“Teflon Pope” Spins Spanking, As Women & Children Suffer, by Jerry Slevin, Christian Catholicism (February 7, 2015)

Childless Pope Francis, and his other old bachelor cronies, have done it again. They have shown once more their extreme insensitivity and tone deafness to the protection of women and children. The pope has clearly condoned violence to children, while his subordinate Polish bishops have, in effect, condoned violence to women, it appears.

Will the media, if they truly care about defenseless children and desperate women, now finally report what this “Teflon Pope” is really about? Will they end their nonstop nonsense that seemingly aims at perpetuating the myth of a “big teddy bear” pope, despite his well reported authoritarian Jesuit and “bouncer” history and his many continuously inconsistent and insensitive actions and statements?

And Pope Francis’ illusory sex abuse commission is now being exposed as little more than another of the Vatican’s Machiavellian political ploys — a classic stall tactic in the form of an extremely unfocused, open ended, conflicted and understaffed “study commission”. The Vatican has spent billions in self defense to protect unaccountable bishops and shifted to other governments the multi-billion dollars costs to care for priest abuse survivors. Now, the Vatican pinches pennies on a study commission that will only meet in person twice a year, it appears. This is a real and evident farce and an insult to hundreds of thousands of priest abuse survivors worldwide and to their loved ones, whose lives and families have often literally been destroyed by priest predators and unaccountable bishops who protected and still protect their clerical pals.

And millions of innocent children still remain at risk from this corrupt clerical system that could be curtailed if the pope really wanted to and at least tried effectively to change it. So far, he is clearly failing to do so. Now world leaders, including the USA’s President Obama and Germany’s Chancellor Merkel, must act to end these obscenities. At least the UK’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, has just taken his big step with an independent commission that has teeth, as reported here, [Mirror] and here, [BBC News].

Pope Francis has to date failed to appoint to the commission respected canon lawyer, Tom Doyle, a Dominican priest in good standing and the world’s top expert on curtailing priest child abuse. Fr. Doyle and the pope both worked, at different times within a few years of each other, under the same Cardinal, Pio Laghi. Why is Doyle being overlooked? What is the pope afraid of?

The Vatican appears to be trying instead to exploit courageous, but frustrated, abuse survivor commission members, Ireland’s Marie Collins and the UK’s Peter Saunders, as mere window dressing. This while millions of cowardly Catholics worldwide shamefully temporize, continue despite the contrary facts to offer excuses for the pope and make these two martyrs, who have already suffered too much, do the heavy lifting alone. These two survivors have reportedly even voiced further concerns after the commission’s initial meeting about the Vatican’s efforts on curtailing priest child abuse. They reportedly have now said, in their view, that the Vatican has a year or two at most to implement policies with teeth, otherwise they will leave.

Please see “Pace of Vatican child protection body frustrates Marie Collins“, here, [Irish Times]

Meanwhile, Pope Francis, and his subordinates in Poland, once more confound the world — this time about support for spanking children and omissions about beating women. Please see my full discussion below and “Holy See must clarify stance on corporal punishment“, by outspoken former Irish President and canon lawyer, Mary McAleese, here, [Irish Independent] , and “Pope’s sex abuse commission alarmed by Francis’ comments about spanking kids, says it’s not OK” , here, [U.S. News] and “Clergy sexual abuse victim criticises pope over spanking remark“, here, [Irish Independent] and “Poland votes to ratify treaty to protect women” , here, [Zee News] and “Pope calls again for ‘incisive’ women’s presence in church, offers no specifics“, here, [National Catholic Reporter] .

Why do so many in the media let Pope Francis “zig and zag” so often, without calling him on it. Just follow the latest papal wizard’s meandering Yellow Brick Road. Don’t breed like rabbits, just don’t use the Pill. Help the poor, but honor, like he seems to do, the crony capitalist billionaires who help keep them poor and the Catholic hierarchy rich. Protect children, but don’t report priest child abuse to the police unless legally obligated to do so. Slap your kids, but do so respectfully. Protect women, but oppose treaties that actually seek to do so. Be nice to abuse survivors, but go bankrupt to avoid compensating them justly. Don’t judge gay folks, just ostracize them from Church institutions. Is Pope Francis really shrewd, or just opportunistic, or even duplicitous and hypocritical? Perhaps his advanced age and overwork and excessive traveling has caught up to him? He had planned to retire several years ago. What do you think?

Pope Francis personally, and probably unintentionally, is evidently undercutting steadily the world’s respect for papal moral authority, as well as the belief of many Catholics in papal infallibility. This papal myth is the key to the modern post-1870 “supreme papacy”. Pope Francis is almost singlehandedly exposing this myth, by his unpredictable, inconsistent and even seemingly contradictory statements and actions, with respect to protecting children and women, to banning contraception, to treating women, divorced persons, gay folks and others with dignity and equality, and on other significant matters as well.

In a related development on Saturday (2/7/15), Saunders and Collins also said the abuse commission has a working group on corporal punishment and they chided Pope Francis for his remarks earlier in the week that seemed clearly to say it was okay for parents to spank their children.

“One time, I heard a father say, ‘At times I have to hit my children a bit, but never in the face so as not to humiliate them,’” the pope said last Wednesday. “That’s great,” Francis continued. “He had a sense of dignity. He should punish, do the right thing, and then move on.”

The comments prompted an intense debate, and Saunders said, he wanted to have a chance to tell Francis how wrong he was.

“I think we need to talk to the pope about this issue because there are millions of children around the world who are physically beaten on a daily basis,” Saunders said. “It might start out as a light tap but the whole idea of hitting a child is abut inflicting pain … Physical violence has no place in a modern day upbringing.”

Significantly, well informed and reliable, Anne Barrett Doyle, of BishopAccountability.org has responded to the pope’s sex abuse commission’s first press conference wisely and pointedly, in pertinent part as follows (in italics):

” … If Commission members are going to fulfill the vision articulated by Pope Francis earlier this week — to become an “important and effective means” of helping the Pope “rid the Church of the scourge” of sexual assaults by clergy — we urge them to:

1. Insist on accountability measures that are tough and unambiguous. Church officials who endanger children and protect dangerous priests must be removed and censured.

2. Insist on a church abuse policy that is strict, uniform, and global. Cultural norms are not an acceptable excuse for putting children in danger. A priest who would be deemed unsafe by bishops in one country must not be allowed to work in another.

3. Take issue with Pope Francis’s instruction to church officials this week that the provisions of the CDF’s May 2011 Circular Letter be “fully implemented.” This document is more about due process for priests than protection of children. Some of its provisions are dangerously weak.

4. Ask why the Circular Letter contains NO provision regarding zero-tolerance – that is, the permanent removal of a priest guilty of an act of child sexual abuse.

5. Demand that true zero tolerance become the church’s global standard. It must be stated in every abuse policy of every bishops’ conference and religious institute.

6. Avoid recommending universal adoption of the U.S. church’s norms unless those are tightened. While stricter than the Circular Letter provisions, the U.S. norms have proved to be too lenient. They give U.S. bishops too much discretion in deciding whether to remove an accused priest.

7. Insist that bishops and religious superiors be required to: a) investigate every allegation; b) remove accused clergy during investigations; and c) submit all allegations to independent, lay review boards.

