THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Just a bit of chronological context: 'INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY', which became an almost-instant theological classic, was published one year before Jorge Bergoglio was ordained a priest.

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI


See previous page for earlier posts today, 8/30/18.



Thanks to Father Z for leading us to this most timely message.

Tolkien's lost prophetic message
on abuse in the Church
by Billy Ryan
August 28, 2018

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“Besides the Sun there may be moonlight but if the Sun were removed there would be no Moon to see. What would Christianity now be if the Roman Church has in fact been destroyed?”
– Letter 250, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

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J. R. R. Tolkien was not only the author of the best-selling novel ever written, but a fierce Catholic. Nearly 55 years ago in a letter penned to his son, Tolkien offered a prophetic message on having unwavering Faith despite grave scandal in the clergy.

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In the last resort faith is an act of will, inspired by love. Our love may be chilled and our will eroded by the spectacle of the shortcomings, folly, and even sins of the Church and its ministers, but I do not think that one who has once had faith goes back over the line for these reasons (least of all anyone with any historical knowledge).

‘Scandal’ at most is an occasion of temptation – as indecency is to lust, which it does not make but arouses. It is convenient because it tends to turn our eyes away from ourselves and our own faults to find a scapegoat.

But the act of will of faith is not a single moment of final decision: it is a permanent indefinitely repeated act > state which must go on – so we pray for ‘final perseverance’.

The temptation to ‘unbelief’ (which really means rejection of Our Lord and His claims) is always there within us. Part of us longs to find an excuse for it outside us. The stronger the inner temptation the more readily and severely shall we be ‘scandalized’ by others.

I think I am as sensitive as you (or any other Christian) to the scandals, both of clergy and laity. I have suffered grievously in my life from stupid, tired, dimmed, and even bad priests; but I now know enough about myself to be aware that I should not leave the church (which for me would mean leaving the allegiance of Our Lord) for any such reasons: I should leave because I did not believe, and should not believe anymore, even if I had never met anyone in orders who was not both wise and saintly. I should deny the Blessed Sacrament, that is: call our Lord a fraud to His face.

If He is a fraud and the Gospels fraudulent – that is: garbled accounts of a demented megalomaniac (which is the only alternative), then of course the spectacle exhibited by the Church (in the sense of clergy) in history and today is simply evidence of a gigantic fraud.

If not, however, then this spectacle is alas! only what was to be expected: it began before the first Easter, and it does not affect faith at all – except that we may and should be deeply grieved. But we should grieve on our Lord’s behalf and for Him, associating ourselves with the scandalized heirs not with the saints, not crying out that we cannot ‘take’ Judas Iscariot, or even the absurd & cowardly Simon Peter, or the silly women like James’ mother, trying to push her sons.

It takes a fantastic will to unbelief to suppose that Jesus never really ‘happened’, and more to suppose that he did not say the things recorded all of him – so incapable of being ‘invented’ by anyone in the world at that time: such as ‘before Abraham came to be I am’ (John viii). ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’ (John ix); or the promulgation of the Blessed Sacrament in John v: ‘He that he eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life.’

We must therefore either believe in Him and in what he said and take the consequences; or reject him and take the consequences. I find it for myself difficult to believe that anyone who has ever been to Communion, even once, with at least a right intention, can ever again reject Him without grave blame. (However, He alone knows each unique soul and its circumstances.)

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And for this piece from the Onion...

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Satan Refuses To Accept
Any More Catholic Priests In Hell

NINTH CIRCLE, HELL— Stressing that the situation in the underworld was quickly spiraling out of control, Satan, the Great Tempter and Father of Lies, announced Wednesday that he would not allow any more Catholic priests to enter hell.

“This place is completely overrun with those monsters, and frankly, they kind of creep me out,” said the Prince of Darkness, adding that every time he looked up, he saw another recently deceased member of the Roman Catholic clergy being cast down into the fires of hell, where each is expected to be tortured until the end of time by Satan and his minions.

“We’re used to having every manner of unrepentant sinner down here, but those guys are beyond messed up. I swear, if I see one more of those sick bastards, I’m going to throw myself into the eternal flames.”

In response, God has reportedly instituted a secret policy whereby the priests would no longer face damnation but would instead attend mandatory counseling sessions and then be quietly transferred into heaven. [I don't like this line at all - in which, even if in jest or irony, God's mind is equated to that of tolerant 'merciful' pastors and popes!]

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Best of all, as an exercise in what-ifs, consider Father Z's scenarios below...


I can dream, can't I?

If Francis resigned, then what?

August 29, 2018

I’ve had a lot – A LOT – of emails about various aspects of the possibility of Pope Francis’s resignation. There is talk about this, since The Viganò Testimony. More and more people are calling for Francis to resign. That’s a popular trend these days, however. If someone has a bad hair day, they MUST RESIGN!

Seriously, this is a far graver situation than that, but it is hard for me to imagine that Francis would consider abdicating even for 2 full seconds.

Nevertheless, I am getting questions along this line.

From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
Hi Father, If in whatever way, Pope Francis stopped being Pope; Canonically, could Pope Benedict renounce his resignation and return to the Papacy? Mentally, it seems that he is very alert and he could be in office just long enough to remove bad members of the hierarchy and replace them with good ones and then again and then a conclave could be called and a new Pope could be elected?

Let’s think this through.

If Francis were to resign…

Scenario 1: There would be a conclave, the cardinals would come and elect a successor. They are free to elect whom they wish. They could re-elect Benedict! He could then accept or refuse. Say he accepts. He is again, indisputably, the Pope hopefully until the natural end of his days. Enough of this resignation stuff.

Scenario 2: Francis resigns. However, enough evidence is produced to prove that there was something wrong with Benedict’s resignation in 2013. They say Benedict was pressured out of office and his resignation was null. That means that Benedict is still the Pope now. He can’t be reelected. Any conclave that would be called after Francis resignation from an office he never held would be seriously compromised because a) lots of the cardinals in it aren’t really cardinals and b) the man elected would be an anti-Pope. Benedict would be Pope thereafter until his dying day. Unless he resigned for real.

Scenario 3: Benedict really did resign, but there were enough shenanigans in the conclave, violations of JP2’s and B16’s regulations, that the electors or the elected were somehow banned from licit participation or holding office. That would mean that the results of the election were faulty and that there is now an anti-Pope. But there isn’t a true Pope either because Benedict legitimately resigned. That would mean that the cardinal electors who were cardinals at the time of Benedict’s resignation in 2013 would have to convince every one that they alone should be in a new conclave and elect Benedict’s successor. They could re-elect Benedict if they wanted to. Then, see the end of Scenario 1.

Scenario 4: Francis resigns and two factions of cardinals gather in separate, rival conclaves. They might elect different guys… or the same guy! A third party? Benedict? Probably different guys. Then we have a problem that is harder to work through.

Shades of the Council of Constance!

And in that time, there were rival claimants and questionable cardinal electors and saints on both sides and post factum sanations of acts. Whew.

Anyway, one could write a rip-snorter TV series out of this!

Anyway, I would once again be able to dust off my old “RE-ELECT BENEDICT” Swag in my online shop from before the 2013 conclave and we could reform the “Committee To Re-Elect The Pope“. I shut that shop down after the 2013 conclave, of course. But there was some fun stuff in it! Car-flags, stickers, campaign buttons, yard signs.

How the media are covering up for Pope Francis
If the head of any other organisation were guilty of such complicity,
he or she would not only be forced to resign but could also end up in the dock
by Damian Thompson

August 29, 2018

It’s depressing to see the media – both Catholic and secular – shielding Pope Francis from the explosive allegation made by his own former nuncio to the United States, that he knowingly covered up for and revived the career of serial gay predator Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in testimony published on Saturday, says he personally told Francis in 2013 that McCarrick, retired Archbishop of Washington, had ‘corrupted generations of seminarians and priests’.

The Pope shrugged this off, says Viganò, and went on to lift canonical sanctions placed on McCarrick by Benedict XVI. McCarrick was his close ally – as was retired Cardinal Danneels of Belgium, who had concealed incestuous abuse by one of his bishops. Fully aware of this, Francis invited Danneels to a synod on the family – something that didn’t trouble the Pope’s most fanatical supporters in the media, known as ‘Team Francis’. It still doesn’t bother them.

Confronted by these new grave and credible charges against the Pope, members of Team Francis writing in the liberal National Catholic Reporter, the Tablet and America magazine have desperately sought to discredit Viganò.

They’ve had very limited success. Yes, the former nuncio is an ideological opponent of Francis; assisted by fellow conservatives, he timed his statement in order to cause maximum embarrassment to the pontiff. Also, it appears that Benedict’s sanctions against McCarrick were delayed, ineffective and flouted.

But we know that the old cardinal was forced out of the seminary where he was living, and on the orders of Benedict. That may be as far as the sanctions went. It wouldn’t surprise me if McCarrick’s continued insubordination – supported by fellow cardinals aware of his dirty reputation – played a part in Benedict’s decision to resign the papacy in despair.

The evasive coverage of this scandal by Team Francis hardliners is impossible to justify. Certain ‘reporters’ should ask themselves whether they have become complicit in concealing sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, most of the secular media – now almost bereft of religion specialists – are lazily clinging to the narrative of Francis as a ‘Great Reformer’.

He is nothing of the sort. He’s a man whose ruthless and cynical modus operandi was well known in Argentina before he was elected pope. (I urge everyone to read the book The Dictator Pope by Henry Sire, which gives chapter and verse.) Note that Francis has not set foot in his home country since leaving for the 2013 conclave. He dare not: he has too many enemies there.

Especially disappointing is the biased coverage of the Viganò affair by theNew York Times, which broke the original McCarrick story. Why did the respected Jason Horowitz begin a long report this week with the following paragraphs?

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Since the start of his papacy, Francis has infuriated Catholic traditionalists as he tries to nurture a more welcoming church and shift it away from culture war issues, whether abortion or homosexuality. “Who am I to judge?” the pope famously said, when asked about gay priests.

Just how angry his political and doctrinal enemies are became clear this weekend, when a caustic letter published by the Vatican’s former top diplomat in the United States blamed a “homosexual current” in the Vatican hierarchy for sexual abuse. It called for Francis’s resignation, accusing him of covering up for a disgraced cardinal, Theodore McCarrick.

With the letter – released in the middle of the pope’s visit to Ireland – an ideologically motivated opposition has weaponised the church’s sex abuse crisis to threaten not only Francis’s agenda but his entire papacy. At the very least, it has returned the issue of homosexuality in the Roman Catholic Church, which many conservatives are convinced lies behind the abuse crisis, to the centre of debate.

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None of this is untrue, though it perhaps misinterprets the line ‘who am I to judge?’ Francis was answering a question about Mgr Battista Ricca, a Vatican diplomat caught up in a colourful gay scandal whom the Pope nonetheless appointed to help reform the Vatican bank. But much of Horowitz’s piece reads as if it has been dictated by Team Francis.

Liberal Catholics and the mainstream media are misleading us on two crucial points:
1. Viganò’s motives in releasing the testimony are fundamentally irrelevant. We need to know whether his claims are true. Did Francis ignore what Viganò told him about McCarrick – which, let us not forget, was the truth? I reckon he did, but then I’ve long been convinced that this Pope is prepared to overlook all manner of offences so long as the offender is useful to him. Read my blog post about the shady papal confidant Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga of Honduras, whom Francis declared innocent before the investigation of allegations of financial wrongdoing had even begun.

2. The reputations of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis have all been damaged by the McCarrick scandal.
- John Paul made McCarrick Archbishop of Washington and a cardinal even though he was already widely rumoured to be a predator – and his previous archdiocese of Newark had paid money to adults claiming that they had been sexually assaulted.
- Benedict acted very late in the day against McCarrick, after the latter’s retirement, and his low-key canonical sanctions amounted to very little.
- Francis, however, is credibly accused of a far greater degree of complicity in McCarrick’s crimes. If the head of any other organisation were guilty of such complicity, he or she would not only be forced to resign but could also end up in the dock.

Team Francis must understand this. To their eternal disgrace, and helped by ignorant secular news outlets, they want to make sure that the public doesn’t understand it and continues to believe in Francis the Reformer. Who does not exist.

Indeed, articles so far in the mainstream US press bear out the validity of Father Zuhlsdorf's interpretation of Bergoglio's dodge against having to answer the Vigano expose:

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[Fr Z's comment: In my cynicism – please forgive me for being a little cynical right now? – what the Pope said is along the lines of:

“You, the press, have been on my side till now. If you think about it for a while, you should still be on my side. If you weigh the alternatives you will remember that I am your guy.”

This is not a happy man. But that’s not much of a conclusion. Listen to, however, what he is trying to say.

Here is what I think he said, without saying it.
The Pope is calling on the press to do the necessary work to make this go away.

I dunno. Have I read that wrong? Sincerely… do you get something else from that?

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One might say that the Bergogliacs who make up the mainstream media have taken an inexplicable, even treasonous, choice for liberals of any stripe: defend Bergoglio rather than stand up against criminal priests and bishops. Where is all the outrage they feigned to high heavens with the release of the Pennsyvania Grand Jury report? An outrage that, in retrospect, they failed to manifest to the degree it required the final outing of McCarrick's double life (after all, he had been long one of their favorite poster boys for 'liberal' no-longer-Catholicism!).

Amid all the furor over the Vigano expose and the cancer of clerical sex abuse/cover-up that has metastasized to afflict the reigning pope himself, let us not forget that the 'evil clown', Lucifer's principal agent today, has many other irons in the (hell)fire. Edward Pentin describes one of them.


Have synods become vehicles
for legitimizing heterodoxy?
By looking back at the past two synods on the family and their fallout,
as well as the upcoming October synod for young people,
it’s possible to come to a conclusive answer.
by Edward Pentin
Blogpost on

August 25, 2018

(This is the text of a talk I gave at the Conference of Catholic Families in Dublin, Aug. 23, 2018).

Up until this pontificate, Synods never used to be the overwrought affairs they are today.

In fact, they used to be a joy to cover – they brought interesting Church leaders to Rome, were usually held in good spirits, and pretty much everyone was pulling in the same direction.

That all changed with the synods on the family, and the reason, many argue, is because of pressure from heterodox theologians to steer the debate, with some urgency, in a direction they wanted the Church to go.

So in this brief talk, I just want to report what I’ve witnessed, and reported on, to help you see if these meetings are, in fact, legitimising heterodoxy, or rather genuine instruments aimed at bringing the Church up to date, as the Second Vatican Council memorably pledged to do.

But before I start, what is orthodoxy? The Catholic encyclopedia defines it as signifying “right belief or purity of faith,” and that “right belief” is “not merely subjective, as resting on personal knowledge and convictions, but is in accordance with the teaching and direction of an absolute extrinsic authority.

This authority, the definition goes on to say, “is the Church founded by Christ, and guided by the Holy Ghost. He, therefore, is orthodox, whose faith coincides with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

G. K. Chesterton defined orthodoxy as “not only (as is often argued) the only safe guardian of morality or order” but also the “only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance.”

Heterodoxy, on the other hand, according to the Oxford dictionary, is “deviation from accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs,” although it falls short of being heresy. I prefer to see it as a sort of “going along to get along with the world,” rather than standing up for the Church’s perennial teaching and Tradition at risk of opposition and persecution. Some of you might prefer to call it simply modernism.

So I’ll begin by briefly looking at the nature of synods, some of what happened during the synods on the family and their outcomes, and then look ahead to the upcoming 'Synod for young people'. [Another outrageous Bergogliac misnomer, of course, because no one younger than 40 will be taking part, and as all the Vatican noise about it so far has shown, one that appears to be aimed primarily at 'legitimizing' homosexual relations and therefore, practices, in the eyes of 'the church' (the church of Bergoglio, that is) and no longer considering them 'disordered', much less sinful.]

Originally set up as a permanent institution by Pope Paul VI in 1965 to continue the spirit of collegiality and communion present at the Second Vatican Council, every Synod of Bishops is meant to provide counsel to the Holy Father in a manner that preserves the Church’s teaching and strengthens her internal discipline.

Canon 342 states that synods are to assist the Roman Pontiff in the “defence and development of faith and morals and in the preservation and strengthening of ecclesiastical discipline.”

Church historian Cardinal Walter Brandmüller has often stressed that today’s synods are strictly speaking not actually synods at all but only consultative and advisory assemblies. They are not to be confused with pre-Vatican II Synods, or Councils, that had supreme jurisdiction over the doctrine and life of the Church and could therefore decide on doctrinal matters.

Also as a canon lawyer pointed out to me, it’s not as if prior to 1965, the College of Bishops weren’t already active. They had actually been very effective for centuries in disciplinary matters and in upholding orthodoxy.

But all these points are often overlooked, and ignorance of them has undoubtedly been exploited, using the media as a means of promoting a false perception of these modern synods has having great import.

On the face of it, many lauded the idea of two synods on the family as a legitimate attempt by the Church to better deal with the current crisis in the family that many agree is under attack.

But that, arguably, isn’t what happened. From the start, it seemed to many that an agenda was being pushed.
- We had questionnaires given out by bishops but it was unclear who exactly was consulted, and
- there was a danger the responses would come from poorly catechized faithful or lapsed Catholics who often want to see the Church’s teaching softened or changed, especially in areas of human sexuality.

We had Cardinal Walter Kasper’s opening speech a few months prior to the first synod, introducing his idea for giving Holy Communion to some remarried divorcees – certainly, according to some experts, a deviation from orthodoxy.

Then we saw other efforts to force an agenda, documented in my e-book The Rigging of a Vatican Synod? To name a few:
- the mid-term report that tried to introduce acceptance of same-sex relationships by announcing it first to the media before the synod fathers – something propagandists call “preemptive framing”; - the subtle engineering of the final document; and
- the book Remaining in the Truth of Christ that was obstructed from being given to the synod fathers.

- There was the clear stacking of the deck at both synods in favor of heterodox-leaning consulters and synod fathers, and
- the bringing into the second synod on the family the issue of Holy Communion for remarried divorcees, despite it not receiving the required 2/3 majority during the first synod and so, in theory, it should have been rejected.

Many supportive of the changes brought about by the synods refute any accusation that the meetings have been used to smuggle in and “legitimize” heterodoxy.
- Instead, they say they are means of opening the Church up to new ways of thinking in order to better deal with the new and unique challenges regarding marriage, family and human sexuality facing many people today, and to deal with today’s challenges facing young people.
- The Church must get away from appearing merciless, authoritarian and out of touch, they argue, and so better evangelize and regain her credibility.

But the question that keeps returning is, if that is the case, then why the documented underhand attempts to change the Church’s practice, and therefore, by implication, her teaching?

True, synods have often used cajoling methods in the past, as I explain in my book, but they were always geared towards upholding orthodoxy.

Cardinal Brandmüller perhaps put it best, when he told me in no uncertain terms back in 2015 that those behind the synod had “the aim to change the Church, to adapt it to modern thinking and public opinion.”

He also had no doubt that ideological reasons lay behind their agenda. “They have no arguments,” he said, “no valid arguments, against orthodox doctrine — they don’t. Their argumentation is rather illogical and inconsistent. And as they see more, as they recognize their lack of solid arguments, they become aggressive and try to deceive.”

That approach, it could be argued, carried over into the acrimonious debate that followed the publication of Pope Francis’s summary of the two synods: his post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.

Although, as many have pointed out, there is much to commend in the document in trying to enable the Church to get to grips with today’s devastation of the family in the West, critics say the strife and acrimony that has ensued over the text, namely regarding Chapter 8 of the exhortation, shows more clearly than not that efforts to impose heterodoxy were attempted.

They point out that passages drew, and continue to draw, some strong and enduring expert resistance from large sectors of clergy and laity alike. As one key critic told me recently:

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“We’re talking here of an opposition of vast numbers of practicing and committed Catholics and learned clerics and theologians who are also up against various kinds of strong and cruel pressure, or sheer persecution, risking even their jobs, as was the case of the philosophy professor Josef Seifert. Many others stay silent out of fear, but think exactly as those more courageous ones.”

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The FOUR CARDINALS' DUBIA are of course the most prominent example of this kind of resistance, an attempt to have the Pope clarify the central tenets of infallible and unchangeable Catholic moral teachings that many believe the papal document appears to call into question or contradict.

Several expert critics have argued that if Amoris Laetitia simply intended to teach what the Catholic Church has always taught, this could have been made perfectly clear by simply restating the Church’s traditional teaching in a clear and unambiguous manner. [Which was obviously never Bergoglio's intention from the time he decided to convoke these so-called family synods with the precise aim of allowing communion to remarried Catholic divorcees still living in adultery by Jesus's own definition. And so, he was always very careful never to cite the substantive affirmation of the ban for communion to (unqualified) remarried Catholic divorcees in Par. 84 of Familiaris consortio, though he cites the rest of it, even in AL.]

One method could have been to quote from one of the many ecclesiastical documents that has already dealt with this area, not just John Paul II’s exhortation Familiaris Consortio but pre-conciliar documents. But Amoris Laetitia only makes two — what critics call “marginal” — references to Pope Pius XI’s encyclical on marriage, Casti Connubii. It’s interesting to note, by contrast, that in Casti Connubii, Pius XI warmly and respectfully refers to Leo XIII’s encyclical on Christian Marriage promulgated 50 years earlier. Pius wrote:

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“We follow the footsteps of Our predecessor, Leo XIII, of happy memory, whose Encyclical Arcanum, published fifty years ago, we hereby confirm and make Our own. And while We wish to expound more fully certain points called for by the circumstances of our times, nevertheless we declare that, far from being obsolete, it retains its full force at the present day.”

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For the managers of the synod on the family, however, Familiaris Consortio was already out of date after just 30 years.

Critics of Amoris Laetitia point to a number of areas of heterodoxy, some would say heresy, in the document — subtle attempts to change the Church’s teaching on human sexuality but also on morality in general. These were specified in a letter 45 Catholic academics sent to the Dean of the College of Cardinals in 2016 requesting the Pope repudiate a list of 8 erroneous propositions, many of which you’re probably already aware.

As a reminder of some of these errors:
- the statement that “no one can be condemned forever because that’s not the logic of the Gospel”; or
- “[It] can no longer simply be said that all those in any “irregular” situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace,” or
- paragraph 301 which appears to suggest there are cases when God can be asking a person, in a particular situation, to do to something that is objectively wrong – a clear example, some critics say, of situational ethics, condemned by John Paul II in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor – a document, by the way, never mentioned in the exhortation, despite many believing it to be highly pertinent to family and morality.

Despite these and other errors, it should also be said that other theologians and prelates believe the document can and should be read in continuity with the Church’s teaching.

Pope Francis said so just this week, in a letter to British author Stephen Walford, insisting there is no rupture with past teaching. But he doesn’t really specify how, won’t meet the remaining dubia cardinals, won’t give interviews to media who try to uphold orthodoxy, nor meet his cardinals before cardinal-making consistories. If he’s convinced of the orthodoxy of his positions, people ask, why the reticence to defend them in public?

I would also add that the ambiguity and the heated debate over questionable passages further point to efforts made to introduce heterodoxy.

Paragraph 305 is seen by some as particularly serious as it gives an erroneous understanding of the natural law, stating that the natural law is not “an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject; rather, it is a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions".

The natural law, say critics such as Matthew McCusker of Voice of the Family, is real and objective, not merely a source of “inspiration” for a “deeply personal process of making decisions”. Another theologian I spoke to said such a paragraph leads one to suspect the mere notion of a “rule”, as if it were not true or needed.

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“Think of the pernicious implications of such a state of mind for the average faithful. At best, this would be highly misleading and uncharitable for those souls, but it's far more serious than that, since, as some contend, it is in itself an erroneous statement over a grave subject.”

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Voice of the Family and others have warned that the abolition of the concept of an immutable natural law has been at the heart of the radical agenda pursued over the last two years and that Amoris Laetitia confirmed this, if it didn't actually propel it. As one critic close to the synod pointed out to me, it leads one to ask:

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“Why produce this document containing such novelties at all, if not to propel them ideologically against traditional and true teaching, creating a new state of mind, gradually oblivious to Catholic moral teaching and gradually amenable to radical change? This has been happening since ambiguity and new language became dominant during and after Vatican II.”

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Then, of course, there’s the famous footnote 351 that allows, in certain cases, the help of the sacraments even for those living in an objective situation of sin but for which, as the document says, they may not be subjectively culpable – a concept at the center of much contention, since repentance is needed and the ceasing of the sin for one to receive absolution validly and to resume a state of grace, and thus be then able to access Holy Communion.

The Pope issued a rescript, formally supporting such a teaching as proposed in guidelines issued by bishops in Buenos Aires. A senior Vatican official I spoke to, soon after it was issued, was gravely alarmed by its lack of any mention of drawing on sacred scripture and 2000 years of apostolic tradition, as is usual for such decisions. Incidentally, the same omission was a criticism of the Pope’s recent rescript regarding the death penalty. [Indeed, Bergoglio has been increasingly hubristic in his wreckovation of the Catholic faith over into Bergoglianism - in which, for the major changes he has been decreeing, he cites himself as source - tacitly and singlehandedly taking over from Revelation, natural law and Tradition.]

It might be helpful here to compare Amoris Laetitia to the teaching of Casti Connubii.

Pius XI gives a robust defense of the Church’s teaching throughout the encyclical, reinforcing the magisterium against the prevailing errors of the time. He offers a long exposition on the beauty and meaning of marriage, doesn’t hold back from calling out the culture, and makes frequent references to God, His Commandments and the Gospels.

It’s interesting to compare Amoris Laetitia’s paragraph 35 in this regard. That paragraph states: “There is no sense in simply decrying present-day evils, as if this could change things. Nor is it helpful to try to impose rules by sheer authority. What we need is a more responsible and generous effort to present the reasons and motivations for choosing marriage and the family, and in this way to help men and women better to respond to the grace that God offers them.”

Proponents argue that this is how one must deal with today’s deeply broken society; critics on the other hand see this as just another attempt to legitimise heterodoxy. It amounts to a “refusal to teach,” they say, and seems to be an “abdication of authority". [That's one way of looking at it, from the viewpoint of orthodox Catholicism. But, from the viewpoint of Bergoglianism, it is, on the contrary, AL is almost a founding document of its apostasy, the gospel of Bergoglianism the way it has been cited by leading Bergogliacs as 'the source and summit' of life in the church of Bergoglio.]

Certainly, paragraph 3 of Casti Connubii, takes quite a different approach. Pius XI refers to the Petrine Office as casting a “paternal eye” on the world as if “from a watch-tower.” He writes: “In Our office as Christ's Vicar upon earth and Supreme Shepherd and Teacher We consider it Our duty to raise Our voice to keep the flock committed to Our care from poisoned pastures and, as far as in us lies, to preserve it from harm.”

He was especially referring to how men have forgotten the divine work of redemption and so rely on “false principles of a new and utterly perverse morality,” trampling the great sanctity of Christian marriage “underfoot.”

To highlight another contrast: In paragraph 52 of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis writes: “We need to acknowledge the great variety of family situations that can offer a certain stability, but de facto or same-sex unions, for example, may not simply be equated with marriage.” The teaching against any same-sex relations, however, is simply not stated or reiterated and some have pointed how same-sex unions are nonetheless classified as “family situations” even if they cannot be equated with marriage.

In Casti Connubii, the issue of same-sex relationships doesn’t, of course, arise, but there’s no doubt about its orthodoxy when it comes to non-marital, illicit unions. Paragraph 34 states that either it is a “true marriage, in which case it carries with it that enduring bond which by divine right is inherent in every true marriage; or it is thought to be contracted without that perpetual bond, and in that case there is no marriage, but an illicit union opposed of its very nature to the divine law, which therefore cannot be entered into or maintained.”

And Pius XI prophetically warns of those who strive for a “middle course”, i.e, one which believes that something “should be conceded in our times as regards certain precepts of the divine and natural law.” Such people, he says, are more or less wittingly “emissaries of the great enemy who is ever seeking to sow cockle among the wheat.” This, of course, was also the teaching of Pope St. Pius X who warned that middle courses are in fact a cherished weapon of modernism.

Frequently Pius XI repeats that doctrine of marriage and the indissolubility of marriage were not “instituted or restored by man but by God” and quotes four times Matthew Chapter 19 verse 6: "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder."

And in paragraph 85, Pius XI presciently points out how, and I quote, “advocates of the neo-paganism of today… day by day, more and more vehemently… continue by legislation to attack the indissolubility of the marriage bond.”

Although Amoris Laetitia frequently upholds the importance of the marriage bond [only pro forma, of course - the frosting lathered on to mask the poison at the center of the cake] there is no reference to how it is under attack, and then capitulates by allowing some remarried divorcees access to the Sacraments — a step which critics say makes a mockery of the marriage bond and of the Sacraments.

One last point to note on this is that whereas Amoris Laetitia largely quotes from bishops’ conferences, 20th intellectuals favored by Pope Francis, post conciliar popes, and a few — what some Dominicans say are misused — references to St. Thomas Aquinas, Casti Connubii draws heavily on St. Augustine, Holy Scripture, the Gospels, Leo XIII, and references to St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas, St. Robert Bellarmine, and the Council of Trent.

It also quotes the apostolic constitution of Innocent X, 1653, against Jansenism, condemning the assertion put forth in Amoris Laetitia that “some of God's commandments cannot be observed by just men with the strength they have in the present state, even if they wish and strive to observe them; nor do they have the grace that would make their observance possible.”

Let’s move on now to this October’s synod on "young people, the faith and vocational discernment".

The working document which came out earlier this year is revealing in that, although it contains many laudable references to real challenges facing today’s young faithful, it has also caused alarm by what else it includes. Could the laudable references also be a ploy to cover a gradual drift towards legitimizing heterodoxy? Let’s have a look.

The document recognizes young people’s need for good role models, accompaniment and authentic discernment in seeking a vocation, confronting the cultural challenges of globalization, the importance of the family in formation and the universal call to holiness.

It also emphasizes the need for catechesis, the practice of charity and for young Catholics not only to have a better understanding of the Church’s social doctrine but also to be active in politics. It further recognizes the detrimental effects of an absence of fatherhood, especially in the West, which can affect spiritual paternity.

But it also refers to those young people who wish to move away from traditions because such traditions are “stuck in the past” or “out of 'fashion'”, while at the same time singling out other young people who “seek their identity by taking root in familiar traditions and striving to be faithful to the education they have received.”

Also interestingly, perhaps reflective of today’s hyper-sexualised society rather than heterodoxy per se, the document is laden with references to sexuality (25 mentions in total, compared to Jesus who is referenced 17 times).

In controversial passages which point to the synod being agenda-driven,
- it proposes that “many” young people believe “the question of sexuality must be discussed more openly and without prejudice.”
- it also uses the loaded acronym “LGBT” used by the homosexual movement — instead of what the Church has hitherto used (those “suffering same-sex attraction”) and
- it appears to place heterosexual and homosexual couples on the same level while omitting to reassert the Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

And although it mentions young Catholics who wish to uphold and deepen the Church’s teachings “despite their unpopularity,” the Instrumentum Laboris also highlights other young people who want Church leaders “to deal concretely with controversial issues such as homosexuality and gender issues,” which it says “young people already discuss freely and without taboos.”

Nowhere is the Church’s teaching on these matters reinforced to counterbalance an overly free and all-round acceptance of disordered sexual practices, homosexual or otherwise. Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, the secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, said the reason the Church is engaging with members of the LGBT community is because “we are open. We don't want to be closed in on ourselves.”

In the Church, “there are many areas, there is freedom for people to express themselves — on the right, left, center, north and south — this is all possible,” he said, adding that “this is why we are willing to listen to people with different opinions.”

He also said the term LGBT was used because it was “mentioned in the pre-synodal document” that came out of a pre-synodal meeting with young people in March, although Diane Montagna of LifeSiteNews discovered that the LGBT term in fact wasn’t used in the pre-synodal document. (Some have also noted several disturbing pictures associated with the event, such as a girl wrapped in a rainbow flag, the emblem of the homosexual movement, published on the synod’s website).

The homosexual New Ways Ministry said the use of the acronym was an “intriguing” and important development that signified an “evolution” in the Vatican’s approach to LGBT issues.

The document also states “international research shows that many young people face inequality and discrimination because of their gender, social class, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, geographical location, disability or ethnicity.”

Observers have noted that much of the input for the working document has come from multiple choice questionnaires given directly to young people, and which were skewed to create a desired response that would pave the way to a departure from Church principles on marriage and the family.

The working document will serve to generate debate and talking points at the synod which the synod fathers will be free to accept or reject, but the concern is that an agenda and path towards heterodoxy regarding the Church’s teaching on human sexuality has already been set.

