange (a) papal “pull” with key fundamentalist anti-abortion and anti-gay US voters for (b) potential subsidies and legal protection, as part of an ongoing favored Vatican relationship with powerful US right wing leaders, including Presidents Reagan and both Bushes and with Mitt Romney.

Francis has in many ways already shown his hand on supporting the election in four weeks of a right wing US Senate (likely to preserve a US Supreme Court majority friendly to Francis’ “low tax” billionaire donors and legally vulnerable bishops).

Now before the Family Synod has even started, Francis has preemptively and autocratically indicated the Synod will end on Sunday, Oct. 19 with the beatification of Pope Paul VI, the third 20th century pope that Francis will elevate this year. Many Argentinian Jesuits reportedly found Pope Francis earlier to be autocratic as well. Can the Synod Fathers now be expected to evaluate contraception fairly and honestly in the presence of their “boss” Francis, and his “cherry picked natural family planning couple cheer leaders”? Will the Synod Fathers now challenge Paul VI’s best known mistake, among several major mistakes, including Paul VI’s undercutting of real episcopal collegiality and optional celibacy implementation?

Of course, the Synod “Fathers Without Kids” will not now pursue the Synod’s heavily hyped reconsideration of Paul VI’s Ban of the Pill — this appears to be just more “papal bull”. So much for the “Sense of the Faithful”! Moreover, approving of contraception now would undercut the US bishops’ anti-Obamacare contraception mandate crusade a few weeks before the critical US elections in a few weeks. The prohibition on contraception will survive this Synod, to be sure.

And, of course, predictably, Francis will try to control Synod information flow through his fellow Jesuit, Fr. Lombardi, who has been spinning us for years about the Vatican’s “zero tolerance” of clerical child abuse.

As veteran and forthright AP Vatican reporter, Nicole Winfield, has just put it so well:

“Technically, the synod is a closed-door affair, with only the opening session broadcast and a final written message published. Press conferences are scheduled throughout.”

“In past synods, the Vatican published written summaries of bishops’ remarks to the meetings and provided daily briefings about the general themes discussed.”

This time around, however, the VATICAN APPEARS TO BE CLAMPING DOWN on the dissemination of such detailed information to encourage frank and spontaneous discussion. No written summaries are being provided.” (My emphasis)

So much for the trusting Papa Francesco! God forbid, Catholic “sheep” would know which “shepherd” said what. The only person that can hold any bishop accountable is Pope Francis, and he will be live at the Synod. What “bulloney”! The ex-bouncer still lives, forcefully, it appears.

There is no sufficient reason the Synod discussions could not be broadcast live on television, as the Vatican’s endless parades of hierarchs in colorful dresses are regularly done. Francis clearly wants to control the media “Synod spin”, as he has controlled the spin since he was elected. Docile Catholics inexcusably just grin and bear this, yes, often like “sheep”!

Paul VI wrote Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical which enshrined the Vatican’s opposition to artificial contraception. This was in spite of the overwhelming approval of artificial contraception in 1966, after years of careful consideration by cardinals, bishops, theologians, doctors and married couples on Paul VI’s own pontifical “birth control” commission and the clear “sense of the Catholic faithful”.

Paul VI, of course, wanted in 1968 to avoid jeopardizing his weak papal “mystical power” claim to “infallibility” by reversing Pius XI’s 1930 ban on birth control, evidently made in 1930 to pump up the depleted post-World War I European population, in light of the growing atheistic Soviet threat that Pius XI had been obsessed about since he saw Soviet brutality first hand over a decade earlier in Poland.

Francis apparently will also be overlooking the reports of Paul VI’s alleged illicit gay relationship with an Italian actor, as Francis last April overlooked the unanswered questions about John XXIII’s and John Paul II’s evident failures to act effectively to curtail clerical sex abuse of children and, as well in the case of John Paul II, failures to to act on the numerous and substantial allegations of sexual improprieties of Vienna’s Cardinal Groer and Mexico’s one man sex abuse scandal, Fr. Maciel .

Of course, this beatification ceremony will dovetail neatly with the US bishops’ current US election driven crusade against Obamacare’s contraception insurance mandate to help elect a right wing US Senate in four weeks. The US right wing’s main issue in the US Senate campaign is opposition to Obamacare. Hello? Are you listening fundamentalist US voters? Francis seems to want you to vote Republican.

