UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Increasing numbers of Cardinals seem to be facing serious criminal prosecution risks that likely will increase rapidly. Pope John Paul II mainly avoided acknowledging these risks and Pope Benedict XVI duplicitously tried to Tweet them away. They both failed and made matters worse, certainly from a criminal defense perspective. Prosecutors and jurors will no longer give Cardinals the benefit of the doubt and the media is aggressively reporting Cardinals’ sins more often. The next Pope must confront these risks honestly and openly or the risk of imprisonment will only increase for Cardinals worldwide. Abuse survivors must be treated justly and children must be protected effectively. Hierarchical wrongdoers must be exposed, removed and punished transparently and promptly. This requires papal leadership and real reforms now.
In the past week, Catholic scholar, Hans Kung, Dominican priest, Matthew Fox, and Oxford historian, Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch, have weighed in on the current crisis. Their assessments must be listened to, or some Cardinals will very likely be prosecuted in the near term.
Fr. Kung just spoke of his former university colleague, Joseph Ratzinger, this week as reported here at:
[Spiegel]
The seemingly unending and substantially unaddressed Vatican scandals of child abuse cover-ups, sexual blackmail, financial corruption and managerial incompetence have reached a tipping point making resignation the only option apparently. Shortly, on March 1, Cardinals reportedly will be told secretly what is in the confidential report of the three octogenerian Cardinal survivors of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Franco. They have seen it all before, no doubt.
The next Pope will surely be bogged down for years in ongoing worldwide governmental investigations, civil litigation and criminal prosecutions of the Church’s hierarchy that are now beginning to mushroom. These challenges are already burdened by the overall dark legacy left by ex-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and his Polish predecessor, so concisely summarized by Dominican priest, Matthew Fox, a student of key theologian, M.-D. Chenu, who theologically guided Joseph Ratzinger and Karol Wotyla at Vatican II, accessible here:
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