Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan On John Paul II and His Defenders

John Paul II blessing the monster Maciel

It's no secret that I view the canonization of John Paul II as nothing less than a travesty and an illustration that liberal Catholics who want to believe that Pope Francis is substantively a breath of fresh air are deluding themselves.  In response to a piece by Peggy Noonan - who seems to have lost all reason - comparing Pope John Paul II to Barack Obama in terms of leadership, Andrew Sullivan lets loose with an honest assessment of John Paul II's reign that bares repeating and which ought to be mandatory reading for every churchgoing Catholic.  Here are the money quotes:

Under John Paul II and his orthodoxy-enforcer, Joseph Ratzinger, the scope for any dialogue within the church was essentially ended. Whole areas of theological debate were ruled impermissible; discussions about faith and morals were also discouraged and any hints of heterodoxy, i.e. thinking, were monitored and punished. John Paul II’s papacy was capable of detecting the most trivial form of theological dissent and punishing it relentlessly, while it found itself miraculously blind when it came to the endless rapes and abuse of children and adolescents that we know now were endemic.

This wasn’t leadership; it was the abdication of basic moral responsibility for the church John Paul II ran. And these were not only crimes of commission but also of omission. A monstrous figure like Marciel Macial was lionized by John Paul II even as he sold drugs, was a bigamist,  abused countless young men, and even raped his own son. Cardinal Bernard Law was rewarded for his own disgusting cover-up of child-rapists with a sinecure in Rome.

Open your eyes, Peggy. There is world outside your 1980s nostalgia-fest. And it’s as different from your reality as “seems” is from “is”.

I may not always agree with Andrew - who I did get to meet a few years ago - but when he lets loose on someone, few do it better.

Maureen Dowd: John Paul II Is No Saint

The Roman Catholic Church continues to suffer from twp huge PR problems: (i) the ongoing sexual abuse scandal that continues to show itself to be a global problem and (ii) the failure of the Vatican to take severe disciplinary action against any of the bishops and cardinals who engaged in deliberate cover ups and obstruction of justice.  The second problems may likely stem from the fact that these bishops and cardinals were following orders from the Vatican.  This conclusion is hard to escape when the Church in what I deem absolute idiocy has moved to canonize Pope John Paul II who oversaw the worst years of the sex abuse scandal explosion and did absolutely NOTHING to punish the high clerics involved (unless one considers being called to Rome, given a plum assignment and rendered outside the arm of extradition laws a punishment).  In a column in the New York Times Maureen Dowd lets loose on the canonization of the anything but saintly John Paul II.  Here are excerpts:

There were some disturbing elements to the Easter Mass I attended at Nativity, my childhood church.  The choral director sang “Amazing Grace” to the tune of “Danny Boy.” The pews were half-empty on the church’s most sacred day.

But it was most upsetting as a prelude to next Sunday. In an unprecedented double pontiff canonization, Pope John Paul II will be enshrined as a saint in a ceremony at St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Vatican had a hard time drumming up the requisite two miracles when Pope Benedict XVI, known as John Paul’s Rasputin and enforcer of the orthodoxy, waived the traditional five-year waiting period and rushed to canonize his mentor. But the real miracle is that it will happen at all. John Paul was a charmer, and a great man in many ways. But given that he presided over the Catholic Church during nearly three decades of a gruesome pedophilia scandal and grotesque cover-up, he ain’t no saint.

John Paul deserves major credit for his role in the downfall of Communism. Even though neocon Catholics who idolize and whitewash John Paul don’t like to dwell on it, he also directed consistent and withering moral criticism at the excesses of capitalism long before Pope Francis did.

Perhaps trying to balance the choice of John Paul, who made conservatives jump for joy because he ran a Vatican that tolerated no dissent, the newly christened Pope Francis tried to placate progressives by cutting the miracle requirement from two to one to rush John XXIII’s canonization. 

