At Two Year Mark, Pope’s Plan Seems Doomed

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
February 21, 2015

http://christiancatholicism.com/at-two-year-mark-popes-business-plan-seems-doomed/

As Pope Francis approaches his second papal anniversary, he has finally shown his plan. He has shown at least enough to indicate why his plan will fail. Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Francis poses with soccer stars endlessly and “globetrots” aimlessly, while the Vatican sinks.

A prominent and informed Jesuit has already, in effect, declared that the Pope, and the Council of Cardinals the pope picked and leads, do not know what they are doing !!!

Indeed, Pope Francis’ latest desperate distraction, to try to salvage his doomed plan, appears to be to drum up support for a new “Christian crusade” against the ISIS terrorists.

Unfortunately for the dangerous plans of the pope and his likely latest US culture warrior, Jeb Bush, ISIS’ days as a serious Western threat appear to be already numbered, even without a new crusade. ISIS should be well contained by the time Hillary Clinton defeats Jeb and his brother’s old war prone foreign policy team in next year’s US presidential elections — bad news for the Vatican and its billionaire donors,  as discussed here, “The cracks in Islamic State’s business plan are starting to show” at [Reuters] .

Catholics will now need to stop wishful thinking. They need to press their governments to clean up the Vatican promptly. Catholic Church leaders, we now know for sure, will never do so unless compelled to do so by outside democratic forces.

The pope’s plan has been fairly simple: Protect at all costs Church leaders and wealth, not by making Church leaders accountable and law abiding, but mainly by shoring up alliances with major world political and financial players. The plan sought:

• To protect cardinals and bishops from governmental investigators and criminal prosecutors
• To protect Church leaders’ assets from excessive corruption and from lawyers for priest sex abuse survivors
• To protect unaccountable bishops’ local monopolies over their dioceses and the local Catholic faithful
• To protect bishops’ key salesmen — their captive celibate priests who collect top Church leaders’ money and who depend on bishops’ to survive
• To create an illusion, through public imagery and misleading promises, that the Vatican is changing its immoral ways, as well as its warped teachings that are designed mainly to preserve and protect the Church leaders’ power and wealth.

The pope’s plan has failed already. Child abuse and financial scandal revelations keep generating more bad press and intrusive investigations faster than the pope’s spinners can find more babies for him to kiss.

Very significantly, a devastating two year report card was just delivered to the pope, by a brave Jesuit no less!  Fr. Thomas Reese, the world’s leading expert on Vatican organizational structure with a UC Berkeley Ph.D. in political science, just gave the pope a failing grade.  Reese is the author of the highly regarded, “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church”  discussed at Amazon here,  [Amazon]

Reese’s most startling observations, in his brave two year assessment here, [National Catholic Reporter] , is that “ … the Council of Cardinals [taking] two years to come up with this reshuffling of boxes on the organizational chart simply shows they really don’t know what they are doing… .  A conspiracy theorist would say that getting the Council of Cardinals to focus on this reorganization was a way of distracting them from any real reform in the [Vatican leadership structure] Curia. …” (emphasis mine)

As one would expect, the Jesuit Reese’s preferred bias is towards merely more clerical structural reform, which will also fail in my view. Sharing power, as Reese seems to want, among more unaccountable men worldwide, is hardly likely to end the child abuse and financial scandals. The Vatican has blown it. It has run out of time! Catholics, especially parents and women, have had enough.

Sharing power with the Catholic 99% majority is the only way to save the Catholic Church. For a relevant discussion of what Pope Francis needs to do, if he truly wants to save the Catholic Church, please see my related reform remarks,  “The Crisis Pope Francis Faces” here, [Christian Catholicism]

My considered reform remarks are based on my lifetime experience as a Catholic and decades experience as an international lawyer. Jesuit educated Fr. Hans Kung, whom Pope Francis has honored recently with replies, etc.,  and whose former assistant, Cardinal Walter Kasper, reportedly is the pope’s theologian of choice, has complimented me on these reform remarks.

