New pope’s economic stance

Dr. Webster G. Tarpley
Tue Mar 19, 2013
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/03/19/294355/new-popes-economic-stance/

The election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as head of the Roman Catholic Church marks a watershed, since this is the first time that a prelate from a third world or developing country has become Pope.

Bergoglio is also strongly identified with Catholic social doctrine, which has traditionally stressed a preferential option in favor of the needs of the poor, rather than a concern with the privileges of the rich, combined with a rejection of laissez-faire, neoliberal, or monetarist economics in favor of social solidarity. Francis has set his first official day in office on the March 19 festival of St. Joseph the carpenter, the patron saint of workers.

This papal election was also remarkable for what did not occur. Elements of the US Catholic hierarchy, evidently backed by forces within the State Department and the Obama White House, had made no secret of their desire to take control of the Vatican and employ it henceforth as an abject tool of US imperial policy. The New York Times and Washington Post contributed articles seeking to highlight the many advantages which they claimed would derive from electing the first American pope. The delegation of US cardinals, second in numbers only to the Italians, attempted to act as a political machine in Rome on the eve of the conclave, giving daily press conferences in an attempt to stampede the 115 members of the College of Cardinals into electing an American.

According to insider reports, the manager of this effort to elect an American pope was New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who focused on the effort to install Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley as the new pontiff. Italian newspaper accounts revealed that O’Malley’s main advisor was the clergyman Terrence Donilon, the brother of Tom Donilon, the political operative who currently serves as the director of the National Security Council in the Obama White House. The danger was thus clear enough that, if O’Malley had prevailed, the next pope would get his inspiration from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

To pose this danger in slightly different terms: Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland is currently a quite serious candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. If Sean O’Malley were to become pope, the potential might then exist to have within a few years President O’Malley in Washington and Pope O’Malley in Rome. As the great Italian poet Dante argued 700 years ago in his Divine Comedy, it is essential for the spiritual and religious power of the papacy to be kept separate from the political and military power of the empire. The virtual absorption of the Vatican by Washington could well have spelled the final collapse of the Catholic Church.

Since the 1943 Anglo-American invasion of Italy during the time of Pius XII, the Vatican has continuously found itself under pressure to toe the London-Washington imperial line. Some popes were able to assert a significant degree of independence, notably Paul VI Montini, whose reign marked the high point of influence within the church by veterans of the wartime European resistance against fascism. More recently, the Polish Pope John Paul II sought to condemn the aggression committed by the Bush administration, but was always pulled in the other direction by the Polish tendency to look to Washington as a counterweight against Russia. Benedict XVI turned out to be far weaker, reflecting the postwar subordination of Germany to the United States. He was always on the defensive because he had taken part in German air defense during World War II.

The anti-imperialist tradition is strong in Argentina

But now we have a pope whose national origin will tend to impel him towards independence from Washington. Among all the nations in Latin America, Argentina is surely second to none in its tradition of national sovereignty and resistance to imperialism, a tradition which has persisted through many changes of political regime. According to some reports, 10 Downing Street in London has already witnessed apoplectic scenes by Prime Minister David Cameron due to the fact that Pope Francis I Bergoglio, as the Argentinean that he is, regards the Malvinas (or Falkland) Islands as an integral part of Argentina, regardless of any referendum staged there by the British among their colonizers.

On the day after his election, Francis went personally to the guesthouse where he had been staying in Via della Scrofa in downtown Rome to pay his bill and pick up his baggage. As part of this gesture of humility, he had no elaborate security and no disruptive motorcade, but rode in a single automobile of the papal gendarmes. Under Benedict XVI, the Vatican had appeared under siege, doubtless as a result of the pope’s gullible acceptance of the Anglo-American phantom of a global war on terror. The Vatican remains haunted by the mysterious death of John Paul I in 1978, and by the 1981 attack carried out by Ali Agca, a co-worker of Frank Terpil of the CIA. But Francis is signaling that he is not afraid, and is not willing to hunker down behind the Vatican walls.

Another danger which has been avoided is the election of an oligarch camouflaged as a modernizer or reformer. This was the role sought by the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan, who did not live to see this year’s conclave. This year’s plausible oligarch-reformer might have been Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, a representative of the feudal aristocracy of the Holy Roman Empire. And there were others seeking to play this role. Instead, Bergoglio brings with him the concerns of the global South, starting with the imperative of economic development and the eradication of poverty.

Bergoglio’s track record in this regard is instructive. The Argentine military junta of 1976-1983 and the neoliberal economic policies it started wrecked the nation’s economy during the 1990s. By the end of the military government, unemployment was at 18% officially, and there were bouts of hyperinflation at the end of the 1980s. Under the pro-IMF economics Minister Domingo Cavallo, Argentina established a fixed rate of exchange to the US dollar. The propertied classes indulged in massive tax evasion and sent flight capital to foreign banks. Taking power in the midst of this crisis, President de la Rua imposed seven rounds of brutal austerity, driving unemployment up to 20% in December 2001. When the IMF cut off further loans to Argentina, there was a panic run on the banks. Strikes and riots forced de la Rua to resign and flee on December 21, 2001.

During the latter months of 2001, Bergoglio did not hesitate to lecture President de la Rua to his face Sunday after Sunday about the bankruptcy of neoliberal economics and the terrible social consequences, as Rua sat in his pew of the cathedral in Buenos Aires. During this time, Bergoglio commented that extreme poverty and the “unjust economic structures that give rise to great inequalities” constituted violations of human rights and that social debt was “immoral, unjust and illegitimate.” During a strike by public employees in Buenos Aires, Bergoglio noted the differences between, “poor people who are persecuted for demanding work, and rich people who are applauded for fleeing from justice.” (“Argentines protest against pay cuts,” BBC, August 8, 2001)

A subsequent president, the Peronist Adolfo Rodriguez Saà, declared a debt moratorium, causing Argentina to default on $132 billion in foreign debt, one of the biggest burdens of any developing country in the world. The link between the peso and the dollar was severed, and the resulting devaluation lowered the standard of living - just as in Iceland over the last few years. After an 11% fall in GDP during 2002, Argentina stabilized and recovered under Presidents Duhalde and Kirchner. Although the debt moratorium policy substantially reduced foreign debt, the International Monetary Fund demanded full payment of every penny, with no discounts and no haircuts.

Bergoglio opposed “anonymous and perverse mechanisms of speculative economy”

These were the conditions in which Bergoglio operated around the time that he was named Cardinal in February 2001. Bergoglio organized soup kitchens and food banks in the favelas (slums) of Buenos Aires and other cities for the relief of the poor. He condemned the policies that were leaving the Argentine people “strangled by the anonymous and perverse mechanisms of a speculative economy.”

In an interview with the magazine Trenta Dias of the Communion and Liberation movement, Bergoglio declared: “the current imperialism of money also shows an idolatrous face. Where there is idolatry, God is canceled, and human dignity is canceled.” For this he blamed “left-wing ideologies just as much as the imperialism of money.” Bergoglio can thus be considered a principled opponent of both neoliberal economic doctrine, and of the ultra-left liberation theology. (Geninazzi and Rizzi, Avvenire, March 13, 2013)

An article by Dylan Matthews posted on March 13 on the Washington Post blog points out that the Argentine bishops, with Bergoglio chief among them, were sharp critics of the laissez-faire or neoliberal economic policies of Argentine President Carlos Menem, who was in office from 1989 to 1999. Citing the essay “Argentina, the Church, and Debt” by Thomas Trebat, Mathews argues that, at the height of the debt crisis in 2002, Bergoglio was a leading voice in calling for a debt restructuring in which social programs would be considered more important than repaying and servicing existing financial debt. Statements by the Argentine bishops at that time diagnosed the main problems of the Argentine economy as “social exclusion, a growing gap between rich and poor, insecurity, corruption, social and family violence, serious deficiencies in the educational system and in public health, the negative consequences of globalization, and the tyranny of markets.” These were technically joint statements of all the Argentine bishops, but there is every reason to believe that these were above all Bergoglio’s own views.

