A New Pope and an Old Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal

By Christoffer Bell
Chicago Now
May 20, 2013

http://www.chicagonow.com/what-really-grinds-my-gears/2013/05/pope-catholic-church-sex-abuse-scandal/

Is this what father was praying for all along?

In the Name of the Pope, the Cardinal, and the Priest who Touched Little Timmy

As white smoke billows out of the chimney chute of the conclave, 1.2 Billion Catholics around our cerulean globe raise their hands in celebration of the dawning of a new era and the appointment of a new Pontiff; Pope Francis. “Out with the old and in with new” is a technique utilized by corporations to assuage the contemporaneous concerns of shareholders in times of trouble. And similar to the smoke and mirrors act thrown out by capitalists is the one being thrown out by the theologians. What is being talked about is the new pope, but what isn’t being talked about is what happened to the old one.

Two months have passed, and rumors continue to circulate as to why Pope Benedict XVI abdicated his responsibilities and the papal throne; the first pope to do so in over six centuries. Was it his health? Did divine intervention from the Pope’s boss give him a sign that he was needed somewhere else? The questions and requests for explanation became lost in the cries of a crowd who cheered for their new leader, but I find the Vatican’s response of, “Well we don’t know why he resigned, but look, here is our new leader let’s talk about him” sitting inside my stomach about as well as a three day old Cool-Ranch taco.

Think about it. How dirty does a corporation have to be in order for a person who has dedicated his entire life to it, to look at clandestine reports that he has received as the head of the organization and say, “You know what…nope…can’t do it.” Compounding concerns is the fact that the leadership of some of the most nefarious companies in the word decided to go down with ship instead of abandoning it. For instance, look at the hegemony of Enron. Even with the feds breathing down the Carlo Franco adorned necks of the executive board, they decided to play the scene out until the final curtain fell.

What is even more disconcerting is the reason that floats to the top of the list. That Pope Benedict XVI found such widespread pedophilia within the Catholic Church’s membership that he couldn’t bear to defend the indefensible. A further concern is the dearth of information the public has regarding the investigation that Pope Benedict XVI launched in order to probe how much kiddy diddling was actually going on. One source reports that the Catholic Church has paid as much as $3 Billion to settle claims of molestation that have bird-dogged it the last two decades. Let me state that again; $3 Billion. If they handed $1 Million to each of the claimants (unlikely) that stepped forward there would have to be at least 3,000 cases in order to reach that amount. That’s an awful lot of violated altar-boys. Unsettling is the knowledge that the boiler-plate conditions of a settlement almost always require the person receiving the money to refrain from going to the media, possibly the police, or disclosing the settlement amount to the public. So we will never have the basic, but important, questions regarding kiddy diddling answered: how much, how often, and where.

I realize how difficult the situation has been for the Catholic Church. After all, the Catholic Church’s stance has always been black and white even if the issues are elephant gray. Unfortunately, an underage missionary in the missionary position isn’t abortion or gay-marriage, and there isn’t a lot of wiggle room to make an argument. Kid-fucking is about as far into black as you can go, and there is no penance that will absolve the church of its sins. Like the civil war soldier that has contracted gangrene on one of his limbs, this isn’t about curing, it’s about surviving. Of course the Catholic Church isn’t going to cease to exist overnight, but the world is watching closer than any cloud riding deity, and as the CEO of any fortune 500 company can tell you, it’s not what a corporation does during the good-times that make it viable, but what it does in the bad. Right now Transparency and Truth is the only thing that could save a morally bankrupt Catholic Church.

Something needs to change and although the Church’s worst fear is change it is going to have to make a decision. Because going left or right, doing one thing or another are choices that anyone can see, but forbearing from making a choice is a choice all on its own.

The Catholic Church’s unendorsed slogan has always been WWJD, but would Jesus have paid-off the victims with one of Caesar’s coins if he caught one of his apostles inside an altar-boy outside the sacristy. I don’t think so, most reasonable people don’t think so, but in these unchartered waters the Catholic Church does think so. A rather taciturn religious constituency seems to revel in being complacent and hoping to God that everything just works out instead of demanding to get an explanation as to why Pope Benedict XVI stepped down.

All in all, the irony might be lost others, but it’s not on me. The same blind faith that has built the Catholic Church might ultimately be the same blind faith that demolishes it by repelling other believers when that attitude is applied to explanations involving clerical molestation. No matter what anyone’s opinion is, one would have to agree that the Catholic Church’s leadership is allowing their ark of moral fortitude to drift from conservative waters, into archaic ones’. I find a sad kind of humor when I get into conversations with people, and have to relax my defense of a Catholic-Church which purports to be guided by the hand of God by admitting that the Church isn’t bad or evil, just Misguided.