Pope Francis’ penitential pilgrimage? Why again?

Trudeau’s apology speech to be released soon?

Cadaver lynching.

I had multiple titles and just went with all of them

Pope Francis is able to travel again (for now) and his first destination will be Canada. He is there to apologize for mass graves of indigenous people, isn’t he? But no bodies have been uncovered yet have they?[1][2][3] No excavations have taken place yet. Shouldn’t that happen first?

Churches were burned because of it, though not governmental buildings, even though it was the government who had taken the kids from their parents and told Church institutions to take care of them with little funds.

Maybe the Church shouldn’t except the status of scapegoat. Seems like a parody of authentic Christianity, but what do I know?

I don’t want Francis to go without a pilgrimage. Maybe he can do one for Zanchetta’s victims instead. Zanchetta, the man he promoted and shielded, even as more and more credible accusations of sexual abuse against him piled up.[4][5] Maybe he could do penance for the victims whom he had investigated instead of you know, the abuser?

Or maybe he could do a pilgrimage to the several victims of McCarrick who weren’t mentioned in the Vatican’s own McCarrick report (after 2 years of work)

Why did the media eat up that report again? Even taking their cues right from the Vatican’s own summary? That’s modern journalism, I guess. Why did the Vatican even have a narrative summary? Oh right, to proclaim a narrative. Objective and factual report scan speak for themselves, half-truths and lies need spin-doctors.

Maybe he could make a pilgrimage to the abuse victims from the diocese of San Diego led by McElroy, the man Francis will be making cardinal soon.

Just some suggestions.

It is easy to apologize for the (supposed) crimes of your predecessors. Specifically, if it didn’t involve one person. If it can be blamed on the institution from the past. It fits in well with any progressive way of thinking, but it risks perverting this. Love for progress lead to a stereotypical view of the past and allows the past to be used as a scapegoat. Anti-Conservatism and anti-Traditionalism become easy fixes.

Corpses are easy to put on trial. The Catholic Church knows all about that. The Cadaver Synod is quite infamous, but that period was known as the papal dark ages and at least then they were willing to name the defendant and they at least got a living person to represent him.

The perversion to ritually scapegoat the past has been both disproportionate and extreme with Catholicism. Both secular media and Progressives within the Church tend to throw out all critical thinking, reason or respect for due process when attacking Conservative prelates (Cardinal Pell and Cardinal Woelki stand out).[6]

But if such reformists themselves cover up abuse this tends to be ignored. Francis’ handling of Zanchetta did not get nearly the coverage it would have if Benedict XVI had dared to pull anything like that.

Progressive Catholics can cover up abuse with relative impunity. They can even attack the Church as a traditional institution at the same time. It is the institution and specifically her traditions that are responsible as Cardinal De Kesel from Brussels has done.

It is like a school shooter lecturing us about the need for more gun control.

The victim mentality is quite sickening. The abstract institution is to blame. Not the one actually covering up the abuse.

It feels weird to try to explain the Catholic Church to some of its bishops, but either you are Traditionalists and you believe Christ founded the Church and that its traditional structures are unchangeable, or you are more progressive and skeptical and believe it is a historical development. Then it is a human institution led by flawed humans, and when you led your diocese and covered up abuse there, you did that. The Church has no magical power to cause you to do evil.

Instead of blaming institutions and traditions from the past, we should look at what is happening now. What we still haven’t learned or maybe even things we have forgotten.

It is easy to point fingers at our grandparents. And it is really easy for the state to pretend that society 50+ years ago was theocratic. It wasn’t. And if the state could be wrong then, if the state could violate people’s rights in the most horrible ways, maybe we need more checks and balances, instead of less. Maybe the expansion of state-power with the decline of the Church needs to be contained.

That the media has become a willing enabler of abuse cover ups in the Catholic Church under Francis is a terrible scandal. Unverified grave stories regarding institutions from half a century ago, seem to matter more than the Argentinian, German and American abusers Francis has and sometimes still is protecting right now.

What angers me even more is that people like Richard Dawkins haven’t tried to have Francis arrested and tried for crimes against humanity yet. Are New Atheists really alright with religious leaders covering up and enabling child sexual abuse, if these leaders are more in line with a Progressive view of life?

I guess praying that Sam Harris will prove the hero of genuine non-ideological atheism would be a weird self-contradictory thing to do right?

Altman Beten

Sources:

1. https://nypost.com/2022/05/27/kamloops-mass-grave-debunked-biggest-fake-news-in-canada/
2. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-mystery-of-canada-s-indigenous-mass-graves
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHjacKNHAyw
4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/argentine-catholic-bishop-gustavo-zanchetta-sentenced-sexual-abuse-pope-francis
5. https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-americas/2022/06/jailed-argentine-bishops-lawyer-sent-by-vatican-to-investigate-priests-of-his-diocese
6. https://www.mariabode.nl/mensen/jezuietenpater-kardinaal-woelki-is-mislukt/