The Un & the “minor” Papal Commission on Minors

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
May 3, 2014

http://christiancatholicism.com/the-un-the-minor-papal-commission-on-minors/

It is turning into a significant fortnight for the Vatican, which included an inconsequential long delayed first meeting of Pope Francis’ overly touted advisory “Commission on Minors” that was clearly and likely intentionally overshadowed by a papal saint making doubleheader. In particular, the period included:

(1) Two developments on the Vatican’s “slow walk stonewalling” on holding bishops accountable for protecting children—a “going through the motions” preliminary meeting of the elusive new papal advisory Commission on Minors and a review of indicated Vatican stonewalling at next week’s UN Committee on Torture hearings in Geneva; and

(2) Two new “pope saints” and a third in the wings, as described below;

(3) Two tributes, offered by well regarded Catholic thinkers in a leading lay Catholic publication, of the top Vatican critic, Fr. Hans Kung, here

[ncronline.org]

[ncronline.org]

(4) Two critiques, and a brief history, of the priest abuse scandal, by Fr. Thomas Doyle, the leading expert and advocate worldwide for priest abuse survivors; one critique here

[ncronline.org]

[crusadeagainstclergyabuse.com]

( 5) The release of the sworn depositions of former Vicar General of the Minneapolis Archdiocese (USA), Fr. Kevin McDonough, brother of President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, here

[mprnews.org]

; and of his Archbishop Nienstedt here

[mprnews.org]

The press conference following the first meeting of the advisory committee was revealing and disappointing, even if predictable given the stonewalling to date by the Vatican, including Pope Francis. The press conference indicated the commission is virtually leaderless, unfocused, unscheduled and , in effect, just another stall tactic to enable the Vatican to continue its cover-up.

The media reporting also suggested that the brave survivor on the commission may be in over her head, given her limited experience with slick Vatican bureaucrats. The other lay members were noticeable more for their lack of meaningful contribution, after months of hype, on the Catholic Church’s top priority, holding bishops accountable for protecting predatory priests who raped children. It is also clear O’Malley’s mission is to enable Francis to keep tight control over disciplining bad bishops. The absolute monarch wants to remain absolute. This is unacceptable and ineffective, given the Vatican’s failed efforts to police itself for centuries.

As Vatican representatives prepare to testify before a United Nations inquiry into torture , a Vatican official warned that it would be “deceptive” to link torture with the pedophilia scandals that have swept the Catholic Church. The Vatican’s chief spokesman, Fr. Lombardi, said Friday, 5/2, that the Convention Against Torture, endorsed by the Vatican in 2002, was one of the most important in the U.N.’s ambit.

Lombardi also stressed in a statement the Holy See’s “strong commitment against any form of torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment.”

But Lombardi urged the U.N. committee to resist pressure from human rights activists that are intent on including the sexual abuse of minors in a discussion about torture. Most international lawyers and tens of thousands of children sexually abused, often brutally by priests, likely see this differently than childless and celibate Jesuits like Fr. Lombardi and Pope Francis. Trained on the texts of the medieval scholastics, these Jesuits are taking “hairsplitting and legalisms” to new heights. It is almost obscene to try to make this distinction. As Fr. Lombardi noted, the treaty covers “… torture AND OTHER cruel … treatment…”

If child rape, facilitated since 1910 by making Catholic children begin at seven years old making confession in a dark box to an unknown priest, is not “cruel treatment”, what is? What is wrong with you, Fr. Lombardi and Pope Francis? We are talking about defenseless kids. Did you exchange your humanity when you took your Jesuit vows?

SNAP, the survivors advocacy group, recently indicated that hundreds of children and adults were still being “sexually violated, tortured and assaulted” by Catholic priests. “Torture and violence can be subtle and manipulative. Or it can be blatant and brutal,” said SNAP President Barbara Blaine. “Either way, it’s horribly destructive to the human spirit, especially when inflicted on the young by the powerful, on the truly devout by the allegedly holy.” She added: “Nothing has succeeded in getting Vatican officials to stop this violence”.

In a separate inquiry in February, the U.N. watchdog for the human rights of the child issued a scathing report ordering the Holy See to open its files on clergy who had “concealed their crimes” and called on the Church to remove suspected or known abusers. In a rare interview in March, Pope Francis surprisingly and almost dogmatically defended the Church, saying it had acted with “transparency and responsibility” on the issue.

In a written submission, a right wing group, Catholic Voices USA, told the U.N. committee Friday, 5/2, that the Church had become “the global model for the legal safeguarding of children” . Amazing! Meanwhile, the Vatican’s Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, indicated on Friday that the incidence of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy was “the lowest” among all the professions, including teachers and judges. The limp and distracting Vatican excuses seem to never end.

Pope Francis announced after nine months as pope and under media pressure the creation of an advisory papal abuse commission last December. He named its members four months later in March, a few days before his first meeting with President Obama, after coming under significant criticism for having substantially ignored the sex abuse issue. The commission’s eight members, picked by Francis as absolute monarch, met for the first time this week, to discuss preliminarily and in anticipation of the UN Committee on Torture’s anticipated grilling soon, the potential scope of their work and possible addition of future members. Francis claimed publicly he wanted the commission to be “independent”, but he picked its members, limited them to an advisory role and will have to approve the commissions protocols. Neither independent nor promising, it appears. Briefing reporters Saturday, May 3, Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley indicated current Church laws “could” hold bishops accountable if they failed to protect children. But he said those laws hadn’t been sufficient to date and that new protocols were needed. O’Malley also indicated he hoped to broaden the advisory commission membership to reflect the worldwide church, specifically because so much of what the commission must do is educate Church officials about the problem in places where the scandal hasn’t yet exploded. “There is so much ignorance around this topic, so much denial,” O’Malley said surprisingly, if not amazingly.

The commission will make proposals to the pope, but Cardinal O’Malley said that a specific time frame had not been decided upon. “The one thing that this meeting showed is how many issues there are to deal with and how complex they are,” he said. Though the commission was established to advise the pope, it could also be “of service” to national bishops conferences.

