THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI






New entries for the Clerical Bestiary
Translated from

December 16, 2017

Dear Stilumcurialisti, this bestiary is quite variegated - positively and negatively, but I an afraid more negative than positive…

Let us begin with the new Italian law on ‘end of life’. I would advise you to read the commentary by Marco Tarquinio, editor of Avvenire [the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference now totally under the thumb of the Bergoglio-appointed CEI secretary, Mons. Galantino]. It seeks to put together two unrelated matters: the law that substantially allows murder by request in Italy, and Italian military support against slavery in Africa. Do they seem matters of equal weight to you? Not to me. The reason for putting them together in one commentary? I do not know, but malicious person that I am, I can imagine why.

The Avvenire of Mons. Galantino, obliged to speak about a law that was discussed and passed in the almost total silence of the Italian bishops, not to mention the deafening silence from the pope who is Primate of Italy, in order not to give the impression that the newspaper is finally aligning with those pain-in-the-neck pro-lifers against euthanasia, feels it must also strike out at migrantist circles. Even if it is hard to understand why Catholics should be concerned. After all, we have been told that “The spirit of Marco Pannella [longtime leader of Italy’s Radical Party who died earlier this year and who championed all the ultraliberal causes including abortion on demand, same-sex ‘marriage’ and euthanasia on demand] will help us to live in in the same direction…” by Mons. Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, speaking earlier about the euthanasia bill, now law.. Brace yourself for more of ‘the spirit of Marco Pannella’ in the future!

But if you want to rinse your mouth of the bad taste above, then read the statement by Mons. Crepaldi…

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‘Bridges’ will not hold without truth
by Mons. Gianpaolo Crepaldi
Archbishop of Trieste
Translated from

December 16, 2017

On Thursday, December 14, the Italian Parliament approved the so-called DAT law which opens the way to euthanasia in a form that is even more emphatic than in other nations. During the months of discussion preceding the vote, I intervened, as bishop and as president of the Cardinal Van Thuan Observatory, along with others, such as the Centro Studi Rosario Livatino, in order to highlight the gravity of the contents of this law. Unfortunately, what prevailed was the libertarian and ultimately nihilistic ideology professed by so many members of Parliament. And so, Italy will proceed towards a dark future based on a ‘freedom’ that is extenuated and devoid of hope.

This law adds to others approved by this sad Parliament which has distanced our legislation on life and the family from the objective norms of natural moral law that are inscribed in the hearts of men, but which, too often, are obscured by big and small partisan interests and by the deformation of intelligence.

But those who have been most committed to dismantling via legislation the principles of the natural moral law – which, to the believer, is the language of the Creator – are not able to tell us how they will replace the effects of social cohesion achieved by having goals in common.

Freedom understood as self-determination, which this new law affirms and absolutizes, is unable to hold together anything, much less persons, nor can it even help the individual put himself together.

It is most concerning that in this Parliament, such negative laws can be approved in a context of remarkable indifference. I express my support for all those who mobilized with words, writings and other external manifestations in fighting for the human good.

But I must also note that many others should and could have done so. And this observation applies to the Catholic world especially. A wide swath of her components stayed away from defending values so fundamental for the dignity of individuals, fearful perhaps of creating walls instead of bridges by doing so. But bridges that are not built on the truth cannot hold.

At times like this, a sentiment of discouragement may prevail, and it is understandable. Everything in life comes at a price, and the terrible law that has been passed will produce suffering and injustice to the very flesh of persons. One has the impression that we must now commit ourselvesto reconstructing from scratch an alphabet that has been disarticulated.

At the same time, one must always remember that hstory is always open to new courses and solutions, as well as new possibilities for recovery and rescue. But humanly speaking, such recovery and rescue will not compensate for the injustices that have been provoked and experienced, but they will allow us not to conset to more of the same.

Let us not forget not just history, but also the Lord of all history. We trust in him so that we nay be ready to face new occasions which he will set before us.

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JAMES MARTIN AND OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE
Then ,there’s James Martin, the Jesuit who is the standard-bearer for the LGBT cause in the Church. This time, we cite him for having disseminated and praised blasphemous pictures spoofing Our Lady of Guadalupe on her feast day last December 12.


It must be noted that the images are supposed to represent Our Lady ‘re-imagined’ as contemporary Mexican female icons represented by the artist herself in the ‘Wonder Woman’ take-off (she actually calls this ‘Portrait of the Artist as Our Lady of Guadalupe’, a conceptual and metaphysical impossibility!) her mother (at the sewing machine), and her grandmother, and that this is what she thought she was doing:

Even if she had not given it the blasphemous title she does, the fact that in her ‘self-portrait’, Ms Lopez shows herself stomping on an angel in her triumphant lunge forward, while holding a serpent in her right hand, underscores the blasphemy. In which she completely overturns Marian symbology.

WHAT DOES THE CATECHISM TEACH?
IGNORANCE IS WIDESPREAD AND WORSENING
A friend from the north has written Me:

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A direct experience. FoR the catechetical year of the age group in my parish that are to be confirmed during the year, we had to learn about the Holy Spirit. During our sessions to consider the Most Holy Trinity as a Unity, I realized that the children were answering the most elementary questions with absuridities. For example, what Our Lord commands in Mt 28,19 [“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”] I asked who was giving the mandate, and a child answered: “The Father’. So I made a basic questionnaire to evaluate their level of preparation. Well, a good 90-95% of these children who were to be confRimed soon replied NO to the question “Is Jesus Christ God?” It means that in effect, we are giving confirmation to pagans not Christians. Obviously, it’s because they are ignorant of the essentials of the faith.

And yet, a sacrament of God is horribly misused under the slogan that everyone seems to use these days, “Not to worry! God will provide…”. To me, that sounds like blasphemy…

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AMORIS LAETITIA, and the ignorance
of those at the top of the Church hierarchy
But perhaps ignorance of the fundamentals of our faith is much more widespread than one thinks, because it also afflicts – in a way that was once unthinkable - some hierarchical levels. Consider this item:

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“The famous American scholar of canon law, Edward N. Peters, laments that pastors today are quite ignorant about canon law and calls on them to study it more. He says, in fact, that distribution of the Eucharist is ‘regulated’ by Canon 915 – of course, never once mentioned in AL, nor in the interpretation of the Buenos Aires bishops, and not even in the approving letter that the pope sent them in reply. But, it follows that for as long as the revised Code of Canon Law which went into effect in 1983 remains in force and unchanged by any pontifical document, everything stays as it was before [Before AL, that is].
He continues:
“Unless Canon 915 itself is directly revoked, gutted, or neutered, it binds ministers of holy Communion to withhold that most august sacrament from, among others, divorced-and-remarried Catholics except where such couples live as brother-sister and without scandal to the community. Nothing I have seen to date, including the appearance of the pope’s and Argentine bishops’ letters in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, makes me think that Canon 915 has suffered such a fate.” He concludes by saying that further Vatican ‘seals of approval’ on AL, or on the two letters that have been upgraded to ‘authentic papal magisterium’, will not change things”.

An opinion confirmed in another letter I got recently:

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Dear Mr. Tosatti:
I am M.C., a Portuguese lawyer and canonist. I write you this e-mail because of what is being said about AL 305 after that which was published in the AAS of October 2016.

It is not true that #305 has now become ‘authentic magisterium’. A pope does not have the power to elevate his personal opinions (cf AL #3 and #4) to the category of authentic magisterium. And even if he did, he could not do it by rescript [[I[as was the case with the letters exchanged on AL.]

I do not understand why no one seems to point out these elementary facts of theology and canon law… Thanks a lot. Merry Christmas!

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THE PRIMACY OF CONSCIENCE? WHERE’S THAT?
Despite Cardinal Kasper’s recent plea that everyone should stop talking about AL, here is an opinion on that infamous ‘primacy of individual conscience’, which is the key – or one of them – to the problem of admitting anyone to the sacraments:


THE DIOCESE OF FLORENCE SELLS LAND TO BE USED FOR A MOSQUE
AND THE RED CROSS WILL GET RID OF CHRISTIAN CROSSES
Let me close with the news that the diocese of Florence has sold some of its land on which a mosque will be built.

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[FLORENCE, Dec. 14, 2017 (ANSA) – A new mosque will rise on land that is owned by the Diocese of Florence in the Florentine commune of Sesto Fiorentino. The news, anticipated today by the newspaper La Nazione, has been confirmed by a joint note from the Commune of Sesto, the Archidocese of Florence, the Unviersit y of Florence and the Association for the Mosques of Florence. This will therefore solve the thorny problem of finding land on which to build the Muslim place of worship because up to now, none has been available… A agreement on intent will be signed Friday under which the Archdiocese will sell the land to the Muslim community of the Province of Florence so that they can build a mosque and an Islamic cultural center. In turn, the archdiocese will purchaseland belonging to the University of Florence on which it will build a religious center.

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I think this news goes hand in hand with the decision of the international Red Cross to take away the crucifix from all their premises in order nt to offend non-Christian religious sensibilities. In Belgium, many Red Cross volunteers have objected. M,I find it hard not to agree with the Hungarian Foreign Minister who said: “These measures must be considered as attempts to sweep out the civilization and culture of the continent”.

FINALLY, PRAY FOR MARY WAGNER,
ANTI-ABORTION HEROINE

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/12/2017 20:54]

On the Pope, the Argentine bishops,
and the meaning of ‘magisterial authority’
By Phil Lawler
CATHOLIC CULTURE.ORG
Dec 15, 2017

Several readers have written in recent days to question why this site has offered no editorial commentary on the Vatican announcement that the Pope’s letter to the Argentine bishops on the implementation of Amoris Laetitia should be regarded as magisterial teaching. Two or three readers, going further, have complained that we have given short shrift to a news story of enormous importance.

While I understand these readers’ concerns, I disagree. I did not —and still do not — see this story as particularly important. Not much was changed by the appearance of the Pope’s letter in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, or by Cardinal Parolin’s announcement that the papal statement was magisterial. I say this for three reasons:

First, a private letter from the Pope cannot be seen on the same level as a formal papal document, even if that letter is later made public.

Insofar as Pope Francis made a magisterial statement on marriage, he made it in Amoris Laetitia. Keep in mind that the flurry of interest in the letter to the Argentine bishops involves the interpretation of that apostolic exhortation — that is, the proper understanding of a papal statement that has already been made. And Amoris Laetitia has certainly been given plenty of coverage on this site.

Second, the most controversial aspect of Amoris Laetitia is the suggestion — a suggestion, not a clear statement — that Catholics who are divorced and remarried may under some circumstances receive the Eucharist without making a commitment to live in abstinence.

As canon-law expert Ed Peter has explained, the Code of Canon Law (specifically Canon 915) requires priests to withhold Communion from Catholics in those circumstances. No one disputes the authority of Pope Francis to change canon law, but [SO FAR] he has not changed Canon 915, and so it remains in force, with its own “magisterial authority.”

The Roman Pontiff can speak with authority on questions of faith and morals, but he cannot overrule the laws of logic. [But Bergoglio seems to really believe that he is sui generis among all the humans ever created by God - as Mary was sui generis in the way God destined the future 'mother of God' to be - so he thinks he is free to say and do what he pleases. Surely in his deluded mind, what he pleases is not just good, but the best and only choice(s) possible, and just as he allegedly told Mueller that he does not have to explain himself to anyone because he is pope, he must think that being sui generis - and the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit, to boot - he does not have to follow the logic of Logos, but his own Bergologic that does away to begin with, with the principle of non-contradiction. That is why Bergoglio's mental universe appears to be a welter of contradictions. We are cursed with a pope who is irrevocably delusional, to name just one of his worst characteristics.]

In his letter to the Argentine bishops, applauding their understanding of his apostolic exhortation Pope Francis declared: “There are no other interpretations.” [By which we are supposed to understand that there can be no other interpretations that what the Argentine bishops gave in their letter.]

But there are other interpretations. [To none of which he has objected. And as Sandro Magister points out in his blog today, Dec. 18, the interpretation given in the guidelines issued by the pope's own Vicar in Rome, for the Diocese of Rome, of which the pope is Bishop, is far more liberal in interpreting the discernment-accompaniment-blahblah blather of AL than the Argentine bishops' letter. Hah, betcha neither Parolin nor Bergoglio thought of that!]

Some bishops say that Amoris Laetitia upholds the traditional teaching of the Church; others say that the document changes those teachings. These interpretations are incompatible. The Argentine bishops’ document, like the Pope’s apostolic exhortation, leaves crucial questions unanswered. Until those questions are answered clearly, nothing much is accomplished by the claim that the reigning confusion has “magisterial authority". [Perhaps nothing much in substance, but superficially, Bergoglio has elevated two private letters by rescript to be 'authentic magisterium' which is the take-away message for most Catholics who follow these discussions. Not that anything becomes 'authentic magisterium' just because the pope says so - because it can never be if it is anything that contradicts what the Church has taught for millennia!]

How did we get from this...

to this in less than 5 years?

Can you even make out the figures of Mary, Joseph and the manger in this travesty of the Nativity scene?
Bergoglio has chosen to sacrifice the Christmas message in order to propagandize his 'mercy', though it seems all he cares about
are the corporal works of mercy. What about the spiritual?


When one must search the Vatican's
'Nativity' scene for the Holy Family
who seem like intruders in a
social activism tableau
Translated from

December 18, 2017

Finally I went. To see the Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square. It was my friend from my favroite pizzeria in Borgo Pio who pushed me to do it: “Go...go... then tell me what you think”.

- You didn’t like it?, I asked.
- Not on your life.
- Why not?
- It made me uncomfortable. With that nude man in the foreground? The gym buff? That’s no poor man to be clothed! He seems to have just come out of a wellness center. And Mary and Joseph are lost somewhere in there, certainly almost hidden by all the other figures. But go and see, then we can talk about it.

And so I went. I must say that the nude man just overpowers everything in the tableau. He’s there in the foreground, pink-fleshed, shaved all over, muscles well-defined. My friend is right – this is no poor man who needs to be clothed! He looks more like a model well-pleased with his attributes.

Then the dead man – who seems to be on display on a table. He is covered with a white sheet, and all we see is a cadaveric arm hanging inert down one side of the table. Next to him there is a big man: we do not know what he is supposed to be doing, but he seems rather threatening, with one hand raised above the corpse and looking rather grim. [He illustrates the corporal work of mercy ‘bury the dead’].

This Nativity scene was donated by the territorial abbey of Montevergine, and is supposed to be, as Vatican Radio tells us, “a work of art using 16th century figures executed according to the most ancient Neapolitan tradition”. [Why the 16th century exactly? Something to do with the Lutheran schism?]

Produced by ‘a Neapolitan artisans’ workshop’, the Nativity scene occupies “a space that is almost 80 square meters and a maximum height of seven meters". It is inspired “by the corporal works of mercy, represented by 20 figures, each about 2 meters high, made up of polychrome terracotta, with crystal eyes and fabric clothing.”

I do not have any articistic competence. The statues, as single statues, are certainly praiseworthy.
[Frankly, I don’t see anything praiseworthy at all in the individual figures, none of whom look particularly ‘aesthetic’: they are generic figures devoid of any expression – literally blank-faced - that might make them sympathetic to the beholder. The figure that is supposed to be Mary (who was 17 when she gave birth) looks like a common Neapolitan matron without the least bit of holiness about her, and I can’t see enough of Joseph to tell how he is portrayed. One commentator has noted that the nude man appears to have been lifted from some other work, which explains why the figure is so incongruous in every way – i.e., the artisan studio that made these figures did not think it worthwhile to cast a new figure to depict ‘the naked’ who must be clothed, for this grotesque and really quite ugly ensemble whose theme was approved by the pope himself.]

The impression is that one is not looking at a Nativity scene at all – that is, a representation of the birth of Jesus – but at a group of people who are quite busy doing their own thing and are really indifferent to the miracle of the Nativity.

The corporal works of mercy are represented by figures in the act of performing them: a man visits a prisoner (of whom we see only the head, which looks creepy because it seems disembodied); a woman with a jug in hand gives water to a thirsty man; a young man assists a sick one; a man looks down on the nude man and seems to offer a piece of cloth (that hangs from his hand and has not even managed to cover anything of the naked man); there’s someone who houses pilgrims; and the man who is presumably preparing to bury the corpse laid out on the table.

In the midst of all this social activism, Joseph and Mary seem to be almost like intruders who happen to be there by accident. Who knows, perhaps when the Baby Jesus takes his place in the manger on Christmas Eve, the Holy Family will probably find some space amid all this busy-ness, but for now, this ‘Nativity scene’ looks like a rather messy and disordered tableau depicting a social cooperative.

I repeat that I have no artistic competence, and what I am saying may horrify art experts, but I cannot deny my disconcertment. Even the Magi seem to be more concerned with the activities going on around them than by anything else. And of course, the whole tableau lacks a stall or a cave or a roof that indicates a refuge, instead of which there is the suggestion of a dome, as though Jesus had chosen to be born in a quake-damaged church of which only a small tottering piece has been left behind.

I read somewhere that Facebook refused to publish a photo of this tableau because it is “sexually allusive and provocative” – because, of course, of the nude man whom my friend calls the gym buff. I do not know how Facebook works out its criteria for 'acceptability' and I do not wish to get into it. I will limit myself for now to imagining what a child might say who is brought to look at this ‘Nativity’ scene.