Of course, the secretive Vatican does not publicly disclose its legal and geo-political goals and strategies that it formulates with considerable input from its high priced legal. financial and political advisers, but it clearly has some. These current goals and strategies can be reasonably inferred from the Vatican’s actions taken since Ratzinger indicated a year and a half ago that he would strategically retreat to an unprecedented “pope emeritus” or “shadow pope” position. Ratzinger, appears to be functioning as the Shadow Pope, as his oldest acquaintance, Hans Kung, had warned 18 months ago he would.

The overall papal goals and strategies over the last two years appear from many indications to include the following ten:

(1) Replacing the stern and rigid public image and doctrinaire decisional style of Benedict with the softer and gentler image and intentionally ambiguous platitudes of Francis, amplified by a Vatican media operation greatly enhanced both internally and externally by powerful and wealthy Vatican allies that have considerable influence over various media outlets;

(2) Boosting papal “mystical power and infallible doctrines” by commandeering the Vatican’s saint making process for the benefit of modern popes, including the failed anti-contraception advocate, Paul VI, now to be beatified seemingly mainly by a Francis “fiat” in a couple of weeks at the new Synod;

(3) Protecting, as the highest priority, Catholic cardinals and bishops from prosecution, especially related to allegations of child abuse and/or related cover-ups and of financial corruption, (A) by easing out, quietly and with minimal recriminations, controversial hierarchs by comfortable retirements, demotions or transfers, and (B) by trying to co-opt completely all independent government investigations of hierarchs with Vatican controlled and secretive proceedings, that conveniently also protect against disclosures about other hierarchs that may be implicated (Archbishop Wesolowski, for example, served in numerous countries over more than three decades and could well have in his computer files child porn related links to other pedophiles in the worldwide hierarchy — who knows, but why did Francis have him smuggled, in effect, back to the Vatican?);

(4) Tightening papal control over Church finances under a facade of minority “lay oversight” from carefully selected and potentially pliable papal allies mainly from “big finance”, “big oil” and major media sectors, with the oil and finance advisers possibly now being behind Francis’ almost warlike calls for action against Islamicist extremists in Syria/Iraq, while some of them amazingly may now also be behind the current touting of Pope Francis for the Nobel Peace Prize;

(5) Strengthening alliances with powerful political and financial interests worldwide, including with right wing “low tax” billionaire elites in the USA who appear to need Vatican political help in four weeks to elect a right wing US Senate and thereby preserve a “business friendly” US Supreme Court majority indefinitely; hence, the Vatican directed, pre-November US bishops’ election “crusades” against gay marriage and Obama’s policies on contraception insurance, immigration law enforcement and non- deployment of more US troops in the Middle East;

(6) Continuing to handle priest and bishop child abuse allegations secretly within the Vatican under Ratzinger’s hand picked protege, Cardinal Mueller;

(7) Pursuing effective child protection reform measures very slowly and almost secretly in a new advisory committee (A) headed by Cardinal Law’s successor, Cardinal O’Malley, who is experienced with “handling” abuse investigations confidentially, and (B) assisted by Law’s, O’Malley’s and Mueller’s predictable and pliable longtime canon lawyer, Fr. Oliver;

(8) Diverting attention from priest child abuse matters with tightly controlled media directed “synod spectacles” of numerous “cherrypicked” celibate men discussing privately and anonymously arcane and insufficient theological justifications for “doctrines/disciplines”, that many adult Catholics have already in practice exercising their “sense of the faithful” rejected, relating to divorce, contraception, cohabitation, gay marriage and similar sexual morality matters generally “foreign” to celibate hierarchs. Since Francis has shrewdly tried to string out until 2016, a US Presidential election year, the schedule for him to respond directly on any issues addressed at the Synod, he in effect may have bought Ratzinger and the Vatican an extra three years to try to deal with its major child abuse and financial corruption scandals, except that the Wesolowski type crimes demand much earlier resolutions ;

(9) Deflecting attention from the Vatican’s worldwide financial and sex scandals to a “New Devil”, a small number of Islamicist terrorists who threaten and attack some local Middle East Christians, and perhaps more importantly, are threatening to control much of the oil resources so important to some of Francis’ key political and financial allies; and

(10) Endeavoring to silence, marginalize or “manage” alternative prophetic and theological voices, especially women like Tina Beattie, Mary McAleese, Elizabeth Johnson, and the sisters of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and of Network.