Almost absurdly, O’Malley indicated that the current eight-member commission wanted to become aware of child protection legislation and programs in the Vatican City State. He added “we feel that it is important for the Vatican City to model the importance and priority of child protection.” Of course, Vatican City has about a dozen children, so at its current rate, the Commission can be expected to take months on this diversion. Of course, Francis has apparently for legal reasons also taken the indefensible and counterfactual position that the pope doesn’t really oversee his worldwide bishops. It appears the elusive Commission will take even longer than the several years the German bishops are taking to set up their abuse investigation. This appears to be a classic “stall exercise”, perhaps to let Francis to continue to side step the abuse scandal at least until November’s US Congressional elections or even the 2016 US presidential election. Members of Pope Francis’ advisory commission indicated Saturday (5/3) they would develop “clear and effective” protocols to hold bishops and other Catholic Church authorities (presumably including bishops) accountable if they fail to report suspected abuse or protect children from pedophile priests. They plan to meet again in several months, over sixteen months after Francis was made pope and more than seven months after O’Malley prematurely, it appears, announced under pressure the idea of a papal abuse commission. Francis is taking the game of ‘hiding the ball” to new levels. Victims groups have long blasted the Vatican for refusing to punish any bishop or superior who covered up for priests who raped and molested children. They have listed accountability as one of the core issues facing Francis and a key test for his new advisory Commission on Minors. At the present pace, only younger bishops need be concerned. The older ones will likely all die before this Commission has any real impact, if it ever does. Victims groups have long cited the case of O’Malley’s predecessor in Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in disgrace as archbishop after the sex abuse scandal exploded publicly there in 2002 and Law was shown to have covered up for notorious child rapists. But Pope John Paul II then appointed Law to the prestigious assignment as archpriest of one of the Vatican’s four major basilicas in Rome. Even today, another U.S. bishop, Robert Finn, remains in office despite having been convicted of criminal failure to report suspected child abuse.Incidentally, Francis in 2005 served as a cardinal with Law on a papal commission on the family. Who was Francis to judge? Much remains to be done. The Commission on Minors still has no founding statute or protocols. Its independence within the Vatican bureaucracy is unclear and uncertain. Neither a firm date timeline for drafting the fundamental documents or for adding more members has yet been set. And Commission members hail mostly from the industrialized world, whereas comprehensive church abuse policies lag largely in the developing world. And respected Church experts like Fr. Thomas Doyle have not been added to the Commission, at least so far. Recently, the Italian bishops’ conference released their guidelines and said they had no legal obligation to report suspected priest child abuse to police. O’Malley indicated on Saturday the Church’s response shouldn’t depend on legal obligations, but rather “moral obligations” to report suspected abuse. Of course, Italian bishops do not answer to him. They do answer to Francis and he has not really weighed in yet, if he ever does. The advisory Commission on Minors met this week, as indicated, on the eve of a U.N. Committee on Torture meeting in Geneva in which the Vatican is expected to come under a second round of severe criticism for its handling of abuse. A U.N. committee monitoring implementation of a key treaty on children’s rights blasted the Holy See earlier this year, accusing it of systematically placing its own interests over those of victims by enabling priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children through its own policies and code of silence, noted by ex-Vatican prosecutor, Bishop Scicluna, as the “omerta” code often identified more with the Mafia. The Commission on Minors’ “slow walk” follows over a year of near silence by Francis on the major challenge he faces—making bishops, including himself, accountable to the Catholic faithful. Likely, this may be the only way the Vatican can head off outside governmental intervention that is already well underway in the area of Vatican finances. For more details, see

[nytimes.com]

At times, Pope Francis is like a riddle—tough to figure out. He appears charming, yet authoritarian; self-confident, yet imprudent; and purposeful, yet unpredictable. His opportunistic apologists fawn over him, while a thirsty 24/7 media world cannot get enough of his free publicity punch. He volunteered at 77 years old to fix a child abuse and financial mess for frightened cardinals concerned about saving their necks. Many Catholics, on the other hand, welcomed him hoping he would grab some cardinals’ necks. He mainly smiled his way through his first year, while keeping his cards close. Now he has been forced to show his hand finally, with three papal saints in the works and two UN Committees on his back. Criticism continues about whether popes should be declared saints with the canonizations of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. John XXIII apparently steered 2,000+ bishops at the Second Vatican Council away from addressing the child abuse scandal in the 1960?s. John Paul II and Benedict XVI steered them away from the scandal from the 1970?s until last year. For some historical and other perspectives on the saint making of recent popes, see

[blog.yupnet.org]

and

[truth-out.org]

Desperate efforts were made this week by John Paul II’s Opus Dei former spokesman and by the pope’s opportunistic biographer, George Weigel, to air brush over the Polish pope’s extensive knowledge for years of the priest child abuse epidemic. Francis met with Weigel recently and also met with him several months before he was selected to be pope. Coincidence? Perhaps. Again why? These apologists’ efforts were recently blown away by Fr. Thomas Doyle, who had direct knowledge of what the pope knew and when he knew it, as shown here

[ncronline.org]

Now an Italian magazine has predicted the contraception ban author, Paul VI, will be beatified in 2014, paving the way for his sainthood, as reported here

[ncronline.org]

