When truly serious (perhaps even criminal) issues arise with a pope, what is the expected or recommended action from good Catholics? I ask sincerely as a curious Protestant. Do you start rattling chains locally and hope it continues on up, turn to the press, go straight to the Vatican, is there a process?
Trump isn’t a sovereign. The American people are sovereign in that sense. The Pope really is one.
The traditional remedies for bad sovereigns are revolution and secession. One of those options is available to every Catholic individually. As you were pointing out recently, what happens to Church finances if this nonresponse drives away lots of people? If you can’t trust the priest around your kids, how many families will be in church very often?
Keeping boys away from priests isn't hard to do, and a more generous amount of parents present on "field trips" is probably all one needs.
There are some who will leave the Church, using this as an excuse, just as there are many who left over divorce, claiming that 'the Church wants too much money.' Etc., etc., etc.
Personally, I'm not a member because of a Pope, or a Bishop, or a priest. I'm a member because I prefer salvation to the alternative and because the Church offers that, along with a metric ton of cohesive teachings and thought on the matter.
The Pope should indeed insist on silence and prayer and separation -- from all priests who have been sinfully homosexually active. Priests, bishops, cardinals -- those who have been sinning should be sent, by the Pope, to be silent and prayerful in monasteries and seminars away from the normal faithful.
Those unable/ unwilling to refrain from sinful sexual activity should leave, or be excommunicated.
The Pope doesn't want to do the dirty work of cleaning up the legal but immoral homosexual actions of adult priests, and the lies, coverups, mutual back-rubbing going on in the Vatican's "gay Mafia" which has long had too much power.
I think I'm with Dad29 on this, to the extent a Protestant has a view at all. No church that I'm aware of has ever been free from scandal about sin in general or even sex in particular. What's special about the current scandal, to my mind, is the abuse of children. Parents shouldn't have any difficulty keeping their kids from getting trapped in private with a priest. If you're willing to reject a church because it's staffed by sinful human beings, you can't have a church.
That's not to say that I wouldn't like to see huge numbers of Catholic clergy and laity rising up in protest of the omerta program. At the very least, the laity have the right to withhold financial support--they can always give directly to charities they trust. The clergy should be going right to the wall with truth-telling and refusal to be enablers. Loyalty to a church doesn't absolve anyone of those obligations, a view supported by our highest authority during His life. The trick is to distinguish between disobedience in service of personal preference or convenience, on the other hand, and disobedience in service of conscience, on the other.
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Silence doesn't seem to be quite the proper response to wolves pretending to be shepherds.
Prayer certainly--for some saints and maybe a brand-new lay teaching ministry.
As Chrysostom apparently didn't say, "Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops."
It isn't a new observation--I recently read the Chronicles of Matthew Paris. That isn't happy reading.
The Pope's school of accountability seems to be one of "La, la, la; I can't hear you."
Eric Hines
When truly serious (perhaps even criminal) issues arise with a pope, what is the expected or recommended action from good Catholics? I ask sincerely as a curious Protestant. Do you start rattling chains locally and hope it continues on up, turn to the press, go straight to the Vatican, is there a process?
There is no way to un-seat a Pope under Canon Law. He may resign, of course.
He's also a sovereign--akin to Trump--so the only civil-criminal charges he could be tried for would be arising in the Vatican itself.
Not likely.
Trump isn’t a sovereign. The American people are sovereign in that sense. The Pope really is one.
The traditional remedies for bad sovereigns are revolution and secession. One of those options is available to every Catholic individually. As you were pointing out recently, what happens to Church finances if this nonresponse drives away lots of people? If you can’t trust the priest around your kids, how many families will be in church very often?
You're right about Trump/Pope/sovereign. THANKS!
Keeping boys away from priests isn't hard to do, and a more generous amount of parents present on "field trips" is probably all one needs.
There are some who will leave the Church, using this as an excuse, just as there are many who left over divorce, claiming that 'the Church wants too much money.' Etc., etc., etc.
Personally, I'm not a member because of a Pope, or a Bishop, or a priest. I'm a member because I prefer salvation to the alternative and because the Church offers that, along with a metric ton of cohesive teachings and thought on the matter.
The Pope should indeed insist on silence and prayer and separation -- from all priests who have been sinfully homosexually active. Priests, bishops, cardinals -- those who have been sinning should be sent, by the Pope, to be silent and prayerful in monasteries and seminars away from the normal faithful.
Those unable/ unwilling to refrain from sinful sexual activity should leave, or be excommunicated.
The Pope doesn't want to do the dirty work of cleaning up the legal but immoral homosexual actions of adult priests, and the lies, coverups, mutual back-rubbing going on in the Vatican's "gay Mafia" which has long had too much power.
I think I'm with Dad29 on this, to the extent a Protestant has a view at all. No church that I'm aware of has ever been free from scandal about sin in general or even sex in particular. What's special about the current scandal, to my mind, is the abuse of children. Parents shouldn't have any difficulty keeping their kids from getting trapped in private with a priest. If you're willing to reject a church because it's staffed by sinful human beings, you can't have a church.
That's not to say that I wouldn't like to see huge numbers of Catholic clergy and laity rising up in protest of the omerta program. At the very least, the laity have the right to withhold financial support--they can always give directly to charities they trust. The clergy should be going right to the wall with truth-telling and refusal to be enablers. Loyalty to a church doesn't absolve anyone of those obligations, a view supported by our highest authority during His life. The trick is to distinguish between disobedience in service of personal preference or convenience, on the other hand, and disobedience in service of conscience, on the other.
Another way of telling their 1 billion human slaves to "Obey Authority".
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