8. Insist too that every abuse policy require church officials to report allegations to civil authorities, even when not mandated to do so under local law.

9. Recommend that the following red-flag language be removed from the Circular Letter and from every Conference’s abuse policy: “the bishop has the duty to treat all his priests as father and brother.” This language belongs in documents about doctrine, not sex crimes by clergy. Bishops worldwide invoke this principle to justify not reporting child-molesting priests to secular law enforcement. Bishop Charles Scicluna confirmed this in a 2010 interview. A bishop calling the police on a priest is “a gesture comparable to that of a father denouncing his own son,” he said, and the church therefore does “not force bishops to denounce their own priests.” The abuse policy of the Philippine Church is explicit on this score: its bishops do not report priests to civil authorities, since the bishop-priest relationship is “analogous to that between father and son.”

10. Insist that the norms require transparency. Bishops and religious superiors must be required to publicly release information about credibly accused clergy, including their names, assignment histories, alleged crimes, and church files. And this transparency should begin with Pope Francis. Just as he has modeled a simple lifestyle for the world’s bishops, he could set an example of transparency, by disclosing information about credibly accused clergy he has managed during his career.

BishopAccountability.org, founded in 2003, offers a large online archive of documents, reports, and news articles documenting the global abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church. An independent non-profit, it is not a victims’ advocacy group and is not affiliated with any church, reform, or victims’ organization.

Recently and significantly, Francis’ fellow Jesuit, Fr. Hans Zollner, a key member of the pope’s sex abuse commission, seems to be reading from a different script, in his recent and almost embarrassing promotional interview on Vatican Radio. entitled “Child protection at top of Pope Francis’ priority list“, here, [Vatican Radio] . Even usually sympathetic journalists seem now to be second guessing Pope Francis. Please see, for example, David Gibson’s “Vatican sex abuse commission meets amid new hopes, old concerns’“, here, [National Catholic Reporter] and see also former New York Times’ reporter, Ken Briggs’ “Pete Rose, Meet Junipero Serra“, here, [National Catholic Reporter] .

It may be that Pope Francis just wants to appeal to different Church donation sources, for example, divorced and remarried Germans, with their substantial governmental tax subsidy, and right wing US Republican plutocrats who seem to think they need more of the anti-gay marriage, as well as US Latino, voters to elect a “low tax/low regulation” presidential ticket in 2016, like Jeb Bush/Ted Cruz in all likelihood. Please see Betty Clermont’s relevant, comprehensive and well documented, “Catholic Right Still Tied to Big-Money Republicans“, here. [Church and State] .

Pope Francis is halfway thro ugh his four year term. He can be expected to retire at the end of of 2016 — after he helps (with his media missives on Cuba, Oscar Romero, Junipero Serra, Our Lady of Guadalupe, anti-contraception, anti-gay marriage, etc.) get out the US Latino vote for the JebBush/Ted Cruz ticket in the US presidential elections. By then, as an 80 year old with one lung, he will likely be replaced by Cardinal Parolin, whom Francis is evidently grooming as his successor, to be expected for one of of powerful Cardinal Sodano’s top proteges.

As Betty Clermont well shows, Francis is already working hard on the 2016 US elections with, among others, the leadership of the US Knights of Columbus, whom Francis has known for at least a decade. As Betty Clermont indicates: “The Knights have contributed so much to the bishops’ political agenda that “nearly 90 archbishops and bishops – including 11 cardinals” showed up at their last annual meeting, including the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. Supreme Knight Carl Anderson has had three private meetings with Pope Francis and the pontiff met with the Knights’ board of directors shortly after his election.” Please see her full and superb analysis at the above link.

Now for Pope Francis’ latest inconsistency. Pope Francis reportedly spoke Feb. 6 to Italy’s interior minister, and a group of top provincial law enforcers. The pope lectured them that their work must be guided by “the indispensible framework” of obedience to the law, attention to human needs and confidence in public institutions. He added that the true goal of exercising authority is to achieve “the common good,” and such authority is exemplified when power is service, modeled after Jesus Christ who came to serve others. “The more citizens perceive that established powers are generously aimed at trying to offer answers to their needs and safeguard their rights, the more they will be willing to embrace directives and possess a diligent and orderly spirit of collaboration and respect,” the pope said.

The pope also praised the positive and fruitful collaboration between the Italian police, dioceses and parishes, saying such relationships needed to be “affirmed, enhanced and deepened.” He would say that, given the Italian police’s long pattern of looking the other way on Catholic Church’s leaders’ extensive corruption and child abuse criminality. How can the pope lecture law enforcers when he still is overseeing an organization that still seems so lawless at times?

Meanwhile, in his recent promotional interview on Vatican Radio,

the top Jesuit expert member of the pope’s new advisory sex abuse commission, Fr, Hans Zollner, predicted, in effect, that it would take years for the commission to get results, especially in some ” … European countries like Poland, Croatia or Hungary – {where the child protection} conversation is only just beginning … “.

Did Zollner clear this with the former Polish official on the pope’s commission or with the German bishops who have been evading for many years effective measures to protect children from priest abusers? In any event, as the Vatican showed with Archbishop Wesolowski, it is possible to create a full criminal justice system almost instantly when one wants to — like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, or in this case perhaps out of a papal wizard’s mitre, it appears.

Marie Collins and Peter Saunders, outspoken and brave abuse survivor members of the pope’s go slow commission may need to pull Zollner aside and read him the riot act.

Asked about accusations of how slowly the work of the Commission is proceeding, Zollner reportedly indicated that the commission has no legal or juridical competencies, but rather is only an advisory body to the pope and to local bishops conferences. “It’s not a quick fix topic,” he stressed, and you can’t expect a culture that has developed through hundreds of years can be “detected, analysed and solved within five years or so”.

Zollner’s “not a quick fix” may be the understatement of the century! The commission’s chairman, Cardinal Sean O’Malley and his chief of staff, Fr, Robert Oliver, (disgraced Boston Cardinal Bernard Law’s former canon lawyer, incidentally) have been dealing intensively with priest abusers and complicit bishops for over a decade. in effect, seemingly stalling on advocating effective solutions of the scandal. Zollner has not been moving too fast himself for that matter either.

As David Gibson reported recentlyin the above link, it’s only now, as the full papal sex abuse commission has begun a critical three-day Vatican meeting (a first with all members attending), on Friday (Feb. 6), that Irish abuse survivor, Marie Collins, thinks priest sex abuse survivor advocates have a chance to really shake things up – though there are still no guarantees.“I find it very frustrating how slowly the church moves, as a lay person coming in from the outside,” Collins, 68, reportedly said in an interview on the eve of the meeting, which runs through Sunday. (My emphasis).

Apparently, the commission will only meet twice a year reportedly. And its chairman, Cardinal Sean O’Malley seems to be scheduled simultaneously to be attending his higher priority meetings with Pope Francis and the Council of Cardinals.

Likely, the sex abuse commission’s chief of staff, Fr. Robert Oliver, disgraced Boston Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer, will be in charge if O’Malley is absent, and possible even if O’Malley is present, by many indications!“It’s a shock to the system really how slowly they move,” Marie Collins reportedly said. “I would definitely like to see things moving more quickly. But you have to try and achieve what you can achieve. All we can do is get in there and try and move as fast as we can. But I personally do have a great frustration with the speed of the church.”

