UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Pope Francis has recently stepped up significantly his already strong efforts to protect the Catholic hierarchy from basic international laws and any democratic oversight.
Of course, Francis is trying to avoid both the long reach to the Vatican of Australia’s Royal Commission now investigating Cardinal Pell’s alleged abuse cover-ups, as well as increasing calls for a comparable US Presidential Commission under President Obama.
And seemingly of equal importance are Francis’ and his US bishops’ relentless efforts via anti-Obamacare contraception insurance and anti-gay marriage crusades to help their “low tax” billionaire buddies preserve a right wing US Supreme Court majority by electing a Republican US Senate majority in November. Both of these majorities will also likely be “friendlier” to some US bishops who are increasingly expected to end up in US federal bankruptcy and criminal courts. In a non-Presidential election year, Francis’ push may be the “turnout difference” in some states, especially among fundamentalist and Latino Catholic voters.
Significantly, Francis this week has shocked many Catholics, including his usually devoted Jesuit cheerleader, Vatican expert, Tom Reese, at the National Catholic Reporter (NCR), by Francis’ appointments of disgraced Cardinals Sodano and Danneels to the “Family Synod of Fathers Without Kids”. …
Francis then shocked even more Catholics by selecting, for two key priest child abuse “prevention positions”, conflicted former canon lawyers to Boston’s disgraced Cardinal Law and Chicago’s much criticized Cardinal George.
Fr. Robert Oliver, Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer, will be, in effect, chief of staff for Law’s Boston successor, Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s illusory Vatican “child abuse commission”, and (b) Fr. Robert Geisinger, a Chicago Jesuit, will be new Vatican “chief prosecutor”. Geisinger has had strong ties as a canon lawyer to both Chicago Archdiocesan and Jesuit leaders, some of whom reportedly had extensive histories of secretly protecting priest sex abusers.
One US Jesuit province alone paid in 2011 over $160 million to settle priest child abuse claims. US Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, then even objected to a Jesuit, Fr. Conroy, being appointed US House of Representatives’ chaplain, only to be overruled by Republican leader, John Boehner, with strong support for Boehner’s selection from a NCR editor
The Vatican chief prosecutor position is derived from the absurd legal claim, based on the 1929 corrupt bargain between Mussolini and Pope Pius XI, that the 110 acre campus in Rome used for a few hundred Catholic religious officials is a separate nation. This is a cynical and conflicted “self policing” position that, in effect, aims often to protect in secrecy alleged child abusing clerics, like Pope John Paul II’s favored Polish/Dominican Republic Archbishop Wesolowski, from national criminal prosecutions abroad that would likely implicate more Vatican officials in public legal proceedings. …
On Cardinal O’Malley
As to Pope Francis’ new “papal protector of children”, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, recent NCR comments of Jim Jenkins are revealing. Reportedly, Jenkins, a prominent California psychologist with some abuse survivor patients, battled with Cardinal Levada, beginning a decade ago when Jenkins was on Levada’s San Francisco’s Archdiocesan child protection board. Jenkins observes about O’Malley, in pertinent part:
“Hierarchs in the Vatican are only motivated by power and it’s twisted sister, money. This is a typical maneuver by Cardinal Sean O’Malley. He says the pious thing in public but in private, behind the scenes, he makes sure that the fix is in. This is the way that O’Malley has conducted himself ever since he became a bishop – it’s the way he has climbed the clerical ladder. O’Malley is the chief Vatican cleaner-upper who sweeps up after the elephant parade of abusers. … “
Jenkins adds in another comment:
“Really, with Sean O’Malley – the most political creature I have ever met in my whole life – in charge of this commission, we shouldn’t get our hopes up by any means. O’Malley has greased his climb up the clerical ladder cleaning-up [as in covering-up] sexual abuse scandals in every stop along his career as a prelate. It is what O’Malley does best. That is the reason the Vatican dons made him a cardinal in the first place. He does his job well, and looks really good in that Franciscan habit – right out of central casting.”
“It is illogical for us to expect much from Papa Francesco on the sexual abuse front. Bergoglio could never have risen to the rank of cardinal-archbishop of Buenos Aires, then get elected pope, without the support of the most reactionary members of the hierarchy [Think Ratzinger!].”
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