The global network of spin-doctors for the Vatican has engaged itself in the latest effort to defend the pope.
I mentioned a Missouri Synod effort not long ago. Now George Neumayr (of Catholic World Report) is adding his perspective.
Their counter-attack explains that the modern, secular world does not like traditional Roman Catholicism. Lapsed Catholics are especially vindictive.
The defensive efforts are irrelevant. The Vatican is in trouble because the entire Roman Catholic apparatus has covered up its crimes for several decades, hoping everyone would forget, punishing anyone who became serious about reform. The scandals in America go back much earlier. Goodbye, Good Men traces some of the early scandals and the massive cover-ups of the time.
Starting in the 1980s, the Roman process of moving criminal priests to new locations became public. After 20 years of coverage, the latest examples are in Europe, Ireland in particular.
The best defense for the Vatican would be to discipline the criminals and those who have covered up for them. Will that happen? In the old LCA, one bishop went bonkers to such an extent that he retreated to his basement and made musical instruments, instead of working. His last report was read by many as the wackiest thing ever put into print. I read it - wow. They gave him one of the largest congregations in the LCA, where he could collect a huge salary before retiring. That is how the system doles out discipline, even when the issue is obvious and rather harmless. An ineffective LCA bishop probably saved many souls just by being mentally incompetent.
I keep reading about these bad priests and teachers being a minority and just a local problem. That hardly seems likely, given the extent of the reports and the countries involved. Their seminaries and teaching orders became highly refined recruiting centers.
Does anyone wonder what will happen to ELCA, now that the older liberals are quitting in disgust, thanks to the gay lib ordination vote in 2009? Consider these restrictions for enrollment and ordination:
- Opposition to women's ordination has been impossible for decades.
- Support of the Confessions would be miraculous, because most ELCA seminarians hardly know the Catechism, let alone the Book of Concord.
- Defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman would be viewed as Stone Age, bigoted, and anti-Gospel.
- The men and women disciplined mildly in the past would be paraded as heroes for the future.
- Only the politics of the Extreme Left would be normal.
What kind of ordinands will emerge from those ELCA hotbeds? They settled a $40 million lawsuit years ago, thanks to the new thinking about ordination.
