UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
The unprecedented ongoing crisis, of bishops and priests who sexually assault children with impunity, presents Pope Francis with a fundamental choice — Francis can either try to save the coercive top-down papacy and thereby risk losing the hierarchical Church to prosecutors from the USA, Australia and elsewhere, or he can try restore a consensual bottom-up Church like the one that Jesus’ original disciples, including some women, left behind. Only a Church with independent and effective lay oversight will ever convince prosecutors at this point that children are safe from clerical predators.
So far Pope Francis has mainly followed the top down script that ex-Pope Benedict and Cardinal Sodano apparently offered him last year as a pre-condition to his becoming Pope. This is evident from the ten goals described in detail below that Francis now appears to be pursuing vigorously.
Popes have of necessity had political strategies for almost two millennia. For the initial three centuries, as the small Christian movement spread widely, popularly selected popes usually tried quietly to peacefully coexist with political leaders . Constantine and his successors changed that in the 4th Century, increasingly influencing top-down imperial papal selections. Since then, popes’ main priority has often been to maintain a close working relationship with the most powerful political leaders.
Pius XI and XII sought this mistakenly with powerful fascists, Mussolini, Franco and Hitler, while Paul VI unsuccessfully sought peaceful co-existence with the Soviets and the West. In the American Century, the last three popes, including Francis, have sought to exchange (A) papal “pull” with key fundamentalist anti-abortion and anti-gay US voters for (B) potential subsidies and legal protection, from a favored relationship with powerful US right wing leaders, including Reagan, the Bushes and Romney.
Francis has in many ways already shown his hand on supporting the election in four weeks of a right wing US Senate (likely to preserve a US Supreme Court majority friendly to Francis’ “low tax” billionaire donors and legally vulnerable bishops).
Now before the Family Synod has even started, Francis has preemptively and autocratically indicated the Synod will end on Sunday, Oct. 19 with the beatification of Pope Paul VI, the third 20th century pope that Francis will elevate this year. Can the Synod now evaluate contraception honestly in the presence of their “cherry picked” natural family planning couple cheer leaders and challenge Paul VI’s best known mistake. In addition. Paul VI undercut episcopal collegiality and optional celibacy implementation. Of course, the Synod “Fathers Without Kids” cannot and will not now pursue the Synod’s hyped reconsideration of Paul VI’s Ban of the Pill — this appears to be just more “papal bull”. So much for the “Sense of the Faithful”!
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