- Excuse me, mamma and papa, but where is Our Lady? And St Joseph? And the Baby Jesus?
- You have to look closely, son.
- Where?
- There... to the left of the man who is... well, naked. Don’t you see?
- No, I see nothing...
- OK, let’s move a bit... Now, do you see?
- No, I see the head of a dark-haired man seen through a small window. Did they cut it off?
- No my son, they didn’t. That is a man in prison, with his head showing through the window. He is being helped.
- Well, but where is Baby Jesus?
- Let’s move again... Now, do you see?
- No, now I see a man on a table covered with a white cloth. Why?
- Because he is... mmm, dead.
- A dead man! Why? Who killed him? What did they do to him?
- Nothing, my son. He died, and now he must be buried.
- And the Child Jesus?
- Let’s move again, and I will lift you up. Now, do you see?
- No, what I see is one of the Three Kings with a turban around his head. I don’t like it.
- Come on, son, don’t say that!
- Papa, mamma! Let us go! I am afraid...
- Why? Don’t you like this Nativity scene?
- No. I don’t like it. It gives me the creeps...

So there! Now I shall go find my friend the pizzamaker. I know we shall have much to chat about!

While we're at it, let's remind ourselves of the works of mercy:


I can't seem to find any reference to when the Church drew up these lists, about which the Catechism says the following:

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2447 The works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in his spiritual and bodily necessities. Instructing, advising, consoling, comforting are spiritual works of mercy, as are forgiving and bearing wrongs patiently.

The corporal works of mercy consist especially in feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead. Among all these, giving alms to the poor is one of the chief witnesses to fraternal charity: it is also a work of justice pleasing to God...

2448 In its various forms - material deprivation, unjust oppression, physical and psychological illness and death - human misery is the obvious sign of the inherited condition of frailty and need for salvation in which man finds himself as a consequence of original sin. This misery elicited the compassion of Christ the Savior, who willingly took it upon himself and identified himself with the least of his brethren.

Hence, those who are oppressed by poverty are the object of a preferential love on the part of the Church which, since her origin and in spite of the failings of many of her members, has not ceased to work for their relief, defense, and liberation through numerous works of charity which remain indispensable always and everywhere.

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In the Catholic Church, the works of mercy are encouraged as an act of both penance and charity. The Protestants see the works of mercy as a means of grace which lead to holiness and aid in sanctification. The works of mercy are based on specific mitzvah (commandments based on divine law) found in the Jewish Torah (as a Jew, Jesus and his family would have observed all these mitzvahs - more than 600 of them - religiously). The corporal works of mercy are echoed in the New Testament by the so-called 'sheep and goats' preaching of Jesus as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew (25:31-46), in which the allusions to specific works of mercy come from examples that the Lord gave in his Sermon on the Mount:

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"But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.

Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then the King will tell those on his right hand, ‘Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?’

“The King will answer them, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
Then he will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in; naked, and you didn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

“Then they will also answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?’

“Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

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But since Bergoglio and Bergoglianism apparently believe that everyone will be saved ultimately, everyone goes to heaven and there really is no Hell, it would seem they do not think there is a Final Judgment at all, so I don't know that this pope ever thinks at all about this 'sheep and goats' teaching. Anyway, did we hear any of these Last Judgment considerations at all from this pope in the weeks of Advent of which it is the theme?

But back to Christmas and some relatively unknown facts about how St. Francis of Assisi thought it ought to be celebrated, after adoring the Christ Child wherever the Nativity scene is re-created as he first did in Greccio in the early 13th century...

That infamous 'consumeristic Christmas'?
It originated with the poor Saint of Assisi -
here is how and why
Translated from

December 17, 2017

Every year at Christmas we hear moralistic sermonizing deprecating the ‘consumeristic Christmas’, replete with anathemas against giftgiving and denunciations of Christmas feasting as sinful waste.

Leading this pontifications in banality, as usual, is the Pontiff himself, Bergoglio, who thunders against ‘the feast of commercial consumerism’, ‘useless gifts’, and ‘abundant waste’. Superficial thoughts that find no equivalent in the great treasury of spiritual literature about the Birth of Jesus.

Above all – far from being an evil – the so-called ‘race for Christmas consumerism’ is, from a social viewpoint, a true manna every year for the economy in Christian nations, even in Italy which has been suffering from great unemployment. In practice, it provides an opportunity for most families – including those with low income – to celebrate Christmas with joy.

Also, are we sure than it is consumerism that has caused Christmas to degenerate into a secular celebration of giftgiving and abundant feasting? It doesn’t seem so, since so-called ‘consumerism’ became widespread in Italy only since the 1960s and 1970s, and even the very notion of consumerism itself is relatively recent, say, the 1950s in the United States.

Whereas Christmas has been celebrated for 2000 years. And Christian tradition itself has linked such a celebration to include giftgiving and abundant feasting.

Leo the Great had a memorable homily in the 5th century:

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“There is no room for sadness on the day when Life was born, a Life that destroys our fear of death and goves us the joy of eternal promises. No one is ecluded from this happiness”.

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Whenever, in recent years, I chose to ‘confront’ this idea, some were horrified and accused me of wanting to ‘sanctify’ capitalistic consumerism.

Since I was born to a family of miners, in which the Catholic faith was abundant, not money, I know from experience what poverty is, but also what the joy of Christmas always was, even for a poor family like ours.

But this is best demonstrated by someone who is above any suspicion, certainly not one linked to consumerism, luxury and wealth in his chosen vocation, one who passed into history for having been a passionate lover of “My Lady Poverty” – St. Francis of Assisi.

It is not by chance that he ‘invented’ the tradition of the Nativity scene – he was the sublime poet of Christmas, hymn-singer of the Incarnation of God.

In the text containing the testimonials of Brother Leone and some other of Francis’s first friends after his ‘conversion’, which bears the title “Compilatio Assisiensis”, we read:

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“Francis had a devtion to the Birth of Christ that was far more than he had to any other festivity of the year, because although Our Lord worked out his Redemption of man in other solemnities, the holy Francis told us, nonetheless, that work began the day he was born for us. That is why he wished every Christian to exult in the Lord on Christmas, and that, out of love for Him, who had given Himself to us, we should all be generous in expressing our joy not just towards the poor but even towards animals and birds”.

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The announcement of Christmas – the supreme Gift God made to men, Himself – established for St. Francis a ‘theology of giving’, to give everything in celebrating the birth of Jesus.

Chiara Mercuri, who has reconstructed the life of the saint based on these testimonials in her book “Francesco d’Assisi. La storia negata” (Francis of Assisi: The untold story), comments: “Therefore, Christmas should be a day of joy and abundance for everyone. Only if this is so can it really be Christmas”.

She then explains how the saint’s Christmas wish was carried out in his time:

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“They had rich dishes that were usually absent from the meals of the Franciscan friars, like meat, cheeses, wine, oil, lard and fresh fruit. Beggars, peasants, doctors, notaries, nobles joined the friars in their feasting, and the women would send the friars and the poor in the vicinity cakes of almonds and honey, pasta dishes, fritters sprinkled with rosewater, pastry rolls filled with honey, raisins, nuts and cinnamon, biscuits with anise, and peppered bread”.

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In short, Mercuri concludes, “everyone tried on this day to be ‘Christmas’ for someone else, without forgetting anyone, any living creature”.

St. Francis reached a point that he wished even his beloved larks (who sing the praises of God) [The Italian word for lark is ‘allodole’, literally ‘those who give praise’] and all other animals to be included in the feasting.

His friends wrote in their testimonials:

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“We who lived with him heard him say many times: ‘If one day I could speak to the Emperor, I will plead for him that for the love of God and through my imploration, he should issue a decree that would prohibit anyone from capturing a lark or treating a lark badly. And also that all the authorities in every city, the lords of the castles and of villages, should be required every year, on the Nativity of Our Lord, to compel their subjects to sprinkle wheat and other grains on the roads outside the cities and fortresses, so that all the birds, especially our sister larks, will not want for food on such a solemn day.

And out of reverence for the Son of God, who was delivered by his mother in the presence of an ox and a donkey, every man on that night should give enough food to our brother oxen and donkeys. In the same way, let all the poor be fed to satiety by the rich”.

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As we see, the way we celebrate Christmas (the Nativity scene, gifts, gestures of charity and solidarity, abundant food on the table) are the things St. Francis thought appropriate for Christmas. He gave birth to the genuine ‘spirit of Christmas’ (beyond Charles Dickens).

The saint of Assisi reminds us that happiness is in giving, in making others happy, because all the most important things in life are given to us freely: life itself, and Creation, heaven, earth, the sea, love, and above all, salvation.

Because God gave himself freely to us, he became man, he died for us, he ransomed us from original sin to rescue us from evil, and he rose again. He taught: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give” (Mt 10,8).

Giving is the logic of God. Christmas Day is not an anomaly – it is life as it should always be. Can you understand that, Mr. Scrooge?

Pope Francis’s 'open and incomplete' leadership
and the puzzling 'reform' of the Curia
Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ, one of the pope's closest advisers, says Bergoglio's leadership
'is based on the success-error dynamic' which inevitably 'destabilizes whoever seeks certainties…'
by Christopher R. Altieri

December 19, 2017


Does Pope Francis have a plan for the reform of the Church? The editor-in-chief of La Civiltà Cattolica, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ, reportedly says, “No.”

While that answer sounds counter-intuitive, there are good reasons for giving it, only some of which Spadaro is reported to have spelled out, in remarks he delivered to a group of journalists gathered in Madrid under a banner describing themselves as Periodistas pro Papa Francisco – “Journalists for Pope Francis”.

The event was billed as the I Congreso Internacional (first international congress, and included participants from ten countries, according to one organizer. [I had read, in passing, an announcement of this event, and the question that flicked to mind immediately was - "How many will turn up for it?" So, it seems there were journalists from 10 countries! Quite a poor job on the part of the organizers, considering that there are at least 40 countries in the world where Catholics account for 50% or more of the population.]

According to another supporting organization, the actual number of participants was “reduced.” The participants issued a Final Declaration that makes for some fascinating reading on its own.

The only name on the speakers list certainly recognizable to English-speakers was Spadaro’s.

A write-up on Spadaro’s remarks, which appeared in the e-pages of Religión Digital – one of the organizers of the event, along with Mensajeros de la Paz – under the by-line of Religión Digital’s director, José M. Vidal, tells us Spadaro really brought the house down. [RD and Vidal have been among the most pro-active propagandists of this pope, Bregoglianism and the church of Bergoglio, in an unabashedly sycophantic way.]

Religión Digital reports that Spadaro – who really doesn’t like to be called “adviser to” and “confidant of” Pope Francis (so much so that he seems to make a point of expressing his discomfiture at being described in such terms) – as saying some interesting things, mostly regarding what Pope Francis is not. [Spadaro doth protest too much - considering how he has been diligently using his social network capabilities (small though his followers number seems to be] to tout the pope's views every chance he gets and to openly interpret them in case you may not have understood Bergoglio's original language!]

The piece in Religión Digital has Spadaro quoting Pope Francis as saying, in response to a direct question regarding his intentions as a reformer, “I do not [want to reform the Church]. I just want to place Christ more and more at the center of the Church. It will be He who makes the reforms.” [Really??? That's the first time I've read him say any such thing! Now he's saying Christ 'will make the reforms'. Christ does not 'make the reforms' even if the Catholic Church is his one true Church. He gives the Church and the men who are in charge of the Church the graces they need - if they ask for it, accepting they can never do anything by themselves alone, without the grace of God - to be able to make the Church perform the mission for which Christ intended her, which is to prolong his presence on earth for all time.

Yet haven't Bergoglio and his idolators always presented him to be the wonder worker who was going 'to change the Church', not just reform the Curia (which was their specified goal initially)? As in fact, Bergoglio has, by building his own church through piecemeal but systematic wreckovation of the structures and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church while availing all he can of his authority as pope and the bimillennial infrastructure of the Church to make it appear that the emerging church of Bergoglio is, in fact, still the Roman Catholic Church? ]

Nevertheless, Pope Francis was elected with a mandate for reform. A good deal of ink has been spilled in the effort to parse his papacy as one of reform. He has spoken of the need for reform. So, to hear that he does not want to reform the Church is surprising.

Perhaps it ought not be.

To the extent Pope Francis was elected with a reform mandate, it was a specific one to reform the Roman Curia – and the Curia is not the Church (though it is the instrument that assists the Successor to Peter in his mission of teaching, governance, and sanctification of the Universal Church, and that’s something, like it or not).

In any case, that work seemed to begin in earnest, with the swift nomination of eight (later extended to nine) members of a “small council,” the “C8” (later “C9” after the inclusion of the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin) Council of Cardinal Advisers, in April of 2013, just a month after his election.

Then, at the end of 2014, Pope Francis used the traditional exchange of greetings with the high curial officials to give a list of 15 ills that plague the Curia. That list is interesting to read in light of what has and has not transpired in the intervening three years. Though institutional reform was and is on everyone’s mind, Pope Francis was clearly, in that address, speaking of – and speaking to – the souls of men. [But, as most commonsense commentators observed at the time, why did he wait almost two full years before doing this, when all his talk of reform before that was purely structural and not directed to the men who make up these structures? If he thought the Curia was afflicted by all those spiritual maladies, why did he not, from Day 1 of his papacy, instruct all curial heads to weed out the unworthy from their offices, to begin with? Nor was there any such internal house-cleaning reported at all after that public scolding. It was just so much more of his empty sanctimony that has gotten him nowhere good.]

Spiritual reform, reform of the soul, repentance, conversion, healing, receptiveness to grace, and docility to the promptings of conscience: all these are essential to the life of every Christian, and only more so to the lives of those Christians who are called to assist the Universal Pastor in his governance of the Universal Church.

Even so, the Roman Curia is a bureaucracy, and would be a bureaucracy if it were staffed and run by living saints. It is one thing to undertake a reform of a bureaucracy. It is quite another to undertake a reform of bureaucrats. [Which, to repeat, despite that very public dressing down in his Christmas address to the Curia in 2014, does not appear to have taken place at all. Unless the firing of 3 CDF staff members for allegedly having criticized the pope in private constitutes a measure to reform the bureaucrats!]

The institutional reforms undertaken thus far have been piecemeal: two new departments, given the vague designation of “dicastery,” are responsible for essentially the same work they did before, when that work was spread out over nearly a half-dozen different offices.

Consolidation is fine – it makes a good deal of sense whether viewed from the point of view of mission-effectiveness or from that of the bottom line – but the question of nomenclature is not insignificant.

“Dicastery” is usually an informal shorthand used by Vatican insiders to refer to offices of the Roman Curia willy-nilly. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, once called La Suprema, is a “dicastery,” but so is the glorified think tank called the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Congregations are the big guys: they have governing and teaching responsibilities; councils are usually advisory bodies (the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts is an interesting middle case, but very much sui generis); academies, commissions, etc., are usually ad hoc, more focused on facilitating and being involved in conversations with thought-leaders in and across specific disciplines.

Calling a new department with a broad mandate covering mission-critical areas like Laity, Family, and Life or Integral Human Development (which includes Justice, Peace, Care for Creation, Migrants and Refugees, Health Care, and Papal Charity), by the vague title of “dicastery” does not help anyone understand what the powers of the new offices are or will be, nor does it tell them where they stand in the pecking order.

This is not something that escaped the attention of the men principally responsible for the reform of the Curia. As the Secretary to the C9, Bishop Marcello Semeraro, noted in 2016:

---

[The distinction present in Pastor bonus between Congregations and Pontifical Councils is operated on the basis of the exercise, or not, of a [governing] power. It is useless, however, to circumvent the impression that comes from it (not only in public opinion) of dicasteries of first and second order! [sic]

This will also be taken into account in the general organization and this is why in the most recent implementations the more general terminology of ‘Dicastery’ has been used, which in ecclesiastical parlance is already used as a synonym and omnicomprehensive (Cf. Pastor bonus art. 1 & 2 § 1 & 2).

Among the counsels received were those insistent and widespread calls for a simplification and a streamlining of the Curia: the merging, or merger, of dicasteries according to matters of competence, as well as internal simplification of the individual dicasteries; the possible suppression of offices that no longer meet the needs of current contingency; the insertion and, possibly, reduction of commissions, academies, committees, etc. within the dicasteries. There have also been calls to reorganize the specific competences of the various dicasteries, moving them, if necessary, from one dicastery to another. [See? The concern has all been about structures.]

---

All this takes note of the fact, but does not account for it – nor does it explain how people are to go about their work. If one were to gather the impression that the inevitable confusion is not an unintended consequence, but the real desired result of the reform, one could hardly be blamed.

The one new dicastery that does have a specific designation is the Secretariat for Communication, which has a clear mandate, but is headed by a priest with the rank of monsignor, while the other secretariats are headed by cardinals who are also archbishops.
Nota bene: This is not a question of vanity.

The new communication secretariat’s first task is to implement the recommendations of the two independent blue-ribbon panels (the first conducted by the consulting firm of McKinsey & Co. and the second by a special commission headed by Christopher Francis Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes) that studied Vatican communications from 2013 to 2015, and came back with advice that came to: cut costs, and get the message under control.

The cost-cutting work has been hard and painful – more so since Pope Francis told the leadership of the new secretariat they could not wield the sword of redundancy – but the message-control part of the mandate is made measurably more difficult by the circumstance of ecclesiastical rank.

Said simply: prefect or not, no monsignor can tell a bishop what to do, let alone an archbishop or a Red Hat – and the major problems with message discipline have never really come from the communications outfits now under the direct control of the Secretariat for Communications.

The Secretariat for Communications, ongoing challenges notwithstanding, did just this past week clear a major hurdle when it rolled out the revamped web portal Vatican News for beta testing.
So, there’s that. [I have not had the time to check out the new portal, and I have yet to read any reviews of it.]

Meanwhile, the C9 cardinals studying the reform of the Curia continue to meet – their 23rd working session is scheduled for the end of February – without so much as a rough outline having been presented to the public to date (though we are promised it is “more than ¾ ready”).

