Why Is Pope Francis Still So Afraid of Oversight by the Catholic 99.99% ?

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
January 30, 2015

http://christiancatholicism.com/why-is-pope-francis-still-so-afraid-of-oversight-by-the-catholic-99-99/

Common sense, and accumulated experience, tell us that organizational problems can only be fixed, long term, by changing the organizational structure that caused the problems. The Catholic Church has had escalating and scandalous problems that have resulted, since the 1870 First Vatican Council “proclamation on infallibility”, largely from the Vatican’s top down and unaccountable monarchical structure, regardless of which Church officials handled, or more likely mishandled, specific problems.

Yet, Pope Francis in two years as pope has mostly just recycled some officials, leaving the flawed top down structure intact. Pre-Constantine, early Catholics oversaw their religious leaders directly for three centuries. Catholics must do so again, soon! Who and/or what follows Pope Francis? Please see The Crisis Pope Francis Faces , “Pope Francis Is Still Failing Too Many Abused & Abandoned Children, No??” and Pope Francis vs. Shadow Pope Benedict — Who is Infallible .

The obvious flaw in Francis’ current approach was again just noted by Gerald Posner in an NPR interview, “From Laundering To Profiteering, A Multitude Of Sins At The Vatican Bank” here [NPR] discussing former Wall Street lawyer Posner’s explosive new 750+ page book, “God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican” , see at Amazon link [Amazon]

God’s Bankers covers the astounding saga marked by poisoned business titans, murdered prosecutors, mysterious deaths of private investigators, and questionable suicides; a carnival of characters from Popes and Cardinals, financiers and mobsters, kings and prime ministers; and a set of moral and political circumstances that make clear the Vatican’s real aims and ambitions.And Posner even looks to the future to assess if Pope Francis can succeed where all his predecessors failed: to overcome the resistance to change in the Vatican’s Machiavellian inner court and to rein in the excesses of its seemingly uncontrollable and insatiable hierarchical greed.

Asked in his NPR interview about Pope Francis’ Vatican financial reforms, Posner responded, in pertinent part: “I’ve been impressed by him … {but} What could upend it? He needs to be there long enough that these changes can’t be reversed by a new pope who gets in and can be pushed around by the strong dominant bureaucrats.”

Pope Francis has not yet even selected an international auditing firm for the Vatican’s own huge proprietary assets. As eminent historian of the papacy, Eamon Duffy recently noted in the New York Review of Books, in pertinent part: ” … A pope with a long time in office can ensure that those around him share his vision. Rome appoints all the world’s Catholic bishops; the pope himself decides who will be a cardinal. The long pontificate of John Paul II and the succession of his right-hand man, Benedict XVI, have created a hierarchy who share much of their vision for the church. Gerhard Muller, still head of the Vatican’s most influential department, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is also the general editor of Benedict XVI’s collected writings … Francis himself is unlikely to have a long pontificate: he is an old man, with only one functioning lung.”

Focusing on Francis, Duffy also noted: ” …, Bergoglio {Pope Francis} himself has acknowledged that as {Jesuit} provincial, ‘I had to learn from my errors along the way, because, to tell you the truth, I made hundreds of errors. Errors and sins.’ Significantly, however, he attributes those sins not to religious or political reaction, but to inexperience and failure to consult: ‘I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.’ ” Francis’ inexperience as pope, and authoritarian style still plague him as pope, it appears.

Despite the Vatican spin machine’s 24/7 effort to present the pope as an easy going “happy go lucky” guy, he still seems to fall back too often to his authoritarian default position. If this seemingly oblivious strategy continues to dominate much longer, it is likely to be all moot anyways. Outside government prosecutors and regulators will then likely write the final Vatican chapter.

Australia’s Royal Commission is now projecting it will cost its citizens over $4 billion to clean up the clerical child abuse mess that Vatican’s financial czar, Cardinal Pell, helped create. The UK is now gearing up for a massive Australian style investigation. The USA’s Minneapolis investigations are seemingly closing in on the cover up scandals surrounding President Obama’s Chief of Staff’s brother, Fr. Kevin McDonough. The Vatican has fiddled too long. Rome and its empire is aflame.

Napoleon locked up a pope who died incarcerated. Popes may think they are infallible, but they sure as hell are not invincible. How long can Western democracies be expected to sit quietly for a pope who pushes with his contraception ban a population explosion in desperately poor Catholic countries, who still oversees worldwide priest child abuse cover-ups and who calls as a major religious leader, in effect, for a military solution, a crusade, in Iraq and Syria as he reportedly did last August?

Yes, with Western democracies facing serious internal threats from internal Islamist terrorists, how long do you think the Western leaders are going to sit for Francis calling for another Middle East invasion? The crusades are history, and so will the Vatican be if Pope Francis fails to get realistic soon.

Please see Francis’ Breeding Policy Fails Kids, Women & Gay , The End of Vatican Scandals in 2015? and Pope Cools Down Abuse Team – NO Tom Doyle .

Meanwhile, US bishops’ seeming political allies, billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, recently made headlines by pledging nearly $900 million to help elect candidates who support their libertarian strain of economic conservatism, but the industrialists are also nearly doubling their investment in the business school of Catholic University of America, which is overseen by the U.S. bishops, as reported by David Gibson..

That’s despite the fact that many Catholics — including Pope Francis — say the kind of unregulated capitalism that the Kochs appear to promote runs counter to the Catholic Church’s social teachings.

It appears that the US bishops may be collecting here their reward for helping the Kochs’ “low tax/low regulation” Republican candidates get control a couple of months ago of the US Congress.

Furthermore, David Koch supports gay marriage and abortion rights. Critics of the CUA gift say it is ironic that the school would seek such massive support from a social liberal when Catholic charities are not allowed to take any money from any person or group that supports abortion rights or gay rights.

Indeed, Davis Koch would likely not be able to be hired to work at a Catholic parochial school in some dioceses, given his positions on sexual morality issues. But his money apparently still talks to unprincipled US bishops, it appears.

Please see:

[religionnews.com]