Mea Maxima Culpa, the Pope, the President and Our Children

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
February 5, 2013

http://christiancatholicism.com/mea-maxima-culpa-the-pope-the-president-and-our-children/

[Click here for the petition.]

Sexually violating an innocent child in one’s care is unthinkable. Sexually violating more than 200 deaf children in one’s care is beyond unthinkable! HBO’s current award winning documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa” shows, horribly, that this is what a lone Milwaukee priest allegedly did. The Vatican, its complicit hierarchical subordinates and subservient local prosecutors evidentally failed repeatedly to curtail it.

Moreover, too many reliable reports, catalogued extensively and accessible to all at BishopAccountability.org, make it clear that the unthinkable has been, and continues to be, pervasive in religious organizations, especially in my Catholic Church, in the USA, as well as in Australia and so many other countries.

This revealing documentary captures the common pattern found in too many U.S. Catholic dioceses, from Los Angeles and San Diego in the West and Philly, New York and Boston in the East and many cities in between. While papal apologists try to obfuscate the pattern in mystical smokescreens, it is mainly and simply about ACCESS, OVERSIGHT and ACCOUNTABILITY.

The recurring pattern is:

(1) EASY ACCESS: Spirtual “power” enables many sexual predators to abuse young children very easily;

(2) BAD OVERSIGHT: Religious leaders, like bishops, frequently fail to curtail the abusers, who then abuse others; and

(3) NO ACCOUNTABILITY: Local prosecutors bend to bishops’ political power permitting abusers to continue abusing.

ACCESS and OVERSIGHT are mainly under bishops’ control. ACCOUNTABILITY is mainly under your control, if you exercise it.

In only 30 seconds you can help change this continuing pattern by applying your political clout. Just click on, as many others are now doing, and sign the petition to President Obama: http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-investigate-child-sexual-abuse-by-priests-rabbis-religious-leaders

If you haven’t signed, why not? Please reconsider and do so now. You could help save a child from “soul murder”. If you have signed, thank you. Now consider asking others to sign as well.

The petition will stay up until President Obama steps up. If too few sign, he may just disregard it. Catholic political leaders, from Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Leon Panetta, Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo, to John Boehner, Chris Christie, Peter King, Rick Santorum and Rudy Guiliani, have been shamefully too often silent. Perhaps the President can teach these Catholics how to be better Christians.

Similarly, so-called Catholic reform groups, like Voice of the Faithful, Call To Action and the Association for the Rights of Catholics, are silent on a Federal investigation commission despite my requests for support, apparently preferring to sing Kumbaya and let the Spirit do the heavy lifting! Is it any wonder the bishops so arrogantly behave with impunity if this is their reform opposition? After all, children do not donate to these groups.

Moreover, it is clear from the comments of some of the early signers that support for the petition in itself is helping some survivors cope and is giving them hope. So please sign it now.

ACCESS risks can be reduced by educating children better and by selecting religious employees more carefully. The Church, prodded by its liability insurers, has improved education. The growing priest shortage, intensified by the Pope’s needlessly excluding many available and willing married and women priests from the selection pool, is leading bishops to accept more questionable seminarians and to retain more predatory priests, almost guaranteeing the priest child abuse risks will remain, if not increase.

Money is most important to the Vatican clique. Low cost celibate male priests are the hierarchy’s main source of profit, “selling” the unique Eucharist weekly at Mass and offering VIP treatment for large donors . Priests must be obtained, retained and replaced upon retirement, it appears, no matter what risks their replacement and retention may present to children. The Los Angeles, Philly and Boston Archdiocesan criminal files make this crystal clear repeatedly.

OVERSIGHT is presently very inadequate, as the same files clearly show. Bishops are not really subject to independent audits and know they can get away with taking chances on questionable priests, even if innocent children pay for the bishops’ bad bets. Overly trusting Catholics immorally, yes, immorally (!), just keep giving to pay for the bishops’ mistakes and to help the bishops to avoid prosecution for child endangerment. Meanwhile, bishops continue to risk recklessly Catholic children’s security, as they ruthlessly close churches and schools unaffordable mainly due to the bishops’ $3 billion failed abuse prevention strategy in the USA.

ACCOUNTABILITY is generally absent at present. Local legislators, mayors and prosecutors are too often unwilling to take on the local bishops, with their financial, legal and media clout. Los Angeles, Philly, Kansas City, Boston, Manchester, Chicago, Miami, Bridgeport, New York, Long Island, Kansas City, San Diego, St. Louis, Portland, and many other cities’ priest child abuse scandals make this sickenly clear. It is a national crisis and requires a Federal resolution.

For over three decades, Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor, John Paul II, have gone through cynical public relations motions, while countless Catholic children have been raped or otherwise sexually violated by priests with impunity. Pope Benedict’s “rap sheet” is long. It includes his failures to act to stop abuse in Munich and Regensburg in the 1970′s, to his numerous failures to act as a Vatican Cardinal to his recent appointment of one of Cardinal Law’s aides as chief Vatican prosecutor and his sacking of an independent abuse investigator in Germany. The German Shepherd has fooled no one with his occasional media spectaculars with a few carefully selected abuse survivors.

