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







A belated translation of Marco Tosatti's post to mark one month since the Vigano 'Testimony' was published. He is blunt about the facts glaring at us in the face...

A month of 'Viganogate':
Not one denial, not one response to his claims
Meanwhile, the cover-up in high places for McCarrick continues
Translated from

September 21, 2018

On Sunday, Sept. 23, it will be four weeks to the day since the publication of the ‘Testimony’-denunciation by Archbishop
Carlo Maria Viganò, who was the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States from 2011-2016.

The document poses many questions, chief of which is this: Who favored, covered for and protected now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in his career as a homosexual predator?

The document gives names, among which, ultimately, is the reigning pope himself.
- Who was told by Vigano himself on June 23, 2013, of McCarrick’s ‘criminal’ record; and
- Who nonetheless rehabilitated the cardinal, heeding his advice on episcopal and cardinal nominations in the US Church, resulting in the McCarrick ‘stable’ that includes the Archbishop of Chicago, Blasé Cupich, and the Archbishop of Newark, Joseph Tobin [both made cardinal shortly after their episcopal appointments], the Archbishop of Washington, DC, Donald Wuerl; the current Prefect of the Superdicastery for Laity, Family and Life, Kevin Farrell [also made cardinal and nominated to his position on the advice of McCarrick, who was Farrell’s boss and apartment-mate in the last six years of McCarrick’s service as Archbishop of Washington]; and Bishop McElroy of San Diego.

On the plane returning from his trip to Dublin last month, the Pontiff declared he would not say a word about the Vigano Testimony: “Read it and judge for yourselves”.

In fact, of course, he has commented on it, not directly, but obliquely as he habitually does on issues he does not wish to address frontally.
- Doing so through his morning homilettes at Casa Santa Marta, seeking to liken his silence in refusing to give an obligatory answer to a precise question to that of Jesus when he refused to engage the mob that sought to drive him off the cliff in Nazareth.
- And in the process, insulting his critics (also his habitual way when faced with questions he does not wish to answer [and cannot answer for fear of self-incrimination]. He has called them ‘wild dogs’ and compared them to the devil (the ‘Grand Accuser’) who seeks to discredit bishops…

Indeed, if we examine what has happened since the Testimony was published, we see that an answer has been given. Which is dramatic and tragic. Namely, that the cover-up for McCarrick continues and will continue. How are we made to understand this?

The Pontiff has not said anything directly about McCarrick. But his so-called ‘vice pope’, Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras has – he is the highest-level prelate who has the pope’s confidence, being the coordinator of the Council of 9 Cardinals advising the pope on the governance of the Church.

Yet he himself was defended with a letter from the pope in the midst of the financial and homosexual scandal swirling about him, his former vicar in Tegucigalpa, and his diocese (where someone wrote on the walls of the cathedral, “PEDOPHILE CARDINAL”). So, despite all that, Maradiaga’s words do carry papal weight.

And on McCarrick, he said:

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“I don’t think it is right to transform something private into a ‘bomb’ which has exploded around the world and whose fragments can damage the faith of many. I think that this case which has an administrative nature should have been made public based on criteria that are more serene and objective, and not with a negative load of profoundly bitter words”.

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So, until and unless the Pontiff deigns to tell the planet’s 1.3 billion Catholics whether, for five years, he did coddle and cover up for someone he knew to be a homosexual predator of seminarians and priests, shall we then think, from what Cardinal Maradiaga said, that at the Bergoglio Vatican, the fact that a cardinal forced and obliged priests and seminarians is considered ‘something private’ and that such an ‘infraction’ is only to be considered an ‘administrative’ problem?

If you apply to all this the armamentarium of the “me-too’ movement, imagine the outcome. This is worse than Harvey Weinstein.

