One Thing Is Clear, Now We Can See What Pope Francis Has Been Up Against

I don't spend a lot of my time looking into Vatican-hierarcy politics in the Catholic Church so when something like the smear job that the guy Pope Francis fired as Vatican Ambassador to the United States launched this weekend happens, I've got to depend on those who do follow those.  The scandal, launched in hard-right wing Catholic publications and obviously coordinated with key right-wing opponents of Pope Francis - witness the rapid deployment mounted by them, looks like it was well planned and, like a Trump security clearance removal, it was held ready for just the right time.  The trigger to that seems to have been the release of the Grand Jury report on child sex abuse in Pennsylvania,  though I think that might have just been fortuitous timing, I think it was Francis's visit to the scandal ravaged country of Ireland.

The prime vehicle that Vigano and his fellow putschists used was the far-right National Catholic Register, a publication obviously named to confuse people with the source I've relied on as a window into Vatican politics, the independent and harder to classify National Catholic Reporter.  This article by Michael Sean Winters exposes the central lie that Vigano uses, the supposed demotion of the disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick by the retired Pope Benedict XVI and the alleged restoring of status to him under Pope Francis.  Something that obviously isn't true.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s testimony proves one thing: The former Vatican ambassador to the United States is to the clergy sex abuse crisis what Oliver Stone is to the assassination of President John Kennedy, a trafficker in conspiracy theories who mixes fact, fiction and venom to produce something explosive but also suspicious. When you finish reading this testimony, as at the end of Stone’s 1991 movie “JFK,” you can only conclude that the product tells us more about the author than it does about the subject.

Vigano is certainly correct that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, longtime Secretary of State to Pope John Paul II, was a patron of disgraced former-cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Stone recognized the assassination happened in Dallas. But why does Vigno fail to mention the key role played by Cardinal Stanislaus Dsiwisz in protecting McCarrick?

Vigano alleges that Pope Francis lifted sanctions against McCarrick that had been imposed by Pope Benedict. Indeed, the headline on the Edward Pentin story that broke the news of this testimony reads “Ex-nuncio Accuses Pope Francis of Failing to Act on McCarrick’s Abuse.” But, Francis did act. He is the one who removed McCarrick from ministry in June. The central focus of this testimony is the claim that Benedict issued sanctions against McCarrick: “the Cardinal was to leave the seminary where he was living, he was forbidden to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance,” Vigano writes.

During the Benedict papacy, with my own eyes I witnessed McCarrick celebrate Mass in public, participate in meetings, travel, etc. More importantly, so did Pope Benedict! If Benedict imposed these penalties, he certainly did not apply them. He continued to receive McCarrick with the rest of the Papal Foundation, continued to allow him to celebrate Mass publicly at the Vatican, even concelebrating with Benedict at events like consistories. (See photo above taken in 2010.) But, as Vigano tell is, it is all Pope Francis’ fault.

Vigano is more than a little obsessed with homosexuality and names prelates whom he accuses of supporting efforts at “subverting Catholic doctrine on homosexuality.” Filmmaker Stone was obsessed with the grassy knoll. Back in my seminary days, when one of the seminarians would give evidence of this kind of obsession, making wild claims about homosexuality, its sources and its effects, ignoring the emerging scientific and psychological data, the rest of us would look at each other and someone would say, “I would like to take a look at her dance card.”

I don't, for a second, believe that the putschists intent on trying to force Pope Francis to resign or, failing that, to discredit him, care about gay priests, faithful to their vows of chastity or failing in that most human way to honor them, I certainly don't think they care about child sex abuse except in so far as they can use it as a weapon to mount their political campaigns.  None of them with power seems to have done a single thing about any of those things before they became items in the news.  I do think they are organized, well financed by wealthy right-wing Catholics and some of the more disgustingly obscene hold overs of medieval corruption - Knights, Dukes, etc.  And all of the shady and entirely secular not to mention Mafia style connections that those have always been.   The best way to understand them is the way you understand Trump or Putin, they are gangsters.

