UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
* It has been a very tough 24 hours for a weary Pope Francis. He is a 78 year old celibate bachelor, yet he seems to like to pontificate, with little or no input from female advisers, as if he is also “infallible” about families He also claims to care about innocent children, yet he often seems almost oblivious, if not indifferent, about them. The pope, in effect, just indicated to 1,000 families to keep having more Catholic babies in overpopulated and impoverished Manila, and, for good measure, also to frown on same sex marriages. What is really up here?
* Meanwhile, an Irish priest prophet, Fr. Shay Cullen, in effect, just pointed the finger on worldwide CNN at Manila’s Catholic hierarchy for failing to protect street children, including those reportedly horribly locked up to make sure they were off camera during the pope’s Manila visit.
* Fr. Cullen had earlier in 2012 discussed his work, over several decades with thousands of sexually abused Filipino children, on USA PBS-TV’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, indicating even then that the Filipino Catholic hierarchy appeared more concerned with curtailing contraception then with curtailing child sex trafficking and abuse. It is inexplicable why Francis did not meet with Fr. Cullen ,who has testified as an expert about child sexual exploitation before a an international relations committee of the US Congress.. Please see:
* [PBS]
* As expected, Manila’s Cardinal Tagle took Francis for a tour of a showpiece center for street children next to Manila’s lavish Cathedral, unlike the harsher centers that many of the estimated 500,000 Filipino street children may be confined to when not living on the street. In a statement issued after the visit, the center said that by taking the time to meet “many children who faced horrors of the street like begging, violence, drugs (and) prostitution,” Pope Francis demonstrated “that he is the Pope of the forgotten.” Really? What about the street children Fr. Cullen brought up on CNN yesterday and in the [Daily Mail] ? How is Pope Francis’ by banning contraception helping these children and their families? What is he thinking?
* And Archbishop John Nienstedt just had his Minneapolis Archdiocese file for bankruptcy, surely with Vatican concurrence. This will likely assure delays in, if not denials of, the delivery of overdue justice for numerous survivors of priest child sexual abuse. It also helps Nienstedt and his colleagues, conveniently, avoid having to testify under oath soon in some messy child abuse trials.
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