Perhaps it is as Spadaro is reported to have said to that group of “Pro-Francis” journalists, i.e., that Pope Francis “does not have a plan for the Church,” though a less-reserved observer might suggest that a plan for the Curia is arguably neither too much to ask at this point, nor really entirely lacking. One need only know where to look – and the place to look is Santa Marta, where all the shots are called and all the stories start and end.

Here, too, Spadaro offers some words that are in line with what we have seen of the Holy Father’s own characterization of his working methods. Francis’s leadership, Spadaro is reported to have said, “is based on the success-error dynamic,” which inevitably “destabilizes whoever seeks certainties,” insofar as “discernment is not based on human certainties, but on enabling the unfolding of God’s will in history.” [Oh, so now the infamous 'accompaniment-discernment-blahblahblah' of AL for remarried divorcees who persist on living in adultery is supposed to 'unfold God's will in history' - and are we then to conclude that God's will is for these couples to continue being adulterers and yet be in a stage of grace that makes them worthy to receive communion? I do not doubt Vidal's account of what Spadaro said - so this seems to be an egregious instance of this know-all Jesuit failing to think out the logical consequences of the statements he makes in his endless apologiae pro Bergoglio.]

Spadaro reportedly described the Holy Father’s thought as “open and incomplete” – a turn of phrase that is meant to place Pope Francis’s thought in contrast to that of a closed system or self-contained ideology. [But to vaunt 'open and incomplete thinking' is as much of an ideology in itself - ridiculous as it may be - and as self-contained as any so-called 'self-contained' ideology.]

If this really is an accurate picture of the Holy Father’s mind, it would mean Francis conceives his mission as essentially that of the discerner-in-chief. [Whose task is quite easy, then, because all he has to discern is his own mind - certainly he acts as if he does not have to consult the Catechism and the bimillennial Magisterium it contains and teaches, because all that is irrelevant to the Bergoglian here and now.

After all, hasn't he said from the beginning that everything he says and does since he became pope comes directly from the Holy Spirit? Who needs the Catechism, tradition, previous Magisterium, or even Scriptures, if God speaks directly to you and through you? That is the insufferable conceit and hubris of this man.]

How that understanding squares with the expectations of his electors, or with the hopes of those they elected him to lead, is still very much to be seen.

Another perspective on what's happening in the Bergoglio Vatican - from someone who seems to think Bergoglio is blameless in the 'lawlessness' he decries...

The curia’s biggest problem?
The rule of law is being overlooked
[Does that not follow when you have a 'dictator pope'?]
by Ed Condon

December 20, 2017

Over the weekend, Pope Francis turned 81. All Catholics of good will wished him a happy birthday and, of course, many more. The Pope is now two years past the age at which a cardinal can participate in a conclave, six past the age when curial officials have to submit their resignations, and eight past the age when a diocesan bishop is required to submit his resignation. But he has, I am sure he would agree, still a lot left to do.

The single greatest task still ahead of the Pope is the one clear job before him when he emerged onto the loggia nearly five years ago: reforming the curia. From stamping out networks peddling favouritism and influence, to cleaning up the Vatican finances, everyone agreed that there was an urgent need for some law and order to be brought to the daily operations of the Holy See.

Francis’s first moves appeared big and bold, setting up the C9 Council of Cardinals to advise him on reforming the governing constitution of the Vatican and creating a whole new set of bodies to oversee the finances of the curia.

But from these promising beginnings, sadly little progress has been made. Systematic reform of the curia has given way to a mere renaming and merging departments. Financial scrutiny remains a distant dream, as official after official is sacked for “exceeding their mandate.”

As we await tangible progress towards constitutional reform from the C9, contempt for the rule of law and proper procedure in the curia is palpable when dealing with some Vatican departments.

Last week Prof. Kurt Martens, a very senior and respected canonist and academic, offered up a textbook example of the way Rome is running. Prof. Martens tweeted out a single line from a decree of the Apostolic Signatura, effectively the Church’s Supreme Court. It said that while the court was preparing its decision on a case before it, the Prefect for the Congregation for Clergy had taken the act under appeal to the Pope, who had been persuaded to sign it, thus making it a papal act of governance and beyond appeal. Sadly, this kind of thing is becoming all too common.

I myself know of one very recent case in which someone appealing before another Vatican department received a phone call from a senior cardinal who told him to drop the appeal because “if [the person being appealed] didn’t have the power to do what he wants, I can get the Pope to give it to him.”

The implication is clear: access to the Pope is a serious commodity in Rome, and those few who have it are able and willing to take advantage of it.

One could be forgiven for assuming this was evidence of an over-involved Pope reaching down into specific cases, but, in fact, it seems the Holy Father is, at least at times, unaware of what is happening.

Despite Francis’s stated desire to be a “free-range” Pope, and live in the Domus Sanctae Marta to allow him to be around people on a daily basis, his handlers have eliminated the ordinary mechanisms by which a pope is kept up to date on how the Church is actually being run – the regular udienza di tabella [scheduled one-on-one meetings with the heads of Vatican dicasteries, especially with the heads of CDF and Bishops, which with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, were regularly held on a specific day once a week.] has been swept off the papal schedule, for example, and those out of favour with the Pope’s gatekeepers can find that he doesn’t have a minute to spare for months at a time.

Meanwhile, whether it is retroactively authorising the cancellation of the PWC audit of the Vatican finances or okaying the illegal intervention into the Knights of Malta, those few with daily access to the Pope are able to get his signature on a range of measures which go directly against his stated aims. [Aww, Mr. Condon, don't be so disingenuous! Cancelling the PWC audit and interfering so directly in the internal affairs of the sovereign Knights of Malta could not have happened without this pope's approval, regardless of his 'stated aims'! These were not events -
both reprehensible - that simply came and went but were the object of endless media reporting and commentary for days and weeks. If they had been merely the result of handlers acting on their own, they would have been squelched right away by the pope who is, after all, the supreme authority on all this!]

Two years ago, I wrote here that I feared Pope Francis was becoming a prisoner of his handlers, and this fear seems to have come to pass. [Oh please! Does anyone think that Bergoglio's actions as pope are nothing but things he was compelled to do by his 'handlers'? An autocrat like him needs no handlers. He is his own law and he cannot be held blameless for his errors and missteps.]

Bringing discipline and structural reform to the curia is a herculean labour, and one which requires that the Pope stop presuming the foxes will fix the hen house. [But in this case, the fox is the pope himself, and he'll keep his henhouse exactly as he wants it, smothering any hens he thinks he wants to eat up.]

There is still time, though, if Pope Francis can break through his own inner circle. If he does so, many in Rome may yet find themselves confronted with an old man in a hurry. I hope they do.

New lamentations by Super-Ex:
When 2017 was marked by a pope
who celebrated Luther more
than the Fatima centenary,
what shall we expect in 2018?
Translated from

December 19, 2017

SuperEx – my correspondent who is ex-Avvenire, ex-Movimento per la Vita, etc.but not ex-Catholic - has written to express his best wishes for the Christmas season to myself and to the Catholic Church.

But he also adds a gloomy review of the year about to pass, because as he says, there are no sadder words than to say “It could have been ...” Instead, we know how it has been in the reign of Pope Francis, Sovereign Pontiff...

---

Dear Tosatti,
The year is coming to an end and one asks spontaneously what a Catholic Pope could have reminded the faithful in 2017.

The first answer that comes to mind is Our Lady of Fatima. Actually, Bergoglio did devote a few days to commemorating the centenary of Mary’s apparitions in Fatima. But only to comply pro forma and then shelve it: "I said this and did that. That’s it for the centenary!" Or [as the Italians say], ‘Passata la festa, gabbato lo santo’ (literally, ‘Once the feast is over, you can forget the saint’).

That’s right. One recalls how the entire tragic weight of Mary’s words in those apparitions was carefully ignored in the pope’s ‘observance’ of the centenary: the vision of Hell shown to the three children, the prophecies of more difficulties for mankind if the world did not heed the call for prayer, penance and conversion... Instead, we were told that Fatima has nothing more to tell us. [Actually, the pope said in Fatima last May that Our Lady’s message was one calling for peace, nothing more!]

Of course, the Mary who appeared in Portugal a hundred years ago was not at all ‘Bergoglian’: she spoke of conversion and chastisement for sins. So she was ‘put in her place’, so to speak. Just as the pope had earlier done to the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, whose charism includes a deep Marian devotion.

Then, on the flight back from Fatima, the pope also found it opportune to pick at Medjugorje, which certainly deserves a more serious consideration than a few harsh and confused statements given standing up in an airplane subject to ups and downs! If only out of respect for the millions of persons who believe that Mary appeared there, and who have a right to be treated with greater sensitivity if in fact, the pope eventually decides to downgrade the phenomenon.

The fact is we must accept that in 2017, Mary was not in the center of Bergoglio’s thoughts. Perhaps if only because that Jewish girl who bore the Creator in her womb, is a serious obstacle to Bergoglio’s dialog with Protestants, who are comfortable with having women bishops and with feminist rhetoric, but cannot understand why the Catholic Church should venerate a simple girl as the Mother of God!

So, to shelve the Fatima centenary [as a necessary but nonetheless minor celebration in 2017] also meant forgetting all about another centenary – that of the Communist revolution in Russia, which is closely linked to the Fatima apparitions because it was in Fatima that Our Lady foretold the errors that Communism would spread around the world with its ideology.

But how can the pope speak ill of Communism, considering his sympathies for the Castro regime in Cuba, his ‘super-dialog’ with Beijing, and his esteem for Bolivian President Evo Morales and his gift to him of Christ crucified on the hammer and sickle [and whom, Antonio Socci pointed out recently, the pope just met at the Vatican for the fourth time – they also met when the pope visited Bolivia in 2015 – when he, Bergoglio, has yet to grant an audience to the family of Asia Bibi]? So to bring up what Mary said of Communism would not have been opportune at all!

Because speaking of the Russian Revolution [a social experiment that ended disastrously in the collapse of the Soviet empire and its satellites in 1980] could have been an opening in the dialog with the Orthodox Churches which suffered terribly because of that revolution, and who have much more in common with Catholics than do the Lutherans! But Cardinals Kasper and Marx would not have understood...

But setting aside the Fatima centenary and that of the Russian revolution - Bergoglio friends like Scalfari, Bonino, and a new one, Andrea Orlando (born 1969, currently Italian minister of justice, was one of the founders of the leftist Partita Democrata, Italy’s more or less dominant political party in the past few years) would surely have agreed, which is important to this Vatican. It served, among other things, also to bring down the curtain for now on the IOR, where unspeakable things [also unspoken about] have been occurring lately [largely unreported and ignored by the media] which if they had taken place five years ago, would have provided the anti-clerical left with abundant material for daily denunciations and a continuing narrative of corruption and malfeasance.

A friend points out that it is probably very well that Bergoglio has not once referred to the horrors of Soviet communism [or of Chinese communism, for that matter.] Because if he had done so, he might have had to follow his now well-defined script, whenever he is forced to acknowledge Islamist violence in specific terrorist attacks, which is to immediately neutralize it by saying “But Catholics too have their fanatics and terrorists”. Imagine, my friend tells me, if we had to listen to him say, “But Catholics too have had their own gulags”!

But these are our times: Not just Catholic theology and the catechism are daily put to the test, but between syntactical errors and illogical statements, we are also constantly being given spine-shivering distortions of history!

So if 1917 was not dedicated to commemorating our Lady’s apparitions in Fatima nor the Bolshevik revolution, much less dialog with the Orthodox Churches, it doesn’t mean that the Bergoglio Vatican failed to link it with a significant historical event.

For more than a year now [since mid-2016 and preparations for the pope’s travel to Sweden on Halloween’s Day to open the fifth centenary year of the Lutheran schism], Bergoglio and his closest associates have been commemorating and celebrating Martin Luther – the great heretic par excellence and divider of Christianity and Europe, friend to sovereigns and the powers in his time, the creator of national and nationalistic churches, real churches of state!

And Bergoglio wished to initiate the hosannahs himself, traveling to Sweden to do that with a female Lutheran bishop. Why Sweden of all places? A truly secularized country, in which both faith ad the family are in crisis, of whom only 2% of the population say they practise their religion (most of them being Lutherans), which has women priests galore, and was the first country in the world to recognize same-sex ‘marriage’.

But this pope chose to go to Sweden. Religious sociologist Rodney Stark, in his latets book entitled The trumph of faith, gives us some information about Sweden. He reminds us, first of all, that the Lutheran Church was the church of state till 2006, and that it is a church now in its death throes.

Not the Lutherans, but New Age cultists and oriental religions are all the thing now in Sweden: 20% of Swedes believe in reincarnation and in horoscopes; half of them believe in telepathy; one in five trusts in the power of amulets; two in five believe in ghosts; and most young people are interested in UFOs.

In short, writes Stark, everywhere in Sweden is a ‘private and invisible’ religion, a do-it-yourself faith that is fully consistent with Protestant free conscience and individualism. Following one’s own discernment, as the pope advocates, does he really want every Catholic to custom-individualize his own Credo and his own morality, as they now do in Sweden?

What about 2018? It being the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Revolution [that gave birth to the Me generations and the ‘primacy of my conscience’ and the rejection of traditional morality in favor of “I alone know what’s best for me and I alone can decide”], we shall probably witness the canonization of John Lennon, while ‘Imagine’ becomes the official Vatican hymn.

The word ‘peace’ [which has become as abused as the word ‘love’ and has ceased to mean anything when spoken casually, or even in a context such as the ‘Love and peace’ slogan for the pope’s trip to Myanmar, or his message for the 2018 World Day of Peace, itself an almost meaningless ‘celebration’ observed only by the Catholic Church which instituted it, and whose celebration never seems to go beyond the pope’s message for the year] can provide many take-offs for countless sermons. [Each of them as meaningless as when a beauty contestant says that all she wants for the world is peace.]

Yet after the Year of Mercy, what can we have? Let’s see: the Year of Peace and Love? A quinquennial for migrants and for the environment?

Or since it is the 50th anniversary of Humanae vitae, will the church of Bergoglio mark it by dismantling it piece by piece, as it has already started to do? Remember it was the encyclical whereby Paul VI, in that fateful year 1968, said a firm NO to the anthropological and ethical revolution that had just conquered the world overnight.


Here's another review of 2017 in the Church. Imagine what it would read like if the writer were a more skillful ironist! But a great job nonetheless of assembling together in one article the absurdities in 2017 of the church of Bergoglio :


A threadbare Christmas tree in a Roman square.


My summary of the spiritual fruits
received from the pope in 2017
By Finan di Lindisfarne
Translated from
ANONIMI DELLA CROCE
December 19, 2017

No point speculating on why this Christmas tree in a Roman public square seems to be almost bald. Yet it contrasts with what I thought was a year that was very fruitful for evangelization and the spiritual direction of souls.

Let me summarize what were, for me, the points of great interior growth and discovery of new frontiers of the faith.
o Faith is relative: It is wrong to absolutize any principle, because it is a sign of scant spiritual and intellectual maturity.
o The Eucharist is not all that important: It is, of course, but we should not obsess about things taught in the Church for the past 2000 years, such as Trans-substantiation.
o Whatever the Church said in the past must be taken with a grain of salt: dogmas, magisterial documents, ecumenical councils – nothing from the past can be important here and now.
o True faith can be measured only by how one welcomes immigrants, according to the absolute Biblical concept of opening frontiers. It is wrong to defend ourselves from hostile peoples who wish to destroy the Christian faith (we recently saw an optimal example of genuine welcome for migrants from the Bishop of Florence who sold a piece of land belonging to the Church on which local Muslims could build a mosque).
o Addendum to the above: Any biblical passage that condemns syncretism is abrogated. The episodes in which God punishes Israel for having allowed the construction of pagan temples within the walls of Jerusalem must be considered as a mere literary exercise.
o On sexual morality, we have witnessed an evolution of sexual emancipation and freedom which will finally bring us to the truth: namely, I alone can decide what my sex is, because it is a gift. However, we are still awaiting the completion of this evolutionary process whereby there will be rightful condemnation for anyone who would wish to confine love to the cage of natural heterosexuality.
o More progress has been made in the area of critical judgment: To think that we can judge any human actions in the light of God’s commandments has been declared wrong by the new ‘men of the church’ who have received the light directly from the Holy Spirit (who blows where He wills): An example is homosexual practices which from being sinful (as a consequence of a retrograde society) have now become virtuous – and that is why the pope has appointed open advocates of homosexual love to high positions in the Catholic Church.
o Homophobia is a pernicious dogma. Anathema to whoever denies the sanctity of homosexual love!
o In the matter of self-determination, the retrograde concept that life is sacred has been replaced, because there are cases when it is not so [as when it is still in the womb], and it is now possible to choose the moment of death: It is wrong to seek to cure a terminally ill person, just let him die as a sign of mercy.
o The ideas of ‘the Cross’ and ‘sacrifice’ are also outdated: God is mercy only! Woe to those who profess the ideas of punishment and sin, of justice and divine condemnation – they are trapped in their own obtuseness.
o The ecological revolution is of primary importance: global warming is a fact and must be corrected, as the Psalms tell us. [They do?]
o Joseph and Mary were refugees: anathema to anyone who denies this truth of the faith.
o Those – and here I shall officially call them ‘rosary-sayers’ – who obtusely defend the family composed of mother, father and children; the indissolubility of marriage; the ban on communion for remarried divorcees who continue to live in adultery – must be isolated and considered insane.
o It is not possible to ask the pope for clarifications on moral matters.
o To grant ius soli [citizenship by virtue of physical presence in a country] to anyone who has entered Italy is a dogma: It is not natural to try to consider it reasonable for anyone to try to investigate such prospective citizens in any way.
o The traditional external gestures of reverence shown inside a church have been abrogated: Eating, dancing, singing pop songs in church are to be considered gifts from heaven to be offered to the Eucharistic presence.
o Priests are forbidden to wear the cassock and any other signs that distinctly identify them as priests. They must dress like all the other faithful. After all, consider the case of a sinner who enters a church in search of a priest before which he must confess a grave sin; he sees someone who is dressed like a laborer, so he leaves without confessing, not knowing that the ‘laborer’ was in fact, the parish priest. So what? Confession is a medieval practice and it has now been replaced by the mercy God bestows on each man abundantly for any and all sins. But then again, what sin? Doesn’t divine mercy cancel the very idea of sin? [So we are told now. But why was it, once more, that God sent his Son to earth? To tell men we could just go on doing as we please and not to worry, God’s mercy will assure us all of heaven after death? So why did he drive out Adam and Eve from Paradise, to begin with? You see where all this ‘mercy without justice’ crap falls apart once it is examined with common sense alone?]
o Martin Luther is a saint: All the Church documents condemning him are hereby abrogated. Protestantism in whatever form is simply one facet of the ‘Church of Christ’, of which the Catholic Church simply happens to be the oldest form.
o Ideologies previously condemned by the Church, such as Marxism and all its filial branches, including Liberation Theology, have now been fully rehabilitated.
o The new model for monasticism shall be Enzo Bianchi’s Bose community.
o The idea of the Gospels as the absolute and definitive textual record of what Jesus said must be laid to rest because the Jesuit Superior-General, Fr. Arturo Sosa, has pointed out that we do not really know what he said since there were no tape recorders in his time. So we must consider the gospels only as initial drafts from which we can then develop our own faith.
o The only firm point in Church teaching must be global pacifism which must and can never ever be rejected.
o Hell does not exist, and if it does exist, it is empty. As the Jesuit Superior-General also tells us, Satan is only a mythological figure. [His fellow Jesuit, the pope, claims on the other hand, that Satan is very real that he tempts man to evil and sin, but does it really matter when according to him also, there cannot be ‘sin’ since God forgives everything and everyone?]
o Our Lady does not ‘send’ messages; let’s play down this tradition of Marian apparitions – it can be tolerated for ‘simple folk’, but must not be encouraged. Indeed, it is not possible to think that the Mother of God would ever speak in reproaches [sin, hell, penance – really?] nor to ask us to change our behavior (to ‘convert’), because, don’t you know, God cannot want us to change: he accepts us for what we are because he is infinitely merciful.
o Communion in the Church must be seen in the context of divisions and encounters which provide vital energy and impulse, and that is why the presence of factions that are diametrically opposed in matters of doctrine constitutes great spiritual fruit.
o Religious freedom must be confirmed as dogma. All religions are equal, but it is also necessary to promote Islam in order to avoid dissidence.

