A Next & Ex-pope: Infallible and Immune ? What’s up ?

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
February 12, 2013

http://christiancatholicism.com/a-next-ex-pope-infallible-and-immune-whats-up/

At what moment will Pope Benedict XVI lose his infallibility and his soverign immunity? Apparently, on February 28 when he formally resigns. Perhaps, the historically unsupportable claims of papal infallibility will cease soon. As to the lack of legal immunity, since Joseph Ratzinger can be sued and prosecuted after February 28, he apparently will follow Cardinal Law’s lead and stay safely on papal grounds evading subpoenas.

Ratzinger’s new Vatican quarters have been undergoing renovation apparently as his retirement base reportedly since the last nuns were removed in November. The editor of the forthcoming complete edition of his works, Archbishop Mueller, is now on site as chief Inquisitor at the CDF. Cardinal Law’s ex-aide is in as chief prosecutor. His handsome aide was just made a Bishop. The Pope is ready. He can now focus on his last written effort to push his narrow views, on his music and on dealing with prosecutors’ requests. He has Cardinal Sodano and their subservient Cardinals on site to continue to cover-up the sex abuse and financial scandals until they install their hand-picked and subservient successor, God forbid. Why didn’t Ratzinger think of this five years ago?

If you took a time capsule ride back to 1787 Versailles, you would be struck by the ruthless and unaccountable style of the French King. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic James Madison was drafting a Constitution that prohibited kings and provided for accountable and term-limited rulers who could be impeached for cause by elected representatives. By 1918, the idea of accountability had swept through Europe, except in Vatican City where an absolute monarchy still is the rule with a self perpetuating papal clique that can lock up a butler in a closet-sized room for months without real due process. Unless the imperial coercive structure is changed back to the Catholic consensual structure Jesus and his first disciples left behind, it matters little who is Pope. The insightful butler clearly understood this.

Yes, Cardinals likely will now go to Rome, but they must demand first that a conference be convened soon, before any election occurs, to be held far away from Rome to address seriously and comprehensively the Church’s major problems, which are just getting worse with the recent decades of papal inattention and will continue to get worse if Ratzinger and Sodano elect their man. The Cardinals should realize that they could be next to be shamed, like Cardinal Mahony just was, unless they act to change the status quo.

Catholics are not waiting on Cardinals. Australian and Irish Catholics have already gotten their governments to act.Now many from different faiths and no faith all across the USA, and even worldwide, including some of those harmed by the abuse of the deaf victims in Milwaukee, have already signed my petition calling on President Obama to step up. They have indicated they have had enough with the domination of local prosecutors and legislators by the Catholic hierarchy and its well paid apologists and lawyers. More signatures, including yours, will help accelerate the establishment of the U.S. national investigation commission, especially important now when the Vatican may be at a turning point.

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Please, as well, ask those you respect and who value children to sign it also. If you are active in a U.S. advocacy group, like SNAP, CTA, VOTF, ARCC, Dignity, CORPUS, WomenPriests, ask your leadership to support the petition. Similarly reticent, so-called progressive Catholic voices, like the National Catholic Reporter and Commonweal, seem dumbfounded by the positive prospects of President Obama establishing a U.S. national investigation commission. They must now take a stand.

What are they all waiting for? Blogging, writing, talking and prayer, however admirable and well intentioned, have barely influenced the Vatican clique and their subservient U.S. Bishops to date and will likely do little more in the future, certainly in the near term as more children are raped by priests, while duped Catholics continue to contribute enabling compicit bishops to protect priest pedophiles and predators perpetually.

I have separately proposed that President Obama consider appointing First Lady, Michelle Obama, to chair the new Obama commission. She is well respected as a Harvard lawyer and devoted mother. She would be an ideal choice with her established credibility if she were willing to accept the appointment.

The First Lady of the USA could consult with another effective former practicing lawyer, Julia Gillard, Australia’s Prime Minister, who just established a national investigation commission that already has the Catholic hierarchy and the Vatican running for cover.

Prime Minister Gillard recently disclosed that the tipping points in her decision to call for a national commission were the numerous disclosures that the Catholic Bishops, as part of their cover-up, moved predatory priests to avoid prosecution to other states and even other countries, where the predators continued their sexual abuse of more trusting and innocent children. The multistate and multinational dimensions of the crimes against children apparently convinced Prime Minister Gillard she had to take action at the Federal level.This moving of predatory priests interstate and across national borders has, of course, happened repeatedly in the USA as well, necessitating a Federal response in the USA as well.

If the First Lady would oversee this, President Obama would still be able to focus on his many other priorities, including resisting the Vatican’s and its plutocratic Republican contributors’ unrelenting and opportunistic efforts to derail Obamacare over contraception insurance and immigration reform over gay marriage.

U.S. voters recently made clear their rejection of the Vatican’s lobbying efforts to deny marriage equality for gay U.S citizens. Now the Vatican appears to be trying to deny it for gay immigrants. As to the Vatican’s relentless and futile anti-contraception crusade, 79 year old conservative Cologne Cardinal Meisner, recently approved a “morning after” pill of the type that, only a few months ago, many U.S. Bishops were condemning President Obama for helping U.S. women gain affordable access to. Does the Vatican understand how contraceptive pills work? Does the Vatican understand that President Obama has been re-elected?

If there tragically were not over 200 million “unplanned” children living miserably in countries where Vatican lobbying effectively denied their parents access to affordable contraception, a dispute among octogenerian celibates over permissible forms of contraception would make good political satire! But sadly, the Vatican’s anti-contraceptive efforts, apparently mainly to please the Vatican’s plutocratic Republican donors by keeping family planning wedge issues in political play, will very likely only fail again, while these efforts continue nevertheless to burden families and children.

Does the right hand talk to the left among Cardinals and the Vatican clique? Do the unprecedented, selective and well orchestrated shaming by an Opus Dei Archbishop of Cardinal Mahony, and the unexpected support from Cardinal Meisner for contraception that is reportedly starting to stir up German Bishops, indicate a Cardinals’ revolt is brewing. Will this revolt affect the papal elections next month? We may soon find out.

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Finally, I hope some of you will consider linking this statement to your comments appropriately at the websites of:

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where many potential petition signatories have favorably read many of my earlier comments. I seemingly am now blocked from those websites, possibly for my objecting occasionally to their editors for failing to challenge the Catholic hierarchy adequately.