Abdication on the Last Day

National Survivor Advocates Coalition
February 28, 2013

http://nationalsurvivoradvocatescoalition.wordpress.com/editorials/

Our hope is slim and sliding rapidly away but hope’s DNA is resilience and therefore we will hover over it until the hour strikes when hope is slain and an abdicating pontiff punts the largest crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in the last 500 years into the Vacant See.

In the waning hours of his papacy, we hope that Pope Benedict XVI removes criminally convicted Bishop Robert Finn as head of the Diocese of Kansas City- St. Joseph, MO, lifts the seal of secrecy from the documents that Vatican knows detail the crisis, and removes from the priesthood all of the priests who are credibly accused whose cases have been sitting for years within the protection of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

In the name of all that is good and holy we hope that Pope Benedict, who can express his own sense of desolation adrift from a Lord he felt was sleeping, understands what those raped and sodomized by priests and nuns live with each day.

We hope he knows that they are burdened, scarred and haunted by depression, loss, confusion, anger and the void of being held back from the gate of spiritual solace by the memories of the desecration of their young bodies by priests and nuns.

While he still commands the full power of the papacy, we hope that Pope Benedict XVI uses it to be the Vicar of Christ’s healing through the power of truth.

By virtue of heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith where the cases of clergy sexual abuse became centralized under his direction and by being the Supreme Pontiff, this man has more knowledge than anyone in the Church about the vastness and the cruelty of this scandal.

The tremendous power of the papacy is his until the clock strikes 8 PM today in Rome. We hope that as the hours and then minutes tick by and the last of this and the last of that continues to be counted off that he will reach for a pen and with the stroke of it start the Church’s journey to the unveiling of truth.

As it was in the beginning of his papacy when he said, “ The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me … “ so let it be at the end of his papacy that Pope Benedict acts so that the world can see what resurrection is.

We hope that Pope Benedict does not abdicate what he could do on the last day.

He has the power to throw a Hail Mary pass of truth and justice into the Vacant See. We hope he knows that.

— Kristine Ward, Chair, National Survivor Advocates Coalition, (NSAC) KristineWard@hotmail.com,

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The National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) is an all volunteer organziation of in the pew Catholics and men and women of goodwill supporting survivors of sexual abuse and working to educate society about sexual abuse and to bring about effective legislative reforms. NSAC News is a daily free online news briefing on the scandal distributed online Monday through Friday. To susbscribe email Steve Sheehan: sheehan1777@aol.com