In conclusion, dear readers, I do find it strange that the Christmas tree in the photo is virtually bald, when 'the Church' has never before experienced a year so rich in spirituality and innovation.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/12/2017 00:47]

Forty years of anti-life legislation in Italy:
From abortion to euthanasia (1978-2017)
by Roberto de Mattei
Translated for Rorate caeli by Francesca Romana from

December 20, 2017

The Renzi-Gentiloni governments will go down in history as those that imposed two of the most wicked laws in the Italian Republic: pseudo-homosexual-marriage, called “Civil Unions” (May 20th 2016) and euthanasia, under the name of the “living will" or DAT (Dichiarazione anticipata di trattamento, Advanced declaration of Treatment), approved by the Senate on December 14th 2017.

This law will be registered in the Official Journal on the fortieth anniversary of the legalization of abortion, Law 194, which passed on May 22. Thus the circle is closed.

Forty years of aggression against life and the family, via abortion to euthanasia, with civil unions and quick divorce along the way. It should be remembered that the law which introduced abortion was signed by Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, and Giovanni Leone, the President of the Republic, both Christian Democrats. The euthanasia bill will be signed by a Catholic Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, and by Sergio Mattarella, President of the Republic, also a Catholic and former Christian-Democrat parliamentarian.

Neither of them will feel the need to appeal to conscientious objection which La Piccola Casa Della Divina Provvidenza (The small house of Divine Providence) in Turin (better known as Cottolengo), through– its superior General, Don Carmine Arice, had the courage to do:

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“We cannot carry out practices that go against the Gospel, even if the possibility of conscientious objection is not provided by the law: Marco Cappato who accompanied people seeking assisted suicide, was taken to court, so we too will go there, in the event of a possible conflict between the law and the Gospel; we must choose the Gospel.”[/qdim]

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Don Arice continued by explaining that “faced with a request to die, our structure cannot respond positively. At present, objection of conscience is not provided for private health institutions. Nonetheless, I believe that in conscience we cannot respond positively to a request for [assisted] death: therefore, we will abstain fro enforcing the law, with all the consequences that this implies” (La Stampa, December 15th, 2017).

A second betrayal has been added to that of the Catholic politicians who approved the law.

In 1978, after the approval of abortion, the Movement for Life came into existence, promoted by the Italian Episcopal Conference. Officially its aim was to be a voice in defense of unborn life in Italy. In fact, the real role the bishops gave to it was that of impeding the birth of an anti-abortion movement similar to the one formed in the United States and other countries.

This has appeared clear since 1981, when the Movimento per la Vita (Movement for Life) promoted an abrogatory referendum to modify Law 194, wherein, however, the following was confirmed: the legalization of therapeutic abortion for the entire nine months of the pregnancy; public funding for the execution of abortions; the obligation of hospital entities to execute abortions in any case; the free distribution, on the part of consultants, of contraceptives including early abortions for minors.

The referendum which took place on May 17th 1981 – and in which coherent Catholics could do nothing other than abstain – was a defeat for the Movement for Life. It was the beginning of the “lesser evil” strategy, which concession after concession, has brought us to the present disaster.

“On the basis of this strategy," wrote the late Mario Palmaro in a unforgettable article for La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, May 1st 2013,

---

"the Catholics in politics – and the information and formation entities supporting them –can no longer “limit themselves” (sic) by affirming the non-negotiable principles in opposition to the legislative initiatives which deny them, but must assume a legislative initiative by promoting laws that affirm those principles only in part, but which impede the approval of worse laws. […] One might at least ask though – will this “doctrine of the lesser evil” really obtain results? Yes, it will: disastrous ones.”

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Francesco Agnoli wasn’t wrong then when he brought the ambiguities and compromises of the Movement for Life to light (A History of the Movement for Life. From heroism to concessions, 2010) and especially [those of] Carlo Casini, who was its president for twenty-five years, until 2015, when Gian Luigi Gigli succeeded him. Casini was a Christian Democrat parliamentarian in Italy and Europe for thirty years; since 2009 Gigli has been in the people’s-Christian Democratic party which has sustained the Monti, Letta, Renzi and Gentiloni governments.

How can we imagine a free and independent action on the part of public figures subject simultaneously to two powers? That of the respective parties they belong to and that of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, thanks to whose significant funding the Movement for Life is prospering (and dying).

Furthermore, if the Movement for Life, which should have stirred up the public square, posed no resistance whatsoever to the “living will”, how can one ignore the responsibility of the Italian Episcopal Conference, and especially its secretary, Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, who see the main enemy not in euthanasia, but in “unnecessary life-sustaining medical treatment”, and hopes “that someone begins to realize the Church is less bigoted than what is thought” (Avvenire, November 18th 2017)?

The Archbishop of Trieste, Giampaolo Crepaldi, one of the few prelates who openly, publicly condemned the law, underlined the climate of indifference in which the “living will” was approved, particularly in the Catholic world: “Large components [of this Catholic world] have avoided the commitment in defense of fundamental values for the dignity of the person; fearful perhaps, in this way, of creating walls, rather than bridges. However, bridges not built on the truth will not stand up.”

The Vatican reporter, Giuseppe Rusconi, commenting on Monsignor Crepaldi’s words recalls “the grave responsibilities of the Catholic hierarchy which has shown widespread public indifference towards such an ill-omened bill, for the dignity of the human person, a stance in total contrast to the social doctrine of the Church. Grave are the responsibilities of a large part of so-called Italian press agencies, with Avvenire at the top of the list and which immediately raised a white flag - even if they hid behind some apparently quasi-combative headlines,” (www.rossoporpora.org 15 December 2017). [One can understand better now why Marco Tosatti's correspondent, Super-Ex, qualifies himself primarily s ex-Avvenire, ex-Movimento per la Vita!]

Avvenire is the newspaper of the Italian Episcopal Conference, whose secretary, Monsignor Galantino, is one of the Pope’s righthand men. Further, Pope Francis’s words on the end of life to the Pontifical Academy for Life on November 19th, were interpreted by everyone as an “open door” to the form of euthanasia which the ‘living will’ represents.

Necessary words, wrote anti-Catholic Corrado Augias then, “to bring down the ultimate resistance of some Catholics and – probably – convince at least part of them into giving their assent” (Repubblica, December 16th 2017). To the question whether the Pope’s words had represented been an opening for the law on the end of lif,e Monsignor Galantino replied: I’m not a politician but I hope the politicians will do their duty, not only in this respect” (Avvenire, cit.).

For that matter, whom do we have to appeal in order “to build bridges where walls are raised” (Audience of February 25, 2017) if not to the reigning Pontiff”?

The walls have been torn down and the bridges built: the result, as Monsignor Crepaldi stated, is that “a libertarian ideology has prevailed, ultimately nihilistic, expressed in the consciences of many parliamentarians. Thus, Italy is heading into a dark future based on a worn-out [idea of] freedom, devoid of hope.”

Along with Paolo Gentiloni and Matteo Renzi, Pope Francis and a large part of the Catholic world have taken upon themselves the moral responsibility of this law. Yet nothing that happens in history evades the judgment of God Who punishes those responsible for scandals in time and eternity. Only by remembering the Lord’s supreme justice, might we appeal to His infinite mercy to spare us from the deserved punishments on our ill-fated nation.

It's emblematic that the photo, taken at the Curial get-together last Christmastime, shows the gathering in chiaroscuro, in contrast to the bright ceiling fresco.

To echo Fr Hunwicke, when will he stop??? On top of everything, he invents things to rebuke others about. He's right up there with Donald Trump - worse, really, because he is the pope - in distorting truth (flat-out lying, in short) for self-serving purposes.

Pope Francis rebukes dismissed Vatican
officials who claim to be martyrs
[Has anyone read about any of his victims claiming they are martyrs?]

Thursday, 21 Dec 2017

Pope Francis has criticised Vatican officials for “ambition”, “vainglory” and “self-referentiality” in his annual keynote speech.

The yearly address to the Roman Curia, given in the days before Christmas, has often been a wake-up call. [It would be, if one assumes that none of those who work in the Curia ever do a daily examination of conscience or go to confession. Otherwise, Bergoglio's working assumption would be that they are all hardened sinners who are not even aware of sinning and choose to persist in sin - just like his privileged remarried divorcees.] In 2014, Francis drew up a list of “sicknesses” such as “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and “existential schizophrenia”.

This year the Pope again delivered some stern criticisms of his staff, and appeared to make reference to recent public controversies.

The Pope denounced an “unbalanced and debased mindset of plots and small cliques that in fact represent – for all their self-justification and good intentions – a cancer leading to a self-centeredness”. [Sounds like he's talking about himself?]

He also referred to former officials who left after being “corrupted by ambition or vainglory. Then, when they are quietly sidelined, they wrongly declare themselves martyrs of the system, of a “Pope kept in the dark”, of the “old guard”…, rather than reciting a mea culpa.”

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has been the focus of recent controversy. Three officials were removed from their posts, despite the protests of the then-prefect Cardinal Gerhard Müller. The cardinal’s term was then not renewed – the first time this has happened in modern Vatican history.

Cardinal Müller has since complained that Pope Francis “did not give a reason. Just as he gave no reason for dismissing three highly competent members of the CDF a few months earlier.”

Cardinal Müller added: “I cannot accept this way of doing things. As a bishop, one cannot treat people in this way.”

Another prominent official to have been removed this year is Libero Milone, the Vatican auditor general, who claimed he was forced out by the “old guard” because he was cracking down on financial corruption.

In this morning’s speech, the Pope praised “vast majority” of curial officials. saying that many work with “dedication” and sometimes “great holiness”.

But he acknowledged the difficulties of reforming the curia, quoting a 19th-century statesman who quipped: “Making reforms in Rome is like cleaning the Sphinx with a toothbrush.” [All right already. It's something that has become axiomatic about curial reform, something the popes before you acknowledged,which didn't stop them from trying to do what they could. But you were supposed to be the wonder-worker pope, right? And up till recently, you were cocksure in all your statements that yes, you are 'reforming the Curia' and everything is right on track to accomplish that. Now, because most recent analyses - even from Bergoglian sites like Crux and iehard Bergoglians like John Allen - have pointed out how little reform has really been accomplished (because the best potential reforms have now been all rolled back), suddenly you acknowledge 'difficulties'.]

The crèche and the gap
The messiness of history is a caution against letting sentimentality take over Christmas;
so are some challenging truths about Mary, Joseph, and their place in the 'economy of salvation'
by George Weigel

December 20, 2017

For the past decade or so, I’ve been assembling a mid-sized Judean village of Fontanini crèche figures, including artisans, herders (with sheep), farmers (with chickens and an a-historical turkey), vintners, blacksmiths, musicians, weavers, and a fisherman or two (one awake, another sleeping).

Like the colossal Neapolitan crèche at the basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Rome, it’s a reminder that the Lord Jesus was born in the midst of humanity and its messy history: the history that the Child has come to set back on its truest course, which is toward God.

The messiness of history is a caution against letting sentimentality take over Christmas; so are some challenging truths about Mary, Joseph, and their place in what theologians calls the 'economy of salvation'.

Why challenging? Because Mary and Joseph were called to both form their son in the faith of Israel and then give up, even renounce, their human claims on him, so that he might be what God the Father intended and the world needed.

When Luke tells us that Mary kept all that had happened to her and to her boy “in her heart” (Luke 2,52), we may imagine that she was pondering what the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar once described as a great detachment: at his birth, Jesus “detached himself from her in order to tread his way back to the Father through the world.”

Some will welcome the message he will preach along that messianic pilgrimage; others will be resistant. And that resistance (in which the Evil One will play no small part) will eventually lead to Calvary, where the sword of sorrow promised by ancient Simeon in Luke 2.35 will pierce Mary’s soul.

Then, in the tableau at the foot of the Cross, as captured by Michelangelo in the Pietà, Mary will offer the silent affirmation of God’s will to which she once vocal assent at the Annunciation: “Be it done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1,38).

The last recorded words of Mary in the New Testament – “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2,5) – underscore that the role of Mary, who receives the Incarnate Word of God at the Annunciation and gives birth to him in the Nativity, is always to give her Son away: to point beyond herself to him, and to call others to obedience to him.

Thus what Balthasar described as a “detachment” applies to Mary as well as to Jesus: Mary detaches herself from whatever her own life-plans might be, and from whatever her maternal instincts to keep her Son close might be, in order to fulfill the vocation planned for her from the beginning – to be the model of all Christian discipleship, which is the abandonment of my will to God’s will for my life.

Then there is Joseph, another model of self-gift and self-renunciation. Hans Urs von Balthasar again:

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“In the background of this scene of birth there also stands Joseph, who renounces his own fatherhood and assumes the role of foster father assigned to him.

He provides a particularly impressive example of Christian obedience, which can be…very difficult…to accept, especially in the physical sphere. For one can be poor by having given everything away once and for all, but one can be chaste only by a daily renunciation of something which is inalienable to man.”

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[Perhaps the pope of AL would have done well to seek inspiration from the saint whose image he claims to keep by his bedside so he can consign all his problems to him, including letter petitions from the faithful (but never, I think, letters from cardinals seeking clarification) - before summarily rejecting as he did the Church proviso that 'adulterous'couples wishing to receive communion may do so only after confession and amending their life concretely by henceforth living in abstinence.]

And that makes Joseph a model for those who struggle daily to live, by grace, the truths they affirm about human love.

“Mind the gap” is the ubiquitous instruction found on the London Underground, cautioning passengers against stepping between the main and the platform. It’s also a pithy but accurate description of the drama of the Christian life.

For we all live, daily, in the “gap” between the person I am and the person I was called to be at baptism. The quotidian effort to minimize that “gap,” which means cooperating with God’s grace, is the warp and woof of the spiritual life.

So the complement to the Fontanini characters surrounding our family crèche – each of whom represents a personal and unique “life in the gap” – is a small “Mind the Gap” Christmas ornament on our tree. For the Child born in Bethlehem is the bridge across the gap, and the angels atop the tree announce his birth.

A blessed Christmas to all.

Weigel obviously chose not to comment at all on the 'Nativity scene' - really a 'works of mercy' tableau - now on display in St. Peter's Square, when his line about 'the messiness of history' (the routine messiness of life, really) would have been the perfect opening to discuss the messy tableau and to comment on the overwhelming predominance of the 'mercy' theme over the Nativity event that a creche is supposed to commemorate (i.e.,something like - "The tableau reminds us that the messiness of life makes it necessary for each one of us to perform the corporal works of mercy, but...")

Funeral Mass for Cardinal Law
at St. Peter's Basilica
In his homily, Cardinal Sodano says
‘Even cardinals make mistakes’
by John L. Allen Jr.
Editor

Dec 21, 2017

ROME – Before an unusually small congregation of mourners, albeit one that featured U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Callista Gingrich and her husband, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a funeral Mass for Cardinal Bernard Law was celebrated behind the main altar in St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday afternoon.

Pope Francis took part in the ritual, not celebrating the Mass but offering final prayers at the end, reading the prescribed prayers for the final commendation of the deceased to God and the final valediction.

The Vatican’s foreign minister, British Archbishop Richard Paul Gallagher, was also on hand for the funeral Mass.