In 2001-2004 Argentine crisis, Bergoglio supported debt reduction, rejected austerity

In one of his own later speeches, Cardinal Bergoglio commented: “We live, apparently, in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least,” where “the unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.” (National Catholic Reporter, March 3, 2013) Plutocratic ideologues intent on shredding the social safety net will get no comfort from Francis.

According to Carlos Burgueno of the Argentine business newspaper Ambito Financiero, Bergoglio is “Anti-liberal. A tough critic of the IMF and the policies of adjustment. A defender of the process of debt restructuring.” “Anti-liberal” can be understood as a rejection of economic policies designed to benefit a narrow financier oligarchy. In IMF jargon, “adjustment” and “structural adjustment” are euphemisms for genocidal austerity and killer cuts targeting the poor, the sick, the old, the very young, and the underprivileged. “Debt restructuring” means debt moratoriums, debt freezes, defaults, haircuts, write-downs and other means of reducing the illegitimate debt burden which is now crushing so many of the world’s people.

A major statement on the economic crisis was issued by the conference of Argentine bishops under Bergoglio’s leadership in August 2001. This landmark statement pointed out that “some of the most serious social ills we suffer in economic and political affairs are a direct reflection of the crudest liberalism.” The state was defined as “an instrument created to serve the common good, and to be the guarantor of equity and solidarity of the social fabric." The Argentine bishops with Bergoglio at their head condemned the lack of a “social safety net” to care for those cast out by the existing economic model. They targeted in particular “two diseases, tax evasion and squandering of state funds, which are funds sweated by the people.” Organized labor was advised to exercise moderation in using the right to strike.

But the bishops saw the foreign financial debt of Argentina as the biggest negative factor, taking care to condemn the “external debt that increases every day and makes it difficult for us to grow.” (Ambito Financiero, March 14, 2013; Buenos Aires Herald, March 14, 2013)

In 2005, the Argentine government offered foreign creditors a reimbursement of thirty cents on the dollar. Many of the most rapacious hedge fund hyenas rejected this offer, instead launching lawsuits and unsuccessful attempts to seize Argentine assets held abroad, including Argentine airliners, ships, and the Argentine central bank deposits at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Bergoglio intervened in these conflicts several times, supporting the ability of the Argentine government to reduce and restructure the foreign debt. (Ambito Financiero, March 14, 2013; Buenos Aires Herald, March 14, 2013)

In October 2009, Cardinal Bergoglio again sought to call attention to the unsolved problems of poverty in Argentina under the presidency of Nestor Kirchner. According to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, “Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio harshly criticized the government and society for failing to prevent the rise of poverty in the country, a situation he called ‘immoral, unjust and illegitimate’ because it occurs in a nation that has the capacity to avoid or correct the damage. ‘Instead, it seems that it has chosen to exacerbate the inequalities,’ said the head of the Catholic Church in Argentina, for whom ‘human rights are violated not only by terrorism, repression and murder, but also by unjust economic structures that cause great inequalities.’” He added that the position of the Catholic Church was “very clear” as it had “warned for some time about the social deficit of Argentines.”

Bergoglio supported justice and peace October 2011 call for Wall Street sales tax

As the world economic depression was felt more and more in Argentina, Bergoglio sharpened his confrontation the plutocrats, telling them in May 2010: “You avoid taking the poor into account.” In the following year, Bergoglio spoke out against the terrible wages and working conditions prevailing in the Argentine capital, which he compared to a form of modern slavery: “In this city, slavery is the order of the day in various forms. In this city, workers are exploited in sweatshops and, if they are immigrants, are deprived of the opportunity to get out. In this city, there are kids who have been on the streets for years. The city has failed and continues to fail in the attempt to free them from this structural slavery that is homelessness.” (La Nacion, September 24, 2011)

The main Vatican response to the European financial crisis which broke out in early 2010 was the document entitled Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority, issued by the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace in late October 2011. Although Bergoglio was apparently not formally a member of Justice and Peace, press accounts from Buenos Aires indicate that in the eyes of Argentine public opinion he was closely associated with this initiative and the reforms it recommended. The Argentine journalist Carlos Burgueo writes: “As worldwide recognized church representative and leader of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, [Bergoglio] signed along with his Ghanian fellow cardinal Peter Turkson in October 2011 the Vatican’s harsh document against adjustment policies that were beginning to be applied in the European countries in crisis.” (“Ya como referente mundial de la Iglesia y conductor, junto con el tamién papable ghanés Peter Turkson, del Pontificio Consejo para Justicia y Paz, firmo en octubre de 2011 una dura cr?tica del Vaticano contra las politicas de ajuste que se comenzaban a aplicar en los paises europeos en crisis.” Ambito Financiero, March 14, 2013; Buenos Aires Herald, March 14, 2013.)

The Council for Justice and Peace blamed the 2008 world panic triggered by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on “a liberalist approach, unsympathetic towards public intervention in the markets” which “chose to allow an important international financial institution to fall into bankruptcy, on the assumption that this would contain the crisis and its effects.” According to this document, a central threat to the world economy and to world peace comes from “an economic liberalism that spurns rules and controls.”

The Council for Justice and Peace criticized in particular the International Monetary Fund for being an institution now totally inadequate for the needs of world economic development, citing “…the gradual decline in efficacy of the Bretton Woods institutions beginning in the early 1970s. In particular, the International Monetary Fund has lost an essential element for stabilizing world finance, that of regulating the overall money supply and vigilance over the amount of credit risk taken on by the system. To sum it up, stabilizing the world monetary system is no longer a ‘universal public good’ within its reach.”

A key aspect of the Vatican’s October 2011 recommendation for dealing with the new world economic depression was the enactment of a financial transaction tax, also known as a Tobin tax, and in the United States increasingly referred to as a Wall Street Sales Tax. The document states: “… it seems advisable to reflect, for example, on taxation measures on financial transactions through fair but modulated rates with changes proportionate to the complexity of the operations, especially those made on the ‘secondary’ market. Such taxation would be very useful in promoting global development and sustainability according to the principles of social justice and solidarity.” Bergoglio has thus endorsed the approach of Pope Paul VI as seen in the famous encyclical letter Populorum Progressio of 1967, which “clearly and prophetically denounced the dangers of an economic development conceived in liberalist terms because of its harmful consequences for world equilibrium and peace.” (Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, October 24, 2011)

Were the new pope’s first words a veiled opening to China?

Another significant novelty is doubtless the fact that Bergoglio is the first member of the Jesuit order to become pope. The Jesuits have a well-earned reputation for using intrigue to seek political power. As some commentators have pointed out, Jesuits are traditionally associated with elite education, which grew out of their desire to serve as tutors of the children of kings and princes with a view to shaping the opinions of future rulers. Even today, the Jesuits are considered one of the most cohesive and powerful of the Catholic orders. Should this situation be seen in negative terms? Maybe not, as a glance at history might suggest.

The Jesuits were founded under Venetian auspices in 1534, but, gravitating towards a greater power, soon entered into a close alliance with the Spanish Empire. The Spanish-Jesuit alliance lasted until about 1767, the year when the Jesuit order was banned by the Portuguese Empire, France, the Spanish Empire, and some Italian states. This was followed by the suppression of the Jesuit order by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. The Jesuits survived only by fleeing to the non-Catholic states of Prussia and Russia.

The response of the Jesuits to their suppression took the form of a de facto alliance with the British Empire. This meant specifically that the Jesuits threw their considerable influence on the side of the movements for independence that arose during the Napoleonic wars throughout the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in Latin America. When Lisbon and Madrid lost most of their possessions in Latin America, the revenge of the Jesuits was complete, and many of these states passed under predominantly British influence. After the British had eliminated Napoleon as a competitor for world domination, the Jesuit order was restored in 1814 by Pope Pius VII.

We can thus say, simplifying somewhat, that the Jesuit order has been in uneasy alliance with the British and later Anglo-American world system since about 1770. The election of Pope Francis I may mark a real departure from this arrangement. And the reason for the change may well have to do with the Vatican’s policy towards China.

