Benedict's Shock Troops Sent To Ireland To War On Liberals, Not Heal Clerical Abuse

Undoubtedly Archbishop Dolan will get his coveted promotion to Cardinal now that he has agreed to be a member of the visitation team who will beat--I mean sermonize-- the Irish Catholic Church back into submission to Rome and it's theology of the priesthood.

New Vatican campaign to clamp down on 'liberal opinion'
By John Cooney - Irish Independent - Monday June 07, 2010

VATICAN investigators to Ireland appointed by Pope Benedict XVI are to clamp down on liberal secular opinion in an intensive drive to re-impose traditional respect for clergy, according to informed sources in the Catholic Church.

The nine-member team led by two cardinals will be instructed by the Vatican to restore a traditional sense of reverence among ordinary Catholics for their priests, the Irish Independent has learned.

Priests will be told not to question in public official church teaching on controversial issues such as the papal ban on birth control or the admission of divorced Catholics living with new partners to the sacraments -- especially Holy Communion.

Theologians will be expected to teach traditional doctrine by constantly preaching to lay Catholics of attendance at Mass and to return to the practice of regular confession, which has been largely abandoned by adults since the 1960s.

An emphasis will be placed on an evangelisation campaign to overcome the alienation of young people scandalised by the spate of sexual abuse of children and by later cover-ups of paedophile clerics by leaders of the institutional church. (This will be a trick and a half since Benedict is bound and determined to shove the whole problem back down our throats as the solution.)

A major thrust of the Vatican investigation will be to counteract materialistic and secularist attitudes, which Pope Benedict believes have led many Irish Catholics to ignore church disciplines and become lax in following devotional practices such as going on pilgrimages and doing penance.

Bishops and priests will be instructed to preach to their congregations the unchanging central message of Jesus Christ about love, healing and repentance. (As meted out by the magical celibate all powerful priesthood.)

While the restoration of church discipline and pious practices such as praying to Our Lady and the saints will be welcomed by regular church-goers, the Vatican investigation is likely to face a backlash from liberal Catholics who want more accountability and democracy in church decision-making. (The backlash will come from MATURE Catholics who may or may not be liberal and could very well be conservatives who understand religious authority without accountability is tyrany, not salvation.)

Visitation

Vatican officials are finalising the precise terms of the instructions for the investigators named last week by Pope Benedict, who initiated an 'Apostolic Visitation' last March in his pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland.

The investigators are clearing their diaries to visit Ireland's four principal archdioceses, the national seminaries and study centres run by religious orders in the autumn.

In the wake of the shocking Murphy report into clerical child abuse, the conservative Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, will examine the study courses conducted for trainee priests at the national seminaries in St Patrick's College, Maynooth, and the Pontifical Irish College in Rome.
At a meeting held in Maynooth last month, Archbishop Dolan told a gathering of priests "to return to basics" and to ground their ministry in "prayer, humility and a rediscovery of identity".

Archbishop Dolan's address, titled "God is the only treasure people desire to find in a priest", was the high point of the Irish church's celebration of The Year of the Priest, a campaign to encourage vocations to the priesthood.

The hardline address was enthusiastically endorsed by Cardinal Sean Brady, the Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh.

This week, as part of the Vatican's rigorous restoration policy, a widely promoted rally will be staged in Rome to cap what Pope Benedict has called "The Year of the Priest".

Thousands of priests from across the world, including from Ireland, are expected to attend the showcase event which is planned as a major spectacle trumpeting the special status of the priesthood.

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If this wasn't so incredibly sad it would be funny. This amounts to Benedict declaring a civil war with in the Irish Church itself. The shrink in me see this as one man acting out his own internal war through his external position. Unfortunately Benedict has the power to do this. If for no other reason than this one, the power structure in the Church has to change.

This visitation is not about the love, healing and repentance which would actually be healing. It's about blaming the laity for the sins of the father's. It's about demanding the laity bow down before the very clerical system which abused them and piously beg for more. This is truly pathological.

I have one last observation. It's no accident that Ireland has been chosen as the place to wage this war. Ireland has a history of tolerating an abusive hierarchy and an abusive Church for the good of their souls. Rome is betting Irish Catholics are willing to undergo another round of abuse for the sake of this 'marriage'. Somehow I think Rome has misread Ireland exactly the way an abusive spouse misreads the anger of the abused spouse. There is a limit. There is a time when the abused finally says no more, not ever again, I have had enough. I don't care what you say. I can no longer trust or believe anything you say because in the final analysis it's always and forever more all about you.

I think Ireland has reached this point with Rome. I think a lot of us are reaching this point with Rome. It's just too bad there is no mechanism in place through which Benedict can be sent off to enact the drama his own internal conflicts in the solitude of his own soul. Perhaps Irish Catholics can send him that message.