The main celebrant for the liturgy was Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, acting in his capacity as the Dean of the College of Cardinals.

His role was controversial, given that like Law himself, Sodano has a checkered history when it comes to the child sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church. [I don't know that Cardinal Sodano's questionable history in this respect has anything to do with why he officiated. He obviously did so as Dean of the College of Cardinals. At Mass, he receives the Body and Blood of Christ - are we to assume he has been receiving communion sacrilegiously at every Mass he has celebrated since his association with Father Maciel? That he never, at any point, realized his grievous error in this respect and failed to confess it and get absolution for it? Besides, the moment a priest celebrates the Eucharistic sacrifice properly, he acts in persona Christi, and nothing about his personal life can change that.]

For much of the late 20th century, Sodano was a patron of the late Mexican Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legion of Christ, whose pattern of sexual abuse and misconduct was eventually recognized by his own order following a Vatican investigation that Sodano had opposed.

In 2010, Sodano again stirred controversy when he suggested during an Easter homily that critics of Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of sexual abuse controversies were engaging in “petty gossip.” [A gross misrepresentation by Allen of the incident, and blatantly unfair to Cardinal Sodano - for whom I hold no particular brief but that he deserves fairness - as I remarked at length at the time.]

In his homily on Thursday for the funeral Mass, Sodano appeared to allude to Law’s association with the abuse scandals in the United States, saying that cardinals too make mistakes and fail, and adding that’s why Catholics include a confession of sins at the beginning of every Mass.

One of the opening prayers for the Mass read: “O God, who chose your servant Cardinal Bernard Law from among your priests and endowed him with pontifical dignity in the apostolic priesthood, grant, we pray, that he may also be admitted to their company forever.”

Thursday’s Mass was not broadcast over any of the Vatican’s media services, as funeral Masses for deceased cardinals generally aren’t carried, and likewise Sodano’s homily was not distributed through Vatican media channels.

In general, the absence of tributes for Law in the usual venues in Rome has been striking. Often when a well-known cardinal dies, there will be admiring pieces on his life and legacy in Italian Catholic media, and comments from senior Church officials in television interviews.

This time around, however, there’s been little official acknowledgment of Law’s death beyond Thursday’s funeral Mass.

None of that, however, has stopped some critics from questioning the wisdom of staging the funeral Mass at St. Peter’s and involving the pope.

Father James Martin, a well-known commentator on Catholic affairs in the United States, tweeted out on Thursday that “there is no need always to follow the norm” and that “it is exceptionally painful for abuse victims to see this.”

[Of course, the sanctimonious Fr Martin would not miss out this chance to be quoted. What I remarked above about Cardinal Sodano and his presumed sins and sinfulness is equally valid for Cardinal Law.

As questionable as his actions in Boston may have been - and John Paul II's decision to name him Archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maggiore (which is the #1 Marian shrine in the Catholic world) after he had resigned as Archbishop of Boston - why do Catholics like Martin assume that thereafter, the cardinal remained unrepentant and sinful- and therefore undeserving of a funeral Mass in t. Peter's Basilica which is where funeral Masses for deceased cardinals are held.

In general, the attitude from these sanctimonious types - not to mention the abuse victims themselves whose psychological and emotional damage may well last the rest of their lives - is that any priest or bishop who has been accused of sexual abuse or covering up for it is automatically condemned for life, that there is nothing he could ever do to redeem himself of his sin(s).

My personal proviso about Pope Francis naming Mons. Ricca to be the spiritual adviser at IOR and confirming him as general manager of the Vatican hotels, including Casa Santa Marta, is that Ricca must have assured the pope that he had put his former life as an active homosexual behind him, that he had confessed and been absolved (perhaps he confessed to the pope himself), and that he would henceforth live as a priest ought to live. In which case, having been named the IOR prelate by the pope comes down only to an egregious case of bad optics.

In Benedict XVI's historical letter to the Catholics of Ireland in 2010 on the sexual abuse issue, he devoted a section addressed "To priests and religious who have abused children" - he did not simply give up on them! - in which he says:

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I urge you to examine your conscience, take responsibility for the sins you have committed, and humbly express your sorrow. Sincere repentance opens the door to God’s forgiveness and the grace of true amendment. By offering prayers and penances for those you have wronged, you should seek to atone personally for your actions.

Christ’s redeeming sacrifice has the power to forgive even the gravest of sins, and to bring forth good from even the most terrible evil. At the same time, God’s justice summons us to give an account of our actions and to conceal nothing. Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God’s mercy.

---

It's hard to imagine that anyone who went through the difficult process of priestly formation in answer to a vocation he felt, and was subsequently ordained a priest, could ever forget that he can be back in God's grace through confession, penance and a sincere and concrete amendment of his life to renounce the sins and crimes he committed. Those who forget, or choose to ignore this, simply elect to stay with Satan and renounce God. I charitably choose to think that Cardinal Law, Cardinal Sodano and Mons Ricca - to go with the examples cited here - all did the right thing.]

Martin suggested instead that the funeral Mass should have been held at the Basilica of St. Mary Major, where Law was installed in 2004 as the archpriest following his resignation from the Archdiocese of Boston. [Assuming it had been held there, Martin would surely have found a reason to object. Anyway, why would it be any 'better' to have the funeral Mass celebrated in Santa Maria Maggiore than in St. Peter's? Besides, the SNAP types would simply say Law did not have a right to a funeral Mass at all!]

Top panel: left, Fr Gheddo at a refugee camp during his mission years; right, in retirement.
Bottom panel: Fr Gheddo's blog site and his last entry on 12/14/17.=, just six days before he died.

Our prayers for the eternal repose of a man who embodied the Church's age-old missionary tradition...

AsiaNews founder
Fr Piero Gheddo dies
by Fr. Bernardo Cervellera
Editor

December 20, 2017

Milan (AsiaNews) – Fr Piero Gheddo, a missionary with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), died today at the Ambrosiana nursing home in Cesano Boscone, near Milan. He was 89 years old and had been ill for some time.

Internationally recognised as ‘the missionary of print media’, Fr Gheddo worked all his life in the world of communications to spread the Gospel. In 1986 he founded AsiaNews, and continued to contribute to it when it went online.

Born in 1929 in Tronzano Vercellese (Italy), he attended the diocesan seminary of Moncrivello (Vercelli province). He entered PIME in 1945 and was ordained priest in 1953. His dream was to go to India, but after his ordination he was always asked to work in journalism.

He often said he had repeatedly asked his superiors to let him go on mission, but without success. Still, he travelled the world like no other and he knew the missionary world in all its aspects and in all its latitudes.

Convinced that the universal mission is the responsibility of each believer, he was one of the founders of the PIME missionary centre in Milan in 1961. From there, he spread culture, information and mission works in Italy and the world together with Fr Amelio Crotti and Fr Giacomo Girardi.

The campaigns organised by the PIME Centre against hunger in the world, for Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees, for peace in Lebanon, for the missionary Vigil ahead of World Mission Day have marked the lives of many generations of young people.

The foundation of Mani tese (Extended hands) in 1964 and Editrice Missionaria Italiana (Italian Missionary Publishing, EMI) in 1955 are part of this work.

From 1959 to 1994 he was editor of the monthly magazine Mondo e Missione (World and Mission), one of the most precious tools to learn about global issues and the Christian contribution to Church building and development.

At a time of great ideological conflicts, he combined a clear ecclesial identity to openness and commitment to heal the world’s social wounds, convinced of the irreplaceable contribution of the Gospel to humanity’s full dignity.

In tune with the Second Vatican Council, but rowing against the current, he was the first to denounce – after seeing it in Vietnam – the Vietcong’s violent ideology. Acclaimed by the whole world, he witnessed its oppression of the Vietnamese people.

While valuing Helder Camara, the bishop of Recife – brought to Italy by the PIME Centre –, he was always critical of the Marxist trend within a part of Latin America’s liberation theology.

On the subject of hunger in the world, he stepped away from the obvious complaints (colonialism, exploitation, etc.) and easy solutions (investments, technology transfers, etc.) to show that – as missionaries say – underdevelopment has a cultural dimension. In order to overcome it, education and evangelisation are necessary, to give people and their dignity a role to play in history.

This balance was valued by popes as well. In 1962, as a journalist of the Osservatore Romano, he was chosen by Giovanni XXIII as an expert to draft the conciliar decree Ad Gentes. In the 1990s, John Paul II chose him to author the encyclical Redemptoris Missio.

Fr Gheddo’s activity has been multifaceted. He was the editor of Italia Missionaria (Missionary Italy), whose goal was to promote an evangelising sensibility among young people, as well as Missionari del Pime (PIME Missionaries), to provide direct access to the experiences from the missionary borderlands.

For years, he contributed to Italian state television (RAI) explaining the Sunday gospel. On Rai radio, he contributed a brief morning message (Il Vangelo delle 7.18, The Gospel at 7.18 am). He also collaborated with Radio Maria and various lay publications like the magazine Gente and the newspaper Il Giornale when Indro Montanelli, whom he befriended, was the paper’s editor.

Father Gheddo wrote more than ninety books, thirty of which were translated, and received several journalistic awards.

From 1994 to 2010 he was director of the PIME Historical Archives in Rome, publishing several histories of PIME missions in the world, as well as biographies of some members of the institute.

Deeply convinced that the world needs models and experiences, Fr Gheddo was a driving force behind the cause of beatification of a number PIME missionaries: Giovanni Mazzucconi, Paolo Manna, Clemente Vismara, Mario Vergara, and more recenlty Alfredo Cremonesi.

He worked on documenting the actions of the servants of God Marcello Candia, Angelo Ramazzotti, Felice Tantardini, Carlo Salerio, Egidio Biffi as well as Leopoldo Pastori and Mgr Aristide Pirovano.

Worthy of mention is cause of beatification of his parents, Rosetta Franzi (1902-1934) and Giovanni Gheddo (1900-1942), spearheaded in 2006 by Mgr Enrico Masseroni, bishop of Vercelli.

After overcoming some obstacles, including the fact that a son cannot take up the cause of beatification of his parents, the new archbishop of Vercelli, Marco Arnolfo, restarted the cause in 2015, appointing a new postulator, lawyer Lia Lafronte.

Fr Gheddo’s books on his parents, Il testamento del capitano (The Captain's Testament) with the letters of Pope John from the war in Russia (San Paolo, 2002) and Questi santi genitori (These Holy Parents) (San Paolo, 2005) have become best sellers, popular reading in many Italian families.

Starting in 2014, the ailing Fr Gheddo needed constant medical care. For this reason, he moved to the Ambrosiana nursing home in Cesano Boscone, in the diocese of Milan. Here he worked almost until the end, managing his blog and sending thoughts and reflections about mission in general.

Cardinal Maradiaga probably has an exculpatory explanation for what this story alleges, but just in case there is some truth in all this (maybe
the sums involved were really quite modest), how will the pope spin this for his friend and probably number-1 surrogate (for which he has been
widely called 'vice-pope' by the media), as well as coordinator of his Crown Council of Nine???

35,000 euros a month for the Cardinal:
a new scandal that's shaking the Vatican
The pope's friend and adviser, Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, apparently
has been receiving $600,000 a year from a Honduran university
by Emiliano Fittipaldi
Adapted from the English translation provided by
L'ESPRESSO
December 21, 2017

When he finished reading the investigative report by the apostolic envoy he himself had sent to Honduras last May, Pope Francis’s hands went up to his skullcap. He had just found out that his friend and main councilor — THE powerful cardinal Oscar Maradiaga Rodriguez, a staunch supporter of a poor and pauperist Church, and coordinator of the pope's Council of Cardinals since he created this in 2013 - had received over the years around 41,600 US dollars a month, with an additional 64,200 dollars bonus in December,from the Catholic University of Tegucigalpa.

The Pope received the dossier six months ago, and has let it be known that all final decisions in this connection will be made by him.
[He deserves credit for ordering an investigation, to begin with - he must have had serious reason to do so; but why are we hearing about the report only six months later? Unless he gave Maradiaga and his 'co-accused' time to answer the charges, but that does not seem to be indicated anywhere in this story.]

Not included in the report he read was that several witnesses, both ecclesiastical and secular, have accused Maradiaga of investing more than $1.2 million in some companies in London, investments which have reportedly vanished into thin air.

Nor that the Court of Auditors of Honduras has been investigating the flow of large sums of money from the Honduran government to the Foundation for Education and Social Communication and to the Suyapa Foundation, both foundations of the local Church and therefore dependent on Maradiaga himself.

"The Pope is sad and saddened, but also very determined at discovering the truth," people of his entourage at Casa Santa Marta have said. [Does that mean he is assuming the veracity of the report without confronting Maradiaga to get his side?]

They say he wants to know every detail of the investigation conducted for him in Honduras by Argentine bishop Jorge Pedro Casaretto. Not to mention the final destination of the jaw-dropping sums of money reportedly obtained by the cardinal.

Just in one year, 2015, according to an internal university report obtained by L’Espresso, the cardinal received almost $600,000, a sum that some sources say he has been collecting annually for a decade in his capacity as Grand Chancellor of the university.

However, some other rather unpleasant items account for the rest of the sums he received, according to Bishop Casaretto’s report. Many witnesses also made similar accusations against the Auxiliary Bishop of Tegucigalpa, Juan José Pineda, among the most loyal in Maradiaga’s inner circle and his de facto deputy in Central America [since Maradiaga is almost always globe-trotting].

Casaretto took the testimony of around fifty witnesses, including administrative staff of both the diocese and the university, priests, seminarians and the cardinal's driver and secretary.

Maradiaga, a Salesian like former Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, was born in Honduras 75 years ago. His birthday falls on 29 December, at which time he is expected to submit his resignation under the mandatory retirement age for bishops. At which time, we will know if the pope will keep him on or accept the resignation.

A primary school teacher before becoming a middle school math professor, the cardinal is a highly cultivated person ​​fluent in five languages, an expert in moral theology and philosophy ,and a great lover of music. He became very well-known in Latin America as a sworn enemy of corruption and a strong defender of the very poor.

That is why, in 2013, Francesco, who appreciated his intellectual and government skills, called him to head the group of cardinal advisers helping him with the reform of the Roman Curia and with governing the Church, in general. [Precisely because he is reputed to be a great intellectual - leaving aside the fact that the accusations alleged are evil - why and how would Maradiaga have done all the things he is accused of, and expect none of it to come out? Sanctimonious people should strive to be above suspicion like Caesar's wife!]

The accusations against Maradiaga's auxiliary are many: "Some [audited] expenses go to close friends of Pineda, like a Mexican who calls himself ‘Father Erick’, but who never took his vows", according to one source. "His real name is Erick Cravioto Fajardo, and for years, he lived in an apartment adjacent to that of Cardinal Maradiaga, at Villa Iris. Pineda, who has reportedly lived with him under the same roof, recently bought him a downtown apartment and a car. The money, we fear, came from university funds or from the diocese. We have denounced this close and unseemly relationship to the Vatican. The pope knows everything". [Oh dear! Another Ricca openly living in flagrante delicto, so to speak! But Worse because Pineda is a bishop!]

The witnesses also disclosed alleged investments to the tune of millions gone catastrophically sour: Maradiaga supposedly transferred large amounts of diocesan funds to some financial companies in London, like Lehman Wealth Management, and now, part of the money entrusted (and deposited in accounts in German banks) seems to have vanished.

Casaretto's report also hints at possibly huge money transfers to the media empire set up by the archdiocese, and to the Suyapa Foundation, which manages the newspapers and television channels of the diocese,

As to Bishop Pineda, local newspapers pinpointed him recently as having orchestrated reckless financial operations, receiving as much as $1.2 million in public funds allegedly meant for projects aimed at "training of the faithful to the values ​​and understanding laws and social life". According to the accusers, these expenses were never supported by valid documentation.

The Vatican is understandably worried that the Honduran Court of Auditors launched an audit of the Tegucigalpa archdiocese Catholic for the years 2012-2014. They are reportedly investigating the legality of projects for which the government transferred every year tens of millions in the local currency to the Foundation for Education and Social Communication, whose official representative is Maradiaga. As of the time of writing this story, a letter from the prosecutors that L’Espresso obtained states that Maradiaga's archdiocese has yet to produce the documentation requested.

Imagine if in their time, Cardinal Deskur (John Paul II's close friend since they were in seminary together) or Cardinal Meisner (probably the cardinal who was closest to Benedict XVI) had been accused of what Maradiaga is being accused of!...However, it's Christmastime, and I can only pray Maradiaga - as much as I dislike him - can properly and honestly answer the accusations made against him. This is a man who was listed among the front-running papabile in 2005 and 2013, after all.



Top papal adviser and critic of 'the rich'
embroiled in allegations of financial misconduct
by Steve Skojec

December 21, 2017

A top papal adviser known for his tirades against capitalism and the wealthy is under investigation by the Vatican after reports that he has been receiving over $40,000 US per month from the Catholic University of Tegucigalpa and had allegedly invested amounts of over $1 million in companies in London that “later vanished into thin air.”

According to Emiliano Fittipaldi of Italy’s L’Espresso weekly newsmagazine, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras — the coordinator of the pope’s C9 council — has fallen under the scrutiny of the pope himself since the allegations have surfaced.

They implicate him in receiving of nearly $600,000 a year for up to a decade from the Catholic University of Tegucigalpa of which he is Grand Chancellor.

Despite his advocacy of the poor at the expense of the rich, when asked in a 2014 interview about the wealth of the German Church — also closely tied to the Francis pontificate — Maradiaga responded that “helping the poor does not mean being poor”. In that same interview, he nevertheless blamed the wealthy in America and Europe for the 2008 financial collapse.