Some believe this is simply the culmination of an agenda that’s been pushed since before Francis’s election: to legitimize not so much heterodoxy as homosexual relationships within the Church.

Julia Meloni, writing recently on the upcoming synod in Crisis Magazine, pointed to the ghost of Cardinal Carlo Martini whose blueprint for today’s modern Church can be seen in many of the actions of this pontificate. Martini endorsed same-sex civil unions before his death, had always dissented from Humanae vitae, and also wanted to use young “prophets” to revolutionize the Church. He said it would “never occur” to him to “judge” homosexual couples.

A key figure behind the synods has been Archbishop Bruno Forte, a follower of the late cardinal, who wrote the infamous mid-term report at the synod on the family. But for this synod, Jesuit Fr. Giacomo Costa, Vice President of the Martini Foundation, was handpicked by the Pope to help lead the synod as a special secretary and was a leading figure behind the instrumentum laboris. Meloni points out that Fr. Costa’s writings have promoted same-sex couples’ struggle for “social and civil rights.”

To add to these developments, last month the Pope chose four cardinals as present delegates. It was noticed that strangely all of them came from the periphery (Iraq, Burma, Madagascar and Papua New Guinea) and know little about challenges facing youth, which are arguably greatest in the West. Some think they were chosen because they are more likely to easily accept whatever agenda is finally pushed through, but on the other hand, the Church in the global south is often more conservative, so it’s hard to say.

What does appear to be clear is that efforts seem to be in place to prevent traditional voices having any sort of a key influence, something critics of the synod say is likely to compromise and thwart the very spirit of so-called synodality.

It’s not all a bleak picture. Many of the young people who took part in the pre-synodal meetings were grateful for the experience: for the chance to dialogue with Church leaders and to be felt listened to.

But as with the synods on the family, what is evident to even an impartial observer, is that many figures behind the meeting are in favour of an agenda, whether conscious of it or not.

And that agenda appears to be to make the Church move with the times rather than move the times — to paraphrase Chesterton. Or as a former Vatican official more darkly said to me: “To accept the poison of the times rather than to salt them, thus leaving souls easy prey to practices that rot the soul and compromise their eternal salvation.”

We also have the Synod on the Amazon to come in 2019 which looks set to tinker with priestly celibacy, and some continue to be concerned that the youth synod will be used to change Humanae Vitae on its 50th anniversary.

From what I’ve discussed, I therefore think it’s safe to argue that synods under this pontificate have been attempts to introduce heterodoxy. When you put it together with comments from Church leaders such as Cardinal Pietro Parolin who said it represents a paradigm shift, it seems very clear.

What remains unclear, given the rancor, hostility and opposition that has come from these synods, is whether the introduction of such heterodoxy has been legitimized.

In the light of truth and faith, heterodoxy can never be truly legitimized, but it can be perceived to be approved in the eyes of the general public, helped in large part by the mainstream media which is rarely, if ever, respectful of Catholic orthodoxy.

That may be all the leaders of this push towards heterodoxy need and want, and on that score at least, they look to be succeeding.

But I’d like to end on a hopeful note by quoting Timothy Tindal-Robertson, president of the World Apostolate of Fatima of England and Wales who asked that I pass on this message to you which I’ve shortened slightly:

“We know,” he said, that “Our Lady will save the Church through the triumph of her Immaculate Heart, as she promised in the July apparition. What we do not know is how bad things will get up to the moment of her intervention,” because of the continued failure to live the message of Fatima and failure of bishops to promote it.

He therefore advises doing what Our Lady instructed: reciting the daily Rosary, praying, doing penance and offering up one’s trials, suffering and sacrifices, and trying to comply with her request for the 5 First Saturdays devotion in reparation for the blasphemies and ingratitude with which her Immaculate Heart is pierced.

If followed, he says, Mary’s message “cannot fail to deliver and raise up the Church, strengthen people’s faith and overcome current evils.”

Maradiaga strikes out at Vigano and Pentin

Pentin has been denounced by 'Vice Pope' (vice in both senses of the word) Cardinal Maradiaga as a hitman who has been out to get him for the past three years. FIDES, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies, reports this:

---

Newly arrived in Honduras from Ireland, where he accompanied the Pope at the World Meeting of Families, Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga described as "slander and defamation" the libel of former nuncio Viganó and "sin against the Holy Spirit" that asks for the resignation of the Pope. For his part, he admits that he is attacked for being a member of C9 and confesses to feeling "the victim of a hitman, who practices media harassment and is called Edward Pentin".

The media has publicized an 11-page letter from former Nuncio Carlo María Viganó, in which he makes very serious accusations against you, what could you tell us about it?
About three years ago I am the victim of a "hit man" who practices media harassment. His name is Edward Pentin and he works for an EWTN newspaper called the National Catholic Register. I have never talked to him, but he has used the "anonymous libel" that was published by another Honduran "hit man" in a local media that constantly insults me and slanders me. Who am I, Archbishop of a small diocese and a small country to appear in the slandered and defamed world press, with no possibility of defending myself? Clearly the only reason is because I am the Coordinator of the Council of Cardinals who are working on the reform of the Vatican Curia. The enemies of this reform want to end this Council. The main objective is Pope Francis.

I have been surprised by Monsignor Viganó's writing, since he is not the person I have known for several years. The sin of slander and defamation is very serious, and to be forgiven they need the author to repair the damage done.

---

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/09/2018 16:31]

Marco Tosatti has become the object of ‘calumny and defamation’, as Bergoglio and Maradiaga might use those words, by two major para-Vatican sites – IL SISMOGRAFO, the ultra-Bergogliac site run by Chilean Luis Badilla (after a long career at Vatican Radio) who wrote an anti-Tosatti screed yesterday, and to which Tosatti promptly responded, followed today by Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference that has become more Bergogliac than even Dario Vigano’s consolidated Vatican media, with an editorial written by Stefania Falasca, longtime friend of Bergoglio since he was a cardinal. As I have not had time to translate Tosatti’s response to Badilla, I shall go ahead and translate his response to Falasca and thereby hit two birds with one stone.

Tosatti, of course, has the definitive question for Falasca: Since you are so close to Bergoglio, and as a journalist, why don’t you just go and ask him, “Is it true Vigano spoke to you about McCarrick as he says he did?” But, of course, neither she nor Badilla nor any other Bergogliac would dare do that because they already know the answer, which Bergoglio would never articulate definitively, YES or NO, not even to them, to avoid self-incrimination. (Same bind he had with the DUBIA.)

Meanwhile, not content with just shooting the messenger of dark truth, Mons Vigano – since they can’t shoot down his factual affirmations corroborated by other prelates and supported by documentation that Vigano cites and locates – now they’re also hitting at Tosatti, alleging that Mons. Vigano’s Testimony is largely a product of his, Tosatti's, ‘creativity’. All this, folks, spells DESPERATION writ large among the most fanatic of Bergogliacs. (Personally, I think there was also a lot of jealousy, too, that AP should have devoted an article to Tosatti’s contribution to the testimony!)

Avvenire crazed like Il Sismografo
Falasca, since you can do it,
why don’t you just ask the pope
if Vigano talked to him about McCarrick?
Translated from

August 30, 2018

Today, I would have wanted to limit my post to publishing the reflection of Mons. Athanasius Schneider on Mons Vigano’s Testimony. Unfortunately, an editorial by Stefania Falasca in Avvenire obliges me to reply. First, let me cite what she says:

---

Finally we have the cherry on the cake in this whole ‘affaire’. In a long conversation with the Associated Press news agency, a journalist who writes a blog that is notoriously anti-Bergoglio, in the grip of an uncontrollable euphoria of narcissistic protagonism, [one would us those very words to describe Jorge Bergoglio’s habitual mindset], managed in a few minutes to offer on a silver platter the clay feet of the inept operation: [Tsk-tsk! What an inept mixed metaphor!]: he confessed publicly that it was he who wrote the script for the so-called testimony-denunciation. These were his textual words: “I did professional editing. Namely, we worked over his draft, the material of which is substantially the Nuncio’s, to make sure that it would read easily and be journalistically useful”. [Falasca appears to have read a different report from that I posted in the previous page, or else, she took the unspeakable license to claim these were Tosatti’s ‘textual words’ when they seem to be her paraphrase of what Tosatti told AP, as I do not see any such ‘text’ in Nicole Winfield’s AP story.] In short, a creative work to advance a journalistically useful program, and of which the only true precision is in its clockwork mechanism. [She goes from bad to worse. Whatever made her think she was capable of writing an effective poison letter that does not sound as absurd as she makes it!]

---

It sounded familiar. Since, in fact, this was the same twaddle peddled yesterday by Luis Badilla in Il Sismografo, and which I was obliged to refute in yesterday’s post.

But let me say once more in simple words, so that everyone understands. Mons Vigano contacted me a month ago because he wanted to give an interview after having read – on a site that Falasca knows very well because it is part of the Bergoglio Press Gang – allusions, insinuations and falsehoods on Monsignors Montalvo and Sambi [Vigano’s immediate predecessors as Apostolic Nuncio to the USA] and on Benedict XVI. Montalvo and Sambi are deceased so they cannot defend themselves, and Benedict XVI tries to keep silent as much as he can. One must remind Falasca of Talleyrand’s motto, “Above all, not too much zeal!”

When we next saw each other a few weeks later, he told me that instead of giving an interview, he had prepared a text which he wanted published. So we read it together. My contribution was to suggest certain cuts, to clarify terms and situations not easily understandable to those who are not familiar with Vatican doings, sto spell out acronyms, and to see to it that the discourse flowed well. That’s what is called editing, Stefania. So, I am sorry for you and your colleagues, nothing creative there. What’s mine in the Testimony is what I have just described.

Anyone who reads the document would know that it is the personal testimony of someone who has lived the events he describes in the way he describes them. What does ‘creativity’ have to do with it? Either what Vigano says is true or not. [That is really the only legitimate question – which none of the Bergogliacs wish to address because they are unable to refute much of it – except Vigano’s conversations with Bergoglio, which only the latter can deny or refute, which he has refused to do, and why ever not???]

I am very sorry I cannot say that I wrote the whole thing to make you and your customers happy. But I did not. As for narcissism – well then, I am narcissistic, at least about this matter, which is a healthy thing if you ask your lord and master who is an expert at it. In which my narcissism is limited to respond to a colleague who wants to tell a tale about how the Vigano testimony came about.

But a piece of advice, Stefania! When you wish to attack someone, take the time to look at what he has written. You surely saw that I already responded to your mentor, Luis Badilla. I understand that it’s a difficult bind for you [the Bergogliacs], and in order to create diversions from the central point of the Testimony, you and others have to desperately struggle to come up with theatrical special effects, intrigues, conspiracies, even deigning to attack a nobody like me (surely, a sign of desperation).

But there is a very simple way to get out of your bind for a journalist like you. Since we all know of your intimate friendship with the then cardinal and now pope Bergoglio (some malicious wags say it was thanks to this that suddenly you became an editorialist for Avvenire after coming out of the smoking ruins of Giulio Andreotti’s 30 Giorni), why then, since you can so easily do it unlike the rest of us, don’t you go to the pope and ask, “Holy Father, is it true what Vigano wrote?”, to wit:

---

Immediately after, the Pope asked me in a deceitful way: “What is Cardinal McCarrick like?” I answered him with complete frankness and, if you want, with great naiveté: “Holy Father, I don’t know if you know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation for Bishops there is a dossier this thick about him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance.” The Pope did not make the slightest comment about those very grave words of mine and did not show any expression of surprise on his face, as if he had already known the matter for some time, and he immediately changed the subject.”

---

So you could simply ask him: “Does this correspond with the truth? Or is it mere invention?

Then you can give us all his reply, whatever it may be. And thus you could contribute, for once, to disseminate entire truths, not half truths or fragments thereof. Please, do it!

P.S. Falasca is married to a more reputable Vaticanista, Gianni Valente, who obviously enjoys the same intimacy with Bergoglio as his wife does. So if they could both team up and ask Bergoglio - to get a definitive answer in a scoop they could share with the world, why haven't they done so? Because they know they will never get a definitive answer which would not be self-incriminating for Bergoglio!

Let us pray that there are enough priests with the sense of faith and morals that this priest has compared to the other kind he decries.

A priest says McCarrick’s treason
is ‘damnable abomination,’ but
bishops’ silence is even worse


GREENVILLE, South Carolina, Aug 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A U.S. parish priest was planning to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae on the weekend by preaching on the great encyclical, but then the scandal of ex-Cardinal McCarrick made him change his plan.

So instead Fr. Jay Scott Newman gave a must-hear homily blasting priests and bishops who have rejected Humanae Vitae, both by teaching false doctrine and through their own “evil conduct.”

“The treason of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is a damnable abomination,” he said, “but while McCarrick’s sins are appalling, they are merely the crimes of one man…. Worse … is the systemic corruption of priests and bishops who do not believe what the Church teaches but continue to preach anyway.”

McCarrick was recently removed from public ministry over a credible allegation he molested an altar boy 50 years ago. Whistleblowers and victims have come forward to describe McCarrick’s predatory behavior and the disregard they received from Church officials when reporting it. Pope Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals this weekend.

Newman described how, after promising at their ordinations to teach the Gospel as it has been revealed by God and is communicated by the Church, corrupt priests behave rather differently.

“...With a wink and a nudge they encourage cynical disregard for the revealed truth of God’s eternal Word,” Newman continued, “and create a new religion of their own devising, a faith that will not disturb the indulgence of their ambition and lust, and which encourages the people of God to disregard the solemn and sacred truths about love, marriage, sex, and the gift of children.”

Newman reflected that, in all the craziness of 1968, the only reason the media was interested in Humanae Vitae was that many Catholic priests and theologians rejected it, sometimes not even stopping to read it before writing screeds against it.

“Revolution had come, not just to our universities and city streets, but to the Church,” he said. “And the content of Pope Paul’s letter was lost in the storm which was unleashed by the spectacle of priests telling their people to disregard the solemn teaching of the Church, too often with the silent consent of their bishops.”

The homilist found it an “odd coincidence” that the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae had fallen just when the disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had been “unmasked as a serial predator and abuser.” He spoke bitterly of how McCarrick had managed, despite his evil treatment of boys and men under his care, to rise through the ranks of the Church hierarchy. Newman called the ex-cardinal's behaviour “sickening and almost beyond comprehension”, but he was just as scathing about other, unnamed, bishops:

“..Even worse than this man’s personal atrocities, is the failure of other bishops to decry his sins and the damage he has done. Most bishops simply have not spoken, and too many of those who have, sounded more like liability lawyers or company spokesmen protecting their interests than like the prophets and apostles who denounce unrighteousness and call God’s people to repentance and conversion, contrition, confession, and amendment of life,” he continued.

Saying that he believes that the priesthood is a “beautiful, essential gift to the Church,” Newman nevertheless denounced a clerical culture that is “in many ways diseased and deformed and must be made new by the fire of divine love and the truth of the Word of God.”

The homilist said that he had never been surprised by the world’s rejection of “hard sayings” concerning sexuality, but that the rebellion of pastors, bishops, and the College of Cardinals against them was not something we expected. He said he hoped that McCarrick would be laicized, and that every bishop he promoted “should be scrutinized to make sure this disease does not spread”.

Bishops with significant ties to McCarrick include Cardinal Blase Cupich; Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who is the Prefect of the Dicastery for Family, Laity and Life; Cardinal Joseph Tobin; and Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

However, Newman also told his listeners to remember that the only one who profits from shameful clerical sins is “the father of lies” who wants humanity to reject the Gospel.

“Strike the shepherd, scatter the sheep,” he said. “Discredit the messenger, and you discredit the message. That is the strategy of our ancient enemy, the fallen one who does not want us to hear and heed the will of God.”

He asked his congregation to ponder what they themselves can do to help heal the Church, and offered five suggestions himself: that they read Humanae Vitae and change their lives to live its teaching; to study Part III of the Catechism, which provides training in virtue; to go to Mass at least once a week; to go to Confession regularly, perhaps once a month; and to “pray for all those who stumble and fall, including Ted McCarrick.”

Father Newman, who recently celebrated his 25th anniversary as a priest, has been the pastor at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville, South Carolina for 17 years.

Steve Wood, a parishioner at St Mary’s, told LifeSiteNews via email that he was heartened by his pastor’s strong sermon.

“I have been terribly upset by the long string of clergy abuses and even more by the episcopal cover-ups,” Wood wrote.

“After hearing Fr. Newman's homily in Mass on Sunday, I was encouraged that the clergy abuse cover-up was not being swept under the rug in my parish,” he continued. “As I shook Fr. Newman's hand after Mass, I thanked him for a superb homily.”

A theory for the canonical prosecution
of an ‘Uncle Ted’ type of prelate
What does canon law say about the reprehensible conduct alleged against ex-Cardinal-but-still Archbishop Theodore McCarrick?
by Edward N. Peters
August 31, 2018

To the extent that the burgeoning crisis in the Church (one I think scarcely paralleled in Church history) now involves the Roman Pontiff, canon law is of limited — not none, but limited —value in dealing with some of its key aspects, including its most urgent aspect, the credible allegation that Pope Francis knowingly protected and even favored at least one homosexually active prelate and certain of his enablers in the Roman Curia and a national episcopate.

Respectful of the nature of the Church as willed by Christ, no mechanism of canon law provides for the removal of a pope from office. Even the automatic loss of papal office for heresy theorized by some saints and scholars (a theory I basically support) does not envision a process to remove a pope from office but rather declares that the conditions for loss of office have been satisfied.

Because, however, I do not think that Francis has committed an act of heresy (see Canon 751) I speculate no further on this papal loss-of-office scenario and — prescinding from how Francis might eventually choose to respond to allegations against his own actions — I instead turn to what canon law has to say about the reprehensible conduct alleged against former-Cardinal-but-still Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, emeritus of the Archdiocese of Washington.

First, the canonical problem.

Canon law’s alleged inability to take cognizance of sexual relations by clerics between themselves and/or with ‘lay adults’ (a recent euphemism describing seminarians!) supposedly springs from the admittedly narrow wording of Canon 1395 even as broadened by provisions of m.p. Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela.

But while I would contest that pessimistic interpretation on other grounds, conceding the inability of Canon 1395 to reach these offenses simply prompts the question as to whether other norms might yet enable a formal penal canonical response against an “Uncle Ted” kind of prelate. I think some other norms might.

Besides the sweeping powers of a pope broadly articulated by Canon 331, etc., powers conferred by Christ such that even a seriously compromised pope could still wield them for the protection of the Church, of more specific relevance to us is, among other norms, Canon 1399, the final penal norm of Book VI of the 1983 Code. Note that, as McCarrick and some others are bishops and often cardinals, the broad papal criminal authority over such figures implicit in Canon 331 is expressly recited in Canon 1405.

To be sure, Canon 1399 must be approached with caution by ecclesiastical leaders but it exists precisely because the Legislator knows that not all grave offenses, though quite deserving of punishment, can be adequately ‘pre-visioned’ in the text of the law. Because the Church sometimes needs a demonstrable way to respond to heinous but unimaginable offenses (the sexual exploitation of seminarians by bishops would be an example) Canon 1399 authorizes a “just penalty” for the “external violation of a divine … law” when the gravity of the offense “demands punishment and there is an urgent need to … repair scandal.”

Now assuming, first, that dismissal from the clerical state (laicization) of an Uncle Ted-type predator, a cleric who apparently long used his ecclesiastical positions to procure sexual victims, would be considered a “just penalty” for such conduct, and assuming, second, that there is “an urgent need to repair scandal” in such cases, nevertheless a third, necessary question remains: whether “divine law” forbids the kind of clerical sexual misconduct alleged against McCarrick. I think it does. The argument runs thus:

Sacrilege is forbidden by divine law and includes “profaning or treating unworthily … persons … consecrated to God.” Catechism of the Catholic Church 2120. Clerics, and a fortiori bishops, as persons consecrated to God, are forbidden to engage in, inter alia, sexual misconduct under pain of committing not only an offense against victims but also a “sacrilege” against themselves, this, even if the sexual relations with another were consensual. )Peters, “Canonical considerations”, esp. pp. 157-167 and numerous sources cited therein). Note, moreover, that obligations arising from divine law, such as a cleric’s obligation to avoid sacrilege against his own person, are not subject to prescription. See, e.g., Canon 199.

Now, bringing these sacramental, moral, and ecclesiological values together — values represented with more or less explicitness in canon law (but which, we see now, are worthy of much better explicitation in the Code) — I think, in brief, that the Roman Pontiff could conclude that: upon achieving moral certainty regarding sacrilege committed by a cleric (let alone a bishop) against his own person, he (the pope) could punish such an offender with penalties up to and including dismissal from the clerical state regardless of when the sexual predation or exploitation was committed and irrespective of when it was discovered.

The pope could, but need not, use a dicastery such as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to investigate and assess the evidence in these cases but final judgment in the case remains with him. A pope’s use of, or failure to use, such canonical measures as seem to be available to him would be subject to the judgment of history (and of God), of course, but not to that of any other power.

I am not aware that this ‘clerical sacrilege’ theory for the prosecution of prelates for sexual misconduct under Canons 331 and 1399 has been widely explored yet and, even as I reflect on it, I can anticipate some objections to the theory along with, I hasten to add, some responses to those objections, although obviously a fuller discussion of those matters goes beyond what can be attempted here.

For now, I merely raise this theory of the case for consideration by those who might be called upon to deal with current and future complaints against bishops and, in the meantime, want to suggest to the faithful that, while penal canon law certainly stands in need of several reforms, it might not be, even now, quite as powerless to confront evil in episcopal ranks as some might fear.


Meanwhile, Fr Hunwicke reflects on one already reprehensible and inevitable consequence of Bergoglio's hubristic and capricious rule...


Renewing the Magisterium

August 31, 2018

So, just suppose that PF, faced with increasing calls for his resignation, resigns. What sort of successor do you think a divided College of Cardinals might elect [Which they would, in any case, regardless of whether Bergoglio resigns or dies.]

My guess is that they might elect someone whom the majority thought would at least not increase the divisions in the Church. A Pope whose aim would be, not to reverse the acts of PF, but somehow to draw a divided and sorely wounded Church together again. This would be a timorous but not ignoble aspiration.

But suppose the next Conclave were to elect a vigously orthodox and unambiguously Catholic pope ... let's call him Leo XIV. Suppose, as some commenters on this blog have liked to imagine, this pope were in some way to cancel certain elements of the 'Magisterium' of PF ... or even its entirety. Good. A new start. Yes?

But ... where would that leave us?
It would leave us with a fatally compromised and weakened Magisterium.

Because if Leo XIV can scrub out the Magisterium of Francis I, it is not easy to see upon what grounds the subsequent pope Francis II can be told that he is acting ultra vires if he tries to scrub out the Magisterium of Leo XIV.

It seems to me that by trying to scrub out the Magisterium of S John Paul and of Benedict XVI, PF has created a logical conundrum to which it is not easy to see the answer. He has damaged the ability of any pope, 'liberal' or 'traditional', ever again to use effectively the Petrine Ministry.

The only 'Magisterium' which could 'trump' that of any Roman Pontiff would be that of a Pope sitting in and with an Ecumenical Council. But who wants to go down that path? The conventional assumption that doctrinal definitions of such a Council must rest upon moral unanimity would probably mean that, even in merely prectical terms, such a Council might not deliver its expectations.

Through his wilful behavior, PF has created the inevitability of an eventual (however long it may take) schism, which will be so much the more disastrous than the last great schism of the Latin Church because it will not merely be jurisdictional, but will involve large and fundamental doctrinal elements of discord.

It is likely to take generations before the full effects of the present pontificate are finally visible. [And generations more to reverse all its noxious effects.]

As the Church reels, is an even larger scandal building?
As the gap widens between what the hierarchy says about Islam and
what ordinary Catholics can see in the news or encounter in their own lives,
many more Catholics will become alienated from the Church.
by William Kilpatrick

August 29, 2018

The Church has been deeply damaged in recent weeks by revelations of widespread clerical sex abuse in Chile and Honduras, the further revelation that Cardinal McCarrick’s predatory behavior had been hushed up, and now claims by an archbishop that Pope Francis knew about sanctions imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI but repealed them.

It may seem that things couldn’t get much worse for the Church, but it almost certainly will. More revelations of abuse and cover-ups at the highest levels are likely to come, and the level of distrust and discouragement among ordinary Catholics is bound to grow.

But there is another scandal waiting in the wings which may prove larger and more devastating than the current one. The looming scandal concerns the Church’s facilitation of an Islamic takeover of much of the Western and non-Western world. [What does it say of Bergoglio that he has been the number-one facilitator of both scandals???]

If the term “Islamic takeover” seems overblown, then you may not be paying attention
- to the escalating persecution of Christians in Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, and Indonesia;
- to the genocide against Christians in Iraq, Syria, and Nigeria; and
- to the gradual submission of European nations to Islamic demands.

Is the Church knowingly facilitating the persecution of Christians and the Islamization of Europe? No, but its semi-official policy toward Islam, nevertheless, has that effect. Ever since Vatican II, Church policy has been one of turning a blind eye to the violent and aggressive nature of Islam while declaring “esteem” for Islam as a fellow monotheistic religion.

For years now, Catholic leaders — the pope, bishops, priests, Catholic media, and Catholic educators — have covered up the large gap that divides Islam and Christianity.Instead they have poured all their energies into emphasizing the similarities between the two faiths, while simultaneously decrying “Islamophobia” — a term which seems to refer to any criticism of Islam. [Kilpatrick generalizes thoughtlessly. Surely, Benedict XVI never did so, either as cardinal or as pope! ON THE CONTRARY!]

As the gap widens between what the hierarchy says about Islam and what ordinary Catholics can see in the news or encounter in their own lives, many Catholics will become alienated from the Church. The priestly sex abuse scandals that broke in 2002 had that effect. In those areas that were hardest hit by the scandals, Church attendance dropped off dramatically. The same is likely to happen as the realities of Islamization put the lie to the Church’s Pollyannaish view of Islam. Only this time, the disaffection will be on a greater scale.

Why? For two reasons.
- First because the addition of this second scandal to the sex abuse scandals will have a compounding effect —the straw-that-broke-the-camels-back.
- Second, this new “straw” is potentially a good deal heavier than all the previous straws combined.
The number of victims of sex abuse by priests is difficult to estimate; it could amount to tens of thousands worldwide. But the victims of worldwide Islamization will be numbered in the tens of millions.

I’m not talking here about killings and massacres, but about the daily humiliations and persecutions that non-Muslims suffer in Muslim lands.

If present demographic and cultural trends continue it is quite possible that several European nations will fall under Islamic control within the next twenty years.
- Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands are prime candidates.
- Germany, France, and the UK are also vulnerable.
As sharia law spreads through Europe, so will the abuses that accompany it. And many of these abuses are sexual or sex-related such as honor killings, child marriages, wife beating, and female genital mutilation.

Although they are hardly identical, the two scandals resemble each other in two important respects. Both involve widespread sex abuse and both involve a cover-up.
- In Europe the abuse of vulnerable women and vulnerable minors, both Muslim and non-Muslim is now widespread.
- Sweden has the second highest incidence of rape in the world.
- Thousands of teen-aged girls in English towns such as Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford have been victimized by Muslim rape gangs.
- Twelve hundred women were sexually assaulted on a single night outside the Cologne train station on New Year’s Eve 2016.
- Meanwhile, the number of Muslim girls and women in Europe who have been subject to FGM is estimated to be well over 500,000.

Priests and bishops, of course, are not committing these crimes, but they are strangely silent about them. They do not speak out about them the way they do when an incident of “Islamophobia” hits the news. Perhaps they don’t speak out, because they are, in part, responsible for the increased presence in Europe of all those additional rapists, wife-abusers and FGM practitioners.

It’s no secret that Church leaders have been at the forefront of those calling for a more welcoming attitude toward migrants. A recent National Post headline tells the story: “The loudest opponent of Italy’s new anti-migrant policy? The Catholic Church.”

The voices of opposition range from the Pope, who has said that migrant security is more important than national security, down to the village priest. The Post report cites one priest who said that the anti-migrant party “cannot call themselves Christians.” And it quotes an Archbishop who says, “The Church can’t stay silent. I can’t stay silent.”

Yet the Church has stayed silent about the massive crime wave that has swept Europe as a result of the open-borders policies it has lobbied for. The Post article mentions a pro-migration statement by the Italian Bishop’s Conference” illustrated on its website with the photo of a weak migrant who had been clinging to flotsam in the Mediterranean before her rescue.”
- But where are the photos of the rape gang victims?
- The victims of car and knife attacks?
- The bruised and bloody faces of the elderly couple attacked in their apartment by Muslim migrants?
- And where are the photos of the acid-scarred babies and children?
The city of London now has the highest per capita rate of acid attacks in the world, but such statistics seem of little interest to Church leaders.

Church’s leaders have not only been guilty of encouraging mass migration of a type that would predictably result in a wave of horrific crimes, they have been guilty of looking the other way when the crimes occur. And when a terror attack is too big to ignore, they assure us that such acts have nothing to do with Islam.

These daily cover-ups of Muslim criminal activity are part of a much larger cover-up — the cover-up of the full truth about Islam. As mentioned earlier, Church author ities and educators have presented a one-sided picture of Islam —one with all the scary parts left out. For example, in Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis asserts that “authentic Islam and a proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” Not surprisingly, he has been thanked on several occasions by top Muslim authorities for his defense of Islam.

Like the sex abuse scandal, this sugar-coated portrayal of Islam constitutes a betrayal of the shepherd’s duty to protect. It misleads Catholics on an issue vital to their security. For example, the only threat from migrants that Pope Francis will admit to is “threats to our comfort.”

The hierarchy’s misleading assurances on Muslim migration can be summed up by a banner that “welcomers” in European countries sometimes display. It proclaims: “They’re not dangerous, they’re in danger.”

However, as more and more Europeans come to realize that a significant number of the migrants are indeed dangerous, their feelings of betrayal will increase. More and more European governments are now tightening their immigration policies.

If the Church remains the last and “loudest” voice calling for the importation of cultures that are misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian to the core, the result may well be a final falling away from the Church on the part of those who already have their doubts.

If the church persists in its pro-Islam policy, several consequences will likely follow. For one thing, the Church will be further discredited. As more Catholics come to realize that Church leaders have been misleading them about Islam, distrust will grow. Almost everything that Church leaders say will become suspect, and the exodus from the Church — particularly in the West — will likely accelerate.

Another consequence is the development of what I call the “evil twin brother” hypothesis. As Church leaders continue to emphasize their solidarity with Islam, many — both inside and outside the Church — will be prompted to ask some obvious questions.
- Why would anyone want to declare solidarity with a faith that considers jihad obligatory?
- That denies the equality of men and women?
- That prescribes stoning or whipping for adultery, and death for apostasy?

Here’s what I had to say about the matter six years ago:

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It was precisely by claiming that Christianity and Islam are essentially the same that atheists were able to make so much hay in the aftermath of 9/11. The atheist argument is not that Islam is the bad apple among world religions, but that it is just like all religions — irrational, cruel, and unjust. Atheists such as Hitchens and Dawkins made a particular point of portraying Islam and Christianity as evil twin brothers… When Christian clergy identify themselves with Muslim clerics, it serves only to strengthen the atheist argument that there is little difference between the two faiths.

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What is especially problematic is that many Catholics — including some prominent conservative Catholics — extend the “common ground” claim to include sexual values. Some have argued that Catholics and Muslims are natural allies against immodesty, pornography, homosexuality, promiscuity, and so on.

But, as Nonie Darwish has demonstrated in several books (particularly in Wholly Different), Christianity and Islam are miles apart when it comes to sexual ethics.
- Islam sanctions polygamy, easy divorce for men, child marriage, and, in times of war, sex slavery.
- In Afghanistan, the dancing boys (“bacha bazi”) are practically a cultural institution.
- In Iran it is considered perfectly legitimate for seminary students to enter into “temporary marriages” — essentially a form of prostitution.
- Most of these practices — especially child marriage — are strongly defended by Muslim clerics. In other words, what the West considers sexual misconduct is just business as usual in many parts of the Muslim world.

As the non-Muslim world learns more about these practices, the claim by Catholics that Islam is their ally in upholding sexual morality may prove particularly damaging.

If one invites comparisons, comparisons will be made, and in one respect transgressions by Catholic clerics suffer by comparison with similar transgressions by Muslim clerics. At first glance, both seem to be guilty of hypocrisy. But the Imam with two wives, the Muslim clerics who lobby for lowering the age of marriage to twelve, and the seminary student who pays for sex, are all within the letter of the law. They know better than most what Islamic law allows. They can’t very well be accused of hypocrisy.

