"Father knows best."
Every time I see a stupid, reactionary, and patronizing action by the Vatican, the Holy See reminds us all once again that they are not to be judged by mere human law. No, their stupidities transcend all normal classifications of idiocy, soaring into rarefied realms of blithe intransigent irrationality with utter glee. The problem is when they do several stupid or outright evil things at once. Which moronic action should they be criticized for first?
The latest choice is between commenting on the arrest of Fr. Roy Bourgeois, an American priest leading a protest by participants in Rome for a Women’s Ordination Conference last weekend. But it is not the foiling of the demonstration — there’ll be more of those soon from other groups — it is the reminder of what’s at stake for the Vatican: their power base and the sexual-political claims that support it.
Or perhaps I should rant about the Holy See’s simultaneous call for a “Central World Bank” to solve the planet’s current economic woes. One might imagine that after the Vatican Bank scandals, the P2 rogue Masonic lodge infiltration, and the Calvi murder, Rome would be far too embarrassed to lecture the financiers, even if the rest of the international banking community is in disgrace also, but not so. Like the Scarlet Woman of Revelation, Rome has no shame, even though the Institute for Religious Works, as its bank is called in Vatican doublespeak, was fined over 23 million euros last December for money laundering!
To me, the interesting thing is what these issues all have in common: paternalism.
Since last summer, the Vatican has defined women’s ordination as a “grave crime” to be handled by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, (that is, the Inquisition) just like child sex abuse by priests. A spokesman said that mentioning both in the same document wasn’t equating them, no, just codifying them as the most serious canonical crimes Rome deals with. That’s pure jesuitry, like saying terrorism and kidnapping aren’t equivalent just because the FBI investigates both. They are not, but the understanding that both are vile makes them alike. Putting child abuse and women’s ordination into the same category is a slap at all victims of clergy sex abuse and all women who would serve their God at the altar.
So what is it that is so utterly wicked about women saying Mass or hearing confession? So evil that it ranks right up there with a priest raping a child?
The thing is, Rome cannot act any more forcefully to repress women than by threatening them (again) with the Inquisition. But the old men are stuck in a bind. Their system of power is based on Christ having only ordained men — therefore, only humans with (unused) penises allowed. For celibacy makes them special. The willing sacrifice of their sexuality earns them (in their twisted view) the right to be held in awe by the laity, all the privileges they enjoy, and all that juicy power.
No wonder the bitter greybeards of the Curia will never allow into their club any men who admit to using their penises sexually, much less women. Yet the open secret is that celibacy is not necessary to be a priest: St. Peter was married, as are many married Byzantine Rite Roman Catholic priests! Therefore celibacy cannot be made into dogma, so instead they’ll thunder, like any father pressed into a corner, “Because I said so!”
These anti-sexual shenanigans relate to the world economic order because the Vatican cannot think in any other way than authoritarian paternalism. As the Roman Church has since Constantine, the pope calls for top-down running of the world by the elite. Let the rich manage the poor, and let the Church guide them both.
The document’s agenda is boldly announced in its title: Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority. And it does not hesitate in stating that the goal is nothing less than “a public Authority with universal jurisdiction”; in other words, a world government.
The pope’s note has the expected criticism of capitalism, bravely opposing “the idolatry of the market”. But this is not to do anybody any favors, but rather to form a New World Order. As the document says (emphasis added):
Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world authority and to regional authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders, which are in fact already very eroded in a globalizes world.
The World Central Bank would impose taxes on financial transactions, too.
Such taxation would be very useful in promoting global development and sustainability according to the principles of social justice and solidarity. It could also contribute to the creation of a world reserve fund to support the economies of the countries hit by crisis as well as the recovery of their monetary and financial system…
Despite the talk of “social justice and solidarity”, this does not sound like anything Jesus would say. Instead of hobnobbing with the elite, I think he would more likely be organizing farm collectives, soup kitchens, and empowering the poor. He might even be leading the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Jesus was not about restoring corrupt, broken financial systems. He had no interest in rewarding the rich for their greed. This is the sort of thing Benedict’s savior actually had to say about the plutocrats:
But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
(Luke 6:24-26)
As for “social justice”, back in the Twentieth Century, certain liberal theologians, especially in Latin America, began to reconsider the Gospel’s social teaching. They developed the radical idea that there should be a “preferential option for the poor“; that is, in public policy, the effect on the poorest citizens should always be considered first. This led to liberation theology which applied the Gospel in terms of a struggle for liberation against economic and other oppression.
Liberation theology, ironically, grew out of the liberal milieu of Vatican II. Young Joseph Ratzinger was a prominent thinker in these circles, but being traumatized during the student protests of 1968, shifted hard to the right.
His ally, John Paul II, the Polish pope, was a committed anti-Communist would have nothing to do with Jesuit fellow travelers and Maoists as he saw them. Liberation theology was all but condemned as heresy by John Paul II, though the social pronouncements coming from Vatican II have never been officially denied.
Benedict, the reborn autocrat, when he became the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith totally supported the crackdown. Old allies were silenced, right-wing regimes pacified. And so the poor are not to be liberated, not until the Millennial Kingdom, if then.
So the poor are treated the same way as women and clergy abuse victims, and pretty much everybody else. As children needing to be told what to do.
In fact, if this latest pronouncement from Rome doesn’t sound like the world system of the Antichrist the Protestants have long been warning about, I don’t know what does. And if Rome is the Scarlet Woman, what then?
Then I heard another voice from heaven say:
“‘Come out of her, my people,’
so that you will not share in her sins,
so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
for her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes.
Give back to her as she has given;
pay her back double for what she has done.
Pour her a double portion from her own cup.
Give her as much torment and grief
as the glory and luxury she gave herself.
In her heart she boasts,
‘I sit enthroned as queen.
I am not a widow;
I will never mourn.’
Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.
(Rev. 18:4-8)