How the Catholic Church Became Naughty...And Where the Real Hindrance to Reform Lies

How the Catholic Church Became Naughty…

And Where the Real Hindrance to Reform Lies

By Jack Doherty

Copyright 2016 by Jack Doherty

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Table of Contents

Chapter One: The Pope’s Christmas Message to the Vatican Curia

Chapter Two: The Early Church

Chapter Three: The Imperialization of Christianity

Chapter Four: The Middle Ages

Chapter Five: Some Bad Popes

Chapter Six: The Crusades

Chapter Seven: The Fight against Heretics

Chapter Eight: The Protestant Reformation

Chapter Nine: The Council of Trent (1545-1563)

Chapter Ten: Reason over Religion

Chapter Eleven: Catholic Missionary Activity

Chapter Twelve: Catholic Church Influence and Power Wane

Chapter Thirteen: First Vatican Council

Chapter Fourteen: The Church Moves from Poverty to Wealth to Poverty

Chapter Fifteen: Wealth Returns to the Vatican

Chapter Sixteen: The Ustashe Movement and ODESSA

Chapter Seventeen: Socialist Tendencies in the Vatican

Chapter Eighteen: Vatican Wealth Comes with Bad Company

Chapter Nineteen: The Vatican Bank Is Corrupted

Chapter Twenty: A New Pope and Business as Usual

Chapter Twenty-One: Bishops and Priests Revealed as Soviet Spies

Chapter Twenty-Two: Moneyval and Bank Reform under Pope Francis

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Child Sex Abuse Scandal

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Vatican’s Investigation of Women Religious Congregations

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Vatican Leaks Scandal

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Real Hindrance to Reform

About the Book and the Author

Bibliography

Chapter One: The Pope’s Christmas Message to the Vatican Curia

Three days before Christmas 2014 they gathered together to hear their leader tell them that they had an exaggerated sense of their own self-importance, that they lusted for power and control, and that they acted like Lords of the Manor superior to everyone and everything. They were all dressed in black with red or violet sashes; their leader wore white. Slowly and deliberately he described their vices: vanity, hypocrisy, back-biting, spiritually and mentally hardened, being boastful, feeling indispensable, forming cliques to consolidate power, gossiping, and being indifferent to others. They were naughty. Yes, the pope was reprimanding his cardinals, archbishops, and bishops for their naughty attitudes and behavior.

Pope Francis was hardly giving the governing body of the Catholic Church, the Vatican Curia, a Christmas message of good wishes and blessings. He was giving his cardinals the hard truth as his Christmas present.

Jesus Christ established his Church, naming Saint Peter the leader or first pope, using these words, On this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. Well, according to Pope Francis they did prevail and from inside the Church. Pope Francis told leaders of the Catholic Church they are acting naughty. But why tell the whole world?

A faithful Catholic might raise the objection: Why should we hang out our dirty wash for everyone to see? However, it was Pope Francis who has already hung out the dirty wash - the naughtiness which he called corruption. Every Catholic should see how dirty that wash is, so it can be cleaned up. We should know how deeply pervasive this corruption is within the Vatican and within dioceses throughout the world now and throughout history. In the process the world will see us recognizing the past naughtiness and applaud our efforts to stop it.

The name Vatican refers to the Roman name for the hill and the area around it upon which the sovereign city and the buildings within it (Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Apostolic Palace, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican museums, and the government buildings) were built. It is the Vatican City State. There is no doubt that the Vatican is awe-inspiring, mysterious, powerful, spiritual, holy, majestic, archaic, political, insidious, authoritative, and conservative. The word Vatican is capable of evoking countless other adjectives depending on one’s perceptions and prejudices about the Catholic Church.

The Holy See (or Holy Chair) refers to the ministry of the Pope as supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church as well as the legal entity of the various church authorities necessary to govern a universal church. The Holy See is the seat of government of the Catholic Church. The terms Vatican and Holy See are often used to mean the same thing.

Pope Francis was addressing this governing body in his Christmas message and he was treading on dangerous territory. While it is true that this governing body alone does not make up the whole Catholic Church of 1.2 billion believers, the world throughout history has mainly judged the Church according to the words, example, and behavior of its leaders.

The pope was attacking the center of power in the Vatican, which is entwined with palsy-walsy Italian politics, unprincipled business vendors, ominous secret societies, white-shirt Masonic wheeler-dealers, gruff Mafia mobsters, and weak-willed church leaders. But how did the Church get that way? We go back to the first centuries of Christianity for a quick overview on how that naughtiness began.

