Are They Better Than Me?

(photo from Telegraph.co.uk)

This is Neil Gallanagh. The Church decided not to unfrock him even if abused boys.

Deaf boys.

(photo from The Guardian.Com)

Bernard Cardinal Law covered-up hundreds of sexual abuse of children by priests of the Archdiocese of Boston.

He’s still inside the Church.

John Paul II (yes, the so called Saint) in 2004 made him archpriest of St. Mary Major, one of the Eternal City’s four Patriarchal basilicas.

 

Santa e Puttana (con tutto il rispetto per le Puttane).

Tra pochi giorni sapremo se la Chiesa di Roma inizierà’ ad essere più’ madre e dunque meno matrigna. Divorziati, Gay, Famiglie del XXI secolo, Risposati e compagnia bella, almeno quelli che nonostante tutto ancora si sforzano di essere Cattolici anche se sono sempre presi a calci in faccia, attendono la risposta del Sinodo che sta per concludersi nelle ovattate sale all’interno del Vaticano.

E’ piu’ cattolico un Divorziato (risposato) che vuole prendere la Comunione o un prete pedofilo? Io voto per il Divorziato.

E’ più’ cattolico un Gay che vuole essere vicino (tramite il Sacramento della Comunione) a Gesu’ Cristo oppure un vescovo che copre, ha coperto, sta coprendo, gli abusi dei preti colpevoli?  Io voto per il Gay.

Francesco e’ un ingenuo se crede davvero che il marcio sia stato eliminato del tutto dalla Chiesa di Roma.

La Chiesa di Roma e’ stata per duemila anni Santa e Puttana.

Perché dovrebbe cambiare all’improvviso?

One, Two, Three Popes…

http://www.Ansamed.info

The canonization of both John XXIII and John Paul II will take place this Sunday, April 27, in Rome, and the event is expected to attract million of people to the epicenter of Catholicism.

Though both popes will be elevated to sainthood on the same day, their impacts on the Catholic Church and its more than a billion followers worldwide could not be more different.

I am not sure many people remember John XXIII, who after all, died in 1963. He was a stocky little man with a prominent nose and a gentle voice. he was considered a “transitional pope”, being 76 years old when he was elevated after eleven ballots to the Throne of Peter.

Regardless, during his short-lived papacy (just under five years), he did much to open the Church not only to the world but also to the future. In calling the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which he didn’t see completed because of his death in 1963, John XXIII shook the walls of a previously unchanging Church, essentially returning the individual human being to the center from the periphery of the Catholic vision as it was until that moment.

“We are all made in God’s image, and thus we are all Godly alike” was one of his teachings -an uncommon belief among his predecessors, where the supreme authority of the pope in all matters was unshakable.

The encyclical letter “Pacem in Terris” is not simply about peace. It is also (and especially) about human rights – about the dignity of man: the poorest, the forgotten, and the last. And this was more than fifty years ago.

I’ve written before that I consider John Paul II a pope that did damage to the Catholic Church.

His conservativism, his opposition to the opposition to the ordination of women, and his vision of a Church based on a sheltered and deaf perspective on the world (despite his frequent travels) all succeeded in alienating many that were ready to be embraced by the Catholic Church.

His appointing of conservative bishops throughout the world and his benevolence towards organizations like Opus Dei, Legion of Christ, Neocatechumenal Way and Schoenstatt, have served to push away those who are not part of such self-righteous way to see the Church.

There is a reason why churches are getting emptier and emptier, and there is a reason why the Catholic Church has pushed away more and more people.

The great popularity of Francis proves that people again wish to be part of the Church of Rome -a loving and open Church rather than one closer to the Middle Ages than our times.

I believe Francis is torn between the conservative forces that are still the predominant influence within the Vatican and his own vision of the Church of Rome (Just today news broke of a possible call he made to a divorced woman in Buenos Aires, telling her that she is doing nothing wrong in taking communion).

Francis is a Jesuit and by education is inclined to politics. Could this the reason he chose to make both John XXIII and John Paul II saints on the same day?

Is he trying to build a bridge?

Maybe.

La Casta

 

Lo ammetto; avverto la stanchezza.

Ho l’impressione di scrivere solo di loro: i Vescovi della Chiesa Cattolica (anche se in fondo  scrivo di molto altro). Continuo a scrivere di questi arzilli vecchietti o attempati signori di mezza eta’ che continuano a proteggersi l’uno con l’altro. O a dire, come in questo caso, cose che non fanno altro che danneggiare quella Chiesa di cui essi si definiscono  pastori.

In fondo e’ solo notizia di ieri (riportata tra l’altro dal Messaggero e dall’Huffington Post) :  che la CEI, commissione episcopale italiana) ha dichiarato che , I Vescovi non hanno alcun dovere giuridico di denunciare alle autorità di polizia i preti pedofili, dunque quei soggetti di cui loro sono i supervisori. Hanno solo un “dovere morale”. In pratica ci avvertono che loro non sono legalmente responsabili.  E’ come se dicessero “Non potete accusarci di nulla. Sono solo loro i preti cattivi ad essere responsabili. Sono loro quelli sporcaccioni. Cattivi. Brutti. Sporchi. Noi invece siamo buoni e innocenti”.