It’s another matter with the Catholic cleric who violates his vow of chastity. People in the Western world are typically more outraged by hypocrisy than the actual sin committed by the hypocrite. Individuals who are forthright about their sexual activities are often celebrated in Western literature and Western media for their 'bravery and authenticity'.

The hypocrisy of Catholic clergy may lead to more defections from the Church and, ironically, to more conversions to Islam which will be seen by some as the more honest of the two religions.

But Christian defections to Islam is another story for another article. Let’s conclude with a very brief discussion of how both scandals — the cover-up of sexual abuse and the cover-up of the threat presented by Islam — might be dealt with. Since many others have written extensively about solutions to the first problem, let’s focus on the one suggestion (other than prayer and fasting) that seems most likely to set the Church on the right path in regard to both scandals.

Many have suggested that what is needed is a thorough housecleaning at the upper levels of the Church. A clean sweep is probably not a practical goal but a housecleaning is certainly in order.

It’s difficult to see how the people who allowed the sex abuse problem to metastasize are suddenly going to turn around and solve it. There’s a good deal of truth in the adage, “personnel is policy”. You can create new policies on paper, but if the old personnel is in charge of implementing them, nothing will happen.

Interestingly, the people who enabled the first scandal (clerical sex abuse) are most probably the same people who are facilitating the second scandal (the cover-up of Islam’s aggressive nature). Those Catholic leaders who subscribe to “progressive” views on sexual morality, likely subscribe to the “progressive” view that all cultures and religions are essentially the same.

The relativistic and non-judgmental thinking that Pope St. John Paul II criticized in Veritatis Splendor can be used to excuse both sexual sins and cultural sins. The same false virtues of tolerance and inclusivity that allowed the first scandal to grow, have now become the rationale for overlooking the many problems with Islam.

There is some anecdotal evidence that those who are “progressive” on sexual matters are also inclined to minimize the Islamic threat.
- Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Chairman of the German Bishop’s Conference, who has raised the possibility of blessings for same-sex unions, has also been among the chief “welcomers” of Muslim migrants.
- Cardinal McCarrick, who symbolizes the current abuse crisis, may also stand as a symbol of Catholic clerics who naively trust in the good intentions of Islamic clergy. After returning from an official visit to Iran, he applauded the disastrous Iran nuclear deal in an essay for the Washington Post and reassured his readers that they could trust the Iranians because Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei had issued a fatwa against the possession of nuclear weapons (a fatwa that proved non-existent).

The Iran deal greatly boosted Iran’s ability to sponsor terrorism worldwide, and, in that sense, McCarrick could be considered an enabler of Islam. But, then, the USCCB itself was a strong supporter of the deal, and Bishop Oscar Cantu, the head of the Committee on International Justice and Peace, warned Congress not to “undermine” the deal.

In any event, bishops whose sense of sin is limited to man-made climate change and the building of border walls are less likely to notice the approach of other types of evil. It is probable that clerics who saw no danger in the rise of homosexual networks in the Church will also see no danger in the spread of a supposedly “peaceful” fellow religion — even though that religion has a long history of subjugating other cultures and religion. By the time that they do notice the danger, a great deal of — possibly irreversible — damage will have been done.

I think backslider is inappropriate to describe Jorge Bergoglio in the context of the Ricca and McCarrick stories, and of his known record in Argentina of protecting a known homosexual bishop and a convicted homosexual priest. (And who knows what others we do not yet know about?) Though not involved in homosexual liaisons (not as far as anyone knows so far), he is a serial offender just as much as McCarrick and Ricca were.. One tends to believe that the reports of his protective and tolerant treatment of the bishop and priest in question are not inaccurate at all, else we would have heard denials from the Vatican already. (Or maybe the Bergoglio Vatican does not consider a story public and worth denying or refuting until it is picked up by all the media, not just by a few outlets).

Bergoglio the backslider
His apparent dismissal of earlier information about McCarrick's misconduct
recalls his dismissal of derogatory information about Mons Ricca
whom he named his personal representative to the IOR in 2013


August 31, 2018

“I have read it, and I will not say a word. You [journalists] read it, and make up your own minds. When a bit of time has gone by and you have drawn you conclusions, maybe then I will speak.”

This is how Pope Francis responded - on the evening of August 26, on the flight back from Dublin - to those who asked him about the indictment leveled against him that same morning by the former nuncio to the United States, Carlo Maria Viganò.

A very elusive reply. On a par with other previous reactions of his, every time he has seen himself attacked. As in the case of the “dubia” on his doctrinal correctness raised in 2016 by four authoritative cardinals, whom he never wanted to receive or to dignify with a clarification. [Nor even a simple answer acknowledging receipt of their letter! That's simply boorish and something no well-educated person would do, much less if he were Pope! What would his grandmother say if she were still alive and aware of such bad manners - insult really, because these four cardinals were his peers before he became pope, and suddenly, they are ignored as if they were non-entities?]

This time, however, the object of the accusation is not a doctrinal controversy ad intra, with little impact on secular public opinion, but a question of sex, or rather of homosexuality practiced for decades, with dozens of partners, by an American churchman of the highest rank, who went on to become archbishop of Washington and a cardinal, Theodore McCarrick.

In essence, Viganò accuses Pope Francis of having been informed by him about McCarrick’s misconduct as early as June 23 of 2013, but of having done nothing as a result, or rather of having kept the reprobate close to him as his chief adviser in the appointments that are reshaping the Catholic hierarchy in the United States, promoting his proteges. Only this year, following charges that he also abused a minor, did the pope decide to sanction McCarrick and strip him of the cardinalate.

The accusation is of unprecedented gravity and is difficult to contest in its substance, in part because of the key roles that Viganò once occupied in the curia and in diplomacy. But sure enough, in this case as well Pope Francis has chosen not to react. He has left the task of judging to media professionals. Sure that many will speak out in his defense, as has already happened with the “dubia,” where in effect the subsequent battle in fact played out in his favor.

But that victory will smile on him again remains to be seen.

The McCarrick case is not the only one of its kind that has gotten Jorge Mario Bergoglio into trouble. There is another one that looks like its exact twin. It concerns Monsignor Battista Ricca, director of the Casa Santa Marta selected by Francis as his Vatican residence, whom he promoted on June 15, 2013, at the beginning of his pontificate, as prelate of the IOR, meaning the pope’s contact at the Vatican “bank,” with the right to attend all of the board meetings and to access all of the documentation.

During the second half of that month of June, 2013, the ambassadors from all over the world had gathered in Rome. And it was on that occasion that Viganò, nuncio in Washington at the time, met with Francis and told him about McCarrick’s misconduct.

But even the appointment of Ricca as prelate of the IOR, which had taken place a few days before, had created quite a bit of distress among a good number of the nuncios, who had known him as a diplomatic adviser in Algeria, Colombia, Switzerland, and then Uruguay, everywhere displaying conduct that was anything but chaste, especially at his last destination.

In Montevideo, between 1999 and 2001, Ricca cohabited with his lover, former Swiss army captain Patrick Haari, who had followed him there from Bern. And he also frequented cruising spots with young men, getting beaten up one time and another getting stuck in an elevator at the nunciature with an eighteen-year-old already known to the Uruguayan police.

Ricca ended up being removed from diplomatic service in the field and recalled to Rome, where miraculously his career became a success all over again, turning him into a diplomatic adviser of the first class within the structure of the secretariat of state, and above all director of the three Vatican residences for cardinals and bishops visiting Rome, including that of Santa Marta, with the opportunity to establish excellent relationships, including friendships, with churchmen of half the world, including Bergoglio, who as soon as he was elected pope admitted him into his most intimate circle, where he still remains today.

So then, among the nuncios gathered in Rome during that month of June, 2013, there were also those who knew about Ricca’s scandalous background and thought that Francis was not aware of it, considering his promotion of this character, a few days before, to nothing less than prelate of the IOR.

So there were those who, during those days, wanted to put Francis on guard by informing him about Ricca’s record.

Not only that. Among the numerous witnesses of Ricca’s scandalous conduct in Montevideo were some of the Uruguayan bishops, one of whom, after Ricca was appointed prelate of the IOR, felt it his duty to him write an anguished letter in which he asked him, “for the love of the pope and of the Church,” to resign.[

And in effect Francis wanted to see clear documentation of Ricca’s record while he was at the nunciature of Montevideo. He had it sent to Rome through his own personal channels, without going through the secretariat of state.

In the meantime, in L’Espresso, a very detailed article on Ricca had come out. Who did not react at all publicly, while in private he dismissed as “gossip” all those facts reported against him, and made sure to make it known that the pope, with whom he had met, also considered it “gossip” devoid of any foundation.

Interviewed in July of 2013 by the Uruguayan and Argentine press about the prelate’s fate, the nuncio to Montevideo at the time, Guido Anselmo Pecorari, limited himself to this laconic statement: “I maintain that the question is in the hands of the Holy See. And surely the Holy Father, in his wisdom, will know what to do.”

The fact is that at the end of the month of July, during the press conference on the flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro, where he had gone for world youth day, Pope Francis was in effect questioned by a Brazilian journalist on the Ricca case and the “gay lobby.” And this was his actual reply, transcribed as such in the official bulletin of the Holy See:

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“About Monsignor Ricca: I did what canon law calls for, that is a preliminary investigation. And from this investigation, there was nothing of what had been alleged. We did not find anything of that. This is the response. But I wish to add something else: I see that many times in the Church, over and above this case, but including this case, people search for 'sins from youth', for example, and then publish them. They are not crimes, right? Crimes are something different: the abuse of minors is a crime. No, sins.

But if a person, whether it be a lay person, a priest or a religious sister, commits a sin and then converts, the Lord forgives, and when the Lord forgives, the Lord forgets and this is very important for our lives. When we confess our sins and we truly say, 'I have sinned in this', the Lord forgets, and so we have no right not to forget, because otherwise we would run the risk of the Lord not forgetting our sins. That is a danger. This is important: a theology of sin. Many times I think of Saint Peter. He committed one of the worst sins, that is he denied Christ, and even with this sin they made him Pope. We have to think a great deal about that. But, returning to your question more concretely.

In this case, I conducted the preliminary investigation and we didn’t find anything. This is the first question. Then, you spoke about the gay lobby. So much is written about the gay lobby. I still haven’t found anyone with an identity card in the Vatican with 'gay' on it. They say there are some there. I believe that when you are dealing with such a person, you must distinguish between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of someone forming a lobby, because not all lobbies are good. This one is not good. If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this in a beautiful way, saying ... wait a moment, how does it say it ... it says: 'no one should marginalize these people for this, they must be integrated into society'. The problem is not having this tendency, no, we must be brothers and sisters to one another, and there is this one and there is that one. The problem is in making a lobby of this tendency: a lobby of misers, a lobby of politicians, a lobby of masons, so many lobbies. For me, this is the greater problem. Thank you so much for asking this question.”

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Three observations about what Pope Francis said here:

1. In maintaining that he had found nothing worthy of blame in the investigatio preceding Ricca’s appointment as prelate of the IOR, Francis confirmed that the personal dossier on him that was kept at the secretariat of state had been carefully scrubbed of his scandalous past. But in the preceding weeks Francis also had available to him the accusatory documentation kept at the nunciature of Montevideo, incontrovertible documentation, seeing that on the basis of it the Secretariat of State had withdrawn Ricca from diplomatic service in the field. And yet he ignored it.

2. Francis applied to Ricca the typology of those who have committed “sins of youth” and then have repented. But this is never the image of himself that Ricca has presented, rather that of one who has always rejected as baseless “gossip” the accusations against his conduct.

3. And it was in reference to none other than Ricca that Francis pronounced the famous phrase that has become the trademark of his pontificate: “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?” With this phrase, Bergoglio reversed completely to his favor in world public opinion an affair that otherwise could have seriously undermined his credibility.

This is the feat that Pope Francis is again attempting today, after the McCarrick affair has been laid bare by ex-nuncio Viganò.

This time as well Bergoglio has refrained from judging. He has put the ball back in the media’s court. Where pedophilia is not acceptable, but homosexuality is. No matter if it is committed by churchmen who in practicing it completely violate the commitment of chastity that they took on publicly with the sacrament of orders.


Meanwhile, Irish book author and journalist John Waters, who has probably been the only one among his fellow Irish mediamen to stand up in the past 2-3 decades for Catholicism and its beliefs, writes this article that jibes perfectly with Father Z's interpretation of Bergoglio's 'coded' reply to the newsmen on board the papal flight when asked about the Vigano expose.


SUBTITLE: Why he continues to be Teflon-clad and simply
sheds off negative publicity like water off a duck's back

Three questions to begin:
1. Why did the World Meeting of Families, which took place in Ireland last week, all but exclude from its panels and speakers people who had been active in recent Irish referenda relating to family and children?
2. Why did virtually every panel of commentators covering the World Meeting of Families and papal visit on Ireland’s national radio and television station comprise at least 50 percent LGBT activists?
3. Why did the Irish media play down the explosive intervention of the former Vatican diplomat Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò until Pope Francis was preparing to leave Ireland on Sunday afternoon?

The answer to the first question has two parts.

One is that the Irish Church hierarchy, having more or less avoided involvement in three referenda — 0n (so-called) children’s rights (2012), same-sex marriage (2015), and abortion (2018) — seek to ensure that those who tried to do the job they abandoned become non-persons within the Irish Catholic world. More and more, the Irish bishops appear to wish to curry favor with those who despise the Church, and to dismiss and disparage those who defend Christ’s proposals for humanity. [Simply taking the cue from YOU-KN0W-WHO!]

I was one of just three people who fought prominently in all three referenda on the side that the Catholic Church might have been expected to lead. Though I had gained a reputation as an arch-apologist for the Catholic Church, I was not invited to speak at the World Meeting of Families or even to attend it, and so I watched and listened from a distance.

To the second question: Media panels are stuffed with LGBT activists in order to protect the dominant narrative concerning clerical sex abuse in the Church. That narrative insists that sex abuse was perpetrated by pedophiles; that the main cause was clerical celibacy; and that the coverups were conducted by Church leaders to protect the Church from bad publicity.

We have known since the John Jay Report published by the US bishops in 2004 that the overwhelming majority of abuse in the Church was carried out against teenage boys. The levels of pedophilia in the Church are shown by this report to be below those of the general population — whereas the levels of homosexual abuse were many multiples of the general situation.

In Ireland, anyone who tries to state this case is immediately attacked by both journalists and LGBT activists. For this reason, the truth has never been fully reported, nor has its significance been absorbed even by the Church at the official level. Most Irish people have no sense of the true meaning of the child abuse scandals, and both the media and much of the Church’s priests and leadership seem anxious to retain the narrative that implies the victims were all “little ones.”

The first child-abuser priest to be exposed in Ireland was a man called Brendan Smyth, a classic pedophile who clearly was psychiatrically ill. When being led into or out of court hearings, he would put on a show of demonic face-pulling for the cameras, providing perfect cover for those who wanted to conceal the true nature of the problem.

Hence, the vast majority of Irish people are unaware that Smyth was an aberration among abusers, and that the problem arises in large part from the invasion of the priesthood in the 1970s and 1980s by unprecedented numbers of gay men, devoid of vocations, who now seek to undermine Church teaching on all sexual questions and who —rightly or wrongly — have come to see Pope Francis as an ally. This fifth column, the peel masquerading as the fruit, is the chief agent of the coverups of the abuses its own members have perpetrated.

When you think about it, the situation is absurd: Irish Christians are not permitted to hear any kind of discussion in the media about their faith, other than the gripes of people who seek to place gay sex at the heart of Christian and Western culture. But it is essential if the goal is to protect the narrative. Most people are terrified of being labeled homophobic, so the presence of LGBT proxies on broadcast panels ensures that nobody dares approach the truth.

The answer to the third question feeds into all of the above.

It is often unclear whether the confusion Pope Francis leaves behind him is a deliberate strategy or the consequence of a chaotic thinking process, but in any event he has long given succor and comfort to those who hate the Church, while causing dismay to many of those who love her.

Almost from the beginning, the media — who have otherwise sought at every turn to bury the Church — have adopted Pope Francis as their champion, creating an entirely bogus, indeed asinine, good pope–bad pope dichotomy between Francis and his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.

This is why Archbishop Viganò’s statement was not widely reported in the Irish media (or indeed elsewhere) until late in the day last Sunday, and then only grudgingly, with the reports laced with innuendo about Viganò’s motivation and timing.

The pope’s exchange with journalists on the plane back to Italy must rank as one of the strangest episodes of mutual avoidance in the history of journalism. An issue that journalists have prosecuted with extreme vigor for a quarter-century had finally arrived at the door of a pope: a direct and concrete accusation that, in a specific instance, he had protected a serial sexual abuser. Yet the omertà of the day continued into the early exchanges of the press conference, with several questions from Irish journalists making no reference to the matter.

Then Anna Matanga of CBS — the first mainstream platform to cover the Viganò story on Sunday — asked: “This morning, very early, a document by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò came out. In it, he says that in 2013 he had a personal talk with you at the Vatican, and that in that talk, he spoke to you explicitly of the behavior of and the sexual abuse by former–Cardinal McCarrick. I wanted to ask you if this was true. I also wanted to ask something else: The archbishop also said that Pope Benedict sanctioned McCarrick, that he had forbidden him to live in a seminary, to celebrate Mass in public, he couldn’t travel, he was sanctioned by the Church. May I ask you whether these two things are true?”

The pope replied:

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“I will respond to your question, but I would prefer last—first we speak about the trip, and then other topics. … I read the statement this morning, and I must tell you sincerely that, I must say this, to you and all those who are interested. Read the statement carefully and make your own judgment. I will not say a single word about this. I believe the statement speaks for itself. And you have the journalistic capacity to draw your own conclusions. It’s an act of faith. When some time passes and you have drawn your conclusions, I may speak. But, I would like your professional maturity to do the work for you. It will be good for you. That’s good.”

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To the uninitiated, this seems like a desperate prevarication mixed with feeble flattery, a playing for time. But if it was a prevarication, it turned out to be an effective one: The pope’s refusal to answer the question was meekly accepted by the journalists present, who would surely have brought the plane down had the pontiff’s name been Benedict or John Paul.

The Viganò story has since gained little traction in the mainstream, except for the purpose of discrediting the archbishop. It was as through the pope’s weak waffle was absorbed by some invisible padding of the plane’s walls.

Even yet, Archbishop Viganó's intervention is being treated by the Irish media as some kind of outrageous exercise in party-pooping, revealing — if anyone was in any doubt — that the abuse scandals have chiefly been regarded by media people as an opportunity to prosecute an agenda rooted in other matters.

And when you read the pope’s response again in light of what has happened — or not happened — in the several days since, it acquires an ominous tenor, inviting a stab at a new translation. Here is mine:

---

Read the statement in the knowledge of the relationship you and I share: We are men and women of the world and like-minded on what is important. We know where we stand on matters like homosexuality and homosexual priests.

But be careful how you handle this Viganò business— a wrong word could undo all we have achieved. I have faith in you to figure out who this man is. Do your work well and there will be no need for me to risk my position. Once you have defused the situation, I will deal with Viganò for the record.

We are all adults here. I know I can count on you. I need your help on this, but we have an understanding that has worked well so far. Trust me.

---

Which was what Father Z said last Sunday in fewer lines:

---

In my cynicism... what the Pope said is along the lines of: “You, the press, have been on my side till now. If you think about it for a while, you should still be on my side. If you weigh the alternatives you will remember that I am your guy.”

Here is what I think he said, without saying it. The Pope is calling on the press to do the necessary work to make this go away.

---

Washington DC's conservative newspaper is obviously not among Bergoglio's media Praetorian Guard...

Pope Francis normally won't stop talking -
He's picked a funny time to go silent
by Becket Adams

August 30, 2018

For a guy who loves to talk, Pope Francis sure has picked a funny time to be silent.

The Holy Father dodged questions this weekend about an 11-page document alleging he knowingly enabled and empowered sexual predators in the Catholic Church. The New York Times weirdly characterized the pope's non-response as taking “ the high road,” but it's hard to reconcile this description with the role Francis is supposed to play for the Catholic faithful around the world.

The accusation, penned by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, alleges a conspiracy of child sexual abuse spanning the globe. It alleges a conspiracy of silence and complicity within the Vatican. It also alleges Francis personally empowered known abusers, granting them the ability to handpick bishops in the United States.

It’s serious stuff, and it deserves a serious response from the Vatican. But so far, Francis has opted not to address any of it.

“Read the statement attentively and make your own judgment,” the pope told journalists on Aug. 26, according to a Catholic News Service report.

"I will not say a single word on this," he added. "I think this statement speaks for itself, and you have the sufficient journalistic capacity to draw conclusions. When some time passes and you have your conclusions, maybe I will speak. But I would like that your professional maturity carries out this task."

This is an abdication of responsibility, and it is testing Catholics' faith. Francis is not acting like the shepherd of the people of God. He is acting like a feeble politician who is looking to buy time while using the press’s deep-rooted prejudices against his critics.

In contrast, Vigano, who national newsrooms have tried very hard to paint as a vindictive, homophobic, and conspiratorial lunatic, participated in a lengthy interview this week, answering several questions regarding the veracity of his letter. That's more than any Vatican official can say.

Pope Francis’s non-response this weekend is especially frustrating, considering his penchant for sloppily expressed public positions that routinely lead to misleading and poorly informed news cycles. When it comes to climate change, immigration reform, priestly celibacy, same-sex marriage, weapons manufacturers, etc., Francis is often willing to rush in, as critics might put it, without too much circumspection.

In fact, in the very same press conference this weekend where he refused to comment on the Vigano letter , Francis was quick to answer a question about what parents should do should they learn their child is gay.

"What would I say to a parent whose son or daughter had that tendency? I would say first, pray. Don't condemn. Dialogue, understand, make room for that son or daughter, make room so he can express himself," Francis said. "I would never say silence is a remedy … [and] to ignore one's son or daughter who has a homosexual tendency is a failure of fatherhood or motherhood."

Hey, Father, speaking of silence never being the remedy: Were you aware in 2013 that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick sexually abused male seminarians and minors? What did you know about former Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s third-most powerful official? What about the 31 Chilean bishops who tendered their resignations this year?

Francis’s titles include “Vicar of Jesus Christ,” “Successor of the Prince of the Apostles,” and “Servant of the servants of God.” He is the shepherd to a flock that numbers in the billions.

Now would be a good time for him to step up and act like it.


From a moral-historical perspective,
this crisis is much worse than you think
[Paging Cardinals Wuerl and Parolin and all who are downplaying it]
by Benjamin Wiker

August 20, 2018

Contrary to Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s early and oft-quoted assessment, the Catholic Church is in fact facing a “massive, massive crisis.” Greater clarity about the nature of this crisis can be had by looking at the larger moral-historical perspective.

[Cardinal Parolin's money quote (from yesterday) was "Certainly, the situation is not worrying at all!" after assuring everybody that Bergoglio was 'serene' amid it all. How much more deaf and dense can the pope and his Bergogliacs be to treat the whole escalating abuse scandal so cavalierly?

Do not forget that the Vatican also assured us that this pope did not intend to do anything more about the scandal after writing his 'letter to the people of God' - that was before the Vigano expose, but apparently, Bergoglio will continue to act as if everything was 'same old, same old'.

God have mercy on him first, because he needs to change which will be a mercy to us all. Maybe what Bergoglio seriously needs, to begin with, is an all-out no-holds-barred whistles-and-bells EXORCISM by any and all qualified exorcist priests who should converge on Casa Santa Marta to drive away Satan.]

There is only one reason why pedophilia is even a moral issue today: historically, the Catholic Church made it one. Sex with boys and girls, but especially boys, was an accepted part of ancient Greek and Roman culture, the culture into which Christ Himself, and hence the Church, was born.

Christianity rejected this common pagan sexual practice as a distortion of sexuality, and evangelized accordingly. If it were not for the success of Christianity’s evangelical efforts, the laws against pedophilia still on the books today would never have been there at all.

To give this historical sketch some important details, the most desirable age for men seeking sex with boys in ancient Greece and Rome was the 12-18 year old range, when the boys were blossoming into sexual maturity on their way to becoming men. In short, homosexual activity was defined primarily by pedophilia. There were no artificial distinctions between homosexuality, pedophilia, ephebophilia (sex with someone between 12-14) and hebephilia (sex with someone 15-18). There was simply the culturally commonplace desire of men to have sex with boys from ages 12-18.

Moreover, pedophilia with boys was not confined to a few perverted individuals with exclusively homosexual orientation. The great majority of men engaged in it as an accepted part of Greco-Roman culture, whether they were (as we would designate them) homosexual or heterosexual. Thus, pedophilia was not a moral issue, but a cultural practice engaged in by most men. (This is an important point that I’ll take up in a future article, because it means that our current attempt to fix a definite homosexual “percentage” in the population, say 2 percent or 10 percent, doesn’t take into account that homosexuality and pedophilia can spread to the majority through a deformed culture.)

That was precisely the situation in ancient pagan Greece and Rome. Then came Christ. Christianity made pedophilia a moral issue. As Christianity slowly evangelized the pagan Roman Empire, the widespread acceptance of men having sex with boys was replaced by widespread moral revulsion (and the appearance of anti-pedophilia laws that followed upon it). The same is true as well for homosexuality, sexual slavery, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. They became moral issues, rather than accepted pagan social practices, only because of Christian evangelization.

Here are the lessons we must learn from this history.
- The sole reason that there are still secular laws on the books that prohibit and punish pedophilia is that Christianity came to dominate culture in the West through evangelization.
- The only reason that we have accepted homosexuality in culture and in law is the increasing de-Christianization of the culture in the West.
- As we become even more secularized (i.e., re-paganized), pedophilia will soon be accepted, just as homosexuality, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia have already been embraced.

This is a massive, massive crisis in and for the Church because a deeply-embedded worldwide homosexual network among our priests, bishops, and cardinals is actively engaged in bringing about the full de-Christianization of the world by preying on boys between 12-18, literally recreating Greco-Roman sexual culture in our seminaries and dioceses. If you want to know what it was like in the sordid sexual days of ancient Greece and Rome, just read the Pennsylvania Report.

That’s a rather horrible irony, isn’t it? The very men most authoritatively charged with the evangelization of all the nations are full-steam ahead bringing about the devangelization of the nations. In doing so, these priests, bishops, and cardinals at the very heart of the Catholic Church are acting as willing agents of re-paganization, undoing 2,000 years of Church History.

To be even more pointed, these priests, bishops, and cardinals are the chief agents of devangelization, de-Christianization, repaganization. There is nothing, nothing, that undermines the moral and theological authority of the magisterium more quickly and thoroughly than the devilish marriage of scandal and hypocrisy. It destroys the ability to evangelize.

And note that I say both moral and theological. Why should anyone now take anything the magisterium has to say seriously, whether it’s the Church’s teachings about pedophilia and homosexuality, or its teachings on the Most Holy Trinity?

Is that massive, massive enough of a crisis for you, Cardinal Wuerl? Could you imagine it being any more massive?

EXCLUSIVE: Viganò reveals what really happened
when Pope Francis met privately with Kim Davis
by Diane Montagna


ROME, August 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Less than a week after publishing his extraordinary 11-page testimony implicating Pope Francis and several senior prelates in a cover-up of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s sexual abuse of priests and seminarians, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has now decided to reveal, for the first time, the details surrounding Pope FrancisS’ meeting with Kim Davis during his visit to the United States in 2015.

In a written statement, dated August 30, 2018 (see the Italian and English texts below), Archbishop Viganò, who served as papal nuncio to the United States from 2011-2016, says he was prompted to speak out after reading an August 28, 2018 New York Times article, in which Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean sexual abuse victim, says the Pope “recently told him Archbishop Viganò nearly sabotaged the visit by inviting the critic, Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who became a conservative cause célèbre when she refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.”

Davis was jailed for five days for defying a court order to grant marriage licenses, on the grounds that she had personal religious objections to same-sex “marriage.”

According to the New York Times report, the Pope allegedly told Cruz: “I didn’t know who that woman was, and [Archbishop Viganò] snuck her in to say hello to me — and of course they made a whole publicity out of it.”

“I was horrified and I fired that nuncio,” Cruz recalled the Pope saying.

In the introduction to his three-page statement, Archbishop Viganò writes: “Faced with the Pope’s reported statement, I feel obliged to recount the events as they really unfolded.” ... [its official English text below:]

---

Pope Francis met privately with Kim Davis:
Here is what really happened

On August 28, 2018, the New York Times reported part of a conversation that Juan Carlos Cruz, the most well known Chilean sexual abuse victim of Father Karadima and Bishop Barros, allegedly had with Pope Francis.

Inexplicably, in his conversation with Cruz, the Pope is said to have spoken about his meeting with Kim Davis during his visit to Washington on September 24, 2015, and to have said that he knew nothing about the case before the meeting.

Faced with the Pope’s reported statement, I feel obliged to recount the events as they really unfolded.

At the end of the dinner, at the Nunciature in Washington, on the evening of September 23, 2015, I told the Pope that I needed him to grant me a half hour, because I wished to bring to his attention, and possible approval, a delicate and easily achievable initiative; that is, to meet personally and in a completely confidential way, out of the media spotlight, with Kim Davis, a clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky, the first American citizen condemned and imprisoned for one week for having exercised her right to conscientious objection.

At the beginning of our meeting, on the evening of September 23, I gave the Pope a one-page memo summarizing the Davis case (here attached in Italian and English). The Pope immediately appeared in favor of such an initiative, but added that the meeting would have political implications, and said, “I don’t understand these things, so it would be good for you to hear Cardinal Parolin’s opinion.”

It was already 9:30 in the evening, so I went in person with two of the counselors of the Nunciature (an Italian and a Lithuanian) to the hotel not far away, where the Pope’s entourage was being hosted. Since I had called ahead to give advance notice of my arrival, His Excellency Archbishop Angelo Becciu (Substitute of the Secretary of State) and His Excellency Archbishop Paul Gallagher (Secretary for Relations with States, and Head of the Political Section of the Secretariat of State) were waiting for me in the hotel lobby. They immediately notified me that Cardinal Parolin had already retired to his room, and they did not consider it appropriate to disturb him, since they could easily make him aware of our meeting the following morning.

We then met in a small lounge of the hotel. As I said, there were five of us. I gave them the same memo that I had given to the Pope, setting forth its content and explaining the reason for my visit, which had been requested by the Pope. After considering the case, Archbishop Becciu was immediately in favor of the Pope receiving Davis privately before he left Washington for New York.

Archbishop Gallagher, while showing support for the idea given the importance of defending the right to conscientious objection, said that it was appropriate to verify from the point of view of common law whether there were any reasons that would render the meeting inadvisable; namely, whether the legal proceedings brought against Davis were concluded or were still open. I therefore had him speak by telephone with the canonist for the Nunciature, who before becoming a priest had been a judge in the American military courts and a professor of canon law. After the conversation with the canonist to clarify matters — he said there were no procedural obstacles — Bishop Gallagher gave an unconditionally favorable opinion that the Pope should receive Davis.

The following morning, after the Mass that the Pope concelebrated with us in the Nunciature, I informed the Pope of the positive opinion of his two principal collaborators, who had then told Cardinal Parolin about our meeting. The Pope then gave his consent, and I organized to have Davis come to the Nunciature without anyone noticing, by having her sit in a separate room. Everything was made much easier by the fact that Davis was already in Washington, where she was invited to receive a Cost of Discipleship Award from the Family Research Council.

Before the meeting took place, I alerted the photographer from L’Osservatore Romano that he should not release the photographs of the meeting without the permission of his superiors. He of course observed the orders, but took many photographs, which have never been published, and are currently kept in the photographic archive of L’Osservatore Romano. I also had Davis promise me in advance that she would not give any news to the media until after the Pope’s return to Rome, at the end of his pastoral visit to the USA. Davis faithfully kept her promise.

Early in the afternoon of September 24, before leaving for New York City, the Pope entered as planned into the sitting room where Davis and her husband were waiting for him. He embraced her affectionately, thanked her for her courage, and invited her to persevere. Davis was very moved and started crying. She was then taken back to her hotel in a car driven by a pontifical gendarme, accompanied by an American Monsignor and staff member of the Nunciature.

Once the Pope returned to Rome from Philadelphia after the World Meeting with the Families, the news of his meeting with Davis broke out in the media. An avalanche of phone calls, faxes and emails arrived at the Nunciature in Washington and the Vatican Press Office, many with insults and protests, but also many in favor of the Pope’s meeting with Davis.