Marie Collin’s fellow survivor on the commission, the UK’s Peter Saunders, already put the Vatican on notice that the two survivors will not just be “showpieces”, telling a British newspaper on his arrival in Rome that he will demand that the Vatican force bishops around the world to open their files and report any clergy abusers to authorities without delay or dissembling. (My emphasis)“

“The Holy Father is a supreme monarch and bishops around the world are answerable to him,” Saunders told the Telegraph. “If he says they must give up the documents, they can’t argue with that. It’s one of the things I will be saying to the commission — unless they throw me out.”“Victims of abuse are not interested in financial compensation from the church, we just want a sincere apology, for the church to say ‘We will cast out these vipers in our midst,’” he said.

O’Malley had indicated earlier in a US CBS TV interview that the Catholic Church leadership, presumably from Pope Francis on down, needs to develop a system for disciplining bishops, a task Collins said she and the other commission members also want to pursue as a priority. O’Malley has been dealing with this issue intensely for over a decade. What is he waiting for?

“It has to be something that doesn’t depend on what pope or bishop is in place,” Collins reportedly said wisely. “It has to be a firm, fixed structure that will be immoveable and will remain in place no matter who the leadership are and what their views are.” (My emphasis)

This weekend’s talks will be key to seeing if that will happen. “Survivors and everyone else are waiting to see if this commission achieves anything. We certainly don’t want to be waiting 20 years to find out if there’s anything to come out of it that’s worthwhile, … I certainly would be expecting to see more news coming out (after the meeting) and more about what is happening and what is actually being planned“, Marie Collins also reportedly said. (My emphasis)

David Gibson also quoted from an e-mail from SNAP’s outspoken leader, David Clohessy, who fairly stated as follows: “The most decisive pope in memory who is quickly and dramatically changing church finances, governance and morale remains stunningly unwilling to deal in any meaningful way with the church’s greatest ongoing crisis.” (My emphasis).

In the email, Clohessy reportedly praised Collins and Saunders as “smart and compassionate individuals who are brave to take on this role.” But he said he hopes they “won’t end up feeling used or betrayed” if the pope’s advisory sex abuse commission does nothing, as Clohessy reportedly expects will be the case.

A two-day Cardinals’ meeting in Rome, before Pope Francis installs 20 new Cardinals on Feb. 14, will now fine tune the Catholic Church’s top down central bureaucracy to assure a smooth transition to an even tighter papal control under a younger pope. Church leaders under Francis have evidently decided to work together in mutual self interest to stonewall outside government efforts to subject the Vatican and Cardinals to their laws protecting children. How long can such a short sighted strategy succeed? Not long, as I discuss below.

Francis so far appears to have met the main goals of the frightened Cardinals who elected him two years ago. He has kept all of them out of jail and most of their bishops out of bankruptcy courts, despite several serious scandals. He has also stemmed the theft of Vatican wealth and gotten financial regulators to back off somewhat. None of these outcomes appeared inevitable when the failed Pope Benedict suddenly quit under pressure two years ago. The ex-Pope, a misguided manager, left his successor a massive legal and financial mess in the Church’s “house of cards”, as Francis quaintly put it. Francis has navigated this so far by skillfully employing media management and by pursuing dangerous geo-politics, ranging from endearing himself to major leaders of China and Russia, Saudi Arabia and US Republicans, to dictators in Cuba and even to the disgraceful “leader for life” Mugabe in Africa, see “Zimbabwean leader among faithful marking Pope Paul VI′s beatification“, here, [Star Africa]

Francis has, disappointingly but not surprisingly, “charged” the wishful thinking and docile “Catholic 99.99%” a very high price to save the 0.01 % Church leadership. Among other charges, (1) children remain at serious risk of sexual predator priests due to continued Vatican stonewalling on child abuse, as Peter Saunders, the leader of UK abuse survivors recently added to Francis’ new sex abuse commission, has just boldly reminded Francis, see”Pope Francis told to hand priests over to police as new Vatican child abuse commission starts work“, here, [Telegraph] , (2) many women are still denied access to effective contraception options and all women remain perpetual subordinates as “Adam’s ribs”, and (3) major Vatican financial liabilities still remain, as is even more evident now with the release of Jesuit educated and former Wall Street lawyer, Gerald Posner’s explosive and comprehensive book, “God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican” , (see at [Amazon] link).

On Catholic women’s continuing subordination as inferiors, please see my “Vatican To Women: YES on Unwanted Babies – NO on Tummy Tucks “, here, [Christian Catholicism] .

On Vatican financial corruption, in “God’s Bankers“, Gerald Posner, who was generally stonewalled by the Vatican leadership under both the ex-Pope and Francis, in his research efforts to see the Vatican’s relevant records, covers everything from unspeakable misdeeds involving Holocaust victims’ assets, to Vatican facilitation of tax evasion, money laundering and of bribery of Italian political leaders, and even to Pope Francis’ recent desperate and incomplete efforts to stem the financial hemorrhaging. Posner did get some access to the young Swiss and non-cleric Vatican adviser, Rene Bruelhart, an international financial lawyer, an area where Posner’s former firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore is very influential. Bruelhart likely worries about his legal career after the Vatican, as he needs to, given the serious scandals that continued under Cardinal Bertone on Bruelhart’s watch as Vatican Bank financial watchdog.

The very regrettable aspect of Pope Francis’ strategy is that it is really unnecessary at present and ultimately is counter-productive. Since the end of World War II in 1945, the Vatican no longer needs “balance of power calibrated protection” from world powers, as it did for almost 1,700 years, except that the Vatican still seems to think it still needs protection from child abuse prosecutors and from the International Criminal Court. The Vatican no longer need this protection — it only needs to obey the law and compel its bishops to do likewise!

The Vatican under Pope Francis is pursuing a losing ge0-political strategy, yes, unnecessarily at that. For almost 1,700 years popes have usually employed a classic international “balance of power” strategy to advance Vatican political and financial interests, sometimes just to thwart unfriendly invaders. Popes had to “manage” the military might of of likes of Constantine, Justinian, Frederick II, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Bismark, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt, Reagan/Bush, et al. Now they face Xi Jinping, Putin, Obama, Merkel, Cameron, Abdulaziz al-Saud, et al., none of whom have any interest in annexing the Vatican’s 100+ acre campus in Rome.

So why does the Vatican still think it needs a geo-political strategy and vast diplomatic department for Catholicism? Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Protestant and Orthodox Christianity do not have diplomats or engage in Machiavellian international politics generally, with minor exceptions?

With Pope Francis likely finished half of his papacy (as indicated, he will turn 80 years old in less than two years), the reasons for Vatican geo-politics seems clearer now. Pope Francis, and his likely successor, Cardinal Parolin (a former top aide to the ever powerful Cardinal Sodano), were brought in to keep the Catholic leadership out of prison and wealthy as well.