Francis I and a possible Vatican opening to China

At a time when church membership is declining in Europe, and when American Catholics are becoming increasingly secular, the Vatican is looking to Africa as any area of future growth. But China may offer even greater possibilities for expansion, and the Vatican may consider an opening to the Middle Kingdom as more valuable than an alliance with the declining US empire. There are today an estimated 12 million Roman Catholics in China, but the actual number may be far higher. The Chinese government sponsors a national Catholic Church, styled the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which does not recognize the Roman papacy and which claims some 5.3 million members. Rome claims the sole ability to appoint bishops, and this is rejected by the Beijing government. Because of this conflict, the Vatican has failed in its attempts to establish full diplomatic relations with Beijing. The Vatican very much wants a concordat or treaty which would resolve these outstanding issues.

One of the most sensational elements in the so-called Vatileaks document dump engineered by Anglo-American intelligence in 2012 was a report of a conversation allegedly held between Cardinal Paolo Romeo, a Jesuit-trained Vatican diplomat serving as the Archbishop of Palermo, Sicily and (apparently) Chinese officials in Beijing in the autumn of 2011. According to this account as reported in the pro-US Italian newspaper Il Fatto, Romeo told the Chinese that Benedict XVI Ratzinger would no longer be Pope a year later, or in other words by about November 2012. As it turned out, this prediction was off by just a few months. But, perhaps as part of the doctoring of Vatileaks documents by the CIA or by MI-6, this prediction morphed into the exposure of a supposed plot to assassinate Ratzinger. However, Romeo may have only intended to inform the Chinese government that the diplomatically inept Benedict XIV, considered incapable of defying Washington and London by re-orienting the Vatican towards China, was about to be eased out in favor of a new pope more open to an accommodation with Beijing. (Marco Lillo, “Complotto contro Benedetto XVI entro 12 mesi morirà,” Il Fatto Quotidiano, February 10, 2012) The first events of Francis’ papacy would seem to lend credence to this view.

When Bergoglio appeared for the first time as Pope on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, the second sentence of his speech noted that the conclave had chosen a new bishop of Rome “from almost the end of the world.” According to Professor Filippo Mignini, an expert in the history of philosophy from the University of Macerata quoted by Il Giornale of Milan, these words are a quotation from the Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci, a missionary sent to Imperial Chinese court of the Ming dynasty in 1601. Ricci and his fellow Jesuits were able to interest the Chinese emperor and many of the leading nobles in exhibits of European technology, including steam engines but also chronometers, telescopes, and other precision instruments. The successes of Ricci and other Jesuits were envied by the competing Dominicans and Franciscans, and this issue was still alive at the time the Jesuits were dissolved in 1773. But by 1958 the Vatican had endorsed Ricci. Does the Vatican now believe that the developing sector and China are more important for its future growth than Europe and America? The coming months will tell.

Anglo-American propaganda has already turned hostile against Pope Francis, attempting to dredge up discredited old charges that he was somehow in collusion with the 1976-1983 Argentine military junta. The murderous excesses of that regime were in fact encouraged by US Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as revealed by secret State Department documents released in September 2002. As for Bergoglio, one Jesuit he is accused of betraying has come forward to deny the charges. The Argentine human rights activist and leading opponent of the military junta, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, has formally stated that Bergoglio was not one of the churchmen who collaborated with the dictatorship.

Finally, there remains the question of where this project might go wrong. Bergoglio has taken the name of Francis, after a saint who is celebrated for his humility and simple lifestyle. But there is also the more recent attempt to recast St. Francis as the patron saint of environmental fanaticism, radical ecology, and even green fascism. The rich elitists who fund the main environmental groups will try to influence the new pope in the direction of Agenda 21 and its anti-human doctrines. One example is the Italian demagogue Beppe Grillo, who greeted the new pope with the claim that his Five Star Movement -- largely devoted to implementing Agenda 21 -- represents the true followers of St. Francis today. The new pope would do well to avoid such false friends.

Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1946. A philosopher of history, Tarpley seeks to provide the strategies needed to overcome the current world crisis. He first became widely known for his book George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (1992), a masterpiece of research which is still a must read. During 2008, he warned of the dangers of an Obama presidency controlled by Wall Street with Obama: The Postmodern Coup, The Making of a Manchurian Candidate and Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography. His interest in economics is reflected in Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide Through the Worst Financial Crisis in Human History Against Oligarchy. His books have appeared in Japanese, German, Italian, French, and Spanish. Tarpley holds a Ph.D. in early modern history from the Catholic University of America.

On Gay Unions, a Pragmatist Before He Was a Pope

Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/world/americas/pope-francis-old-colleagues-recall-pragmatic-streak.html

Robalini's Note: Despite the attempt by some to portray Pope Francis as a hard-right conservative, an actual inspection of his history may suggest otherwise.  His position on economics seems a rejection of neoliberalism, and this excerpt from a recent NYT piece indicates he is not so hard-lined on social issues as some have advertised...

The very idea was anathema to many of the bishops in the room.

Argentina was on the verge of approving gay marriage, and the Roman Catholic Church was desperate to stop that from happening. It would lead tens of thousands of its followers in protest on the streets of Buenos Aires and publicly condemn the proposed law, a direct threat to church teaching, as the work of the devil.

But behind the scenes, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who led the public charge against the measure, spoke out in a heated meeting of bishops in 2010 and advocated a highly unorthodox solution: that the church in Argentina support the idea of civil unions for gay couples.

The concession inflamed the gathering — and offers a telling insight into the leadership style he may now bring to the papacy.

Few would suggest that Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, is anything but a stalwart who fully embraces the church’s positions on core social issues. But as he faced one of the most acute tests of his tenure as head of Argentina’s church, he showed another side as well, supporters and critics say: that of a deal maker willing to compromise and court opposing sides in the debate, detractors included.

The approach stands in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who spent 25 years as the church’s chief doctrinal enforcer before becoming pope, known for an unbending adherence to doctrinal purity. Francis, by comparison, spent decades in the field, responsible for translating such ideals into practice in the real world, sometimes leading to a different approach.

“The melody may be the same, but the sound is completely different,” Alberto Melloni, the director of the liberal Catholic John XXIII Foundation for Religious Science in Bologna, Italy, said of the two.

Faced with the near certain passage of the gay marriage bill, Cardinal Bergoglio offered the civil union compromise as the “lesser of two evils,” said Sergio Rubin, his authorized biographer. “He wagered on a position of greater dialogue with society.”

In the end, though, a majority of the bishops voted to overrule him, his only such loss in his six-year tenure as head of Argentina’s bishops’ conference. But throughout the contentious political debate, he acted as both the public face of the opposition to the law and as a bridge-builder, sometimes reaching out to his critics.

“He listened to my views with a great deal of respect,” said Marcelo Márquez, a gay rights leader and theologian who wrote a tough letter to Cardinal Bergoglio and, to his surprise, received a call from him less than an hour after it was delivered. “He told me that homosexuals need to have recognized rights and that he supported civil unions, but not same-sex marriage.”

Mr. Márquez said he went on to meet twice with Cardinal Bergoglio, telling him of his plan to marry his partner and discussing theology. The man who would become pope gave him a copy of his biography, “The Jesuit.”

Cardinal Bergoglio’s readiness to reach out across the ideological spectrum and acknowledge civil unions for gay people could raise expectations that he would do the same as pope. But some of this strategic flexibility may have stemmed as much from Francis’ position at the time as from his personal ideology.

Though Benedict publicly condemned legal recognition of unmarried heterosexual couples, much less gay couples, there was often an expectation of some discretion in putting his positions into practice.

While the pope in Rome issued the doctrine, bishops like Cardinal Bergoglio were “on the frontier, in the field,” and had to contend with the complexities of local politics, said Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert for the newspaper L’Espresso in Italy.

Mr. Magister noted, for instance, that Benedict made it clear in 2005 that divorced Catholics who had remarried without an annulment should not receive communion. But Benedict did not instruct bishops how to enforce that, he said.