In an article on September 30, 2015, the New York Times reported that “Vatican officials initially would not confirm that the meeting occurred, finally doing so on Wednesday afternoon, while refusing to discuss any details.”

The Vatican Press Office then issued a statement — without their superiors in the Secretariat of State ever consulting me — stating that the Pope had never received Davis in a private audience, and that at most he may have greeted her among many other people before departing for New York.

Father Rosica and Father Lombardi added to the lies, and were quoted as follows in the October 2, 2015 edition of the New York Times: “But the Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman, said on Friday that the office of Archbishop Viganò had extended the invitation to Ms. Davis and that the Pope was probably not briefed about her case. And the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the chief Vatican spokesman, depicted the meeting as one meet-and-greet among many.” This is the transparency of the Holy See under Pope Francis! [One still cannot understand why so much negative to-do - many days after the event - over a meeting with someone who, from the Catholic standpoint, is one of the 'good guys' - she is against same-sex marriage and went to jail for standing up for her convictions!

Why did the Bergoglio Vatican consider the report of her meeting with the pope as negative in any way? Is this not yet another indication that Bergoglio and the Bergogliacs are far more interested in keeping his 'Who am I to judge?' image regarding homosexual practices (and by implication, other sexual deviancies) crystal-clear to 'the world', beginning with the secular media, than in upholding Catholic doctrine on disordered sexuality?]

The next morning, at about 6:00 a.m. in Washington — I remember it well because I had just entered the chapel at the Nunciature — I received a frantic telephone call from Cardinal Parolin, who told me “You must come immediately to Rome because the Pope is furious with you!” I left as soon as possible and was received by the Pope at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, around 7 o’clock in the evening on October 9, at the conclusion of one of the afternoon sessions of the Second Synod on the Family.

The Pope received me for almost an hour, and was very affectionate and paternal. He immediately apologized to me for troubling me with coming to Rome, and he lavished continuous praise on me for the way I had organized his visit to the USA, and for the incredible reception he received in America. He never expected such a welcome.

To my great surprise, during this long meeting, the Pope did not mention even once the audience with Davis!

As soon as my audience with the Pope was over, I immediately phoned Cardinal Parolin, and said to him, “The Pope was so good with me. Not a word of reproach, only praise for the success of his visit to the USA.” At which point Cardinal Parolin replied, “It’s not possible, because with me he was furious about you.” [NB: This last meeting with Bergoglio took place on Oct. 9, 2015. Viganò was not replaced as Nuncio to the USA till eight months later, in April 2016, although he had submitted his pro forma resignation when he turned 75 in January 2016. Obviously, Bergoglio was not furious enough as to fire him ASAP! Or, Bergoglio's rabid fury conveyed to Cardinal Parolin turned schizophrenically to rational sweetness-and-light when he did meet with Viganò. Or we could say Viganò is making this up as he is accused of making up his June 13, 2015 conversation with Bergoglio about McCarrick. Judge for yourself, as Bergoglio says.]

This is a summary of the events.

As mentioned at the beginning, on August 28, 2018, the New York Times reported an interview with Juan Carlos Cruz, in which Cruz reported that during his meeting with the Pope, in April 2018, the Pope told him about the Davis case. According to Cruz, the Pope said: “I did not know who the woman was and he [Msgr. Viganò] snuck her in to say hello to me — and of course they made a whole publicity out of it. And I was horrified and I fired that Nuncio.”

One of them is lying: either Cruz or the Pope. What is certain is that the Pope knew very well who Davis was, and he and his close collaborators had approved the private audience. Journalists can always check, by asking the prelates Becciu, Gallagher and Parolin, as well as the Pope himself.

It is clear, however, that Pope Francis wanted to conceal the private audience with the first American citizen condemned and imprisoned for conscientious objection.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò
Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana
Apostolic Nuncio
August 30, 2018
Feast of Saint Jeanne Jugan and Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster

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Will the Vatican now claim that Juan Carlos Cruz, too, is making up the statements he attributes to Bergoglio about Kim Davis? Did he then also make up Bergoglio's "You are good as you are. God loves you as you are", implying a greenlight for Cruz to continue with his homosexual lifestyle? The Vatican never disputed that, when Cruz told the media about it shortly after he met with Bergoglio. Are they going to dispute it now - and lose the brownie points Bergoglio accrued from 'the world' and its homosexualist crusaders (namely, 99% of the media and everyone who considers himself 'enlightened' and/or 'intellectual') for saying the obvious corollary to his 'Who am I to judge?' statement?

Obviously, no one in the Bergoglio Vatican ever read the line from Sir Walter Scott (often wrongly attributed to Shakespeare): "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive"! Lie upon lie upon lie about matters which are objectively verifiable through documents and contemporaneous reports of the events they dispute! ]

Abp Chaput calls on pope
to cancel synod on 'youth'
in light of abuse crisis
by Maike Hickson


August 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia told a conference that had met to discuss the “young people” of the Church that in light of the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church he had written to Pope Francis asking him to cancel the upcoming Youth Synod set to take place in Rome.

“The bishops would have absolutely no credibility” in the upcoming Youth Synod, Chaput told the Cardinal’s Forum, an annual gathering to provide academic formation of seminarians and continuing education for lay people, yesterday. The synod's planned dates are set for October 3-28, 2018.

The August 30 panel discussion, which took place at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, was on the topic of “Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment.” Some 300 participated in the event.

Archbishop Chaput said the Youth Synod should be canceled.

“I have written the Holy Father and called on him to cancel the upcoming synod on young people. Right now, the bishops would have absolutely no credibility in addressing this topic,” he said.

Instead of having a youth synod, the Archbishop proposed that a synod should be held to address the topic of the bishops themselves. “I have called on him (Pope Francis), in its place, to begin making plans for a synod on the life of bishops,” he said.

Chaput's call for a synod on bishops reflects a similar call by Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth, England. Egan has also written to Pope Francis asking for an "extraordinary synod" on priestly life so as to deal with the "clerical sex abuse" crisis.

“I suggest the Synod be devoted to the identity of being a priest/bishop, to devising guidance on life-style and supports for celibacy, to proposing a rule of life for priests/bishops and to establishing appropriate forms of priestly/episcopal accountability and supervision,” Egan wrote in the letter that he made public.

Archbishop Chaput’s call for the youth synod to be canceled comes at a time when accusations of clergy-abuse cover-up plague top leaders within the Church, including Pope Francis. Last week, Archbishop Viganó release a detailed testimony in which he claimed that Pope Francis covered up for now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick despite having been given information that the Cardinal was a serial abuser who preyed on seminarians.

A working document for the upcoming Synod on Youth released in March — allegedly drafted by young people — stated that Catholic teaching on “contraception, abortion, homosexuality, cohabitation” is “especially controversial” and that “they may want the Church to change her teaching.”

Faithful Catholics have raised concern that just as the two Synods on the Family were used by key figures within the Church to undermine the Church’s teaching on marriage and the Eucharist, so too do they fear that the Youth Synod will have an analogous agenda [this time, focused on 'normalizing' deviant sexual lifestyles in keeping with the obvious agenda of Bergoglio-agreeing-with-the-world].

Of course, Abp Chaput and Abp Egan both know their appeal will change nothing, and this 'youth synod' will take place as programmed. Because
1) the Bergoglio Vatican staunchly proclaims that Bergoglio will say and do nothing more about the abuse scandal than the 'letter to the people of God' he wrote four days after the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report and which, according to the Vatican, was 'exhaustive'.
2) two of Bergoglio's mini-me's - Cardinals Parolin and Cupich - have said, respectively, that [ "Certainly, the situation is not worrying at all", following the Vigano expose; and "This is not some massive, massive crisis" following the McCarrick exposes and on the eve of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report which Wuerl knew would implicate him 'massively'.
3) cancelling the 'youth synod' would mean acknowledging a crisis they willfully indulge in a lunatic denial of reality.
4) Bergoglio cannot afford to delay his program of 'merciful inclusiveness' to normalize sexual deviancy ASAP.

Slowly, and one by one, some bishops are coming out to demand action by the pope for a public investigation of the McCarrick abuses and of the many plausible allegations made by Mons Vigano.

Bishop of Charleston, SC, writes papal nuncio
urging him to encourage the pope to answer
the Vigano allegations directly
CATHOLIC MISCELLANY

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August 31, 2018

His Excellency Christophe Pierre
Nuncio, Apostolic Nunciature

Dear Archbishop Pierre,
Our Church is in crisis and as the leader of the Catholic faithful in the State of South Carolina, I write with urgency to express my sentiments and echo those of the people in my care. We feel betrayed, angry and misled.

Something must be done now. I have several recommendations that support the statement from Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
- It is imperative that the Holy See take a leadership role in investigating the rise of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, despite the reported knowledge of his prior sexual misconduct and monetary settlements during his earlier diocesan assignments. It is absolutely necessary for all of us to know how and why this happened. Action must occur immediately and publicly.

- I, too, strongly support an investigation by the Holy See along with a national lay commission with its own authority to seek the truth about the statements made by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.

These recent reports have triggered many different versions of what has actually happened - and it is necessary that the Holy Father respond to the allegations made by the Archbishop. Please encourage the Holy Father to address these allegations directly. This is in everyone’s best interest; lack of knowledge and uncertainty contribute to the confusion so much a part of our people’s lives today.

Our Church is called to be a beacon of light in the darkness. I ask that you be an ambassador of truth and assist in the securing of actionable change.

- Also, I wholeheartedly endorse every effort to reform and renew our initiatives to protect survivors in allowing the national review board to serve as an independent entity that will review allegations made against bishops. This work must be entrusted to the laity.

This time of scandal requires especially strong and courageous leadership. I pray that all bishops commit to a new era of transparency and action. We must dedicate ourselves to the healing of all whose faith has been undermined and work to do all we can to prevent such crimes from happening in the future.

Please know that I support all of your efforts to assist our Church here in the United States.

In the Lord’s Peace,

Most Reverend Robert E. Guglielmone
Bishop of Charleston

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I have yet to post about a letter to Pope Francis from concerned Catholic women - it deserves a full reading - and an online petition requesting prayers and support for Abp Vigano. The letter to the pope will, of course, go into the same dead letter drawer at Casa Santa Marta along with the DUBIA and God knows how many online petitions - many of them signed by hundreds of thousands of Catholics - have been addressed to this pope over the past five and a half years to protest his anti-Catholic actions and statements.

Why in the name of God is media
protecting Pope Francis?
by Ben Shapiro
Editor-in-chief, DAILY WIRE
August 31, 2018

In 2003, The Boston Globe won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on a massive sex abuse cover-up inside the Roman Catholic Church, led by the archdiocese of Boston. The Pulitzer board praised the newspaper’s “courageous, comprehensive coverage of sexual abuse by priests, an effort that pierced secrecy, stirred local, national and international reaction and produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church.” Hollywood made the Oscar-winning movie Spotlight about the effort.

In 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Vatican ambassador to the United States, released an 11-page memo alleging that Pope Francis and other top members of the Vatican had reinstated Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to a public position despite credible allegations of sexual abuse of seminarians and minors. The memo rocked the Catholic Church; Pope Francis has refused to comment; and other sources have come forward to back Vigano’s claims.

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago made the near-unbelievable claim that Pope Francis shouldn’t comment, since he has “a bigger agenda. He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.”

So, did the press leap to investigate Vigano’s claims? Did they demand answers from Pope Francis? Did we see the same type of courageous, comprehensive coverage of Francis’s activities [past and present] that we saw from the Globe team circa 2003? Of course not.

Instead, mainstream media outlets have gone out of their way to portray Vigano as a disgruntled conservative angry at Pope Francis’ progressive interpretation of Catholic doctrine. The New York Times headlined, “Vatican Power Struggle Bursts Into Open as Conservatives Pounce.” Their print headline was even worse: “Francis Takes High Road As Conservatives Pounce, Taking Criticisms Public.”

Yes, according to the Times, the story wasn’t the sitting Pope being credibly accused of a sexual abuse cover-up — it was conservatives attacking him for it. The problem of child molestation and sexual abuse of clergy took a back seat to Francis’s leftist politics, as the Times piece made clear in its first paragraph:

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“Since the start of his papacy, Francis has infuriated Catholic traditionalists as he tries to nurture a more welcoming church and shift it away from culture war issues, whether abortion or homosexuality. ‘Who am I to judge?’ the pope famously said, when asked about gay priests. Just how angry his political and doctrinal enemies are became clear this weekend…”

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It wasn’t just the Times.
- On Wednesday, Reuters headlined, “Defenders rally around pope, fear conservatives escalating war.”
- On Thursday, Reuters doubled down with this headline: “Conservative media move to front line of battle to undermine Pope Francis.”
- The Telegraph (U.K.) reported, “Vatican analysts say the attack appears to be part of a concerted effort by conservatives to oust Pope Francis, who they dislike for his relatively liberal views…”

But why in the name of God is calling on the Vatican not to defend sexual abusers a political issue for the press? Why isn’t this something we can all agree upon? Why aren’t the press asking the pope tough questions, instead of focusing on the supposed motivations of the whistleblowers?

The media’s disgraceful attempts to cover for Francis because of their love for his politics merely exposes the actual malign motivations of many in the media: they were happy to expose misconduct and evil inside the Catholic Church when the pope was a conservative; they’re happy to facilitate a cover-up when the pope is a liberal.

That’s vile. And most Catholics understand that if the members of the media — an overwhelmingly secular group of people — are steadfastly defending a papacy accused of sexual abuse cover-ups, it’s not out of goodwill for the Church generally. It’s out of a belief that traditionalist doctrine must be rooted out at any cost, even including the abuse of minors and the violation of basic canon law.

The media’s coverage of the burgeoning potential cover-up scandal by Pope Francis and his associates doesn’t call conservative Catholics into question. It calls into question members of the media themselves, who seem eager to uncover wrongdoing only when it serves their political interests, and eager to subordinate the interests of the innocent to their political agenda when they must.

On the other hand, Steve Skojec at 1Peter5 may be seriously under-estimating the power of the media to impose their narrative of choice on their readers, and therefore on 'the world', which willy-nilly adapts whatever is the 'single idea'/aka ideology that the dominant culture chooses to push at any moment in the age of the Internet:

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I don’t know how long they [the Bergogliac media] can keep this narrative. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse, and 2018 is a dangerous time to take the side of a predator, no matter their ideology. Just ask Harvey Weinstein.

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[Surely, Skojec cannot think that Bergoglio as the highest-possible-profile advocate/leader of the current pagan, un-Christian, anti-Catholic dominant culture is as easily expendable and disposable to that culture as Harvey Weinstein was!]

Addressing the 'proofs' against Viganò:
Noise without substance
Translated for 1Peter5 by Giuseppe Pellegrino from

August 30, 2018

Editor's note: Aldo Maria Valli, the author of the following article, is the reporter with whom Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò originally planned the publication of his allegations against Pope Francis and several high-ranking Vatican cardinals. [Viganò's final statement was then re-worked for publication with Marco Tosatti.]

Recent comments by various journalists on the controversy surrounding Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò after the publication of his "Testimony' attempt to discredit the former nuncio to the United States.

In particular, it was noted that, in May 2012, at a gala dinner in New York, Viganò spoke words of kindness and esteem for Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, even though he already knew that the cardinal had been sanctioned by Pope Benedict XVI, who had asked McCarrick not to attend public ceremonies and not to travel.

A video from that event, the World Mission Dinner of the Pontifical Mission Societies, which took place at a Manhattan hotel, shows Nuncio Viganò open his remarks by greeting Cardinal McCarrick first of all, saying: "Distinguished guests, bishops who are present, and guests who are being honored this evening as "Pontifical Ambassadors of the Missions" - what a beautiful title first of all, His Eminence Cardinal McCarrick, already an ambassador for some time, as priest, bishop, archbishop, cardinal, and all of us wish him well.. ."

According to some people, these words are the proof that Viganò is lying. In his memoir, Viganò accuses McCarrick of not having respected the sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict XVI, but during that same period of time, [as the video shows], "Viganò publicly praised McCarrick". In my opinion, the video proves no such thing. Let's think about the circumstances.

In May 2012, Viganò had been nuncio to the United States for only a few months (since November 2011). He attends one of his first public high-profile events as the ambassador of the Holy See. The occasion is very prestigious.

When a cardinal is present at such an event, from the point of view of the hierarchy, the nuncio [who is only an archbishop] ranks below him and is bound by protocol to greet the cardinal first in his remarks and to speak some words in his honor. Now, in that situation, what should Nuncio Viganò have done? Ignore McCarrick? Or say publicly in his remarks: "Your Eminence, I ought to greet you but I will not, because you are a scoundrel"? Or expose him to public ridicule and say, "Here tonight is Cardinal McCarrick, who takes seminarians to bed with him and has been sanctioned by the pope. I greet him!"

It is obvious that on such an occasion, the nuncio, who is the personal representative of the pope, plays the role of the diplomat he is supposed to be - that is, he does not state publicly either what he knows or what he personally feels about it. Ambassadors often have to hide their personal emotions in order to save appearances. It is simply a part of their job, often unappreciated.

Thus, Viganò makes his greeting. He does so at arm's length, without any particular emphasis, and God alone can know what was going on inside the soul of the nuncio at that particular moment. But then he is expected to say some words of praise. Viganò says with regard to McCarrick that "we all wish him well".Isn't this what a Christian should do? To wish well for the sinner, despite his sin? It seems to me that by using that expression, Viganò did quite well.

Although he was only at the beginning of his assignment and thus still not very experienced as nuncio, he held his feelings at bay and respected the exigencies of protocol. I repeat: In these situations, an ambassador is bound to act in this way, to act as if he knows nothing, without letting anything leak out. If Viganò had not acted in this way, he would have given scandal and betrayed the trust of the pope.

You will ask: but why did McCarrick not respect the orders of Pope Benedict XVI and instead go around in public freely? That's a good question. It's the same question Viganò asked, which led him to conclude that McCarrick was protected by somebody very high up who intended to make a fool of Pope Benedict himself.

But now we come to a second video that is circulating, which, according to some commentators, once again shows that Viganò is a liar. This is a video related to the first one, showing a brief encounter between Archbishop Viganò and Pope Francis, at the end of the official meeting of nuncios with the Holy Father in June 2013.

In his memoir, Viganò recalls that the pope, without any preface, barked an order to him in a tone of rebuke, saying, "The bishops of the United States must not be ideologized! They must be pastors!" [What was Bergoglio barking about? When he himself, who is the ultimate secular anti-Catholic ideolog, has been responsible for 'ideologizing' all the cardinals, priests and bishops who have chosen to cast their lot with him!]

Those who are contesting Viganò's version of events and calling him a liar are now claiming that this video shows a pope who is initially smiling, in no way aggressive, who, upon learning that he has the nuncio to the United States in front of him, begins a discourse. Well, we can prove nothing about this discourse, because the [official Vatican] video, as often happens in these cases, has been cut in such a way that it does not show the private content of the conversation.

But it seems to me completely understandable that Viganò in his recollection of that moment, held in his memory not so much the initial smile of the pope (who in these situations smiles equally at everybody in the same way), but rather the content of the brief conversation that followed. This is why, in his memoir, Viganò says the pope, without any preceding remarks, gave him an order in a reproving tone.

In reality, this is probably exactly what happened. After the initial smile, the pope immediately began to speak with Viganò, but we don't know what followed because the video doesn't show it.

At this point I would like to emphasize that, if I reply to critical observations and accusations against Viganò, I am not doing so in order to save Archbishop Viganò, but rather out of respect for the truth, and because it seems unjust that such heavy accusations, such as being a liar, are being so freely circulated.

And finally, a response to those who are maintaining that Viganòhas also committed perjury, because, by publishing his memoir, he has violated the pontifical secret that he was sworn to uphold as nuncio. On this point we can observe that the 'secret' of which we are speaking is not of a sacramental nature. It is not - just to be clear - like the seal that binds a confessor [in the Sacrament of Penance]. The secret that binds a nuncio functions in the service of the Church and her action in the world.

But if this secret comes to be used not for the good of the Church, but rather against her - that is, if it becomes a conspiracy of silence [omerta] to cover up a lobby, whoever becomes aware of this perversion not only can, but should violate the secret. It is his duty for the good of the Church, in the name of the truth.

I repeat one more time that if I have wanted to respond to the accusations against Viganò;, I do so not to enter into conflict with other observers and commentators. I believe rather that in this whole affair, we must scrupulously avoid descending down to the level of personal attacks.

What is needed instead is to keep our eyes fixed on the key question: the moral corruption denounced by Viganò - a corruption that, according to the former nuncio, has now reached the highest levels of the Church, so much so that an action of force is necessary, such as the publication of his memoir, in order to bring about the beginning of a purification.

On LifeSite, Vigano explains why Benedict XVI's sanctions against then Cardinal McCarrick were privately made:

EXCLUSIVE: Viganò says McCarrick was restricted
under Benedict XVI, but 'he didn't obey'
by Lisa Bourne


August 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) - Disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick continued making public appearances after Pope Benedict XVI had imposed sanctions upon him because 'he didn't obey' the Holy Father, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganòtold LifeSiteNews in an exclusive interview.

The former papal nuncio to the U.S. responded to efforts in the media to question his testimony that Pope Francis covered-up for McCarrick while knowing of his reputation for sexual abuse of seminarians and priests.

Viganò reiterated in the interview that he had spoken with McCarrick about the restrictions Benedict had put upon him, but that as nuncio he did not have authority to enforce those restrictions. "I was not in the position of enforcing", Viganò told LifeSiteNews, "especially because the measures (sanctions) given to McCarrick (were made) in a private way. That was the decision of Pope Benedict".

Viganò said Pope Benedict made McCarrick's sanctions private, perhaps "due to the fact that he (McCarrick) was already retired, maybe due to the fact that he (Benedict) was thinking he was ready to obey". But, McCarrick, "certainly didn't obey", Viganò told LifeSiteNews.

Various media outlets have published reports attempting to cast into doubt Viganò and his detailed testimony released August 25 implicating Pope Francis and other top prelates in covering up for McCarrick despite knowing he was a serial sexual abuser of seminarians and priests.

One of the elements of Viganò's testimony being questioned is whether Benedict, in fact, had put restrictions on McCarrick after learning about the allegations against the former Washington D.C. archbishop. An August 29 video produced by the US Bishops' Catholic News Service (CNS) casts uncertainty on whether Benedict had placed sanctions on McCarrick sometime between 2009 and 2010, as Viganò said in his testimony.

The video shows clips of McCarrick testifying before Congress in March 2011 on behalf of the USCCB, a January 2012 ad limina visit at the Vatican during which McCarrick concelebrated Mass and met twice with Benedict, and another May 2012 event sponsored by the Pontifical Mission Societies honoring McCarrick at which Viganò had spoken.

Viganò told LifeSiteNews he had already spoken to McCarrick at the time of the latter video clip, repeating the measures that had been taken to him by Pope Benedict, which his predecessor the late Archbishop Pietro Sambi had done as well. Viganò, nuncio from October 2011 to April 2016, explained he was just beginning his role as the Pope's representative at the time when each of the events in the various video clips edited together by CNS took place, just learning the culture and hierarchy of his new assignment in the U.S.

Aside from just beginning his mission, he said, the nuncio is not somebody who may enforce restrictions directly, especially with a cardinal, who is considered the superior. Such an enforcement would belong to someone in the position of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, and McCarrick successor, said Viganò.

Another clip from the CNS video showing McCarrick attending an ad limina visit in Rome and meeting Pope Benedict, seems to suggest that the cardinal had no sanctions placed on him. Viganò explained that once again, McCarrick was not obeying the restrictions placed on him and that it was inconceivable for Benedict to take the issue up with the cardinal right then and there with all the other bishops present.

Another clip from the CNS video showing Viganò attending a Pontifical Mission Societies gala along with McCarrick seems to suggest that McCarrick had no sanctions and that Viganò did not seem 'anxious' about the cardinal's presence.

Viganò told LifeSiteNews that he could neither forego attending the event, nor did he have an opportunity during the event to remind the cardinal of the sanctions. "I could not say, 'What are you doing here?'; he said. "Can you imagine? Nobody knew (about the sanctions), it was a private meeting (when they were levied by Benedict). So this video doesn't prove anything".

Proof of sanctions levied against McCarrick during Benedict's papacy is not confined to Viganò's testimony. A June 2014 Washington Post piece headlined "Globe-trotting Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is almost 84, and working harder than ever" highlighted just how ubiquitous McCarrick was after Francis was elected. The report confirmed he had been sidelined by Benedict, only to re-emerge under Francis:

"McCarrick is one of a number of senior churchmen who were more or less put out to pasture during the eight-year pontificate of Benedict XVI," the Post piece states. "But now Francis is pope, and prelates like Cardinal Walter Kasper (another old friend of McCarrick's) and McCarrick himself are back in the mix, and busier than ever."

The article also includes the previously reported exchange between Francis and McCarrick in which Francis was reported to have joked that the devil wasn't ready for McCarrick in hell. The Washington Post story uses the exchange as an introduction to "the improbable renaissance that McCarrick (was) enjoying" under Francis.

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"I guess the Lord isn't done with me yet," he told the pope. "Or the devil doesn't have your accommodations ready!', Francis shot back with a laugh.

McCarrick loves to tell that story, because he loves to tell good stories and because he has a sense of humor as keen as the pope's. But the exchange also says a lot about the improbable renaissance that McCarrick is enjoying as he prepares to celebrate his 84th birthday in July (2014).

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Detailing a handful of McCarrick's international visits after Francis's March 2013 election, the Washington Post article stated:

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Sometimes McCarrick's travels abroad are at the behest of the Vatican, sometimes on behalf of Catholic Relief Services. Occasionally the U.S. State Department asks him to make a trip. But Francis, who has put the Vatican back on the geopolitical stage, knows that when he needs a savvy back channel operator he can turn to McCarrick, as he did for the Armenia trip".]

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McCarrick, named a cardinal in 2001, retired in 2006, the Post article recounted, "and was sort of spinning his wheels under Benedict. Then Francis was elected, and everything changed." Later in the piece, McCarrick lauds Benedict, and implies that if he'd been asked, he would have done what Benedict wanted: "to bring the church back to where he thought it should be".

"Pope Benedict is a wonderful man, and was a good friend of mine before he became pope," McCarrick said. "But he was anxious to bring the church back to where he thought it should be, and I guess I wasn't one of those who he thought would help him on that. I would have obviously done what he asked."

On American Conservative, Rod Dreher cites the unlikely and then- unexplained absence of McCarrick from the Annual Cardinals' Dinner at the Catholic University of America from 2007-2013, and asks:

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Could it be that Archbishop Viganò is mistaken, and his 2006 memo on McCarrick [when Viganò was still in the Secretariat of State] was, in fact, taken seriously, and Benedict XVI did impose some restrictions on McCarrick shortly afterward? It would explain his absence from the Cardinals Dinner from 2007 through the rest of Benedict's pontificate.

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At Catholic Herald, deputy editor Dan Hitchens plays devil's advocate to examine Vigano's principal claims on the McCarrick case. As Bergoglio has said about this case, judge for yourself, (Who is he to judge, he has infamously asked, yet here he was telling the media to judge Vigano's testimony for themselves!]:

Pope Francis and McCarrick:
Where does the evidence lead?
Archbishop Viganò made four major claims.
But do the facts support them?
by Dan Hitchens

August 31, 2018

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s testimony, published on Saturday, goes on for 7,000 words and names more than 30 public figures, mostly to denounce them. But at its heart are a small number of very serious allegations about Pope Francis’s treatment of Theodore McCarrick. Since the letter’s publication, some more evidence has emerged against which to test Viganò’s major claims. How do the allegations stand up?

Claim 1: Pope Benedict XVI imposed sanctions on McCarrick
Viganò writes: “Pope Benedict had imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis: the Cardinal was to leave the seminary where he was living, he was forbidden to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance.” These came into place, Viganò says, in 2009 or 2010.

Do the facts support the claim? Mostly – but there are complications. Several glimpses have been recorded of sanctions on McCarrick:
- The Catholic News Agency reports two eyewitness (but anonymous) accounts of McCarrick being told he had to leave the seminary on Pope Benedict’s instructions.
- On Monday, the Archdiocese of Washington confirmed that, in 2011, it had cancelled a meeting between McCarrick and young men discerning their vocation. The request came from Viganò, who was then the nuncio (Vatican representative) to the US.
- In July, the Washington Post quoted someone who “worked with McCarrick”. The source is paraphrased as saying “they suspect Church leaders in Rome had McCarrick had chastised McCarrick in some way, telling him to pull back from public life.”
- On Monday, another witness said Viganò was correct. Mgr Jean-François Lantheaume, who used to work at the nunciature in Washington DC, was asked whether it was true that Vatican officials had told McCarrick he was sanctioned. Mgr Lantheaume replied: “Viganò said the truth. That’s all.”

One complication is that not all sources have corroborated Viganò’s story. According to America magazine, some “Vatican officials … who asked not to be named said they knew nothing about sanctions or restrictions on Archbishop McCarrick.” That doesn’t discredit Viganò’s account – he always claimed that the sanctions were only communicated through a few channels – but it makes it harder to confirm.

Another complication is the numerous accounts of McCarrick turning up in public: preaching at St Patrick’s Cathedral, performing an ordination, appearing at celebratory events – in other words, not acting like a man under Vatican restrictions. Viganò’s explanation is that McCarrick “didn’t obey” the sanctions. Indeed, the Washington Post’s source said McCarrick ignored Vatican strictures: “He did whatever he damn well wanted.”

Sometimes McCarrick even appeared at events with Viganò or Benedict. Again, Viganò has an explanation: as nuncio, he didn’t have the authority to impose sanctions directly, while Benedict was too mild-mannered to rebuke McCarrick at a public event.

The most plausible conclusion, based on what we know, is that Benedict did indeed impose sanctions, but wasn’t willing and/or able to make them comprehensive.

Claim 2: Pope Francis was told about McCarrick’s depravity
Viganò alleges Pope Francis “knew from at least June 23, 2013 that McCarrick was a serial predator.” The date is precise because on that day, three months after Francis’s election, the new Pontiff met Viganò. At the meeting, the archbishop says, he told the Pope: “I don’t know if you know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation for Bishops there is a dossier this thick about him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests.” He further claims that Francis did not make any comment or seem surprised.

Do the facts support the claim? Inevitably, it’s hard to say – nobody can read the Pope’s mind. Francis is famously well-informed about Vatican goings-on, and several close observers have said that “everyone knew” about the charges against McCarrick. But that is circumstantial.

Again, it is strange that Francis has refused to comment on Viganò’s claim, but silence is not an admission. So the question is – could Viganò really invent such a spectacular libel?

Claim 3: Francis abandoned Benedict’s sanctions
According to Viganò, when Francis became Pope, McCarrick was released from the previous sanctions: “from the time of Pope Francis’s election, McCarrick, now free from all constraints, had felt free to travel continuously, to give lectures and interviews.”

Do the facts support the claim? The facts are, at least, not inconsistent with Viganò’s allegation. It has been widely observed that McCarrick had a new lease of life under Francis. In 2014, a highly sympathetic profile of McCarrick in the National Catholic Reporter said that

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McCarrick is one of a number of senior churchmen who were more or less put out to pasture during the eight-year pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. But now Francis is pope, and prelates like Cardinal Walter Kasper (another old friend of McCarrick’s) and McCarrick himself are back in the mix and busier than ever… [McCarrick] was sort of spinning his wheels under Benedict. Then Francis was elected, and everything changed.”

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The profile said that McCarrick was making trips abroad “at the behest of the Vatican”, and that Pope Francis “knows that when he needs a savvy back-channel operator, he can turn to McCarrick, as he did for the Armenia trip.”

In the US, too, there’s some evidence that McCarrick was given more freedom. As one of Rod Dreher’s correspondents has noted, from 2001-06 McCarrick attended each “Cardinals Dinner” hosted by the Catholic University of America. Then in 2007-12 he abruptly stopped. But in 2013, after Francis became Pope, McCarrick became a regular attendee once more. That roughly matches Viganò’s story.

It does seem, then, that whatever sanctions had been in place under Benedict evaporated under Francis. But, as observed above, the nature of those sanctions is fuzzy. How official were they? Did Francis knowingly lift the sanctions, or did they just cease to function because Benedict was no longer around?

The Associated Press, in a report which has never been denied, said that Pope Francis reduced sanctions against some abuser priests. But that doesn’t mean he would have done the same with McCarrick.

Again, Viganò’s testimony fits well with the facts. But we still have to assume that Viganò is not a liar. [But why assume, to begin with, that he is a liar???? Or would dare lie so spectacularly and publicly on matters that are for the most part easily verifiable for any journalist willing to check them out?]

