UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
* Astute Catholic Church critic, Gary Wills, when asked in a recently reported interview whether he believes Pope Francis will push for real change on key issues facing the Church, responded with his typical directness, “Yes, because he has to. They are overdue and are already occurring throughout the church. ” Ever self confident, Wills added that he believes “the changes, in order of likelihood, are easing off from the condemnations of contraception, divorce, and homosexuality … ” {My emphasis}
Gary Wills may be right, but as discussed below, these changes alone cannot and will not preserve the almost 150 year old top-down papal domination of the Church. Pope Francis must choose — the Vatican must either share power effectively with the Catholic 99.9 %, the so-called People of God, or the Catholic 0.01% leadership will soon lose its power to outside liberal democratic governmental intervention.
* This is not 1870 or even 1960. In 1870, Pope Pius IX shrewdly maximized papal control by getting himself, in effect, declared “infallible” as the Vatican lost its Papal States Kingdom in 1870 and all of its earlier outside monarchical masters by 1918, with the end of the First World War. By 1960, Pope John XXIII realized this “Wizard of Oz-like approach” would no longer play in the post-Second World War democratized world and he sought to make key changes. The Vatican bureaucracy stymied some of these key changes for a half century, but have been neutralized now by unending Vatican scandals. Now, the Vatican will either democratize itself directly and voluntarily or it will most likely be democratized indirectly and involuntarily, sooner rather than later. Yes, the Vatican must either democratize now or face a slow institutional death at the hands of investigators and prosecutors. It is either/or!
* The current Catholic Church crisis, and the several challenges the crisis has provoked, have been occasioned by almost unending scandals. Catholics no longer trust their leaders and it is getting worse, not better. For example, Pope Francis purportedly is trying to “prosecute” secretly his former colleague, disgraced Archbishop Weslowski, while the UK’s Prime Minister Cameron cannot find an investigator who is independent enough to investigate alleged child sex abuse by prominent British insiders. Is the UK Prime Minister, who regularly publicly faces the House of Commons on his actions, less trustworthy than Pope Francis, who faces occasional staged interviews? Why the double standard? Why should Francis investigate his own subordinates?
* And his new financial czar, Cardinal Pell, just reported astonishingly that he “found” hundreds of millions of Euros not previously reported on the Vatican’s books. Will the “miracles and nonsense” ever end? Please see:
]The Spectator]
* These scandals involve priest child abuse, bishop misconduct and financial corruption and have no end in sight, it appears. The yet uncontrolled scandals have caused the ongoing crisis, while the insatiable 24/7 media cycle and the Internet are accelerating it non-stop.
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