Of all the members of the pope’s inner circle, it has been Maradiaga who has stood out as the most enthusiastic proponent and enforcer of the pope’s agenda. He identified himself early on in his role in the papacy as a staunch progressive force, and has continued to make public statements that reinforce that impression.

In a talk given in October 2013, he claimed that the Second Vatican Council “meant an end to the hostilities between the Church and modernism, which was condemned in the First Vatican Council.”

He was acting president of Caritas Internationalis when it was first reported that the international Catholic relief organization held a seat on the board of a pro-communist, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual organization known as the World Social Forum — but he nevertheless took no action.

In 2014, he publicly chastised Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who at the time served as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as inflexible, calling him “a professor of German theology” who “sees things in black and white terms.”

In the same interview, he said that the Church reforms championed by Pope Francis had “reached a point of no return”; a theme he reiterated in a 2015 talk in which he claimed that the pope “wants to take this Church renovation to the point where it becomes irreversible.”

He was also a point man in the attacks on the DUBIA cardinals, accusing them of not having read Amoris Laetitia before commenting on it, and of “pharisaism” in their response to it. He took things a step further with Cardinal Burke, the de facto leader of the DUBIA effort, saying that he “is a disappointed man, in that he wanted power and lost it.”

But now, it seems that the tables have turned against the brutally candid Honduran cardinal. His role as leader of the pope’s hand-picked men is now in doubt as reports of his extravagant income threaten the image of the pope’s commitment to “a poor Church for the poor.” Sources cited by L’Espresso said that Francis is “sad” about the allegations against Maradiaga, “but also very determined at discovering the truth”...

It is unclear how much Pope Francis knew about Maradiaga’s financial activities when he was brought on board as an adviser. The pope was given a dossier on the matter six months ago, and has reserved to himself the right to make all ecclesiastical decisions as a consequence of the investigation. The question remains, however, whether the pope will take action.

In the past, he has received criticism for his handling of several cases of clerical misconduct among his friends, the most significant case being that of the Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, a member of the so-called “St. Gallen Mafia” who claims to have participated in a conspiracy to elect the Argentinian pope.

Danneels was caught on tape attempting to silence a victim of clerical sexual abuse in his diocese; the book The Dictator Pope alleges that Danneels was also implicated in some way in nearly 50 of 475 dossiers on allegations of clerical sexual abuse that ultimately went missing after having been seized as evidence by Belgian police and subsequently deemed inadmissible in court for unknown reasons.

Danneels was nevertheless present with Pope Francis on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on the evening of his election, and was personally invited by the pope to attend the Synod on the Family, despite his advocacy for abortion and homosexual “marriage” in his home country.

December 21, 2017

Canon212.com's headlines are becoming increasingly insupportable - not just for rubbing in its editor's biases unnecessarily in the most offensive
(and usually grammatically incorrect) ways - and being not the least bit careful about making elementary spelling errors posted in 72 points bold -
as in the banner headline below:



Even if today was a heavy news day for 'the Church' (Paul VI to be canonized, Cardinal Law buried, Bergoglio blasts the Curia again, and the
revelations about Cardinal Maradiaga's financial doings), I would not have posted this headline summary, were it not that it illustrates the worst
journalistic faults of this particular news aggregator.

News aggregators ought to simply collate the headlines, maybe tweak some a bit for clarity, but they have no business building their biases
into the headlines with which they choose to re-baptize existing ones and assaulting the reader with these biases the way Canon212.com does.

The ways of God are truly inscrutable. Who would have said even three years ago before he was beatified, that Paul VI, pope of Humanae Vitae
as well as the Novus Ordo, would become a saint so soon (40 years since his death), which means to some people, including me, that this leaves
the cause of Pius XII lagging far behind???

Pope Paul VI, beatified in 2014,
is one step closer to canonization
by Iacopo Scaramuzzi
From the English service of

December 21, 2017

In a special issue entitled “It will be the year of Saint Paul VI", the weekly magazine of the diocese of Brescia, La voce del popolo, writes that on 13 December, theologians of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood recognized a miracle attributed to the intercession of Pope Montini, after an approval had been given by the medical consultants who examined the case.

It remains for the Congregation itself and finally, the pope, to approve the miracle and thus pave the way for the 262nd pope's canonization. There will follow a Consistory with the official announcement of the approval and setting the date for the canonization.

The miracle was the birth of baby girl Amanda who in 2014 had survived in the womb and was delivered despite the fact that the placenta [the lifeline to the mother that supports the baby while it is in the womb] had broken.

The expectant mother, a native of Verona, was warned that she would miscarry, but a few days after the beatification of Papa Montini, she went to the Santuario delle Grazie in Brescia to pray for his intercession. She carried her child to turn, and the girl was born in good health, implying there had been a healing of the broken placenta in utero.

Pope Francis beatified his predecessor on 19 October 2014, concluding the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family.

“Rumors are so insistent and the next steps so fast to take, that everything indicates 2018 as Blessed Paul VI’s canonization year”, writes the diocesan newspaper of Brescia.

October 2018 could be the occasion, when, from Oct. 3-28, the 15th Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, focused on the problems of young people, will take place at the Vatican with the presence of a large number of prelates participating in the synod.

It will most likely take place on one of the first three Sundays of October, but some are saying, it will probably be Oct. 21.

[If the miracle has been authenticated by both medical and theological experts, why should it take another 10 months to formalize the approval and set a canonization date?]

Notice a slight re-arrangement in the Mercy tableau (left), from how it was when it was uncovered last Dec. 7 (right)? It seems an effort was made to 'isolate' the Nativity-scene proper from the rest of the overwhelming clutter.

So, someone did look more into the background to uncover relevant facts about the now-baptized 'Gaytivity scene' in St. Peter's Square, and I am [really not] surprised that no journalist had done so earlier... As it turns out, 'Gaytivity' is not at all an improper tag for it...

Italy's LGBT activists behind the scenes
of the Vatican’s 'innovative' presentation of the Nativity
by Diane Montagna


ROME, December 20, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican Nativity scene featuring a naked man, a corpse, and no sheep or oxen is the artistic offering of an abbey which is the focus of Italian LGBT activists, it has emerged.

Enquiries by LifeSiteNews have revealed that the Abbey of Montevergine, which donated the innovative ‘Nativity of Mercy,’ houses the Marian image that has been adopted as patroness by LGBT activists in Italy. The abbey shrine is the annual destination of a sort of sacred and profane “ancestral gay pride” pilgrimage which, according to one LGBT activist, in recent years has gained the “active, political participation of the LGBT community.”

An official of the Vatican’s Governorate has told LifeSiteNews that the abbey of Montevergine initially proposed the original idea for the ‘Nativity of Mercy.’ The Vatican discussed and developed a more detailed design with the abbey, then submitted final plans to the Secretary of State and Pope Francis for approval, which was duly granted.

“The presence of the Vatican Nativity Scene for us is a reason to be even happier this year,” Antonello Sannini, president of homosexual activist group Arcigay Naples, told LifeSiteNews on Tuesday. “For the homosexual and transsexual community in Naples, it is an important symbol of inclusion and integration.”

The Christmas crèche fury blew up on Twitter last week, when photos of a nude male figure to illustrate the corporal work of mercy ‘clothe the naked’ made the rounds on social media, sparking sharp criticism and debate.

Viewers lamented the figure’s “prominent placement and languid pose,” according to a Breitbart News report, which saidthat the figure’s pose “led many on social media to suggest that there is a vaguely homoerotic tone to the scene.”

Facebook, adding to the fury, rejected the photo referencing its policy against “sexually suggestive or provocative” images.

One observer remarked, regarding the 'poor' man in need of clothes: “I’ve worked with a personal trainer. That guy’s been in the gym two hours a day, six days a week.”
'
“This horrendous exhibit, a sacrilegious, highly deceitful and malevolent attempt to turn the holy innocence of the manger in St. Peter’s Square into a lobbying tool for the homosexual rights movement, is just the latest fiendish act, but one that’s symptomatic of this entire pontificate,” one source close to the Vatican told LifeSiteNews.

Meanwhile, the Neapolitan artist who crafted the crèche, Antonio Cantone, appeared to suggest that he intended it to be provocative.

“It is not a camp nativity; it is particular and makes you think,” he said. “It leaves no one indifferent; there are provocations.”

This year’s Christmas crèche also features a reproduction of the ancient and beautiful icon of Our Lady of Montevergine. [On the left side of the tableau: I've outlined it in red - and I apologize I did not notice it at all before this]. The original icon, housed in a chapel of the mountain shrine, measures 12 feet high and six feet wide, and depicts the Blessed Virgin seated on a throne with the divine Infant Jesus seated on her lap.

The Marian image is dark, and so the icon is often referred to as one of the “Black Madonnas.” Among local Italians, her dark complexion made them believe she was part of the serving class and so she came to be affectionately known by the faithful as “Mamma Schiavano” or “Slave Mama.”

Each year, Our Lady of Montevergine is honored through two pilgrimages to her mountain shrine: one on February 2, the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or Candlemas; and the second on September 12, the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, which is preceded by a three-day festival.

On the night before the feast pilgrims are hosted by Ospedaletto d’Alpinolo, the nearest town to the abbey, before making the “sagliuta” or “juta” (from the Italian “salire,” i.e. ascent) on foot to the shrine of Our Lady of Montevergine early the next morning. The three-day celebration is a mix of sacred and profane, and features dances and songs accompanied by large tambourines.

Our Lady of Montevergine has a particular significance for homosexuals and transgenders in Italy. According to a legend, Our Lady of Montevergine saved two homosexuals from death in the winter of 1256. The couple had been beaten and driven by night from their city and brought to the mountain where they were tied to a tree and left to die of the cold or be eaten by wolves. According to the legend, Our Lady of Montevergine had pity on them and ‘miraculously’ freed them. In 2017, La Repubblica called it “the progressive miracle of a gay-friendly Madonna.” [She wasn't specifically 'gay-friendly', but merciful and human-friendly - it was not a specifically gay-friendly act: she would have rescued any persons, male or female, left in the same predicament.] More commonly, she is known as the mother “who grants everything and forgives everything.”

[I am very happy that the LGBTs of Italy have a patron saint in Our Lady of Montevergine, but do they forget that Mary is also the icon of chastity par excellence? (It surely is no coincidence that the place name for her shrine in this case is Montevergine (the virgin's mountain).)

They would do well not to think of her as someone who 'forgives everything' - first, because forgiveness only comes from God, and second, because she would not forgive any offenses against God, especially offenses that are committed habitually without intention of amendment.

She has also been God's most consistent messenger to mankind for penitence, penitence, penitence! Indeed, they must avail of her patronage so she may be God's agent for the grace they need to be able to sacrifice their unnatural sexual preferences and offer that sacrifice as their gift to God, not their raw sexuality as the LGBT activists appear to imply.]

The “juta dei femminielli” [ascent of the femminielli] is therefore held each year on Candlemas Day to recall the legend through song and dance. Femminielli is a term used by the Neapolitans to refer to a population of homosexual males with markedly feminine features.

The LGBT community also looks to Our Lady of Montevergine because she sits on the ancient temple site where the pagan goddess Cybele was once worshiped. In a 2014 article entitled “The procession of the femminielli,” La Repubblica noted that the eunuch priests of Cybele ritually castrated themselves “to offer their sex as a gift to their goddess in order to be reborn with a new identity.”

Antonello Sannino, the president of Arcigay Naples, told LifeSite that the “juta dei femminielli” involves a “mix of the sacred and profane.” Admitting his own distance from the Church, Sannino said “there is a strong popular devotion among believers” but for others, the ritual represents entrusting oneself to a non-Christian divinity.

The annual Candlemas pilgrimage is a kind of “ancestral gay pride,” he said, and has been a “way to welcome into the culture of the city [of Naples], the figure of the femminiello which is disruptive in a binary ‘masculine-feminine’ society.”

In 2002, the pilgrimage made the papers when the then abbot of Montevergine, Tarcisio Nazzaro, expressed his displeasure at the presence of the Neapolitan ‘femminielli.’

According to La Repubblica, during Holy Mass, Nazzaro told them: “Your prayers aren’t prayers but a clamor that Our Lady is not pleased with and so does not welcome. You are like the merchants that filled the temple until Jesus threw them out.” Allegedly, he later confided to the Sacristan: “I don’t have anything against anyone and I didn’t wish to offend anyone, much less these individual faithful. But what’s too much is too much. We need a little respect for the sacred place, and the dignity of the shrine has to be preserved.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraphs 2358-2359, that although homosexual inclinations are “objectively disordered,” men and women who suffer this trial “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity” and “every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided” but like all Christians they are “called to chastity” and to Christian perfection.

Sannino didn’t berate the abbot but thought that the presence at the abbey in 2002 of Vladimir Luxuria, Italy’s first transsexual parliamentarian, precipitated the dispute. “It was too political in 2002,” he said.

That incident galvanized the LGBT movement, Ottavia Voza, president of Arcigay Salerno, told LifeSite. Another minor incident followed in 2010, but the “active, political participation of the LGBT community” began after the dispute in 2002.

In September 2014 under Pope Francis, a new abbot of Montevergine was elected, Dom Riccardo Luca Guariglia. Earlier that year, Luxuria wrote a letter to Pope Francis on behalf of the LGBT community, and publicly presented it at the Candlemas pilgrimage at the Shrine of Montevergine. No one is aware of a response to that letter.

In 2017, leaders of the LGBT community met Abbot Guariglia. Voza said the relations are now “excellent” and this year they “had an opportunity for dialogue with the abbot.” Voza told LifeSite that Vladimir Luxuria was there and the abbot “stopped to speak with us.” It wasn’t a private meeting but “in essence, he gave us his blessing,” Voza continued, adding that the incident in 2002 “was completely overcome.”

“He welcomed us,” Voza said, “and understood the importance of the presence of the community.”

Matters also intensified politically in 2017 when LGBT activists inaugurated Italy’s first ever “no gender” bathroom in Ospedaletto d’Alpinolo during the February 2 pilgrimage, and a civilly ‘married’ homosexual couple was given honorary citizenship by Ospedaletto d’Alpinolo’s civic authorities. Together with the LGBT activists, the civil authorities also unveiled a plaque at the entrance of the town, reading “Ospedaletto d’Alpinolo is against homotransphobia and gender violence.”

At the ceremony, Vladimir Luxuria said the small town of Ospedaletto d’Alpinolo should serve as a model for the rest of Italy.

Abbot Guariglia was interviewed about the ‘juta dei femminielli’ in 2017, saying: “St. Benedict tells us that guests are to be welcomed as Christ himself” and the abbey has “this peculiarity, that of being welcoming every type of pilgrim who comes to the shrine, first, to give homage or to entrust themselves to the Mother of God, and then also to celebrate the Sacraments.”

Sannino welcomed the Vatican Nativity Scene, saying he believes it is an “important symbol of inclusion and integration,” but whether it signifies greater openness by the Church depends on “how conscious” Vatican officials were of the connection with LGBT activists in making the decision. [But what is this persistent myth peddled by the victimhood-mongers that there is no 'inclusion and integration' in the Church. There's a reason it is called the Catholic Church ,i.e., universal - to which everyone is welcome, but in which every member must also accept her teachings, and not expect to be exempt from any of the divine commandments that they find inconvenient to them or incompatible with their chosen lifestyle.

The attitude of Catholic victimhood-claimers - i.e., all those the Church denounces for chronic mortal sins against chastity, including the remarried adulterers and practising homosexuals, or for condoning and practising contraception, abortion, euthanasia and other anti-life crimes - seeks entitlement to being exempt from the commandments that all Catholics try to obey. They seek a moral [more properly, amoral] entitlement worse than the material and legal entitlement that they have already obtained in the secular world.]

“We hope that the Church will finally develop a real sense of openness in the wake of the Pope’s words,” he said, referring to Francis’s “Who am I to judge?” comment. “The Church is extremely slow in its transformations,” he believes, and is fairly confident “this will also happen.” [Gee thanks, but yukkkk!]

But people in Rome are wondering how Pope Francis will respond. As in past years, Pope Francis is expected to spend time before the crèche [Can we really call the 'gaytivity' mercy tableau a creche???] in silent prayer on December 31 after Vespers and the chanting of the Te Deum prayer of thanksgiving in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The concern is that the optics of his silent prayer before the icon of Montevergine and the naked man, positioned on either side of the Nativity Scene, will send a signal, or be used by the more politically motivated in the LGBT community, to push their agenda.

Officially, the Vatican isn’t commenting on the Nativity scene, so it’s unclear how aware those who made the decisions are of its connections to Montevergine abbey and its associations with Italy’s LGBT activists. LifeSite contacted Vatican spokesman Greg Burke but he declined to answer. [What else can he say really, when an official of the Governatorate (which officially funds the Christmas display on St. Peter's Square) has already explained that "the abbey of Montevergine initially proposed the original idea for the ‘Nativity of Mercy.’ The Vatican discussed and developed a more detailed design with the abbey, then submitted final plans to the Secretary of State and Pope Francis for approval, which was duly granted."

Italian Church historian Roberto de Mattei of the Lepanto Foundation sees this as the latest attempt to “paganize Italy and Europe” through indirect means, in what he calls “soft neo-paganization.”

This involves choosing places of Christian worship “to return them to their pagan origins,” De Mattei explained, sending Christianity back into the age of catacombs where it was persecuted by the pagans.

The LGBT movement is not only political or cultural but a “religious movement” with pagan characteristics, he added. “This should not surprise us, because sex was also at the center of many pagan cults,” De Mattei said. “This therefore portends a new neo-pagan persecution of those who remain faithful to Catholicism.”

De Mattei noted that next year marks 50 years since the cultural, or sexual, revolution of 1968, and he believes it is now being “transformed into a religious revolution” where sex is still at the center, but being “transformed into a divinity intended to replace Christianity.”

