‘scandals of Hastert, Pell, US Bishops & Irish Vote Overshadow Pope’s US Trip

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
June 6, 2015

http://christiancatholicism.com/scandals-of-hastert-pell-us-bishops-irish-vote-overshadow-popes-us-trip/

The Vatican and the US political establishment appear to share the same basic approach to “insiders” who abuse children sexually or who protect the abusers — “DON’T ASK ! DON’T TELL !”. This approach will change soon, just watch !!

Pope Francis will visit the USA in September. He wants to try to help elect next year a “Vatican friendly” US President and Congress and thereby solidify a “friendly” US Supreme Court majority for decades to come. The pope’s evident immediate goal is to head off a potentially catastrophic US national investigation of institutional child sexual abuse, like independent investigations already underway in Australia, Ireland, the UK, Canada and elsewhere.

The media magnified pope prefers, often with amplification by some opportunistic and fawning journalist cheerleaders, to pontificate vaguely, superficially and even at times magically and inconsistently, about subjects like the “poor” and “climate change”. He pontificates as an out of touch celibate 78 year old bachelor who got a community college equivalent certificate in chemistry over a half century ago. He then ruled for years in a purportedly mainly Catholic Argentina where few now even regularly attend Mass.

The pope had been invited to speak to the US Congress before top US leaders got to see strong evidence of the pope’s real weakness among Catholic voters, as Irish voters recently overwhelmingly proved in rejecting a key position of the pope’s on marriage. Many Catholics like the pope’s friendly and refreshing style, but the Irish have shown few will vote for the pope’s medieval positions that are mostly aimed at preserving the absolute papal monarchy.

The pope wants to avoid discussing openly in the USA how his irrational and self interested opposition to modern birth control hurts the poor and accelerates global warming by generating unaffordable and unwanted population growth. And surely the pope wants to avoid talking about still unaccountable bishops, like Cardinal George Pell and those ten US Catholic Church officials described in a recent criminal complaint in Minneapolis, who protect alleged priest child abusers, as the pope also did in Argentina, and in effect is still doing as pope from many indications.

Unfortunately for the pope, there are clear, disturbing and public parallels between (A) his troubling disregard, evident when promoting Pell last year to the No.3 Vatican position, of credible allegations about Pell relating to serious child sex abuse cover-up and even worse actions, and the pope’s ongoing avoidance mostly of the worldwide priest child sex abuse scandal, just shown again in the Minneapolis criminal complaint covering at least ten senior Church officials’ failures, and (B) the US Congress’ recent minimizing of child sex abuse allegations about longtime former No. 3 US government official, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (who was recently criminally indicted), and the US Congress’ (and President Barack Obama’s) inexcusable avoidance of investigating the US institutional child sex abuse epidemic, including in the US Catholic Church. The case for a US national inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse has been made by many, including here by leading Australian advocate for abuse survivors, Aletha Blayse.

Hastert’s recently disclosed scandal, and the recent disgraceful revelations about Minneapolis’ Church officials, including Fr. Kevin McDonough, brother of President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, now help explain perhaps why both the US Congress and the White House avoid even mentioning the Catholic child sex abuse scandals.

What are these politicians trying to hide? In the much smaller UK, for example, British police recently reported that more than 75 politicians are currently being criminally investigated for child sex abuse. Are US politicians “purer” than UK politicians, or even US bishops for that matter. Perhaps, but unlikely. The Hastert case suggests they are not. Time will soon tell, with some help from independent prosecutors, and hopefully as well, from Obama and Congressional leaders!

International survivor group SNAP’s President, Barbara Blaine, an abuse survivor, a lawyer and a key player in Australia’s structuring of its Royal Commission investigating institutional child sexual abuse, has recently called out the shameful US national political establishment, which includes President Obama and Catholic Congressional leaders, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner.

Barbara boldly stated, in pertinent part; “In September, Pope Francis will address the US Congress, a body that has refused, over decades, to take a single action to investigate or expose clergy sex abuse and cover up by Catholic priests, bishops, nuns, seminarians and brothers … . But as a body, no federal US institution [including the White House] has ever taken action about – or even investigated – this horrific, on-going scandal… . When dozens of baseball players were charged with illegal use of steroids, Congress held hearings. But Congress has held no hearings whatsoever when it comes to the known 6,427 US priests that are credibly accused of sexually assaulting more than 100,000 children … ”. SNAP’s executive director, David Clohessy, has now fairly called for the removal of Hastert’s portrait from the US Capitol until the allegations about him are resolved.

The current developments in the Hastert, Pell and Minneapolis scandals, and the prophetic Irish vote, signal trouble for Pope Francis, who is to address the US Congress on September 23, and even for Obama and House leaders, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, among others, for their failures to press for a long overdue US national investigation.