What Is Missing from Pope Francis' New Long �letter␝ ?

By Jerry Slevin
The Christian Catholicism
December 1, 2013

http://christiancatholicism.com/what-is-missing-from-pope-francis-new-long-letter/

John Allen, Vatican expert for CNN and the independent National Catholic Reporter (NCR), is likely correct in his current NCR column . John says “experts” will pore with a fine tooth comb over Pope Francis’ new 200+page “Letter”, entitled “The Joy of the Gospel” (“Evangelii Guadium”).

But many Catholics and others, not “experts”, also will soon ask their own questions: Why is this Letter being published now on these particular topics? Does the Letter address one of their major concerns–making bishops trustworthy again? What’s missing and why is it missing?

Bishops were originally selected by, and accountable to, the general Catholic faithful, the so called “People of God”, in the Church the Apostles left behind in the New Testament era. All Catholics were considered spiritually equal on the first Pentecost. If Catholic bishops will not be accountable to the faithful again, why not? What is Francis’ objection to the full Gospel message?

As the absolute monarch he in fact is, Francis picked the specific points he wanted to address in his Letter. On many of the points he selected, he wrote marvelously and spiritually. But he didn’t ask Catholics what they wanted addressed, and thereby he avoided essential but uncomfortable topics that remain unaddressed.

The Church’s current child abuse and financial scandals show how untrustworthy some in the the Catholic hierarchy have been. Francis surely cannot just assume most disillusioned Catholics and others will accept only fine words, without real deeds reflecting these words. They won’t if they think clearly and are paying attention !

As with Pope John Paul II, the honeymoon with this friendly, likeable and seemingly well intentioned pope will not last too much longer. His actions will be measured closely by his words. Will they match up?

Most Catholics, like me, were “hard wired” as young children to trust their popes. Recent scandals have unplugged that wiring for many. While some still will in hope “wait and see”; others will ask sooner for more than words and gestures. The days of giving popes lifetime free passes are over for many Catholics in this 24/7 free digital media era. Ex-Pope Benedict found that out the hard way.

Francis’ Letter covered many topics, many of less immediate concern to most Catholics. More significantly, Francis Letter also avoided some pressing concerns of many Catholics. Given the poor track record of some of the Vatican’s friendly “experts” who, out of self-interest usually, often avoid challenging popes, the omitted topics and the reasons behind the omissions will likely get little attention. Even seasoned and bold journalists are often caught up in Francis’ cheerleading. Currently, Francis is a major media star.

Francis, I think, missed real opportunities in his Letter, likely intentionally. I want to point out a few of them and also consider what the omissions can tell Catholics. As a Christian Catholic, I try to assess Francis through the lens of my extensive experience with some leaders of multinational organizations I encountered as a Wall Street lawyer.

Abused children hurt by priests, disrespected women treated unequally, desperate couples denied contraception and gay persons withheld rights, all deserve prompt support. For them, “wait and see” at this point is another risky approach.

To better understand the significance of what was excluded from Francis’ Letter, it is required to keep in mind the unique circumstances of Francis’ election and his current situation.

A sudden papal resignation in February and a cardinals’ seeming revolt in March shocked the Vatican. Popes Benedict and John Paul II had both tried hard to maximize the centralization of power in the Vatican, not even permitting bishops to deal locally with perverted priests who abused children, including one Milwaukee criminal who abused 200 deaf children. Now, more bishops face real risks of bankruptcy and even criminal investigations, exacerbated by an overly centralized and counter-productive management structure.

For example, the recently reported revelation, that Minneapolis’ Archbishop Nienstedt reviewed with Vatican Cardinal Levada’s office whether some computer child porn images on a local priest’s computer were really child porn, is just the latest absurd instance of a flawed Vatican micro-management policy. The fortuitous confluence in this instance of (1) a serious US Federal crime, (2) the questionable advisory role of President Obama’s top aide’s brother, and (3) a whistle blowing female ex-Archdiocesan Chancellor, just underscores local bishops’ untenable and precarious positions today in an internet and open media age. Levada and Nienstedt likely haven’t heard the last of this case.

Pope Benedict and John Paul II were by most indications poor managers. Both seemingly failed miserably and shamefully to address the child abuse and financial scandals effectively. By last February, financial investigators and criminal prosecutors were apparently climbing the Vatican’s barricades relentlessly. Government investigators had even blocked the Vatican’s lucrative tourist business’ critical access to the international credit card system.

So the ex-Pope and his ever-present close companion, George Ganswein, abandoned ship and swam to a nearby and expensively remodeled convent, abruptly leaving 4,000+ worldwide cardinals and bishops in the lurch to fend for themselves. Enter Pope Francis !

Excessive Vatican centralization had failed even the world’s bishops, as a stymied Pope John XXIII apparently knew it would a half century earlier when he advocated bishop power sharing. Local “baron cardinals and bishops” at the time of Francis’ election evidentially wanted some power back as increasingly more of them faced bankruptcy and even criminal investigations.

