Pope Francis Selectively Uses “Genocide” & Other Media “Hot Buttons”

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
May 3, 2015

http://christiancatholicism.com/pope-francis-selectively-uses-genocide-other-media-hot-buttons/

Pope Francis evidently seeks to win next year the political “World Cup” for his desperate team — election of a “Vatican friendly” US President, preferably named Jeb Bush and certainly not named Hillary Clinton!

Francis, an Oz-like wizard with current media techniques, has stepped up his US presidential election political outreach to US Latino voters with his recent major “saint making” event for 18th Century Hispanic Franciscan missionary, Fr. Junipero Serra. It was held at Rome’s North American College (NAC), the US bishops’ well funded elite seminary.

Paradoxically and perhaps unintentionally, the pope apparently by these political machinations also is prodding unrelated opposition groups (Native Americans, priest abuse survivors, disrespected women, gay and divorced Catholics, advocates for children, disgusted “ex-Catholics”, et al.) to organize together, likely for highly visible and media attractive protests during his upcoming US visits, as are currently continuing in Chile and are now underway against NY’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan at a New York Jesuit university, Le Moyne College, no less.

Not surprisingly, the US Knights of Columbus head, Carl Anderson, reportedly gave the NAC/Serra event closing talk. The Knights have “invested millions” in supporting the US bishops’ politically motivated US crusades against women and gays.

Ironically, by highlighting Serra, the pope is reminding Latinos of the often harmful historical alliance of the Vatican and Spanish imperialists that has contributed considerably to the continuing difficult situations for millions of the poor in many Latin and South American nations.

Australian/US Princeton philosopher, Peter Singer, recently perceptively observed that it is hard to believe that if the Philippines, a Spanish colony for centuries, had been colonized by, say, Protestant Britain rather than Catholic Spain, the use of contraception would be an issue there today and, accordingly the current social and economic situation would today have been much better. Fortunately, the paternalistic effects of Serra’s imperialism had been deflected significantly in part by the subsequent politically democratic history of Western US states, a development Serra unlikely foresaw and more unlikely would have approved of.

At NAC, Pope Francis reportedly said of Junipero Serra, despite some significant contrary facts that the pope seemingly overlooked: “He was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a saintly example of the Church’s universality and special patron of the Hispanic people of the country, ..” In the opinion of others, however, “Serra should be considered nothing less than a monster.” “The missions were coercive religious, forced labor camps….”  And see also, “NATIVE AMERICANS PROTEST FATHER JUNIPERO SERRA’S SOON-TO-BE SAINTHOOD, with video here, ABC7 .

NAC ceremonial events draw major US wealthy donors and top cardinals, as indicated extensively on NAC’s website’s photo gallery. See there interestingly the recent photo of depressed looking and disgraced Boston Cardinal Bernard Law with the current German Shepherd, Cardinal Gerhard Muller. They both appear to be recovering from their recent capitulation to the LCWR and the American sisters they reportedly tried to dominate. Pragmatic Pope Francis and Law and Muller now appear, however, already to have what they needed — a chastened and silenced US sisterhood unlikely to undercut next year, as they did with Sister Simone Campbell and the Nuns on the Bus in 2012, the Vatican’s significant efforts to elect a right wing US President. Please see that revealing picture and others from the North American College photo gallery, here, Flickr .

New York’s Cardinal Dolan, a former NAC rector, is currently under fire from some Catholic college students reportedly over his child abuse cover-up and anti-gay positions. A petition on Change.org is asking NY’s Jesuit Le Moyne College administrators to replace Dolan as their upcoming graduation speaker. See the video of some of the well spoken and concerned students, “Le Moyne Students Plan to ‘Ignore’ Cardinal Timothy Dolan Commencement Speech“, here,  TWC News .

Please sign this petition now by clicking on here Change.org    !!

The pope should as a Christian, of course, condemn as inhumane and unchristian, as well as prudently try to curtail, atrocities against all groups, especially of innocents, whether Armenians, Jews, Muslims, Orthodox, Protestants, Catholics, Native Americans or defenseless child victims of priest child abuse (including by Franciscans and Jesuits).

Pope Francis, however,  seems to “cherry pick” the wrongdoers he condemns to advance Vatican geo-political advantage. Turkish Muslims who in World War I clearly committed atrocities against innocent Armenians were engaged in “genocide”; while Franciscans who helped Spanish soldiers decimate Native Americans were engaged in “evangelization”, according to the pope. Jesus never said “love your enemies” only when it advances your self interest. Mass atrocities are not meaningfully susceptible to “ranking as better or worse”.

