Church Must Face Demons

Herald Sun
March 1, 2013

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/church-must-face-demons/story-e6frfhqo-1226588794673

A PUFF of white smoke emerging from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel will announce the election of a new pope.

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But it might also signal surrender. Better a cannon shot to declare a war within the ranks of the Catholic Church that can be won only by a warrior pope.

The successor to Benedict XVI must be a fiercer pope to remind its clergy they once followed a fiercer God.

While the church is slow to accept more modern challenges of homosexuality, abortion, even contraception, it is sexual abuse, particularly the abuse of children, that should bring down a wrath instead of a whimper.

Pope Benedict recognised this abuse as an "evil" but did not lead his bishops to strike it down. In his private safe, under lock and key, waiting for his successor to make a judgment, is a dossier said to contain even more startling and profane revelations than have been levelled at some of the most senior figures in the church.

What is already known of the church's cover-ups requires more than a confession and more than a penance in restoring what has been taken from the lives of its victims. It demands a purge of those the church has protected by keeping secret their sins.

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the late Archbishop of Milan, who might have been pope, was a man of searing intellect.

Interviewed by this newspaper, he was a soldier who recognised the scourge of sex abuse, the mistakes of the church and the path it had to take to regain the faith of its dwindling congregations.

"The paedophilia scandals," he said before his death last year, "oblige us to take a journey of transformation."

Now it seems more realistically a crusade than a journey.

Who will be the church's warrior prince will confound the conclave soon to meet in an ancient ritual modernised only by the sophisticated sweeping of the cardinals' quarters to ensure their deliberations are not influenced by electronic eavesdroppers.

It is not so much who will succeed from a field being judged on whether they are Italian, or even white or black, but who will raise a standard in a battle the church is losing?

Over the past two days in Rome, the actions of Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, have been as intriguing as anything that has happened since Pope Benedict became the first pope to step aside since Celestine V, who resigned in 1294 disgusted by Vatican politics and corruption.

Cardinal Pell is the papacy's latest puzzle. At 71, he is relatively young. He projects strength, but is considered by many to have been weak in not acting decisively against sex abuse.

But has he also shown arrogance as a possible papal contender? His farewell to Pope Benedict appeared almost dismissive.

IT was Cardinal Pell who withdrew his hands from the grasp of the pontiff before turning away.

What might the Pope have been thinking following Cardinal Pell's blunt remark to the media that he would prefer Benedict's successor to be "somebody who can lead the church and pull it together a bit". Pope Benedict was a brilliant theologian and teacher, but"government was not his strongest point".

An astounded Vatican issued a statement that journalists should not take advantage of cardinals who were not "media savvy."

Perhaps, it is the opposite. The Archbishop of Sydney has tossed his unsteady mitre into the ring. "It could happen," he says. "I'm Catholic, I'm a bishop, I'm a cardinal." He is a warrior in the religious wars. But which battle is he fighting?