I'm sure we will be reading a flood of commentary on the pope's latest tirade against his Curia in the coming days. Not the best topic to dissect
during the Christmas season, but I don't think our headstrong pope ever thinks about the consequences of what he wants to say and when he
says it. In this case, the 'when' is important, if only, to use a word Bergoglio used yesterday, out of 'delicacy'.

He has had all year round in the past 5 years to write a personal letter to each member of the Curia (2500 by 365 days = 7 letters a day more
or less), if he wanted to, to let them know he is greatly burdened by their miscellaneous inadequacies and yes, sins, if not crimes. For most,
this would be a generic letter - though signed by the pope, it becomes a keepsake - but for those he considers most recalcitrant and perhaps
incorrigible, he could have their superior draft a specific letter for him to sign. But no, he must wait for the 'exchange of Christmas greetings with the Curia' to get maximum PR mileage out of it...


A pope's historically unprecedented threats
to his Curia, the Maradiaga scandal, and
increasing surveillance of Vatican personnel
Translated from

December 21, 2017

The usual series of reproofs from the reigning pontiff to the Roman Curia came this year at a particularly unfortunate time. We don't know if the temporal coincidence was intended or the result of new unhappy facts brought to light about one of Bergoglio's closest associates.

Because even as the pope was speaking about his 'ongoing reforms' saying: "Speaking of reform, I am reminded of a significant saying by Mons. Frédéric-François-Xavier De Mérode [Who he? Had to look up this latest example of academic namedropping by a trying-hard-to-sound-erudite Bergoglio. Merode (1820-1874) was a Belgian prelate who became an official in Pius IX's Vatican.] "To carry out reforms in Rome is like cleaning the Sphinx with a toothbrush", Emiliano Fittipaldi was disclosing, in a L'Espresso article, that one of the men closest to Bergoglio, Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga of Honduras, champion of the 'poor church for the poor', appears to be immersed in a number of questionable financial affairs involving millions of euros.

Maradiaga, of course, is one of Bergoglio's primary advisers, his strenuous defender, and coordinator of the pope's advisory Council of Nine (C9) which has been working with him on curial reform, and has so far given birth only to a mouse (in the consolidation of several pontifical councils into larger 'carriages', and a reform of Vatican media which one cannot call clear at this point).

But in the pope's address to the Curia, he vented on others [Tosatti implies that the pope could not have been referring to Maradiaga in what he said, but on the other hand, Fr. Z had second thoughts about the following after reading the expose on Maradiaga.]:

---

"Allow me to spend a few words on another danger, which is that of those betrayers of confidence or those who profit from the maternal generosity of the Church, even those who had been carefully selected to give greater vigor to the body of reform, but – not understanding their high responsibility – allow themselves to be corrupted by ambition or vainglory, and when they are consequently distanced from us in a delicate manner , declare themselves erroneously to be martyrs of the system, of an 'uninformed pope', of the 'Old Guard', instead of saying 'Mea culpa'. [Now, the first part of the statement may be an indirect reference to Maradiaga - 'carefully selected...', '...corrupted by ambition or vainglory'; but it is neutralized by the second part that sounds like an unveiled reference to Cardinal Mueller and not to anyone else, even I do not recall Mueller claiming to be a 'martyr' in any way.]

Besides these persons, there are others who are still working in the Curia, to whom one has given all the time for them to get back on the right track, in the hope that they might find in the patience of the Church an opportunity to convert themselves rather than profiting from it. All this, however, without forgetting the greater majority of faithful persons who work in the Curia with praiseworthy commitment, fidelity, competence, dedication, and even holiness". [Of course, he had to say that last statement, too, although I don't recall that he made any such qualification in the omnibus denunciation he made of the Curia and its spiritual maladies in December 2014.]

---

The pope used the adverb 'in a delicate manner' to describe the dismissals without cause; the pressures, subtle and obvious, exercised on persons in order to force them to resign; and the resignations extorted by using the obedience 'lever', and so on, prevaricating. Delicately, indeed!

And all this while Vatican control over emails, telephone landlines, and, I am told, even on some categories of personal cell phones, is reaching surveillance levels that would be envied by North Korea. To say that the pope's words yesterday were threatening ("to those to whom all the time has been given to get back on the right track") [Ah, but the right track is what? The Bergoglian line, of course. Certainly, not orthodoxy!] is an understatement. It would have been a threat if the secretary general of the Communist Party had said it back in the 1970s.

But it is also an evident signal that the level of unease in the Curia is rising – at least among those who are not Curial officials named by Bergoglio himself and obviously homogenized to his regime. So now he must make explicit threats, certainly never heard from a Vicar of Christ, at least not in contemporary times, in order to respond. Merry Christmas to everyone.

Pezzo Grosso on the pope's threats -
Too bad Freud is no longer with us!
Translated from

December 22, 2017

The occasion was too opportune. After the threatening address by the reigning Pontiff to the Roman Curia yesterday, Pezzo Grosso found his interest piqued and wrote us forthwith. As we noted yesterday, I cannot remember a pope who throws out vague threats to those who refuse to allow themselves to be re-educated", nor one who has taken to classic tools of invective to justify his own inefficiency or of those he has chosen to carry out tasks for him.

Papa Bergoglio spoke of traitors [Has any contemporary pope ever been so paranoid and expressed it so publicly???] He might as well have cited a Fifth Column, 'enemies of the people', counter-revolutionaries, reform saboteurs, not to speak of backstabbers and the 'Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy'.

Perhaps it is not entirely his fault: as in any self-respecting autocratic and rather obsessive regime, the pope is surrounded by a hive of sycophants and coryphants all busily engaged in justifying their existence and their funding, and in pointing out 'enemies', true or false, that the sovereign's ire may fall on them, evoking in the eyes and mind of an inquiet monarch the smoke and mirrors of conspiracies. … But let's hear what PG has to say:

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Dear Tosatti,
Reading 'the pope's threats to the Curia', I was, first of all, not surprised. It reminded me of the frustrated husband who, after his nth failure in work and after his chief's reproofs, comes home and beats his wife and children for no apparent reason.

But I also found new material that indicates the urgent need for the pope to have new sessions with his psychoanalyst. Because in fact, every accusation he makes against the Curia are those that have been made against him. I think it was you, Tosatti, who first wrote about the dressing down that he recently gave to a very important cardinal (one who belongs to his court, even) who reproached him for not doing what he was elected to do – am I right?

Who knows that this syndrome is called that has led the pope to call his own people 'betrayers of confidence', 'profiteers from the Church's maternal generosity", who have allowed themselves "to be corrupted by ambition and vainglory". But this takes the cake: "those who declare themselves to be martyrs to a hostile Curia that does not understand them"…

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PG certainly makes his point that the Curial address yesterday betrays, more than anything so far, the serious psychological and mental affliction besetting Jorge Bergoglio (forgive the armchair diagnosis). Pure paranoia it was, and you don't have to be a psychoanalyst to recognize it. On top of his narcissistic personality disorder – which perhaps also encompasses paranoia. Not to mention his anal obsessive-compulsive pontifications at his morning homilettes. Or his habitual lying – which need not be a psychological disorder at all but simply a bad bad habit surely unbecoming of pope. Not that much of Bergoglio's conduct has been properly becoming of a Pope.
 

SORRY, SORRY, SORRY...
Apparently Cardinal Maradiaga has responded to the accusations against him but I only saw the story now...

Cardinal Maradiaga responds
to allegations of corruption
By Andrea Gagliarducci
CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY

Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Dec 22, 2017 (CNA)- Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodriguez Maradiaga has rejected accusations of financial mismanagement, and offered an explanation for allegations that he has received an excessive salary for a largely ceremonial role at the Catholic University of Honduras.

In an email interview with CNA, Cardinal Maradiaga explained that “a little more than one year ago, we had to fire a manager of the university because he was stealing,” and “shortly after, an anonymous defamatory paper was spread, filled with a series of calumnies of the kind published this week.”

Cardinal Maradiaga was referring to a report by Italian outlet L’Espresso. According to the report, Cardinal Maradiaga received $600,000 from the University of Tegucigalpa in 2015, as a sort of “salary” for being the chancellor of the University. The cardinal was also accused of losing nearly $1.2 million of Church funds through investments in some London financial companies.

The accusations were not new, since the website ConfidencialHn had reported on them in Aug. 2016. Cardinal Maradiaga said that the archdiocese has begun a legal action to defend itself, but this has “had no effect in clarifying the truth.”

Cardinal Maradiaga explained that the Catholic University of Honduras is “owned by the archdiocese.” The cardinal stressed that, during his term as archbishop, and chancellor of the university, the college has grown to 11 campuses spread across Honduras.

The cardinal added that “the university is aimed at assisting the pastoral works of the Archdiocese,” and to support that work, he said the archdiocese, not the cardinal personally, received monthly payments that were “more or less” the amount of money described in reports – approximately $41,400 monthly.

This money, he added, was delivered to “pay the seminarians’ tuition, to fund the building and renovations of churches and to provide economic assistance to priests in rural parishes or to priests who have no livelihood.”

Cardinal Maradiaga stressed that “funds are not transferred in my name, but in the name of the archdiocese,” and this can be witnessed by priests. He underscored that “with these funds, we also help a lot of poor people that seek help everyday.”

Fr. Carlos Rubio of the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that the Catholic University of Honduras financially supports “all the bishops [of Honduras], not just the cardinal, to help the dioceses. Remember that the university is Catholic and under the auspices of the Church.”

“All the bishops receive support for their dioceses, not for personal use,” Rubio said. The money “is support from the Catholic university for the mission of the diocese.”

Cardinal Maradiaga confirmed that there was an apostolic visit to Bishop Juan José Pineda, auxiliary Bishop of Tegucigalpa, but he stressed that the bishop himself “asked the Holy Father for an apostolic visit, in order to clear his name.”

Pineda has long been the subject of accusations of financial mismanagement, and rumors that he financially supports a male companion using archdiocesan funds. Some have alleged that he had an apartment built on the campus of the Catholic University of Honduras, in order to house this companion.

A Catholic missionary working in Honduras told ACI Prensa that Pineda’s situation is a source of scandal in the Honduran Church. The bishop “lives with an ‘aide,’ without any explanation by anyone,” the missionary said.

“Bishop Pinedo has bought him a downtown apartment and a car. The car, we fear, comes from the coffers of the university or the diocese. We have reported this unseemly relationship to the Vatican. The pope knows everything,” the missionary added.

Cardinal Maradiaga said that the Archdiocese does not yet know the results of the apostolic visit, but he also asked “how these results eventually got” to L’Espresso. He said that the report “says half truths, that are in the end the worse lies.”

The cardinal denied that the Finance Council of the Archdiocese have ever authorized “any investment” similar to those reported by L’Espresso.

Cardinal Maradiaga concluded: “Why have accusations that were published and dismissed one year ago been published now, only 8 days before I present my resignation to Pope Francis, since I will have reached the age limit of 75?”

In Maradiaga’s view, attacking him is a way to try to jeopardize Pope Francis’s reforms. And he said: “I will keep serving [those reforms] as long as the Holy Father wishes so.”

I hold no brief for Maradiaga except his right to fairness. His explanations sound plausible, and I wonder why the L'Espresso reporter did not even try to get his side before publishing his expose. But then I realized that the reporter is Emiliano Fittipaldi author of the 2015 expose book, Avarizia (Greed), on miscellaneous questionable financial episodes in the Vatican, including the story of Cardinal Bertone's costly renovations for his post-retirement residence inside the Vatican. I think expose writers, by definition, seek to show only one side - the most evil side, of course - of the things they report on.

In any case, Cardinal Maradiaga was either not asked or chose to gloss over the (to me) more scandalous report that his auxiliary bishop has been co-habitating with a man and spending diocesan funds on him. Diocesan affairs in Tegucigalpa require more serious journalistic investigation. If this is even halfway true and Maradiaga condoned the situation, then it makes Maradiaga guilty of tolerating what seems to be an openly deviant and sinful lifestyle by his deputy.

On the other hand, it seems none of the usual suspect Bergoglio defenders have denied Fittipaldi's allegations that the pope has been seriously concerned over the report submitted to him six months ago by an Argentine bishop he sent to investigate what appears to have been persistent negative reports from Tegucigalpa. Perhaps his main concern is Mons. Pineda, not Cardinal Maradiaga.

'The Mystical Nativity', Sandro Botticelli, 1500.

Thanks to David Warren for illustrating his article with this wondrous painting by Botticelli, the existence of which, Philistine that I am, I was not even aware of. (It seems to me that this 'Birth of Jesus' painting ought to have been far more famous than the 'Birth of Venus' or 'Primavera' (Spring), the Florentine master's best-known works)... Warren's article is an indirect but spot-on commentary on misrepresenting the Nativity scene in any way, with a tribute to Benedict XVI's Infancy Narratives of Jesus in his title and in his conclusion...


On the 'Infancy Narratives'
and the Christmas story
By David Warren

December 22, 2017
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2017

Recently, through my bad habit of consulting the Internet, I learned of the “Dunning-Kruger Effect.” Lest I send gentle reader on the same electronic goose chase, let me explain what it is: the invention of a couple of social psychologists, which I darkly suspect to be tongue-in-cheek.

According to David Dunning and Justin Kruger, there is a cognitive bias among some people, to think themselves smarter, more capable, and better informed, than they really are. This bias is most pronounced among stupid people.

Like all good pop psychology theories, this one is easy to confirm. Look anywhere, and evidence comes into view. It can be tested, statistically. It can be demonstrated in real time. Compare, if you will, the confidence levels in a randomly selected home handyman, before and after he attempts a simple household task.

I mention that last as a means of entrapment. According to one of my own pop-psych theories, women suspect that the Dunning-Kruger Effect (henceforth “DKE”) applies mostly to men. But in my view feminism has leveled the playing field. Women are now as likely as men to imagine themselves competent.

Of course, in the design of the human metabolism, the eyes are turned outward. It is easier to spot examples of stupidity in others. It takes time to get round to observing the presence of DKE in oneself. And more time still, to invent excuses.

To be fair to Messrs. Dunning and Kruger, they mention the flip side. Smart people tend to be less confident of their own understanding and abilities. They thus mistakenly assume that all the idiots around them are smarter than they look; that they must know more than they do. (After all, they couldn’t know less.)

This leads me to my next pop-psych theory. I postulate that there is a mysterious relationship between intelligence and charity.

True. It is a complicated relation, however, and my full theory must explain why intellectuals are so dumb. This would be because, whether they have the native abilities they suppose, or not, they lack charity.

Arrogance is a great brain-freezer. It makes you stupid. A problem I can see with DKE is that it encourages arrogance. And this, because it forgets that our eyes look outward. It would be better if the whole thing were phrased: “You – and I mean YOU – are not nearly as smart as you think you are. Your superior airs are laughable to others. Better they were laughable to yourself.”

This is an odd way, I admit, to turn attention upon the “Infancy Narratives.”

It is a phrase that has irritated me for a long time. The tone of it is redolent of DKE. The authors of any academic study of those “infancy narratives” risk succumbing to the condition.

To the simple mind, there is Jesus in the crèche, and Mary and Joseph and the “waminals” (as my younger son used to call them), plus the Magi, and a Shepherd or two. The Star, perhaps Angels, are on a plane above. They have not come to participate in an infancy narrative. Rather they have come to the baby Jesus, whether from Heaven or from Earth.

Now, one might argue that the biblical scholars have come there, too. They have worked their way into the scene, even in their disbelief. They are going to explain everything to us, using terms derived from literary criticism.

I was once tempted to draw them into the scene, together with News Anchors and Cameramen. In fact, I succumbed to the blasphemous temptation. There was a Reporter with a microphone, asking Joseph how he “feels,” with the klieg lights on him. A Capitalist, elbowing his way through the Magi, had brought a “free gift” of disposable diapers. A tourist stand had set up to sell trinkets. There were other busy touches.

The intention was not blasphemous, but satirical. I was trying to depict an “infancy narrative” that included our modern narrators, deadline-sensitive and hurried. Mother Mary was shielding her Child from the lights. This made the two of them almost invisible.

A story is indeed being told, but as any humble Christian can know, its meaning goes beyond mere “narrative.” For Christ has come into the world. Rather than present this as a philosophical abstraction, the first artists made it concrete. They made it so any child could understand it, and in the knowledge that his understanding would grow.

To the modern mind, it can now be discarded. We “give up childish things.” To accept the veracity of the Biblical infancy narrative is like believing in Santa. The lit-crit terminology explains it away. In the past – in the “childhood of the race” – people probably took that sort of stuff “literally.” But we are so much smarter today.

I am not – let me insert another “of course” – proposing genocide on the scholars. We should learn everything we can about our origins and destiny. My faith, though inadequate, is at least sufficient to fear nothing from archaeological or textual discoveries. It has been rewarded, through the years, with one confirming discovery after another.

From my understanding of the material records, I have no doubt that the church at Bethlehem is correctly sited, over that ancient Nativity scene; as is the Holy Sepulcher over the Empty Tomb. For the first Christians were “literalists,” truly, and quite particular about names and places.

They knew where to locate their shrines, even before the Gospels were written; and when the Romans buried them to suppress Christianity, they knew where to find them again: right under the pagan temples the Romans had built over them. By now, the sequence is perfectly clear.

Like an old Simeon, our emeritus pope, the aged Benedict XVI, also wrote a book on the “infancy narratives.” It is more learned than almost any of the others; its scholarship is exact and current.

And as he reminds us, the story is true.


And from there, to Fr.MacRae's poignant Christmas card...



Fr. Z shares a Christmas card
from Fr. Gordon McRae

Let us pray for Fr. Macrae and all unjustly accused priests like him; for all the priests who have sinned against chastity and against innocence; and for all priests and bishops in general that they may always be worthy servants in the vineyard of the Lord.

