A Genuine Miracle

Once upon a time, the Catholic Church was a powerful organization that didn't need much publicity to generate revenue. The parishioners came to Mass and donated money to the parish, the diocese, and the Vatican.

Then along came revelations of sexual abuse by the clergy, abuse that was covered up by the powerful bishops who ran the Holy See like a business that needed protection from bad publicity. Their efforts fell short and they discovered that the faithful weren't so inclined to head off to Mass every Sunday and put their pennies on the plate. Revenue fell and those revelations of abuse turned into lawsuits that drove several dioceses into bankruptcy.

In the Vatican, Pope John Paul II presided over the attempt to get the folks back to paying, praying and obeying. When victims of clerical abuse came forward, the perpetrator was shunted to another parish and money was distributed to hush up the chatter. It was all about stifling reports, keeping it under the rug where it had been festering for generations.

The latest diocese to be exposed sits in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Timothy Dolan dealt with the pedophile priests and tried to not rock the boat. He succeeded in part. He was made a Cardinal in New York, but his star has been dimmed by evidence that his steady hand on the tiller required the shifting of pedophiles from one group of innocent children to another.

How to stop this nightmare?

The Vatican has happened upon a true miracle and will soon declare that John Paul II is a saint.

The collective loss of memory is a genuine miracle. It's a far better miracle than the purported cure of a nun who was said to be suffering from Parkinson's disease, which cannot be diagnosed with certainty until the patient's brain is sectioned. That is an analysis that can only be done post-mortem. And the Sister is very much alive.

The man was a saint, the Vatican claims, and will everyone stop mentioning that other apparently saintly man who founded the Legionaries of Christ? Now there's a miracle, that Marciel Maciel had time for so much evangilizing when he was busy fathering children with multiple women and molesting the seminarians.

Until the scope of the clerical sex abuse allegations came out, John Paul II was a beloved figure. The Church is hoping that making him a saint will bring back some of the love, and with that love will come money to fund the Church and pay off the lawsuits from the scandal for which John Paul II is miraculously not held accountable.

Good luck with that. There aren't many sitting in the pews to hear the grand announcement when John Paul II becomes a saint at a speed that is dazzling for the slow-moving bureacracy that governs the Catholic Church.