One of John Paul’s great shames was giving Vatican sanctuary to Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, a horrendous enabler of child abuse who resigned in disgrace in 2002 as archbishop of Boston. Another unforgivable breach was the pope’s stubborn defense of the dastardly Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, a pedophile, womanizer, embezzler and drug addict.

As Jason Berry wrote last year in Newsweek, Father Maciel “was the greatest fund-raiser for the postwar Catholic Church and equally its greatest criminal.”  His order, the Legionaries of Christ, which he ran like a cult and ATM for himself and the Vatican for 65 years, denounced him posthumously in February for his “reprehensible and objectively immoral behavior.”

The statement followed a United Nations report upbraiding the church for turning a blind eye to child abuse by priests and the sins of Father Maciel, who had serially abused adolescent seminarians, some as young as 12, and had several children with at least two women. His sons also claimed he abused them.

It is wonderful that John Paul told other societies, Communist and capitalist, to repent. But his tragedy is that he never corrected the failings of his own society, over which he ruled absolutely.

The church is giving its biggest prize to the person who could have fixed the spreading stain and did nothing. The buck, or in this case, the Communion wafer, doesn’t stop here. There is something wounding and ugly about the church signaling that those thousands of betrayed, damaged victims are now taken for granted as a slowly fading asterisk.

John Paul may be a revolutionary figure in the history of the church, but a man who looked away in a moral crisis cannot be described as a saint.

When the church elevates him, it is winking at the hell it caused for so many children and young people in its care.

Unless and until Pope Francis sacks countless bishops and cardinals his PR efforts will ultimately be little more than smoke and mirrors  and the Church leadership in the end will remain morally bankrupt.

Sex, Lies and the Vatican

If one wants an evening soap opera like plot complete with lies, scheming, criminal conspiracies, illicit sex and much more, then one need look no farther than the Vatican according to a new book entitled Vatican Diaries released a little over a week ago.  Yet somehow the nasty old men that inhabit the Vatican's halls and palaces think they are fit to be the moral arbiters to over a billion Catholics even as the are the epitome of un-Christian conduct.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the new book and the snake pit that lies behind the lavish exterior of the Vatican.  Here are some excerpts:

Vatican insider John Thavis always had a hunch Pope Benedict XVI would retire. But he had no idea it would coincide with the release of his book Vatican Diaries, which was published on February 21. “I’d like to say I had planned it that way,” he told The Daily Beast in the Vatican’s press office days after the papal resignation. “But it was just a happy coincidence.”

Thavis’s book is a notebook dump of sorts gathered from 30 years working as a Catholic News Service Vaticanista—the official term used for Rome journalists who have personal cellphone numbers for cardinals and high-ranking Roman Curia prelates. While his book would have been interesting for Church watchers before Benedict’s resignation, it will surely become a veritable handbook on all things Vatican now that the world is watching who the cardinal electors choose as a new pope. 

On one papal trip, the Vatican press spokesman actually reworded a statement Benedict made on abortion and excommunication that Thavis felt crossed the line. “Editing Pope Benedict’s extemporaneous comments had been a com­mon practice from the very first day of his pontificate,” Thavis writes.  .  .  .  .  The idea of a midlevel bureaucrat fine-tuning Pope Benedict’s language may sound strange, but it reflects a deeply entrenched conviction that the actual words a pope pronounces are not definitive until the ‘official version’ is published. Usually the editing was merely annoying, but in this case it was an attempt to rewrite reality.”

