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| US & Vatican Top Men Talk Contraception: Will Francis & Obama Talk Kids Next?
By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
January 14, 2014
http://christiancatholicism.com/us-vatican-top-men-talk-contraception-will-francis-obama-talk-kids-next/
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, a practicing Catholic, met for almost two hours recently with Cardinal-designate Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, traditionally the top Vatican position under the pope. Ironically, Parolin had been then powerful Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Sodano’s top deputy in 2004 when the Vatican reportedly helped undermine Kerry among US Catholic voters leading to Kerry’s loss to President Bush.
The two reportedly discussed issues related to international religious freedom, including Middle East hot spots and even US healthcare reform. US bishops appear to be contending in the current election campaign for control of the US Senate and likely the continuing US Supreme Court majority that Obamacare’s contraception insurance mandate violates their religious freedom. For more on the meeting, see:
[National Catholic Reporter]
Lurking in the background appears to be the Vatican’s goal of preventing outside governments’ involvement in the Vatican’s control of its bishops, especially in bishops’ lobbying efforts to regulate women’s reproductive options as well as bishops’ management, or mismanagement, of priest child abuse allegations worldwide.
Looming clashes between national governments and the Vatican on these issues seem inevitable. It is unclear whether the recent Secretaries of State meeting will lead to direct discussions between Pope Francis and President Obama on religious freedom, contraception insurance and/or unaccountable bishops. The two have never met.
Meanwhile, later this week the Vatican will have to answer on the record for six hours questions on its child abuse oversight before an international tribunal, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva.
In a 2005 meeting on related Middle East and religious freedom matters, Vatican Secretary of State Sodano, Parolin’s boss then, reportedly sought US Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice’s help in dealing with a US court case involving the Vatican’s oversight of alleged bishop mismanagement of a possible US priest child abuser, see:
[National Catholic Reporter]
It is unknown whether either Parolin or Kerry raised the priest child abuse scandal subject recently, although the scandal is even more pressing today than it was in 2005.
The international religious freedom issue has been accelerating for some time. Indeed, Denis McDonough, currently President Obama’s Chief of Staff, discussed it at length with US bishops just before the last US presidential election, even mentioning his priest brother, Fr. Kevin McDonough. Now Fr. McDonough, a former Vicar General in the St. Paul/Minneapolis Archdiocese, is a key management official in expanding priest abuse investigations involving alleged Federal and state crimes, creating sensitive legal and related political issues for President Obama.
For Denis’ remarks on religious freedom, see:
[link]
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Kerry has some relevant history here. In 2004 U.S. bishops reportedly received instructions from the ex-Pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, second in power to Sodano, that there was to be no communion at Mass for Kerry. Presumably, Kerry is well versed in the Vatican’s use of religious freedom covers for political advantage.
The U.S. bishops began a campaign in 2004 against Kerry unprecedented in scope, vitriol and direct interference by clergy in politics. They approved a statement that politicians who support legal abortion were “cooperating in evil.” The message went out to all Catholics in multi-media format and in technically non-partisan words that voting Democratic would jeopardize one’s immortal soul.
President Bush’s strategist, Karl Rove, reportedly identified the Catholic vote as central to his long-term plan to convert swathes of traditional Democratic voters, thereby transforming the Republicans into the majority party.
Throughout the 2004 campaign, Rove maintained that, if Bush won the Catholic vote, he would be reelected. Rove was right. Rove sought to turn out several million additional Catholic voters. Catholic turnout was 63 percent, up from 57 percent four years earlier, and constituted more than one-in-four voters nationwide, voters disproportionately distributed in key battleground states such as Ohio and Florida. Bush, a Methodist, impressively won 52 percent of the Catholic vote versus 47 percent for John Kerry.
As a result of the 2004 election, it was unquestionably clear that this wedge issue tactic worked. It appears in full bloom currently in the Catholic hierarchy’s renewed anti-Obamacare contraception insurance and anti-gay marriage election year crusades. John Kerry has seen this drill before.
Informed Vatican journalists seem to be signaling that Francis’ media honeymoon may be ending. The focus has been until now often on engineered photo ops and slick sound bites orchestrated by the papal media handlers. More frequent substantive reporting may be returning, it appears.
A major current challenge for the Vatican appears to be to advance favorably the April canonization of the Polish Pope, John Paul II, while containing two significant controversies relevant to the Polish Pope. One involves the unresolved scandals of John Paul’s protected contributor, Fr. Maciel, and Maciel’s yet unreformed, and perhaps unreformable, money machine, the Legion of Christ; and the other involves two Polish clerics accused of child abuse in the Dominican Republic .
Francis’ approach to these scandals is quite important because they cannot be handled merely by spin tactics and pious platitudes. They require Francis to show his hand, especially on clerical child abuse, which he has seemingly endeavored mostly to sidestep so far.
The papal spin machine is, of course, still trying to focus more on diversionary and ”children friendly” stories like Francis’ recent endorsement of breast feeding in the Sistine Chapel. This likely would have shocked Michelangelo, but would have been well appreciated by his politically more informed contemporary, Machiavelli.
The generally more substantive AP reporters have instead honed in more on the apparent efforts of the Vatican to try to avoid stories that may cast a shadow over the soon to be canonized John Paul II, namely, the Maciel scandal and the alleged Polish clerical child abusers.
One of the two accused Polish clerics had been ordained as a priest and bishop by John Paul. He is Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the former papal ambassador to the Dominican Republic removed suddenly by the Vatican in August in the wake of child sex abuse allegations. He is apparently being kept out of sight in Rome . Weslowski has served as a Vatican diplomat for over a decade, initially under then Secretary of State, Cardinal Sodano, another apparent protector of Fr. Maciel.
