UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
LISTEN UP, PLEASE, ALL VOTING CARDINALS!
If Cardinals in a few weeks elect a new Pope without first getting a public commitment from him to convene promptly a non-Curial commission to address specified structural and pastoral reforms, they will miss a unique opportunity to save the Catholic Church from likely collapse and themselves from possible prosecution. The Vatican Cardinals clique, with ex-Cardinal Ratzinger a stone’s throw away, will then just finish sinking the Vatican Titanic that much faster, amidst the seemingly unending and substantially unaddressed scandals of child abuse cover-ups, sexual blackmail, financial corruption and managerial incompetence.
No matter who is elected, he will like his last two predecessors be just another pawn of the Vatican clique. When the other Cardinals return home, it will be business as usual, as clearly happened in the half-century following the Second Vatican Council.
These are just some of the prospective challenges facing the next Pope, who will surely be bogged down for years in ongoing worldwide governmental investigations, civil litigation and criminal prosecutions of the Church’s hierarchy that are now beginning to mushroom. These challenges will be compounded by the heavy burden of the dark legacy left by ex-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, so concisely summarized this week by one of his inquisitorial victims, Dominican priest, Matthew Fox, a student of key Vatican II theologian, M.-D. Chenu, accessible here:
Here’s what well-advised Cardinals who want to survive can and should do, in my view as an experienced international lawyer and lifelong Catholic.
First, they must read my unheeded advice to Pope Benedict XVI in the Washington Post in 2010, accessible here:
[Washington Post] …
We all have a moral obligation to protect children and signing a petition is a simple, yet potentially effective, way towards meeting that obligation. Please take a minute and sign it at:
[Click here for the petition]
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