According to the magazine , a miracle in California has been attributed to Paul VI. In a magazine preview, the article said Francis’ Congregation for the Causes of Saints would meet in a week to confirm the miracle attributed to Paul VI. Once the miracle is confirmed, Pope Francis will then likely proclaim Paul VI’s beatification in October at the end of the Synod on the Family, the magazine predicted. So much for the fair consideration of reversing the contraception ban by the 150 childless Synod Bishops. Of course, Francis will likely canonize Paul VI, who condemned contraception in his encyclical, Humanae Vitae, in 1968. Francis apparently needs to buttress by his Synod in October Francis and his US bishops’ support in early November’s key US midterm elections of right wing US politicians and their billionaire backers, as cardinals struggle to survive democratic governments’ investigations like Australia’s and to avoid a similar one in the USA. Francis’ US political support depends on his opposition to Obamacare’s contraception insurance mandate, so Paul VI apparently needs to be “divinized” like John Paul II and John XXIII are being now, their child protection failures notwithstanding. Humanae Vitae must be “glorified”, it appears. Francis will, of course, have to navigate past the hurdles implicit in the reported public denials available on Google by Paul VI of any affair he was alleged to have had with an Italian male actor. Who knows? Francis has sailed past the ex-Pope’s secret gay lobby report, while the media has mainly played dead about it. Sexual hypocrisy now appears to be quite acceptable at the Vatican and not even newsworthy anymore, it seems. Who are we to judge? Francis has already swallowed John Paul II’s and John XXIII’s poor records on curtailing priest child abuse and on defrocking Fr. Maciel. He would easily do the same for Paul VI. It appears anything goes now in Rome if it might save the hierarchy’s hides. So Let the (papal) Saints Come Marching In! Please hold on to your Pope Alexander VI (Borgia) relics. They may yet fetch a Prince’s ransom on E-Bay. Francis had a choice. Protect children or protect bishops. Instead of letting papal “saint making” take a normal course over time, he has chosen to accelerate it to put bishops first. That monumental and bad decision almost assures the end of the Vatican in its present form as discussed below. Francis seems to suffer from the same hubris that Pius IX suffered from when he lost the Vatican’s papal kingdom. The ex-Pope’s dream of a smaller “cult-like” church may soon be fulfilled, perhaps unintentionally, under Francis’ leadership, as the Catholic Church exodus, especially women and children, accelerates. Francis’ desperate ploys to canonize popes who chose to protect predatory priests over children at a time when the Vatican Titanic is sinking in a child abuse swamp is reminiscent of Pius IX’s equally desperate ploys — his declaration of papal infallibility and his Syllabus of Errors condemning democracies, as Italian democratic nationalists were taking control of the Papal States almost a hundred and fifty years ago . It is likely that Francis’ current Roman circus events of declaring new “papal saints” will be as “spectacular” a failure as the Syllabus of Error, notwithstanding the marshalling for media effect of many thousands of innocent “extras’ from Poland and elsewhere to fill up St. Peter’s Square. And now the Vatican hierarchs have no where left to run and hide. Paradoxically, the media extravaganzas guarantee many more people will hear about the various papal scandals—so much for the former FOX News publicist’s apparent plans! It appears Pope Francis got significant multinational corporate backing for his saintly spectacular. Were Francis and his predecessors winking when they disparaged global capitalism, as they seemed to be winking when they repeatedly declared “zero tolerance” of priest child sexual abuse? See here

[www.nbcnews.com]

The key moral challenge Francis faces as pope is to restore Catholics’ trust in leaders who too often risked children inexcusably for years. If a pope cannot be trusted to protect children and to demand that his bishops be held accountable for failing to do so , what can he be trusted with? Francis seemingly continues this cover-up and now honors popes who earlier dishonored children. Ominously, Francis had generally avoided this abuse scandal challenge for over a year. He now has recently failed to meet it on several occasions; most noticeably by unnecessarily jamming through the sainthood of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. Both these popes risked children’s safety continually and shamefully. Francis could have indicated his seriousness about holding bishops accountable by holding these two popes accountable to a thorough and independent review of their record. But instead he rushed to their sainthood on a superficial and biased investigation by papal subordinates. Why? Francis seemingly continues this cover-up and now honors popes who earlier dishonored children. Again why? Stark examples of related cover-ups that continues under Pope Francis are well indicated by two recent video depositions worlds apart—Cardinal Pell in Australia, here

[abc.net.au]

and former Vicar General of the Minneapolis Archdiocese (USA), Fr. Kevin McDonough, here

[mprnews.org]

Cardinal Pell’s full testimony disclosed a pathetic, if not cruel, example of approaching survivors of priest child abusers as legal claimants to be crushed by the Cardinal’s lawyers. Yet, Francis just promoted him to the No. 3 position at the Vatican. Fr. McDonough, brother of President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, has refused to meet to discuss abuse cases he oversaw with police or even with his Archbishop’s own task force, yet he continues to serve as a Catholic pastor in good standing. Francis’ message to bishops in Australia and the USA is the same as the message being sent worldwide with these two canonizations—protecting suspected predator priests is not viewed negatively by the Vatican and the hierarchy will not be held accountable. For an excellent brief overview of the abuse background by a well informed priest, please see:

[crusadeagainstclergyabuse.com]