Thavis wastes no words on his condemnation of the Vatican’s handling of the various sex-abuse scandals that have rocked the church in the 30 years he has been covering the Vatican beat. He dedicates several chapters to the unsavory sex-abuse cases the Catholic Church has been involved in, and manages to explain in laymen’s terms the very complicated Legions of Christ scandal by walking through a series of investigations and interviews by high-ranking church officials including the Vatican’s promoter of justice. He focuses on the lurid life of Legions founder Father Marcial Ma­ciel Degollado and paints as vivid a character profile of the disturbingly strange man as has been written to date. Father Marcial, as he is referred to, was a favorite of Benedict’s predecessor Pope John Paul II, despite a myriad of allegations of sexual improprieties and financial corruption. Benedict, as pope, finally put an end to Marcial’s reign amid his apologies to seminarians he sexually abused and his admission that he had fathered several children with different women. “Nowhere was there any hint that the order itself bore any responsibility for a cover-up; on the contrary, the Legion’s highest officials were portraying themselves as victims of Maciel’s duplicity,” Thavis writes. “And while the Legion was admitting to the founder’s extramural heterosexual affair—he was human, after all—it re­fused to touch the more serious allegations that Maciel had turned his own seminary into a pedophilia camp.”

Thavis may not have known that his book would coincide with Benedict’s sensational resignation and a historical conclave when there is still a living pope, but he certainly was prophetic in his last chapter, which is a succinct and unapologetic tribute to the former pope. He wades through the various incarnations of Benedict’s papacy, from his gaffes to his more meaningful moments, painting a human portrait of a man who shocked the world with his resignation.

The more I learn of the lies, deceit, and abuses overseen by the Vatican, the more saddened I become that I remained a Catholic as long as I did. 

Vatican Launches Investigation Into Legionaries of Christ

In an interesting development, the Vatican is commencing an investigation into the misdeeds of the Legionaries of Christ and its late founder, Maciel Degollado. For years a number of Popes - including the less than saintly John Paul II - protected the Degollado and the Legionaries of Christ despite many allegations of Degolladro's corruption and sexual abuse of seminarians, not to mention fathering of an illegitimate daughter. One cannot help but wonder how thoroughly the Vatican wants to investigate and how open it will be about the likely dirty linen that is likely to be found. While the Legionaries are a religious order as opposed to a diocese, the corruption and cover up of sexual abuse is a stroy all too common within the Catholic Church world wide. Personally, I am not holding my breath and expecting a sincere investigation by the Vatican - especially because John Paul II was conspicuous in his support of Degollado and willingly closed his eyes to wickedness. On the other hand, the Vatican may fear that a failure to investigate will leave it open to even more charges of hypocrisy. Here are some story highlights via RawStory:

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The Vatican has launched an investigation into the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order whose secretive founder stands accused of sexually abusing numerous children over decades.

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And the investigation may have to grapple with an uncomfortable question: If the entire religious order was based on lies and deception, should it be disbanded? In an article at GlobalPost, reporter Jason Berry states: The issue facing Benedict has no precedent in modern church history: whether to dismantle a movement with a $650 million budget yet only about 700 priests and 2,500 seminarians, or to keep the brand name and try to reform an organization still run as a cult of personality to its founder. Excessive materialism and psychological coercion tactics continue Maciel’s legacy.

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In the 1990s, as sex abuse scandals linked to the Catholic church came to light, victims of Degollado's sexual abuse began to come forward. Though the Vatican first recognized the claims in 1998, it wasn't until 2004 that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Pope John Paul II's right-hand man, launched the first inquiry into Degollado's actions. Starting in 2004, at least 30 witnesses testified to Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the C.D.F. investigator, that Maciel abused them as youths. But the 2006 Vatican order punishing Maciel failed to specify what exactly he had done, nor did it acknowledge the victims.

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In Maciel's case, it took 30 years – until 2006, after John Paul's death – for the new pope, Benedict XVI, finally to issue a public rebuke, and then it was simply an order that he should see out his days in private prayer rather than face a court. The long delay is evidence, some have suggested, that the Vatican still does not take the issue of paedophile priests sufficiently seriously.
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Numerous conservative Catholics are hell bent to have John Paul II name a saint, but his continued refusal to act against or lift a finger to protect against sexual abuse is hardly the conduct of a saint. I can only assume that John Paul II did not want to turn off the money spigot that the Legionaries came to represent. Having been a Knight of Columbus - a Catholic fraternal organization with billions of dollars of assets - nothing talks like money within the Church hierarchy.