The cardinals who elected Francis were reportedly understandably perturbed personally and apparently had had enough with being treated as mere Vatican pawns. The cardinals’ seeming solution, it is becoming clearer now, was to press for a return of some of the unaccountable power of the papal monarchy to groups of local bishops conferences, often under the influence of local cardinals, but previously accountable only to the pope. Neither the pope, the cardinals nor these bishops conferences were or will be accountable to the People of God in any meaningful sense, even after this “de-centralization adjustment”.

Who stands to benefit most from this power adjustment—local cardinals and bishops, of course. It is reminiscent of the “revolt” of feudal barons (including apparently some bishops) that demanded the Magna Carta in 1215 from King John. That “adjustment”, however, provided only limited benefits for powerless peasants.

Interestingly, 1215 was also the year that the most powerful pope ever, Pope Innocent III, at his Fourth Lateran Council, imposed on Catholics the ultimate absolute papal monarchy that Catholics are largely still burdened with. Even more interestingly, Innocent III granted Francis of Assisi papal permission to act, indicating that helping the poor and protecting the powerful have co-existed for centuries in the Catholic Church.

In none of these cases, however, did or do the Catholic “People of God”, everyday Catholics, have any really effective say. Even after Francis’ Letter—they remain mainly passive pawns to be controlled by unaccountable bishops appointed and removable only by the pope.

Lay Catholics have even been further patronizingly treated recently by the hierarchy, with enticing offers of slanted 2014 Bishops’ Synod questionnaires that will, in my view, likely be disregarded, if even read. Francis with this Letter didn’t even wait for questionnaires. Apparently, “infallible popes” can hear even without listening.

Importantly, Francis had to have known for some time that the German bishops were about to challenge the Vatican, as these bishops currently are doing, on divorced German Catholics’ being re-admitted to the Eucharist. Biblical scholars had established years ago that Jesus’ remarks on divorce were made in the limited context of ancient patriarchic Jewish divorce laws that treated women very harshly. These Jewish laws have little applicability today and cannot reasonably serve as a basis for denying Catholics communion.

Excluded divorced German Catholics also represent a revenue loss of contributions at Mass and of governmental subsidies to German bishops. Some of these divorced Catholics are also a significant source of resistance against German bishops.

German bishops apparently were and remain under siege after the recent “Bling Bishop’s” widely reported excesses and false testimony. The German bishops’ multi-billion dollar annual governmental tax subsides seemingly were and still remain at risk.

Divorce in Western countries, also, is no longer an effective political “election wedge issue” that bishops can profitably exploit, as abortion and gay marriage issues still are in some countries. Francis’ move then in his Letter, to “adjust” centralization by shifting some power to bishops, was in my view mainly his inevitable acceptance of the German bishops’ “fait accompli”.

The background on the German divorce reform and the apparent current related struggle between Pope Francis, on the one hand, and Archbishop Mueller, head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and a close friend of the ex-Pope, was recently well described by Hans Kung in his brief positive initial assessment of the Francis Letter, accessible at:

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/texts-speeches-homilies/4/162/pope-francis-text-is-a-call-for-church-reform-at-all-levels-says-hans-k-ng

The People of God, however, remain basically powerless still, notwithstanding this Letter. That is the bottom line!

Against this background, some of Francis’ Letter’s major omissions are quite understandable. Francis disappointingly ducked the calls to make bishops like Finn, Myers, Nienstedt, Law, Rigali, Mahony, Brady, O’Brien, Vangelhuwe, Norway’s Mueller, et al., accountable for allegedly protecting child predators or worse. Francis also had little to say about helping priest abuse survivors heal or receive justice.

Francis’ weak endorsement in his Letter of John Paul II’s biblically unsupportable and almost inexcusable “block” on women priests unnecessarily and unwisely preserves the Vatican’s “old boys’ club”. Resulting and increasing priest shortages inevitably will likely only preserve, and possibly even increase, priest child abuse occurrences by increasing pressure on bishops to accept questionable seminarians and to keep suspected priests in ministry longer.

Contraception was then also understandably avoided by Francis in his Letter. Contraception involves papal infallibility claims, since several modern popes condemned it. Infallibility is the key “mystical rationalization” currently for papal absolute monarchical power. Without the infallibility pretext, ths pope is mainly and merely just another bishop and Vatican cardinals are just mainly plain vanilla bureaucrats.

Francis surely makes some wonderful statements in the Francis’ Letter. But do or will his deeds match his words? So far they really haven’t. For example, Francis eloquently endorses verbally the “option for the poor”. Yet he too often continues actually the papal “option for the rich”.

For example, Francis’ key donors and papal knights (Malta, etc.) are too often wealthy men who benefited and still benefit most from the seemingly rigged international financial system. Even the current German head of the Vatican financial regulatory effort is reportedly a former investment banker and arms dealer executive, as well as a Knight of Malta. Papal knight, Carl Anderson, a former staffer to Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms, is apparently still a key liason to some billionaire plutocrats, and remains one of Francis’ key advisors and a Vatican Bank director.

