UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Kevin O’Brien
I just posted about what T. S. Eliot might have called Riot in the Cathedral, the situation in Osorno, Chile, where a mob of almost 1,000 protesters tried to stop their new bishop from being ordained.
In that post I mentioned the man who started this trouble, Fr. Karadima.
I just now discovered that Rod Dreher mentioned Karadima in an update to one of his posts in April of last year. It’s worth quoting this update in full, as well as the observations made by Adam DeVille that Rod includes on what it would take to reform this problem, and (by implication) why we’ve gotten to where we are.
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Here are comments from links posted in the comments section. First, someone put up this essay by Lee Podles, the orthodox Catholic writer who has done deep investigation on the scandal. Excerpt:
Francis is a fixer. Whenever a parish or diocese experience a disaster, a fixer is sent in, as O’Malley was to Boston. Francis is the papal fixer. He is changing the subject from sexual abuse by his charm, hominess, and willingness to let people indulge their minor vices without a censoring voice from the clergy.
A fixer differs from a reformer in that a fixer does not address the roots; he is not radical. He merely papers over the problem, merely puts a poultice on the cancer.
Karadima is a terribly abusive priest in Chile. The archbishop of Santiago told him to stop saying mass in Public. Karadima ignored the order, and photos of him saying mass were tweeted to tens of thousands of people.
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