THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

On his blogsite today, Sandro Magister articulates an obvious but hitherto unasked question (because it was considered unthinkable, improbable and impossible):
After the verdicts against Cardinals Pell and Barbarin, what about trying the pope himself?

Church is under siege and stunned
after the Pell and Barbarin verdicts

March 11, 2019

In Australia, Cardinal George Pell has ended up in prison [as he awaits sentencing]. In France, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, has been given a suspended sentence of six months in jail. And it is not out of the question that other prominent cardinals and bishops could soon end up under the judgment of secular tribunals, charged with having committed or “covered up” sexual abuse against minors.

For the Catholic Church, this opens questions of noteworthy gravity, in the face of which her leadership is showing that it is by no means confident that it knows what to do.

In particular, the following three questionS:
1. A SPECIAL TRIBUNAL TO TRY THE POPE?
Both Pell and Barbarin have been found guilty on the basis of questionable proofs, both in a second trial, after the first had ended without a guilty verdict. For Barbarin, even the prosecutor had asked for acquittal. Both say they are innocent, and have asked for an appeal ruling.

Meanwhile, however, within the Church, the former was prohibited, when the trial was still under way, from the exercise of his public ministry and from contact with minors. And a few days ago, the latter announced his resignation as Archbishop of Lyon, certain that the pope would accept it.

In Pell’s case, the Vatican has announced that the that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith will open a canonical process. And it is likely that the same thing will happen with Barbarin.

But what kind of process? And how? Along general lines, concerning bishops presumed guilty or negligent in matters of abuse, Pope Francis published in June of 2016 an apostolic letter, Come una madre amorevole (Like a loving mother), in which - as he explained afterward at his news conference on the way back from Ireland on August 26 2018 - “it was said that for trying bishops it would be good to set up a special tribunal,” one for all. But he said he himself thought that "this was not practicable,” and opted to resort to a canonical jury that would be set up for each case. As in the case - he presented by way of example - of Guam archbishop Anthony Sablon Apuron, convicted at first instance by the CDF, but whose appeal has been taken in charge by the pope himself, with the assistance of a commission of canonists.

In all this, the procedures continue to be uncertain. Last November, Francis forbade the episcopal conference of the United States to put to a vote the creation of an independent commission of laymen charged with conducting the first hearing on bishops under investigation.

But the alternative solution upheld by Cardinal Blase Cupich, obviously acting for the pope, namely, tp assign first investigation of an accused bishop to the metropolitan of his ecclesiastical province, is also far from being codified. Although Cupich personally presented at the Vatican summit on 'the protection of minors' last February 21-24, he gave no details of any specific plan to deal with accused bishops.

The first objection to Cupich’s proposal is that entrusting the first investigation to the metropolitan - or to another bishop - of the province of the defendant risks putting the judgment back into the hands of clerics who often belong to the same coterie and therefore are tempted to assist each other.

But if there is uncertainty on how to proceed with regard to a bishop presumed to be guilty or negligent, what is to be done when the one under accusation is the pope himself? [Everyone else, when discussing these accusations against Bergoglio, has failed to follow through with the obvious - which they ought to have asked before the recent summit, as, IMHO, I was saying they should. Why is everyone so gung-ho about trying all other bishops suspected of cover-up except Jorge Bergoglio? Whose offenses, at least prima facie, are among the worst cases of episcopal cover-up we know of - the worst if one considers that at least two of his Argentine proteges were/are bishops (Maccherone and Zanchetta) not to mention his most notorious protege so far, Theodore McCarrick

Pope Francis has not yet responded to those who - like former US nuncio, Carlo Maria Viganò - have accused him of supporting and promoting to the e McCarrick, in spite of the fact that his multiple abuses were known to him. And he continues to keep quiet more than six months after having promised journalists at the press conference on the way back from Ireland, on August 26 2018: “Study [the case], and then I will speak.”

Meanwhile, weighing even more on Francis is the case of Argentine bishop Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta, his friend and spiritual son since the latter was undersecretary of the Argentine episcopal conference. The pope made him Bishop of Oran in 2013, soon after he became pope, then after Zanhetta suddenly resigned citing 'health reasons' in 2017, he was promptly elevated by Bergoglio to a Vatican sinecure created for him at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), in spite of the fact that very detailed charges of bad behavior by Zanchetta had been sent by churchmen of the diocese of Orán to the competent authorities, in Argentina and Rome, on several occasions from 2015 to 2017. [The worst part is that these accusations included 'financial mismanagement', which it now turns out, the pope himself had ordered Zanchetta not to disclose he had sold two church properties in Oran so that the diocese could continue to qualify as a 'needy' diocese.]

On this too Francis is keeping quiet.[Worse, his spokesman insisted that the Vatican never heard of the accusations against Zanchetta until late last year.] The only decision that has been made known is that the Vatican has ordered a preliminary investigation by the current Bishop of Oran into the charges on Zanchetta. [Rather academic, and yet another subterfuge, in view of the written depositions sent by the accusers to the nuncio in Argentina and to the Vatiacn.]

And if this investigatio should confirm the responsibility of Pope Francis in theZanchetta case, it remains to be seen how the imperative of a fair trial might be reconciled with the norms of canon law, whose canon 1404 establishes that “the First See is judged by no one", and §2 of canon 1405 specifies that "a judge cannot review an act… by the Roman Pontiff without his prior mandate."