Is Francis just winking to his billionaire plutocratic allies as he castigates capitalists? Time will tell, especially as the US Senate elections approach in less than a year. If Francis’ US bishops keep trying to deny the poor in the US the health insurance coverage of Obamacare, it will be very telling of Francis’ real intentions and goals.

Disappointingly and ominously in a Sunday, December 1, 2013′s nationwide NBC-TV “Meet the Press” interview appearance, NY’s Cardinal Dolan reiterated his “anti-Obamacare and anti-gay marriage” conservative political talking points. This indicates clearly that the US bishops are gearing up to push these “wedge issues” again as national policies in the upcoming 2014 elections, without regard for Francis’ purported change of tone. Is this just a “Good Cop/Bad Cop” strategy with Francis as the “good guy” and his “US bishops’ as the bad guys? It is inconceivable to me that Francis is not fully briefed on and involved with the US bishops’ political strategy.

Francis and his cardinals and bishops are often still tightly linked worldwide to ruling elites who exploit the poor. For example, Francis’ childless and celibate Filipino and US bishops are currently working hard to deny couples a chance to minimize their poverty by responsible and reasonable family planning. Also, gay persons’ rights continue to be used insensitively and unjustly by the Vatican as political chips in papal geopolitical power games.

At the end of the day, Francis has disappointingly avoided taking the inevitable right step—moving to share clerical power with the laity. That will come sooner than he apparently expects. By force of civil laws, like is now happening with the clean-up of Vatican financial corruption and with Australia’s unprecedented investigation of bishops’ cover-ups of predatory priests.

It is unlikely, in my view, that ending clerics’ monopoly on power will happen as a result of Francis’ 200+ page gratuitous monologue or his upcoming October 2014 Bishops’ Synod on the Family— 150 celibate and childless elderly patriarchs re-writing the permitted rules for making love, etc. , with no women participants. Truly amazing !

The hierarchy are expected soon be compelled to obey laws democratically enacted and obeyed by everyone else. Then, to save their own necks, they will likely be compelled to agree to share power with the only Catholics who would really be trusted by most of the faithful–lay Catholic administrators democratically elected. That is good enough for me !

Respected Catholic scholars and other Christian denominations have already worked out sensible approaches to making bishops accountable. The uncompleted efforts of Italian nationalists in 1870 to bring the Vatican up to date in a democratic world will finally be completed. Bishops can then begin again preaching the entire New Testament.

In the last analysis, few people will any longer accept a cynically selective Gospel message preached by bishops they distrust for good reasons. According to the Gospel message, bishops are supposed to serve the faithful and also to protect children. Many of them haven’t served the faithful really and still many don’t protect children enough.

Pope Francis may call this a New Evangelization, but it seems to be often a “cherry-picked” Gospel message preached by the same old unaccountable bishops. And despite Francis’ obvious personal appeal and even sincerity, many Catholics no longer trust their bishops.

Bishops cannot restore this trust alone. They must seek the oversight of lay Catholics whom people can and will trust. If Francis and the bishops fail here, Catholics will realize Francis was elected by frightened cardinals to try to change the tone, but not the tune. That cannot fly in the internet age.

As an interim measure, Francis should at least put Fr. Thomas Doyle, O.P., in charge of bishops’ child protection efforts. Fr. Doyle, as the leading advocate worldwide for survivors of priest sexual abuse, has bravely stood up to many complicit bishops. He works well with and is trusted by many lay Catholics. Francis and Fr. Doyle both, as young priests, worked closely with Cardinal Pio Laghi. They are both sincere and effective priests. They would work well together.

This appointment alone would help to restore quickly more trust than 200+ pages of moving Jesuitical rhetoric ever could, especially when it avoids essential concerns of many Catholics worldwide.

There are some reasons for hope. The clock is running out for the Vatican. Either Francis and his other unaccountable bishops will fix the current mess or government prosecutors accountable to the People of God and other citizens will soon fix it for them.

Some Catholics object to pressing Francis and want to give him more time. Those who suffer under some of the Vatican’s unChristian policies have waited long enough. Francis may be well intentioned and trying to create a major “mess” to overwhelm the mess the ex-pope left him.

I am sceptical.

Francis appears to me at times to be too overconfident and had exhibited in Argentina instances of poor judgment in critical decisions, like his reported risking of two Jesuits to military thugs. There must be some reasons he was reportedly shunned by many Argentinian Jesuits and chose to climb ambitiously the hierarchical ladder instead, very unusual for a Jesuit.

If I am wrong and all works out under him, I will be very pleased. But from my experience, “messes” left to unaccountable powerful men, to address on their own, too often get worse.

Either way, I think Catholics and everyone else have to pay close attention and look past the media hype. It is a tough and dangerous world and no leader is beyond accountability and scrutiny, whether pope, president or prime minister.