The AP’s recent update on the Maciel scandal is at:
[link]
The Polish Archbishop’s apparent fleeing to the protection of Rome from the Dominican Republic was earlier reported at:
[link]
The AP’s recent update on the alleged Polish clerical child abusers is at:
[link]
Recent news reports indicated that the Vatican had refused a Polish request to extradite the Polish Archbishop. A Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, recently noted that there has been no extradition request and that the Vatican is ready to “collaborate” with investigations both in Poland and in the Dominican Republic. Almost six months after Wesolowski fled to Rome, collaboration appears to have been thin so far, if any has even occurred.
Lombardi added that Wesolowski is facing a canonical investigation by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which could lead to his laicization as a priest and bishop, and possibly to a criminal investigation by the Vatican’s own criminal court. Back in July, perhaps with Wesolowski in view, Francis issued a ruling that extended the jurisdiction of the Vatican’s limited criminal court in sex abuses cases to papal diplomats.
John Allen, a prominent Vatican commentator for CNN, current Vatican reporter for the independent National Catholic Reporter and soon to be Boston Globe associate editor, favorably and surprisingly observed recently about this seeming Vatican evasionary cover-up, “While it’s too early to say how this process may play out, should it end in Francis putting an archbishop behind bars, it would be seen by most observers as a clear signal that this pope means business on the sex abuse front”. Given Francis prior record in Argentina, there appears to be little or no prospect the Polish Archbishop will end up behind bars.
John Allen, of course, is not a lawyer. His seeming acceptance of purported Vatican efforts to self-police accused bishops borders on the ridiculous, especially given the Vatican’s failures to date. The Vatican has neither the resources nor the expertise to investigate multiple child abuse allegations in a foreign country. It is also clearly conflicted, if not patently biased. It is investigating itself, with Pope Francis as judge, jury and lawmaker. Laicization is an inadequate penalty for child abuse.
Francis fails to appreciate, it appears, that the rest of the world’s judicial systems have long since mostly rejected as woefully inadequate such an absolute monarchy approach to law enforcement.
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The subtle influence of Cardinal Sodano may be operative in the current setting. Investigative reporter, Jason Berry, following his thorough and reliable reporting on Fr. Maciel’s ties to Vatican officials, especially Sodano, had argued strongly when the ex-Pope resigned last year, that Sodano be replaced. Obviously, Sodano was retained and oversaw the election of Francis. For Berry’s statement. please see:
[link]
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Moreover, Francis’s curial cardinal appointments suggest Cardinal Sodano’s and the ex-Pope’s continuing strong influence. Three long time Sodano proteges ( Archbishops Parolin, Baldisseri and Stella) and the ex-Pope’s long time protege, Archbishop Muller, head of the fundamentally flawed child protection department, the CDF. Add this to Francis’ decision to protect the Polish Archbishop, another Sodano protege, from answering for alleged crimes against children as Papal Nuncio in the Dominican Republic. The continuation of Cardinal Levada, another protege of the ex-Pope and Muller’s predecessor as purported “child protector”, on the key Commission on Bishops is just more of the same.
It is becoming clearer that Sodano’s 2010 “petty gossip” approach to minimizing the sexual abuse of children, even by Vatican officials like a Nuncio, is guiding Francis. This is even worse than the two prior popes’ protection of Cardinal Law was, since Law had not been accused of abusing children personally.
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This stonewalling strategy cannot and will not work. It suggests Francis may be just an interim ”subject changer” who will not fundamentally reform the Vatican. Meanwhile, Francis slips past key challenges like women’s equality, divorced Catholics’ treatment and contraception by carefully scripted metaphors, photo ops and sound bites with the help of his ex-FOX TV News’ chief spinner.
Pope Francis appears to be following the failed path of the ex-Pope who had been warned in 2010 not to follow the “petty gossip” approach. See the still relevant and unheeded 2010 Washington Post advice to the ex-Pope based on a suggestion of another experienced Jesuit, “Pope Should Endorse Independent Investigation”, at:
[link]
Catholics have watched too many papal evasions over the last half century. Now Catholics must consider using their democratic power to get their governments to compel the Vatican to obey child protection laws, as these governments are already compelling the Vatican to obey financial transparency laws. Australia has already begun and the USA may not be far behind.
Since the Fourth Century, external political pressure was usually the main force behind Vatican reform. That will soon happen again.
Child protection is the top priority for Catholics. If Catholics cannot trust their hierarchy to protect children from some in the hierarchy and their agents, how can they trust them on any other matter? And why should they?
The legal investigations into priest child abuse and bishops’ cover-ups are gathering steam worldwide, e.g., in the UK/Northern Ireland, Australia, Minnesota, St. Louis, Chicago, et al. Moreover, Minneapolis’ Archbishop Nienstedt and former vicar general, Fr. Kevin McDonough, are scheduled to be deposed under oath later this month by the key abuse survivors’ lawyer, Jeff Anderson.
As a lawyer myself, it is very puzzling that Francis appears still to think he can try to curtail this abuse scandal by attempting to bring prosecutions in house. If anything, such efforts are likely to just fuel the suspicions of many that the Vatican’s long standing cover-up is continuing.
As the People of God, it is the world’s Catholics’ Church as well. It is not merely the private property of a a group of aged celibate men focused too often on protecting their power and wealth, without accountability to any independent oversight, even for unspeakable violations of defenseless children.
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