What you see in this effort is the part of the hierarchy and the all too worldly kingdom that has always plagued the Catholic church and which, to an extent, will always plague large human institutions, especially those with large property holdings.  You also see the really awful role that the corrupt Curia has had in the governance of the Church, money has more than a little bit to do with a lot of that corruption.

One of the things which I know very little about is the shadowy cult of priests, Order of the Incarnate Word a scandalous political-connected group not unlike those favored by John Paul II and Benedict, the Popes whose good-old-days the putschists want to return to.  I'm not yet entirely clear on the part they're supposed to play in the accusations against Pope Francis but which, when he was a Bishop in Argentina, he was one of the major forces opposing.   While he and the other Argentinian bishops opposed the group, refusing to ordain deacons and priests for the order, Theodore McCarrick, an American bishop, was their go-to guy for ordination even as the scandal plagued and massively corrupt super-power Cardinal Angelo Sodano played that role for them in Rome.  I don't know how a group that Pope Francis opposed becomes his responsibility except that I know the American media knows even less about this than I do and they're carrying that kind of stuff because they don't really care about this except in so far as it has American political impact and it boosts their ratings.

The pay-back for Vigano is that Pope Francis fired him as ambassador when he set him up to meet the gay-hating county clerk Kim Davis when Francis visited the United States.   Being busy being Pope, trying to force the hierarchy full to the top of corrupt appointees of his two long-serving predecessors, dealing with the sex abuse scandal and everything else a Pope has to know about, clearly, wasn't aware of that low level of American politics when met with someone he should have been able to depend on his ambassador to not set him up to meet.   Vigano was obviously playing American politics in setting it up, that's obviously the kind of guy he is, he is not credible.

The Catholic Church is paying a huge price for the papacies of John Paul II and his hand-chosen successor,  Benedict XVI.  It's paying a huge price for the corruption that has flourished in the Vatican and which installed bishops and Cardinials who had no business being put in charge of anything.  I think given the neo-medieval, power centralizing proclivities of, especially, John Paul II, it's not a huge surprise that a full-blown political power struggle like this has broken out.  I had hopes that Pope Francis would be able to at least beat that back and he has made an effort, though I didn't understand the huge size of the task.

In the popular imagination, unfortunately many Catholics as clueless as many protestants on this count, the Pope is an absolute dictator who can make heads role at the flick of a wrist.  The secular media who are reporting this, as unaware of that as the most ignorant lay person, even as large parts or the Catholic media are in on the corruption. Well, John Paul II certainly ruled after that fashion to the best of his ability,  though, even with the corrupt Vatican establishment and right-wing political powers behind him, he couldn't personally destroy Vatican II and set up a renewal of neo-medieval autocracy which was clearly one of their goals.

Things got worse under Benedict who was totally out of his depth in dealing with the Vatican establishment, which apparently learned how to play him far better than he learned about it during his long years as part of them.   Pope Francis is having to deal with the opposite, trying to reform while doing justice, giving due process to those accused of things like sex abuse.   One thing that is clear, cleaning out even the upper hierarchy of the Church is something a Pope just can't decide to do and just make it happen.   Especially when there are powerful bishops, Cardinals and others opposed to him and ready to lie and use every dirty tool they've got to maintain their power and the status quo they have created.   They've got lots of very dirty, very secular wealth behind them.

In reading about this, one of the things I thought was that if Pope Francis slept in the papal apartment he might have ended up like the short-reigned, well hoped for reformer, Pope John Paul I.   Given the extent to which his enemies are taking this, I don't believe that the theorists of how Albino Luciani died are unjustified to be wondering about how he died.  I wonder if some day he will have a feast day with red vestments worn, a modern martyr-Pope.   I hope Pope Francis doesn't become another. 

I am concentrating on Karl Rahner's idea of "winter" Christianity and listening to women religious and the Roman Catholic Women Priests.  If Francis doesn't open up the real power of the Catholic Church beyond the unmarried men who rule it, it will not recover moral authority.  He has to remove those who have to be removed, no matter what their political positions are, no matter how much influence they have with billionaires and millionaires.  I hope those who believe that this putsch attempt will backfire are right but until their hold on power is ended, they'll be back.