UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
The Vatican’s pervasive obsession with secrecy and spin, often tolerated by a mostly captive media that is dependent on Vatican sources for “news crumbs” and invitations to ride on the papal plane during exotic and unnecessary papal trips, requires Catholics seeking the full truth at times to try themselves to draw the most plausible inference from known facts. Put simply, official Vatican explanations and media apologists “analysis” of them are often misleading or incomplete, in my view as an experienced international lawyer. Once again, this Vatican’s media manipulation tactics were just confirmed, this time by longtime “Vatican insider journalist”, Robert Mickens, in his recent Letter from Rome . As Mickens indicates, the pope avoided a photo op with the world’s leading female archbishop, who is also Sweden’s Primate, a former Chicago theology professor, a Christian advocate for contraception access and acceptance of same sex marriage and a top expert on the moral implications of climate change. Yet the pope craftily exploits photo ops daily with the likes of the Harlem Globetrotters and other sports and Hollywood celebrities. Why the misogynistic papal discrimination? See my pertinent remarks, “What Do We Now Know About The Real Goal Of Pope Francis?”.
Why did Pope Francis really sack Kansas City USA Bishop Robert Finn in the manner and at the time the pope did? It is becoming clearer now that the pope’s priorities were mainly (1) to protect himself from the expanding revolt over his own blunder with Chilean Bishop Barros that was seized upon by at least four lay members of the pope’s “go slow’ abuse commission, and (2) to avoid undermining the pope’s strong push to help elect next year a “Vatican friendlier” US president, preferably another Bush and certainly not another Clinton! Francis evidently was not made pope by frightened cardinals to protect “expendable bishops” like Finn. But “who is to judge” which bishops or even cardinals are expendable? For important background on the pope’s urgent Chilean bishop mess and his ties to the broader Chilean priest sexual abuse situation, as well as his Chilean cardinal connections, please see intrepid Jason Berry’s comprehensive description, “Chilean cardinals close to pope stained by abuse cover-ups“, here,
Finn was a “somebody” among the US Catholic hierarchy. He had longtime key backers, thought once to be powerful in Rome, including his former St. Louis USA bosses, Cardinals Justin Rigali, Timothy Dolan and Raymond Burke. He also had his Opus Dei connections. That’s history now. Indeed, Dolan is facing his own coming USA revolt just when the pope is getting ready for his visit to the USA in September. This USA revolt has already begun with brave Jesuit students, many opposed to priest child abuse and bishops’ cover-ups and homophobic crusades, at a New York Jesuit university, with their petition here on Change.org (SIGN IT NOW PLEASE), and related anticipated civil disobedience seeking to reject prominent New York’s Cardinal Dolan as graduation speaker, in light of his evident child protection and homophobic failures, see here, Catholics Revolt: Jesuit Grads Shun Dolan As Goldman Sachs Bankers Woo Him .
Despite originally indicating reportedly that the lay abuse commission members would have access to the pope, the pope has apparently reversed himself. He has, in effect, jammed his lay members with his new “statutes” for his “go slow” advisory abuse commission headed by a weak O’Malley, and infamous Cardinal Law’s former canon lawyer, Fr. Robert Oliver. Importantly, the commission’s new statutes (two years’ late incidentally) specify: “§ 3. Proposals submitted to the Holy Father by the Commission must be approved by a majority of two-thirds of the Members.” (emphasis mine). The commission’s clerical members, subservient to the pope, can now block, by a “one third plus one” vote, lay members’ access to the pope. Of course, the lay members can and likely will go public to the media as they think necessary in good conscience, as they already have. The commission’s “statutes” seem more for the continued “protection of bishops” than for the “protection of minors”, it appears! Predictable, no? We waited two years for this? Shameful! See here the full Statutes of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.