Outrage against current mass violence is courageous. Outrage against historical mass violence is less courageous. Selective outrage, however, is hypocrisy. Pope Francis vented calculatingly recently against 100 year old mass atrocities during World War I by Turkish Muslims against Armenian Catholics. Yet, the pope continues to keep Vatican Holocaust genocide related files secret, as he also overlooks seemingly the Catholic Church’s poor record with Native Americans.

That record did not end with Serra. In one of the largest settlements in the Catholic Church’s sweeping sex abuse scandal, the Jesuits agreed in 2012 to pay $160+ million to hundreds of Native Americans and Alaska Natives who were abused at the order’s schools. And the year before, records of U.S. Franciscan clergymen accused of child sexual abuse were posted online, three years after a Los Angeles judge ordered the documents released. Francis is engaged in selective outrage here, evidently for political advantage. He can and should do better.

Of course, it seems obvious, to me anyways, that the pope is using the anti-Muslim aspect of the Armenian atrocities to gin up his continual call for a new Middle East invasion to “protect Christians”. The pope’s Big Oil backers must like this. In practice, Pope John Paul II, the ex-Pope, Cardinal Sodano, and likely his then top aide and Francis’ current No. 2 man, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, facilitated extending the disastrous Iraq War by helping George W.Bush get re-elected in 2004. Francis appears to be just following in their footsteps. Unnecessary wars kill Christians also, as well as Muslims and many other innocents.

A recently published report has revealed that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was responsible for the deaths of approximately 1 million Iraqis, which is 5 percent of the total population of the country. The report also tallies hundreds of thousands of casualties in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Please see the respected report, titled “Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the ‘War on Terror,'” that persuasively indicates the real casualties, Christians, Muslims and others, reached “genocidal dimensions.” (emphasis mine)

Significantly, Thomas Reese, a respected journalist, US Jesuit political scientist and member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission to advise the president, Congress, and the State Department on international religious freedom, has just noted the harmful effect that the unnecessary, wasteful and destabilizing US Iraq invasion had. In the National Catholic Reporter, Reese said in pertinent part (in italics):

“For the Christians in the Middle East, one of the ironies of their precarious situation is that they were much better off in Iraq under Saddam and in Syria under Assad than they are today. Likewise, things are improving for the Coptic Christians in Egypt under the new military government, even if in general, the human rights situation is terrible. … 

As long as democracy is seen as a winner-take-all struggle, conflict will be intense and violent, and politicians will exploit religion for their own purposes. The stakes are simply too high for the losers who will be excluded from the jobs and benefits provided by government.”

Please see also my relevant remarks,  “What Do We Now Know About The Real Goal Of Pope Francis?” and “A Pope, A New US War, Jeb Bush Neocons & Big Oil ” .

Unfortunately for Cardinal Dolan and perhaps the pope as well, the Jesuit impact on students still thrives. The Catholic Revolution that began recently with parents and grandparents in a Chilean cathedral (see here, here, and here) is spreading to younger Catholics, now to a New York Jesuit university.  As I recently noted here, “Must Jesuits Overlook Jesuit Pope’s Mistakes?” , some Jesuit priests seem often to be silent under our Jesuit pope, but a majority of the 2015 graduating class at Jesuits’ Le Moyne College are objecting to the most prominent US prelate, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s being the speaker at their commencement ceremonies in a few weeks. A petition on Change.org asking the college to change the speaker has been signed by more than 500 people. The college’s graduating class is roughly 600 students. See the video of some of the concerned students, “Le Moyne Students Plan to ‘Ignore’ Cardinal Timothy Dolan Commencement Speech“, here,  TWC News . Please sign this petition now !!

The LeMoyne protest by mature Jesuit students suggests the Jesuit pope may face protests when he visits the USA for the first time in a few months. Meanwhile, Cardinal Dolan appears to be reaping a better return on his US presidential election campaign oriented “evangelization” efforts directed at “low tax/less regulation/least safety net” wealthy 0.01% US donors; see his recent conference with Goldman  Sachs’ CEO and top bankers, and his earlier “the pope loves the rich” spiel on the CNBC international business network here, Goldman Sachs , and here, CNBC .

Students at LeMoyne reportedly say their research led them to reports that Dolan has been involved in efforts to cover up priest sexual abuse of children. “We have tried to make steps to state our intolerance with sexual violence on this campus and, also, within the church it shouldn’t be tolerated,” said Amy Denny, a senior. “Overall, I do not think Cardinal Dolan represents the tenets we value at Le Moyne College,” said Katherine M. Bakhuizen, a senior. Take that, Tim!