There was little ambiguity in Cardinal Bergoglio’s vehement opposition to the gay marriage law, which was approved by the Senate in July 2010. In the months between the bishops’ meeting and the Senate vote, the cardinal, in a letter, called the bill a “destructive pretension against the plan of God.”

Clashing with Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who supported the law, he endorsed protests involving tens of thousands of people against the bill, incurring the ire of some gay rights leaders here.

“The reality, beyond what he may have said in private meetings, was that he said some terrible things in public,” said Esteban Paulón, president of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals. “He took a role, in public, that was determinedly combative.”

But others who observed the bishops’ private annual assembly in 2010 said that the cardinal was earnestly hoping for compromise on the issue.

“Bergoglio’s thinking was very clearly demonstrated both with what he said and in the message of his pastoral work,” said Roxana Alfieri, a social worker in the communications department of the bishops’ central office here.

“He didn’t want the church to take a position of condemning people but rather of respect for their rights like any vulnerable person,” said Ms. Alfieri, who sat in on the bishops’ 2010 meeting...

New Pope 2013

Now That There’s A New Pope, How Many Days Till Doomsday?
The 1.2 billion-strong Roman Catholic church now has a new spiritual leader, Pope Francis. His election proved to have many firsts for the secular faith. But along with the many firsts, could he also be the last pope highly associated with the doomsday prophecy by St Malachy?
Esther Tanquintic-Misa | March 14, 2013
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/445870/20130314/roman-catholic-church-new-pope-2013-jorge.htm

The 2013 papal conclave may have escaped the precise election of a black-skinned pope, but conspiracy theorists among netizens remain adamant the selection of Pope Francis has indeed heralded the end of days for the people on planet Earth.

Forum members at godlikeproductions.com sorted and debated the affiliations of Pope Francis.

"We all mistook first black pope to mean skin color. Not true. In the Jesuit order, there is a Black Pope," member Sak posted.

The former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio is the leader of the Jesuits, who traditionally wear black cassocks. When he got elected to become spiritual leader of the Catholic church, he became the first Jesuit Pope.

"Therefore, the head of the Catholic church Pope Francis, who is now 'Peter,' is also the head of the Jesuit Order," the member said.

Simply put, Pope Francis is, at least according to conspiracy theorists at that forum, the black pope.

Some also picked on the new pope's chosen papal name, Francis, to represent St Francis of Assisi.

Francis of Assisi was one of 7 kids born to a man named Peter, whose real name is Pietro Di Bernardone.

"What more evidence do we need? This new pope is Italian which is part of Rome, he lives and works in the Vatican City of Rome, he is the first Jesuit Black pope, and he wears a Black Cross, and is now Peter of Rome."

But while doomsday pugs now bombard the world wide web with their deductions, there are others, as expected, who fight inference with an all-together different interpretation.

Over at gotquestions.org, "biblically speaking, there is absolutely no connection between a black Pope and the end times. The Bible does not even mention the papacy."

While there may be an end of times phophecy, everything has been wrongly interpreted.

"The Bible, particularly Revelation 17:9, does not say anything about Popes in general or an end-times Pope in particular."

But with all the hullaballoo over St Malachy's predictions and the apocalyptic list of prophecy of the 112 Popes, one question remains - just how many days are now left before doomsday?

Will Next Pope Be Last?

Loren Coleman
Monday, February 11, 2013

Robalini's Note: Written before the election of Pope Francis, this is a still interesting article...

Full Article:
http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2013/02/LastPope.html

Pope Benedict XVI has announced, in a surprising and shocking resignation, that he will step down on February 28, 2013, at 8:00 p.m. Has the next Pope already been predestined and foreordained?

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a Hitler Youth as a boy, who later deserted the Nazis, was one of the oldest Roman Catholic Popes. He was 78 when first picked; Benedict XVI will be 85 when he ends his term. Ratzinger assumed the Papacy following John Paul II's death in 2005.

Part of Benedict XVI's statement reads:

After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry...In today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognise my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry entrusted to me.

Past: Reason?

Some have noted that the conservative Pope Benedict XVI has not handled the priest sex abuse crisis extremely well.

For those who are unaware of the significant political role of Pope Benedict XVI in this scandal, you may wish to view Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, a powerful 2012 documentary film, directed by Alex Gibney. It is airing on HBO in 2013, including, by "coincidence," on February 11, 2013, the day Benedict XVI's resignation was announced. As the documentary notes, on November 25, 1981, Pope John Paul II named Ratzinger as the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the "Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office," the historical Roman Inquisition. As the Holy Inquistor, the future Benedict XVI had all priest sexual abuse cases come through his office. As the Pope, he backed away from making fundamental changes to the structure of how the Papacy handled the scandal. As the Gibney documents, Benedict XVI may have been stopped for doing more for the victims, instead of protecting the establishment, by those surrounding him.

Next: Petrus Romanus

So what now? Did St. Malachy indicate the future of the Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church?

Now the speculation will be on who shall be chosen as the next Pope. But do the prophecies of Saint Malachy give us an insight? Saint Malachy was a 12th century visionary Irish monk, who during a trek to Rome, foresaw all the popes who would reign into the future, to the final one.

When they were published, 500 years after allegedly being found in the Vatican archives, they were debunked as being false. But intriguingly, the prophecies published in Benedictine historian Arnold Wion's book Lignum Vitae in 1559, has been demonstrated to be very accurate. Indeed, Malachy's list, today, from 1139, has been found to be remarkably correct.

Malachy, in verse, wrote down the future names of the Popes in epigrammatic code, which have been clearly linked to the names of the Popes chosen. Malachy's series of visions are about 112 Popes from Celestine III, who was elected Pontiff in 1130, until the last Pope who is described in his list as Peter Romanus.

The last Pope? Yes, Malachy is said to have seen the end of the Papacy with the election of what would be the next Pope after his predicted Benedict XVI (The Glory of the Olive).

According to the Malachy prophecies, the next Pope could be seen as being named Petrus Romanus, Peter Romanus, Peter the Roman, or Peter of Roman. "Peter" or a variation on that name is derived from the meaning, "the Rock of the Church," linking the last Pope to the first (non-Jesus Christ) leader of the Church. (Padre, of course, is another name for "father," and is related to the name Peter.)

Peter Romanus, in the prophecies, is viewed as the last Pope. Pope Peter (II?) of Rome? Or a Cardinal named Peter?

The Future: The Church Shall Change

The Saint Malachy verses end thusly:
In the persecution of the Holy Roman Church,
There will reign Peter the Roman,
Who will feed his flock among many tribulations
After which the seven hilled city will be destroyed
And the dreadful Judge will judge the people.

The phrase "the seven hilled city" is a direct reference to Rome. "The Seven Hills of Rome (Italian: Sette colli di Roma) east of the river Tiber form the geographical heart of Rome, within the walls of the ancient city. The original city was held by tradition to have been founded by Romulus on the Palatine Hill." Source.

The verse is seen as predicting everything from the end of the Papal structure to the end of the world. Will the celibacy of priests end under the next Pope?

A Faded Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife

LAURIE GOODSTEIN
September 18, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/historian-says-piece-of-papyrus-refers-to-jesus-wife.html

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife ...’ ”

The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”

The finding was made public in Rome on Tuesday at the International Congress of Coptic Studies by Karen L. King, a historian who has published several books about new Gospel discoveries and is the first woman to hold the nation’s oldest endowed chair, the Hollis professor of divinity.

The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous. Until Tuesday, Dr. King had shown the fragment to only a small circle of experts in papyrology and Coptic linguistics, who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery. But she and her collaborators say they are eager for more scholars to weigh in and perhaps upend their conclusions.

Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage.

The discussion is particularly animated in the Roman Catholic Church, where despite calls for change, the Vatican has reiterated the teaching that the priesthood cannot be opened to women and married men because of the model set by Jesus.