Claim 4: Francis made McCarrick an important adviser
Viganò alleges that Pope Francis made McCarrick “his trusted counsellor”. Importantly, McCarrick is supposed to have helped to pick bishops: “The appointments of Blase Cupich to Chicago and Joseph W. Tobin to Newark were orchestrated by McCarrick” and others, Viganò claims. McCarrick, the archbishop says, “had become the kingmaker for appointments in the Curia and the United States, and the most listened to advisor in the Vatican for relations with the Obama administration.”

Thanks to McCarrick, Viganò tells us, Cardinal Burke did not retain his place in the Congregation for Bishops – which plays a vital role in selecting bishops – and Cardinals Wuerl and Cupich were parachuted into the Congregation. Another McCarrick associate, Archbishop Ilson de Jesus Montanari, allegedly became Secretary of the Congregation thanks to McCarrick.

Do the facts support the claim? Broadly, yes, though not every detail can be confirmed. As recorded above, McCarrick certainly gained influence and status when Francis became Pope. The well-connected Vatican journalist Rocco Palmo, of Whispers in the Loggia, wrote in 2016 that “Francis is said to revere [McCarrick] as ‘a hero’ of his.” Palmo has also corroborated the idea of McCarrick as kingmaker, reporting that

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“in mid-Sept 2016, Card McCarrick wrote a letter to the Pope…seeking the appointment of Joe Tobin to Newark; 2 sources w/direct knowledge of it told Whispers shortly thereafter. To that point in the process, Tobin’s name hadn’t figured…”

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Palmo has stood by his reporting despite what he calls “thuggish and almost unbelievable” attempts to make him renounce it.

Another Vatican journalist, Sandro Magister, reported at the time of Cupich’s appointment as Archbishop of Chicago: “The appointment of Cupich is thought to have been recommended to the Pope with particular enthusiasm by Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga and above all by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop emeritus of Washington.”

However, Cardinal Cupich himself said this week that, while he doesn’t know exactly how his appointment was decided, “I don’t think that I needed one person to be my advocate.”

Such matters will always be relatively mysterious. But Viganò’s claim, in this instance, seems plausible enough.

A provisional conclusion
What, then, does all this add up to? Everyone will draw their own conclusions. My own is that, while a position of agnosticism can be justified – especially at this early stage – it’s not unreasonable to believe Viganò’s central claims.

A more difficult position, I think, is to dismiss what Viganò is saying. There are two ways to do this.

The first is to say that Viganò is a liar, even a fantasist, on a truly epic scale – a sort of Catholic Mark Hofmann. It’s not enough to argue that Viganò is an ambiguous figure with an axe to grind. He would have to be much more than that: someone capable of defaming the Holy Fatherm, while calling “on God as my witness”, and to do so with such diabolical cunning that the Pope and his closest allies are unable to immediately discredit his claims.

The second possible argument is that we just don’t know enough: that, as in a detective story, some key evidence can turn everything on its head. That if the files of the Vatican and the US nunciature were opened, or if the churchmen accused by Viganò came out to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the picture would change dramatically.

But then the person who is most loudly calling for the files to be examined, and for the protagonists to tell their story, is Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. [QED!!!]

I do not know what has caused the two earlier pieces on this post to appear the way they now do after I added the third one. Will try to remedy it as soon as I can, which may have to mean re-posting/re-formatting the first two.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/09/2018 06:46]

Today, Sept 2, Aldo Maria Valli's blogpost entitled "I mass media, Ratzinger e Bergoglio: due pese, due misure" (The mass media, Ratzinger and Bergoglio: Two weights, two measures)
https://www.aldomariavalli.it/2018/09/02/i-mass-media-ratzinger-e-bergoglio-due-pesi-e-due-misure/
enlarges on the theme of two articles earlier posted on this page - Damian Thompson's "Why is the media covering up for Pope Francis?" and Ben Shapiro's "Why in the name of God is the media protecting Pope Francis?" - to point out how differently this selfsame media treated Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI for all that it was he who almost singlehandedly, authorized by a physically failing John Paul II, first did anything at all to start ridding the Church of the scourge of clerical sex abuses. Will translate as soon as I can.

And on his Facebook page, Antonio Socci cites the following words from St Catherine of Siena in a post entitled
DEDICATED (WITH GRATITUDE) TO MONS VIGANO

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"Woe is me! I will not be silent any longer! I cry out with a thousand tongues! I see that the world is rotten because of silence, and the Holy Church, the Bride of Jesus, has become all pale because her blood has been sucked out: the Blood of Christ which was given to us by grace... Evil pastors have done this, with arrogance, for their own self interest, taking on for themselves the glory that ought to be God's alone".
- St Catarina da Siena
Co-Patroness of Europe

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Catholic World Report has posted an English translation of a recent interview with a Swiss bishop who minces no words about homosexuality among ordained ministers of God.

'The Pope’s silence [on the Vigano expose]
is a classic non-denial!'
Attempts to rewrite the traditional doctrine that regards homosexual acts
as disordered in themselves and therefore forbids them, are conspicuous

August 31, 2018

Editor’s note: The following Kath.net interview with Auxiliary Bishop Marian Eleganti, O.S.B., about the revelations by Archbishop Viganò, the Pope’s silence, and the alleged homosexual network in the Catholic Church was conducted by Roland Noe and published on the Kath.net site yesterday. Bishop Eleganti is Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Chur, Switzerland.

Chur (kath.net/rn, August 30, 2018). “The attempts to rewrite the traditional doctrine that regards homosexual acts as disordered in themselves, and therefore forbids them, are conspicuous. Pope Francis is surrounded by cardinals and advisors who are headed in this direction.”

So says the Auxiliary Bishop of Chur and former Jugendbischof of the (Catholic) Episcopal Conference of Switzerland [i.e. the bishop delegated to oversee programs for the pastoral care of young people] in this interview with kath.net.

The World Meeting of Families in Dublin was completely overshadowed by the topic of sexual abuse, and not just because of the revelations by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former Nuncio in Washington, D.C. Well, the Pope himself would like to say nothing about the accusations. What do you say about this?
The fact that Pope Francis does not want to say a single word about them is a classic non-denial. Lying, of course, is completely out of the question. [A tactful terse way of saying that Bergoglio chooses not to say Yes or No, because as with the DUBIA, if he had to say anything definitive about it, he could [and would] well be lying in public. I first called Bergoglio's no-comment reaction the equivalent of invoking the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment on the right not to incriminate oneself by one's own words. Christopher Ferrara has said so too in his recent commentary on the Vigano expose in Fatima Perspectives.]

In Dublin in an EWTN interview you demanded an unsparing and independent investigation into the causes of the sexual abuse crisis and the cover-up, also with respect to the question about a “homosexual subculture” in the Church. One Swiss diocese attacked you in an incredible way in this connection. What do you say about this?
Anyone familiar with the ecclesiastical structures is not surprised by it. Concerning this matter I have several posts on my FaceBook page that respond to it.

James Martin, speaking at the World Meeting of Families, called for the Church to equate homosexuality with heterosexuality to the fullest extent and to admit homosexuals to all ecclesiastical ministries and offices without further ado, although Pope Francis advises against accepting candidates with homosexual inclinations into the seminaries.

The scandals and their hidden difficulties show that homosexual clerics, their friends and networks exist and are represented in the structures of the Church even at the highest level, among them certainly many clerics with homosexual inclinations who are living chaste and holy lives. But we hear about the others every day through the coverage of the sexual abuse cases.

In another interview with kath.ch [an online news service affiliated with the Episcopal Conference of Switzerland] you said that framing this issue merely as an issue of the abuse of authority or clericalism is another cover-up. Doesn’t Pope Francis, or at least one part of his entourage, advocate this view?
The issue is certainly complex. But one element of political correctness is what they consider the absolute dogma that sexual abuse and homosexuality must not be correlated; similarly, the possibility of changing a homosexual orientation must not even be considered or investigated. In contrast to this, paradoxically, gender theory claims that one’s sexual orientation can be chosen freely. Judith Butler, one of the most important pioneers of gender theory, is lesbian.

To maintain that clericalism is the sole root of sexual abuse, and not to take into consideration sexual and emotional needs as well, and probably vices too, is from my perspective, reductive reasoning, and a classic case of denying reality, that is: purely ideological and interest-driven.

Pope Francis stirred up this wasp’s nest with an indiscreet but honest statement on the airplane from Dublin to Rome when he remarked that children with homosexual inclinations can be helped psychiatrically until the age of twenty. His spin doctors therefore immediately censored his statements in the written version of the interview and removed the obsolete word “psychiatry” and explained on Twitter that he was talking here about the general psychological counseling [literally: "accompaniment”] of those children. But obviously Francis was thinking about something else.

Should bishops who demonstrably have covered up cases of sexual abuse resign?
It is difficult to imagine that they will remain in office.

Is there currently a heated debate, not only in the United States, about a homosexual network in the Catholic Church? Do you consider it real, and are there indications that it is active in German-speaking countries (Switzerland, Germany, Austria)?
The attempts to rewrite the traditional doctrine that regards homosexual acts as disordered in themselves, and therefore forbids them, are conspicuous.

Pope Francis is surrounded by cardinals and advisors who are headed in this direction and openly support James Martin, the most prominent champion for a change in the teaching to date about homosexuality. Some of them were appointed by Pope Francis himself, such as Cupich, Tobin, Farrell. The last-mentioned invited James Martin to Dublin.

What happens at the head of the Church is multiplied in her body, and of course in our German-speaking countries, too. Indeed, Cardinal Marx and other German bishops have already speculated in public about blessing homosexual unions.

Thank you for the interview.

It's been some time since I checked out Lawrence England's blog, so imagine my surprise at this particular long piece obviously written after the McCarrick revelations but two weeks before the Vigano expose. In which England speaks about his personal experience as a Catholic homosexual who saw the light... It is a rare testimonial, and one can only pray that God continues to give him the grace he needs in his life as a married man, and that his story can help others who were in the same plight he was.

Pope Francis, 'gay' clergy,
the abuse scandal and the great divide

August 19, 2018

For the purpose of the reader's understanding in these, most sorry times!

I'd like to say a little about how the Lord our God has helped me to live with a same-sex attraction which He has rendered, with His divine grace, so minimal as to be negligible, even non-existent.

Long-term readers of this blog will know that I have in my time struggled in and out of the 'gay' identity and the 'gay' lifestyle. It has been 15 years since I committed the sin of sodomy with a complete and utter stranger. This sin was so vile and contrary to the Good that I felt more shame than pleasure even in the action of carrying it out, to the point that I put a stop to the sin during the event. The gays won't like that story because, remember, nobody's meant to feel ashamed about doing gay stuff in gay world.

After this encounter, I sought, mostly while drunk, similar sexual encounters - all of this while I was a Catholic, I might add, yes even as a convert, all of which were based around the desperate satisfaction of my lust, a lust which I had continually denied even existed until I felt unable to adequately temper it. While I never committed the actual sin of sodomy again, other sexual encounters with men, too, were mortal sins of such a category that they, too, warranted God's vengeance.

I never wanted the condition of homosexuality, a condition which is intrinsically disordered, ordered contrary, in of itself, to nature, towards acts which can never be approved or receive the blessing of Almighty God.

I receive, occasionally, insights into why this condition occurred in me and became such a feature of my life, early sexual experiences, memories, parental attachment, domestic life etc, but ultimately there is a part of me that remains a mystery to myself and I'm not completely sure God would have it any other way. 'In my deepest wound, I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.' (Confessions, St Augustine)

In His unfathomable mercy, the Lord did not abandon me to my unnatural lust. Because I sought Him, He took pity on me, or perhaps rather, because He took pity on me, I sought Him. Who is the prime mover, O Lord, if it is not You?

For the sake of those who need God's help to overcome this inclination, I shall say that there are various instruments that the Lord used to enable me to escape from the prison of homosexual lust and I shall name them now.

1. Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and especially the morning offering to Him.
2. Devotion to the recitation of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. They who live by Holy Wisdom will not sin.
3. Devotion to the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary
4. Devotion to the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy
5. Devotion to St Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes from whom I was given the special grace and consolation of being instructed by the Lord God.
6. Devotion to Sts Francis, Padre Pio, Anthony of Padua
7. Devotion to the Brown Scapular and the daily wearing and veneration of it.
8. Later on, devotion to the daily prayer of the Divine Office, the common prayer of the Mystical Body of Christ
9. Friday penance, Holy Lent, mortification.
10. The reading of lives of the Saints and edifying and holy books.
11. The reading of Sacred Scripture.
12. Regular Confession of my sins, mortal and, when no longer mortal, venial.
13. Holy friendship and the seeking out of good and holy company both 'online' and offline.
14. The abandonment of bad friendships with those who tread not the path of Christ and the removing of myself from the occasion of sin.
15. Almsgiving and the friendship of the poor.
16. Spiritual direction, admonition, correction and consolation from a holy priest of Jesus Christ, zealous for souls and for the glory of God.
17. Devotion to the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ as taught by that priest, without whose guidance, I would most surely be a child of Hell.
18. Devotion to the Mass, which is the renewal upon the Altar of the Most Blessed and Efficacious Sacrifice of Calvary for us sinners, made present to us in time, the Sacrifice made most evident in the Mass of Ages, the Traditional Latin Mass and Eucharistic Adoration.
19. Pilgrimage
20. Marriage

I am now 40, will be 41 on the Feast of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary on October 7th. I have no desire to sleep with a man whatsoever. I fulfil those duties which God lays upon me in marriage, I love and cherish my wife. I currently work as a gardener for an agency at a local park, mowing lawns and strimming them, changing bins and littering parks, maintaining housing estates and parks, basically. It's not great money but I have the dignity of labour and providing for my wife and I. We don't have children yet, I hope one day we will but I trust in God and I fear nobody but Him.

May Your will be done, O Lord!

Alas, if Fr James Martin SJ had been my guide, or even Pope Francis, the one and only Jorge Mario Bergoglio, I would still be swimming in my mortal sins, I'd probably be living alone, maybe making sacriligious Communions, perhaps I would have given up on Confession, or lapsed, or maybe shacked up with some guy, probably getting sodomised regularly, probably drunk out of my skull.

I'd perhaps never have listened to holy and good counsel or thought there was any need to resist or overcome, with God's grace, a condition into which I felt I was 'born'. Maybe I'd have just killed myself. Yeah, those are the facts.

You know, even here, in Brighton, during a Gay Pride manifestation, there was a sign at the back of the station basically telling the suicidal gays not to take their suicidal lives and to download an anti-suicide app. It's almost as if people know that the hedonistic gay lifestyle kills, or something!

This false pastor, this antichrist, Fr James Martin SJ, has nothing, and I mean nothing, to offer the homosexuals of our day. Or any day.
- He does not seem to know the Lord Jesus Christ.
- He has no hatred for sin.
- He seems to possess no love for God.
- He has no desire to lead souls to God, but only on a plate to Satan. He does not trace for men the path to Heaven.
- He evidences no love for Our Lady, Our Lord, the Mass, the Church or, actually, for anyone but himself and the promotion of his false gospel.
- He only ever promotes himself.
- He senses no danger of Hell for himself or for others.
- He leads souls into the abyss.

Why he entered into the Sacred Priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, I simply have no idea. Was it to save souls? Or just to hang out with some guys? What? Why? What a terrible waste of a ministry, a waste of a vocation, a waste of time his ministry is and he is just one of many, many clergy who have squandered the graces God lavishes upon those who have faith who believe that, in spite of their own weakness and fragility, with God all things are possible. That is, all things, including chastity, obedience, observance of vows, heavenly virtues, self-control, charity, fortitude, justice, compassion, love of the Lord, be they for marriage or for the priesthood and all those things that the clergy named in the Grand Jury Report of Pennsylvania did not find to their taste, all those things that they wilfully rejected.

As for those men who say that a homosexual person could never be a priest, well, you know I know where you are coming from, but I'm not yet convinced it's a good place. Yes, I know sodomites have infested the priesthood and wreaked havoc on the lives of the young - even children - but even St Peter Damian would be able to distinguish between a man who was a little delicate or a little effete and a man who gave signs that he thought day and night about raping kids and robbing the young of their innocence, or who couldn't wait for the other guys in the seminary to leave the rectory so that he and Roger could go and screw each other in his room.

As a man with my background of libertine behaviour, I never thought I would or could marry a woman, but I know Jesus Christ and He is the difference. He makes all the difference! All the difference in the world!

But if you think that God's grace is so mean, if you think that God is so stingy and mean in His grace that it would not touch the homosexual and leave him changed, if he asked the Lord and His Mother and Saints for help, when that man reaches out to Him, daily, then you have learned nothing about God and His grace.

And if you are a priest, your ministry, also, could turn to rotten fruit in your own hands, since you will encounter such men and they need both compassion and firm, fatherly guidance. These men need pastoral guidance rooted in the truth about human sexuality.

You ask for God's grace and He gives it to you in full measure, enabling you to live according to the Gospel. The Lord Jesus does the same for the homosexual who seeks His grace and mercy. There is no difference! The Lord when giving His gifts of grace does not distinguish between the 'straight' and the 'gay'. He is generous! The Lord is compassion and love. He teaches His precepts to those who yearn for them.

The Lord Jesus does not abandon His children who call out to Him. He guides them along the right path. He leads them to green pastures and - as long as He has them available - in His Providence to good and holy pastors.

To those homosexuals who ask for His Divine Help, he shows great care and concern. He shows them the way of salvation. He upholds them. If they fall, He does not ignore their sin, but gently waits for their return to Him with penitence and sorrow and if they are willing to be led by Him, the Good Shepherd, He leads them in a way the World cannot comprehend along a path He has already trodden, the Way of the Cross, folly to the world, but the glory of Christians. He shows them that the way to Salvation is the Cross. He permits them to share in His Cross. They who carry it, joyfully, honour Him, who is King Eternal and they will eventually receive a crown of glory.

I know I have sinned. I am fully aware of what I am capable of doing and I know that if it were not for God's grace, I could do it again. Only a fool presumes on God's grace and says, 'Now, I am safe'.

Equally, only a fool would test out his acquired chastity and get smashed at his local gay bar seeing if he could handle being around that, or even occupying himself with thoughts of naked men at nighttime, if he wants to maintain his purity. However, he would not necessarily be a fool to consider offering his life to God in the Priesthood, if he felt that God was calling him to that.

Speaking for myself, I know that God has given me free will to choose Him, to daily ask for His grace, for I can do nothing without Him, or to refuse Him and turn away. I believe in Heaven and Hell. I believe that our moral choices will form us into men who grow in the image of God or the image of the Devil himself if we persist in our sins. Those who persist in their sins, God crowns with a tortured conscience in this life and a tortured soul in eternity, which will be joined with their bodies on the Last Day, for everlasting punishment.

I do not believe for a moment that "Uncle Ted" McCarrick has believed in either God, the Devil, Heaven or Hell for decades, if ever. I don't believe most US bishops do either. I don't think he feels any compunction or shame about what he has done and I don't believe the US Bishops feel much compunction or shame for covering it up. That said, I have deep suspicions over whether the US Bishops are observant of their vows themselves. Many of them are clearly hirelings, wolves!

Readers, please be aware that this scandal in the US is about homosexuality, but please also be aware that even homosexuality is not actually about homosexuality. Homosexuality is about the wilful refusal to cooperate with God's grace in the peculiar arena of human sexuality and to submit mind, body, heart and soul to His divine will.

Embracing impurity in mind, body and soul, embracing homosexual thoughts and actions amounts, of itself, to a rebellion against Truth and against God Himself. In essence, embracing it in any way is an opening to the diabolic, because it removes from man his ability to see other men as brothers, but rather as sexual idols, objects of satisfaction and lust.

There is no fraternal charity to the carnal man, one who lusts over other men. To such men, everyone around them become objects for the satisfaction of their unnatural desire. This is precisely what pornography viewers, masturbators and fornicators do and precisely how they think. I know, because I have had experience in all these sins as well.

There are many men who, because of their refusal to cooperate with divine grace - or who simply don't believe in it - would be loathe to enter into the priesthood and who are toxic. I have most certainly been that man. Some of these men are homosexuals, some of them are heterosexuals.

The heterosexual priests who trust in themselves instead of their Redeemer can fall easily into the vice of fornication or even adultery, or some other form of impurity if they do not pray! The homosexual men who seek ordination who live for their passions fall by seeking the satisfaction of their lust with men or even, sinking deeper into the depths of depravity - since man's heart is a bottomless pit - boys!

It is obvious that a carnal, sensual man who gives the impression that he fancies other men, or younger men, or older men and who wishes intimate relationships with them should be absolutely excluded from any consideration to the priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ or any religious order, though he may find salvation in the cleft of a rock.

Priests are called to be pure. They must be pure in order to celebrate the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Those who commit mortal sin and then celebrate the Mass are doomed if they do not repent, since such men commit sacrilege and desecration of the Eucharist. They bring down God's just wrath on themselves and others! This is one reason why we must pray for priests, holy priests and holier bishops.

Among the People of God there are, equally, men whose homosexuality is not 'deep-seated', whom the Lord has either preserved from the path of crime or whom He has healed of unnatural lust by means of His superabundant grace, whom the Lord Himself chooses to be His sacred ministers in Holy Orders, who, while possessing an awareness of a particular weakness, do not find chastity hard at all because the Lord's yoke is easy, not a burden, and the friendship of the Lord Jesus Christ is for them their singular joy.

These men become a source of sanctification for others and they quietly do those things that please the Lord, they reject evil and choose good consistently, they practice self-denial and offer their lives in sacrifice to the Victim in Whose place they stand on Earth to offer that same Victim to the Eternal Father in the Sanctuary of our God.

Having formed holy, virtuous habits, they abandon a former way of life and pattern of thinking and put on the mind of Christ Jesus. God's grace enables them to be what the Lord has by his grace infused them with, the heavenly knowledge of God, the power to be sons of God, they become a new creation and if they are priests, alter Christus, that is to say, another Christ.

They model their lives on the Lord's Cross and imitate Him in His charity and his sufferings as well as striving to imitate His Saints. For such men, JESUS is or becomes EVERYTHING, because He has shown Himself solicitous towards their plight and condition and saves them from all their terrors, setting them free from that which, like leprosy, plagued them. Jesus Himself fortifies these men to be pillars in the House of God. These men have become priests, bishops, Cardinals and, I expect, Popes.

But here's the thing...

The main thing that I ask you who are reading (if you're still here) is whether those things that I mentioned above that have aided my abandonment of or a former way of life for another that is Christian, rather than pagan -
- Are any of these things being recommended to the Faithful by the majority of priests, bishops, cardinals or the Pope himself? No. - - Do any of these kinds of devotions form part of Fr James Martin's outreach to the unrepentant perverts? No.
- Does the Church of today, other than in those ministries that receive little recognition from Bishops but who actually HELP men to live chastly, like Courage, believe that there are any remedies for those enticed by their same-sex attraction to mortal sin? Surely the numbers of those who do are a minority.
- Are the experiences of men such as me listened to or are they even welcome? These practices and devotions are, I think you'll agree, in the minds of many, 'pre-Vatican II' Catholicism.

The majority of these men, the spiritual children of a band of wretches who burnt the Sanctuary of God with fire and set up their foreign emblems during the 1960s and 70s, disdain all such devotions, all such pious and efficacious means to growth in holiness and formation in the manner of life Christ Himself wishes for His children. They think these things are pointless and useless, without intrinsic value. God's grace means very little, if anything, to many of them. They are like the heathens and to many of them they live and believe and think as if God does not exist.

If the Holy Catholic Church continues to ordain men who - and there are some giveaway signs - cannot be trusted to be alone with a Catechism without ripping out texts and replacing them with their own thoughts, or men who evidence no sign of supernatural faith, like one Jorge Mario Bergoglio, for instance, or men who cannot be trusted to be left alone with another man in an enclosed environment, or cannot be trusted to be left alone with a woman, even another man's wife! - in an enclosed environment, or even a child, for Heaven's sake, then naturally the Holy Catholic Church will suffer persecution and death from the inside out, making Her mission of the Salvation of souls impossible to carry out, Her Lord rendered an incredible folk story for the naive masses.

In all seriousness, we wonder how such men were ordained in the first place, but they were. Though I am a late-comer to the Holy Faith, becoming a Catholic in 2001, many will tell you who were witnesses to these things that it was obvious that an entire generation or three of clergy were being formed without discipline, traditional, tried and tested theology and spirituality and an almost secular worldview in which no moral teaching or dogma was truly to be proclaimed.

Just look at Pope Francis and those he has gathered around him and 'doubt no longer, but believe'. Something went terribly, terribly wrong! It is true that there have always been such scandals but it is also true that the Church knows of nothing as downright diabolic, huge and horrific as reports that have come from the United States.

A holy and angelic Pope is required by the Catholic Church in order not to set up yet more policies and procedures since the ruling on who and who shouldn't be ordained was already in existence. The Church so obviously needs men of FAITH, of supernatural faith, who would rather DIE than betray their Lord in the ministry entrusted to them in Holy Orders.

The US bishops, having shown themselves to be so utterly corrupt and untrustworthy, must examine their role in the outrages committed against the Body of Christ and the innocent young, and, if guilty, resign their Office and let trustworthy men take their place. If they do not feel capable of doing this, then the Pope must step in and help them to make the right choice. If the Pope feels incapable of doing this then the Pope must resign his Office and let a trustworthy man of faith and integrity take his place. To those with eyes to see, this reality is both simple and glaringly obvious.

Then, maybe then, the Church might just be granted the opportunity of true renewal, true reform and true and lasting healing, worshipping in liberty, in freedom, finding in Her worship the awe and wonder of the Lord God. May Your Church, dear Jesus, be once again what You Yourself called Her when You addressed Your holy Apostles..."You are the light of the World." (Matt.5, 14-16)

PRAY FOR THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

PRAY FOR THE VICTIMS AND THE SCANDALISED FAITHFUL.

PRAY FOR THE LIBERTY AND EXALTATION OF OUR HOLY MOTHER,
THE CHURCH!

Bergoglianity, Bergoglianism, whatever you call his insidious faith-wrecking anti-Catholicism, this man is its source and summit.

Fr H uses the term 'Bergoglianity', which means the quality of being Bergoglian. I have always used the term Bergoglianism, because more than
just being a 'quality', being Bergoglian has become an ideology among its fanatic practitioners.

The heart of Bergoglianity

September 2, 2018

The heart of the Bergoglianist error is, in my fallible opinion, to be found in such texts as the letter Archbishop Nichols wrote last year to PF, assuring him that English Catholics believe that his election was the work of the Holy Spirit [not in my name, Vincent], and that the Holy Spirit guides him daily [ditto]; vide similar statements by now-Cardinal Farrell linking the Pope to the Holy Spirit ... Mgr Pio of the Rota ... ...

Now one of the Church's leading and most extreme hyperultrapapalists, the papolatrous Cardinal Maradiaga, has encapsulated that error in a single lucid sentence and, in so doing, has pushed the error a few notches further up the scale ... or even, you may feel, off the scale. Here are his reported words:
"To ask for the resignation of the pope is, in my opinion, a sin against the Holy Spirit, who ultimately is the guide of the Church."

I need not remind you that the "sin against the Holy Spirit" is, according to the words of the Lord, the unforgivable sin: unforgivable both in this world and in the next (Mt 12:31 sqq et parr).

Not even, apparently, merely a sin canonically reserved to the Holy See. A sin ... unforgivable!

As PF's grip on power becomes ever more threatened, it is natural that his cronies should become daily more extreme in their desperate rhetoric designed to protect their unfortunate and profoundly flawed hero.

But to say that calling on him to resign is a sin against the Holy Spirit goes even further than I had feared possible.

I wrote recently, "They are running scared and they will become very dangerous".

When I wrote this I had no idea just how scared and how dangerous. Is there anything they will stop at?


V is for ...
A distinguished brother priest has sent me a picture of Churchill giving his "V for Victory" sign, together with a suggestion that V stands both for Victory and for Vigano.

This simple gesture could be used at Papal Public Audiences, Diocesan synods, Deanery meetings; whenever a speaker (or homilist) says something implicitly critical of Archbishop Vigano ...


Fr Z, reporting Fr H's post on Bergoglianity, comments:

Wherein Fr Hunwicke
identifies a serious problem

September 3, 2018

...Think of what they [the Bergogliac hyperultrapapolators] are saying:

Francis does something like change a paragraph of the CCC so that it says something that the Church has never before said and, indeed, appears to contradict directly what the Church has taught on the matter and, when people raise objections or ask questions, his supporters say that they sin against the Holy Spirit.

Francis teaches something in an encyclical which seems to say that people in the state of mortal sin should be admitted to Communion – which no saint or theologian in their right mind would have suggested in centuries past – or that they cannot live up to the ideas of morality that the Church teaches and, when people object, they are accused of sin against the Holy Spirit.

Ratzinger once answered that the role of the Holy Spirit in the conclave was not to be the Super Elector of the new Pontiff, but rather to ensure that the decision the poor little mortals make will not be total disaster for the Church.

The Holy Spirit did not control the Evangelists with automatic writing. Neither does the Holy Spirit impose Popes. Or would the papaltrous require us to believe that the Holy Spirit imposed Sergius III, John XII or Alexander VI?

Do we sin against the Holy Spirit – unforgivably – if we insist that men chose every Pope after Peter and that the Third Person made sure they couldn’t destroy the Church?

The Holy Spirit surely is at work in the Church and He without question offers assistance to us all, each according to our vocations.

However, those who claim “sin against the Holy Spirit” against their opponents or critics should be aware that what they are doing is weaponizing the Holy Spirit, instrumentalizing God, which is not to be tolerated.

God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7).

If you are one of those who claim that to resist anything Francis does is sinning against the Holy Spirit, you had better look carefully into your own soul. You’ve gone too far.

The City of Light under a regime of darkness:
a historical meditation on current events
by John C. Rao

September 3, 2018

Monday, August 28th, the Feast of St. Augustine, followed hard upon the Sunday statement of Archbishop Viganò regarding papal delinquency in the chastisement of episcopal evildoers.

Mulling over the possibility of some providential connection between the annual commemoration of the Doctor of the Church and the ex-nuncio’s document brought to mind the Bishop of Hippo’s City of God. It did so because this work, published in the early fifth century, one of the many tragic eras in the history of Western Christendom, is of continuing significance to all of us living through what is without a doubt the worst of such periods of trial to date. Its significance comes both from the circumstances surrounding its publication as well as the substance of the arguments to be found therein.

Perhaps the most painful aspect of the circumstances in which St. Augustine wrote The City of God - after the Sack of Rome in 410 and just before the Vandal invasion of his native Africa in 429 - was that the period preceding the disaster was one where Catholics in the western part of the Roman Empire were filled with hope.

St. Jerome, visiting the Eternal City in the late 300s, recounts how changed it was from his earlier memories of it, due to the fact that during his absence the Christians had triumphantly occupied so many public spaces that had once served pagan purposes. Nevertheless, hopeful as the changed public scene might have been, the victory was recent and time was needed in order to make it permanent.

The disaster that overtook the Christian Empire in the West — its occupation by barbarians who were either pagan or heretical in belief - subjected the Church to their influence and made the recovery long and difficult.

Similarly, the most painful aspect of the descent of the Western Church into her present decadent state is that the century and a half that preceded the 1960s was in many respects one of impressive recovery from another age of decline whose history is unknown to most Catholics.

The eighteenth century as a whole witnessed a steady and often pathetic Catholic surrendering of intellectual, spiritual, and social bastions to the forces of naturalism and secularization. The French Revolution merely intensified this collapse in a violent way.

Renewal began even in the depths of this Catholic winter, emerging from small circles of laity and clergy working in union with one another to rediscover the Catholic Tradition that the eighteenth century had neglected, often mocked, and almost entirely forgotten. A deepened understanding of the full meaning of the Incarnation and the Mystical Body then led to an energetic nineteenth and twentieth century effort to reoccupy all the intellectual, spiritual, and social spaces that had been abandoned to the naturalists, claiming them for Christ the King.

Slowly, but definitively by the reign of Blessed Pius IX (1846-1878), these seemingly powerless circles gained the support of the Papacy. One salient feature of the papal involvement in the effort to reoccupy public space and transform all things in Christ was the recognition that doing so required a commitment to shedding Catholic light
- to dispel the darkness of a previous era of doctrinal murkiness and practical surrender of the Faith to outside influences; and
- to make it clear to the faithful and the non-faithful alike that the modern western world was engaged in a massive “civil war”.

In this civil war, either Christ would rule, truly liberating the individual and society in the process, or godless man would rule in the name of a naturalist freedom that actually blindfolded him to his true good and enslaved him.