For over a year as pope, and decades before as a bishop and Jesuit official, it appears that Francis has failed to protect children that Jesus clearly mandated must be protected. Francis has now made clear he will stand and stonewall rather than adopt serious Vatican reforms to protect children. His most defiant indication so far is to canonize two popes who also failed badly to protect children. The message to his fellow bishops, including convicted criminal, Bishop Finn is clear—like Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, Francis will overlook failures to act to curtail priest child abuse. In effect, it is merely a venial sin. Is Pope Francis’ “infallible” declaration of sainthood, or canonization, for Popes John XXIII and John Paul II part of a larger undisclosed strategy? It seems so. Francis’ “divinizing” these two popes now, thereby seeking to enhance selectively Francis’ ability to capitalize on their individual moral influence over various Catholic groups, appears aimed at consolidating Francis’ papal power base and at maximizing his influence over a divided world Catholicism. Francis’ strategy appears directed at both so-called “conservative” Catholics, who often favor John Paul II’s more dogmatic approach in his rigid encyclicals and self-serving Catechism, and “liberal” Catholics, who often favor John XXIII’s seemingly more pastoral approach in initiating the Second Vatican Council reforms. Since the Catechism contains many positions that support a dominant papacy that depends on a rigid sexual morality, Francis’ rushed and unsurprising “elevation” of the Catechism’s papal proponent, John Paul II, is both symbolically, practically and perhaps ominously significant for many key “doctrines” that Francis is purported by some to be reconsidering, such as women priests, contraception, divorced and remarried Catholics’ readmission to sacraments, and marriage equality. As to the seeming rush to sainthood, maximizing Francis’ power over a less theologically divided Catholicism appears to be especially important to the Vatican currently. The Vatican now faces its greatest external threat since the loss of its extensive Papal States’ territory almost a century and a half ago. The democratically driven threat for the Vatican is the increasing pressure, including potential criminal prosecutions of the hierarchy, from powerful democratic governments over the Vatican’s mismanagement, especially of its bishops’ poor child protection performance. The Vatican over a 1,500 year period has eliminated democratic pressure internally, but is now paradoxically facing democratic pressure externally. Outside governmental oversight is already well underway of the Vatican’s long overdue efforts to clean up the mismanagement of its corrupt finances. The Vatican has already lost badly under the ex-Pope and his key Vatican Bank director, the influential US Republican, Carl Anderson, its battle to resist accepting international financial accountability. The current media focus on bishops’ excessive mansions and clerical embezzlement is just a start on exposing hierarchical financial corruption, as independently audited financial statements eventually become the norm for Catholic Church finances. Francis appears to understand fully that the Vatican now has a single strategic option to try to meet this democratically driven threat. The Vatican can gain trust from democratically controlled governments only by curtailing hierarchical mismanagement by adopting fundamental internal structural reforms to assure that bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, are transparently accountable to independent lay oversight, as in other Christian denominations and as existed in the earlier Catholic Church. Without independent lay oversight, reforms can be rolled back by any future pope. Alternatively, the Vatican can continue to try to resist more effectively outside democratically driven governmental oversight. Despite many hollow promise-s to reform internally, all modern popes, including Francis by his actions and inaction so far, have mostly chosen to resist outside government oversight. Popes have resisted mainly by playing politics to try to influence the governments that may press the Vatican. This is quite evident in the current US Congressional campaigns for November’s important elections, where the Vatican’s subordinate US bishops are pressing in opposition to President Obama and the Democrats. The Vatican has reason to fear Obama, as evidenced by the following recent blistering remarks, of a Deputy US Attorney in Obama’s Justice Department, about criminally convicted Bishop Robert Finn and the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese’s handling of a predator priest’s case: “When it becomes clear at the outset of the investigation that the entire hierarchy of a centuries-old religious denomination does not seem willing to recognize that the children depicted in the images are, in fact, victims of child exploitation, nor seem very willing to help establish the identity of the children depicted, and instead are spending millions of dollars on legal counsel in an ill-advised effort to avoid having the priest and bishop accept legal responsibility for their crimes, then you know, as an investigator, that your work is cut out for you …” The priest is serving a 50 year Federal sentence and Finn barely escaped a prison term himself. Pope Francis, however, has continued Finn in office for over a year so far. This continuing Vatican choice to resist this outside democratic pressure can succeed only if the Vatican can maintain sufficient influence over those groups that commonly control these democracies. To sustain that influence in any particular powerful democracy, such as the USA or Germany, the Vatican must appear to a specific ruling group in the democracy to exercise enough papal influence over critical Catholic voters and local financial elites in such democracy to warrant the ruling group’s taking a “hands’ off” attitude to the Vatican’s mismanagement problems. In the USA, for example, the Vatican for three decades has assertively sought political allies, usually among right wing Republicans, like Carl Anderson, and their tax adverse billionaire backers. For their part, Republican political leaders, and their related conservative US Supreme Court majorities, have often supported Vatican positions more fully, including with respect to bishop accountability failures. The Vatican has attempted in recent elections, and as mentioned above, is currently attempting for the upcoming US midterm Congressional elections in November, to use “wedge issue crusades” opposing contraception, abortion, gay marriage, et al., to boost the campaigns of right wing political candidates by increasing voter turnout of conservative Catholic voters in key states. To maximize this essential Vatican political influence, it appears that Francis decided he should try to reduce internal Catholic divisiveness symbolized by the split among John Paul II and John XXIII advocates. The Vatican’s strategy of resistance has already failed to deter outside governments from requiring the Vatican to comply with modern international banking and financial regulations, which the Vatican had successfully avoided mostly for over a half century. Notwithstanding Francis’ canonization media extravaganza, Francis’ strategy of continuing to resist governmental pressure to hold bishops accountable will likely also fail. Outside governments will continue to press to require the Vatican to comply with laws aimed at protecting children, whether or not popes are opportunistically declared saints. At times, one gets the impression that Francis believes if he (1) continually changes the subject, (2) avoids talking about the abuse scandal and abuse survivors, and (3) keeps claiming he only rules about 100 acres with 1,000 subjects in Vatican City, he will be legally unaccountable. If his lawyers told him that, he should get another legal opinion pronto. Given Popes John Paul II’s and John XXIII’s known and widely publicized failures, even without independent access to damaging material in the Vatican’s Secret Archives, to address seriously either the priest child abuse scandals or Fr. Maciel’s well known sexual excesses, as well as Francis’ continued stonewalling on curtailing abuse effectively, the current canonization maneuver will likely be counterproductive. The Vatican’s purported investigations of both popes’ records have been materially inadequate and evidently biased, and the claimed miracles in their name are embarrassingly insufficiently established. For Francis to claim “definitively” that these two popes, with their evidently serious limitations even based on an incomplete investigation, are “saints”, just adds to the overall appearance of a massive Vatican cover-up of bishop accountability failures. Francis has also further undercuts his already tenuous papal claim to infallibility. In 1998, the ex-Pope as a cardinal, with Cardinal Bertone, stated that a pope’s decision to declare a saint must be accepted by Catholics “definitively”, i.e., as infallible. If there is any papal decision that shows the lack of papal infallibility, it is the declaration now of these two popes as saints. Tens of thousands of Catholic children would likely have avoided priest sexual abuse if either of these popes did not behave as moral cowards, as they appear to