Sex Predator Protected by Pope John Paul II, Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, has Died

As Whispers in the Loggia reports (http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2008/01/developing-fr-marcial-maciel-degollado.html), Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, the controversial founder of the Legionaries of Christ, died yesterday aged 87. After great efforts by Pope John Paul II to deflect any investigations into allegations of sexual abuse by Dellollado, he was ultimately given less than a resounding reprimanded by Nazi-Pope, Benedict XVI in 2006. Degollado represents perhaps one of the most aggregious cases of high clerics in the Catholic Church acting to protect a sexual predator. The National Catholic Reporter in a lengthy article has details of Degolloado's abuse of minors and the Vatican's efforts to protect him. This case in my opinion shows why the move to canonize John PaulII is not only ridiculous but yet another scandal. Saints do not protect such monsters. Here are some highlights from the NCR's december, 2001, story(http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/120701/120701g.htm):

Without explanation, the Vatican has halted a canon law investigation of one of the most powerful priests in Rome, accused by nine men of sexually abusing them years ago as young seminarians. The allegations focus on the actions of Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the 81-year old leader of the Legion of Christ, a wealthy religious order known for its theological conservatism and loyalty to the pope. Maciel has been praised by Pope John Paul II as “an efficacious guide to youth.”

The men say Maciel first abused them when they were young boys or teenagers between the ages of 10 and 16, sometimes telling them he had permission from Pope Pius XII to engage in sexual acts with them in order to gain relief from pain related to an unspecified stomach ailment.

The accusers -- seven Mexicans and two Spaniards -- tried for many years to reach Pope John Paul II with information on Maciel, a Mexican national who founded the Legion in the 1940s. Letters by two of the men, sent to John Paul in 1978, and again in 1989, both by diplomatic pouch, brought no reply.

On Feb. 23, 1997, the group went public with their accusations in The Hartford Courant, a major newspaper in Connecticut, where the Legion has its U.S. headquarters. The men include Fr. Felix Alarcon, a retired priest in good standing in Madrid; Juan Vaca, a psychology professor in New York; Arturo Jurado, a professor at the U.S. Defense Languages School in Monterrey, Calif; and in Mexico, Jose Barba, a Harvard-trained scholar of Latin American studies; Jose Antonio Perez, a lawyer; Alejandro Espinosa, a rancher; Fernando Perez, an engineer; and Saul Barrales, a school teacher. A ninth accuser, Juan Manuel Fernandez Amenabar, a former priest and university president, left a statement of alleged abuse and gave accounts to several witnesses before his death in 1995.

In recent years, the accusers have expressed guilt for not reporting Maciel during the 1950s-era investigation. At that time, however, sexual abuse was a taboo subject, they note. Some also said that Legion of Christ members pledge loyalty to Maciel and the order, so they faced a violation of their oath if they gave a negative report, risking expulsion from the seminary.

The Vatican refused to make any comment at all to the Courant or to the Mexican media when it did follow-up stories in 1997. Although the pope later appointed Maciel to a synod of bishops, the Vatican has never made a formal statement on the allegations or on Maciel’s countercharge of a conspiracy against him.

Fortunately, in 2005, the case was reopened. At the time, then Cardinal Ratzinger said that, "lamentably, the case of Father Maciel could not be opened because he was a person very loved by the pope and had done so much good for the church." Ultimately, the investigation resulted in the Degollado's forced dismissal from the clerical state, and the Holy See -- now with Ratzinger as Pope -- triangulated its response. Issuing its decision in May 2006, the dicastery allowed the once-omnipresent Maciel to remain a priest, albeit one "invited" to "a reserved life of prayer and penance, renouncing all public ministry." Such is justice within the Roman Catholic Church. Kid gloves and deference for the abuser and indifference for the victioms. What would Jesus say?