These remarks, unlike some of my other ad hoc advocacy intended remarks which Hans Kung has not endorsed, are my considered and best effort to point Pope Francis to an efficacious path to required reforms. But the “Holy Father” thinks he knows best! Time will tell, soon!!

Catholics seem mesmerized by papal mythology. Myths are over simplified stories with a supernatural twist — believed deeply and docilely by many, often from their youth. These “mythical stories” tend misleadingly to “frame” problematic issues for believers, even when unsupported by sufficient facts and/or contradicted by realities that believers irrationally overlook.

Papal myths are ones that modern popes have propagated to Catholics, like papal infallibility, beginning at seven years old during initial sacramental indoctrination, if not earlier through their Catholic parents and teachers. These myths promote papal power and prosperity with no questions asked, even when questions are rationally warranted — Pay, Pray & Obey!

Many Catholics habitually and irrationally accept these myths, thereby avoiding the need to make tough decisions, to act as real Christians, that are honestly called for by viewing papal reality unfiltered by papal spin. Even some purported Catholic scholars and journalists, often seemingly out of ambition and/or intimidation, are influenced by these mythical “frames” when viewing papal reality.

Pope Francis is unsuccessfully trying to preserve, as did his immediate predecessors, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, by  similar tactics (internal intimidation, external propaganda and media manipulation), the crucial papal myths underlying current papal power and wealth.

Evidently, Pope Francis fears that the present risks, of prosecution and imprisonment for Catholic Church leaders arising out of child abuse and financial scandals, will increase even faster than they presently are, if the full and unvarnished truth of some Church leaders’ misdeeds were to be uncovered.

Hence, for example, alleged child abuser, Archbishop Wesolowski, is being managed secretively by Francis.

The Vatican seems clearly to be relying heavily on these papal myths to try to obscure reality, as it faces a major and plausible “once in 150 years” threat. Francis had been expected by the frightened cardinals who elected him, it appears, to try to meet this threat and buy time, as an interim “media friendly, globe trotting” papal distraction — like John Paul II also was.

Francis has already failed. The Internet, social media and 24/7 news cycle have now begun to use the truth to pick the papal bones.

Even disgraced Cardinal Tercisio Bertone, in effect, has recently and ignobly pointed the finger of blame, for some of his main misdeeds, at his former longtime boss, ex-Pope Benedict, as well as at the former Vatican Bank directors, and even at Pope Francis, for whom he worked for seven months.

Hardly “Omertà” on Bertone’s part, no?

The Vatican Bank directors evidently include Carl Anderson, still the head of another financially oriented organization, the Knights of Columbus (USA). Anderson reportedly was a key mover in the sudden ouster of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the Vatican Bank’s ex-head, who subsequently cleared Italian government financial investigators unscathed.

Anderson was abruptly replaced by Francis on the Bank’s board as more Bank scandals became public.

Anderson appears to continue to have influence with Francis, as they evidently work together to help elect as US president next year a right wing “low tax” Republican, probably the latest Bush candidate, Jeb. For Anderson’s continuing role, please see “How One Religious Organization Bankrolls America’s Social Conservative Movement” here,

http://churchandstate.org.uk/2014/12/how-one-religious-organization-bankrolls-americas-social-conservative-movement/

At the same time as Bertone tries to lay blame on others, including Pope Francis, Bertone has subtly and publicly taken credit for several positive Francis’ actions, including on Cuba/USA relations, as mostly his and Benedict initiatives per Bertone’s telling.

In his recent “softball interview” in the Huffington Post , Bertone offered a truly pathetic example of “bureaucratic buck passing” and “revisionist history.”

Bertone’s interview version of Vatican Bank scandals differs considerably from the  remarkably revealing expose (1/8/15) of Tedeschi, the Vatican Bank’s ex-head, under the Catholic Herald banner headline, “HOW I WAS BETRAYED BY THE VATICAN” here, [Catholic Herald] , discussed further in my “Ex-Bank Head Presses Pope, ex-Pope & Cardinal Bertone” here, [Christian Catholicism] .

