Really, Is Archbishop’s Hot Tub Too Hot?

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
February 20, 2014

http://christiancatholicism.com/really-is-archbishops-hot-tub-too-hot/

Several prominent media outlets are fairly attacking the latest example of a Newark, NJ Catholic bishop’s excesses, that includes installing an apparently expensive hot tub. Newark is one of the poorest US cities. As stated in a scathing editorial of the National Catholic Reporter (NCR): “Archbishop John Myers’ decision to expand his summer residence … already a model of luxury … is nothing short of an assault on the goodwill and trust of the people of God.”

Myers had been pilloried recently, with justification, for his failures to protect children adequately from an allegedly predatory priest. Myers’ pal, Governor Chris Christie, seemingly supported Myers’ escape from that mess. Christie now has his own “bridge problem” and will likely be unable to join Myers in the hot tub anytime soon.

So what can Catholics do about Myers, and so many other bishops who suffer from that terminal episcopal malady, “bishop unaccountability” ? Complaining in blogs, and even withholding donations, haven’t reformed the hierarchy significantly to date and, in my disappointed but experienced view, likely never will. These half-measures have mainly just led bishops to be more secretive and to hire more publicists and lawyers, wasting even more donations.

For the several reasons I discuss in my advice to President Obama, he must step up with a national commission. See at:

[christiancatholicism.com]

The call for President Obama to step up on religious institutional child abuse has also been made by the leading academic legal authority on institutional child sex abuse in the USA, as well as a highly regarded constitutional scholar in the church-state area, Professor Marci Hamilton. Professor Hamilton clerked for US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She has also as a lawyer dealt directly with the Catholic hierarchy on behalf of priest sex abuse survivors. See her article at:

[verdict.justia.com]

Historically, major reforms of corruption in the Catholic Church have usually resulted from outside pressure from monarchs or other governmental leaders, or from competing religious forces, or some combination of these pressures. That makes sense, I suppose. Why would an ambitious cleric who slithered up the hierarchical ladder to get his shot at unlimited income and power, without accountability, give it up without a struggle? Once you have it, why give it up unless forced to do so? Bishops, we now know too well, cannot be shamed into reforming.

Pope Francis really has to date made little difference here; the temporary removal for excessive expenditures of the German Bishop of Bling, Tebartz, notwithstanding. We are now learning that Tebartz has allegedly had other legal problems with misusing funds. In any event, the bad publicity he generated was potentially jeopardizing the multi-billion Euro subsidy that the German government provides the Catholic hierarchy annually. That was a risk neither the German bishops nor the Vatican wished to take.

As we are seeing in the child abuse area as well, bishops appear to just roll their eyes when Francis talks about financial and child protection reforms. Without real accountability, that is to be expected, as Francis must well know. When he headed the Argentine bishops, they failed to file with the Vatican a child protection program despite a purported Vatican deadline. Francis knows well how the game is played.

Since Pope Francis appears to have relied for key appointments on Cardinal Sodano as his Chief Recruiter, we should have expected this (e.g., Secretary of State, Parolin, Secretary of the Synod on the Family, Baldisseri, et al.). NCR’s reports and books by Jason Berry have educated us about what to expect from Sodano, the quintessential Machiavellian curia cardinal.

The fancy bathtubs and hot tubs are the tip of the iceberg. LA Cardinal Mahony’s and NY Cardinal Dolan’s separate and mostly unnecessary cathedral construction expenditures, approaching an estimated almost $200 million each to satisfy their competitive “edifice” complexes, are even much worse, by amount at least. And the more than $3 billion (including almost $700 million for Mahony’s “mortal sins”) the US bishops have spent on a flawed priest child abuse legal strategy, often to keep themselves out of jail while stiffing abuse survivors, is the worst by far.

Francis has not only failed effectively to address bishop unaccountability in his almost year as pope; he has aided and abetted it, especially with his protection in Rome of the Polish Archbishop Nuncio who allegedly sexually abused multiple boys in the Dominican Republic. Francis has also today made the Vatican’s failed head of purported child protection, Archbishop Mueller, a cardinal, even after respected and informed German Jesuit educator, Klaus Mertes, on February 6 called for Mueller to be sacked over his alleged predatory priest cover-ups while Bishop of Regensburg.

The problem with papal rhetoric is you cannot tell if it are sincere statements or just scripted propaganda. You can only evaluate it by comparing it to the actions that relate to the rhetoric. Priest child abuse and bishop accountability are not just more issues on a papal to-do list. As every parent knows, if you cannot be trusted with children, you cannot be trusted. Case closed ! Pope Pius X, after almost 2,000 years of adult confession, rigged the sacraments to require child confessions and first communions at 7 years old. Popes since then have demanded secrecy about sex abuse via the confessional. We must change this to protect defenseless children.

There is hope for Catholics, at least in the USA. It is President Obama, who will meet for the first time with Pope Francis in a few weeks on March 27. Whether one voted for him, or likes him, is unimportant. He is chief enforcer of USA laws and a parent. If he only does what the Australians are doing, having a thorough investigation into institutional child abuse in the USA by all religious groups, we likely could bring this Catholic abuse scandal to an end.

Since Francis and his US bishops are seeking to help transfer to conservatives and their billionaire backers control in November of the US Senate and the future US Supreme Court majority thereafter, Obama will have to confront Francis. Obama may be forced in these circumstances to expose Francis’, and US bishops’ including Myers, cynical strategy.

A national investigation commission would be one element of an effective approach to doing this. I have pointed this out in detail to Obama in my recent ”Advice to President Obama” linked above. Pressure from Obama, in my view, will lead to lay oversight, since bishops like Myers cannot be trusted to operate without checks and balances.

The reason the US Founders infused the Constitution with checks and balances is they knew leaders cannot be blindly trusted. That applies to popes and bishops as well. As Australia is now showing us, once the rule of law is firmly applied to a religious hierarchy, whether Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or other, the real truth comes out and the need for effective lay oversight becomes much clearer.