Will Cardinals Try to Delay Benedict Xvi's Choice for Next Pope?

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
January 29, 2013

http://christiancatholicism.com/will-cardinals-try-to-delay-benedict-xvis-choice-for-next-pope/

There has been one papal election in three decades. The next Pope could reign for decades. Current voting Cardinals were selected almost entirely either by Benedict XVI or by John Paul II while Benedict served as his key advisor. Benedict, with his Cardinal appointments, increased substantially the overall voting percentage held by Vatican based Cardinals. Significantly, he also eliminated in 2007 the majority vote “deadlock breaking” vote provision that John Paul II had introduced in 1996. This now effectively gives a one-third minority of voting Cardinals a veto over a papal election candidate, enhancing the power of the Vatican Cardinals’ voting bloc. It also helps explain, to me at least, how Benedict got sufficient Cardinals’ votes to be elected Pope in 2005.

Most importantly, however, it also gives other minority voting blocs of Cardinals an opportunity to block an election until a candidate is proposed that is acceptable to them. For more explanation, please see my statement, “Is the Pope Panicking Over Sex Scandals, or Political Polls, or Both?” at http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-gg .

It seems evident, and even understandable, that Benedict is preparing for his successor, including with his Cardinal and other appointments, such as the new conservative head of the Vatican’s doctrinal commission and pro-cleric chief canon law prosecutor. Benedict has established with the Catechism and the new Liturgy his personal view of doctrine and ritual as the “law of the land”.

By beatifying John Paul II, Benedict has put a “mystical” aura on their joint program to entrench even deeper the Vatican clique’s dominant control of future doctrine and discipline, most evident currently in the ruthless inquisition of Fr. Tony Flannery and the priests union in Ireland. It seemed unthinkable that the Vatican could sink the Catholic Church’s reputation much lower in Ireland, but the tone-deaf Vatican clique has managed to do so.

The current problem, however, is that Benedict and his immediate predecessor have made a real mess of the Catholic Church. He has failed to resolve in any significant way the priest sexual abuse scandal. Apparently, the Vatican’s child abuse legal defense is overseen by a sole practioner from California.

Nine months now after firing the head of the Vatican Bank in the midst of financial scandals, Benedict has not replaced him. Meanwhile, the Vatican is incurring losses daily from its tourist business due apparently to related banking restrictions from the Bank of Italy. Apparently, the same California sole practioner is also advising the Vatican on its European banking law problems.

Given this track record of failures, how many Cardinals really want to leave their financial and legal fates over the next few decades to the papal candidate selected by Benedict and his incompetent Vatican clique. The next couple of years will surely see an increase in international criminal investigations of child abuse and financial misdeeds.

The major Australia abuse investigation commission is just the beginning. President Obama will face increasing demands to establish a comparable commission as the still ongoing LA Archdiocesean revelations shock almost everyone. Moreover, beginning next Monday evening, February 4, HBO will begin airing initially in both English and Spanish the award winning documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa”. This powerful and moving documentary tells of the alleged sexual abuse over several decades by a single Milwaukee priest of over 200 deaf boys. It also points out clearly the Vatican’s failures to curtail this. HBO reaches over 25 million subscribers in the US and many more in over 150 other countries.

Cardinals have a choice. They can wait until the next papal election is announced and go to Rome and push for their candidate against a well prepared Vatican clique that has shown little ability and/or interest in addressing authentically and effectively the abuse and financial scandals. Alternatively, Cardinals can now call publicly for a conference far away from Rome of worldwide and representative lay and clerical, male and female Catholics to address returning promptly to the Church’s consensual leadership structure that Jesus and his disciples left behind for 300 years, before Constantine and his successors commandeered the Church and imposed a coercive hierarchical structure that continues to now.

Interestingly, Mea Maxima Culpa shows clearly how and why the hierarchical structure fails clerical and lay Catholics, especially children. If Cardinals prefer to wait and take their chances resisting the Vatican clique in Rome under the pressure to announce a new Pope, they are very ill advised, in my view as an experienced international lawyer. Also, if Cardinals choose maintaining the status quo, they had better prepare to spend even more time and treasure over the next few years on their lawyers, including civil, bankruptcy and criminal lawyers.