"New York Times Takes Aim at the Papacy… Again · July 21, 2010"

 by Pastor Hal Mayer

“The Catholic Church continued to heap insult upon injury,” wrote the New York Times, “when it revealed its long-awaited new rules on clergy sex abuse…”

“The church still believes in its own intrinsic holiness despite all evidence to the contrary. It thinks it’s making huge concessions on the unstoppable abuse scandal when it’s taking baby steps. The casuistic document did not issue a zero-tolerance policy to defrock priests after they are found guilty of pedophilia; it did not order bishops to report every instance of abuse to the police; it did not set up sanctions on bishops who sweep abuse under the rectory rug; it did not eliminate the statute of limitations for abused children; it did not tell bishops to stop lobbying legislatures to prevent child-abuse laws from being toughened.”

“There is no moral awakening here. The cruelty and indecency of child abuse once more inspires tactical contrition. All the penitence of the church is grudging and reactive. Church leaders are merely as penitent as they need to be to protect the institution.”

“After the Belgian police bracingly conducted raids on the church hierarchy, inspired in part by the horrifying case of a boy molested for years by his uncle, the bishop of Bruges, a case that the church ignored and covered up for 25 years, the pope did not applaud the more aggressive tack. He condemned it…”  The author also took aim at the Roman Catholic law of an all male priesthood. But last of all, the article pointed out that by abusing the young, is in effect, abusing Jesus Himself.

“‘Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest, you did to me.’ That means that the priests abusing the vulnerable young were doing that to Jesus, raping Jesus. Any clerical functionary who shows more sympathy for the predator priests than for their victims instantly disqualified himself as a follower of Jesus. The cardinals said they must care for their own, going to jail if necessary to protect a priest. We say the same thing, but the ‘our own’ we care for are the victimized, the poor, the violated. They are Jesus.’”

Rome never changes. She does what she has to do to keep her influence if possible. But don’t count the Vatican out of end-time Geopolitics just yet. She is never more wily, never more shrewd, and never more effective than when she is under pressure. The scandal may well be one of the ways the angels are holding back the winds of strife. See Revelation 7:1   Keep the Faith