Kailey McDonald, also a senior, is holding out hope that the college will disinvite Dolan. “Jesus taught love and acceptance, and so does Le Moyne,” McDonald said.”The Jesuits do not condemn people for the way they love. I have not seen evidence that Cardinal Dolan reflects these teachings, and I hope Le Moyne recognizes that.”

Cardinal Dolan, the USA’s most visible prelate, is surely having a tough stretch. The former top aide to Dolan’s St. Louis’ mentor, retired Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali, has just been sent back to jail by a Jesuit educated judge for a child endangerment crime, see here, “Two Cardinals’ Aide’s Crime Upheld Yet Philly Visit Is Still On?”

And Dolan’s former St. Louis subordinate, Bishop Finn, was just sacked by Pope Francis over a criminal failure to report a serial child pornographer priest, see here,”Finn’s Law: Police Must Now Handle Crimes Says Pope” .

Please see my relevant remarks,  “What Do We Now Know About The Real Goal Of Pope Francis?“. The pope has a poor record on standing up on child abuse cover-up matters to cardinals, for example, like Rigali, Law and LA’s Roger Mahony. The pope recently invited shamed Belgium Cardinal Daneels to participate in his farcical all celibate male Family Synod. And as to the pope’s poor record in the broader Chilean abuse situation involving Francis’ Chilean connections, please see intrepid Jason Berry’s comprehensive description, “Chilean cardinals close to pope stained by abuse cover-ups“, here, National Catholic Reporter .

Meanwhile, Chile still boils over. Students at the Catholic University of Santiago recently staged a demonstration against the pope’s close adviser, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati. The students were angry over the dismissal of a prominent Jesuit liberation theologian.The Jesuit priest has been outspoken on the social mission of the Church and sexual morality, in particular the issue of communion for divorcees who have remarried.

Cardinal Ezzati, one of Pope Francis’ elite “C9″ group of nine advisers and one of the first prelates Francis made a cardinal, is a controversial figure in the Chilean Church. He was accompanied at the recent event, where the demonstration took place, by the newly-appointed Bishop Juan Barros, who was also targeted by the protesters. Bishop Barros is alleged to have colluded in or covered up the child abuse committed by the priest, Fernando Karadima, who was banned from ministry by the Vatican.

The pope will soon get to visit Cardinal Dolan’s NY cathedral and mansion that are being restored for almost $200 million. Meanwhile, Dolan appears to be avoiding lawyers’ efforts seeking some access to the $50+ million he apparently had “buried” in a cemetery trust to keep it from helping, among others, some of the 200 deaf children sex abuse victims of a Milwaukee priest pervert whom Cardinals Ratzinger, the ex-pope, and Bertone reportedly gave a free pass. Of course, Dolan’s predecessor, Cardinal Egan, admitted, in effect, to priest sex abuse cover-ups, then retracted with impunity his admission.

Cardinals and bishops are mainly unaccountable, even to the pope, it appears. And the abuse mess is still causing unexpected problems that Pope Francis seems unable to control. For example, Peggy Noonan, the prominent conservative Republican spokeswoman and President Ronald Reagan’s former top speechwriter, recently complained in a very critical column in Rupert Murdoch’s influenced Wall Street Journal about the announced closing by Cardinal Dolan of her Manhattan church in the middle of the ” … refurbishment of mighty St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which has been extremely expensive. [and] … the cost, the past 20 years, of all the settlements and legal fees associated with the sex scandals. …”.

Peggy Noonan used her sharp Brooklyn Irish American pen to go after the apparent “edifice complex” of her  “friend”, Cardinal Dolan, as she notes here: “The cardinal could sell his grand private mansion in Midtown, just down the street from what has been assessed the most valuable piece of real estate in the city, Saks Fifth Avenue, judged to be worth almost $4 billion. Think of what the cardinal’s mansion would sell or rent for! That would take care of everything. This is what Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley did: sell the cardinal’s estate. He lives now in a small apartment in a modest part of town. “

Are the Irish eyes of “Happy Tim Dolan” still smiling? Will Dolan’s pal, Bill Donahue now go after the LeMoyne graduates? Stay tuned! For Peggy Noonan’s complaints about Cardinal Dolan’s seeming “edifice complex”, please see her column, ” Cardinal, Please Spare This Church “.

It is too bad it seems to have taken the potential loss of her local Church structure to get Noonan to talk so forcefully about the 20 years of priest child abuse scandals that she refers to here. Let us hope she keeps complaining. Perhaps Noonan will weigh in on the LeMoyne protests? If a “friend” of Cardinal Dolan writes such a strong criticism in the US’s major national newspaper that is likely read by most of Dolan’s main donors, what can Dolan expect from his “enemies”?