UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Charles J. Reid Jr.
We are not moving gently or confidently toward the next conclave. We are staggering toward it. The worldwide Catholic Church, in just the last few weeks, has had to confront some truly ugly scandals.
Consider: In late January, the new Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, had to order his predecessor, Roger Cardinal Mahony, to cease public ministry following the release of thousands of pages of personnel files detailing the Cardinal’s role in the cover-up of priestly molestation cases going back to the 1980s. Over the vigorous objections of Los Angeles’ Catholics, Mahony insists on voting in the forthcoming conclave. Then, on Feb. 22, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh and the only British cardinal of voting age, resigned from office and indicated that he had no plans to vote in the conclave. His decision followed complaints made by several priests that the Cardinal had made unwanted sexual advances towards them. Earlier in February, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, published the story that Pope Benedict’s resignation was finally forced by a report made by three trusted cardinals detailing acts of sexual misconduct by Vatican priests. The report, whose contents remain unknown even though its existence has been more or less confirmed, will be delivered to the new pope for, it is hoped, swift action.
Can any good come of this? It is too much to expect sweeping reforms. Women priests, for instance, are simply not in the cards. Still, the situation facing the Church is sufficiently grave that we are entitled to hope for some dramatic actions. The Church — by which I mean not Catholics alone but all Christians — can only pray that at least some of the following steps are taken:
1. The Church’s government must become less monarchical.
Such a move would be in keeping with the progress of Church history since the latter 19th century. Prior to 1870, the pope was both the spiritual head of the worldwide Catholic Church and the temporal ruler of a large swatch of central Italy (the papal states). With the reunification of Italy in 1870, the papacy’s temporal rule was reduced to Vatican City.
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