As Pope Francis approaches his 78th birthday in two months and increasingly struggles to handle the escalating and relentless stress, he is running out of time. If he does not soon change directions, he likely will be the last pope who might possibly save the Church from perpetually splintering or even sinking completely.

Francis’ recent complaints about the poor selection process for new priests from the diminishing seminarian pool, while he avoids facilitating married and women priest eligibility, and also while he oversees the shift of foreign priests from Africa and Asia and the excessive reliance on many thousands of married male deacons, make one wonder if Francis is in over his head as pope. Moreover, his frequent public references to devils and guardian angels raise questions about whether the stress is affecting his reasoning processes.

His predecessor, Ratzinger, then 85 years old at “retirement”, decided in February 2013 to make a strategic retreat to a nearby convent, to oversee from “retirement” a new strategy to defend against other escalating major investigations of Vatican wrongdoing, especially involving failures to protect children and to obey banking laws.

Ratzinger’s (and Francis’) top goal by most indications was and remains to keep the hierarchy out of the clutches of independent prosecutors. Civil fines and damages appear to be acceptable, since the Vatican appears to have access to substantial financial resources. This is discussed further below in the articles linked here at the bottom.

As mentioned above, Hans Kung, who has known Ratzinger well for over a half century, warned, even before Francis was elected, about Ratzinger remaining at the Vatican. Kung stated, as follows in pertinent part:

“It is very dangerous to have a former pope living in the actual Vatican. … He will have the same secretary, Father George. He wants to remain in contact with cardinals and with the new pope. I was afraid of a “shadow pope” in the Vatican. Now it seems confirmed. He is certainly interested in prolonging his line, otherwise he would not have done it like this.”

“… It is a dangerous situation. I see many conflicts … {I foresee a} secret interference, an uncontrollable one.”

“Ratzinger says, “I’m out, but I am in the center of the Vatican.” So, that’s not good. Of course, he will not have official communications, but infinite private meetings… “

“This has been prepared for a long time. It is part of a clear strategy. Just think of the appointment of his secretary as archbishop (last December). The curia have defined this as “the new nepotism.” Or there is the Holy Office Prefect, a friend and disciple of Ratzinger, Bishop of Regensburg. Less accepted in Germany among the bishops… “

Pope Francis seems, with his diversionary Family Synod strategy, to be pressing very hard to change the subject and distance himself from the escalating fallout from the priest child rape scandal. Francis has for over 18 months mainly avoided addressing this scandal directly, effectively and transparently, even though the scandal is the most serious Vatican crisis since 1789. The French Revolution then began the challenges to absolute monarchies like the Vatican, the world’s oldest continuous unaccountable monarchy. The revolutionary fever has now crossed the Tiber to Vatican Hill. Increasingly, Catholics are demanding accountability of its leaders, as had existed for centuries in the Church that the disciples of Jesus, including some women, left behind.

The latest major abuse scandal fallout may soon be emitted from Puerto Rico (PR), a territory of the USA, where the papal apostolic delegate to PR, Archibishop Wesolowski, had been the senior Vatican official for five years. He fled secretly last year to the Vatican’s purported legal immunity protection, as potential investigation targets Cardinals Law and Pell seemingly also have done. Indeed, Pell appears still to be in the cross hairs of the important commission that is investigating institutional child sexual abuse in Australia and that is also relentlessly moving in on the Vatican’s complicit role there, it appears.

Significantly, President Obama’s Federal prosecutors in PR recently have stepped up considerably priest child abuse and related criminal investigations. Given Wesolowski’s reported computer stash of 100,000+ child porn images, and his reported sexual obsession with young boys, US investigators may soon identify some Puerto Rican boys, all US citizens, as being among his many child victims. Obama’s Federal prosecutors are also involved in Minneapolis priest child porn investigations relating to allegations previously reviewed insufficiently by the Vatican and by local vicar general, Fr. Kevin McDonough, close brother of Denis McDonough, Obama’s Chief of Staff.

US Federal prosecutors treat child porn as a very serious criminal matter. Also, the US has an extradition treaty with Italy, but not with the Vatican. This may help explain Weslowski’s reportedly being moved to a Vatican apartment, since he had earlier been spotted walking freely in Rome in Italian territory.

