What's really needed from the next pope

Yeah, sure, ex-priest Brian Frawley's lesson from corporate America is well taken: the Catholic Church needs a pope with "the vision thing," as George Bush, Sr. named it, dismissively, not just a competent insider who knows how the Church machine works.

Others are saying the Church needs an African pope, or a Latin American pope.

But Frawley and others are ignoring the elephant in the room: decades of sexual abuse by priests.  The Church's cover-ups in the U.S. have already irreparably harmed the Church's standing there. The scandal is just starting to be uncovered in Europe. And it is still under wraps in Latin America and the rest of the world. You can bet victims there will be coming forward for decades.

A recent Pew poll of U.S. Catholics found that 34 percent named sex abuse and pedophilia among priests as the Church's most urgent issue. No other issue even broke double digits. 

There are about 70 million Catholics in the U.S., about 23 percent of the U.S. population. Only Brazil (127 million), Mexico (96 million) and the Philippines (76 million) have more Catholics than the U.S. 

So this should be a wake-up call for the Vatican. The next pope should start by turning over to law enforcement authorities every bit of evidence it has about priests who engaged in sexual abuse, starting with the U.S.. The Vatican should adopt a zero-tolerance policy for abuse and a mechanism for easy reporting of abuse, proper follow-up, and outside/third-party reviews of all reports of abuse. Just for starters.

In other words, the next pope's top priority must be to clean out the Church's stalls. This is in the Church's own best interests, although the old guys in charge seem to believe just the opposite. In fact everything else is just window dressing. 

To pick a pope, learn lessons from business world

By Brian Frawley

March 8, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/08/opinion/frawley-choosing-a-pope/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7

What a Catholic priest must do to get noticed these days

Just in case you thought the premise of the hit TV show Breaking Bad was a bit far-fetched, here is yet more proof that truth is stranger than fiction. (I'm late to the game on BB; I'm only through Season 2 so far.)

Jeez, it looks like we're running out of places to hammer any more nails in the Catholic Church's coffin. 

(BTW, I have concluded, based on all available evidence, that for the Church to take action against one of its priests the first time he is caught committing a felony or molesting somebody, he has to be running buck naked, high on PCP, through a shopping mall on Black Friday on live TV while carrying a sack-full of kidnapped kindergartners and screaming, "I am Satan Claus, come and get me!" Talk about having somebody's back! And the job security! Man, even the Cosa Nostra isn't as tight-knit and loyal to its own as the Catholic Church.)

Cross-Dressing, Show-Tunes-Loving Connecticut Priest Busted for Selling Meth and Laundering Money Through His Sex Shop

By Neetan Zimmerman

January 18, 2013 | Gawker

URL: http://gawker.com/5977011/cross+dressing-connecticut-priest-busted-for-selling-meth-and-laundering-money-through-his-sex-shop

Pope: Internet alienates everybody except pedophile priests

Ah, Benny Boy, what superb timing you have. The day before you issued your warning to today's youth about the alienating effects of technology and the Internet, one of your priests was arrested for having 21,000 child sex abuse images on his computer.

Leave it to Gentle Ben to condemn harmless iPod owners and Internet surfers for the specks in their eyes while ignoring the beam in his Church's eye: ordained sex predators on every continent where the Church operates.

If the Catholic Church had any sense they'd put this mean old fogey of a pope into the old priests' home, before he manages to alienate even more people than the Internet which he despises.

P.S. -- Hey, kids, don't forget to get your daily dose of "disorientation" on the Internet at: http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm. They even have a special section: "Abuse of Minors. The Church's Response." As per usual, the Holy See is working overtime issuing speeches, pastoral letters, communiques, and press releases to resolve this grave social ill that it created. (Pssst! Yo, Vatican! You might want to try to do something to stop all your priests screwing little kids though! Just a thought.)

BishopAccountability: 6-10 thousand pedophile U.S. priests

My God, this stat explains it all:

"In the U.S. there have been at least six thousand priests identified as pedophiles since bishopaccountability started counting in 2003, likely ten thousand will be the total number, since 1950, when research is done."

The Vatican couldn't afford to expose all the pedophiles in its ranks, because it would have destroyed the Church. Better to deny, delay, and make quiet civil settlements.

Face It: Catholic Church Now Not Credible on Any Issue re Sex, Marriage, or Children, after Hiding Pedophile Priest Crimes

By Kay Ebeling (Journalist and Adult Victim of Pedophile Priest Crime Survivor)

March 21, 2010 | AlterNet

URL: http://blogs.alternet.org/cityofangelsonalternet/2010/03/21/face-it-catholic-church-no-longer-has-credibility-on-any-issues-involving-sex-marriage-or-children-after-decades-of-hiding-pedophile-priest-crimes/