Jesus Says : Cardinals Need Much More Than a New Pope

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
February 21, 2013

http://christiancatholicism.com/jesus-says-cardinals-need-much-more-than-a-new-pope/

Jesus may not have written anything down, but his followers did. They recorded in the Gospels many of His mandates very clearly. These include: (1) Love one another, (2) Avoid accumulating excessive wealth, (3) Avoid oppressive religious leaders, and (4) Protect children always. Simple enough, but too often overlooked at the Vatican.

Instead in 2013, we find Cardinals who seek to injure each other, often over money, sex or power, who then oppress with sexual guilt and fleece with mystical myths the overly trusting faithful, while protecting revenue generating priests who sexually abuse children.

Now the octogenerian Cardinals clique, who had survived Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Franco, have reportedly found the culprits—greedy homosexuals whose sins purportedly pushed poor Benedict to resign. A fitting fairy tale from the Mythical Magic Kingdom! These oldtimers surely learned alot from Fascist propaganda techniques. Apparently, it is too dangerous for the oldtimers to use the historically longstanding Vatican anti-Semitic or anti-Islamic allusions, so blaming gay persons appears to be the latest default excuse.

Meanwhile, the ultimate careerist, Benedict, seems to blame other Vatican careerists, who in turn blame each other, while longtime Vatican journalists tell us Benedict and John Paul II were always known to be lousy managers, something they seldom reported earlier. Who’s on first?

Jesus’ mandates require more than rearranging the furniture in the Sistine Chapel to suit octogenerian fashions. It requires reforming the papacy which Cardinals must do first and do now. With so many of them weakened by their own sins, they may not be able to do this, but they must try. Among other things, they must make effective and adequate efforts (1) to obtain justice for innocent abuse survivors, (2) to assure the accountability of wrongdoers, including aiders and abettors, and (3) to minimize recurrences.

If no one is held to account, the violation of children will just continue. Hundreds of thousands of innocent children worldwide have been raped by priests. Vatican conference experts, according to John Allen in the February 2012 National Catholic Reporter, 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?

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?

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. Moreover, the UN Committee on Children, echoed by the international abuse survivors group, SNAP, have just called on the President to act on clerical sex abusers and their protectors.

Will Cardinals follow Jesus’ mandates and try to fix the Church themselves now or just continue risking doing some prison time, 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.

Cardinals must forgo the media nonsense, such as disgraced Cardinals Law and Rigali apparently trying to promote their flawed choices of Cardinals O’Malley and Dolan, while Cardinal Mahony gets fingered by most Cardinals, likely for helping to re-elect President Obama. If sinlessness were a prerequisite for Cardinals to vote, no votes would be cast!

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:

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(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? As an experienced international lawyer, I am constantly surprised at how naive and/or ill advised so many Cardinals seem to be about their own personal prosecution risks.

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 expensive outfits paid for by donations? 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.

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.

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, where he can continue to dictate policy by remote control.

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.

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 President Obama’s Department of Justice and the U.S. Congress, echoed by SNAP, 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.

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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, ask your leadership to support the petition. Similarly reticent progressive Catholic voices seem reluctant to press for the positive prospects of President Obama establishing a U.S. national investigation commission. With the UN Committee’s and SNAP’S lead, 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 overly trusting Catholics continue to contribute enabling complicit bishops to protect priest pedophiles and predators perpetually.

It is a sad commentary on the docility and timidity 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.

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.

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.

Please click on to the black text at the top of this column for my analysis of related topics.

Finally, I hope some of you will consider linking this statement to your comments at appropriate websites and/or circulating it to others via social media.

Thank you.