Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [198]
The Reconfiguration plan that Lennon had grafted onto the Boston archdiocese backfired on O’Malley. In Cleveland it backfired on Lennon. Neither bishop knew how to change course: the issue for them was submission by the people to the selling of churches, upholding their authority and preventing further disclosure on Cardinal Law. In Boston, people voted with their feet; financial losses deepened. In Cleveland, Lennon defiantly said final Masses at parishes he suppressed with police escorts. Was this a sign of Christ on earth?
“I grieve for the capacity of the clerical system to denigrate basic human rights,” said Sister Chris Schenk. “As Catholics we are supporting a wall of corruption with our money, whether we want to or not. Our job is to do something about it or risk being complicit. It’s not enough to say, ‘The bishop—or pastor—will handle things.’ Lay leaders, particularly good Catholic businessmen, have to recognize what this corrosive secrecy is doing to us and be part of the solution. I think Mike Ryan’s plan to safeguard the collections must be implemented from the parish to the diocese, up to the USCCB and Peter’s Pence. We need transparency.”
Well, sure, I countered. But how does “transparency” happen in a power structure afflicted with such rot and inertia? In 2010 Italian authorities had impounded funds from the Vatican Bank for alleged money laundering. An investigation of the bank by Italian authorities was under way as Pope Benedict made apologies to clergy abuse victims; but he retreated into a cocoon of silence as cardinals in his Curia were exposed for shielding pedophiles or facilitating schemes to profiteer off church sales. With his hands dirty from the Follieri scandal, Sodano had scoffed at the abuse crisis in an Easter sermon. Popes, cardinals, and bishops betraying human rights are more than mere cracks in a power grid, I told the good nun. How much worse could it get?
“With Cleveland I cry and lament,” she replied. “And yes, I get depressed; however, this will lead to something better for the universal church. I always go back to Saint Paul: ‘But where sin abounded, grace abounded even more’—Romans 5:20. God finds a way to bring good out of evil. That is the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. This is the core of my Christianity. Jesus stood against unjust authority. We push against the rock of injustice in our own church. Evil does not have the final word.”
EPILOGUE
BENEDICT XVI: POPE OF IRONIES
In 2008 the global economy plunged, thanks to titanic greed on Wall Street. Investment bankers created an arcane vocabulary of credit swaps, derivatives, and mortgage-backed securities to mask a riverboat gambler’s monopoly on the table money. For years, bankers donated heavily to well-chosen political troughs and reaped rewards with the dismantling of federal regulatory practices, a legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression. In gutting oversight standards, particularly at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations abetted a bankers’ gambling culture in which only the risk was missing. Wall Street built a wall of fictional value on assets gleaned from the buying and reselling of mortgages in a bonanza of easy lending. The wizards pulled bonus money off the top. When the housing bubble popped, the wall of assets crumbled. Lawyers—expensive ones—materialized from the dust to keep executives out of prison. The U.S. Treasury under President Bush and President Obama used taxpayer billions to save banks and revitalize lending. By 2011 credit was still tight, unemployment was high, the national debt had soared, but the recession appeared to have passed. The bonuses still