2. A REGULAR OR “ADMINISTRATIVE” CANONICAL PROCESS?
In the case of McCarrick, last February 15, the CDF ruled for his reduction to the lay state, at the end of an administrative penal process, namely one that was simplified and abbreviated, as opposed to a juridical trial.

The congregation almost always proceeds like this, by the extrajudicial route, in the thousands of cases that come under its jurisdiction in matters of abuse. With McCarrick, this made it possible to arrive rapidly at the sentence of reduction to the lay state, before the summit convened at the Vatican from February 21 to 24. But this brought along with it - perhaps deliberately - a grave disadvantage: the impossibility of reconstructing in a judicial setting the network of complicity and of favors, up to the highest levels of the hierarchy, that McCarrick enjoyed for years, from those who nevertheless knew of his misdeeds.

Not to mention the incomprehensible delay in the publication of everything that turns out to be documented concerning McCarrick, “in the archives of the dicasteries and offices of the Holy See.” The announcement of the publication of these documents, as also of the results of the preliminary investigation that had led to his removal from the college of cardinals, was made last October 6.

And the following day Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the congregation for bishops, confirmed in a letter to the former nuncio Viganò that McCarrick had in effect been under confidential “restrictions,” since 2006, against traveling and appearing in public, “because of rumors around his behavior,” restrictions that he had never obeyed. But since October 6 more than five months have gone by, and still the dossier has not been published as announced.

So then, what procedure would be adopted by the CDF in investigating Cardinal Pell, to begin with? Given that the congregation will wait in any case, before issuing its own ruling, for the result of the appeal process requested by Pell in Australia (preliminary hearing on June 5-6), one must keep in mind what the Holy See customarily does in cases pursues an administrative process after a secular tribunal has already issued its verdict; namely, to take the findings of the secular tribunal as its basis for judgment. And therefore, if Pell loses his appeal, this would be y be followed by an ecclesiastical conviction as well, with the reduction of Pell to the lay state.

This is why it is likely that Pell’s attorneys will insist that the Holy See not adopt an administrative procedure for their client, but a regular canonical process, more unshackled from the results of the Australian trial. In other words, more autonomous, more free, more sovereign.

3. WOULD THE CDF EXONERATE OR CONVICT THE CARDINALS - BOTH AT A STEEP PRICE
And what will happen when the Holy See has issued its ruling on the Pell case?
- If it convicts Pell, to go along with his defeat in appeals court, there will be great applause from secular public opinion, as also from the champions of “zero tolerance” within the Church.
- But protests will also be raised by those who will point out to a miscarriage of justice because Pell was deprived of his elementary rights to a fair trial and the inconsistency of the accusations against him. Moreover, a me-too verdict from the CDF would be seen as a ruinous act of submission by the Church to the secular powers.
- If the CDF acquits Pell despite his defeat in Australia's appeals court,
some will admire the autonomy - and the courage - of the Church in evaluating the effective absence of proofs in support of the accusations and in deciding as a result.
- But there will certainly be heated reactions on the part not only of secular public opinion, but also of those sectors of the Church that, in any case, would consider a bishop irredeemable for an accusation of covering up clerical sex abuse, even if he is acquitted in civilian court.

This has been the case with Cardinal Barbarin against whom a former magistrate of the interdiocesan tribunal of Lyon, Pierre Vignon, publicly called for his resignation last summer, before the second trial against him had been completed and after a first trial had ended with acquittal:

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“I have been asked repeatedly how I would react if the cardinal were to be declared innocent by the tribunal. The reply is very simple. The conscience of a Christian need not wait for the sentence of a tribunal to know what must be done. If Cardinal Batbarin is not convicted, in any case he is no longer the person who can present himself before victims.”

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And this is also the message of the film “Grâce à Dieu,” the subject and target of which is none other than Cardinal Barbarin, released shortly before the tribunal of Lyon was to issue its sentence.

Returning to the case of Cardinal Pell, there are some who are even afraid that the Australian government - under the pressure of public opinion - could interpret an ecclesiastical acquittal of the cardinal as an implicit condemnation of the judicial system of Australia, and as a result break off relations with the Holy See and push for its expulsion from the association of sovereign states. [So they break off relations. Big deal. But pushing to expel the Vatican from 'the association of sovereign states'? What does that mean: push to expel the UN's principal mouthpiece to the world? Good luck with the UN on that!]

Whether this dramatic outcome proves true or not, this is a time of siege of the Church.


SIDEBAR:
The pope's Lenten retreat

Christopher Altieri reports in Catholic Herald today that Mons. Zanchetta is with the pope and the rest of the Roman Curia on their annual Lenten
retreat in Ariccia, outside Rome.

(Altieri reports it as if there was anything wrong with that, other than confirming that Zanchetta is still considered part of the Curial family. I should imagine
both Zanchetta and the pope need a cleansing Lenten retreat -and whoever else among the 64 people gathered in Ariccia are among those plausibly and/or simply
maliciously 'outed' by Frederic Martel in SODOMA).

To preach this year's Lenten exercises, the pope chose 50-year-old Benedictine Abbot Bernardo Gianni of the Abbey of San Miniato al Monte near Florence, who seemed
to really get into the spirit of Carnival just before Lent. (Thanks to Marco Tosatti's blogsite for the photos)


The Exercises will end on Friday, March 15. During the week of the Spiritual Exercises, all audiences are suspended, including the General Audience of Wednesday, March 1.