UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Shocked Cardinals two years ago elected Pope Francis evidently to save their necks, by containing the financial and sex scandals that exploded under ex-Pope Benedict and by regaining powerful political protectors, especially a Vatican friendly US president preferably named Bush, and even adding as supporters Russian and Chinese leaders. For almost 2,000 years, most popes’ top priority has been securing protection from powerful men from Constantine to Mussolini and Hitler. Francis has media managed well and expensively for awhile with mixed messages, vague promises and photo ops, but the “mystical curtain” is being lifted, especially by brave abuse survivors and persistent reformers who refuse to quit. Francis appealingly called on Catholics to “create a mess” but, instead, by his slick approach, he has created his own expanding mess, which may be his last! Many lifetime indoctrinated Catholics may behave as “dumb sheep” at times, I did, but few of them in the Internet Age remain as “blind sheep”.
Until now, the Vatican has mostly avoided various national prosecutors.The pope and his high priced consultants and lawyers have also so far buried the financial scandals in over hyped committees that he still controls unaccountably, most significantly with no public audits of the Vatican’s own wealth even on the horizon. Now at least four principled and impatient lay members of the pope’s “go slow” sex abuse commission, that was intended apparently by the Vatican mainly to diffuse the sex abuse scandal at least until after next year’s crucial USA presidential elections, are publicly balking at their inconsequential, even illusory, roles. Papal apologists are predictably trying to isolate them as “lone actors”, yet even a cursory review of worldwide Catholics’ opinions indicate these prophetic members speak for hundreds of millions of outraged Catholics who care about protecting children. Hopefully, these bold members will continue speaking out publicly from their commission pulpit to press the pope either to fix the commission or to fire them publicly to make clear the pope’s dissembling delay strategy.
The sex abuse commission fix would include at a minimum more and public meetings and the prompt review of unaccountable bishops like Chile’s Barros. The fix needs also to include the addition of internationally respected abuse scandal expert, Fr. Thomas Doyle, to the commission as some members and many Catholics earlier urged strongly. Enough with the pope’s “cherry picked” safe selections, many of whom are sitting by like papal puppets while the pope protects his old acquaintance Barros! The pope is unlikely to fire these honest commissioners and risk undermining his well crafted facade, especially with his important visits to the USA and the UN quickly approaching.
Francis found time to meet with fundamentalist USA anti-contraception and anti-gay marriage crusaders to help his USA bishops please their low tax billionaire donors in the 2014 USA congressional elections. Will he now make time to meet with his own commission members in other than a photo op? He better find time to meet with them or be prepared to face the major fallout if fails to address honestly the major sex abuse crisis he faces. The fallout will likely spread to the USA by the time Francis visits there in a few months, as discussed below. At least two of the abuse commission members, Marie Collins and Peter Saunders, to their credit are pressing hard to meet with the absolute monarch, Francis, about his appointment of a Chilean bishop Barros recently, a major Francis blunder, as well as about the sex abuse commission’s future role as an effective group, as reported recently here in the National Catholic Reporter. These prophetic Catholics refuse to be used as mere showpiece pawns, as the Vatican seeks to bury the child abuse scandal once again with a “classic delay tactic” advisory commission that superficially paints over the scandal with staged, secretive and scripted meetings semi-annually run by disgraced Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer, Fr. Robert Oliver.
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