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Category Archives: Religion

September 3, 2018 · 12:31 pm

Pope Francis under Attack

My latest on Impakter Magazine, published Friday 31 August and updated today 3 September, here’s the opening:

Allegations of sexual abuse cover-up have lately become the weapon of choice to attack the Catholic Church and Pope Francis. The problem with this weapon is that it too often relies on largely unfounded assumptions, of the “he says, she says” variety. The sexual abuse is, of course, very real and deeply shocking. But the cover-up in every case? Not so much. And in any case, cover-up is always hard to prove.

This is precisely what Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a top Vatican diplomat, former Nuncio in America, did in an 11-page long letter of accusations: He accused the Pope and several cardinals and bishops of cover-up of sexual abuse. The problem is that Viganò’s allegations are unverified.

When it was published on August 26 in the National Catholic Register and other media, it was a bombshell that shook the Catholic community not just in the United States but across the world. The letter was intentionally designed to be as scandalous as possible, citing bishops and cardinals by name, zeroing in on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in particular. And, shockingly, concluding with a call for the Pope’s resignation:

“In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them.”(p.11 of his letter – in bold and underlined in the original)

The Pope did not dignify his accuser of an answer. On the plane back from Ireland, he told reporters, “I will not say a single word about this, I believe the statement speaks for itself.”

The latest news from Italy is that the Pope is saddened (“amareggiato”) by the accusations but is not remotely thinking of resigning. McCarrick’s replacement in Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, immediately found himself in the eye of the storm.

So what happened, has Viganò’s letter unleashed a storm in a teacup?

Not quite a teacup. Many people wondered why Viganò hadn’t published his letter before. The answer is that it was timed to inflict maximum damage to the Pope’s image, coming out a week after the Pennsylvania grand jury report:

And the Pope was traveling back from Ireland when Vigano’s letter hit the news. The visit had not been easy. The trip to Ireland was seen as hugely symbolic as Ireland, once a bastion of the Catholic Church, has now abandoned the Church’s teachings by legalizing divorce and same-sex marriage and lifting a ban on abortion. This was a country where 90 percent used to attend Sunday mass, now thirty percent do.

People had expected him to announce new measures to protect children. They were disappointed. The Pope was apologetic and repeatedly offered his commiseration. But for many, that was not enough. They wanted action from the Church, not words. Yet, the Pope in his last speech publicly acknowledged the crimes:

If Viganò’s aim was to amp the pressure on the Pope, he certainly succeeded.

It is also clear that Viganò’s attack on the Pope is part of a broader conservative strategy to discredit Francis.

…

Read the rest on Impakter, click here.

Let me know what you think. Whether you are a Catholic or not, I think it’s important news. This is an attack against a Pope who stands for moral values that conservatives these days are strangely lacking. The Pope is a paladin of social justice, defending immigrants and the poor. And he is calling on all of us to fight climate change and environmental degradation. In fact, he defends the whole planet and everyone on it!

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Tagged as Archbishop Viganò, McCarrick, Pope Francis, sexual abuse

February 9, 2017 · 2:29 pm

The Trump Effect: The “Clash” between the Pope and the Order of Malta

Here’s another of my articles, just published on Impakter:

The media has recently reported some eye-popping news about the Pope and the Order of Malta allegedly engaged in a power struggle, with the Grand Master of the Order losing the battle and “forced” to resign.

What we have here is the kind of spectacle the media relishes: On one side, the Pope is depicted as the “anti-Trump Pope” for example, see the New Yorker’s article written by James Carroll, an American Catholic reformer and author of eleven novels and eight works of non-fiction, clearly in search of his next plot. On the other side, the Order of Malta, a millenarian Catholic institution with a global, humanitarian mandate, is presented as helplessly in the grips of Cardinal Edmund Burke, a well-known hardliner. An American, Cardinal Burke is adamant about fighting Islam and he is a darling of the populists. So what do you get? A juicy alt-right picture of a clash between a supposedly rigidly conservative Order and a progressive Pope.

In the photo: Pope Francis receives the Grand Master in audience, in earlier better days (June 2006) Photo credit: Order of Malta website

To make it more credible, the Order is reported by some as an out-of-step relic of the Catholic Church, with its members parading around in “nutcracker” red uniforms. Instead, it is, historically, the oldest existing humanitarian organization. It started out nine hundred years ago to assist pilgrims in Jerusalem. Today, its mandate has broadened to cover children, the homeless, handicapped, refugees, elders, terminally ill and lepers around the world without distinction of ethnicity or religion.

In the photo: Upholding human dignity and caring for the people in need. PHOTO CREDIT: Order of Malta website

The Order deploys 120,000 people, some 13,500 Knights, Dames and auxiliary members, 25,000 paid medical personnel and 80,000 volunteers. With its world-wide relief agency, Malteser International, it provides emergency aid in natural disasters, epidemics and war.

The Order is not just another charitable organization: it maintains diplomatic relations with 106 countries, the European Union and the United Nations (the latter as permanent observer), thus effectively linking diplomacy with aid. In short, it has a status similar to that of a government-in-exile, having surrendered its territory – the island of Malta – to Napoleon in 1798 and never recovered it, in spite of a resolution of the 1802 Amiens Treaty and the 1815 Congress of Vienna (it was never applied, the English refused to give it back).

In fact, in this complicated story which we can only glean through partial and even fake news (!), the American Cardinal seems to play a key role. And, as I show below, this is not, contrary to stories in the press, a clash between the Pope and the Order of Malta: They are, and never stopped being together on the same side of human values.

THE ORDER’S GOVERNMENT CRISIS, THE FIRST IN OUR TIME

On 6 December 2016, the unthinkable happened: The Prince and Grand Master, Frà Robert Matthew Festing, the third Englishman to serve as Grand Master, suspended the Grand Chancellor, Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager, a German national and moved to expel him from the Order. The Grand Chancellor, who had been faithfully serving the Order for 40 years (since 1976), immediately denied all allegations of wrong-doing, refused to resign or leave the Order and reportedly contacted Cardinal Parolin, close to the Pope, to obtain guidance.

To read the rest on Impakter, click here.