Whatever their blunders, the P0ntificates of Blessed Pius IX and his successors for the next one hundred years were committed to building the City of God, which must by its very nature be a City of Light. Document after document from the time of Pius IX onwards contributed to clarifying the nature of that City of Light and aiding in its construction.

The first important one, identifying what was Catholic and what was not in the most crystal clear manner imaginable, was the Syllabus of Errors of 1864. It is because of its clarity that the Syllabus aroused the anger that it did from those who wanted the Church to behave herself and leave the public spaces of society alone.

It is no wonder that those reformers who ushered in our own five decades and more of ever more obvious decadence openly proclaimed the teaching upon which they wished to construct the world to be a kind of Counter-Syllabus.

The Counter-Syllabus projected by the “spirit of Vatican Two” was to be open the Church to the 'light' that came from the outside, non-Catholic world. And yet it was precisely this supposed light from the outside world that the Catholic revival in the nineteenth century saw instead as a darkness that obscured the Faith in the name of the naturalist Enlightenment and the Revolution.

If the founders of the Catholic Revival could have been brought back to life in the 1960s they would have told the faithful that what the “modernizers” were actually doing was merely renewing the older assault on the fullness of the Faith that they themselves had worked so energetically to defeat.

The Sack of Rome was to begin again, and, as in the case of the one that saddened St. Augustine in 410, it was people on the inside who were to open the gates to the enemy. The City of Light was to be replaced by the City of Man, ruled over by a regime committed to darkness.

I have no intention in this brief meditation of discussing the whole substantive message of The City of God. The chief point that I want to recall to everyone horrified by the current regime of darkness is Augustine’s teaching that the forces working to build the City of God, i.e., to transform all things in Christ
- and those committed to constructing the City of Man, which insists upon living according to the dark “light” of the unredeemed natural world alone, are inevitably mixed in with one another until the end of time. We experience their warring influences inside our own souls and we see that war played out inside every single natural and supernatural institution, the Holy Church of Christ, with her popes, bishops, priests, and religious included.

We know that that war will end with the humbling of the wicked, for God will not be mocked. Nevertheless, each and every one of us cannot avoid the difficult, seemingly unending struggle, both within ourselves as well as for transformation of the world around us in Christ the King.

We are always in spiritual combat and that combat is now very much going against us. But there can be no rest for those who want the good, since rest means allowing the occupation of all public spaces by the wicked, and, through that occupation, the danger that society will effect our private seduction and even entice us to enlist in the ranks of the enemy.

Thinking that there is some 'Benedict Option' that permits us to hide from battle in a safe spiritual cubbyhole is as foolish as the work of the murk-makers who have abandoned the City of Light to help create the current Regime of Darkness.

The Benedictines themselves understood this by the tenth century. It was at that point that the monks of Cluny, seeing how easily the corrupt, contemporary powers-that-be dominated the monasteries “opting” to stay independent, created their famous large federation, which then set out to occupy public spaces, winning over local lords, kings, and emperors to serving the cause of Christ.

St. Augustine’s City of God is replete with examples of the wicked and self-delusional means by which the unredeemed City of Man is built and the power of the rulers of the Regime of Darkness over their often quite clueless victims is maintained.

In reading them, one is struck by the unchangeable nature of the ways in which the forces who wish to block the transformation of all things in Christ throughout all of history - what I like to call the Grand Coalition of the Status Quo - go about their business.

It is interesting to note that the same unchangeable tools are also identified by Plato, both in his general discussion of the Sophist campaign against any effort to gain knowledge of and act in accordance with the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, as well as in his highly amusing treatment of the particularly ignorant behavior of mass “democratic man”.

Both Augustine and Plato indicate that the “modern” strategy of those trying to discredit Archbishop Viganò’s accusations is effective because it is actually a very ancient one indeed, with a proven record of success behind it from the time of the Sophists onwards. The unum necessarium of every application of this strategy, ancient and modern, is the need to keep men and women firmly and mindlessly chained to the back wall of Plato’s murky cave and prevent their ascent to the light; to keep them away from the knowledge gained in the City of Light and under the ignorance guaranteed by the Regime of Darkness.

One extraordinarily successful method for obscuring the light discussed by St. Augustine involves a mixture of silence and calumny.
- Silence regarding the very existence of Christianity was a favorite tool of the conservative pagan forces in the Roman Empire, and many enemies of the Faith continued to employ it long after its legalization under Constantine.
- Others who felt obliged to speak of the hated Christian enemy did so through calumny regarding the real content of the Church’s teachings and what believers were supposed to do to put them into practice.

We have repeatedly seen the current facilitators of the Regime of Darkness mobilizing both of these tools to achieve their own murky goals. In Archbishop Viganò’s case, this has involved Pope Francis taking the [supposed] 'high road' of disdainful silence, while his allies invent anything that comes into their heads that might work to discredit the whistle blower and his supporters, including everything from Latino-hatred to pollution mongering.

This silence and calumny can work their impact due to another tool that St. Augustine describes with many examples from Roman History: a self-delusion about the gods and nature that allows for the domination of the City of Man by those with a libido dominandi, a lust for power. Augustine shows that some of those who misrule the City of Man under their Regime of Darkness may themselves be self-deluded, while others with a libido dominandi are fully aware that they are manipulating their victims for their own sinful benefit.

The self-delusion that has created the decadence of our own day is to an enormous degree the result of a theme that goes back to the tragic and dangerous path taken by one of the original leaders of the nineteenth century Catholic revival gone astray: the Abbé Felicité de Lamennais (1782-1854).

His vision, kept alive through the many decades when the Church was dedicated to building the City of Light, gained new strength through different representatives of the many-headed school of Personalism, active from the 1930s onwards.

Its main point, as expressed by the Personalists, is that the Holy Spirit speaks through the vital, energetic elements of the world around us, and that listening to, dialoguing with, and giving Catholic “witness” to accomplishing their “will” will lead to the emergence of a new and more authentic Christian order. Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), one of the representatives of the movement, is instructive in this regard:

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Surely [development] is slow and long when only average men are working at it. But then heroes, geniuses, a saint come along: a Saint Paul, a Joan of Arc, a Catherine of Siena, a Saint Bernard, or a Lenin, a Hitler and a Mussolini, or a Gandhi, and suddenly everything picks up speed... Human irrationality, the human will, or simply, for the Christian, the Holy Spirit, [Mounier is saying here that the Christian idea of the Holy Spirit is really 'human irrationality, the human will'! What a perversion of the very idea of the Holy Spirit, third Person of the Triune God! But the Bergogliacs today - see Fr H and Fr Z's recent comments about the Bergogliacs invoking the Holy Spirit - have perverted it even more radically: in their mind, Bergoglio himself is the very manifestation of the Holy Spirit today.] ….May the democrat, may the communist, may the fascist push the positive aspirations which inspire their enthusiasm to the limit and plenitude. (J. Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left, McGill-Queens, 1997. pp. 85, 90).

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Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of listening to the “voice of the Holy Spirit” [to which, of course, those invoking the infinitely-blasphemed Third Person attributed any and all of their ideas and opinions. Hence, people sharing Mounier’s vision were always logically ready to consider the possibility of shelving entire realms of Christian scripture, theology, and spirituality, should they clash with the “emerging convergence.”

If silence regarding the Christian Tradition were not enough, then calumny and mockery of anyone taking that Tradition seriously had to be mobilized to help the Holy Spirit accomplish His goal. "By the last years of World War Two, “there was little place for sin, redemption and resurrection in the debate; the central acts of the Christian drama were set aside” (Hellman, Mounier, p. 265).

Nietzsche’s critique of slavish Christianity now seemed to him to be unanswerable, and he “came to think that Roman Catholicism was an integral part of almost all he hated. Then, when he searched his soul, he discovered that those aspects of himself which he appreciated least were his ‘Catholic’ traits” (Ibid., 190).

Doing what one willed was the only thing that mattered. [While claiming that what one willed was the 'voice of the Holy Spirit'!] Not surprisingly, all rational Greek attempts to understand the True, the Good, and the Beautiful that had been used to support Christianity and dampen the “vital will” were execrated along with Catholicism as well. For Mounier, the Socratics, for instance, had to be driven into the wilderness with a fiery sword. Those obsessed with Catholic dogma, Catholic practice, and the philosophical hunt for the Logos all required diagnosis and serious psychiatric help.

Mounier came flatly to denounce old-fashioned Christianity and Christians. Christianity, he wrote, was “conservative, defensive, sulky, afraid of the future.” Whether it “collapses in a struggle or sinks slowly in a coma of self-complacency,” it was doomed. Christians were castigated, in Nietzschean style, as “these crooked beings who go forward in life only sidelong with downcast eyes, these ungainly souls, these weighers-up of virtues, these dominical victims, these pious cowards, these lymphatic heroes, these colourless virgins, these vessels of ennui, these bags of syllogisms, these shadows of shadows…”. (Ibid.,191).

Metaphysical speculation, Mounier declared, was a characteristic of “lifeless schizoid personalities.”…He referred to intelligence and spirituality as “bodily diseases” and attributed the indecisiveness of many Christians to their ignorance of “how to jump a ditch or strike a blow.”

“Modern psychiatry,” Mounier wrote, had shed light on the morbid taste for the “spiritual,” for “higher things,” for the ideal and for effusions of the soul…Thus, once again, he dismissed many forms of religious devotion as the result of psychosis, self-deception or vanity. Prayer was often a sign of psychological illness and weakness that analysis could do much to heal. Vigorous exercise would help as well. (Ibid., 192-193).

Do not Pope Francis and his followers sound like Mounier, in much of their thought as well as in their actual language? Surely the latter is turning in his grave, lamenting his failure to come up with the words “Promethean Neo-Pelagians” to describe those remaining faithful to a combination of Faith and Reason, now considered to be an offense to the Holy Spirit.

Let us give the Bergoglians the benefit of the doubt and count them among the self-deluded. But, be that as it may, the Mounier-like Counter-Syllabus guiding the Church for the last six decades has done nothing other than what St. Augustine indicated as the consequence of control of life by the builders of the City of Man: guarantee subjection to the demands of those with a libido dominandi, and the satisfaction of whatever their particular whims might be - including making the world safe for the Homosexual International (what an old friend called the Homintern) to go about its business.

Obedience to the wishes of the rulers of the City of Man and the Regime of Darkness that it creates have brought the institutional Church herself under her dark rulers into silencing, calumniating, and mocking her own Tradition.

The special “modern” achievement of those who have opened the gates to the enemies of Christ has been to unify Church, State, Society, and Zeitgeist as never before in history on behalf of the Triumph of the Will of the enemies of Christ, baptizing their every whim as the voice of the Holy Spirit in our times.

Self-delusion, libido dominandi, silence, calumny, and mockery all do their work in creating a population ignorant of the Truth, blocked from discovering it, and so accustomed to its ignorance that it cannot see how degraded it has become.

St. Augustine, notes, among his examples of the degradation of contemporaries committed to the City of Man, the shock of the population of North Africa at the behavior of the exiles escaping the Sack of Rome arriving on its shores. Ready to commiserate with the victims, the Africans found the dull-witted mob only interested in whatever “shows” were taking place in Carthage at the time.

Much of the dull mass of the western world today is so ignorant regarding our civilization in general and the Catholic Tradition in particular that it will believe any lies told it by the powers that be:
- that the Pope can declare anything he wishes to be the Truth, so long it obscures or contradicts past Church teaching;
- that everything he says and does must be obeyed, although it weakens the Faith and its practice;
- and that even though abuse of young boys is indeed horrible, the only people who cannot possibly be involved in it are homosexuals; - and that anything that might threaten the Homintern influence in the Church would be a far worse disaster than the fate of a few adolescent kids.

In the 1970s, when Dietrich von Hildebrand was still alive, a speaker came to the young Roman Forum to lament her inability to interest her bishop in stopping the lies of priests and nuns who were destroying her children’s faith. She told us that, shocked by his refusal to do anything to stop the rot, she went to a nearby shrine to pray before the statue of a Catholic Reformation saint for his help instead, asking herself the question as she did so: “who are the dead and who are living?”.

Von Hildebrand told us that he once stood next to Ludwig von Pastor, weeping for joy in St. Peter’s Square at a ceremony of canonization of a new saint. He was weeping tears of joy because he knew that the Church was filled with saints as well as sinners.

If alive today, this servant of the Church, this lover of the Papacy and its greatness, despite a history filled with many examples of stupid and wicked deeds done by significant numbers of the successors of the Apostle alongside those of brilliance and goodness, would tell us to remember the double reality of sin and sanctity.

Yes, he would say, the leaders of the Church, in a world where the forces seeking the City of God and the City of Man are mixed together with one another until the end of time, can be self-deluded or active servants of the Regime of Darkness. Yes, they must be called to account for their misdeeds.

Just because we see the supporters of the City of Man and its Regime of Darkness dominant today, we must remember that the Mystical Body of Christ does not die, even if its leaders are today “the living dead”. The good elements will arise once again. They will awaken Peter from his slumber — if not his present manifestation, then his successor, or the successor after that. The Darkness will be dispelled. The true voice of Holy Spirit will win out over its parody.

But this will take time, and it will only happen if we reject the temptation to despair; the temptation to flee from a battle that grows more and more unseemly as the years go by and to hide in our own little “Benedict” corners instead. ['Benedict corners' are not meant to be hideaways, but highly self-aware and motivated 'little communities' determined to keep the true faith alive and well against all challenges, staying alive and active to be the nuclei of any future global revival of the faith.]

It will only happen if we continue to study our Faith more deeply, practice it more fervently, and call unceasingly upon the aid of the truly living help of Christians: Mary and the saints in heaven.

You may read all about Ms Miriano on costanzamiriano.com/about/english-version/ -
to see why she is worth our attention.

When homosexual militancy seems
to dictate Church agenda
by Constanza Miriano
Sept. 1, 2018
Translated from her blog by Francesca Romana for


James Martin’s article (1), written in his finest disguise – as victim – obliges me to reflect somewhat on this agonizing McCarrick affair. The Jesuit apostle for all things LGBTQ is increasingly more explicit in his “homosexual” militancy.

Here he is complaining about the witch-hunt against “homosexual” priests in an article re-tweeted by Spadaro, who is also “very loyal” to the reigning pope who recently said that at the least suspicion, homosexuals, must not even enter the seminary.

Unfortunately, complaining and victimhood are the hobbyhorses of these militants (no coincidence that these are often considered feminine personality traits more than masculine). By means of this complaining and victimhood, by means of this talk about discrimination and non-acceptance, homosexual people, on the contrary, have imposed their agenda at all levels with extreme aggressiveness and ideological violence.

First they succeeded with quite a few governments to impose their ‘road-map’ [more than a road map, they have imposed their world view!] - blocking parliaments for months, betraying real priorities, inventing a world where homosexual people are victims of nastiness and violence on a daily basis and ‘it is very urgent in the name of civil rights to deal with this issue’, much more urgent than poverty, education and unemployment.

But, as Bret Easton Ellis says, they are not asking not to be discriminated against, they want to command. An agenda presumably dictated by ‘a higher direction’ I’m not able to decipher, but whose effects are glaring (for example, how otherwise can the parting-words of former Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni be explained: “I’m proud to have led a government which passed DAT (Advanced Healthcare Directives) [a law which is a virtual green light for euthanasia] and to belong to a party that passed civil union laws [allowing same-sex 'marriage']. (2)

Now they are doing the same thing in the Church – by occupying center-stage obscuring the rest – with the result that, at present, many men of holy faith and very sound doctrine*, no longer have the courage to tell the truth about homosexuality: that it is a disorder, that homosexual relations are sins.

As usual the Church ‘gets it’ when everything is over. Even as homosexual priests become consultants in Ministries, running courses that teach ‘homosexual fidelity’, and climbing, bit by bit, working their way up to manage real estate, money and cardinalships and dictating the agenda for the newspapers, the Church seems still to believe the hoax that they, the homosexual priests, are suffering because they don’t feel accepted. Perhaps some [priests] really believe it but they don’t know what’s actually going on. People with same-sex attraction suffer not because they are not accepted, something increasingly, evidently false (I’m still waiting for them to tell us a true story about this, of someone badly-treated in the Church because of their inclinations).

The Magisterium remains their only hope of exiting from their suffering, which will not pass if everyone pats them on the back. It will not pass until it is faced head on.

The Pope said on the flight home from Ireland that a psychiatrist can intervene [to 'cure' same-sex attraction] in young people “but no longer after 20” , However, I know a lot of people who have faced and won this battle even at much later than 20, with the help of someone by their side who told them the Catholic truth about same-sex attraction [and what the Church teaches about chastity]. The work of a doctor alone is not enough - spiritual work is also needed.

The Vatican's official press bulletin then corrected the Pope’s statement, by writing “many things can be done” [about correcting same-sex attraction] and removing the word psychiatrist from the pope's statement.

The indefatigable Martin, grabbing at straws, scrambling, made haste to explain to us that the Pope meant to say that the children need psychiatric help because they feel discriminated. After twenty then, dear Martin, is there no longer any discrimination? So all this stuff you preached in Dublin [and in your book] about homophobia is false? Choose!

Admit that the Pope said what he said – psychiatrist (we have the recording), expressly, because he meant to address the issue of treatment [an issue fully disproved in the 1980s after many bishops, especially in the USA, considered sexual abuses by homosexual priests as nothing more than the manifestations of a psychiatric disorder that could be 'cured' with the right 'treatment].

Perhaps the Pope in his mea culpa for the abuses in Pennsylvania didn’t say the word homosexuality at all specifically not to offend, not to let anyone feel unaccepted, not to rub salt in the self-inflicted wound of [self-indulgent] homosexuality. Perhaps he only wanted to speak about the abuses and not the plague of homosexuality among ministers of God, as certainly not all homosexuals commit abuses. Perhaps he wanted to avoid the risk of equating clerical homosexuality with sex abuses.

Certainly, not all homosexuals commit abuses, but the overwhelming majority of the abuses are committed by homosexuals. And homosexual practice among adult consenting priests is an abomination, independent of the consensus.

It is an abomination first of all for he who commits it - and the father of those priests must condemn it, for the good of their souls, for their eternal salvation and for their life here on earth. If, as we believe and say, homosexuality is a disorder, this influences the entire life of the priest.

We are not male and female only in bed, we are in the way we look at the world, in our judgments, in our emotions, in the way we love others.

The priest is called to a virility even greater than that of the layman, the married man. The priest in the confessional needs a great deal of testosterone and also in dying to himself for the sake of the faithful, the way Jesus fulfilled the call of being profoundly man though he is God.

A homosexual priest who doesn’t fight his inclinations cannot be a good priest and the Church must not be afraid to say this, and indeed the Pope says it: they must not even enter the seminary.

It is not that homosexuals are not virile, it is that they feel wounded in their virility, and ought to be helped to become proud of being real men, whatever wounds they have suffered. True acceptance is to tell the truth with gentleness.

We are all on a path of constant conversion. We are all sinners and all of us are confronted with a disorder (hopefully only one!). Our disorders stop us from being united to the Lord and living our lives in a fruitful and ordered way.

For example when one lives in circumstances of adultery, one’s entire life enters into a sort of schizophrenia, and one is unable to do the normal things [in life] with an undivided heart. All of life becomes adulterous, since affectivity is our center, and the Church guards this with great wisdom. For this reason we have the Sixth Commandment, for this we have Humanae Vitae, for this we have the indissolubility of marriage.

I don’t know the why of all this cautiousness, but if it is about not distancing people, to make everyone feel accepted, not to be divided, perhaps it would be worthwhile looking at what has happened recently to all the “homosexual-friendly” governments in Italy. Almost all of them have been swept away, gone.

What is clear in the opinion of voters [in the last Italian election] is that the homosexual cause cannot impose itself in this ideological and false manner. Therefore, if consensus is the objective, it seems to me what is happening in the Church is what has happened in the political scenarios of many countries: Hollande, Cameron, Renzi, Zapatero, Hillary Clinton, had all the mass-media in their favor, but the common opinion was very far from their narration imposed from ‘above’.

We cannot vote in the Church, and Her true children will continue remain to this Mother however soiled Her garments are. Nonetheless, many are going through a time of disorientation and suffering: many very clear, good words have been said, but perhaps some actions have created confusion.

Why, for example, didn’t Fr. Mike Schmitz (3) go to speak in Dublin instead of Martin? Fr Schmitz, who wrote a marvelous book about same-sex attraction, filled with intelligence, comprehension and delicacy but in line with the Magisterium. This is a priest who gives courses to men on virility (4), how to be real Christian men and who is well-loved and followed by many. He knows how to inflame hearts with the pride of belonging to Christ, without, however, attacking anyone. Plus, as a bonus he made two “Ironmen”. For me many priests are superheroes, but if they swim for 4 kilometers, pedal for 180 and then run a marathon, well then, they are even more so!

NOTES: 1) www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/08/30/witch-hunt-gay...
2) Gentiloni was Prime Minister under the leftist Partita Democrata which was humiliatingly defeated in the last Italian elections by center-right parties who are now carrying out a conservative agenda
3) www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/01/10/made-for-love-father-mike-schmitz-on-gods-plan-for-authent...
4) www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7VkO9tNB5w&t=1832snon
Source: costanzamiriano.com/2018/09/01/se-anche-nella-chiesa-la-militanza-omosessualista-riesce-a-dettare-lagenda/amp/?__twitter_impress...

A Church in turmoil
Is this the biggest upheaval since the Reformation?
by James Schall SJ

by Sept. 3, 2018

A few illiterate or sequestered folks in distant corners of the world may not have heard of the internal problems of the Catholic Church. Both those who hate her and those who love her have opinions about the matter. And well they should.

The Church has been almost the last living connection with our distant human past, as well as the one institution that has insisted that truth is possible, objective, and a central good for all civilizations.

The range of dismay within the Church over its own scandals is wide and articulate. No doubt the uproar is much larger within than without it because Church members are closer to the hearts, goods, and duties that people live by.

When Pope Francis went to Ireland recently to address a world meeting on families, one writer called it simply a “fiasco”. The Pope’s message of sorrow for the victims rang hollow for many because he did not address most of the concerns of real families.

The Pope had promised to clean things up within the Church but, in fact, they seemed to most people to have become steadily worse. William Kilpatrick notes the relative silence of the Pope about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

Publicly, as of now, the Pope has chosen to follow his policy of remaining silent when fundamental questions are addressed to him. Other people, however, think part of a pope’s job description is to clarify and decide on major issues that affect the Church itself.

The Attorney General of Pennsylvania’s report makes the issue something beyond internal Church policies. The Pope himself often calls for what is called transparency. Cardinal Cupich, however, maintains that the Pope is concerned with greater things like environmentalism and immigration.

What are we to make of these astonishing events? A friend of mine thinks that we have seen nothing like this since the Reformation, if then. The Renaissance popes were sometimes high livers, but there were few intimations of heresy surrounding them.

Catholics have long been warned from Scripture itself of their own sins. They were also told that they could expect to be hated by the world. The late Cardinal George of Chicago once famously predicted that his successor would be put in jail and the one following him would be a martyr. Catholic League President, Bill Donohue, sees the devil at work in all of this controversy.

But in Scripture this recurring hatred of the world for the Church was thought to be directed, not at the believers’ own sins, but at their virtues. They were most persecuted when they were most believing, not when they were lax.

In both the Old and New Testaments, we do find many warnings of unworthy shepherds, meaning priests, bishops, and popes. From this point of this view, today we are not really witnessing something new or totally unexpected. In the Old Testament, when things went bad for the Hebrews, it was usually seen to be a result of their own sins. The solution was usually imposed by outside powers in the name of Yahweh. In today’s world, the concern is with those Catholics who simply do not follow the basic tenets of their own faith.

In an article on PowerLine, Steven Hayward wrote that he often considered joining the Catholic Church. Ultimately, he decided against it.

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Among the reasons I decided against becoming a Catholic was my worry that someday they might elect a pope like… Francis. I loved John Paul II and Benedict XVI. My fears are that what has come to pass has come to pass. It’s bad enough that Francis is a left-wing liberationist theologian (liberation theology being merely Marxism with salsa), but there is credible testimony that he has covered up for pedophiles among priests, bishops, and cardinals.

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By now, it is well attested that the central problem is not pedophilia. It is rather the life and practice of adult males seeking relations with younger males both under age and of age. This issue involves more than just the Catholic Church.

What makes this fact especially interesting is that the culture itself has accepted relations between consenting males to be a “right”. If there is nothing wrong with this male-male relationship as such other than age, there should be no problem. The effort to normalize the relation of male to male in their sexual relations has succeeded in public opinion.

The result is that the Catholic Church is caught in both ways. It finds its male abusers paying enormous fines for what would otherwise be a “right” for adults in the civil order. Other institutions, like the public schools or business enterprises, that have much the same problems, are usually bypassed or dealt with on an individual basis.

Many have rightly dubbed this a “cultural war”, because at bottom the issue really has to do with the purpose of sex and its relation to marriage and children — is it natural with its own norms and duties or something we can create of our own will to look like we want it to look?

Meanwhile, many people call the Pope to resign. Ross Douthat, in the New York Times has argued that, even if Francis is guilty of this cover-up surrounding the Cardinal McCarrick case, the Church cannot afford another resigned pope in one century. Francis should stay and clean up the house as he promised. In general, those advocating that Francis remain in office are now largely those belonging to the political left.

As most people recognize, Francis has espoused most of the left social agenda. Even on things like abortion, which he opposes, Francis has downgraded the intensity with which its correction ought to be pursued. His famous remark on his return trip from Rio, when asked a question concerning a male-male relationships, was: “Who am I to judge?” It is fair to say that the general public, rightly or wrongly, took this statement as a sign of tolerance, if not approval.

Looking at this most upsetting morass that the Church seems to have gotten herself into with the election of Pope Francis, a friend of mine said that, in a hundred years, historians would look back on this era as a cleansing period, that, in fact, things were working themselves out in God’s providence. We can hope this is true.

Others see this situation as the end times that are pictured in Scripture when God has had enough and decides finally to judge all of us and be done with it. We hear of people who stop giving money to Church institutions or attending Mass. Recent converts who came into the Church to escape the liberalizing tendencies of their own sects are now having second thoughts about the wisdom of their conversion. Still others think that it is a tempest in a teapot and wish that it would just evaporate and go away.

This panorama of issues in the Church is spelled out here because what happens to the Church affects everyone, even those who disagree with it or hate it. Nor is it a Christian virtue to minimize the scope of the problem facing the Church itself.

What is new, as I have tried to sketch here, is the fact that many of these problems are not threats from the outside but from personal disorders arising inside the Church itself.

The Church, indeed, exists to forgive sins. It has never taught that its members, clergy included, were untouched by sin, though it did demand that they avoid it. It recognized the need for penance, repentance, forgiveness, principles, grace, and virtue, none of which can be ignored.

Many think that the Church can no longer reform itself. The issue can no longer be set aside. Few want it to be. The one thing the Church in turmoil brings to the attention of everyone is the question of how he lives. If we are without sin, we are free to cast the first stone, to recall a famous passage in Scripture (John 8:7).

That being said, we are, no doubt, witnessing a drama unique in world history, the end of which none of us can see clearly.

A leaven in the world:
Why I accuse the pope
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

September 3, 2018

For many years now, it has become quite common for priests to be treated as if they have do not have a conscience. They have been led to corrupt the sacraments without their consent and now it is being directed from the top.

Some years ago I was stationed by the Navy in Florida. A woman came to the chapel with a child to ask about Baptism for an infant. Her visit led to one of the greatest crises of my naval career, perhaps of my priesthood.

You know the tale: Adult wants Baptism for a child, adult hasn’t been attending Mass, adult is in mortal sin and scandalizing the child or children as well as unable to raise them in the faith. Adult needs to return to regular Sunday Mass first. After Confession.

Establishing a reasonable hope that a child will be raised in the faith, which the Church requires for infant Baptism, has always been understood by me to mean that, at a minimum, the child should be educated in the faith and enabled to practice his or her faith by at least attending Sunday Mass, depending upon the help of an adult to get there until he or she is old enough to drive.
Out of compassion in such situations most priests probably, as I did, launch into a nuanced explanation leading to the conclusion that Baptism is for the purpose of going to Heaven, we go to Heaven by cooperating with the grace of Baptism and loving God, we love God by keeping the Commandments, to include keeping the Lord’s Day holy through Mass, and we cannot reasonably assume we are going to Heaven if we choose not to do so of our own free will.

I usually also offer the information that a grave reason excuses from the grave obligation to keep the Third Commandment and ask the adult if he or she has indeed omitted to attend Mass for such a reason.

Well, the mother left my office and lodged a complaint. Word came back that the military archbishop was going to pull my endorsement. The reason was that he had been led to believe that I told the woman “she was going to Hell in front of her six-year-old daughter.” It didn’t matter that it was a lie. For a military chaplain, losing an endorsement means you’re out of the service in 24 hours: no retirement, all one’s years of active duty lost. Disaster.

The Navy chief of chaplains at the time convinced the archbishop to look into the matter with the help of a senior chaplain who would meet with me and discuss the accusation. We did, and I told him that I had never said those words to the woman and had, in fact, never said them to anyone. How do I know where someone is going after they die? Impossible, for anyone, including a priest, as well as irrational. But also, as I would later write in a letter to the archbishop, I consider such behavior a pastoral abuse. If I had indeed done such a thing it should be treated with the utmost seriousness.

The archbishop also said it was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” because there had been other complaints previously. In my defense I made it known that no one from the archdiocese had ever informed me that was the case. [Thankfully] The story ended with me finishing out my term of active duty, after affiliating with the Reserves, and retiring last year. Unscathed.

It is true I was known to preach about Humanae Vitae and other taboo topics and otherwise upset the carefully balanced apple cart in the Catholic chaplain world at the time, then documented in other places as a holding tank for errant clergy.

The senior chaplain interceding on my behalf offered a solution by saying “baptize them all.” That’s not what the Church says. And that’s where the conscience of the priest comes into play.

The Church says that the priest must establish a reasonable hope that the child will be raised in the faith. The priest must ascertain the facts and, if such is not the case, work to bring it about. But he cannot do it without the cooperation of the parents. He must follow his conscience and deny Baptism if the parents reject the faith by refusing to practice it.

The corruption of the sacraments is the greatest threat to the faithful in the pews. Yes, they will fight you tooth and nail to try to get grace under false circumstances, but priests and faithful Catholics must strive mightily to give them salvation in true love. Priests have often become mindless sacramental machines to give our sacraments unthinkingly like candy to every comer.

The Archbishop Viganò Letter currently causing a furor in the Catholic world is simply the straw that broke the camel’s back with Pope Francis.

We have been steadily subjected to more and more abuse of the sacraments and of the faithful like frogs in steadily increasing hot water. It is logically a short distance from corrupting Communion by giving the Lord sacramentally to fornicators or adulterers, as called for by Amoris Laetitia, to allowing a homosexual predator cardinal back into circulation after the previous Pope attempted to protect the faithful by sanctioning him.

This is what it appears was done by Francis in the case of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick with knowledge of his crimes. Regardless, Francis is the Pope and as such it is his job to know. I choose to believe Archbishop Viganò when he writes that he gave the Pope every opportunity to learn of McCarrick’s crimes before he put him back into circulation.

These are pastoral abuses:
- Silence, when speaking would dispel confusion.
- Propagating error instead of Catholic doctrine.
- Restoring sanctioned reprobate clergy back into good standing. - - Appointing homosexualist bishops and cardinals to meetings.

All priests have consciences like every Catholic and also a right and duty to speak out. To all our priests I plead: You owe your flock courage and clear leadership.
- Be silent no more.
- Form and follow your [informed Catholic] consciences.
- Refuse to corrupt the sacraments and betray souls, for we who are priests betray our own salvation if we do thus.

Let’s at least not lie to ourselves: The Viganò testimony is merely the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The evidence is already in and it is abundant. Guilty as charged. Any reasonable person would expect a priest or bishop who has abused his flock to be deposed.

Pope Francis is continuing his course of destruction by disastrous episcopal appointments to Newark, Chicago, and San Diego with prelates in his image who mock our intelligence with their nonsensical prattle and pro-homosexualist ideology.

If we do not speak our consciences we jeopardize our own salvation as well as those we betray also by our silence.

Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.

I have even less respect now for this Bergoglio cardinal who is 'stupid' enough to claim he was edited out of context in a videotaped TV interview brief enough not to allow the possibility of an out-of-context remark. Worse, he has asked that his absurd excuse for a most insensitive remark downplaying the Vigano expose in favor of 'more important things' for Bergoglio to attend to, be read at Mass throughout the archdiocese of Chicago. Fine with me, though, if he wished to further advertise his 'stupidity' in this self-serving way that has nothing to do with serving Christ.

