UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
* Pope Francis has a growing trust problem. Catholics increasingly have a deep seated problem trusting their leadership — in simplest terms, more and more Catholics now ask themselves and each other, this simple question: Why should I trust and support some seemingly corrupt and selfish bishops who ultimately seem indifferent to the rape of my children by some of their priest fundraisers or episcopal colleagues. Moreover, some of these bishops seem to many Catholics to use money raised by their priests at times as if it were the bishops’ own pocket change. Hence, the growing trust problem.
* Many Catholics now either want to change fundamentally, or even to leave, the Church. Without Catholics’ continuing support, bishops will eventually and inevitably lose both their financial security and political power.
* The solution to this trust problem is obviously more honesty, candor and transparency on the part of the hierarchy, including Pope Francis. Yet, hardly a week passes without another unsettling revelation about clerical child abuse or financial corruption, usually uncovered by a diligent reporter or tenacious lawyer. Further revelations then have to be pried out of Vatican officials, who too often try to spin the facts unreasonably and to excuse the failure to have made the revelations voluntarily. Even Pope Francis seems to fit this pattern far too often. Of course, he has already publicly “confessed” to being a “man of the Church”. He apparently has inhaled “pontifical secrecy fumes” for over a half century. Sadly, it shows.
* Unless Pope Francis and his staff start operating less secretly and coyly and more transparently and openly, it is hard to imagine how the Vatican will ever regain concerned Catholics’ trust that is needed for Vatican survival, it seems clear.
* A good example of the desire for change and the rising concern of Catholics about the secrecy that surrounds priest child child abuse is very evident from the recent talk to a Catholic group, and Q&A session that followed, with Kieran Tapsell. He is an ex-Catholic seminarian and an Australian barrister, as well as the author of the excellent new book, “Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse”.
* The book describes the “cover-up” by the Catholic Church hierarchy, including through secretive and evasive canon law tactics, of priest child sexual abuse that has been occurring under the pontificate of six popes since 1922, when Pope Pius XI issued his secret decree, “Crimen Sollicitationis”. This papal order created a de facto “privilege of clergy” by imposing the “secret of the Holy Office” on all information obtained through the Church’s internal canonical investigations. This operates as a form of “Holy Omerta”. If the state authorities did not know about these crimes, then there would be no state criminal trials, and the matter could be treated as a purely canonical crime to be dealt with in secret in the Church courts. Pope Francis, for example, is currently pushing hard to prosecute Archbishop Wesolowski and numerous priests by comparable secretive proceedings, it appears. The explanation is often that this is how we “always operated”, similar to how many other absolute monarchies operated centuries ago. But this is the year 2014, not 1214!
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