So the pope has shot down the hypothesis almost thought to be a certainty that he would not reappoint Mons Guido - but Andrea Tornielli tells us he did do so three months ago (more or less around the time his second five-year term ended), just that we weren't told, obviously. Brownie points for Bergoglio on this.

Marini now performs the function once played by Mueller in the Curia - the token conservative Bergoglio can pass off as his bona fides if anyone should question his orthodoxy (liturgical in the case of Guido, doctrinal in the case of Mueller). He can't use Cardinal Sarah for this purpose because their liturgical differences are too public. Of course, after AL, all bets were off as to Bergoglio's doctrinal orthodoxy, but let's see what his next big step will be in liturgy, since none of his recent moves (Magnum Principium, the 'ecumenical mass' initiative, recent comments about the Novus Ordo) bode well at all...

The Pope confirms Guido Marini as
his Master of Liturgical Ceremonies
Allows him his third five-year mandate since
he was called to the Vatican by Benedict XVI
by Andrea Tornielli

December 22, 2017

The Pope has not changed his Master of Ceremonies for Pontifical Liturgies, and in fact, reconfirmed Mons Guido Marini three months ago for another five years in the position he has held since 2007. [It is his third five-year term, so someone's pants must be constantly on fire for the facile lie of a single-term policy he told Cardinal Mueller last July and which he has not applied to anyone else.]

In recent weeks, even though Marini had been already re-confirmed [but never revealed till today], rumours on a possible change had been spreading inside the Vatican.

Actually, the relationship between the Pope and his master of ceremonies remains solid,and Francis quite appreciates the fidelity of Monsignor Marini, who is tasked with overseeing every papal liturgical celebration: both those that take place in the Vatican and Rome, and those held abroad.

This will be Marini's third five-year mandate in the Vatican. His predecessors were Monsignor Virgilio Noè (later cardinal), who was liturgical MC for Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II from 1970 to 1982. His successor, the Irish John Magee, formerly special secretary of Popes Montini and Luciani, was master of ceremonies from 1982 to early 1987, when he was nominated Bishop of Cloyne. And finally, Piero Marini, who was liturgical MC from 1987 to 2007, year he was replaced, at the behest of Pope Ratzinger, by the homonymous Guido. Piero was named an archbishop and head of the Pontifical Commission for Eucharistic Congresses.

Born in Genoa on January 31, 1965, Mons Guido Marini attended the seminary in Genoa, where he obtained his diploma in Theology. Ordained a priest on February 4,1989, he obtained his doctorate "in utroque Iure" at the Lateran University in Rome and, in 2007, a B.A in the psychology of communication from the Salesian University.

From 1988 to 2003 he was special Secretary of the Archbishops of Genoa: first Cardinal Giovanni Canestri (until 1995), then Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi (until 2002), and finally Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Marini was also master of liturgical celebrations for Cardinal Tettamanzi and Bertone, and of Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who succeeded Bertone as Archbishop of Genoa.

From 2003 to 2005 he was Director of the Diocesan Office for Education and School, where he taught Catholic religion. In 2005 he was nominated archiepiscopal chancellor of Genoa and served as spiritual director of the seminary.

In Genoa, where he grew up, Marini was called Don "Guidino", because he is tall and thin. In Rome, where he arrived by choice of Benedict XVI, he was esteemed for his kindness, but also for his commitment to put into practice Pope Ratzinger’s liturgical ideas.

Someone had hypothesized that the advent of the new Pontiff would soon lead to a change in the ceremonial office. Instead, Francis has proven to appreciate the collaboration of Marini and decided to keep him at his side.

So now I see why Antonio Socci posted this photograph a couple of days ago on his Facebook page, although he did not cite a specific news peg. I saved the photo,of course, because I had never seen it before. But the Bergoglio line about funeral-faced Christians has been one of his staple platitudes as pope - forgetting that he himself was habitually funeral-faced before he became pope. Perhaps he had not yet experienced Christian joy at the time... But here's the news peg that apparently prompted Socci to bring out the photo above, even if it's old Papa Bergoglio stuff (not Cardinal Bergoglio) recycled. I wonder if he ever preached joy at all when he was in Buenos Aires..

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Pope at Casa Santa Marta:
Christians should be joyful

December 21, 2017

Contrasting the joyful countenance of a person who has been forgiven and redeemed, with the face of someone attending a wake, Pope Francis delivered a homily on the joy that springs from the forgiveness of sin and the closeness of the Lord.

Both the first Reading and Gospel for the day speak of the profound joy that comes from within, which is very different from the pleasure that we feel at a party. The whole liturgy cries out, “Rejoice, rejoice!”

The Holy Father focused on three aspects of true joy. First he spoke of the joy that comes from being forgiven: “The Lord has removed the judgment against you.” And so we are called to rejoice, and not to live a tepid life, precisely because we have been forgiven. This, he said, “is the root of Christian joy.” It is similar to the joy of a prisoner when his sentence is commuted, or of one who is healed, like the paralytic in the Gospels. It is necessary, then, to recognize the redemption won by Christ.

The Pope told the story of a philosopher who criticized Christians:
“He said he was an agnostic or an atheist, I’m not sure, but he criticized Christians, and said this, ‘But those people – the Christians – say they have a redeemer. I will believe it, I will believe in the redeemer when they have the look of the redeemed, joyful for being redeemed.’ But if you have the face of one at a wake, how can they believe that you are redeemed? That your sins have been forgiven? This is the first point, the first message of today’s liturgy: You are forgiven, each one of us is forgiven.”

The second aspect, the Pope said, is to be joyful because the Lord “walks with us”; from the moment when He called Abraham He “is in our midst,” in the midst of our trials, our difficulties, our joys, in every moment of our life. For this reason, Pope Francis said, we should take time during to the day to speak with the Lord, “who is by our side,” who is involved in our daily life.

The third aspect of true joy is to not allow ourselves to throw up our arms in despair in our misfortunes:
“That pessimism is not Christian. It is rooted in not knowing that one is forgiven, rooted in never feeling the caresses of God. And the Gospel, we could say, makes us see this joy: ‘Joyful Mary rose up and went in haste…’ Joy brings us in haste, always, because the grace of the Holy Spirit does not recognize slowness, it doesn’t recognize it… The Holy Spirit always goes in haste, always pushes us: going forward, forward, forward, like the wind in the sails, on the boat.”

Summing up, the Pope described the joy that made the baby leap for joy in the womb of Elizabeth when she welcomed Mary:
“This is the joy that the Church tells us about: please, we are joyful Christians, we make every effort to show that we believe we are redeemed, that the Lord has forgiven us everything, and if we sometimes slip up, He will also forgive us, because He is the God of forgiveness; that the Lord is in the midst of us; and that we will not allow ourselves to throw up our arms in despair. This is the message for today: ‘Rise up!’ This is the call of Jesus to the sick: ‘Rise up, cry out with joy, rejoice, be glad and exult with all your heart!’”

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I felt very bad reporting on the funeral of Cardinal Law yesterday without a proper obituary for him because no one was willing to go on record with one, I suppose. For many, he was the devil himself not fit to be touched even with a ten-foot pole. But my own enduring memory of him is that it was he who formally proposed, at the 1985 special Bishops' Synod on the proper reception of Vatican-II, that the Church ought to issue a Catechism for today - a proposal that was carried, despite utter skepticism by his own head of delegation, and which resulted in the monumental Catechism of the Catholic Church first published in 1992.

Now, my great thanks to the blogger at the Tenth Crusade for reproducing a tribute to Cardinal Law by the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, which puts his entire life into more than just the perspective of his failure to deal effectively with the sexual crimes committed by priests in his diocese.

Catholic Action League mourns
the death of Bernard Cardinal Law
by C.J. Doyle
Executive Director

December 21, 2017

The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today is mourning the death of the former Archbishop of Boston, Bernard, Cardinal Law, who died in Rome shortly after midnight, following a brief hospitalization. Law was 86.

Born in Mexico of American parents, Law, a Harvard graduate, was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson, Mississippi in 1961. In 1963, he became editor of the diocesan newspaper, where he received death threats for his support for the civil rights of African Americans.

Named Vicar-General of Natchez-Jackson in 1971, Law was appointed Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Missouri in 1973, serving until 1984. In 1975, he welcomed and resettled 167 priests, brothers, and novices of the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix, who as Vietnamese boat people, were fleeing the Communist conquest of their country. Law gave them a vacant seminary to serve as their new home.

In 1981, the Holy See appointed Law Ecclesiastical Delegate for the Pastoral Provision, which permitted married Anglican clergymen to become Catholic priests. This was the beginning of a long movement which culminated in the establishment of Anglican Catholic Ordinariates by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011.

Appointed Archbishop of Boston by Pope Saint John Paul II in January, 1984, Law was elevated to the College of Cardinals in May, 1985. In his homily at his installation as archbishop on March 23, 1984, Law described abortion as "the primordial darkness of our time...the cloud that shrouds the conscience of our world." A month later, Law attended a pro-life rally in front of the Massachusetts State House.

In 1986, he supported a proposed initiative amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution, which would stop the public funding of abortion, earning him a rebuke from Planned Parenthood, which claimed Law came to Boston "looking for a heavyweight fight" on this issue. His pro-life advocacy would also be criticized by former Lt. Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III, who characterized Law's views as offensive.

In 1985, in a speech in Latin at the Synod of Bishops in Rome, Law was one of two bishops to advocate that a new, universal catechism be issued, the first since the Roman Catechism, promulgated in 1570 by Saint Pius V, following the Council of Trent. This resulted in the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated by John Paul II in 1992. Law was given the task of overseeing the English language translation.

In April, 1985, Law wrote, at the request of the bishops conference, a letter to every American prelate detailing the findings of a conference committee which he headed, which declared that Freemasonry was "incompatible with Christian Faith and practice."

In January, 1988, Law, consistent with his longstanding civil rights position, issued a letter which was read at all parishes in Boston, urging the integration of public housing projects in the city. He became however, the first, and to date, the only Catholic prelate in the modern history of Boston to acknowledge that working class Catholic ethnics had, in controversies such as these, legitimate concerns regarding crime and public safety.

In 1989, Law opposed the so-called gay rights law, which made homosexuals a protected class in Massachusetts civil rights legislation. Following an editorial critical of the measure in the archdiocesan newspaper, The Pilot, Saint Thomas More Chapel, located next to the newspaper office, was vandalized.

In April, 1990, Law became one of the minority of American bishops who implemented John Paul II's decree Ecclesia Dei, which permitted a modest restoration of the traditional Latin Mass.

In June, 1990, while Law was presiding at ordination ceremonies at Holy Cross Cathedral, a mob of militant homosexuals surrounded the building and attempted to gain access. Unable to physically disrupt the liturgy, they attempted to acoustically disrupt it with drums, whistles and boat horns. As the ceremonies ended, they surged forward at police barriers shouting obscenities at worshipers and throwing condoms at priests.

In April, 1991, Law, through his aide, Msgr. William Murphy, asked the League's predecessor organization to oppose a domestic partners ordinance under consideration by the Boston City Council. Although The Boston Globe predicted it would pass by a comfortable margin, it was narrowly defeated following the personal lobbying of Council members by Auxiliary Bishop Lawrence Riley.

Law had a contentious relationship with Jesuit-administered Boston College during his episcopate, warning that BC was in danger of losing its Catholic identity. It was Law who intervened to prevent liberal theologian Richard P. McBrien from teaching there. He also once described the Catholic Theological Society of America as a "theological wasteland."

From 1995 to 1999, the Archdiocese of Boston, under Law's leadership, supported the efforts of the Catholic Action League to resist, successfully, a second attempt to institute a domestic partners program in Boston, this time by Mayor Thomas Menino.

In 1999, Law opposed the nomination of Margaret Marshall as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth, saying she was "open to serious charges of anti-Catholicism." As Chief Justice in 2003, Marshall would write the decision in the Goodridge case, inventing a constitutional right to "marriage" between two persons of the same gender. In it, she asserted that the belief in the universal, millenia old definition of marriage was "rooted in persistent prejudices against persons who are (or who are believed to be) homosexual."

In the late 1990's, Law told the story that he was the object of attempted extortion. According to his account, he was warned, that if he did not cease to oppose the goals of the homosexual movement, the homosexual priests in the Archdiocese would be exposed. Law said he rebuffed his blackmailer, telling him to go ahead.

Law's most egregious error, and the one that cost him his position and his reputation, was to follow the practice of his two immediate predecessors, Cardinals Cushing and Medeiros---under whom four-fifths of accused priests in Boston operated--- in viewing the molestation of minors by homosexual predators in the priesthood as a psychiatric disorder requiring treatment, and offering the possibility of rehabilitation, rather than understanding it for what it actually was, a monstrous crime which deserved immediate prosecution and prolonged incarceration. In this the archdiocese did not behave in a manner inconsistent with other institutions of its time, though it should have.

In 2002, members of the plaintiff bar, some of whom had reached settlements with the archdiocese, combined with The Boston Globe, a newspaper which celebrated predators like Paul Shanley, and which had spent thirty years attacking the Catholic Church, Catholic moral teaching, and Catholic political leaders, to expose all of this.

For eleven months in 2002, Law was subjected to a daily cascade of uniformly negative media coverage, driven by the Globe, that is unmatched even in the era of Donald Trump. After hundreds of articles, columns, op-eds, editorials, letters to the editor and television and radio reports, Law's position became untenable.

Meanwhile, victims groups with bullhorns, bent on confrontation, besieged Holy Cross Cathedral, taunting and harassing innocent Catholics going to Mass, who had never done them any harm. Parishioners were forced to walk into church through a police cordon. Mothers were told through megaphones to cover their children's genitals, because Catholic priests were abroad. The cathedral was denounced as a "house of rape."

Poor Hispanics entering Mission Church were greeted with shouts from the sidewalk of "Check their green cards!" and elderly female secretaries at the chancery were forced to pass angry, jeering protesters. This writer recalls one victims spokesman shouting profanities at him on Commonwealth Avenue.

Fifty-eight priests - at least one of whom was a personal friend and supervisor of defrocked predator Paul Shanley - called upon Law to resign. Massachusetts Attorney-General Thomas Reilly convened a grand jury to investigate the archdiocese. Law, who had repeatedly and profusely apologized for his failures, resigned on December 13, 2002, begging forgiveness, once again. He was not to receive any.

Reilly who, unethically, released a grand jury report condemning Law, later admitted that the former archbishop had broken no laws, and could not be prosecuted.

In 2004, Law was appointed Archpriest of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome. He retired in 2011.

Law was, and continues to be, an object of demonization unprecedented even in the cases of prelates like Rembert Weakland, who actually committed acts of molestation themselves.

On the day of Cardinal Law's death, attorney Mitchell Garabedian held a press conference to denounce Law once again, along with the "trillion dollar corporation called the Catholic Church." During the event, victims talked of having a party, of Law burning in hell, and how they considered "hunting him down in Rome and getting him."

One victim recounted how he began a meeting with Law by shouting an obscenity at him. Remarkably, Law continued the meeting. This forbearance did not constrain the victim from suggesting that the Cardinal's body be chopped up and dropped in the ocean.

Whatever the derelictions of Bernard, Cardinal Law, this much ought to be said. With Cardinal Law, you never had to wonder where he stood on a public controversy. He was never afraid to enter the fray when he conceived it his duty to do so, and he never hesitated to defend the teachings of the Church which he headed in Boston. Cardinal Law never thought silence was the better part of valor, that speaking the truth was impolitic, or that standing up for what he believed in was divisive.

Law never practiced the fawning, obsequious deference towards politicians who reject Catholic morality that seems to obsess our prelates today. In 1990, then state senator (and future governor) Paul Cellucci was disinvited from speaking at Hudson Catholic High School, because of his support for legal abortion.

At Cardinal John O'Connors's funeral in May of 2000, Law garnered thunderous applause when he said the Church "must always remain unambiguously pro-life," as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Al Gore sat stone faced in the congregation. The current regime in Massachussetts of awards, honors and platforms to opponents of Catholic teaching was not the norm under Cardinal Law.

Nor should anyone forget what Cardinal O'Malley said of Cardinal Law today: "He was well known for visiting the sick, the dying and the bereaved at all hours of the night and day, a ministry that extended to the rich and the poor, the young and the elderly, and to people of all faiths."

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

I find the above item from CNS, the news service of the USCCB, a bit absurd in its touting of the pope's 'Marian
devotion'. So, he will "begin 2018 with a focus on Mary and migrants and refugees".

The focus on migrants and refugees is by choice since he chose to make them the theme of his message for the
2018 World Day of Peace, observed by 'the Church' only and no one in other faiths and the secular world, on the
first day of the year. 2018 will be its 51st edition.

And any focus on Mary would be due to the fact that the Church does celebrate on January 1 the Solemnity of
Mary, Mother of God, so it is an obligatory focus for any Catholic, including the pope (even if he is an anti-Catholic
Catholic, that is to say a Bergoglian catholic). What happens to Bergoglio's Marian devotion for the rest of 2018 -
to be conveniently displayed when he returns from a trip and visits the Salus Populus Romani icon at Santa Maria
Maggiore, and on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception at the Spanish Steps next December? (This year, he did
not even celebrate a Mass on Assumption Day.)

The supreme irony is that 2017 was a Marian year par excellence, because of the centenary of Our Lady's
apparitions in Fatima - and yet this pope of the many-times-self-proclaimed Marian devotion objectively
devoted much more of his time, attention and public statements to celebrating Martin Luther in 2017, and
only perfunctory pro-forma because obligatory homage to Our Lady of Fatima.

One can never reproach Bergoglio enough for his obsessive devotion to Martin Luther even at the expense of
the Mother of God herself.