There is no longer any papal territory for popes to protect. For decades now, popes have scrambled to keep Catholic leaders out of prison for stealing Church funds and facilitating priest sexual predators. Their weapons are moral influence over an ever replenishing 1.2 billion Catholics who breed, donate and vote, and often accept the pope’s mythical and infallible power, no matter what unending and unfolding revelations daily disclose, as the new book “God’s Bankers” shows exhaustively.

Jesus, in contrast, evidently believed that his simple, but unique, message about a loving God could be spread by sincere people merely by word of mouth and good example, not by might and money. With almost half his likely papacy behind him, where does Pope Francis fit in the conflict between Jesus’ simple approach and complex papal history — in an age of instant worldwide communication, a powerful democratic ideology, a crony capitalism dominated by a world plutocracy and violent and well armed religious zealots?

Francis has clearly chosen to play the balance of power game, sometimes playing up to world powers, sometimes playing them against each other. At the same time he reaches out to plutocrats like key actors in Big Oil, Big Finance and Big Media and dictators like Mugabe. Francis avoids the Dalai Lama and flies over India to appease China. He meets with Putin who the invades Ukraine. He call for military force to fight ISIS terrorists and ultimately save Saudi oil, even though Catholics are less than 1% of the Chinese, Russian and Saudi populations. Why?

Pope Francis flies all over, yet he cannot even address seriously the ongoing rape of children by his own priests and the escalating prostitution of millions of unwanted street children born to couples denied effective contraception, thanks to Francis’ Catholic Church leaders’ lobbying against accessible family planning. Except for his well funded public relations and media messaging facade, how different in practice really is Francis from his failed predecessors, or even from some of the Borgia popes, for that matter?

Pope Francis’ key theologian, Cardinal Walter Kasper, and former Irish president, Mary McAleese, recently captured best Pope Francis’ “all celibate male” approach to discussing and responding to questions about women and children. “ABSURD” said Cardinal Kasper, and “BONKERS” said canon lawyer McAleese. Notwithstanding these obvious and accurate reactions, the Vatican continues its latest “Fortnight For Servitude” — servitude for women that is. Are Vatican men mad about women and children?

In little over two weeks, a fortnight, Pope Francis has in effect warned, millions personally in the overpopulated Philippines and tens of millions worldwide on TV, about his continuing the disastrous papal contraception ban that has through Church political lobbying denied millions of women in the Philippines, Africa, Latin America and even the USA a real choice about effective contraception.

The pope has now made his initial 48 all celibate male appointments to his Final Synod on the Family in several months. And astonishingly Francis’ Pontifical Council for Culture, in effect, made up of celibate Cardinals and Bishops, are now discussing “Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference”, including opposing plastic surgery while overlooking contraception.

A UK woman theologian has wisely observed about the Council’s prospects: “Neither women nor men exercise competence in the Church because of some mysterious, gender-related genius, but because they are baptised. If that recognition can be the starting point, this time we might get somewhere.” Please see, “Pontifical council to consider challenges women face in society, church“, here, [National Catholic Reporter] .

The Council’s new preparatory document looks at, among other topics, how much pressure women face regarding their body image and the way women’s bodies are exploited in the media, even to the point of provoking eating disorders or recourse to unnecessary surgery.

“Plastic surgery that is not medico-therapeutic can be aggressive toward the feminine identity, showing a refusal of the body in as much as it is a refusal of the ‘season’ that is being lived out,” it said.

” ‘Plastic surgery is like a burqa made of flesh.’ One woman gave us this harsh and incisive description,” the document said. “Having been given freedom of choice for all, are we not under a new cultural yoke of a singular feminine model?”

The document also denounced violence inflicted on women: “Selective abortion, infanticide, genital mutilation, crimes of honor, forced marriages, trafficking of women, sexual molestation, rape –which in some parts of the world are inflicted on a massive level and along ethnic lines — are some of the deepest injuries inflicted daily on the soul of the world, on the bodies of women and of girls, who become silent and invisible victims.”

If the Council is really concerned about protecting women, how on earth can it omit a serious discussion of ways to enable young women to have affordable access to family planning education and services, including the Pill?

A tough minded commenter, Violet, at the National Catholic Reporter, put it well on on 1/31/15. She said: “The pill and abstinence are both methods of birth control. Both are unnatural. The difference is that the effectiveness of abstinence can be overcome by rape. The effectiveness of the pill cannot be overcome by rape. Despite any legal safeguards, a woman who is economically dependent on her husband has essentially no recourse when she gets pregnant even when she has said, “Not tonight dear, I have a headache,” or “My thermometer says not tonight.” HV {“Humanee Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s self serving 1968 political position statement against the Pill} is built around this possibility of rape and thus allows the decision about family size to be exclusively the husband’s. HV works just the way they intended it to work everywhere there is rape, in my opinion. It denies the wife any say-so. Makes her just a field to be plowed.”

In preparing the Papal Council’s document, the Council sought input from women around the world, of course, filtered by celibate men. The process was not without criticism, particularly for the English version of a video featuring an Italian actress, Nanci Brilli, asking women to send in their experiences. Many women felt the use of a heavily made-up actress ran counter to the point of seeking input about the real lives of most women. The Council quickly took the English version off YouTube. The sheer incompetence of some of the Vatican’s celibate men on the subject of women is almost breathtaking at times.

Why have women (and their male partners) tolerated this needless oppression for so long, especially since it runs so counter to the Gospel message and to the lived experience of both early and modern Catholics?

The Vatican under Pope Francis is not just failing to address questions about fairness to women. Catholic Church leadership after two years under Pope Francis still continues its longstanding policy of trying to cover up priest child abuse cases, it appears. This is almost inexcusable. Church leadership, including apparently the pope’s “child abuse czar” and even a bishops conference, currently still seem to fail to abide by the Vatican’s “zero tolerance” hype.

Church leaders are evidently trying, despite Pope Francis’well publicized grand gestures and warm words about abuse survivors, (a) to keep potential abuse cases away, as long and as much as feasible, from independent and experienced local police and criminal prosecutors, who are trained in handling these cases (most recently near Boston and in the South Pacific near Australia), and (b) to avoid paying acknowledged priest abuse survivors’ just claims, as the Minneapolis, Milwaukee and dozen USA diocesan bankruptcy filings make so clear. Pope Francis the “man” is not matching up to his “myth” once again, while many in the media sadly continue to be entranced in their two year “Francismania coma”.

Please see here, “Catholic Bishops Conference … releases new sexual abuse policy“, [Radio Australia]; here,”IC Community Demands Meeting with O’Malley on Church’s Overreaction“, [Revere Journal]; here, “Two cases of child pornography possession in Vatican in 2014“, [Reuters]; here, “Minn. archdiocese transfer of assets may protect it from bankruptcy creditors“, [Star Tribune]; here, “Bankruptcy Protection in the Abuse Crisis“, [BishopAccountability.org]; and here, “Archdiocese wins latest dispute in bankruptcy over sex abuse“, [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel].

Boston”s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the pope’s “child abuse czar”, is finally about to hold his first full meeting of the pope’s abuse commission, even as he is criticized for mishandling the recent Revere case. For O’Malley’s poor “prior record” on priest child abuse cases, please see here, “Six Ways Cardinal Sean O’Malley Has Mishandled the Abuse Crisis“ [BishopAccountability.org]

The Vatican’s most sensational scandal, the abuse cover up, seems to be mostly more of the same half measures used by his failed predecessors. This is consistent with Pope Francis’ earlier failure as Cardinal to address priest child abuse claims fully in Argentina; please see Pope Francis & Database of Argentine Abuse .