Come fece un signore duemila anni fa, se ne lavano le mani. Il signore in questione era un funzionario romano, tale Ponzio Pilato.

Trovo molto interessante come in questo periodo pasquale la Casta che in fondo e’ il vero problema della Chiesa, faccia annunci pilateschi. Ogni giorno di più’ penso che se tornasse sulla terra quel  rivoluzionario rabbino ebreo vissuto duemila anni fa e a cui loro fanno sempre riferimento, (almeno a parole), forse li caccerebbe via dal Tempio come gia’ fece una volta con i farisei.

Chissà che direbbe allora la Casta?

 

 

 

A Nuremberg trial for Catholic Bishops?

Today the United Nations Committee on the Right Of The Child released a report accusing the Vatican of covering up many decades of sexual abuse of children by priests.

The Treaty of Rome (July 17,1998) affirms that: ” Crimes against humanity are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings and that they are not isolated or sporadic events.”

What about the crimes of sexual nature against children committed by Catholic priests? In my opinion these crimes are not just horrible, aberrant acts committed by sick people but true crimes against humanity. Destroying the innocence of children should be considered a crime against humanity.

Some of the priests have paid for their crimes, but what about the Bishops who have covered up the of the sexual abuse?

Should not they as leaders pay a price?

I Don’t Eat Priests For Breakfast

As we speak the cardinals are gathering in Rome to elect the new pontiff,  head of the Catholic Church, trusted spiritual guide to more than a billion Catholic around the globe. There is great anticipation to discover who will ascend the Chair of Peter. It’s always good to remember that the pope is the spiritual guide to more than a billion people and his voice is heard worldwide.

I believe that today, like never before, the election of the new pontiff is of a fundamental importance to the Catholic Church. This must not be an “ad interim” pope. Simply because the Church of Rome cannot afford it.

I hope that a man in possession of the strength and spirit to reform emerges from the Sistine Chapel, where the college of cardinals will elect the new bishop of Rome. A man with the actual courage to look inside his Church with honesty and with openness to the world. A man that understand how to really analyze the wrongs of the temporal -not divine- institution that he has just been called to lead. A real pastor that understands that 21st century catholics are different from those of the middle ages. That the social reality of today is different from that of Idebrando of Soana and Matilde of Tuscany. People need more than just feeble and often unconvincing answers to the problems and challenges that they must face everyday.

The churches are half-empty in Italy just like they are in the rest of the world. Women almost never choose the religious life. After all  why should they? Despite what the bishops say, within the Catholic Church, women are still treated as second-class citizens.

Watch the cardinals, and you will notice that they are a bunch of all men that live in a reality detached from the rest of us. Despite what they allege, they live in a world of wealth and privilege, often in magnificent palaces, and above all, they live without ever having to attend to the everyday realities that are fundamental of the so called flock that they ought to administer spiritually.

So then how can these cardinals be effective overseers of the Christian message? Why does the Catholic Church have to be governed by octogenarians instead of men at the peak of their physical and spiritual strength? I believe because the Catholic Church is blinded by extreme conservatism. The affairs of the last ten years demonstrate that the Church is not really under attack by the secularism and materialism on which it is too easy to blame every sin as if it were Linus’ blanket. Instead, I hold that one of principal problems is the growing distance between the head of the Church (pope, cardinals, bishops) and its base: the faithful.

If Christ really did tell Peter to go to Rome to build His church, I hope that He did it for everyone, even for the poor, gays, divorcees, women and molested children. For those that want to be accepted by the Church instead of driven from it. I don’t want to speak for Christ (even I cannot do that!) but I am convinced that He did not intend His church to be an exclusive club where only old men and hypocrites (I believe call them Pharisees) have access and the right to be accepted.

To me John Paul II was a pope that did more harm than good to the Church. He took it back in time, negating the work of John XXIII and Paul VI (who ought to be given more credit). He created bishops, men most often silent and subservient and therefore rewarded, as long as they sympathized with his reactionary fury. He opened doors to ultraconservative religious orders, like Opus Dei, whose powerful funds may have financed Solidarnosc when John Paul II was the primate of Poland, guaranteeing his eternal gratitude in return. And he opened doors for the Legion of Christ, whose founder Maciel as it turns out was a criminal and a proven sexual deviant. He protected Cardinal Marcinkus the former President of the Vatican Bank, whose murky and mysterious affairs have been a consistent source of nothing short of profound doubt in Italian courts. He refused every opening to the modern world, an obstinate and stubborn defender of a Church that kept its distance from the people. The sex abuse were not new under his pontificate. His grand public relations gestures, like the visit to the Synagogue of Rome and his trip to Cuba, created, in our collective imagination, a distorted sense of what the church really was.

The future is already before us.

I hope that the Catholic Church finally finds the courage and the strength to reinvent itself to better serve the world. I hope that it is truly the Holy Spirit who will elect a pope in the Sistine Chapel, and not some old men with slow reflexes or reactionaries locked in an inexplicable conservatism.

I hope so, not because I am a Bolshevik antichrist that eats priests for breakfast.

I do it as a Catholic, because the Church of Rome is my church too.