Vatican Cringe-a-thon Sex Abuse Summit Ends


Finally the torturous sex abuse summit in Rome has drawn to a close. Torturous because it has been so incredibly cringe-worthy to see the Cardinals and Bishops Pope Francis has chosen to lead this summit trot out errors, buzzwords and meaningless platitudes on a world stage. And no one is buying what they are selling.

Key moments of cringe for me were Archbishop Scicluna, who has already shown himself to be the Pope's useful idiot, stating the direct opposite to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Cardinal Marx telling everyone how the Church had destroyed documents to protect abusers:
The admission that there will be no transparency or accountability, despite the constant repeating of the mantra "accountability, transparency..."
The real issue regarding abuse was totally ignored by practically everyone!
Although a few journalists brought it up:
Then there was the unsurprising news that notorious English language media attaché of the Holy See Press Office Fr Thomas Rosica, who is consistently deeply problematic (see here, here, here, etc, etc) was exposed as having engaged in prolific 'cut and paste' plagiarism for over a decade.

Ultimately there were no real surprises in terms of content, information, style or conclusion. I have to say I was surprised by the usually pro-Francis Crux reporter Ines San Martin who asked the most pertinent question of the week:
We now know that it was the Pope himself who rehabilitated McCarrick who was censured by Pope Benedict XVI, the National Catholic Reporter was rejoicing about this in 2014.

The Pope knew about Zanchetta and promoted him.

When Pope Francis appointed Bishop Juan Barros to lead the Diocese of Osorno in 2015 he admonished those who were telling him the bishop was a problem and said to them:
“You, in all good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they haven’t come forward,”
And he doubled down on the plane home, saying:
“No one has come forward. They haven’t provided any evidence for a judgment. This is all a bit vague. It’s something that can’t be accepted.”
It took Cardinal O'Malley to tell the truth about the eight page report he personally handed to the Pope about the issue.

The Pope now has an overwhelming record of personally protecting and promoting abusers too long to list here (most of it has been listed here).

And this is the thing. We've heard it all before. And Scicluna's "non-answer" says everything you need to know. Ask yourself if you think it is moral to work for someone who you know is not doing the thing you are employed to say he is doing?

So what did we all learn from the Summit? What incredible insights were we blessed with as a result of so much word salad? Incredibly, Archbishop Scicluna says that one of the event's main outcomes is the startling discovery that cover-up is as bad as abuse. Really? This is new is it? We didn't know that before now??
Michael Matt sums the whole thing up well in this video:








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