You will say, it’s all ‘inference’. That we realy don’t know if Maradiaga’s attitude is that of the Vatican hierarchy and the pope. But there is a confirmation that is factual, I believe. It is the attitude of that the pope himself has taken towards the US bishops. Who came to him to ask for something precise: An apostolic visitation – that is, an inquiry organized and directed by the Vatican itself – on the McCarrick case, on his career, on the cover-ups in the USA and in Rome that allowed him, despite all he was doing not exactly in secret (there are reports now that a party was given in his honor by gay people in the Castelli Romani area), to fly high in the ecclesiastical firmament. Until the Church had to ‘wake up’ in a hurry after the first public revelations of McCarrick’s misconduct.

Well, the request for an apostolic visitation was simply not mentioned in the brief communique about the meeting the pope had with the president, vice president and secretary-general of the USCCB in the company of Cardinal Sean O’Malley [himself under fire for questionable decisions about sex abuses in his Archdiocese].

One assumes nothing will come of it. Why not? Because no doors or dossiers can remain closed in the face of such an investigation. Obviously, neither the pope, nor his Secretary of State, nor to mention all the cardinals mentioned by Vigano, would want any doors or dossiers opened. And so, the cover-up continues.

Therefore, fellow Catholics, resign yourself to continue living in doubt - and in this case, more than just doubt - that this pope has covered and continues to cover for a now ex-cardinal who was a homosexual predator. It is not a pleasant situation, because it robs the pope’s words of all credibility, even those that are correct and proper. BUt if logic and facts make sense, what else are we to think?

Only poor deluded ones – or those who wand to delude themselves – could possibly think that the February 2019 summit called by the pope with the presidents of all the bishops’ conferences in every country would put a definitive thrust against the problem of clerical/episcopal sex offenses which the Bergoglio ‘press gang’ continues to call pedophilia in order not to use the real issue which is pervasive homosexuality in the clergy. Rightly, US commentators have criticized the apparent Vatican NO to an apostolic visitation on the McCarrick case.

Let me close with an observation. Four weeks have passed since the Vigano testimony. But NO DENIAL HAS EVER BEEN MADE OF HIS AFFIRMATIONS. A tentative stab on the Kim Davis case resulted in a devastating – and indisputed, because substantiated with a document – reply from Vigano.

Meanwhile, a 2006 letter from the then Deputy Secretary of State Cardinal Sandri confirms what Vigano earlier said about a complaint about McCarrick sent to the Vatican back in 2000 by Fr. Boniface Ramsey of New Jersey.

THE FACT IS NONE OF THE PERSONS LISTED BY VIGANO IN HIS TESITMONY – NOT ONE OF THEM – HAS COME FORWARD TO SAY ABOUT THEIR OWN INVOLVEMENT: ‘IT IS NOT TRUE’.

The media, with rare exceptions, have exercised themselves in cooperating with the personal denigration of Vigano and those who believe in his testimony, but they have stopped there. Even this reinforces the idea that the testimony is on the whole reliable.

If any journalist in Bergoglio’s ‘magic circle’ had found any document at all to refute Vigano’s claims, does anyone think this would have not been disclosed right away with maximum fanfare?

We have to think it is Vigano who holds all the cards right now. And that he has a winning hand. We live in truly terrible times for anyone who seeks to still have confidence in ‘the church’ as it now is under Bergoglio.

Now there's a new scapegoat for the Bergogliacs. One of their most outspoken but also quite doltish propagandists, Massimo Faggioli, now says "The problem is that the real person who should respond to Vigano's letter is not Francis. it's Benedict." It's in a CNN editorial whose theme is that 'both popes are silent' over Vigano's testimony.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/23/europe/silent-popes/index.html



Meanwhile, thanks to Fr Longenecker for summing up the latest developments in this story which has been running for over a week now... Which demonstrates the tactics of Bergoglio pet Cardinal Cupich
in suppressing priests who openly oppose his ultra-liberal positions, including his seemingly bred-in-the-bone homosexualism...