Dr. King gave an interview and showed the papyrus fragment, encased in glass, to reporters from The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Harvard Magazine in her garret office in the tower at Harvard Divinity School last Thursday.

She repeatedly cautioned that this fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married. The text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived, and all other early, historically reliable Christian literature is silent on the question, she said.

But the discovery is exciting, Dr. King said, because it is the first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of a wife. It provides further evidence that there was an active discussion among early Christians about whether Jesus was celibate or married, and which path his followers should choose.

“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,” she said. “There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.”

Dr. King first learned about what she calls “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” when she received an e-mail in 2010 from a private collector who asked her to translate it. Dr. King, 58, specializes in Coptic literature, and has written books on the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Gnosticism and women in antiquity.

The owner, who has a collection of Greek, Coptic and Arabic papyri, is not willing to be identified by name, nationality or location, because, Dr. King said, “He doesn’t want to be hounded by people who want to buy this.”

When, where or how the fragment was discovered is unknown. The collector acquired it in a batch of papyri in 1997 from the previous owner, a German. It came with a handwritten note in German that names a professor of Egyptology in Berlin, now deceased, and cited him calling the fragment “the sole example” of a text in which Jesus claims a wife.

The owner took the fragment to the Divinity School in December 2011 and left it with Dr. King. In March, she carried the fragment in her red handbag to New York to show it to two papyrologists: Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, at New York University, and AnneMarie Luijendijk, an associate professor of religion at Princeton University.

They examined the scrap under sharp magnification. It was very small — only 4 by 8 centimeters. The lettering was splotchy and uneven, the hand of an amateur, but not unusual for the time period, when many Christians were poor and persecuted.

It was written in Coptic, an Egyptian language that uses Greek characters — and more precisely, in Sahidic Coptic, a dialect from southern Egypt, Dr. Luijendijk said in an interview.

What convinced them it was probably genuine was the fading of the ink on the papyrus fibers, and traces of ink adhered to the bent fibers at the torn edges. The back side is so faint that only five words are visible, one only partly: “my moth[er],” “three,” “forth which.”

“It would be impossible to forge,” said Dr. Luijendijk, who contributed to Dr. King’s paper.

Dr. Bagnall reasoned that a forger would have had to be expert in Coptic grammar, handwriting and ideas. Most forgeries he has seen were nothing more than gibberish. And if it were a forgery intended to cause a sensation or make someone rich, why would it have lain in obscurity for so many years?

“It’s hard to construct a scenario that is at all plausible in which somebody fakes something like this. The world is not really crawling with crooked papyrologists,” Dr. Bagnall said.

The piece is torn into a rough rectangle, so that the document is missing its adjoining text on the left, right, top and bottom — most likely the work of a dealer who divided up a larger piece to maximize his profit, Dr. Bagnall said.

Much of the context, therefore, is missing. But Dr. King was struck by phrases in the fragment like “My mother gave to me life,” and “Mary is worthy of it,” which resemble snippets from the Gospels of Thomas and Mary. Experts believe those were written in the late second century and translated into Coptic. She surmises that this fragment is also copied from a second-century Greek text.

The meaning of the words, “my wife,” is beyond question, Dr. King said. “These words can mean nothing else.” The text beyond “my wife” is cut off.

Dr. King did not have the ink dated using carbon testing. She said it would require scraping off too much, destroying the relic. She still plans to have the ink tested by spectroscopy, which could roughly determine its age by its chemical composition.

Dr. King submitted her paper to The Harvard Theological Review, which asked three scholars to review it. Two questioned its authenticity, but they had seen only low-resolution photographs of the fragment and were unaware that expert papyrologists had seen the actual item and judged it to be genuine, Dr. King said. One of the two questioned the grammar, translation and interpretation.

Ariel Shisha-Halevy, an eminent Coptic linguist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was consulted, and said in an e-mail in September, “I believe — on the basis of language and grammar — the text is authentic.”

Major doubts allayed, The Review plans to publish Dr. King’s article in its January issue.

Dr. King said she would push the owner to come forward, in part to avoid stoking conspiracy theories.

The notion that Jesus had a wife was the central conceit of the best seller and movie “The Da Vinci Code.” But Dr. King said she wants nothing to do with the code or its author: “At least, don’t say this proves Dan Brown was right.”

Pedophiles and Popes: Doing the Vatican Shuffle

Michael Parenti
When Pope John Paul II was still living in Poland as Cardinal Karol Wojty³a, he claimed that the security police would accuse priests of sexual abuse just to hassle and discredit them. (New York Times, 3/28/10). For Wojty³a, the Polish pedophilia problem was nothing more than a Communist plot to smear the church.

By the early 1980s, Wojty³a, now ensconced in Rome as Pope John Paul II, treated all stories about pedophile clergy with dismissive aplomb, as little more than slander directed against the church. That remained his stance for the next twenty years.

Today in post-communist Poland, clerical abuse cases have been slowly surfacing, very slowly. Writing in the leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza, a middle-aged man reported having been sexually abused as a child by a priest. He acknowledged however that Poland was not prepared to deal with such transgressions. “It’s still too early. . . . Can you imagine what life would look like if an inhabitant of a small town or village decided to talk? I can already see the committees of defense for the accused priests.”

While church pedophiles may still enjoy a safe haven in Poland and other countries where the clergy are above challenge, things are breaking wide open elsewhere. Today we are awash in a sludge of revelations spanning whole countries and continents, going back decades---or as some historians say---going back centuries. Only in the last few weeks has the church shown signs of cooperating with civil authorities. Here is the story.

Protecting the Perpetrators.

As everyone now knows, for decades church superiors repeatedly chose to ignore complaints about pedophile priests. In many instances, accused clerics were quietly bundled off to distant congregations where they could prey anew upon the children of unsuspecting parishioners. This practice of denial and concealment has been so consistently pursued in diocese after diocese, nation after nation, as to leave the impression of being a deliberate policy set by church authorities.

And indeed it has been. Instructions coming directly from Rome have required every bishop and cardinal to keep matters secret. These instructions were themselves kept secret; the cover-up was itself covered up. Then in 2002, John Paul put it in writing, specifically mandating that all charges against priests were to be reported secretly to the Vatican and hearings were to be held in camera, a procedure that directly defies state criminal codes.

Rather than being defrocked, many outed pedophile priests have been allowed to advance into well-positioned posts as administrators, vicars, and parochial school officials---repeatedly accused by their victims while repeatedly promoted by their superiors.

Church spokesmen employ a vocabulary of compassion and healing---not for the victims but for the victimizers. They treat the child rapist as a sinner who confesses his transgression and vows to mend his ways. Instead of incarceration, there is repentance and absolution.

While this forgiving approach might bring comfort to some malefactors, it proves to be of little therapeutic efficacy when dealing with the darker appetites of pedophiles. A far more effective deterrent is the danger of getting caught and sent to prison. Absent any threat of punishment, the perpetrator is restrained only by the limits of his own appetite and the availability of opportunities.

Forgiving No One Else

The tender tolerance displayed by the church hierarchy toward child rapists does not extend to other controversial clergy. Think of those radical priests who have challenged the hierarchy in the politico-economic struggle for liberation theology, or who advocate lifting the prohibitions against birth control and abortion, or who propose that clergy be allowed to marry, or who preside over same-sex weddings, or who themselves are openly gay, or who believe women should be ordained, or who bravely call for investigations of the pedophilia problem itself.

Such clergy often have their careers shut down. Some are subjected to hostile investigations by church superiors.

A Law Unto Itself

Church leaders seem to forget that pedophilia is a felony crime and that, as citizens of a secular state, priests are subject to its laws just like the rest of us. Clerical authorities repeatedly have made themselves accessories to the crime, playing an active role in obstructing justice, arguing in court that criminal investigations of “church affairs” violated the free practice of religion guaranteed by the US Constitution—-as if raping little children were a holy sacrament.

Church officials tell parishioners not to talk to state authorities. They offer no pastoral assistance to young victims and their shaken families. They do not investigate to see if other children have been victimized by the same priests. Some young plaintiffs have been threatened with excommunication or suspension from Catholic school. Church leaders impugn their credibility, even going after them with countersuits.