have. What does it take to be disqualified as a saint? The prospect of outside governmental oversight of bishop management has been most visible recently in the Australian Royal Commission’s gruesome grilling of Cardinal George Pell. Promptly following the long anticipated grilling, Pell was “promoted out” by Francis to the Vatican’s No. 3 position, the Vatican’s financial czar. The Royal Commission seems to be working its way up the Vatican hierarchical ladder, and plans to call Pell back in due course, assuming he waives any diplomatic immunity claim that may then be available. Moreover, the recent revealing and widely publicized videotape depositions of Minneapolis Archbishop Nienstedt and his former Vicar General, Fr. McDonough, that indicated clearly the ongoing hierarchical failures to monitor adequately suspected priest child abusers, just reinforces the need for greater bishop accountability that Pell’s disturbing testimony also recently indicated. Francis is not likely to dig the Vatican out of this ever deepening hole with Hollywood-style spectaculars like these canonizations. Too many Catholics, and even non-Catholics, have lost trust in the Vatican. More are losing trust daily, as Francis evades taking real action to make bishops, and himself for that matter, more accountable. Historians have shown clearly that Catholic popes, like absolute monarchs generally, have for centuries operated at times with secret geo-political strategies, using pious propaganda to obscure their real goals. This has just been shown thoroughly and indisputably for Pope Pius XI by award winning Brown University Professor David Kertzer in his extremely well documented book, “The Pope and Mussolini—The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe”. When Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis were young, Pius XI reigned firmly. Pope John XXIII served as a papal diplomat under both Pius XI and his Secretary of State and successor, Pope Pius XII. Pius XI and Pius XII pursued ultimately unsuccessful strategies to try to further Vatican interests by frequently cooperating with, and even at critical times politically supporting, dictators Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. It appears that Vatican strategic political thinking in several key respects has remained mainly unchanged since the youthful days of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis under Pius XI. Of further current relevance, Pius XI protected for years a top Curial cardinal with a reportedly continuous and perverse interest in boys. Pius XI also secretly ordered in 1922 that cases of priestly misuse of the confessional for sexual purposes be handled by all bishops secretly under threat of excommunication. This unusual order was likely precipitated to some degree by an increase in priest child sexual abuse cases that may have arisen during the prior decade following Pope Pius X’s unprecedented reduction in 1910 to seven years of age for normal First Confession and First Communion from the customary age of twelve or older. In addition, Pius XI also condemned birth control in 1930, seemingly out of his excessive fear that atheistic Soviet communism would overrun a post-World War I depopulated Europe and destroy the Catholic Church in the process. More babies meant more docile Catholics and more potential soldiers, if needed. Whether couples could afford at the time during the Great Depression to raise all the children they bore, was evidently, then as now, not a significant concern of Pope Pius XI or other childless and celibate clerics. As indicated, Pius X had in 1910 lowered the designated age for First Confession and First Communion to seven years old from twelve, thirteen or even older, as had been the Catholic custom for centuries. Obviously, this facilitated a papal goal of earlier and more effective indoctrination of young Catholics, especially on matters like papal infallibility, papal primacy and clerical privileges generally. It also, however, greatly increased the risks of sexual exploitation of especially vulnerable children by predatory priests, which apparently contributed to the need for the 1922 secrecy order particularly to protect priests. This was quite important, it appears, at a time when the Catholic hierarchy was under considerable external pressures following World War I, particularly in Italy. John XXIII in March 1962, in his own name, reissued to bishops worldwide, secretly and seemingly unnecessarily, the outstanding 1922 confessional sexual abuse secrecy order of Pius XI that apparently was still in effect in 1962. John XXIII, of course, highlighted this secret order just several months before more than 2,000+ Catholic bishops were to arrive for the Second Vatican Council in Rome to discuss publicly pressing pastoral issues. The 2,000+ bishops apparently got John XXIII’s message and avoided any serious public discussion of (1) confessional misuse, (2) raising the age of First Confession, and (3) priest child abuse generally. If the Vatican II bishops had not earlier gotten the word on hiding priest child abuse, this reissued order made sure they did get it. It is clear now from numerous investigations that priest child abuse, inside and outside the confessional, was a significant problem when John XXIII seemingly sought to keep the Vatican II bishops from addressing it. Had he asked, as he could and should have, the Council Fathers to consider the abuse scandal then, including reviewing the half century of evidence of the failed experiment of requiring very young children to confess privately, it seems likely worldwide that tens of thousands of Catholic children and their families could have been spared the horrific effects of priest child abuse. Moreover, a more courageous approach by both or even either Pope John XXIII or Pope John Paul II, a Vatican Council II bishop, then or in John Paul II’s case, later, would likely also have enabled the Catholic Church to have avoided the billions of dollars in abuse related expenses, as well as the lost billions in contributions of disgusted Catholics who left the Church or reduced their contributions over the child abuse scandal. In the USA alone, the Church has spent over $3,000,000,000 in recent decades on the few thousand of the abuse survivors who have settled claims, out of the estimated 100,000 estimated USA survivors of priest child abuse, most of whom are, in effect, viewed almost as non-existent by the Catholic hierarchy, including Francis. In Los Angeles alone, over 500 survivors received from the Archdiocese on average over $1,000,000 each for settling their claims. If all 100,000 estimated USA priest child abuse survivors had received similar justice that most of them were likely entitled to, the total would exceed $100,000,000,000 or over a hundred billion dollars. The lifetime social costs, including health care and income maintenance, for most disabled US survivors of priest abuse, in the order of magnitude of many billions of dollars, has instead been shifted to US taxpayers, while many in the Catholic hierarchy live in mansions like princes, with little financial or other accountability for their management failures, or worse, that helped generate many of these unnecessary and cruel costs. In addition to the multi-billion direct financial costs to the Catholic Church of the abuse scandal, the indirect financial costs are likely even much greater. Many former Catholics cite the abuse scandals as a key reason they stopped participating in, and/or contributing to, the Catholic Church. Polls indicate generally only two-thirds of US Catholics attend Church and they donate an estimated $8 billion annually, barely half the per capita rate of US Protestants. If all Catholics attended Church and donated at the same rate as Protestants, Catholic donations would be approximately $24 billion annually, or triple the current levels. That would feed and house a lot of the poor. The idea of canonizing two men who oversaw this shortfall, as well as the ruination of so many innocent children, apparently to protect their ecclesiastical positions, is shameful at best. In contrast to this canonization public relations project aimed obviously at trying to enhance papal prestige and power by striving to glorify Francis’ “near-divine” predecessors, Francis continues with his low key, almost sheepishly muted responses to the Vatican’s biggest crisis, the scandal of failing to hold bad cardinals and bishops accountable for their longstanding and often continuing child protection failures. Indeed, even Francis’ recent widely reported brief “off the cuff” remarks in a closed meeting with international child protection advocates are ambiguous and inadequate with respect to the key issue of imposing sanctions on bad bishops. As AP’s astute Vatican reporter, Nicole Winfield, honestly noted: “Though unclear, Pope Francis’ comments about the ‘sanctions that must be imposed’ could be a reference to the need to hold bishops accountable.” Could be? What is Francis problem with “straight talk” here? What are he and his cardinals afraid of? Moreover, Winfield also noted, with respect to the highly touted Vatican media machine, the seeming effort of Vatican TV to avoid these off the cuff remarks. Winfield added: “Pope Francis’ comments during the closed audience were reported in part by Vatican Radio, and Vatican Television EXCLUDED THEM ENTIRELY in its initial edit