Bertone had spent almost two decades, often with considerable authority as the evidently “management adverse” ex-Pope’s top aide. This included the period when ex-pope Ratzinger was in charge as Cardinal of seemingly covering up some priest child abuse scandals, such as the Milwaukee priest who reportedly sexually abused over two hundred deaf boys, as well as the Fr. Marciel Maciel scandals after Cardinal Sodano reportedly weighed in.

Bertone confirms that he knew by mid-2012  that Benedict XVI was planning to quit “at least seven months” in advance of his mid-February 2013 public resignation announcement.

This means Bertone learned about the pope’s planned departure about the time the International Criminal Court prosecutor indicated she was giving the ex-Pope and Cardinals Bertone, Sodano and Levada a free pass on filing “crimes against humanity” charges related to the priest child abuse scandal, at least in the short term. That seems plausible enough. At 85 years of age, the ex-pope’s short term was long term as well !

Bertone reportedly indicated that he told Benedict: “Holy Father, you must bestow upon us the third volume on Jesus of Nazareth and the encyclical on faith, before you sign things over to Pope Francis.”

Of course, Francis was only selected in March 2013 AFTER Benedict left. Or was he selected earlier? By whom? Very interesting !

Still very revealing, though. The Vatican Titanic was already sinking in 2012 on child abuse, gay lobby and financial scandal icebergs. Bertone now expects us to believe he emphasized to the pope that he should stick around to write more books few would read after he resigns. Will Bertone’s memoirs also contain such seeming fiction?

Similarly, when asked if it was difficult to make a pope change his mind, particularly a German one… , Bertone reportedly almost incredibly replied, “When they [popes] make certain decisions before God, how can we humans presume to interfere?” Amazing, no? Was Joseph Ratzinger fully human as Cardinal? Is he now as ex-Pope? The papal mythology never quits, it seems.

In the interview, Bertone said his relationship with Pope Francis was very positive. Regarding Bertone’s lavish — and widely criticized — retirement complex: a 2500-square-foot luxury apartment with a view of the city, Bertone reportedly stated “When this apartment was first criticized, he [Pope Francis] called me up and said, ‘Look, I do not have anything against you going to live on the third floor of Palazzo San Carlo.’ ” Francis, according to Bertone, even went further: “The pope [Francis] was informed about everything, even the small secretary’s office. He [Francis] said to me, ‘It’s perfectly fine and you are entitled to it, seeing as you need to write your memoirs, given you have been witness to three papacies… ‘ ” (emphasis mine) .

Perhaps Pope Francis thought Bertone would be “grazing sheep” on his infamous terrace, to get their smell? Really! What a double standard, no?

According to Bertone’s carefully chosen words in the interview, “The terrace, which has views across Rome, is intended for everyone”.

Intended for everyone, perhaps, but who actually uses it? Somehow, I have trouble visualizing the ex-pope’s butler’s children hanging out on His Eminence, Bertone’s terrace. Can you?

Francis should ask Bertone to share his apartment with the recently “resurrected” Bishop of Bling, who could then park his motorcycles on Bertone’s terrace, no? What hypocrisy?

The Cardinal denied mishandling funds during his leadership of the Vatican Bank, presumably including recent allegations that he mishandled millions of dollars through the Bank.

Bertone in the interview said he acted in line with the committee that oversaw the bank and was not a “puppeteer or despot”. Every decision he made, he said, was “in accordance with the Holy Father”, he reportedly said. What does the non-excuse, “I was only following orders” remind you of? If he were following the ex-pope’s orders, we can safely conclude that at least papal financial decisions are not “infallible”. (emphasis mine).

For the “mythical premises” underlying Bertone’s revisionism, please see my “Five Crucial Myths Pope Francis Preaches: Why?”  here, [Christian Catholicism]. For the overall negative implications of, and fatal flaws in, Pope Francis’ continuing protection and rewarding of men like Bertone and the ex-Pope, notwithstanding the papal mythology that seeks to obfuscate what is really happening, please see my “The Crisis Pope Francis Faces” here, [Christian Catholicism] .