UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody
Posted on April 10, 2016 by Betty Clermont
The pope’s “apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (Latin for Joy of Love) On Love in the Family” was presented on Friday. The document is more than 60,000 words. Jesus spoke 2026 words in Gospels and the four Gospels combined are 64,766 words. The pontiff stated his own conclusions based on two synods (meetings) of bishops from around the world held in October 2014 and October 2015. Both were closed to the public and the press.
In his exhortation, Pope Francis urged that his prelates and priests be more “welcoming” to those who are in what the Church refers to as “irregular” unions – that is not married by a priest. He changed no doctrine. Due to the “invincible ambiguity that characterizes the pronouncements of Pope Francis … anyone will be able to dig out from among the 200 pages of the document the passage that he likes most, and act accordingly,” wrote veteran Vatican reporter, Sandro Magister. Another Vatican insider: “the pope’s studied ambiguity [leads] each to find something in the pope’s text to back up his thesis.” Another experienced Vatican reporter, John L. Allen Jr., stated the document “changes little on the ground.”
For example, Pope Francis recently extended the Holy Thursday foot-washing ritual to include women which was already being done for decades if the pastor approved. The pope’s appointed prefect in charge of liturgy announced soon after Pope Francis’ statement that no priest was obligated to include women.
Disregarding the suffering and deaths in families caused by Catholic officials, both synods concentrated on the question of whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics should be allowed to receive communion, an issue left unsettled by the pope in “Joy of Love.” According to New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, most divorced Catholics who ignore their Church’s imperative that they must obtain an annulment before remarrying have either left the Church or receive communion anyway. The comparatively few who broke the remarriage prohibition yet obey the communion rule have learned to live with it.
Pope Francis Can, but Won’t, Prevent Further Child Sex Abuse
Within the first six months of his pontificate, Pope Francis found the allegations of child sex abuse by two of his bishops credible enough to secretly dismiss them from their positions without notifying the civil authorities or the public.
Bishop Gabino Miranda Melgarejo of Ayacucho, a poor Andean region in southern Peru, is still at large as best as I can tell.
Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, the pope’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic, accused of oral sex abuse of poor street boys, remained a free man for over a year during which time he acquired more than 100,000 computer files of pornography with disturbing photos of children who were likely victims of human trafficking. The Italian newspaper, Il Corriere della Serra, reported that Wesolowski was not brought inside the Vatican until “there was a serious risk that the ambassador would be arrested on Italian territory at the request of the Dominican authorities and then extradited.” Wesolowski died mysteriously just before a Vatican trial would have brought the above facts to public attention.
Other than meeting with a handful of his Church’s more than 100,000 sex abuse victims, Pope Francis has done nothing to console the survivors or prevent the sexual assault of thousands of children in the future. The commission he formed in response to rare media criticism in December 2013, dismissed the only member who expressed any criticism. The pope still hasn’t provided adequate funding for the commission.
During the in-flight interview from Mexico back to Rome on Feb. 16, Pope Francis said that a bishop who moves a pedophile priest to another parish should resign. Since then, a French cardinal and Italian bishop said this meant that they were under no obligation to report the clerical child sex abuse which happened under their watch to civilian authorities. Under Pope Francis’ leadership, pedophile priests are still being moved from the United States and Europe to less-developed countries.
By his most recent remarks, Pope Francis signaled his prelates around the world that he would continue to do nothing to prevent them from, or hold them accountable for, aiding, abetting and covering-up these crimes and then persecuting the victims and families.
This was the sickening and systemic pattern revealed not only by the movie, Spotlight, but also by grand jury reports in Philadelphia, Westchester County and Suffolk County (NY) and attorney general reports in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine. The Pennsylvania Attorney General released a grand jury report on March 1 2016, on an investigation of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese showing the same appalling tactics as the prior reports.
All stated that revising the statutes-of-limitations would be the most effective way to prevent future child sex abuse because many victims do not speak up until later in life, citing shame or fear, to expose their tormentors.
When Pope Francis was in the US in September, he praised his bishops for their “courage” in handling the scandal, and consoled them for how stressful it had been. The pope ignored “the litigation and legislative tactics of his bishops” which have denied all American victims of child sex abuse access to justice. “It is the bishops who have blocked any kind of meaningful reform,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York who studies statutes of limitations. “The bishops and the pope have a lot of explaining to do as to why it would be in their mission to keep all of these victims from seeking justice.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