of the audience. The full quote was obtained after The Associated Press requested video of the full comments from Vatican Television.” {Emphasis added} One must wonder if Pope Francis was just embarrassed in the presence of so many advocates for children in a closed meeting, thus forcing him to blurt out his ambiguous remarks, especially on the day human rights lawyers filed their extensive “shadow report” with the UN Committee on Torture about the Vatican’s role in the priest child abuse scandal. The group Francis met with is associated with the UN Committee on the Child that recently blasted the Vatican for child protection failures, so Francis had reasons to be embarrassed. As the papal media extravaganzas make clear, the Vatican’s media machine can get out a message when it wants to. Francis appears intent on preserving the rigid papal sexual policies that have come to underpin the papal mythological ideology of an “infallible pope” that Catholics have been weaned on since 1870. The mythology of a “near-divine pope” is fundamental to the Vatican’s geo-political strategy as the canonizations further indicate. This papal ideology may be reinforced, Francis seems to believe, by the “contrived canonizations” of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII, notwithstanding their seemingly indefensible records on covering up priest child abuse and Vatican financial corruption, including with respect to Fr. Maciel, among other apparent shortcomings. These significant subjects appear to have been carefully avoided in the seemingly rigged canonization preliminaries that lack the “devil’s advocate” investigation that had been used in many earlier canonizations. Ironically, Pope John Paul II, a prodigious and profitable “saintmaker”, had earlier eliminated the devil’s advocate position. Meanwhile, the Vatican Archives that might shed some light on these two popes’ seemingly already obvious weaknesses remain secret, which further undercuts their claim to sainthood. It is really questionable whether this rush to sainthood will increase or decrease interest in these two popes’ evident shortcomings, while surely contributing to many Catholics’ growing cynicism about saint making and about the “real Francis”. Pope Francis is still pushing policies that hurt many in the USA and worldwide, including children and women, especially poor ones. Francis’ strategy, evident by clear actions and pregnant inaction that belie his carefully orchestrated public gestures, is evidentally aimed mainly at protecting the cardinals who elected him from potential criminal accountability for facilitating predatory priests and financial felons, among other misdeeds. Central to the Vatican’s protective strategy for over three decades, as mentioned above, has been to ally itself to right-wing conservatives like Ronald Reagan and the George Bushes in the USA, the world’s most powerful country. Consistent with this strategy, the ex-Pope, through his US bishop subordinates and US papal nuncio, tried unsuccessfully to help defeat President Obama in 2012. This papal protective strategy continues today apparently under Pope Francis with contrived “wedge issue crusades” over Obamacare contraception insurance mandates, gay marriage and immigrant deportation policies. The current papal US political strategy appears to be to help right-wing conservatives win in less than six months control of the US Senate and thereby to maintain conservative control of the US Supreme Court. Control of the Supreme Court is essential to maintaining the right-wing’s “0.01% billionaires” dominance of US national politics, Federal low tax policies and most media access. A key factor in the final weeks of the election campaign will likely be Pope Francis’ push to influence conservative US Latino voters in the key US Senate swing states. Francis’ Synod on the Family in October, with no women or married fathers as full participants, appears likely to reaffirm the Vatican’s regressive policies on human sexuality as set forth in the ‘new saint’s” Catechism. This would set the stage for Francis to make a final targeted push for conservative Latino voters on the aforementioned wedge issues. To avoid undercutting Francis’ US election effort, it appears that Francis must continue to dodge as best he can the issue of bishop accountability until after the election in less than six months. He is well on the way to doing this, having effectively already dodged the issue for over 13 months as pope. Francis’ illusory advisory commission on child protection still needs more members and an agenda, among other necessary features, and will likely not weigh in meaningfully before November. An initial meeting of the European members named so far with Cardinal O’Malley of the advisory commission is likely before May 5th, when the Vatican is scheduled to appear before the UN Commission on Torture. Typically under Pope Francis, there is a well publicized flurry of motion on curtailing priest child abuse before anticipated public events that likely could embarrass the Vatican on the priest child abuse scandal, with little evident follow up thereafter until the next public event. A likely objective now for Pope Francis is to avoid having President Obama call before the November US elections for an Australian style national investigation commission into child sexual abuse by US institutions like the Catholic Church. Francis has already seen how the Australian Royal Commission shredded the legacy of Cardinal Pell, whom Francis had just promoted to the Vatican’s no. 3 position as finance czar. Obama obviously would like for political reasons to avoid challenging the popular Francis. Indeed, Obama has recently accepted the resignation of his HHS Secretary who served as the lightning rod for Obamacare, including its contraception insurance mandate. Progressive groups are now also going after bishops’ mansions, like Newark’s Myers’. Given, however, that the pundits’ current predictions are that the Republicans appear poised to win control of the US Senate in less than six months, Obama may be quite imprudent by deferring announcing an investigation into institutional child sexual abuse. Moreover, the steady flow of troubling media disclosures from the Minneapolis Archdiocesan scandals relating to Fr. Kevin McDonough, brother of Obama’s Chief of Staff, may force Obama’s hand. Time will tell. Most Catholics, like myself, have experienced papal indoctrination efforts since childhood, in confessionals and classrooms, to overlook blindly Vatican misdeeds and to just “pay, pray and obey”, no questions asked. This childhood indoctrination strongly influences many Catholics throughout their lives, which is likely why the Vatican seems determined to retain First Confession for seven year olds. Consequently, many Catholics, and many in the media, overlook Francis’ unambiguous actions and inaction that contradict his pleasing public pontifications. They, instead, choose to continue to be fooled by Pope Francis’ well orchestrated charm offensive, that is both comforting to them and relieves them apparently of guilt about not resisting the Vatican’s evil misdeeds. Catholic intellectuals and media figures mostly are silent, often co-opted by hierarchical “bribes or appointments” or beaten down by decades of papal intimidation. Even some purported Catholic reformers accept insincere and often unbelievable and/or false excuses from the hierarchy, rather than calling a spade a spade. Francis has served in a major city for over a quarter century as either a bishop or a Jesuit provincial, and over a dozen years as a cardinal. He must know the score on the Vatican’s long standing failure to hold bishops’ accountable for protecting predatory priests. Will Francis in fact now take a step forward and hold bishops accountable — that is the fundamental issue he has been ducking for over a year as pope. He has finally announced recently in general terms an advisory commission with a vague mandate and neither a specific schedule nor a clear agenda. Meanwhile, Francis recently in effect approved of permitting Italian priests to continue to avoid reporting abuse cases to the police. Francis volunteered to be Pope. As part of the control group now, he like the ex-Pope and Cardinals Bertone, Sodano, Levada, Parolin and Mueller are all subject to the long arm of the International Criminal Court. The Court avoided, at least for the time being, taking action against the Vatican hierarchy; a prosecution of Vatican leaders still remains legally feasible. Moreover, the Vatican remains subject to the UN committee on the Child and the UN Committee on Torture under the treaties to which the Vatican is bound. Francis is running out of time. Award winning reporter, Jason Berry, recently noted in an article some of the earlier bad experiences with hierarchical abuse commissions had by key Catholics, including Illinois Supreme Court Justice, Anne Burke, and Duquesne Law Dean Emeritus and canon lawyer, Nicholas Cafardi, with the US bishops’ commission. Justice Burke even flew to Rome in a futile effort to try to convince then Cardinal Ratzinger (now ex-Pope) to make bishops really accountable. Cafardi, a legal expert on clerical child abuse crimes, interestingly relates his recent unsuccessful effort to try to assist at his own expense Fr. Hans Zollner, S.J., a key member of Pope Francis’ promised advisory commission. See Berry’s article here:

[ncronline.org]

To appreciate how far Pope Francis’ latest rhetoric on the abuse scandal is from the actual reality of the Vatican’s ongoing failure to address this scandal effectively and transparently, please review the recent reported remarks below recently made to a US Catholic reform group by Fr. Thomas Doyle, O.P. Fr. Doyle has been the leading worldwide advocate for over a quarter century of securing justice for priest abuse survivors. During the 1980?s Fr. Doyle had futilely advised Pope John Paul II’s US representative, Cardinal Pio Laghi, on priest child abuse curtailment policy. Laghi had earlier finished overseeing the Argentina Catholic Church’s self serving cooperation with a brutal military in the “Dirty War”, in which Pope Francis indirectly assisted Laghi, as the local Jesuit provincial, by trying to suppress prophetic local Jesuits who challenged the military. Fr. Doyle’s recent remarks follow: _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE AND THE CHURCH TODAY: TURNING TALK INTO ACTION By: Thomas P. Doyle, J.C.D., C.A.D.C.—April 5, 2014 Where the Institutional Church is Today Sources of Information: media reports, official church statements, court records, official and private reports, information from victims, bishops statements, bishops’ actions. 1. The so-called sex abuse “crisis” or “scandal” is thirty years old this year. My authority for any conclusions or opinions I offer rests partially on the fact that I have been directly involved for all of those thirty years. I will admit today that in the summer of 1985 and the winter of 1985 I would not have been able to imagine what would unfold in the following decades. I certainly had no idea of the impact my own experience would have on my relationship to the institutional Church, to my belief system and to my concept of the Higher Power. 2. Before considering the transition from discussion to action, it is essential to consider the foundation for action and the reasons why it is essential to the life and growth of the Church. By “Church” I do not mean the very limited institutional dimension, but the far more dynamic reality, the People of God. 3. The past three decades have revealed much about clergy sexual abuse, but even more important, they have revealed much about the institutional Catholic Church and the tension between it and the Body of Christ. a. Sex abuse of minors by clerics of all ranks is an historical constant. There is sexual abuse of minors by clerics in every geographic area where the Church exists. b. The extent of revelations of sex abuse has been commensurate with the willingness of victims to seek relief in the civil courts and in the capacity and willingness of the courts to respond to the victims with objectivity. c. Sex abuse has been actively denied and covered up by bishops, religious superiors and popes since the early 19th century. The bishops’ negative and inadequate response to reports of abuse and to suspected abusers has been uniform and consistent throughout the international scope of the Church. d. The institutional Church as a whole and bishops in general, including the bishops of Rome, have never given any credible indication that they understood the nature and gravity of the spiritual damage done to victims. e. Likewise the Church and bishops in general have given no credible evidence to date of an ability and willingness to make the pastoral welfare, i.e., compassionate care and support, the priority in their response. f. Bishops remain on the defensive. Their responses have been administrative and bureaucratic. The bishops in the U.S. have expended significant monetary and human resources on programs and policies to protect children in the future. g. No effort by any diocese has been proactive or initiated independent of pressure from the media, the courts and angry laypersons. In other words, all of the programs and other “advances” referenced by bishops and by Pope Francis have been forced on the institutional Church since the public revelations and nearly all have been instituted since 2002. h. Attorneys for the institutional Church continue to exert great influence over bishops. Victims are treated with disdain if they decide to resort to the civil courts for justice and recognition. Some examples: Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Philadelphia, St. Paul, and Denver. i. The archetype of revictimization and institutional abuse is George Pell formerly of Sydney. j. There are few known examples of bishops who have exhibited sincere pastoral concern for victims. Perfunctory visits at the bishop’s office and penitential liturgies are not examples of pastoral concern. k. The overall costs for the U.S. Church between 1986 and 2014 are slightly over 3 billion dollars. This figure includes known settlements, jury awards and attorneys’ costs for the Church. The actual amount expended on attorneys is unknown but reaches into the hundreds of millions of dollars. For example the diocese of Kansas City took 200 depositions in one case (Teman) and ended up settling for $2.25 million. In Sydney the archdiocese spent $1 million fighting John Ellis who asked for $100,000. l. The Church in general continues to favor the clerics over the victims. This is a by-product of the clericalism mentality and magical definition of the priesthood. The recent decision by the Italian Bishops’ Conference is an example of the attitude. 4. The U.S. bishops continue to treat victims with disdain at the very least. This is evidenced by: ? -Encouraging attorneys to go to extreme lengths to defeat victims who challenge the diocese in court. This holds true for religious communities as well, e.g., California Franciscans, Jesuits, Salesians and Christian Brothers; ? -Refusing to recognize or communicate with SNAP or any other victims group; ? -Expending vast monetary resources and engaging in dishonest campaigns to defeat any legislative advances for victims of child abuse in general; ? -Refusing to publicly disclose the names of known predators and putting known predators back in some form of ministry; ? -Threatening victims with lawsuits if they break confidentiality clauses in settlement agreements; ? -Counter suing victims; and -Failing to muzzle Bill Donohue. 5. There are no clear signs of hope that the institutional Church is beginning to comprehend the horrendous nature of sexual abuse by clerics. There has been a great deal of rhetoric and public relations bluster, but there is little if anything to show sincerity. To date, no bishop has been subjected to any penal process or penal sanctions for sexually abusing minors or adults himself or for their failure to remove known perpetrators. 