Instead of trying to face fully his own Church scandals, Pope Francis spends much of his time, too much, on public relations efforts, like his unnecessary trips to South Korea and the Philippines, and on cultivating as Vatican allies leaders of Russia, China, right wing US Republicans and billionaire plutocrats worldwide.

Catholic bishops are still not required under Church rules generally to report child abuse claims to the police, for example, and accused clerics are investigated secretively by other clerics mainly. Francis has not acted to improve priest selection, to help weed out problem priests faster, by expanding the priest selection pool to include married men and women, and he has not acted on predatory priest management oversight worldwide by making bishops accountable. Kansas City’s criminally convicted Bishop Finn still sits on his episcopal throne.

The Vatican, per Reuters’ recent report linked above, discovered two cases of possession of child pornography within its own walls last year, its chief prosecutor Milano said on Saturday (1/31/15). In his report, Milano said Vatican police had investigated “two delicate cases, of varying degrees of seriousness, of possession of child pornography material” by people living or working inside the 110 acre Vatican campus.

The prosecutor gave no details but a Vatican spokesman said one of them involved Jozef Wesolowski, a former archbishop who was arrested last September in the Vatican on charges of having paid for sex with children while he was a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic. Reportedly 100,000 images of child pornography was found on his computer. The Vatican spokesman gave no details of the other case.

After telling a UN commission that the Vatican was only responsible for protecting children on its 110 acre Vatican campus, the Vatican now seems unwilling to name a priest it is investigating for child porn charges, which may present risks for the few children on the Vatican campus. What is going on, Pope Francis?

The Vatican continues to err in handling sexual abuse by priests. Pope Francis would do well to read the wise advice of Dr. Rosemary McHugh. a priest abuse survivor and an expert on women’s reproductive health, contraception and natural family planning. Please see her remarkable story entitled “Ireland: A Priest Predator & A Young US Doctor & An Archbishop” here.

Indeed, Francis should invite Jesuit educated Dr. McHugh to serve as a full time participant at the Final Synod on the Family in several months. She could join Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, whom she already knows. Martin was a key Vatican advocate, at the 1995 Beijing UN Conference, for the challenge to Hillary Clinton led by Mary Ann Glendon, seemingly as Pope John Paul II’s “female warrior”, with help from Cardinal Sodano’s subordinate, Diarmuid Martin. Glendon, a long time supporter, and likely near beneficiary, of both Boston’s disgraced Cardinal Law and Mexico’s infamous child abuser, Fr, Macial Maciel, is now a top female adviser to Pope Francis.

The 1995 Vatican’s self serving position that Glendon and Marin pushed hard, still held under Pope Francis today, with regard to family-planning services, was that the ” … the Holy See’s actions during this Conference should in no way be interpreted as changing its well-known position that ” … the Holy See in no way endorses contraception or the use of condoms, either as a family-planning measure or in HIV/AIDS prevention programs …”. (My emphasis).

Most importantly, Pope Francis is entering the most critical period of his papacy. He meets soon with all of his Cardinals. Francis should tell the Cardinals, and all Catholics soon thereafter, that he now has rejected completely his original flawed strategy followed so far, and should also consider outlining for them the program discussed in my The Crisis Pope Francis Faces . And, as indicated, in a matter of a mere several months, the pope holds his Final Synod (without any women as full participants, incidentally), as he then moves into his 80th year, on one lung no less.

Francis is surely a remarkable person . Yet by now he must know what the ex-Pope’s sudden quitting really signified. Popes now cannot save both the Catholic Church and the Vatican for the reasons discussed below. Francis’ Christmas attack on Vatican officials perhaps confirmed this. Francis appears, however, to have chosen mainly to protect the Catholic hierarchy, a losing proposition, and likely has as a result set the stage for an accelerated division into various Church factions.

Pope Francis is quite old and yet is working non-stop. He appears, unfortunately, to be surrounded by some men who seem to be oblivious to the Vatican’s precarious position. Francis faces at least three major scandals involving priest child abuse, sexually repressive teachings and officials’ financial corruption, while his hierarchy debate arcane matters like “graduality” and most of the media still focus on counting papal “tweets” and other irrelevancies.

The scandal that has changed everything for the previously “untouchable” Vatican is the child abuse scandal. The pope clearly has not done nearly enough here. And his efforts to change the sexually repressive teachings are facing strong resistance from conservative Cardinals as discussed below. He is almost out of time. While the pope has made a start, in Rome at least, on curtailing his hierarchy’s financial corruption, he still has a long way to go.

Indeed, as mentioned, even Cardinal O’Malley, the new “child abuse czar”, has not yet gotten the message. Some Boston area Catholics think Boston church officials, including apparently O’Malley, have erred in letting three staffers resign because they refused to call 911 when they suspected child sex crimes. See [Revere Journal] Refusing or delaying calls to law enforcement gives criminals and potential criminals more time to destroy evidence, intimidate victims, threaten whistleblowers, discredit witnesses, fabricate alibis and even flee the country. Such refusals and delays often enable more kids to be hurt. So they must be harshly punished. Sadly, that’s not what happened here. O’Malley took the easy way out as he packs his suitcase for his first full meeting in Rome soon with his “go slow” commission.

Meanwhile, as reported in the above link, the bishops in Papua New Guinea, have just adopted an abuse policy, which the Catholic Church has been working on since the 1990s, covering how to investigate sex abuse wrongdoing within the Church and how to report sexual abuse.

The bishops’ Director, who helped formulate the new policy, told Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat program, under the new framework, people wanting to report sexual misconduct could seek advice from a contact person. “We have what is called a contact person who is the first port of call, so to speak, for a person to make a complaint,” he reportedly said.

“They explain to the person their options of going through the criminal process, or through the church process, but the person has the option of taking the criminal process or the church process.” The Director also reportedly said hopefully under the new protocols and guidelines, people from Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands would find it less daunting to report allegations of sexual abuse within the church.

He reportedly also indicated: “We find that in the societies in the Pacific, which are often male dominant with a great respect for church leaders and priests and who wish do not bring shame upon the church, the power of being a leader and chief and so on, that people are very reticent to bring claims against the body of a church or priest and more particularly in rural areas,” he said. So the bishops fix is to report first to a Church contact. Really ???

As to Boston Cardinal O’Malley’s material “omissions” as the new pope’s “anti-abuse czar”, one of his recent omissions was his refusal to respond to the Boston Globe’s recent report about the poor record discussed below of the Vatican’s new “top cop” on child abuse prosecutions, Jesuit Father Robert Geisinger. Contacted by the Globe, O’Malley declined to answer questions about Geisinger’s failure, along with his Jesuit colleagues, to report Jesuit Fr. McGuire to civil authorities. Pell’s spokesman instead passed the buck and referred questions to the Vatican.