Chapter Two: The Early Church

Christ established his church and commanded his apostles to spread his message throughout the world. Christianity expanded in its early years within the Roman Empire which controlled most of Europe and a large part of Asia and Africa. The reign of Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD) was considered a golden age of Roman wealth, culture, and literature. Magnificent temples, theaters, aqueducts, public baths, triumphal arches, and the palaces of the Caesars showed a thriving empire conducting commerce on roads and waterways built originally for its military. Hundreds of slaves did the building and all of the menial jobs, but many of them were intelligent enough trained as scribes and sit at desks writing simultaneously as readers dictated. Their copies went to institutions of learning, libraries, and rich citizens.

Beneath this opulence lay the seeds of a moral degeneracy that would slowly bring the Roman Empire to its ruin. Wars raged on the borders of the empire and the conquered became Roman slaves to be treated worse than beasts of burden, while their possessions were taken to Rome to enhance the already rich ruling families. The slaves built the monuments, palaces, and amphitheaters where many of them would be brutalized in gladiatorial shows for the cruel entertainment of the emperor and the populace. With all the slaves around, free citizens did not work and sank into a useless mass of humanity that craved bread and games in the coliseum as the gift of the emperor. Vices of natural and unnatural sensuality, avarice, gluttony, cruelty, promiscuity, and all forms of debauchery prevailed in a society that worshipped immoral gods. To justify their wicked lives, some emperors even declared themselves gods and saw that the Senate raised deceased immoral emperors to deities and be given their own festivals. The Roman religion of idol worship had nothing to offer against the degeneration of the empire and its eventual fall.

First century Christians believed in the divine truths taught by Jesus and sought to ennoble their lives in prayer, charity, and ministry to others. They centered their worship around the breaking of the bread in imitation of the Last Supper in which Christ said to his apostles to do this in memory of me. The roots of the Catholic priesthood are found in this command of Christ at the Last Supper. As the message of Christ was accepted and practiced by more and more people and Christianity spread to other countries, the apostles saw the need for more apostles or priests to lead their communities in the Eucharistic celebration. There were no restrictions of no marriage or male only.

The popes and bishops of the early church preached and taught what they had learned from Christ’s disciples and their followers. They were very diligent to see that the church was one in faith and did not tolerate wrong teachings. In the first centuries many heresies found followers. The popes and bishops condemned these schismatic churches and their teachings, separating them from communion with the true Church.

Christians tried to go on with their lives as others did, but soon they came to standout in society as strange, because they did not go to the temple on festival days to offer incense on behalf of the emperor and of the empire. Romans considered Christian rituals as strange. They dunked people in water or poured water over their heads as an initiation into their society and called it Baptism. They had meals together and believed they ate their god Jesus in the form of bread and wine and called it Eucharist. Those who disliked Christians spread rumors about their cannibalistic practices and accused them of crimes against the state for not sacrificing to the Roman gods.

The Christian Oath to Do Good

Around the year 112 Emperor Trajan sent Pliny the Younger, a member of an important aristocratic Roman family, to the Roman Province of Bithynia (in modern day Turkey) as Governor. The problem that he was to correct was the mismanagement of funds, but other beguiling matters came up, the most unusual being accusations against that ragged band of Christians.

Pliny would sit on his majestic marble throne with his guards and courtiers around him as miserable wretches calling themselves Christians would be brought before him. He had dismissed Christians as part of the Jewish tradition protected by legal status in the Roman Empire. But the Jews denied that. Thus Pliny treated Christians as a separate group in the empire. Even so he had trouble determining what wrong they had done. The accusation was that the temples were empty and no one was buying the necessary goods to be sacrificed to the gods. Pliny interrogated the Christians – even tortured them. They admitted to no crimes, but Pliny found something very strange in their behavior. They gathered to pray, sing hymns, have a meal together, and strangely take an oath to be good and to do good – to love others, do no evil, to not defraud or steal from others, but to worship their one God. He concluded irrationally that he must do something like execute some of them. Emperor Trajan agreed with him, but warned him against hunting them down, because above all the emperor did not want an insurrection.

In effect these Roman officials gave recognition to Christians as a distinct religious group of the empire and not merely a sect of Judaism.

The Christian Martyrs

Christians were murdered for their religion or for no reason. Saint Peter was crucified. The sixth Pope, Alexander (105 – 115), was beheaded in Rome. The eighth Pope, Telesphorus (125 – 136), was also a martyr.

In the second and third centuries Roman rulers viewed early Christians as criminals and were therefor subject to persecution, torture, and death. In