UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Francis of Assisi preached to help raise funds for the illiterate poor in a patriarchical society amidst a corrupt and monarchical medieval papacy that answered occasionally to a few European kings. Francis was not a 13th Century papal reformer. He left the heavy reform lifting to the 16th Century Luther. Pope Francis preaches to a literate poor in an egalitarian society amidst a corrupt medieval papacy that is steadily being compelled, most often by women, to answer worldwide to the modern rule of law. Most indications to date are that Pope Francis, elected secretly by celibate and aging patriarchs, will not likely be a papal reformer either.
Inevitably, women will be the ones who both save the literate, and legally equal, poor and reform the patriarchical papacy. Pope Francis’ incessant message to couples has been to forgo contraception and have unplanned children. He promises he will then baptise these unplanned children and try to help support them through charities overseen by purportedly heterosexual and celibate males. This failed approach just won’t cut it today. Women have been there, done that and have moved on!
Pope Francis’ predecessor, ex-Pope Joseph Ratzinger, sought desperately to evade the rule of law as he frantically pushed to downsize Catholicism to a financially self-sufficient cult of exhalted hierarchs that were supported by diehard traditionalists, opportunistic plutocrats and accumulated wealth. Without accountability, he even attempted to continue to suppress women and to endanger children as acceptable collateral damage.
The 2005 description of Pope Francis linked in Jamie Manson’s article accessible below, and his early papal actions to date, suggest strongly that Pope Francis will likely just be a smoother and savvier Latin version of the academic Germanic Ratzinger, without the red slippers and the ever present Georgeous Georg, of course. His record of preserving the traditionalist Jesuit order from a military “siege” suggests he could have some success, for awhile at least, in delaying government prosecutors from storming the Vatican archives’ walls. However, his recent meeting with Cardinal Law and permitting the South African Cardinal to offer his apologia for pedophiles both suggest he may fail even at that. Even if Pope Francis now takes action against Cardinals Law, Brady, Mahony, Rigali and O’Brien and Bishop Finn, for example, he will merely be doing what 100 out of 100 leaders of any other multinational organization would have done long ago. As I said before, it is too little too late.
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