Pope Francis’ drawn out two step Family Synod distraction appears to stem from an overall strategy seemingly crafted by ex-Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, and Cardinal Sodano after they both dodged a “potentially fatal” legal bullet in mid-2012 . The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor then deferred ” … at this time …” pursuit of “crimes against humanity charges” relating to their alleged role in a worldwide cover-up of the rape of children by Catholic priests.

For over six months thereafter, the ex-Pope evidently fashioned his future strategy as the continuing “Shadow Pope” before publicly announcing his resignation early last year. It appears increasingly that Cardinal Bergoglio accepted, possibly with some personal input, this strategy as a pre-condition to his papal election as Pope Francis. The Family Synods appear to be a key element of the Benedict/Francis/Sodano strategy to save the papal monarchy by distracting for two and a half years from the unprecedented priest child rape scandal.

Ratzinger, then 85 years old at “retirement”, decided in February 2013 to make a strategic retreat to a nearby convent, to oversee from “retirement” a new strategy to defend against other escalating major investigations of Vatican wrongdoing, especially involving failures to protect children and to obey banking laws, while still pressing through his protege, Cardinal Mueller, for a purer and smaller Church.

To get a sense of why the Vatican is trying so hard to keep out of the grasp of Obama’s Federal prosecutors, please note the remarks last year that Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney in Missouri, announced when a Roman Catholic priest, Fr. Shawn Ratigan, who abused under Bishop Finn’s facilitating watch, was sentenced in Federal court for producing child pornography.

“This sexual predator victimized five young children over a period of almost six years,” Dickinson said. “He violated his religious vows, betrayed the trust of his parishioners, and shocked the entire community. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison for his deliberate, planned, and chronic child sexual abuse. Today’s sentence of 50 years without parole, a virtual life sentence, is a just outcome to protect our children and our community from this predator priest… “

One wonders what this prosecutor would say about a conviction of Wesolowski, whom reportedly was permitted by the Vatican to roam freely in Rome after the Vatican smuggled him back to the Vatican’s “oversight”.

Please also see my, “Pope Francis’ Course and Crew For the “Synod Family Sail” Can Sink the Vatican Titanic” at:

http://christiancatholicism.com/pope-francis-course-crew-for-synod-family-sail-can-sink-the-vatican-titanic/

For Hans Kung’s full warning to the effect that letting Ratzinger stick around would be a real mistake, please see:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/hans-kung-pope-benedict-will-be-a-shadow-pope_n_2781248.html

With respect to Pope Francis’ announced beatification of Pope Paul VI, hopefully, either in connection with the needed Family Synod discussion of gay Catholics and families, and possibly also in connection with the beatification of Paul VI, Pope Francis will generate an honest discussion at the Synod about the pertinence and relevance of rumors of the sexual orientation of recent popes, including Paul VI and Benedict XVI.

Perhaps, the ex-Pope might even share with the Synod Fathers some honest observations of his own on the pressing subject of treating gay Catholics with dignity, notwithstanding his earlier brutal position reflected in the Catechism?. At this point, what does the ex-Pope stand to lose?

Since it is unlikely Pope Francis and the ex-Pope will ever publicly release, without a court order, the ex-Pope’s secret “Gay Lobby Report”, at least the ex-Pope should consider discussing this important subject, no?

For the unprecedented way Pope Francis is making modern popes saints, please see:

http://blog.yupnet.org/2014/04/07/every-pope-a-saint-the-politics-of-canonization/

For some related background, please see:

http://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/a02tPaulV_Accusations.html

http://www.awrsipe.com/Comments/2012-04-04-pope-benedict-gay.htm

For additional information on Wesolowski and the priest child abuse situation in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, please see:

http://eldia.com.do/a-wesolowski-lo-investigan-en-pr/

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03/12/catholic-church-and-puerto-rico-officials-at-odds-in-widening-sex-abuse/

http://www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com/news/feds-bust-pr-priest-in-child-sex-case-96836.html

http://actualidad.com.do/2014/09/25050/

http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2014-10/vatikan-papst-franziskus/komplettansicht

http://pinellas.legalexaminer.com/miscellaneous/catholic-priest-sex-abuse-in-puerto-rico/

http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/local/2014/10/1/52884/Scrappy-Dominican-prosecutor-Vatican-should-turn-over-ex-bishop