Responding to charges that one of his priests sexually assaulted a six-year-old boy, Cardinal Bernard Law asserted that “the boy and his parents contributed to the abuse by being negligent.” Law himself never went to prison for the hundreds of cover-ups he conducted. In 2004, with things getting too hot for him in his Boston archdiocese, Law was rescued by Pope John Paul II to head one of Rome’s major basilicas, where he now lives with diplomatic immunity in palatial luxury on a generous stipend, supervised by no one but a permissive pontiff.

A judge of the Holy Roman Rota, the church’s highest court, wrote in a Vatican-approved article that bishops should not report sexual violations to civil authorities. And sure enough, for years bishops and cardinals have refrained from cooperating with law enforcement authorities, refusing to release abusers’ records, claiming that the confidentiality of their files came under the same legal protection as privileged communications in the confessional---a notion that has no basis in canon or secular law.

Bishop James Quinn of Cleveland even urged church officials to send incriminating files to the Vatican Embassy in Washington, DC, where diplomatic immunity would prevent the documents from being subpoenaed.

Just a Few Bad Apples

Years ago the Catholic hierarchy would insist that clerical pedophilia involved only a few bad apples and was being blown completely out of proportion. For the longest time John Paul scornfully denounced the media for “sensationalizing” the issue. He and his cardinals (Ratzinger included) directed more fire at news outlets for publicizing the crimes than at their own clergy for committing them.

Reports released by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (one of the more honest organizations in the Catholic Church) documented the abuse committed in the United States by 4,392 priests against thousands of children between 1950 and 2002. One of every ten priests ordained in 1970 was charged as a pedophile by 2002. Another survey commissioned by the US bishops found that among 5,450 complaints of sexual abuse there were charges against at least sixteen bishops. So much for a few bad apples.

Still, even as reports were flooding in from Ireland and other countries, John Paul dismissed the pedophilic epidemic as “an American problem,” as if American priests were not members of his clergy, or as if this made it a matter of no great moment. John Paul went to his grave in 2005 still refusing to meet with victims and never voicing any apologies or regrets regarding sex crimes and cover-ups.

With Ratzinger’s accession to the papal throne as Benedict XVI, the cover-ups continued. As recently as April 2010, at Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square, dean of the college of cardinals Angelo Sodano, assured Benedict that the faithful were unimpressed “by the gossip of the moment.” One would not know that “the gossip of the moment” included thousands of investigations, prosecutions, and accumulated charges extending back over decades.

During that same Easter weekend, Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, archbishop of Mexico City, declared that the public uproar was an “overreaction” incited by the doings of “a few dishonest and criminal priests.” A few? An overreaction? Of course, the picture now becomes clear: a few bad apples were inciting overreaction by engaging in the gossip of the moment.

The church seems determined to learn nothing from its transgressions, preoccupied as it is with avoiding lawsuits and bad publicity.

Really Not All that Serious

There are two ways we can think of child rape as being not a serious problem, and the Catholic hierarchy seems to have embraced both these positions. First, pedophilia is not that serious if it involves only a few isolated and passing incidents. Second, an even more creepy way of downplaying the problem: child molestation is not all that damaging or that important. At worst, it is regrettable and unfortunate; it might greatly upset the child, but it certainly is not significant enough to cause unnecessary scandal and ruin the career of an otherwise splendid padre.

It is remarkable how thoroughly indifferent the church bigwigs have been toward the abused children. When one of the most persistent perpetrators, Rev. John Geoghan, was forced into retirement (not jail) after seventeen years and nearly 200 victims, Cardinal Law could still write him, “On behalf of those you have served well, in my own name, I would like to thank you. I understand yours is a painful situation.” It is evident that Law was more concerned about the “pain” endured by Geoghan than the misery he had inflicted upon minors.

In 2001, a French bishop was convicted in France for refusing to hand over to the police a priest who had raped children. It recently came to light that a former top Vatican cardinal, Dario Castrillón, had written to the bishop, “I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil authorities. You have acted well, and I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all the bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his ‘son’ and priest.” (The bishop actually got off with a suspended sentence.) Castrillón claimed that Pope John Paul II had authorized the letter years ago and had told him to send it to bishops around the world. (New York Times, 4/22/2010.)

There are many more like Cardinal Law and Cardinal Castrillón in the hierarchy, aging men who have no life experience with children and show not the slightest regard or empathy for them. They claim it their duty to protect the “unborn child” but offer no protection to the children in their schools and parishes.

They themselves are called “Father” but they father no one. They do not reside in households or families. They live in an old-boys network, jockeying for power and position, dedicated to the Holy Mother Church that feeds, houses, and adorns them throughout their lives.

From their heady heights, popes and bishops cannot hear the cries of children. In any case, the church belongs not to little children but to the bedecked oligarchs.

The damage done to sexual victims continues to go unnoticed: the ensuing years of depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, panic attacks, sexual dysfunction, and even mental breakdown and suicide—all these terrible aftereffects of child rape seem to leave popes and bishops more or less unruffled.

Circling the Wagons

The Catholic hierarchy managed to convince itself that the prime victim in this dismal saga is the church itself. In 2010 it came to light that, while operating as John Paul’s über-hit man, Pope Benedict (then Cardinal Ratzinger) had provided cover and protection to several of the worst predator priests. The scandal was now at the pope’s door---exactly where it should have been many years earlier during John Paul’s reign.

The Vatican’s response was predictable. The hierarchy circled the wagons to defend pope and church from outside “enemies.” The cardinals and bishops railed furiously at critics who “assault” the church and, in the words of the archbishop of Paris, subject it to “a smear campaign.” Benedict himself blamed secularism and misguided applications of Vatican 2’s aggiornamento as contributing to the “context” of sexual abuse. Reform-minded liberalism made us do it, he seemed to be saying.

But this bristling Easter counterattack by the hierarchy did not play well. Church authorities came off looking like insular, arrogant elites who were unwilling to own up to a horrid situation largely of their own making.

Meanwhile the revelations continued. A bishop in Ireland resigned admitting he had covered up child abuse cases. Bishops in Germany and Belgium stepped down after confessing to charges that they themselves had abused minors. And new allegations were arising in Chile, Norway, Brazil, Italy, France, and Mexico.

Then, a fortnight after Easter, the Vatican appeared to change course and for the first time issued a directive urging bishops to report abuse cases to civil authorities “if required by local law.” At the same time, Pope Benedict held brief meetings with survivor groups and issued sympathetic statements about their plight.

For many of the victims, the pontiff’s overtures and apologies were too little, too late. Their feeling was that if the Vatican really wanted to make amends, it should cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities and stop obstructing justice; it should ferret out abusive clergy and not wait until cases are publicized by others; and it should make public the church’s many thousands of still secret reports on priests and bishops.

In the midst of all this, some courageous clergy do speak out. At a Sunday mass in a Catholic church outside Springfield, Massachusetts, the Rev. James Scahill delivered a telling sermon to his congregation (New York Times, 4/12/10): “We must personally and collectively declare that we very much doubt the veracity of the pope and those of church authority who are defending him. It is beginning to become evident that for decades, if not centuries, church leadership covered up the abuse of children and minors to protect its institutional image and the image of priesthood”

The abusive priests, Scahill went on, were “felons.” He had “severe doubt” about the Vatican’s claims of innocent ignorance. “If by any slimmest of chance the pope and all his bishops didn’t know-–they all should resign on the basis of sheer and complete ignorance, incompetence, and irresponsibility.”

How did Father Scahill’s suburban Catholic parishioners receive his scorching remarks? One or two walked out. The rest gave him a standing ovation.

