UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
The ex-bouncer pope is pushing back. A contest of wills seems to be going on between the papal sex abuse commission head, Boston Franciscan, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, and the “wannabe” Franciscan Pope Francis, with his team of Cardinal Angelo Sodano protégées. The pope’s spokeman has now (3/31/15) said that the Vatican is confident the correct decision has been made in appointing Juan Barros as Bishop of Osorno, in Chile. The amazing Vatican statement said: “The Congregation for Bishops carefully examined the prelate’s candidature and did not find objective reasons to preclude the appointment, …”. At least the statement did not allude to the pope’s “infallibility”, as a previous related statement appeared to do.
Once again, there is no indication the members of the pope’s almost farcical “abuse commission” were consulted on this “doubling down”, further indicating their seeming irrelevance to the pope on the fundamental issue of bishops accountability for their sex abuse misdeeds. Why have an irrelevant commission, Pope Francis? Many of the commission members are well informed and sincere, not some clerical hacks too often appointed to papal commissions.
Members of Francis’ Vatican “go slow” commission have criticized sharply Barros’ appointment, as well as their exclusion from the decision process as indicated in NCR interviews last week and below.
Only celibate men living in the childless Vatican bubble could have made this bad decision, and then arrogantly by a written statement declared it to have been made objectively. Pathetic and outrageous, really. Catholic parents will not have it!
This statement is the “death knell” of the pope’s flawed public relations commission, it would appear. The curtain is rising on the real Francis, no?
US political leaders of both parties are shamefully continuing to give the pope a pass on the child abuse scandal, likely to try to gain political advantage in next year’s presidential and congressional elections. Courageous UN leaders and political leaders in other nations like Australia, the UK, Chile, Ireland, et al., are challenging the pope and his subordinates’ indefensible records, but leaders like the USA’s Obama and Clinton, and even Catholics like Boehner, Biden, Peter King, Nancy Pelosi, Jeb Bush, Rubio, Guiliani, Cuomo, Christie, Jindal, Panetta, Santorum, Jerry Brown, et al., look the other way too often on priest child abuse and bishops’ cover-ups. I was a classmate of Guiliani and King and went to the same law school as Obama. I know they know better and deeply believe the others do as well!
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