A year after first announcing the Vatican’s often touted new anti-child abuse advisory commission, O’Malley amazingly stated on 60 Minutes that the go-slow commission was working on some “protocols”, which his subsequent statements seem to suggest will focus more on protecting bishops than children. And CBS did not press him on the commission’s inexplicable and unacceptable organizational delays. It appears to be another instance of a media “pass” for the Vatican’s conflicted approach to holding clerics accountable for harming defenseless children.

It seems quite clear that Pope Francis is intentionally pursuing effective child protection reform measures very slowly, at best, and almost secretly with this new advisory committee (A) headed by disgraced Boston Cardinal Law’s successor, Cardinal O’Malley, who is well experienced with “handling” abuse investigations secretively and slowly, and (B) aided now, as top staffer, by Fr. Robert Oliver, who has been successively Cardinals Law’s, O’Malley’s and Mueller’s predictable and seemingly pliable longtime canon lawyer.

Fr. Geisenger now is serving now as the Vatican’s “top cop”, succeeding Fr. Oliver in that position. Priests presumably will like this “priest friendly” lineup more than innocent children and their parents will, I suspect.

Twelve years after the Boston Globe Catholic priest child abuse revelations and almost 30 years after Father Thomas Doyle’s abuse report to Cardinals Law, Levada, Bevilacqua, Laghi, et al. and Pope John Paul II, for O’Malley to say on CBS we are looking into “protocols” is evidently a farce. And O’Malley seems to have gotten away with it with many in the media so far!

I have to wonder, as an international lawyer, if O’Malley, Oliver and Geisinger, all presumably US citizens, were picked to work on the latest papal public relations ploys to “do little or nothing” to really curtail clerical abuse also because the US has not ratified the International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty.

Since the ex-pope had already been a subject of a complaint filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC), it must have occurred to the Vatican and its lawyers that whomever handles these matters can expect to face a further complaint at the ICC, a very serious matter. It might be more difficult to prosecute them under the ICC Treaty as US citizens if they had returned to the USA when the ICC prosecutor finally pursues the Vatican again, as I am confident as an international lawyer she will.

Pope Francis must act now to try to make the Catholic Church hierarchy accountable once again, as it was during its first three centuries in the Church Jesus disciples, including women, left behind. This is the choice Pope Francis must make soon. Anything less will fail to fix the Church permanently

Moreover, f Francis fails with his “graduality/mercy” initiative at the Final Synod, many Catholics, including some of the millions who follow Francis on Twitter, will likely fairly quickly become convinced that internal Vatican reform any time soon is hopeless. They will then probably either look to restructure their local Church institutions on a consensual basis or just join the tens of millions of others who have already exited the Catholic Church completely.

The Catholic Church may yet survive as a “catch all label” for many diffused groups of practicing Catholics organized consensually from the bottom up, but the Catholic hierarchy appears to be playing out its final act from many indications. In light of the current “mess”, a diffused Church may be a true blessing and closer to the Catholic Church that Jesus’ disciples, including many women, left behind. God works in unexpected ways, no?

This future outcome may seem too pessimistic for a purported “unchangeable 2,000 year old institution”. But is it? For reasons discussed below, this outlook is more likely than not.

Pope Francis needs to adopt a bold new strategy when he meets with his assembled Cardinals soon. He needs to “dream” like Martin Luther King dreamed. As I earlier remarked, in “dreaming” about the pope’s encounter in the Philippines with the young “street child”, Glycelle Palomar, on the eve of Martin Luther King’s US holiday, yes, I had a dream! I dreamed that the pope told the young former street girl what the Vatican’s real strategy was. The pope also needs to tell the Cardinals about the same dream. If the pope had told her (and tells all his Cardinals, especially the new ones) the “real deal”, I dreamed it would go something like this. Pope Francis would have said:

(1) I was elected by frightened cardinals to keep them out of jail for crimes related to child abuse cover-ups and financial corruption;

(2) My priority is protecting bishops, all 5,000 of them, while maximizing their wealth in their unaccountable lifetime positions;

(3) I need to preserve the Vatican’s “richest markets” , especially in the USA and Germany, and among the billionaires of the Philippines, South Korea, Mexico, et al. In the USA, I need in 2016 to get a friendly Republican, like the Bushes were, in the White House (God forbid Hillary Clinton gets elected!), now that low tax/low regulatory Republicans control the US Congress and, in effect, the US Supreme Court. Our US billionaire donors like that;

(4) In the USA, I must also appeal to fundamentalist and Latino voters with a muddled mix of anti-abortion/contraception and anti-gay marriage crusades, and frequent appeals to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Junipero Serra and Oscar Romero, and of course, constant references to the devil;

(5) In Germany, I must protect the bishops $6 billion annual governmental subsidy, including by getting divorced and remarried Catholics from taking their families and pro rata subsidies out of the Church;

(6) I must push with my contraception ban to pump up the Catholic birth rate everywhere, especially in light of the high birth rate among our Muslim competitors; and

(7) If after taking care of my bishops, obedient priests, opportunistic politicians, “scholars” and media supporters and, of course, our 24/7 insatiable civil, criminal and and bankruptcy lawyers, I, as pope, would use the rest of the donations, if any remains, to “trickle down ” what remains to the poor, and to those priest abuse survivors who keep silent.

Once Pope Francis tells his Cardinals that message, he must then tell the Cardinals, and all Catholics soon thereafter, that he now has rejected his original strategy completely. As indicated above, the pope must then consider outlining for them the program discussed in my The Crisis Pope Francis Faces

Well publicized Catholic Church scandals have triggered a unique situation — both an unprecedented crisis and an unexpected opportunity. This crisis (A) erodes Catholic trust in light of the longstanding gap between the Vatican’s words and deeds, (B) invites outside governmental intervention at a time when the Vatican lacks powerful international protectors like it had for centuries, and (C) underscores the urgent need for key changes in Church structure and doctrine. The crisis has also contributed, as indicated, to one pope’s unanticipated resignation and to the replacement pope’s unpredictable revolution.

Before his 80th birthday in less than two years, Pope Francis can successfully seize the opportunity, follow his conscience and apply his unique status, forceful temperament and popular appeal. Most importantly, he can declare “infallibly” key changes. By then, he will have received new input from his two advisory Synods of Bishops. He has already been enlightened by his valuable almost two years of experience as pope.

Pope Francis is now also is unhampered by his prior pastoral positions and unfettered by his earlier ideological constraints as an obedient cardinal, bishop and Jesuit. If Francis fails to act effectively soon, the consequences will likely be quite negative for the leadership of the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis can accomplish much if he wants to and finds the wisdom and courage to do so. Equally important, it seems unlikely any of his successors will get a more propitious opportunity in the foreseeable future to adopt long overdue changes. It may be now or never for Pope Francis and the Vatican.

Any needed changes that Pope Francis leaves uncompleted, whether by choice or circumstances, Catholics can then push to complete soon thereafter, with or without Vatican support. Catholics can be expected to do so, given the current Catholic majority’s momentum and mounting democratic governmental pressures.

The Catholic majority can expect help in effecting these changes from powerful forces, outside the Church structure, that are now investigating the Church in Australia, the UK, Ireland, Minneapolis (USA), the Dominican Republic, Poland, the Philippines and in many other countries.

