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| RC Pennsylvania Bishop's CEO Mission Statement (dedacted) |
Last week a news dump from Harrisburg Diocese and the rest now to cover all eight dioceses more or less in the past few years of gross mismanagement from bishops and ruling archbishops who not only lack compassion not only for children but for people in general I would imagine. What kind of two faced local church CEO gets away with ignoring the cries and hurt of the least of us, the defenseless among us. etc. Well American Business CEOs can get away with taking away benefits, stripping jobs and trashing treasuries (pension funds) without legal or social consequences and still get bigger and bigger bonuses for protecting the shareholders at home and or Rome?
The revised John Jay Report on Systemic Abuse of Children of 2011 suggested that priests ordained in the 1940s and 1950s lacked social skills and could not on a micro level deal with the social revolutions of the 1960s with it social explosions of sex (birth control), drugs and rock and roll.
That the explosion of demand of the upcoming Boomer Generation being banged out by returning GIs and their mates was a demand on in two cases, a visionary building plan for more schools and seminarians / convents to fill the traditional cheap Medieval slave labor based on the wonderfully corrupt concept of celibacy, one of sacrifice at the vocations crowd at street level and more gold cups, champagne, limousines and caviar at the management level of all this. And who but dinosaurs like Spellman and Dougherty and Cushing of the old school of kiss the pope's toe and then go home and do whatever the fuck you want to or what sticks to the wall that you throw on it and it sticks like in cooking pasta? A new sacred tradition?
With massive building programs to teach the next expanded generation of Catholic boys and girls, like the confusion on any building sites, personnel always coming and going and any collateral damage to the building sites and or children is to be expected?
And if you were too focused early in your career in getting elected pope like John Krol of Philadelphia, you might in order to secure your domestic legacy be trying to patch up the mess in personnel that happened during your salad days as archbishop.
Bishop Joseph McFadden
On May 16, 1981, McFadden was ordained a priest by Cardinal John Krol at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul.[7] His first assignment was as a parochial vicar at St. Laurence Church[8] in Highland Park, where he remained for one year.[3] From 1982 to 1993, he served as administrative secretary to Cardinal Krol.[3] He was named an Honorary Prelate of His Holiness on May 29, 1991.[2]
So using a timeline thingy, Monsignor McFadden was personal secretary to Cardinal Krol both as an active archbishop and into the first five years of his retirement.
And we all know that Krol did not move out of the Cardinal's suite of rooms in the main, 1880s portion of the Cardinal's residence. The new archbishop Bevilacqua (between the lines - a name not mentioned once in McFadden's Wikipedia bio btw) had to do with carving out a new archbishop's suite with the remaining 30-40 rooms of the Great Gatsby1920s addition to that mansion. (Bought at a bankruptcy fire sale btw in 1935 for 350k by Cardinal Dougherty, that's less than 5k a room and ten acres too. This all in the Depression and after Dennis's trip to Rome and the Pope's blessing on his Fatwa against the Hollywood controlling Jews with a Catholic boycott in the AD of Philly against all cinemas. Gave the Vatican prestige and further leverage in delicate political negotiations between holy mother church and the new German regime. Wink. Nod.)
I can only imagine that half the priest personnel files of the archdiocese in Philly were scattered around the Krol end of the mansion and not available to Bevilacqua and his crowd even if he was willing to reform the priesthood and weed out the buggerers. etc.
Bevilacqua: "I want you to tell your boss that he has to move out. It is not traditional to stay in the Bishop's palace once one has retired."
McFadden: "His Eminence wishes to remind your Excellency that if you do not like the present living arrangements, please refer it to his Holiness in Rome. A pope who owes so much to his Eminence's good will in the second papal conclave of 1978..."
That the dysfunction at the Archbishop's mansion in Philly was no doubt a microcosm on the Vatican fantasy land of the waning days of the long reigning and ailing John Paul II and his gatekeeper, the future Benedict XVI. And reflective of a lot too no doubt little niche turfs in all the little duchy dioceses in PA.
So Cardinal Wuerl's hemming and hawing in charge in Trumpland DC can say he cared about all the little people in Pittsburgh on his way to the top to the CEO perks of Archbishop of Washington DC, a bit of a yawn here.
Yawn (again)
Shrug.