6. The recent appointment of eight members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is not a sign of hope for a variety of reasons. Everything they need to know has already been well researched especially in the U.S. 7. What Have We Learned About the Church: The past thirty years have revealed much about the institutional Church. Perhaps the most far-reaching conclusion one can draw is that there is a sharp division between the institutional Church and the Body of Christ and that the institutional Church is essentially atheist, judging by its choice to protect its worldly image, prosperity and power rather than respond to the victims with immediate care and concern. a. Ecclesiology. There is either an ignorance on the part of many, including bishops, of the true nature of the Church or there is a conscious rejection of it. b. Spirituality. The clerical spirituality is deeply flawed in that it has highly narcissistic strains, which actually enable sexual abuse and prevent a compassionate and just response to it. b. Priesthood. The common understanding and the standard theology of priesthood in the Church is deeply flawed. The heavy emphasis is on sacramental ritual and sacrifice, rather than ministry. The elitist “theology” of priesthood, grounded in the concept of “ontological change” and being joined with Jesus are the basis and constant support for the toxic concept of priesthood commonly held by victims, and others. c. Pastoral care. The “crisis” has revealed an inability to conceive of spirituality and spiritual care in other than terms of ritual attendance and obedience to authority. The bishops have shown that they do not know how to give pastoral and spiritual care to victims of the clergy. d. Episcopacy. The bishops as a group and as individuals have consistently failed and offended the People of God by their treatment of victims of sexual abuse, their insistence on limiting the concept of “Church” to the clergy and hierarchy and their squandering of financial resources, all donated, for their own security and protection. This calls into question the authenticity of their claim to be the essential pillars of the Church. In reality, in light of our experience with a growing scarcity of priests, but unfortunately not a comparable scarcity of bishops, and the dependence on the laity, it is probably true that the Church needs bishops as much as a duck hunter needs an accordion. e. Concern for doctrine and dogma has eclipsed commitment to charity and justice. The recent popes (John Paul II and Benedict XVI) have reacted, often with cruelty and nearly always without process, to anyone who has voiced or written an opinion not is not in complete compliance with their opinions. At the same time, these popes have protected bishops who have violated children themselves or who have enabled priests to violate children. 8. The Church has responded to the victims of sexual abuse by the clergy and these victims extend well beyond those actually violated by clergy. It includes parents, siblings, friends and in a real sense, every believing person in the Body of Christ. The Church that has responded has been us. It has not been the official institution but laypeople and a small number of clergy and religious. There are a number of things we can continue to do. One of them is not talking about it anymore. There have been enough meetings, discussions, symposia etc. a. Actively support legislative reform in your own state and in other states. If you don’t understand the issues contact SNAP for help. There are numerous sources of factual information. (Please note the work of Voice of the Faithful in collaboration with Sr. Maureen Turlish in this area with the publication of “Statute of Limitation Reform: An Advocacy Guide.”) b. Challenge priests, bishops or lay people who continue to speak out against victims and who continue to propagate the erroneous propaganda from the institution. c. Invite survivors or their active supporters to speak publicly. There are still countless people who live under serious misconceptions about this issue. d. Ask your pastors and your bishops if they support victims support groups, i.e., SNAP and ROAD TO RECOVERY. If they do not, challenge them. e. If survivors plan a demonstration of any sort near you, go and support them. f. If you know of church officials who speak or act in a way that is harmful or derogatory of survivors or who are harboring credibly accused clerics, challenge them. Call, write, email…but challenge them. g. Do NOT donate to any diocesan causes. Do NOT donate to Peters Pence. In the ideal do not donate to any Church affiliated organization especially those that have or continue to harbor criminals. h. Give/donate to survivor support organizations, i.e., SNAP and Road to Recovery. i. Actively insist that all church officials but especially bishops, act and speak with complete openness, transparency and honesty. 9. The thirty-year chapter of Catholic Church history, dominated by an epidemic of sexual abuse of minors by clerics and ineptitude and malfeasance by bishops, has exposed flaws in several essential elements of the Church that are so destructive to the People of God that they are fatal to the present paradigm of the institutional Church. Try as they might the ordained office-holders have been unable to change or camouflage these flaws. The chasm that separated the clergy and hierarchy from the mass of lay people has shrunk to the point where the old methods of control no longer work. The playing field has been leveled to the point where ever growing numbers of Catholics are encountering and confronting bishops as adults and not as compliant and docile children. This has irrevocably altered the definition of the Church promulgated by Pius X in his 1906 encyclical Vehementer Nos: “It follows that the Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the Pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful. So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members towards that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors.” In spite of the insistence of Pius’ successors that this is the only authentic understanding of the socio-political structuring of the people of God, the realities of life in the Catholic Church over the past fifty years have shown that rather than comply in lock-step to such stratification, the voices and actions of a significant number of lay persons, religious and clerics have shown that “agere sequitur esse”, “action follows being,” is not so much changing the meaning of the Church, but revealing what it really is. //END ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ It is hardly surprising Pope Francis has not appointed Fr. Doyle to Francis’ long delayed and still illusory advisory committee on child abuse, the latest Vatican public relations facade for covering-up the priest child abuse scandal. Fr. Doyle has also recently perceptively remarked on the outrageous and shameful testimony before Australia’s Royal Commission of Cardinal Pell, Pope Francis’ new appointment to oversee Vatican finances. For Doyle’s remarks on Pell’s testimony, see:

[christiancatholicism.com]

[opentabernacle.wordpress.com]

and here

[opentabernacle.wordpress.com]