Un Criticism of Obama Doj & Italian Vote; Popes & Pols; Kids & Sighs

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
February 20, 2013

http://christiancatholicism.com/un-criticism-of-obama-doj-italian-vote-popes-pols-kids-sighs/

Leaders can show real empathy, especially in front of cameras. Ireland’s Prime Minister seemed genuinely sad today about the young women and children abused in prison laundries run mainly by nuns. Pope Benedict seemed similarly sad in his brief meetings with a few survivors of priest child sexual abuse. President Obama also seemed sad for the children raped at Penn State. But sad sighs are not enough for leaders. They must be linked to effective and adequate efforts (1) to obtain justice for innocent victims, (2) to assure the accountability of wrongdoers, including aiders and abettors, and (3) to minimize recurrences. Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard skipped the sighs and just went straight to an exemplary fully funded and staffed national royal commission.

On that score, PM Gillard gets an A+, PM Kenny passes so far, the Pope fails and, at best, the jury may still be out on the President. As noted today by SNAP Wisconsin’s usually well informed Peter Isely, the much respected UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva, the leading voice internationally for protecting children, has indicated that President Obama’s Justice Department (DOJ) and the U.S. Congress recently got poor grades on protecting children from sexual abuse in religious settings, especially in the U.S. Catholic Church. SNAP also reported that its efforts to get the DOJ to act goes back a decade. Very disappointing and disturbing, to say the least.

If no one is held to account, the violation of children will just continue. Tens of thousands of innocent children have been raped in religious organizations in the USA alone. Vatican conference experts last year estimated that over 100,000 children so far have been abused by Catholic priests in the USA alone. Where have our political and religious leaders been? Where are they now? No U.S. Cardinal or Bishop has been locked up to date for child endangerment. Will that ever change, Mr. President?

In the midst of a close Italian election campaign ending this weekend, the Pope suddenly announced his resignation that apparently had been in the works for several months at least. The Pope also plans to meet after the election, but before his resignation is finalized, with a senior Italian governmental official. Italian media have recently focused more on the Pope’s resignation than on the Italian elections. Knowledgable observers have indicated this has already given the Pope’s favored candidate, Prime Minister Monti, a needed boost. Just a coincidence? We should know better within ten days whether a carefully timed papal immunity deal is under consideration.

While the Pope may be infirmed and tired, he knew what he was getting into when he took the job at 78 years old. He also knows he could hang around doing little officially as Pope until the end, as his predecessor, John Paul II, did while suffering from severely debilitating medical problems. The Vatican Cardinals clique seems well accustomed to calling key shots, as the butler intimated. So the best bet now seems to be that the timing of Benedict’s resignation decision is likely linked more to prolonging his freedom from prosecution than it is to prolonging his life. Time will tell. He needs to continue to worry about this. He is still young enough to be prosecuted, as older Mafia bosses’ and Nazi jailers’ prosecutions in recent years have already made clear. Arthritis is not a valid defense to child endangerment charges.

The Pope, his Vatican clique and his hand-picked subservient Cardinals and Bishops have spent billions of dollars of Catholics’ donations so far trying to stay out of jail. And so far they have succeeded. Will President Obama now finally step-up and protect U.S. children from priest/rabbi/minister rape? Pre-election, he “hobnobbed” on TV with Cardinal Dolan, who has a poor record on dealing with predatory priests. His Secretary of Defense, well aware from earlier efforts of the Pope’s poor record on protecting children, recently kissed the Pope’s ring before press cameras. The President just reminded the Pope of First Lady Michelle Obama’s and his nice visit with the Pope. Time to stop dancing and to start enforcing laws, Mr. President.

What gives? Will President Obama step-up or not? Local political leaders and prosecutors in Boston, Philly, Los Angeles, and many other U.S. cities have bent for decades under the power of the Catholic hierarchy and their well connected and well paid lawyers and lobbyists. Most Catholics are ashamed of their leaders and all want their children protected. Only the Federal government has the clout to stand up to these powerful religious leaders.

President Obama’s new Catholic chief of staff just said on Meet The Press, in effect, that the Church will do fine if it does the right things. And what if it continues to do some bad things as is obscenely reported almost daily in the international media? President Obama and a U.S. Presidential investigation commission, similar to Australia PM Julia Gillard’s new commission, would have the clout to compel much of the fix needed. President Obama has already condemned institutional child sexual abuse. Now he must put-up or … !