Michael Parenti’s latest book is God and His Demons (2010) which deals with all sorts of theocratic misconduct and misbelief. For further information about his work, see:

http://www.michaelparenti.org/

Pope Vows To Get Church Pedophilia Down To Acceptable Levels

http://www.theonion.com/articles/pope-vows-to-get-church-pedophilia-down-to-accepta,17201/

Pope Vows To Get Church Pedophilia Down To Acceptable Levels
April 5, 2010 | ISSUE 46•14

VATICAN CITY — Calling the behavior shameful, sinful, and much more frequent than the Vatican was comfortable with, Pope Benedict XVI vowed this week to bring the widespread pedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church down to a more manageable level.

Addressing thousands gathered at St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, the pontiff offered his "most humble apologies" to abuse victims, and pledged to reduce the total number of molestations by 60 percent over the next five years.

"This is absolutely unacceptable," Pope Benedict said. "It seems a weakening of faith in God has prevented our priests from exercising moderation when sexually abusing helpless minors."

"And let me remind our clergy of the holy vows they all took when they entered the priesthood," he continued. "They should know that they're only allowed one small child every other month."

The pope said he was deeply disappointed to learn that the number of children sexually abused by priests was almost 10 times beyond the allowable limit clearly outlined in church doctrine. Admitting for the first time in public that the overindulgent touching of "tender, tender young flesh" had become a full-blown crisis, the Holy Father vowed to implement new reforms to bring the pedophilia rate back down to five children per 1,000 clergy.

"The truth is there will always be a little bit of molestation—it's simply unavoidable," Vatican spokesperson Rev. Federico Lombardi said. "But the fact that young boys have gotten much more attractive over the past few decades is no excuse for the blatant defiance of church limits that have been in place for centuries."

"The majority of priests don't want to molest kids at all," he added. "But for those who do, we must make sure they're doing it at a reasonable rate."

Following the pope's speech, the Vatican released a statement outlining its plan to reduce pedophilia. Starting next year, specially trained cardinals will make unannounced visits to inspect and observe random churches in order to ensure they are not going beyond diocese-wide molestation caps. The inspector-cardinals will grade each parish based on long, private interviews with altar boys in darkened church basements, and careful observation of priests' sexual activity.

These senior officials will also have the authority to enforce harsh punishments for any clergy member violating his allotment of pedophilia.

"If a priest goes even one child over the limit, there will be hell to pay," said Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Bishops Giovanni Battista Re, explaining the Vatican's new "Three Strikes, You're Out Rule." "After the third offense, the offending priest will immediately be moved to another parish. This will give officials time to investigate the case, and will act as an effective deterrent since it usually takes months for priests to gain the trust of the new children."

As a "goodwill measure," Cardinal Re said all churches will also be required to display a sign next to the altar showing the number of days since the last molestation.

Criticism of the pope's new plan has already begun to emerge from within the Catholic Church itself. Rev. Walter Moore, a pastor at St. Peter's in Chicago, questioned the Vatican's methodology in calculating the molestation rates, saying the church's inconsistent definition of pedophilia may have skewed the numbers.

"Is it technically pedophilia if the child's clothes are fully on the entire time? What if he's asleep when it happens?" Moore said. "It's time we had some clear guidance from Rome on this issue. For instance, the church counts it as one incident regardless of whether the child is molested multiple times by the same individual or by two priests at once. That's just plain wrong."

"Plus, if it's supposed to be a special secret between the priest and the boy, is it even any of the church's business in the first place?" he added. "Maybe Brandon is just trying to get attention."

The Vatican would not release details of the pope's upcoming world tour, in which he plans to clear up any confusion on the matter by personally demonstrating what constitutes molestation.

The Catholic Church's Waterloo: Why The Pope Should Step Down

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keli-goff/the-catholic-churchs-wate_b_515102.html

Keli Goff
Author, commentator and contributor to TheLoop21.com
Keligoff.com
March 26, 2010
The Catholic Church's Waterloo: Why The Pope Should Step Down

It's a sad state of affairs when new allegations of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse are greeted with the same measure of surprise as another Tiger Woods porn star: none at all.

At this point the story has to take a particularly egregious and shocking turn to warrant front-page news coverage. This week it did. The Vatican -- not a local parish, or a local papal leader, but the Vatican itself -- stands accused of halting an investigation into a Wisconsin priest believed to have molested 200 deaf boys over a 20-year period. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

As reported by the Associated Press, the case bears disturbing similarities to a case in Italy in which a group of priests is also accused of preying on a group of deaf children, and on that matter the Vatican is also accused of dragging its feet. But even more shocking, the New York Times reports that during his tenure as Cardinal, Pope Benedict was cc'd on a 1980 memo that notified him and others of the return of a known pedophile to a parish. The priest was eventually convicted of molesting boys there. But I'm sure that came as no surprise to the people who helped put him there, which, no matter how you dress it up, includes the current Pope. And that's what makes these stories a turning point.

Let me ask you a question: if a memo surfaced making it clear that a CEO knew that a product was highly dangerous but turned a blind eye as the product was given to children during his career, ultimately injuring thousands of them beyond repair, would that CEO keep his corner office? No, because every mother and father of an injured child would demand his head, or at the very least his resignation. Yet for some reason the Vatican appears willing to protect Pope Benedict at all costs, despite the fact that his judgment has been proven reckless at the very least, and legally questionable at worst. For years, the leadership of the Church has tried to convince us that it operates with a level of confusion and disjointedness equivalent to the FBI and CIA pre-9/11 and that this is to blame for its own homegrown terrorist disaster. But now these documents have revealed that that is simply not true: the Church operates deliberately.

Before anyone starts the "you-must-be-anti-Catholic-and-anti-faith" chorus, let me say that nothing could be further from the truth, as regular readers of my writing know. I am not anti-Catholic, anti-religious, or anti-faith, but I am anti-pedophile, and I am even more fervently opposed to those who would protect pedophiles.

You can always tell a lot about a person, organization, or institution by how they respond to a crisis. President Bush's handling of Katrina will forever be haunted by echoes of "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," which became a YouTube symbol for how hopelessly out of touch he and his administration were. But the most telling sign is when those who stand accused, and whose guilt is in the process of morphing from maybe to certainly in the eyes of the public, go on the attack. Think former president Bill Clinton angrily declaring, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," and then going after the "vast right-wing conspiracy." (Yes I know there probably was one, but I think we're all in agreement by now that we can't really blame them for Lewinsky.) Think Gov. David Paterson insinuating that his gubernatorial woes were, in part, racially based. But when the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano recently attempted to blame the media for its current image crisis, it demonstrated a level of gall wrapped in chutzpah with a good dose of delusion sprinkled in that not even Bush, Clinton, or Paterson could match. The media was accused, in part, of acting as if the church "were the only one responsible for sexual abuses -- an image that does not correspond to reality."

Yes, the reality is that there are pedophiles elsewhere, many of them in prison where they belong, but many more not. But is the Vatican arguing on the record that it should be viewed just like any other business or institution in the secular world, where vigilantly protecting children from pedophiles is simply the price of doing business?

People of faith should -- and do -- expect more of our religious leaders, especially when these same leaders continue to try to dictate the morality of others.

But hypocrisy aside, the impact and level of victimization of this scandal reaches far wider than Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Jimmy Swaggert, and Ted Haggard combined, as does Pope Benedict's role in this victimization. Yet while they all tearily resigned, his job so far appears to be safe.

If Pope Benedict is interested in saving his "company" -- the Catholic Church, in this instance -- then he should do what any CEO who had a role in distributing a dangerous product would do: fall on his sword by resigning. If he does not, then he and the church he leads are sending a clear message that they consider themselves above not only the law but possibly God. And if that is the case, then perhaps its remaining parishioners should send the Church the same message that they would send to a company that endangered their children with its products: boycott that company right out of business.

The Truth About Angels, Demons and Antimatter

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520193,00.html

The Truth About Angels, Demons and Antimatter
Thursday, May 14, 2009
By Jeremy Hsu

An antimatter explosion threatens to level the Vatican in the movie adaptation of the thriller "Angels and Demons," but real-world physicists are unfazed by this plot.