Surprisingly, Pope Benedict for the first time just publicly shamed a voting Cardinal, Mahony of Los Angeles. The Pope’s pawn, Archbishop Gomez, publicly referred to Mahony’s child abuse cover-up conduct as “evil”. This unprecedented and selective public papal condemnation, in my view as an experienced retired lawyer, significantly increases the risk for Mahony that he will yet still be criminally prosecuted, possibly for obstruction of justice or perjury. Prosecutors now have a papal blessing to go after Mahony.

Yet the Pope has also just permitted Ireland’s voting Cardinal Brady to exit gracefully, without papal condemnation. Brady was reportedly involved in priest abuse cover-ups at least as “evil” as Mahony. Why the different treatment for two Cardinals?

The likeliest explanation is current papal election politics. Conservative Cardinals in the Vatican clique, including American ones like Burke, Law, Stafford and Rigali, and their right-wing U.S. Republican contributors, have for years targeted Mahony, often an ally of U.S. Democratic political leaders. Mahony’s support last year, of the Democrats’ immigration plan, likely undercut with Latino voters the Pope’s anti-contraception crusade, thereby giving Obama a re-election victory. Payback time has begun in hierarchical hardball!

Clearly, Mahony, who appears to deserve to be indicted for his child endangerment misconduct, was and is an obstacle to the Vatican clique’s efforts to maintain Vatican domination of the Catholic Church worldwide, through groups like Opus Dei that Gomez and convicted criminal Kansas City Bishop Finn are members of. Brady, on the other hand, supports domination by the Vatican clique, as evidenced by his acquiescence in the current unchallenged attack on one of Ireland’s most respected priests, Fr. Tony Flannery, by the Pope’s new German Inquisitor. Flannery’s brother is a top ally to Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who has strongly opposed papal domination in Ireland.

The signal is clear. The Vatican is prepared, it appears, to use selectively the criminal prosecution risks inherent in the worldwide abuse scandal to intimidate voting Cardinals who oppose the current Vatican clique’s candidate to be next Pope. Significantly, Mahony was not offered Vatican immunity as Cardinal Law was. Other Cardinals will surely note that.

Since most Cardinals likely have been involved in some cover-up activity, this election blackmail is a significant threat. It also is a compelling reason for Cardinals to call now for a pre-emptive worldwide conference of lay and clerical, male and female Catholic representatives to be held before the next papal election conclave is announced, far away from Rome, as explained in more detail at: http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-gW .

If Cardinals do not act pre-emptively to protect themselves from the Vatican clique’s picking them off as they are trying to do to Mahony, they are what my oldest friend, a Neapolitan, calls, “stunat’”.

Children in the USA cannot be used as leverage in a papal election. The Pope and local political leaders and prosecutors have repeatedly failed to curtail effectively priest sexual abuse of children. The President has the clout needed to curtail this abuse and he must now step-up and use it.

Believing parents and innocent children have too often been betrayed by religious leaders they trusted too much. The obscene revelations of child sexual abuse from Boston, Philly, Milwaukee, Kansas City, St.Louis, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, Manchester, Salt Lake City and many other U.S. cities confirm this cancer cannot be curtailed effectively by local political leaders and prosecutors. They seem frequently incapable and/or unwilling to apply or amend a hodgepot of inconsistent laws, often outdated and inadequate, to powerful religious organizations.

Of course, well paid and/or brainwashed papal apologists will try to pivot from the documentary’s horrible truths and will castigate it as anti-Catholic, when it is only trying to advance Jesus’ clear mandate to protect children.

Instead of being made to account for child endangerment on their watch, leaders like Cardinals Mahony, Law, Levada, Rigali, Egan and, earlier Bevilacqua, sail off into well funded retirements, leaving high priced lawyers behind to clean up the mess they leave behind. Abuse survivors often must fend for themselves. Trusting Catholics, whose children were abused or at risk of priest sex abuse and whose churches and schools are ruthlessly being closed, are then expected to fund the billions spent by the Catholic hierarchy on a flawed and shameful legal strategy aimed mainly at protecting the hierarchy from prosecution.

The decisive Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has just established a major investigation commission into the sexual abuse of children in organizational settings, by priests, rabbis, ministers, teachers, nuns, coaches, scout leaders and similar custodial persons. The establishment of her commission has already had much positive impact and has led to many admissions by the Catholic hierarchy. In polls, the commission has gotten the support of almost 90% of Australians. A U.S. poll on establishing a Federal investigation commission would likely have similar results.

Since many of the survivors of organizational sexual abuse end up needing governmental financial support, the U.S. is already spending considerable amounts to help survivors of predatory priests, which is as it should be. It would be better, as well, to reduce the number, and extent, of the suffering survivors by the Federal government identifying through an investigation commission effective actions and legislation to deter these sexual crimes more effectively than many corrupt local governments and compromised organizations have done so far.

President Obama recently said the first duty of government is to protect children from violence. Now he must step up and do so by establishing this special national commission. Raping children is surely as horrific as shooting them and both forms of violence must be curtailed now.

Please ask others through Facebook, Twitter and other social media to sign the petition as well. It is little to ask to help protect children.

For more details, please read my statements on the top by clicking on to them. Also, you might consider searching relevant key terms on Google.