Meanwhile, Cardinal Dolan and Archbishop Lori continue to try to derail Obamacare with their absurd “Taco Bell” ploy, They still have not denounced their fellow bishop’s shameful attempt to link President Obama to Hitler and Stalin. Apparently, Archbishop Lori has recovered from the bad press relating to Monsignor Kevin Wallin, Lori’s former reportedly cross-dressing aide and porn dealer recently arrested for selling illegal drugs. At least he wasn’t selling birth control pills!

Will Cardinals instead try to fix the Church themselves now or just continue the risk of sitting in prison cells, as some of them very well may be doing soon, wishing they had fixed it when they could have? Philly’s Monsignor Lynn, former top subordinate to Cardinals Rigali and Bevilacqua now in jail for child endangerment, proves this risk is real. Hopefully, other Cardinals will ask Cardinal Rigali about this at the conclave next month.

Apparently, as experienced clerics warned, Cardinals are having difficulty finding papal candidates free of the abuse or other scandals. There seem to be few who can withstand close scrutiny. Even Boston’s Cardinal O’Malley has been criticized for failing to publicly list suspected priests. Also, his reported effort to tap a nuns’ pension fund apparently to offset abuse related costs has not yet even been raised fully. Perhaps the butler may yet be elected Pope. He at least showed some courage and integrity.

Here’s what smart Cardinals can and should do. They need to block by a one-third vote any papal candidate that will not agree publicly now to take the following three actions:

(1) Serve only a three year term subject to re-election thereafter. Pope Benedict just proved by resigning that the papacy is not a lifelong position.

(2) Appoint now a special committee to identify and recommend within nine months needed structural and pastoral changes. This approach was described in my April 2010 Washington Post web column that you should read now. I tried first to warn Pope Benedict three years ago about what he was facing, but unfortunately for him and for the Catholic Church, he failed even to acknowledge receipt of my column’s advice, so I then published it. The column is linked here at:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/04/pope_should_endorse_independent_investigation.html

(3) Implement the needed changes so identified at a worldwide council held away from Rome within six months of receipt of the special committee’s recommendations as described in my Washington Post column.

Alternatively, Cardinals can give the Vatican clique their blank papal proxies, then hire expensive criminal lawyers and pray for a miracle. How do they really think God will respond?

Pertinently, among some of the relevant guidelines generally ascribed to Jesus are that he was opposed to a self-important, excessively scrupulous and overly indulgent religious hierarchy and that he thought children should be protected from harm. These points have neither been consistently understood nor respected in the Vatican for decades, even for centuries. The “Good News”, or the Gospels, have often been disregarded by the Catholic hierarchy where a Renaissance culture of opulence and celibate incomprehension of children still predominate today.

Where in the Gospels did Jesus say predatory priests are to be protected before innocent children, like the Vatican has done for decades, if not centuries? Where did Jesus instruct his followers to wear $30,000 outfits paid for by donations like Cardinal Burke reportedly does? Where did Jesus tell his followers to launder money like Cardinals reportedly do through the Vatican Bank?

If, as Benedict has clearly indicated, a Pope should go if he is unable to perform his duties, should he be removed if he is unwilling to perform or performs badly? Should there be term limits or maximum age limits? Of course, the only logical answer is yes to all of these related questions. But the Vatican is run by power politics, not logic, or even spiritual values for that matter. Some Vatican Cardinal will likely leak soon the real reasons Benedict is retiring. Benedict will meet soon with top Italian leaders who seem to be benefiting in their own election contests from the media attention on the Pope. Is an immunity deal in the air? In any event, the real story should be out soon.

It is time to restore Catholic leadership to the consensual approach that Jesus and early Catholics followed for over three centuries until Roman Emperors converted the Catholic Bishops, including the Pope, into an imperial bureaucracy dominated by a Vatican clique that dictated ruthlessly for 1,700 years, and still dictates, top-down to Catholics seemingly to fill the clique’s coffers.

It seems significant that key Vatican powers, Pope Benedict and Cardinal Sodano, were both born in 1927 and spent their formative years under totalitarian dictators, Hitler and Mussolini, respectively. This is well reflected in their hierachical approach, but they seem to forget that the Fuhrer and Il Duce eventually got their gruesome rewards, mainly at the hands of constitutional democracies. The Vatican no longer has powerful European monarchs or opportunistic dictators to protect it and plutocrats flee weakness quickly. The Holy Roman Emperor’s phone has been disconnected for almost a century.