The Catholic Church has changed, indeed really changed a lot over two millennia, often due to external pressures. For example, in the 19th Century, Pope Pius IX and his Vatican allies were urged by many, including other rulers, to modernize and reform his declining medieval Papal States to save this papal kingdom.

The pope, in effect, imprudently refused to do so sufficiently, and instead concentrated on being “declared infallible” by many intimidated bishops he convened in Rome despite a coming invasion. He then quickly militarily lost to Italian troops (including many Catholic troops) a large portion of Italy that popes for centuries had ruled as unaccountable absolute monarchs.

Pope Francis, as noted above, is about to meet with all his Cardinals. He needs to change his basic losing strategy before he meets with them. The pope has admitted that he has made many mistakes. The pope, unfortunately, continues to make them with his flawed strategy, including mistakes (1) on his self policing of clerical sex abusers, as indicated here, “Vatican Investigates 2 Cases of Child Porn Possession” [ABC News], (2) on disregarding Catholic women, as indicated here,”Vatican Hits Sour Note With Women, but Progress May Come” [ABC News] , and here, “Who Is the Pope?” by Professor Eamon Duffy [New York Review of Books], and here “Pope confirms 48 prelates as voting members of October synod” [National Catholic Reporter], and (3) on aligning through his US bishops with the “low tax” billionaire Koch Brothers, as indicated here, “Controversial Koch brothers give big (again) to Catholic University” by David Gibson [Religion News Service] , and from Fr. Tom Reese here “Everyone supports tax reform in the abstract, but not the specifics” at:

Oddly, the usually meticulously careful AP Rome earlier on Saturday (1/31/15) reported that the pope’s regular (and overworked) Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, indicated that two Polish-born prelates were being investigated by Holy See authorities for alleged possession of child pornography.

AP earlier had reported that Lombardi on Saturday (1/31/15) identified one of them as Monsignor Bronislaw Morawiec, an administrator at St. Mary Major Basilica, which was Boston’s disgraced former Cardinal Bernard Law’s former Rome base and is a church where Pope Francis sometimes prays. Presumably, Morawiec had been investigated by then top Vatican prosecutor, Fr, Robert Oliver, Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer. Cardinal Law’s former key legal aide, Oliver, is now the top staffer at the pope’s new “go slow” abuse commission that, after almost two years, will have its first full meeting soon.

AP’s original report indicated that the spokesman said Morawiec has already been convicted of fraud by the tiny city-state’s justice system. AP later withdrew the original story linked above, saying in a subsequent report, that Morawiec was not under investigation for child pornography possession, while still indicating that Morawiec has been convicted of fraud by a Vatican tribunal. Got that! He has been shown apparently to be a crook, but not a pervert, thank God.

The Vatican’s tiny city-state’s recently expanded judicial system is neither independent, transparent nor experienced in handling serious crimes involving clerics. It lacks basic competence as well, as the pope’s butler’s trial clearly showed, and as Saturday’s mix up on reporting seems to confirm.

Why is the pope’s busy official spokesman Lombardi handling criminal proceedings announcements? These announcements require more thorough and expert attention, no? AP Rome in a corrected report on Sunday (2/1/15) noted that an earlier version of its Saturday article incorrectly said Rev. Lombardi identified Morawiec as a suspect in a child-pornography investigation. In fact, he had cited Msgr. Morawiec’s fraud conviction, AP finally reported. Is the Vatican’s criminal justice system just a new version of the “Keystone Kops” so evident, for example, in the Vatican’s financial scandals?

No matter what the outcome of the Vatican’s trials, few will accept as reliable any of these Vatican decisions, due the the conflicts of interest, secrecy and sheer incompetence of the Vatican judicial proceedings. The Vatican should look to the current Australian Royal Commission, to the several Irish judicial investigations and even to the imminent UK investigation procedures for guidance as to how to handle criminal investigations of accused clerics in a modern manner.

AP identified (1/31/15) the other child-porn suspect as Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, as had been reported widely awhile ago. A Vatican church tribunal already found Wesolowski guilty of sexually abusing boys while serving as papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic. This criminal trial should be held instead in the Dominican Republic, where the five boys live that this John Paul II appointment allegedly abused.

Of course, the Vatican likely is very concerned about evidence leaks from Wesolowski’ s computer of some of the reported 100,000 child porn images and possibly communications from or to other clerical pedophiles, etc., on his computer.

And with respect to woman, on Saturday (1/31/15), AP’s reliable Rome reporter, Nicole Winfield reported in one of the AP reports linked above: “A new Vatican outreach initiative to listen to women hit a sour note before it even got off the ground: The sexy blonde on its Internet promo video came under such ridicule that it was quickly taken down.But the program is going ahead, and an inaugural meeting this week will study women’s issues in ways that are utterly new for the Holy See. No, there is no talk of ordaining women priests. (My emphasis)

Nicole Winfield added that the Vatican’s new initiative on women ” … denounces plastic surgery as a form of ‘aggression’ against the female body “like a burqa made of flesh.” And it acknowledges that the church has for centuries offered women ‘ideological and ancestral left-overs’ This is dangerous territory for the all-male Catholic Church hierarchy, as even Pope Francis has faced criticism for being a bit tone deaf as far as women are concerned. “ (My emphasis). Of course, the new all male celibate initiative appears to be avoiding the contraception ban. Predictable, no?

Please see above AP Nicole Winfield’s “Vatican Hits Sour Note With Women, but Progress May Come” in the above AP link.

Please see also the pope’s initial all celibate male appointments today to the Final Synod on the Family in October (no women included, of course — “absurd” per Pope Francis’ top theologian, Cardinal Walter Kasper, and “bonkers” per former Irish president. Mary McAleese. earlier). These appointments are discussed in the above National Catholic Reporter link.

Pope Francis in two years as pope has mostly just recycled some celibate officials from the Church’s 0.01 % all male leadership group, leaving the flawed top down monarchical structure intact, with no consequential participation by the 99.99% of the Catholic laity and surely no women.

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.

“Money is useful to carry out many things,” Pope Francis has reportedly said, “but when your heart is attached to it, it destroys you.” As the pope well knows, attachment to money has wreaked much destruction in his own Catholic Church. This is related extensively in the new stunning exposé, “God’s Bankers”, by investigative reporter and former Wall Street lawyer, Gerald Posner, discussed in detail below. And Pope Francis needs to be well aware of the risks here, as he appears to align himself with billionaire plutocrats like the Koch Brothers and Goldman Sachs bankers.

It appears that the US bishops may be collecting here from the Koch Brothers their reward for helping the Kochs’ “low tax/low regulation” Republican candidates get control a couple of months ago of the US Congress. See Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese’s analysis of how US tax changes occur in the National Catholic Reporter link above. Even a slight change in US tax laws could have hundreds of millions of dollars per annum in adverse potential consequences for the Kochs and other billionaire allies of the US bishops and the pope.

Also noteworthy here, 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. And they also follow Pope Francis’ orders, no?

As to recent popes’, including Pope Francis’, “three card monte ” approach to using “infallibility/creeping infallibility/definitive statements smokescreens” to exclude women (over half the 99.99% of Catholics) from any senior leadership role, please see the recent NY Review of Books article in the above link by eminent (and seemingly Catholic loyalist and former member of the papal historical commission) historian of the papacy, Cambridge University’s Eamon Duffy.