Cardinal Cupich orders priests
to address disputed TV report at Mass
By Mitchell Armentrout

September 2, 2018

Cardinal Blase Cupich has instructed Chicago-area priests to deliver a statement at Mass this weekend slamming a local TV news report that he calls “misleading,” saying it was edited to suggest he and Pope Francis were downplaying the ongoing clergy sex abuse scandal.

The clip came toward the end of a two-minute segment that aired Aug. 27 on NBC5 about the Archdiocese of Chicago cooperating with Illinois Attorney Gen. Lisa Madigan’s review of abuse allegations across the state. Since the interview aired, Cupich has been castigated across the internet for being seemingly insensitive to the sex abuse crisis.

“Our story on the interview with Cardinal Cupich was accurate,” NBC5 station manager Frank Whittaker said in an email. “The story is posted on our website along with the full unedited interview for anyone to see.”

In the TV report Cupich disputes, reporter Mary Ann Ahern paraphrases Cupich’s claim of a small group of church insurgents upset with the pope’s direction, followed by the cardinal on screen saying: “He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.”

In a statement issued Wednesday, Cupich claimed the clip “was edited in such a way that gave the false impression that Pope Francis and I consider the protection of children to be less important than other issues, such as the environment or immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Cupich said he was referring to the recent letter from former high-level Vatican official Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, “not the crime of clergy sexual abuse.”

Vigano claimed last week that Pope Francis knew for years about misconduct claims against disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — and also that McCarrick was instrumental in getting Cupich and other U.S. Church leaders appointed by the pope. Cupich has said he doesn’t know whether McCarrick went to bat for him with the pope to get appointed to the top Church job in Chicago.

NBC5 defended its story in a statement on its website. “We believe our story to be accurate in that Cardinal Cupich was referring to the memo about sexual abuse allegations in question,” the station said. “The cardinal was making a point that until accusations are verified, the Pope shouldn’t respond.”

Now, parishioners can expect to hear about the contested quote at Mass this weekend — a highly unusual move for the archdiocese, the local arm of the Catholic Church. .

“Priests have been asked to read the Cardinal’s statement regarding the NBC5 report during Mass this week,” archdiocese spokeswoman Anne Maselli said in an email, declining further comment.

Cupich has been on a seminary retreat in Mundelein, though it wasn’t clear if he’d be speaking there about the sex abuse crisis that’s stretching from the seminaries to the highest rungs of the Catholic Church.


Stonewalling silence = Complicity with sex abuse
By ROD DREHER

September 1, 2018

Credit where credit is due: The New York Times called every curial cardinal accused by Vigano in his letter, asking them for comment. Here’s what happened:

---

Following the pope’s lead, the Vatican has gone on lockdown.

Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, whom Archbishop Viganò also accused in the letter of covering up sexual misconduct by Cardinal McCarrick, rushed a reporter off the phone on Thursday evening.

“Look, I’m not in my office. Good night. Good night," he said. And he was the most talkative.

The Times reached out to every cardinal and bishop said by Archbishop Viganò to have known about the alleged sanctions on Cardinal McCarrick by Benedict. More than a dozen of them declined or did not answer requests for comment.

---

[Did, say, John Allen or Michael Sean Winters bother to do that at all?] Remember what Francis said about the Vigano letter on the plane earlier this week, speaking to journalists?:

---

I will not say a single word about this. I believe the statement speaks for itself. And you have the journalistic capacity to draw your own conclusions. It’s an act of faith. When some time passes and you have drawn your conclusions, I may speak. But, I would like your professional maturity to do the work for you. It will be good for you. That’s good.

---

But he is not doing the one thing he could do to help journalists do the work he says he wants them to do: tell the cardinals to answer journalists’ questions.

The Catholic philosopher Francis Beckwith, who returned to the Roman church after many years as an Evangelical, writes about the current mess:

---

But when given the opportunity to stem the tide of confusion — to offer a word of solace, comfort and hope to the long-suffering Catholics he is obligated by his office to shepherd — Pope Francis announced, in response to a question from the press, that he had taken a vow of silence on these matters, though nevertheless encouraging the press to investigate for themselves and to make up their own minds.

Because I have never been a bishop, let alone a pope, I have no idea whether this sort of answer is wise or foolish. But from the vantage point of a layman who has only been back in the Church for a mere 11 years, the Holy Father’s answer seemed tantamount to saying, “Who am I to ‘pope’?”

Yet, after some reflection, I am willing to give the Holy Father the benefit of the doubt that he isn’t abdicating his fatherly role to lead the flock through this challenging time. For in order for members of the press to do their jobs and investigate these matters — to confirm or disconfirm the claims in Archbishop Viganò’s testimony — they must have complete and total access to the evidence mentioned in the letter’s lone footnote: “All the memos, letters and other documentation mentioned here are available at the Secretariat of State of the Holy See or at the apostolic nunciature in Washington, D.C.”

As we know from the Pennsylvania attorney general’s report as well as the McCarrick scandals, the Vatican has the power, if ordered by the Pope, to lift any veils of secrecy that do not permit the press to view these materials.

Consequently, if the media make the request to examine the documents and memos cited in Archbishop Viganò’s testimony, the Holy Father cannot refuse without undermining his credibility and by default his papacy. Even the Pope knows that a “Who am I to ‘pope’?” answer will not suffice when the hope and faith of millions hangs in the balance.

---

[Has any reporter, in fact, taken the initiative to look into the documents Vigano cites?]

Meanwhile, the Catholic actress Patricia Heaton tears into one of Francis’s more clericalist courtiers:


That is the kind of courage that is eventually going to force the truth out of this stonewalling pope and hierarchy. The stone-cold nerve of these men, thinking they don’t have to be accountable for their behavior, which has cost the Catholic Church in the US over $3 billion, and immeasurable sums of moral authority. These lords of the manor prey on the children of the laity — including their sons in seminaries — and cover up for each other when they’re caught.

If this pope, and these cardinals, are not guilty of Vigano’s charges, then why can’t they come forward and say so? Why are they afraid of the truth? Is it that they are afraid to lie, because they don’t know which documents Vigano has in reserve that will show them up to be frauds?

The Kim Davis distraction
By Phil Lawler

September 3, 2018

Pope Francis asked journalists to investigate the charges in the Vigano testimony, and draw their own conclusions. That’s fair enough — although it’s certainly surprising that the Vicar of Christ would not at least deny participating in what would amount to a repudiation of his own professed principles.

The Pope’s most aggressive allies, however, have done their best to discourage reporters from following up on the Vigano charges, instead offering a menu of potential distractions:
- Was Archbishop Vigano allied with the Pope’s conservative critics?
- Was he a disgruntled former employee?
- Did he engage in a cover-up himself?
- Was he at odds with his siblings?
- Was he unkind to the family pets? (And wasn’t someone recently warning against going down rabbit-holes?)

Now the acidic Father Rosica, the most ferocious critic of the Pope’s critics, has latched onto an ideal distraction: Kim Davis. If Archbishop Vigano can be linked with Davis — a woman who was mercilessly criticized by the American secular media — then maybe reporters will run away with that story-line, forgetting the original content of the Vigano testimony.

So Father Rosica, joined by the former papal spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, have told the world that Pope Francis was unhappy with Archbishop Vigano for arranging a meeting with Davis.

But wait. Fathers Rosica and Lombardi do not say (as others have claimed) that the Davis meeting was a surprise for the Pontiff. On the contrary, they report that the Pope had been briefed, and knew who Davis was. The Pope’s complaint, they say, is that Archbishop Vigano had not reported on Davis’s own marital history: her four husbands.

But again, wait. Why should the Holy Father be dismayed about meeting a woman who has had four husbands? Isn’t this the Pontiff that encourages us all to “accompany” the people in irregular marital situations?

Secular reporters found it very easy to take pot shots at Kim Davis, mocking her accent and her looks and her marital history and her Appalachian background. If they take the hint from Fathers Rosica and Lombardi, they can now run with the story that Archbishop Vigano is an ally of Kim Davis, and forget about the substance of his charges.

But let’s not forget: Kim Davis was savaged in the mainstream media — and then suggested by Archbishop Vigano as a candidate for papal support — because she refused to put her name on a document that she believed to be false. If Catholic bishops showed the same determination not to betray the truth, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

And, for the record. a new statement from the legal firm that represents Kim Davis..

Vatican spokesmen admit lying
about Kim Davis's meeting with the pope
LIBERTY COUNSEL
Sept 3, 2018

After lying and hiding the truth about the private meeting of Pope Francis and Kim Davis in 2015, Vatican officials now admit Pope Francis and his high-ranking officials knew who Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis was and approved a private meeting with her during his 2015 visit to the United States.

Federico Lombardi, S.J., former director of the Holy See Press Office, has now "recalled that Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò had spoken the night before the Davis meeting with Pope Francis and his collaborators and obtained their consensus," as reported in the America magazine.

Yesterday, the Associated Press received a statement from Lombardi in which he now admits "Vatican officials approved" of the meeting with Davis. Yet, in 2015, Lombardi said the opposite of his 2018 admission. Davis is the Kentucky clerk jailed for not granting marriage licenses after the Supreme Court opinion.

This is not the first time the Vatican has changed its story about Kim Davis. Back in 2015, Fr. Thomas Rosica, an English-language assistant to the Holy See, stated that "the only real audience granted by the pope at the Nunciature was with one of his former students and his family," which included a homosexual man and his partner, according to The Washington Post.

However, off-record they said there was a meeting: "Privately, Vatican officials told CNN and other news outlets that the meeting with Kim David [sic] irked Pope Francis, saying that he didn't know the specifics of Davis' situation before the meeting," CNN reported.

In 2015, Lombardi and Rosica lied about the private meeting with the Pope. Now Lombardi and Rosica admit there was a private meeting and that Vatican officials approved the meeting. The Vatican only changed its story to admit the private meeting was approved after Archbishop Vigano released several documents that detailed how top officials, including the Pope, knew about Kim Davis through a memo that Vigano provided to them. These leaders vetted her and even received legal advice regarding the situation before approving the private meeting with her.

In contrast to the disinformation and spin coming out of Rome, the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops gave the Nuncio, Archbishop Vigano, two standing ovations at an event following the Pope’s visit in 2015.

To counter the misrepresentations of Lombardi and Rosica, in 2015 Liberty Counsel released a detailed description of the events before, during, and after the meeting with Pope Francis. This description matches perfectly with the recent statement of Archbishop Vigano about the meeting.

Exactly three years ago, Davis, was in jail because of her religious belief to not place her name, title, and authority on same-sex marriage licenses in Kentucky. Liberty Counsel successfully obtained her release six days later and continues to represent her.

After his election as governor, Matt Bevin issued an executive order accommodating her religious beliefs. In April 2016, the Kentucky legislature unanimously passed a law to accommodate the religious beliefs of all Kentucky clerks.

In 2015, Kim Davis was invited to the private meeting with the Pope after her release from jail. She attended and followed every instruction given to her about the meeting. Liberty Counsel held the public release about the meeting until it was authorized to release after the Pope finished his visit to the United States.

As a result of lies about the meeting coming from Lombardi and Rosica, Kim Davis and Liberty Counsel were ridiculed and maligned, because some media, relying upon the disinformation and spin of the Holy See Press Office, which is directly under the authority of Pope Francis, denied that a private meeting occurred.

This meeting occurred during the papal visit to Washington, DC on September 24, 2015, and within two weeks of the Synod on the Family in which some factions within the Catholic church sought to alter the church’s teaching on homosexuality. The private meeting with Kim Davis apparently ran counter to the narrative of some factions within the Catholic church, and, as a result, the Holy See Press Office lied about the meeting.

"For the first time in three years, the same Press Office officials of the Holy See, who lied about the private meeting, have now confirmed what Liberty Counsel has been stating: there was a private meeting with Kim Davis that was approved by the Pope who was aware of her religious stance regarding her refusal to issue marriage licenses that conflicted with God’s definition of marriage," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel.

"Efforts to downplay or distort the truth have been coming from the Vatican and continue about the private meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis. We are grateful that Archbishop Vigano has set forth the truth about the meeting. Attempts to discredit or attack him personally regarding this meeting have only served to reveal who was lying and who was telling the truth. It is disturbing that the Holy See Press Office, which had to include the Pope, sided with certain factions within the Catholic church seeking to change the church’s teachings and they were willing to lie about the meeting and malign an innocent person when the meeting was pre-approved," said Staver.

Maestro Aurelio Porfiri (born 1968 in Rome), Italian composer, choral conductor, organist, educator, author and publisher,
has published over 30 books and 600 articles, recorded over 10 CD albums, and has over 100 musical compositions in print.
Read more about him on
aurelioporfiri.com/biography-works/about-me/
His Chorabooks recently published, among others, Aldo Maria Valli’s Uno sguardo nella notte: Ripensando Benedetto XVI
With a Foreword by Mario Tosatti. Since April this year, he has become a regular contributor to Tosatti’s blogsite, STILUM CURIAE, with ‘Dispacci dalla Cina’, reports on the Church in China from his sojourns in HongKong and Macau where he has regular commitments as musician and music professor. China and other important issues regarding Bergoglio's administration of the Church and non-shepherding (or deliberate misdirection) of his flock have been pushed to the backburner in the light of the McCarrick-Philadelphia report-Vigano expose concatenation. The following is Porifir's 17th China dispatch to Tosatti.

How McCarrick sought to obstruct
Cardinal Zen’s meeting with President Bush
Translated from

Sept. 3, 2018

Maestro Aurelio Porfiri is in HongKong again and has sent us a new dispatch that is laden with news as usual. His first report is particularly interesting because it is most relevant to current events in the Church. It is about the role that then Cardinal McCarrick played on the China-Vatican issue, in particular, his sympathies with the Patriotic Association [which is, in effect, China’s ‘national Catholic church’].

Let us not forget that – as Mons. Vigano says in his Testimony – the pope's first gesture of rehabilitating the predator prelate after Benedict XVI’s private sanctions was to send him on a mission to China [presumably to advance the Bergoglio agenda of establishing at whatever cost a détente with Beijing that would enable Bergoglio to be the first pope ever to visit China]. Here is Porfiri’s dispatch:



Mark Simon is an American Catholic who lives in Hongkong and is very critical of how Beijing has been governing this former British crown colony. He is a managing editor with a local media outlet, and from what he writes, he appears to be very well-informed about what takes place here and abroad. One of his recent tweets sparked my curiosity.

On August 28, he tweeted: “2006, visit with Cardinal Zen as courtesy call - McCarrick lobbied furiously for us not to see President Bush. Later in day when Zen saw Negroponte at State Dept. We were informed by State that McCarrick thought Zen overstating case”. On other occasions, Simon had pointed out McCarrick’s close relations with the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. In short, a thread runs through all this.

McCarrick has been one of the negotiators for Bergoglio who has most often been to China. Even in 2005, in an interview with Gianni Cardinale, he was already advocating the line that the current pope has taken about China, namely an ‘unfavorable agreement’ with Beijing as the ‘best way’ to resolve the conflict with China about the Vatican’s authority over the Catholic Church in China. Of course, the current crisis, in which McCarrick is among the prime protagonists, has seemed to push aside the China problem and other problems facing the Church.

About this, I have heard from an authoritative source that there may be an announcement on the China-Vatican situation this month (September). My source has access to inside happenings at levels much higher than those to which I have personal access. Perhaps, the announement may be postponed in view of the storm now raging in the Church on account of scandals and various revelations. We shall see.

Five-year Sinicization plan
Meanwhile, Beijing’s five-year plan to sinicize the Catholic Church in China – about which Fr Bernardo Cervellera has written in AsiaNews, and on which I commented for AsiaNews on how this would affect music and liturgy – simply confirms what many have been observing: that the Chinese government is seeking anxiously to control the various religious organizations in China to guarantee a stability that it sees threatened by any freedom of action given to those who profess a religious faith.

It always seems to come back to a juxtaposition between them and us, between China and the West, a juxtaposition with historical reasons that have been well studied in a book by Perry Johansson of the University of Hongkong. Which is basically what was reaffirmed by Wang Zuo-an, director of Beijing’s Office for Religious Affairs, on the Communist Party newspaper Qiushi and reported by HongKong’s Sunday Examiner: that foreign powers must stay away from religions in China.

On why China is not Christian
I asked Fr Jean-Pierre Charbonnier, a noted sinologist with the foreign missions, why China never became a Christian nation. He explained it this way:

---

“Chinese civilization is very refined. It has a strong basis in moral virtue and a drive for self-perfection. But it lacks a sense of human limitations and condemns forgiveness as a shameful weakness. Offenses must always be avenged. The Chinese do not want to lose face by confessing their mistakes. They do not have a sense of sin. On the other hand, Christian faith would demolish such arrogance. And if Christianity has been slow to progress in China, this is due in large part to the non-Christian actions of Westerners in China”.

---

Of course, one cannot deny that throughout history, Westerners in China have not always been exemplary in showing Christian witness. But I would also underscore the centrality of the cultural factors cited by Fr Charbonnier.

Other information
The five major religious organizations in China have reportedly proposed to fly the Chinese flag over all their places of worship and to promote ceremonies honoring that flag during major religious festivities, according to the China Christian Daily on August 7.

In Catholic Independent News on August 27, there is an article reporting on the ‘intensification’ of relations between China and the Vatican under the reigning pope, with the broadcasting of documentaries about the ‘Catholic Church in China’ [Presumably, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. One wonders whether the underground church gets any mention at all.]

In the context of an unprecedented tightening the screws on advocates for human rights, the University of Beijing has expelled two HongKong lawyers, provoking a strong protest from the Bar Association of HongKong.

In other news, although we are always told that the Chinese economy is in continuous growth, a recent article in AsiaNews questions this: “The Chinese statistics office says that corporations are analyzed by sampling. But sources say the sampling cherrypicks the firms that are most ‘virtuous’. In fact, the sampled firms are never made known. The ‘manipulated’ statistics have to do with the country’s largest industries, retail merchandising, electrical consumption, and carbon production. This year, once again, the statistics office is encountering great difficulties to reconcile the data from the various regions and provinces with the overall projection for the Gross National Product”.

“May Thy continual mercy, O Lord,
cleanse and defend Thy Church”
Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Rev. Canon Aaron B. Huberfeld
Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest
Posted by Peter Kwasniewski on

September 4,2018

---

It is always a joy to speak to you after the General Chapter of the Institute, when we priests have been filled with valuable counsels and words of encouragement from our superiors as we begin another year of priestly ministry. Those words could not be more timely, as are the divinely inspired lessons we receive from today’s Mass.

Like you, dear faithful, all loyal priests of Christ are tempted at this moment to be discouraged, despondent, angry and ashamed.

We have all had enough of false mercy, of this criminal abuse of so holy a word. True mercy does not turn its back on sin; does not cover up sin; does not say sin is not sin.

The Church today is a weeping widow! The widow of whom the Gospel speaks today is not a woman mourning the death of her husband. No, apart from Good Friday, the Church does not weep for her Divine Spouse, for He has risen and can die no more. No!

Holy Mother Church today weeps for her sons, lying in the death of mortal sin! The Gentle Healer is at hand, ready to restore them to life, if only they have the humility to accept the need for healing.

As the prayer of today’s Mass tells us, the true mercy of Christ cleanses and defends. To the ailing son who begs of Christ this true mercy, He whispers to him, be of good courage; thy sins are forgiven thee; be made clean – and, go and sin no more.

Of the twelve apostles, we note that one betrayed, one denied, nine slipped away, and one stood by at the Cross. That is a terrifying statistic indeed for the Church hierarchy – roughly eight percent traitors, eight percent shameful cowards, seventy-five percent careful cowards, and eight percent courageous and faithful.

But remember that all the cowards returned to Christ and died the holy death of martyrs! The answer to those who seem to be standing in the sidelines is not bitterness and harsh judgment, but prayer and encouragement.

To those of you who are angry, I say, good, be angry. Know that I and countless other priests are angry right along with you, and we hunger and thirst for justice.

We know the Lord is not mocked, and so we cry out, Arise, Lord, and judge Thy cause! But let us not forget the importance of true mercy. Let us heed the words of the Apostle which we hear today: If a brother is in any fault, correct him in a spirit of gentleness, taking heed lest you also be tempted.

Think about all the faithful priests you know, around the world or right here in this diocese. I am thinking right now of all my generous and zealous fellow priests in the Institute of Christ the King, and the young and cheerful faces of all our seminarians in formation. You cannot look into their eyes and honestly think that the Catholic Church is finished.

Thank the bishops who are standing up for what is right, and don’t hesitate to write to others and gently remind them that you’re counting on them to do likewise.

A word to all you young men considering the priesthood: do not be afraid to answer the call! The real men are still here, and we’re waiting for you. You are joining the greatest army that marches upon this earth: the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Be thankful that He is calling you to such an honor.

Like so many other priests, I take courage in this hour when I see your faith. You continue to come to Mass, request Masses, flood the confessional line, call priests to your hospital beds, raise your children in the true Faith and teach them to believe in the priesthood of Christ, the only religion that brings salvation.

And so, let us be patient with one another, encourage one another. Bear one another’s burdens, and so you shall fulfill the law of Christ. Let us do good to all men, but especially to those who are of the household of the faith.

Each one shall bear his own burden – each one shall have his own dread moment before the judgment seat of Christ. But if we have sown in the spirit – if we have placed ourselves before the true mercy of Christ which cleanses and defends us, then we shall not despair of seeing the triumph of Holy Mother Church, and reap life everlasting. Amen.

---

Still keeping my fingers crossed over whether it's really 'different now', as Fr H argues:

It's different now

4 September 2018

The Dubia ... the Filial Correction ... how shy the clergy were about associating themselves with these initiatives.

But, with Viganogate, a number of bishops have been very willing to call for a proper investigation.

Why the change?

Of course, the major difference is that by softening the Church's witness against Adultery, PF was moving in the direction of fashionable assumptions held in the World. The Media, for the most part, would be overwhelmingly in favour of such a 'modernising' stance. The same is likely to be true of any softening of the Church's witness on homosexuality. And PF's views on the Death Penalty fit comfortably with the liberal Western Zeitgeist.

In these matters, the pope was easily seen as moving in line with a 'soft' consensus. And one has to admit that the so-called 'modernising' views are held by very many Catholics.

The problem now is clerical sexual abuse of minors or of the vulnerable, accompanied by a veritable industry of prelatical cover-ups.
- These are not subjects with which the Media are comfortable and relaxed [Oh yes, they have been pretty cavalier and almost totally acritical of any abuses happening outside the Catholic Church and where no Catholic priests or bishops are involved! Unless it is a celebrity scandal like that of Coach Paterno in Pennsylvania.]
- Nor is child-abuse nearly as acceptable and agreeable to the laity.

"Giving a second chance to people whose first marriages have broken down" ... that seemed kind, merciful, and modern. Not so sex abuse, cover-up, pay-outs, and silence clauses.

And in the secular sphere, it is commonplace for 'investigative journalism' to hunt down 'cover-ups' and 'hypocrisy'. The Vigano event plays into this culture and these assumptions. [But 'investigative journalism' is suddenly nowhere to be found!]

So, all of a sudden, PF has lost the PR initiative [Has he, really? When the major media have closed ranks trying to protect and defend him while trying their damnedest to crucify Vigano as the bigtime villain of our age!] which has passed to his critics.

This, surely, is why there is such incandescent rage among his cronies. They have been suddenly cast into an unfamiliar and uncomfortable position. Riding on the crest of a 'Francis is Merciful' campaign was rather fun. Being asked why their pope is so shy, so unwilling to answer questions about a rather horrible sexual scandal, is not at all what they thought they were signed up to.

And it is easier for bishops to call for 'transparency' and 'full disclosure' than it was for them to 'split hairs' in the realm of moral theology, and to discuss the finer points of the 'doctrine' of 'Development'. In Amoris laetitia and his Synods, PF followed his declared policy of 'creating a mess', of getting others to create facts which he would then be able to interpret and push forward.

This immensely civilised PR policy for advancing heresy is unavailable now that the PR imperative is to distance PF from sex abuse and cover-ups. PF, and his rabble of shifty time-servers, find their backs right up against the wall; room for manoeuvre there is none.

In this abuse crisis, schmaltzy Viennese smiles and condescending advice to go away and read Newman will not solve the problems of an angry (albeit hypocritical) world, or of a bewildered and highly distressed laity.

(Maybe this would not quite be the moment for Archbishop Fernandez to produce a new and augmented Second Edition of his Manual on Kissing with a commending preface by PF.)

Yet the teaching found in Amoris laetitia, and the immorality disclosed out by Archbishop Vigano's 'Testimony', are essentially the same. The completely and radically flawed 'lenient'and laxist ethical casuistry proposed for the comfort of German adulterers could, with perfect logic and fairness, be called in aid by paedophiles.

After all, there have been human societies in which paederasty and ephebophilia have been socially acceptable and on public display. They attracted their own extensive and distinctive romantic literature. I, of course, and my readers, will regard such ideas and such cultures with visceral disgust or with reasoned contempt. But the Vigano 'Testimony' has left PF and his faction without a leg to stand on.

Perhaps they do not read Hesiod in Argentine schools; maybe young Jorge never heard about Pandora and her pithos (jar). But it will be as difficult as ever it was to get the poma (lid) back on the pithos. [NB: the original myth referred to the container of the trapped ills as a pithos or jar, not a box.]

We shall have much characteristically Bergoglian bluster. We may again see the sort of bullying which raised its ugly head after the Correctio even in 'civilised' countries like Austria and Britain.

But this must, surely, be ... if not the Beginning of the End, at least the End of the Beginning.

Because, at last, a hitherto largely quiescent episcopate is showing signs of becoming restive and audible. Extreme measures, even extreme language, against bishops who call for Facts and Accountability and who want to find out Who knew What When, would hardly chime with the public mood.

The Viper in the Vatican
An excerpt from
The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy
by Henry Sire
Reprinted with permission from Regnery Publishing

September 4, 2018

It seems that Pope Francis himself has begun to realize the dangerous ground into which his "mess-creating" philosophy is taking him. He is reported to have remarked just before Christmas 2016: "It is not impossible that I will go down in history as the one who split the Catholic Church."

The thought has not escaped those around him, and in March 2017 the British newspaper The Times published an article under the headline "Anti-reform cardinals 'want the Pope to quit.'"

The article quoted Italian journalist Antonio Socci: "A large part of the cardinals who voted for him are very worried and the curia ... which organized his election and has accompanied him thus far, without ever dissociating itself from him, is cultivating the idea of a moral suasion to persuade him to retire."

These "anti-reform" cardinals (note how media orthodoxy defines those who doubt Francis) are said to number about a dozen, and what exercises them is the fear of a schism created by the Pope. It is also an omen that in the late months of 2016 a theological study on the possibility of deposing a pope was reported to be making the rounds of the Vatican.

Those who are shocked to hear Francis described as a dictator would not question the fact that he is the most politically minded pope to come to the throne for many centuries. This characterization is not a libel of his enemies but is emphasized by so unqualified an admirer as Austen Ivereigh.

We need to understand that the key to Francis's reckless style — the indifference to reform, the tyrannical acts, the feverish quest for popular approval — is that his prime concern is not in fact the government of the Church.

Ivereigh has traced in detail Francis's ambition to make himself a political world leader; he set out with a bombastic vision of the "decadence" of Europe which would be exploited by Latin America to reassert itself, and his dream was to rally the continent into "la patria grande" (the great fatherland) to challenge the imperialist dominance of the United States.

This objective was behind his appointment as secretary of state of Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who had been a much-praised papal nuncio to Mexico and Venezuela, and he was set to work to bind the continent together under the aegis of the Holy See. The actual results have been analyzed by an Italian journalist:

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The image of Francis, who had chances to establish himself as "moral leader of the continent" ... is rapidly going into crisis, despite the outstanding work of the Secretary of State Parolin: in Cuba ...Vatican diplomacy is stumbling; in Colombia the peace referendum was lost ruinously because the country's Protestants sabotaged it; in Venezuela all political sides agree that the Vatican's peace-making effort has worsened rather than improved the situation; and finally in Brazil, after the success of the world youth day, Rio de Janeiro has a mayor who is a Protestant bishop, anti-Catholic, and above all critical of the Episcopal Conference.

---

The election of Donald Trump shattered the assumptions on which Francis's political strategy was based. With all its macho Latin American rhetoric, the plan depended on the presence in the White House of a liberal president willing to abase himself (or herself) to Latin American claims. It collapses before a president whose response to troublemakers beyond the Rio Grande is to build a wall against them.

That is why in 2016 Pope Francis staked all his chips on a Clinton presidency. Those around him, beginning with Cardinal Parolin, told him that Donald Trump had no hope of winning, and on Francis's orders, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) helped finance Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. (It is now being said that the money used for it came from Peter's Pence, the donations of the faithful made supposedly for charitable purposes.)

Francis also intervened in the campaign by word, implicitly accusing Trump of not being a Christian. When Trump won, Francis was furious with his advisors. This may be one reason why Cardinal Parolin has lost favor: [Has he? Did he ever? Or does it matter? He seems to have done very well in re-establishing the Secretariat of State as the Vatican's premier office stronger than ever after the temporary 'anomaly' of administrative powers initially granted by Bergoglio to the now lameduck Secretariat of the Economy. Indeed he has done so well that Vaticanistas like Magister think he has made headway in securing himself the leading post-Bergoglio papabile.] He proved himself fallible on predicting outcomes in the United States, and he has failed to deliver the goods in Latin America.

The global scene in which Francis had pictured his triumph has changed out of recognition. With the rapprochement between the United States and Russia, and with Britain leaving the European Union, Germany and France are left huddled together, trying to protect the tatters of the liberal world order, an order in which Francis had wished to cast himself as the high priest. He now faces what is, for him, a political fiasco.

The White House has strong cards to play against the Vatican, and one may be surprised that it has so far held back from playing them. It is known that the CIA was monitoring the Conclave of 2013, and the thought that the American government might make use of its knowledge is said to be causing sleepless nights in the Curia.

With the failure of the Holy See to reform its criminal financial structures, for which the evidence mounts day by day, one can readily imagine international financial bodies, led by America, deciding that enough is enough. The brutal dismissal in June 2017 of Libero Milone, the Vatican's auditor general, who is not without friends in America, might prove the final provocation.

The fundamental reason for this predicament is that Francis has gone beyond his limits. He is a clever politician — the cleverest to occupy the papal throne for centuries, well able to run rings round unsuspecting churchmen like Cardinals Burke, Sarah and Müller — but as a world statesman he is out of his league.

And while he may be a gifted politician within his limits, the Catholic Church requires higher talents than those of a Peronist party boss. More observers are becoming aware of this fact.

Bergoglio ignored or covered up priestly sex abuses
in Argentina before becoming pope, documentary shows
by Maike Hickson


September 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – German national TV channel ZDF is rerunning a documentary produced last year that claims that Pope Francis, as Archbishop Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, ignored cries for justice from abuse victims in his diocese.

The documentary is now gaining traction in the fallout of Archbishop Viganò’s testimony that the Pope covered-up the abuse of now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. [But how come we are hearing about it for the first time? Hickson diligently reports for Anglophones any significant church news reported or commented on in the German media, but even she never brought up this documentary before now. Was it that underplayed and unnoticed - and why, given the nature of its findings? Because Bergoglio even has the German media in his thrall? What made ZDF undertake the documentary at all, to begin with?]

The documentary also claims that then-Archbishop Bergoglio, prior to becoming the pope, participated in the unsuccessful defense of a priest accused of abuse. That priest has now been imprisoned for 15 years after he was found guilty of sexually abusing children.

Now, in light of the Viganò report, the documentary by Martin Boudot has been aired again and is now making the rounds in the German-speaking world. The documentary, titled “The Silence of the Shepherds,” won the 2017 Prix Europa for best European documentary. [Imagine that! And we still never heard about it.] It is available in the U.S. under the title “Sex Abuse in the Church: the Code of Silence.”

The documentary makes the case that many priests accused of sexual abuse were merely transferred by their bishops to other countries so as to avoid prosecution. The second half of the documentary highlights Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio's own conduct in Buenos Aires.

The film quotes a 2010 book titled in French Sur la terre comme au ciel (On Heaven and Earth) co-authored by Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio and Rabbi Abraham Skorka. In this book, Bergoglio stated that in his diocese there were no pedophile priests, according to the film.