Catholics will not likely in their lifetimes have a better opportunity than in connection with the papal election to reform the Church, and at the same time to protect children as Jesus commanded. It is time to restore the consensual church management structure that the overwhelming vote of Vatican II Cardinals and Bishops contemplated would be adopted a half century ago before a minority of Cardinals like Ottaviani, Wotyla, Ratzinger, Sodano, Bertone, Levada, Rigali, Mahony, Law, Burke, Bevilacqua, Brady, et al., subverted its implementation.

Pope John XXIII issued in 1962 the main secrecy order on priest child sex abuse. But he also realized that accountabilty had to be restored to save the Church. He took the first step by trying to get the Vatican Cardinals to share power with the worldwide bishops. He died soon therafter and the Vatican Cardinals’ clique rejected power sharing craftily. Since then, they have installed compliant Popes who like the papal prestige and are happy to do the clique’s bidding. But the democratic rule of law has run out of patience with clerical child abusers and Popes no longer have any effective political power, as the re-election of President Obama and papal political setbacks in the Philippines, Australia, the United Kingdom, France and elsewhere just proved.

The International Sheriff appears to be on his way to Rome and the Pope cannot hide for long with Georgeous Georg in a refurbished convent. Some of his own Cardinals, or his butler, may likely help nail him, it appears. The Vatican clique’s unending stream of blunders, the latest including (1) appointing Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer as chief Vatican prosecutor of predatory priests, (2) appointing as part-time Vatican Bank “chief” a German investment banker, who is reportedly also overseeing a major arms dealer, and (3) the shaming of Cardinal Mahony publicly, selectively and gratuitously, while others like Cardinals Brady and Rigali got a pass. John Paul II’s principal opportunistic apologist, George Weigel, indicated awhile ago, as I recall, something to the effect that he didn’t find the Vatican staff to be especially bright bureaucrats. Wow, did he understate that! Hierarchical intimidation has unintended consequences evidentally.

But at this point does any of this matter to most Catholics worldwide? While it may seem overly pessimistic to say so soon that the next Pope will likely fail too, it is just being realistic; and yet there is also room for much optimism. The papal resignation is tantamount to an admission of failure and will lead to de-mystification of the papacy quickly. Pope Benedict XVI, soon to again be non-Pontiff, Joseph Ratzinger, and his Vatican clique led by Cardinal Sodano et al., have already set the stage for the next failure.

The sudden call for a quick election conclave substantially diminishes any chance of a real opposition being mounted by non-Vatican Cardinals. Since the Pope apparently knew for some time he would resign, the suddenness seems well planned. Ratzinger will soon be living a few hundred yards away from the new Pope in his refurbished retirement base, hardly a monastery.

Ratzinger and Sodano already likely know who will be the next Pope and one would be foolish to bet against them. Perhaps Cardinals might save some money by just mailing in blank proxies to Sodano.

The reason for some optimism is that the Vatican clique’s apparent raw power grab will now just accelerate the sinking of the Vatican Titanic that much sooner. Even overly trusting Catholics will see through the hierarchical charade. Various prosecutors and survivors lawyers can now be expected to be able to reach Ratzinger, who may lose his legal immunity in a few weeks. Once the rule of international law starts pulling hard directly on papal threads, the Vatican hierarchy can expect to be quickly uncovered and forced to initiate reforms, perhaps after some senior officials face prosecution, which is likely not too far off.

For example, longtime Vatican Cardinal Rigali is still at risk of prosecution in Philadelphia where his predecessor, Cardinal Bevilacqua, last year apparently escaped a likely imminent criminal indictment for child endangerment by dying first! Their hapless senior aide, Monsignor Lynn, took the fall so far and is in prison.

Yes, Cardinals apparently will now go to Rome, but they could have demanded 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.

Catholics are not and should not be 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. The UN Committee on children’s severe criticism of the Department of Justice and the U.S. Congress just reinforces the need for the national investigation commission that the petition requests.

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.

We all have a moral obligation to protect children and signing a petition is a simple, yet potentially effective, way towards meeting that obligation. Please take a minute and sign it at: http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-investigate-child-sexual-abuse-by-priests-rabbis-religious-leaders

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, ask your leadership to support the petition. Similarly reticent progressive Catholic voices, like the National Catholic Reporter and Commonweal, seem reluctant to press for the positive prospects of President Obama establishing a U.S. national investigation commission. They need now to take a stand.

What are they all waiting for? Blogging, writing, debating and prayer, however admirable and well intentioned, have to date barely influenced the Vatican clique and their subservient U.S. Bishops on reforms 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.

It is a sad commentary on the docility of so-called progressive U. S. Catholics that a UN Committee in Geneva has to take the lead in calling for national action on a nationwide and pervasive outrage against innocent and defenseless children in the USA !

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.