Is the Pope Panicking over Sex Scandals, Political Polls, or Both?

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
January 26, 2013

http://christiancatholicism.com/is-the-pope-panicking-over-sex-scandals-political-polls-or-both/

[]

Meanwhile, the scandal is seriously harming the Vatican politically, legally, reputationally and financially. Government officials in the USA, Ireland, Italy, Australia, the Philippines, Germany and other nations increasingly challenge papal positions, including on child protection and contraception, sensing evidentally a weakened papacy. If the Pope continues to lose more political clout, he will also lose his power to exchange with political leaders his electoral support for special privileges and subsidies for the Catholic Church, as is already happening in Ireland and will probably soon happen in Australia, the USA and even in his fatherland, Germany.

The new appointment as chief of staff to President Obama of Denis McDonough, the highly regarded brother of a senior hierarchical canon lawyer from the Minneapolis-St. Paul diocese, with its extensive priest sex abuse claims, suggests the President will know well what is going on in the USA with its more than 100,000 estimated survivors of priest sex abuse. President Obama has already spoken out strongly against child sex abuse in organizational settings; now he may step up and do more than talk about it.

Given this, one would have expected the Vatican to try to address the priest scandals seriously and sensibly, and not merely with cosmetic changes and stepped-up spin. Instead, the Vatican seems to be hardening its defenses of the status quo hoping to survive the scandal, very likely a doomed strategy that has failed completely so far. What’s going on?

Current Papal Strategy

The Pope claims a unique divine authority over a mystical Eucharist administered only by low paid celibate male priests managed ruthlessly by his hand picked and well paid Cardinals and Bishops who serve, like him, for life. As such, the Pope claims accountability only to God and demands strict obedience from his hierarchy, priests and laity. Catholics are expected, no questions asked, to donate at the weekly Eucharist Mass and to accept blindly whatever the Pope and his self-serving Catechism say, even when the Bible, history and/or conscience clearly indicate otherwise.

Advantages of Current Papal Strategy:

The advantages are obvious. Wealth, power and privilege for the Pope, his corrupt Vatican Cardinal clique and their subservient worldwide hierarchy, with no accountability. It is great work if you can get it.

Disadvantages of Current Papal Strategy:

[]

Potential Solution:

The solution is simple. Just follow the recent advice that Milan’s beloved and respected Jesuit scriptural scholar, Cardinal Martini, indicated in his final testament, namely, close the 200 year gap in the Church’s structure and enter the democratic era without the Vatican medieval monarchical clique. The monarchical structure is not only contrary to Jesus’ explicit mandates and to early Catholics’ practice, it is too inflexible and ineffective to work in a global environment. The current inability of the Vatican to head off the Bank of Italy’s hold on Vatican credit card operations is just the latest evidence of Vatican managerial incompetence.

The Cardinals will soon meet to elect a new Pope. They can easily instead just postpone the election until a broadbased meeting of lay and clerical, male and female, Catholics can meet to decide on and adopt needed structural and other reforms, as happened at the first council in Jerusalem described in the New Testament. All that is necessary to get this started is for a sufficient minority of the worldwide voting Cardinals to vote for a candidate that the Vatican Cardinal clique opposes. That would deny any candidate getting a sufficient required majority, thereby necessitating the postponement of the election. This year may be the Cardinals’ last chance to clean up the hierarchy before the prosecutors arrive to pick up the Vatican’s secret archives. Once that happens, the hierarchy will have lost control, as is now happening in Australia and to some extent in Los Angeles.

Of course, a more sensible approach would be for a sufficient number of voting Cardinals to begin soon, before the next papal election is scheduled, publicly calling for a representative meeting, to be held before the next papal election, of lay and clerical worldwide Catholics, at a location far away from Rome, to consider needed reforms. This would avoid some of the humiliation of, and browbeating from, the Vatican Cardinals that would surely occur as a result of a failed and expensive papal election conclave. Once Vatican Cardinals see some other Cardinals calling for such a representative meeting to be held first, the Vatican Cardinals would be hard pressed to resist it.

The Catholic Church has during the past decade survived with a severely ill Pope propped up by the Vatican clique and an octogenarian Pope dressed by his sceptical butler. The Catholic Church can get by with no Pope for a year or two, while it gets its own house in order.

Alternatively, the Cardinals can continue to do nothing but more of the same and elect another papal puppet to serve the interests of the corrupt Vatican Cardinal clique. If that happens, outside governments and their prosecutors will soon make the needed changes for them, as some in the hierarchy likely soon face criminal prosecutions and removal from office. Either way, the Spirit will likely soon return the Catholic Church to the consensual form Jesus and his first disciples left behind for 300 years, and discard the coercive one Constantine and his successors imposed and left behind for 1,700 year until now.