I’m a Catholic. Much of the coverage of the resignation of the old pope and election of the new pope couldnt be more unobservant or trite. In both cases, the lack of noting the black underlayment of issues and lack of acute analyses, are significantly missing.
I’ve been following the ‘live bloggings’ about pope election. Some of it perhaps ought be called ‘dead blogging.’ Reminds me of the youngish priest on NPR a couple months ago spinning so hard he must have fallen over in dizziness… re the hiding of pedophiles within the Church, but as he claimed the Church now is in ‘the forefront of protecting children. That the Church is the LEADER in protecting. That the Church is really really really the LEADER in all this for many years now.
Really? That must be why the excellent Boston Globe journalists’ team had to drag, push, lasso, pry, seize by the hair “Cardinal Law,” one of the most egregious protectors of sexual criminals –into the open, instead of allowing him to hide behind his lacy chasuble.
That must be why serious journalists worldwide worked for DECADES [and continue to work] to expose the filth of secrecy the higher-ups kept under their tables– so that sexual predators could keep eating children alive. “In the forefront,” my mother’s red cat’s rear end.
And in such contrast now, the pope-ing of a cardinal yet to be named… many in online media don’t note in depth the fundemental issues in their ‘live blogging.’ They sort of blog about the moss and the nice flower patch over there, while ignoring the unconfined forest fire blazing through the Roman Catholic Church– one that no amount of money slurry nor ditch digging to hide in, will extinguish.
For the fuel for the fire, is genuine human anguish and betrayal, neglect and felonious abuse of innocents… whether they be vulnerable adults or the treasure of our lives: our children. And it is not done, it is not in the past, it is not contained. It is alive and will be as long as ‘the perpetrators of the perpretrators’ hide behind their gowns, abetted by the sitter in ‘the throne of Peter.’.
Instead of ‘live blogging’ about the tourists in Vatican square, how about ‘live blogging’ about today’s clear indictment via a 10M settlement in one case alone [containing four claims] [previous legal settlements to innocent victims in that diocese alone are in the hundreds of millions of dollars] re Los Angeles’ huge diocese and Cardinal Mahoney’s incredible giving aid to priest KNOWN to be a child molester, who then went on to molest again– and invading the homes, schools of naive immigrants and the poor….
How about ‘live blogging’ that Mahoney’s one vote can potentially swing the election of the pope –and that a man of such completely bankrupt morals who hid and prevaricated to protect himself and his molester friend, is highly irregular, and a travesty.
[Over 10,000 souls in Mahoney’s diocese have signed to petition the Vatican to bar Mahoney from voting on next pope, but the Vat isn’t listening. And Mahoney has cast himself as the ‘real victim’ for he feels it is unfair to condemn him for his intensely destructive behavior toward souls of the innocent.]
Church wants to re-establish credibility, they say. It wont happen by ‘live blogging’ about tourists clasping hands, giddily hoping to to see white smoke as though they are at a snooker game. That is cheap and pitiful coverage of an event that has draconian depths, a history of purposely placing predators in the midst of innocent children and their unwarned parents.
But far more, there is little mention in depth about how the abject and knowing protection of sexual molesters, that is, grown men who entered the untouched bodies of little children via adult male genitals for the adult’s lurid sexual satisfaction… the knowing protection of such evil by certain bishops, monsignors, archbishops and cardinals WORLDWIDE– is woven through and through this ‘conclave’ of elderly Cardinals.
Too, most of the ‘live blogging’ I’ve read, chortles and skips merrily over a dark dark past of neglect and mismanagement of $$$$$ money in many ways– the Vatican opacity in our times re finances is indeed, for certain, the fox running the hen house. It will not shock nor surprise if the new pope says the Vatican, like other countries/ nations throughout the world, is bankrupt.
It will not surprise many of us. Bankrupt. We have suspected such and deeply so for several years now, in the larger body’s pull back of funding for Catholic medical clinics, charity hospital funding, food banks, schools, and other ‘ONLY missions’ of the church which are these as given directly by Christ: to serve, to lift, to help, to comfort, to visit, to cloth, to feed the poor.
Some people become all spooky about the Vat’s secrecy: Ooooh, it’s more somethingorother if it’s all secret. Oooo, religiously spooky. And the Vat does nothing to dispel this foolish thrall that ought be reserved only for Creator, not toward humans, not men, not even men in red.
In reality, the secrecy about sex and money and power is the only way for mismanagement of sex crimes, money crimes and crimes of misuse of power, to continue.
Thereby, for these reasons and more, it’s not the ‘waiting for white smoke’ that’s the story. It’s the ‘smoke and mirrors’ that is already the egregiously endless story of the greatest cabal of protection of child molesters and financial mismanagement gnomes the modern world has ever ever known. Waiting for the white smoke is beyond trite.
Noting Twitter accounts fake and real as filler to blogging, are beyond five and dime. Giving such rapt breathless attention to a tainted and corrupt phenom without critique is not journalism. It’s cheap wax lipstick.
Add that as one blogger wrote as though it were some phenom of asteroidal proportions: ‘the men will stay in the chapel, [the SISTINE chapel]’ until the pope is elected,’ sidesteps the fact that for the Cardinals there is enough food on groaning tables, enough feast to kill an army of gormands for all those days ‘the men will stay in the chapel’.
Many writing about this so-called conclave forget: This is Lent. A many weeks’ long time of deprivation and fasting for EVERY Catholic. The news media, regarding ‘religion’ as usual, misses the big points. Misses the deadly ironies of privilege and vanity amongst too many of the curia.
The pop coverage of the pope election has begun in many quarters to sound like red carpet merde on Oscar night, describing the furnishings, the gowns and capes, the music, the singing. The Vatican is not Hollywood, nor a monarchy– though it sewed up the gowns and capes and crowns and golden accessories like both of the former. It is in actuality, a church group.
Many of us pray that we be granted, for once, a true holy man for pope. Not back slapper. Not child grabber. Not stentorian jabber. A true holy man. Imitatio Cristi. In imitation of The Christ.
Perhaps many of us are fools for hoping for a true holy man, after nearly 4 decades of administrative pomp and admins turning its back, away from the most vulnerable souls, while feasting and fund raising to fill their coffers to overflowing– and then squandering it to pay for their incredibly immoral and stupid decisions about protecting criminals who were their friends. But, then Hope itself, is considered a charism, a gift from Creator.
Though many news reports are fawning as though pope electioneering is equivalent to Queen Elizabeth’s coronation… that is mere made up fantasy. In some there may be an odd pull to have a king perhaps, forgetting that when one has a king, historically, most will become serfs– forbidden to think or act.
A pope is not a monarch. A pope is a mere human like all other humans. A vote of dozens of elderly men does not make a human divinely inspired suddenly.
What is in and on that man’s heart all his life is what makes him either a holy man or a politician.
It was The Christ who said one could not be both.