LifeSiteNews found that specific quote on page 50 of the English version. Here is what Jorge Bergoglio as archbishop says when speaking about pedophile priests:

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“Now, when it happens, you can never turn a blind eye. You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.” “In my diocese it never happened to me,” Bergoglio added. He then described what counsel he once gave to a fellow bishop who had such a case. “I told him to take away the priest's faculties, not to permit him to exercise his priestly ministry again, and to initiate a canonical trial.”

---

When Bergoglio became Pope Francis in 2013, he appears to have ignored his own advice. This is evidenced in the case of known-child molester Fr. Mauro Inzoli, whom the Pope, against the advice of Cardinal Gerhard Müller, reinstated with full priestly faculties. [Only to re-laicize him after a civilian court found Inzoli guilty of multiple counts of sex abuse.]

The documentary reveals, however, how Bergoglio himself, when writing his 2010 book, had indeed had such a case of a pedophile priest in a neighboring diocese and that he was intimately involved in the case. It is the now-infamous Father Julio César Grassi who has been imprisoned for 15 years because of his abuse of children who were entrusted to his care in the “Happy Children Foundation” orphanage.

The documentary also highlighted six alleged victims of abuse who all claimed that then-Archbishop Bergoglio never answered their own specific complaints when they wrote to him as the archbishop of Buenos Aires.

When asked by the documentary journalists whether or not they ever received an answer, they all shook their heads in the negative. Asked about the above-quoted statement that Bergoglio never having a pedophile priest in his diocese and whether he says here the truth, one abuse victim, a woman, answered: “He wants people to believe that, but it is a lie.”

Despite contacting the future pope with allegations against abusive priests, “none of us” received an answer, was the reply by one abuse victim.

“He receives all the celebrities like Leonardo diCaprio” continued a woman, “but for us, not even a quick letter to say he was sorry.”

“I don't expect anything from him. I do not believe in him,” added another woman.

A third woman explained: “I suffered a lot, and I'm very disappointed.” This woman spoke with tears in her eyes: “Because the Pope did nothing when he was archbishop here.” “Everyone told me,” she continued, “write to him, he's bound to reply. But nothing.”

Reflecting on these replies, the commentator said: “As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis was seemingly deaf to the distress of these victims.”

As the documentary continues, highlighting other cases of victims, some put forward their belief that Bergoglio “willfully tried to divert the course of justice.”

Reference was here made to Father Grassi. “The Argentinian Church did all in its power to have him acquitted,” explained the speaker. Juan Pablo Gallego, the defense attorney of the abuse victims, pointed out that the Argentine bishops in 2010 – after the first punitive sentence was spoken about Grassi – had asked a penal law professor (Marcelo A. Sancinetti) to conduct a study, which was compiled in a confidential dossier for internal use, dealing with the Grassi case.

This dossier, which was called “Studies on the Grassi Case” and contained 2,800 pages, came to the conclusion that “the court was wrong,” that Grassi was innocent and therefore should be acquitted. The author also claimed that the abused children spread “falsifications, lies, deceit and invention.”

This study, as the documentary pointed out, was made on behalf of the Argentine bishops under the leadership of Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio, who was, at that time, also the President of the Argentine Bishops' Conference (2005-2011). This information is written on the back cover of the dossier. “So the Pope,” the speaker in the documentary concluded, “did then commission a counter-inquiry to try to have a priest who had been sentenced for pedophilia acquitted.”

“And it is said,” the narrator of the documentary continued, “that Jorge Bergoglio, the future Pope, actually sent it to the judges, with a shrewd sense of timing, before Father Grassi's various appeal hearings.”

Carlos Mahiques was one of these judges. In an interview for this documentary, he made it clear that this study, as ordered by Bergoglio, “is in some areas partial, and extremely partial in others,” and that is why he, as judge, did not allow himself to be influenced by it.

“It was clearly in favor of Father Grassi,” the judge said. “They were trying to exert a subtle form of pressure on the judges.” When asked whether he thought the Church tried to influence the judges, Mahiques replied: “That's totally correct.”

In an interview in the documentary with one of the abuse victims of Father Grassi, it becomes clear that Grassi claimed to stand under the protection of Bergoglio.

“Bergoglio never let go of my hand,” are Grassi's words quoted by the abuse victim who claimed to have heard them from Grassi himself. The victim continued, saying that Bergoglio now “is Pope Francis, but he has never gone against Grassi’s words. So I’m certain that he never did let go of Grassi’s hand!”

The documentary states that, Bergoglio, as Pope Francis “never publicly commented on the Grassi case.” The journalists themselves had tried for eight months to obtain an interview with the pontiff on the subject, but to no avail.

Since they failed, the journalists stood in line at Saint Peter's during one of the papal audiences and were able to call out to Pope Francis: “Your Holiness! Your Holiness, in the Grassi case, did you try to influence Argentine justice?”



Pope Francis, with a stunned face (caught on film here in the documentary), replied “No!” The journalists continued, saying: “No? Then why did you commission a counter-inquiry?” The Pope responded, with a similar face: “I never did.” The documentary then asks: “How can the Catholic Church retrieve itself from these guilty silences?”

Grassi was until recently still on the official list of the diocese of Morón, a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires (on today's list, however, his name is missing). It appears that Grassi was never laicized, at least not under Bergoglio.

Apparently, the documentary does not include the Bishop Maccarone case (Bergoglio's own Mccarrickone!) or Hickson would have brought it up.
So far, only Church Militant, LifeSite and 1Peter5 have chosen to report at all on Bergoglio's record of dealing with sex-offender priests and bishops before he became pope.

A reader of Rod Dreher's blog sent him the ff:

Why Archbishop Viganò
is almost certainly telling the truth
by Edward Feser
on his blog
September 5, 2018

There are five considerations that seem to me to make it very likely that Archbishop Viganò’s testimony is truthful. To be sure, given how numerous and detailed are the claims he makes, it would not be surprising if he has gotten certain particulars wrong. And perhaps in his passion he has inadvertently overstated things here and there. But the main claims are probably true. I certainly do not believe he is lying. The reasons are these:

1. The deafening silence of Pope Francis

Pope Francis has been accused of grave offenses by a churchman of high stature who was in an optimal position to know about the matters in question. Yet he has refused to deny the charges or to comment on the matter at all. That is simply not the way one would expect a person to act if such charges against him were false. You would expect him immediately, clearly, and vigorously to deny the charges.

Some of his defenders suggest that the pope is merely exhibiting a Christ-like lack of concern for his own reputation. He is not defending himself, so the claim goes, any more than Christ defended himself against those who crucified him. Yet the pope has defended himself in other contexts. For example, he has defended himself against the accusation that he is a communist and against charges that he failed to speak out forcefully enough during Argentina’s “dirty war.” After he was criticized by some on the Left for meeting with Kim Davis in 2015, the Vatican issued a statement asserting that “his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects.” In 2016, the pope defended himself against criticism of his refusal to associate Islam with violence. In 2017, he defended himself against criticism of his comparison of migrant camps to concentration camps.

So, the thesis that the pope prefers to “turn the other cheek” rather than answer critics simply doesn’t withstand scrutiny. He does answer them, sometimes. Why, then, would he not defend himself against the far more serious charges now at issue, leveled by an accuser far more eminent than some of the critics the pope has answered in the past?

Furthermore, it is not merely the pope’s own reputation that is at stake. The good of the Church is at stake. There is, as people on both sides of the controversy have noted, a kind of “civil war” brewing in the Church. The pope could help prevent that if he would only respond to the archbishop’s charges. Yet he has not done so.

Pope Francis’s defenders demand that the archbishop back up his charges with evidence. But the archbishop has told us where the evidence is. For example, he has told us that relevant documentation can be found in the files of the Secretariat of State at the Vatican and at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington.

Now, the pope himself has more power than anyone else does to make sure that this evidence is released. He could order Vatican officials to release whatever relevant documents they have, and order local church officials to do the same. And if that evidence would exonerate him, you would think that this is exactly what he would do. Yet he has not done so.

Moreover, at least some of Archbishop Viganò’s charges have to do with private conversations he says he had with Pope Francis. The archbishop’s own testimony about these conversations is evidence. If we want further evidence, only Pope Francis can give it, in the form of his own testimony about the conversations. Yet he refuses to comment.

Again, this is not the way one would expect someone to act against whom false charges have been made – which supports the conclusion that the charges are not false.

2. The apparent silence of Pope Benedict

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has not commented on any of the doctrinal controversies of the past five years, even though he must surely disapprove of some of what Pope Francis is widely claimed to have taught. For example, though Benedict has made it clear enough that he does not agree with the policy of admitting couples in invalid marriages to Holy Communion, he has remained silent about the controversy over Amoris Laetitia. The best explanation is that Benedict does not want to say anything that might inadvertently promote schism. Better in his view, apparently, to leave doctrinal confusion to be sorted out by a future pope than to split the Church apart.

Now, the current controversy is itself something that threatens to split the Church apart. Since Benedict seems to fear that outcome most of all, you would expect him to act in a way that is in his judgment most likely to prevent it.

So, suppose Archbishop Viganò is lying about the sanctions he claims Benedict imposed privately on Cardinal McCarrick. Then Benedict could correct the record and more or less end the current crisis. He wouldn’t even have to accuse the archbishop of lying. He could phrase his remarks in a way that simply asserts that what Viganò is saying is mistaken. Viganò’s credibility would be severely damaged, his defenders would have the wind taken out of their sails, and Pope Francis’s credibility would be largely restored at least in many people’s minds. In other words, the threat of schism would be greatly reduced.

But suppose Archbishop Viganò is telling the truth. Then, if Benedict publicly confirms this, he will vindicate the archbishop’s credibility and thereby do grave damage to Pope Francis. Indeed, such an act would be perceived by many as intended to damage Pope Francis. This would certainly greatly increase the possibility of schism, since many Catholics would see this as a war of popes – some rallying behind Benedict, others behind Francis. The very idea must be horrifying to Benedict, and rightly so.

So, if Benedict is worried about schism, then his silence seems much more comprehensible on the hypothesis that Viganò is telling the truth than it is on the hypothesis that what Viganò is saying is false.

Now, it may be that Benedict has tried to comment in a subtle and indirect way on the controversy. In a summary of developments since the release of Viganò’s testimony, Catholic News Agency notes that “a source close to Benedict” told reporter Edward Pentin that “as far as the former pope could remember” he had made a “private request” that McCarrick keep a “low profile,” where this differs from a “formal decree.”

If this communication was made at Benedict’s behest – and we don’t know that for sure – then this might be interpreted as the former pope’s way of finessing the difficulty of having to choose between either confirming Viganò’s testimony and thereby hurting Pope Francis, or undermining that testimony and thereby hurting Viganò. For on the one hand, the insinuation that Benedict does not clearly remember what happened but that in any case there was no formal decree seems to help Pope Francis. But on the other hand, the assertion that there was a private request to McCarrick that he keep a low profile confirms the gist of Viganò’s allegation.

Some of Pope Francis’s defenders are spinning Pentin’s report as if it undermined Viganò, but it does not do so. Viganò never said there was a formal decree against McCarrick in the sense of the imposition of sanctions as the outcome the standard formal investigative process. His whole point was that the action against McCarrick was something done privately by Pope Benedict rather than a matter of following ordinary disciplinary proceedings. As some commentators have pointed out, this would be similar to the way Benedict dealt with the disgraced Fr. Marcial Maciel.

Some have also claimed that the fact that McCarrick carried out some public actions in the years after Benedict’s alleged imposition of sanctions undermines Viganò’s story. Again, that is not the case. As Rod Dreher points out, the answer to this is that “McCarrick defied the pope’s order. One main theme of the Viganò statement is that these curial cardinals and their allies (Wuerl, McCarrick, et al.) are laws unto themselves.”

The bottom line is that Pentin’s source confirms that Benedict did take private action against McCarrick, just as Viganò said. So, either Pope Benedict has in this indirect and subtle way confirmed part of Viganò’s story, or (if the communication to Pentin was not made at the former pope’s behest) he has remained entirely silent on the controversy, which for the reasons I have given is more comprehensible on the supposition that Viganò is telling the truth. Either way, Benedict’s actions support the truth of Viganò’s testimony.

3. Archbishop Viganò’s concern for his own place in history and his immortal soul

Archbishop Viganò has very conservative theological views. Indeed, his critics insist on emphasizing this point, since they accuse him of having a grudge against a pope widely perceived to be theologically liberal.

Now, among the things any Catholic with very conservative theological views would believe is the Church’s traditional teaching that lying is always and intrinsically sinful, even when done for a good cause – and that it is always mortally sinful when the lie concerns a serious matter, such as another person’s reputation.

Another thing that Catholics with very conservative theological views believe is that while popes are fallible when not speaking ex cathedra, they ought always to be treated with great reverence, even when they are in error. A bad pope is not like the leader of some political faction with which one disagrees. Rather, he is like an errant father. He does not cease to be your father even when he does something bad, and his bad behavior gives no license for treating him with contempt. Even though he may under certain circumstances be criticized by his subordinates, this must be done only with caution and respect, the way a son might plead with his father to reconsider some unwise policy or to cease some abusive behavior.

A third thing that is true of Catholics with conservative theological beliefs is that they tend to have a very romantic view of Church history, and a supernatural one. They see it as an epic story of great saints who obey the divine law even at the cost of their own lives but who are always vindicated in the end; of evildoers who, however seemingly invincible, are always ultimately exposed and undone; and of the divine providence that guarantees these outcomes even when, humanly speaking, all seems lost.

They do not see Church history as fundamentally driven by grubby power politics. They do not see the saints as cynical and clever manipulators who get the edge over their opponents by ruthless means. No Catholic with traditional theological views looks back at the days of Pope Honorius, the Western Schism, or the Borgia popes and thinks: “If only I had been there, I would have come up with a very clever lie that would have saved the day!” Any traditionally-minded Catholic would see this as blasphemous presumption – the doing of evil for the sake of a good end, as if God were incapable of saving his Church in any other way.

Now, suppose Archbishop Viganò were lying. Then he would be committing what he knows to be a mortal sin, because he would be slandering no less than the Vicar of Christ. And he would be committing new mortal sins every time he reiterates these charges, as he has done in the days since he first released his testimony. Nor, as he would know, would sacramental confession wipe away his guilt under these circumstances, because if he were committed to a policy of persisting in this lie, he would lack the firm purpose of amendment that is a condition of being absolved.

If the archbishop were lying, he would also be guilty of contempt for the Vicar of Christ himself, and comparable to a son who humiliates his father and treats him the way he would treat a political enemy. And the archbishop would also be putting himself at grave risk of being remembered as one of the great villains of Church history – a Judas-like figure who slandered a pope and divided the Church. Even worse, he would be putting his immortal soul at grave risk of eternal damnation.

Secular readers and liberal Catholics might think this all very quaint and melodramatic. But the point is that this is the way a traditionally-minded Catholic would see things. In particular, it is the way Archbishop Viganò must see things, given that – as his critics themselves keep insisting – he has what they consider reactionary theological opinions.

Note that it is no good to respond by pointing out (as some have) that the archbishop once said some nice things about McCarrick at a public event, as if this were evidence that he is a liar. Viganò is a diplomat, and the job of a diplomat is to be diplomatic. Everybody knows that at public events, speakers will often say complimentary things about others in the room whether or not they really mean them, as a matter of politeness. This falls under the category of what moral theologians call a “broad mental reservation” rather than a lie, because the nature of the speech act is such that the ordinary listener is well aware that in such a context the speaker might just be being polite and not intending to speak the literal truth.

The archbishop’s testimony is not like that at all, because what he is doing in that context is precisely claiming to reveal literal truths. If what he is saying there is not true, it would be a lie and not a mere mental reservation.

But, again, to believe that the archbishop is lying in his testimony is to believe that he would be willing to do something that, by his own lights, would risk eternal damnation and perpetual infamy – all because he is irked about the Kim Davis affair or other relatively trivial matters. That is simply not plausible. The theological conservatism Viganò’s critics insist on emphasizing in fact makes it less likely that he would lie, not more likely.

4. Pope Francis’s record

As Sandro Magister, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, and others have noted, rehabilitating Cardinal McCarrick would in fact not be all that surprising given Pope Francis’s record. For example, Cardinal Godfried Danneels notoriously tried to protect a pedophile bishop from being exposed. As Pentin notes, Danneels also:

advised the king of Belgium to sign an abortion law in 1990… and refused to forbid pornographic, “educational” materials being used in Belgian Catholic schools. He also once said same-sex “marriage” was a “positive development” and congratulated the Belgian government for passing same-sex “marriage” legislation, although he has sought to distinguish such a union from the Church’s understanding of marriage.

End quote. Yet Danneels was invited by Pope Francis to appear on the balcony with him when his election was announced, and the pope appointed Danneels to a key position at the 2015 Synod on the Family.

Former Los Angeles archbishop Cardinal Roger Mahony was, in 2013, disciplined by his successor for his mishandling of clergy sexual abuse cases in the archdiocese. But earlier this year, Pope Francis appointed Mahony as a special envoy – though Mahony eventually withdrew in the wake of protests from the laity.

Then there is the case of Fr. Mauro Inzoli. As Michael Brendan Dougherty reported last year in The Week:

Inzoli… [was] accused of molesting children. He allegedly abused minors in the confessional. He even went so far as to teach children that sexual contact with him was legitimated by scripture and their faith. When his case reached CDF, he was found guilty. And in 2012, under the papacy of Pope Benedict, Inzoli was defrocked.

But [Inzoli] was "with cardinal friends," we have learned. Cardinal Coccopalmerio and Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto, now dean of the Roman Rota, both intervened on behalf of Inzoli, and Pope Francis returned him to the priestly state in 2014, inviting him to a “a life of humility and prayer.” These strictures seem not to have troubled Inzoli too much. In January 2015, [he] participated in a conference on the family in Lombardy.

This summer, civil authorities finished their own trial of Inzoli, convicting him of eight offenses. Another 15 lay beyond the statute of limitations. The Italian press hammered the Vatican, specifically the CDF, for not sharing the information they had found in their canonical trial with civil authorities. Of course, the pope himself could have allowed the CDF to share this information with civil authorities if he so desired.

End quote. Another case: Msgr. Battista Ricca, The Telegraph reports, “had a string of homosexual affairs that forced his recall from an overseas posting.” But, as Fr. Longenecker comments, even after the exposure of this history, Ricca “still works in the Vatican running the St Martha Hostel where the Pope lives and (as far as I can ascertain) still works at the Vatican Bank.”

Especially controversial was Pope Francis’s handling of the case of Chilean Bishop Juan Barros, who is accused of covering up the sexual abuse of Fr. Fernando Karadima. Fr. Raymond de Souza’s account of the affair is worth quoting at length:

Barros… was promoted from being the military bishop to the Diocese of Osorno in 2015. Protests against this were voluble, and his installation Mass had to be cut short due to violent demonstrators in the cathedral. Most of his priests boycotted his arrival, and the rest of the members of the Chilean episcopate kept their distance.

Pope Francis, though, was determined to make a stand for Bishop Barros’ innocence. In 2015, in St. Peter’s Square, he accused the critics of the bishop of being politically manipulated by “leftists.” That episode – the haranguing Pope captured on video – is played constantly in Chile as an example of the Holy Father’s protection of Bishop Barros and his disdain for the concerns of victims…

The papal nuncio had arranged to have Bishop Barros resign; instead, the Pope confirmed his appointment and insisted upon it even in the face of the Chilean bishops’ vehement protest…

In the most disastrous press interview of his pontificate, Pope Francis told journalists in Chile that those who said Bishop Barros was guilty of a cover-up were guilty of “calumny.”

After that, not only did the Pope have no allies in the Chilean episcopate, but Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, a member of the papal-picked “Council of Cardinals” and head of the Papal Commission on the Sexual Abuse of Minors, took the astonishing step of publicly rebuking the Holy Father, saying that his words caused “great pain” for sexual-abuse victims. The rebuke by Cardinal O’Malley was unprecedented, all the more shocking given that he is considered a close papal ally.

Chastened, and knowing that in a public quarrel with Cardinal O’Malley his own credibility would be shredded, Pope Francis accepted the rebuke during the news conference on the plane home, saying that the cardinal’s statement was just.

End quote. One can only speculate about why the pope has taken such a lenient attitude toward the priests and prelates in question. One possibility is that he takes such a policy to follow from his well-known emphasis on mercy over law and justice. Another is that he regards the churchmen in question as theologically sympathetic allies, and is for that reason willing to overlook their actions. Whatever the reason, a rehabilitation of McCarrick, including a canceling out of whatever penalties were imposed privately by Pope Benedict, would not be surprising given this history.

Pope Francis’s response to other criticism he has received over the last few years is also relevant to the current controversy. He has repeatedly refused to respond even to respectful pleas from eminent churchmen and theologians to clarify his sometimes doctrinally ambiguous statements, even though a clarification would instantly defuse criticism. For example, in response to the controversy over the implications of Amoris Laetitia, the pope could easily say: “Of course it is always wrong for a couple who are not in a valid marriage to engage in sexual relations. In no way is Amoris meant to deny that.” Yet he has refused to do so.

In short, Pope Francis is not known for “straight talk” or straightforward speech. Archbishop Viganò, by contrast, makes claims in his testimony that are extremely clear and frank. He also tells us where to find confirming evidence. He has thereby opened his assertions up to refutation (if they are false), rather than being vague and evasive. Now, a priori, the credibility of someone who makes clear and testable claims is greater than that of someone who is habitually ambiguous and evasive.

5. The response of Viganò’s critics

The New York Times reports that though Cardinals Wuerl and Tobin have denied they knew about the sanctions on McCarrick alleged by Viganò, the general tendency among those named by Viganò in his testimony has been to refuse to respond:

Following the pope’s lead, the Vatican has gone on lockdown.

Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, whom Archbishop Viganò also accused in the letter of covering up sexual misconduct by Cardinal McCarrick, rushed a reporter off the phone on Thursday evening.

“Look, I’m not in my office. Good evening. Good evening,” he said. And he was the most talkative.

The Times reached out to every cardinal and bishop said by Archbishop Viganò to have known about the alleged sanctions on Cardinal McCarrick by Benedict. More than a dozen of them declined or did not answer requests for comment…

A visit to the Vatican Embassy in Washington yielded no information.

End quote. Like the pope’s silence, this is odd. You would expect people innocent of charges of the gravity of those leveled by Viganò immediately, clearly, and vigorously to deny them. Of course, a guilty person might also deny charges raised against him. In his testimony, Viganò is particularly hard on Wuerl, whom he says “lies shamelessly.” But the point isn’t that people who deny charges made against them are always innocent. The point is that people who are innocent usually deny charges made against them.

You would also expect the pope’s most vigorous defenders loudly to be calling for the Vatican and the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington to release of all the documentation cited by Viganò, since the best way to discredit him would be to show that that documentation does not support his charges. But the defenders mostly don’t seem terribly interested in that.

What they do seem interested in is hammering on Viganò’s theological conservatism and his relationships to conservative Catholic media, as if this casts serious doubt on his credibility – in other words, the classic ad hominem fallacy of “poisoning the well.” The charges are either true or false, and Viganò’s motivations for making them are irrelevant to that.

That this attempt at “well-poisoning” is fallacious is only one problem with it. A second problem, as I have already noted, is that Viganò’s theological conservatism in fact makes it less likely that he would be lying, not more likely. A third problem is that the ad hominem tactic cuts both ways. Viganò’s critics can, with no less justice, be accused of wanting to smear him because they have a theologically liberal agenda that they fear will be threatened if Pope Francis is weakened or led to resign.

As the old lawyer’s saw has it, when the facts and law are on your side, you pound those; and when they aren’t, you pound the table instead. Viganò’s critics, who are now pounding the table so loudly while showing a strange disinterest in the facts (namely the documents Viganò has told us to look at), rather give the impression that they too believe that those facts are not on their side.

* * *

Of course, for all I have said, it is possible that new evidence might emerge that disproves Viganò’s key claims. More plausibly, it might turn out that though Viganò is not lying, he has gotten certain details wrong, or that his evident passion has led him inadvertently to exaggerate this or that claim or to overstate his case here or there.

Still, as things stand now, it seems very unlikely that he is lying, or that the broad outlines of his testimony are false. The best way to make progress in determining where the truth lies is for the relevant documents to be released and for the key figures named by Viganò to respond to his charges. The pope could order the release of the documents, and respond to Viganò’s charges directly and urge the others to do the same. The ball is in his court.


Now it is not the time
to 'turn down the temperature'
Sometimes even allies offer advice that is ill-conceived, and
that applies to some of what Fr. Raymond de Souza wrote recently
for the National Catholic Register

September 5, 2018

Apologies for a long post; I don’t have time to write a short one.

I don’t mean to single out Fr. Raymond de Souza, whom I have read with profit many times, but his essay over at National Catholic Register, “It’s time to turn down the temperature”, touches on several issues related to the clergy sexual abuse crisis and its recent, very grave Roman ramifications that need airing. So, first some canonical matters, then some rhetorical ones.

Resignation in general.

Canon law provides for resignation from ecclesiastical office. 1983 CIC 187-189. The threshold for any resignation is pretty low (namely, “a just cause”) so resignation from office for a good cause would bemore than acceptable. Indeed it would be preferable, I think, to an unfit (or worse) occupant continuing to hold a Church office.

Canon law encourages, and frankly pressures, a pastor to resign from office when his ministry becomes “ineffective … even through no grave personal negligence”. 1983 CIC 1740, etc. That norm and others imply that pastors who have acted in ways that actually render themselves unfit to stay in office should resign.

Finally, canon law, albeit in more nuanced terms (given the ecclesiological issues involved), encourages a bishop to resign his see when he “becomes less able to fulfill his office because of … some other grave cause…” 1983 CIC 401 § 2. The allegations swirling around several bishops and cardinals in various countries and in Rome itself would, if true, surely suffice as “grave cause” for such prelates to tender their resignations immediately. The world must await evidence of wrong-doing before making demands in this area but prelates who know the truth of their own situations should act accordingly. Now.

By the way, resignation from Church office motivated by one’s own, or the community’s, awareness of malfeasance in no way renders a resignation invalid (see Canon 188) or prevents ecclesiastical authority from later prosecuting and punishing said resignee for those misdeeds. One who resigns Church office under such circumstances has not ‘picked his own punishment’, rather, he has performed a good act by ending one aspect of his scandal. After that, let justice take its normal course.


Papal resignation, Francis.

De Souza writes: “It was a mistake for Archbishop Viganò to call for the resignation of Pope Francis.” Oh?

Of what was said above concerning resignation from Church office in general, what would not apply to a pope, of all office holders, if he, as alleged by Viganò, from the first months of his papacy knowingly protected and favored a cardinal who was [pick a disgusting verb]-ing seminarians? By what possible stretch of the imagination would such an occupant be suited for the Chair of Peter? Does the historical fact that some pretty bad popes held on to office despite committing various offenses justify other popes acting badly in shirking even the minimal gesture of resigning?

Viganò is unquestionably in a position to know, and claims to know, whether his central allegation that Francis’ was covering for McCarrick, big time, for years, is correct. Believing, as he does, that his claims are correct, Viganò, in calling for Francis’ resignation, has done nothing more or less than exercise his right under canon law “to manifest to the sacred pastors [his] opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make [his] opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful…” 1983 CIC 212 § 3.

I have not called for Francis’ resignation because I do not know (with the degree of certitude that a lawyer seeks) whether Viganò’s key allegations against Francis are substantially true; most assuredly, however, if I reach the conclusion that they are true, I would say, without hesitation, that Francis should resign. Such a resignation would, I think, result in the very opposite of what De Souza fears when he worries that a papal resignation “under a cloud would be a catastrophe for Catholic credibility and unity.” Balderdash. If Viganò’s allegations are proven, I think a papal refusal to resign would be a catastrophe for Catholic credibility and unity.

Papal resignation, Benedict.

De Souza writes: “The mistake that Benedict XVI made by abdicating in 2013 need not be compounded by people — especially high-ranking prelates — treating the papal office as something worldly that can be relinquished under adverse circumstances.” Others, such as Raymond Arroyo, have expressed ‘squeamishness’ over the prospect of a Francis resignation, lest ‘there be three popes’ sitting in Rome. Nonsense. A Francis resignation would no more result in three popes than Benedict’s resignation resulted in two.


Time does not permit me the luxury of squeamishness so let me say a few things directly.

In my view, first, Pope John Paul II should have resigned at least five years before his death; he was effectively ignored by the corrupt elements in his curia for at least that long and the Church has suffered sorely for it. Second, and despite my professional misgiving about how Ratzinger/Benedict understood and used canon law, I think it was a grave error for him to have resigned, and, if his resignation gave the impression that the papacy was essentially “something worldly that can be relinquished under adverse circumstances”, well, that’s on Benedict, no one else. Third, Benedict’s unjustified resignation and its disastrous aftermath does nothing to answer whether Francis should, upon his own knowledge and/or in the face of public proof of malfeasance, resign. That is an entirely separate question to be answered on its own merits.

What really gets me irked.

Most of De Souza’s essay urging disputants “to turn down the temperature” savors of that rhetorical style, now wearing very thin, wherein paternalistic, above-the-fray advice comes down from a supposedly calm and objective observer to squabbling children who are letting emotions get in the way of problem solving, a la, ‘Now, now boys and girls, play nicely.” For crying out loud.

If, even today, a priest still does not see that the last thing in the world that lay faithful—who represent 99% of the victims of clergy sexual abuse and who make up 98% of the voices demanding accounting, cleansing, and deep ecclesiastical reform—need to hear is yet another cleric telling them to quiet down about clergy sexual abuse and/or weighty allegations that abuse was being covered up at the highest levels of the Church, well, I don’t know what to say in the face of such chronic cluelessness.

It certainly does not suffice to excuse the proffering of such advice by pointing to the obvious fact that some laity (among the millions wounded directly or indirectly by decades of clerical indifference in this area) are hot heads forsaking love for fury. We all know that! Such persons are, in fact, a bonus for the devil, for he gets these sad souls to violate charity in their desire for justice! Good priests who want to lend a special hand in repairing the damages wrought by some of their evil brothers and superiors could well reach out in a special way to such persons, to these victims in their own way of clergy sexual abuse and cover-up.

Moreover, this ‘everybody-calm-down’ advice supposedly aimed at ‘both sides’ of this matter is frankly insulting to that one side which, beyond any question, has been severely betrayed by the other. Even the idea that ‘both sides’ are engaged in roughly equal exchanges is groundless. Francis, for example, sees himself as choosing the high road of silence and, after taking some digs at “people lacking good will, … people who only seek scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family”, seems intent on saying nothing more. Sure, a few mouth-pieces such as the papolatrous Fr. Rosica, and few prelates who, it seems, owe their current offices in some measure to the great influence that Francis is alleged to have accorded the disgraceful and disgraced McCarrick, have spoken out intemperately, but for the most part these voices are very, very few.


No, the shouting in this mess is coming overwhelmingly from one side, the side that has been wronged! To call on ‘both sides’, then, “to turn down the temperature” is, therefore, effectively aimed at squelching one side here, the victims!

Deep breath time…

As for some other points in De Souza’s essay, such as his minimizing the personal attacks on Viganò as a “tactical mistake” that “muddied the waters for a few days”, or his concession that “it would [be] very damaging to the Holy Father personally and to the Church generally if Archbishop Viganò’s charges are true” (just “very damaging”?), or his generous interpretation of Francis’ “dramatic and heartfelt admission of error and expression of contrition” in the Chilean debacle—well, to borrow a phrase, who am I to judge? Maybe it was “heartfelt”. I hope it was. But that being granted, may I ask, who is De Souza to judge the pope’s heart? I pray the pope’s conversion was as De Souza sees it, heartfelt. I only know it was the right thing to do, and got done it did, regardless of whether the pope’s motives were heartfelt, self-serving, both, or neither. Fine.

Let me close with this observation: De Souza and I are on the same side of this crisis; I have not the slightest doubt that he detests what has happened to the victims of clergy sexual abuse and is in palpable pain over the very prospect that cover for such abuse was extended even by those in the highest ranks of Church authority. We each, in our respective spheres, have dealt with the aftermath of problems for which neither of us are to blame. We both want the truth to come out. And we each wince when others equally appalled at what has happened purport to speak for all of us with hatred, exploitation, or vengeance in their voices. What can I say, that’s not me and it’s not Fr. De Souza.

But that said, sometimes even allies offer advice that is ill-conceived, and in the respects outlined above, I think that applies to some of what Fr. De Souza wrote for the Register. And I have no doubt, of course, that others might disagree with my disagreements. That’s fine, too.

As I have said from the outset, the cleansing of the Church from the defilements she has suffered of late will come and true reforms will be put into place, but it’s not going to be a smooth process and it’s not going to be a pretty one.

It’s just going to be.