The story features "Da Vinci Code" hero Robert Langdon racing to recover an antimatter capsule stolen from the CERN particle physics facility in Switzerland. Researchers first figured out how to create and trap antimatter particles at CERN, which gave author Dan Brown the inspiration for his story.

One physicist doesn't find CERN's unexpected publicity from the story upsetting. On the contrary, he's rather pleased.

"I always say that what Dan Brown did for the Roman Catholic Church in 'The Da Vinci Code,' he did for me and my research with 'Angels and Demons,'" said Gerald Gabrielse, a Harvard physicist who currently leads an international research team at CERN.

Antimatter is real, but it still represents a baffling presence in the universe – sub-atomic particles that are the opposite of normal matter. When a particle and antiparticle meet, they mutually annihilate each other and release their entire mass as energy.

This bizarre but intriguing reality has prompted plenty of science fiction writers to dream of antimatter engines powering future civilizations or starships, such as Star Trek's U.S.S. Enterprise.

"Angels and Demons" twists that dream of untapped energy into more of a nightmarish scenario, by suggesting what might happen if a relatively large amount of antimatter annihilated itself with matter all at once. A quarter of a gram of antimatter threatens to unleash the power of 5,000 tons of TNT and destroy everything within a half-mile radius – or so goes the fictional story.

The reality is that physicists can only wish they had so much of the stuff.

"If you take all the antimatter produced in the history of the world and annihilated it all at once, you wouldn't have enough energy to boil a cup of tea," Gabrielse told LiveScience.

Antimatter represents a rare entity in a universe dominated by matter, and scientists still struggle to understand why. What they do know is that creating antimatter requires tremendous effort, such as using particle accelerators at CERN to smash together particles at nearly the speed of light.

An occasional antimatter particle may arise naturally when a cosmic ray strikes Earth's upper atmosphere. But collecting man-made antimatter particles is much more practical for research.

Physicists have only slowed and trapped a small fraction of all the produced particles, in this case known as antiprotons. They use antimatter traps somewhat similar in concept to what "Angels and Demons" describes, with magnetic fields keeping the antimatter particles in a vacuum away from any matter.

"You need a container with no walls, that's the idea," Gabrielse noted. His former project, known as TRAP, successfully created and held charged antiprotons for months.

Now physicists face the more daunting challenge of capturing neutral antihydrogen atoms. The newer international effort, called ATRAP, has put together an antihydrogen trap and is working on a second.

"We are trying right now to trap neutral antihydrogen atoms which we have produced, but no one has succeeded in proving that they've been trapped yet," Gabrielse said.

Such neutral antihydrogen atoms could theoretically be clumped together, whereas charged antiprotons are repelled by each other. Whether an antimatter clump would annihilate with all the power of a small nuke without blowing itself apart remains an open question – and that still assumes physicists can create and collect anything close to a quarter of a gram of antimatter.

One part of "Angels and Demons" may have come true, although unrelated to antimatter. The fictional plot includes retinal scanners guarding a CERN lab, and the real-life CERN happened to adopt such eyeball security after the book came out, Gabrielse explained.

So the plot of "Angels and Demons" doesn't quite annihilate upon contact with reality, but the real-life mystery of antimatter may still trump fiction.

"Why the universe is made out of more matter than antimatter? We don't know the answer to that question at all," Gabrielse said.

Hagee Says McCain Sought His Endorsement

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003728364

Hagee, in 'NYT' This Sunday, Says McCain Sought His Endorsement
By Greg Mitchell
Published: March 20, 2008

NEW YORK In an interview that will appear in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, controversial televangelist Rev. John Hagee declares, "It's true that [John] McCain's campaign sought my endorsement."

McCain has attempted to distance himself from some of Hagee's views, much as Barack Obama is doing in relation to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But unlike McCain, Obama has not stood on stage with Wright and accepted his accolades this year.

Interviewed by Deborah Solomon, Hagee refused to discuss his statement that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for a gay rights parade in New Orleans, calling it "so far off-base." He claims, "Our church is not hard against the gay people. Our church teaches what the bible teaches, that it is not a righteous lifestyle. But of course we must love even sinners."

He also said that charges that he had bashed the Catholic Church ("false cult system," etc.) have been "grossly mischaracterized....I was referring to those Christians who ignore the Gospels."

Asked what he thinks of Obama, he answers, "He is going to be difficult to beat, because the man is a master of communication. If he were in the ministry, he would make it in the major leagues overnight."

He also denies that he is a strong supporter of Israel because of any coming "Rapture" in the holy land.
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Greg Mitchell is editor. His new book is "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failld on Iraq."

St Peter not the first Pope and never went to Rome

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/23/wrome123.xml

St Peter was not the first Pope and never went to Rome, claims Channel 4
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent
23/03/2008

St Peter's journey to Rome led to the spread of Christianity in the West and the foundation of Roman Catholicism, so the Church has always taught.

But a new documentary will challenge the link as nothing more than a "conspiracy of faith". In it, prominent academics accuse the Vatican of misleading the world over the fate of the man regarded as Jesus Christ's closest disciple. In allegations likely to spark controversy, they accuse the Church of fabricating a connection with the apostle to validate giving ultimate power to the papacy.

Catholicism holds that the Pope is the sole successor to the 'supremacy' of Peter

Catholicism has taught for centuries that Peter was martyred and buried in Rome and that all popes succeed him, but the documentary will challenge this by asserting that he never reached the Italian city. Instead, it will accuse the Church of ignoring the discovery of a tomb in Jerusalem that archaeologists believe contains the bones of Peter.

Leading theologians said that these views were an "attempt to smear Catholicism" and criticised Channel 4 for allowing such "outlandish" claims to be broadcast.

They expressed concern that they would appeal to people who are easily persuaded by conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene, as proposed in Dan Brown's best-seller The Da Vinci Code.

Dr Robert Beckford, a theology lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, who presents the documentary, denied that this was an attempt to attack the Catholic Church. "This is about looking at what the pillars of power are founded on and examining the scholarship that most Catholics take for granted," he said.

"We found that there is no scientific evidence to support the idea that Peter was buried in Rome, but yet the rival theory has not got out because it challenges the Church.

"If you undermine its basis for power you undermine the Church. It's tragic that the faith gets reduced to manipulating the facts and to one Church trying to make itself superior to others."

As Christianity spread following the crucifixion of Jesus, it became important for the new churches to claim a link with the disciples and led the Catholic Church to establish a connection with St Peter.

advertisementCatholics believe the proof that Christ constituted St Peter head of His Church is found in the two Petrine texts, Matthew 16:17-19, and John 21:15-17. In Matthew, the office is solemnly promised to the apostle as Jesus addresses him: "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven."

Roman Catholicism holds that the Pope, also known as the Bishop of Rome, is the sole successor to the "supremacy" or primacy of Peter and is thus the "Vicar of Christ" for the world.

It is traditionally believed that he was crucified in Rome and buried where the Basilica of St Peter was later built, beneath the high altar.

In 1939, the Vatican announced that the bones of Peter had been found in Rome during an archaeological dig. But the documentary casts doubt on this, questioning why the dig was carried out "in total secrecy", and led by a "personal friend" of the Pope.

"The Pope's authority over the world's one billion Roman Catholics derives from the belief that Peter died and was buried here almost 2,000 years ago," said Dr Beckford.

The documentary, The Secrets of the Twelve Disciples ­(Channel 4 today at 5.45pm), suggests it that is much more likely that St Peter was buried in an ossuary found in Jerusalem with the inscription Shimon Bar Jonah - Simon son of Jonah - the Hebrew name for Peter.

However, Gerald O'Collins, professor emeritus of Systematic Theology at the Gregorian University in Rome, said that the documentary contradicted the "great weight" of tradition that accepted Peter had been martyred and buried in Rome. "This is awful stuff, total ­nonsense," he said. "This kind of outlandish garbage drives me nuts."

John Medlin, the general manager of the Latin Mass Society, said of the "intellectually-challenged" arguments: "They are on a par with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and are unsubstantiated. It shows undisguised disdain for the Catholic Church."