Professor Duffy, in pertinent part perceptively states: ” … In his published “conversation” with the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, he { Pope Francis} has called for a new and profound theology of women and a greater recognition of their crucial role in the church. But his own folksy remarks about the place of women and “the feminine genius” in the church have distressed even the most moderate feminists. He has made clear his belief that Pope John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (Priestly Ordination) has settled ‘definitively’ the question of women’s ordination—’that door is closed.’ ”

Eamon Duffy also notes: “”This blanket endorsement of Papa Wojtyła’s attempt to close down discussion of the issue indicates the limits both of Francis’s radicalism and, arguably, of his theological sophistication. Critics of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis pointed out that popes do not have a hotline to God. ‘Definitive’ papal utterances are not oracles providing new information, but adjudications at the end of a wider and longer process of doctrinal reflection, consultation, and debate, often extending over centuries: there are procedures to be followed if such adjudications are to command obedience. But the question of female ordination has never been subjected to this kind of extended theological scrutiny, and a properly theological basis for the prohibition remains therefore to be tested. So, it was asked, how did Papa Wojtyła know that the ordination of women was impossible, and what was meant by describing his preemptive strike on the question as ‘definitive’?”

The obvious flaw in Francis’ current approach with a self perpetuating, top down and unaccountable management structure was again just noted pointedly by Gerald Posner in an NPR interview, “From Laundering To Profiteering, A Multitude Of Sins At The Vatican Bank” here [NPR] discussing Posner’s ( a former Wall Street lawyer from the elite Cravath, Swaine &Moore) 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.”

Posner’s book, which took him nine years to research and write, has been well reviewed in the reliable Providence Journal, please see:

“In the 19th century, the unification of Italy caused the church to lose the Papal States and the income they had raised. But in 1929, after much negotiation, Pius XI concluded the Lateran Pacts with the Fascist government under Benito Mussolini, an avowed atheist. The cynical agreement defined the 108.7 acres in Rome as a sovereign state, and gave the Vatican a big chunk of cash as compensation for Papal States. In return, the pope endorsed the Fascist government.”

“There’s more. Starting in 1933, and while Jews were being persecuted in the ’30s, Vatican Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, a Teutophile who had spent 12 years in Germany, concluded an agreement with the Nazis that, among other things, required German Catholic bishops to swear allegiance to the Third Reich.”

“And yes, there was money involved: Hitler assessed 8 percent from German Catholics and sent it to the Vatican. Pacelli became Pope Pius XII in 1939, and refused to believe what his priests were telling him about the murder of the Jews. He never even complained when Roman Jews, some of them living 250 yards from his windows, were deported to the gas chambers. But when a stray British bomb happened to hit a Catholic church during the war, Pius XII complained bitterly.”

“It was in 1942, under Nogara, {the Vatican’s top financial advisor} that the Vatican established its own bank, about which much of this book’s narrative is centered. Nogara set it up so that the Allies, who were by that time in Italy, could not keep track of what he was up to. Because it was in a sovereign state, the bank didn’t have to answer to anyone — and it didn’t. High-ranking clerics at the bank were seen carrying out suitcases of cash. Worse than that, the Vatican Bank was used by Italian magnates, politicians and mobsters to launder cash — millions at a crack.”

“The last major moral failing in the Vatican occurred with the scandals involving pedophile priests, and the bishops who covered up for them, in America and elsewhere. Pope Benedict XVI’s failure to apologize to victims was attributed to fears that it might encourage lawsuits directly against the Vatican, not just the dioceses where the offenses occurred.”

Publisher’s Weekly also had a very favorable review of Gerald Posner’s “God’s Bankers” (in italics):

“Posner uses his superlative investigative skills to craft a fascinating and comprehensive look at the dark side of the Catholic Church, documenting ‘how money, and accumulating and fighting over it, has been a dominant theme in the history of the Catholic Church and its divine mission.’ He opens with the various spiritually creative methods the Church has used to make ends meet, such as the sale of indulgences and Pope Urban II’s offer of full absolution to those who volunteered to fight in the Crusades. The bulk of the book focuses on the mid-20th century and includes the Papacy’s accommodations to the Nazis. While this is familiar terrain, Posner convincingly buttresses his unusual position that money swayed Pope Pius XII ‘to remain silent in the face of overwhelming evidence of mass murder.’ And the author’s access to previously undisclosed documents enables him to flesh out the Vatican Bank scandal, which reached its nadir with the mysterious hanging—from London’s Blackfriars Bridge—of Italian banker and convicted fraudster Roberto Calvi. Accessible and well written, Posner’s is the definitive history of the topic to date.”

A dogged reporter exhaustively pursues the nefarious enrichment of the Vatican, from the Borgias to Pope Francis.

In one of his previous works, Mengele (1986), former Wall Street lawyer–turned–accomplished historian and author Posner (Warlords of Crime; Hitler’s Children, etc.) followed the money connection from the Nazi criminals fleeing the Third Reich to Argentina—and struck Vatican gold. Laundering Nazi booty extracted from the Jews, protecting Nazi criminals as they found refuge across the globe, providing hush money for egregious cases of pedophiliac priests—these are just some of the tentacles of Vatican bankrolling since World War II. Having overcome its aversion to moneylending and capitalism as being practices of Protestants and Jews after Italian unification, the Vatican later established a stabilizing appeasement policy with secular leader Mussolini in the form of the Lateran Pacts. Pope Pius XI’s financial adviser, Bernardino Nogara, diversified Vatican finances through the Depression era, entangling Vatican and Fascist ties. The Reichskonkordat, a series of pacts signed by Hitler, extracted taxes from Catholic churches and guaranteed the Vatican’s silence regarding the Holocaust; it also funneled “blood money” from Nazi victims and supported the “ratline” for escaping Nazi criminals. Posner tracks the formation of the Institute per le Opere di Religione (the Vatican bank) in 1942 through its troubled survival into the present era, as it has battled accusations of mob ties, “gay lobby” scandals, WikiLeaks disclosures, lawsuits by victims of sex abuse and the insistence by the European Union on more transparency in the bank’s dealings. Pope Francis’ promises of reform are going to be closely watched. Posner bases his massive research on extensive interviews and documents found in the archives of governments and private companies across the world (the author was barred from the Vatican’s own Secret Archives).

A meticulous work that cracks wide open the Vatican’s legendary, enabling secrecy. (My emphasis)

Ironically, the 8% government subsidy Posner refers to that Hitler’s aides negotiated over with Pacelli and his aide, later Cardinal, Ottaviani, is at the heart from all indications of the German bishops’ push at the current Synods for communion for divorced and remarried Catholics. These remarried German Catholics are leaving the Catholic Church often with their families and taking their German subsidy dollars with them. Pope Francis and his top theological adviser, German Cardinal Walter Kasper, may be sincere in their exhortations about “mercy”, but they appear also to have a close eye on the German subsidy.

Pope Francis, of course, facing escalating outside government pressures, had no choice but to begin major reforms of the Vatican’s financial empire. Pope Francis, however, 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 Müller, 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 in his above article: ” …, 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.