THE CURIOUS CASE OF FR KALCHIK

Sept 23, 2018

For those who are watching the meltdown of liberal American Catholicism, the drama has a new episode every day. Just when you thought it couldn’t get more frightening and bizarre…

It does, and Chicago seems to be one of the flash points.
- You thought two Chicago priests caught having oral sex in Florida in broad daylight was bad?
- Then you learn about the famous Cardinal Bernardin and the seamy death of Fr. Montalbano and the dark side of Casa Jesus and you see just how deep the gay mafia runs in Chicago.
- Now we learn about Cardinal Cupich’s grotesque handling of the case of Fr Paul Kalchik.

Church Militant has the story here
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/chicago-vicars-threaten-priest-for-burning-rainbow-flag
but I’ll give you the short version:

Fr Kalchik is himself the victim of sexual abuse. He was raped as a boy, and then as a young man of 19 he was attacked by a gay priest.

Fr Kalchik was the pastor of the parish of the Resurrection in Chicago. This parish was established by Cardinal Bernardin as the “gay friendly” parish in Chicago. At the dedication a big rainbow banner infused with a cross decorated the sanctuary. By Fr Kalchik’s time the banner had been removed, but parishioners angry with the gay sex abuse scandal in the church decided to burn the banner in a public ceremony on church grounds. Fr Kalchik was warned by Cardinal Cupich not to proceed with the ceremony. Fr Kalchik held back, but the people went ahead with the banner burning.

Cardinal Cupich ordered Kalchik to leave. He refused. Then Cardinal Cupich sends two of his senior clergy to tell the dissident priest to pack his bags because he needs to go to a notorious pastoral center for a psychiatric evaluation. They hint at his death. They pressure him to leave and threaten police action to remove him from the rectory. So Fr Kalchick does pack his bags, but he slips out the back door and disappears.

Phew! This is the version that is being presented, and its pretty dramatic. In fact, it would make a great movie. But let’s stop and draw a breath.

First of all, Church Militant are notoriously inflammatory. They’re sensationalist and it is right to take what they say with a pinch of salt. We don’t know all the background. We don’t know all the facts and we should remember that most situations are far more complicated than they appear in news reports. There is always another side to the story.

It is possible that there is a long history of rebellious behavior from Fr Kalchik, and it is possible that he has a history of emotional or psychiatric issues. It is possible that the parish have been fomenting rebellion and division for some time. There is a lot we do not know.

However, Fr Kalchik was smart, when the two representatives from the diocese turned up on his doorstep, to insist that his parishioners should be present for the meeting. If this happened, then their testimony as recorded by Michael Voris, weighs pretty heavily – even if they are biased in favor of their pastor.

But let’s step back from the sensational and try to take the very best possible view of this incident. Let’s give Cardinal Cupich and the Chicago diocesan authorities every possible benefit of the doubt.
- Let’s assume the Fr Kalchik does have a history of unstable behavior.
- Let’s assume for the sake of argument that he is some sort of wild eyed conservative homophobic radical who needs taming.
- Let’s also assume that Cardinal Cupich is a good and caring pastor for his clergy.
- Let’s assume what he did was a last resort after a long process of dialogue and listening, and that he decided for the best interests of everyone that Fr Kalchik needed a time of rest and re-evaluation. - Let’s assume that Michael Voris is throwing gas on the fire, that the parishioners are exaggerating the foul nature of the event and that Fr Kalchik is not on the lam, but has simply agreed to leave and take a vacation while things blow over.

Even if we give it the best possible gloss this is still an unbelievably monstrous way for Cardinal Cupich to behave. Here’s why:
1. Fr Kalchik is a victim of homosexual abuse. Raped as a child and assaulted by a priest as a young man, it is understandable that he feels traumatized by gay behavior. As a priest it is understandable that he finds a gay mafia in his diocese to be hugely offensive and threatening. Was there appropriate pastoral care for this victim of clergy gay sex abuse? I thought we were all about caring for the victims? If you would like to read Fr Kalchik’s first hand account you can read the heartfelt letter he wrote to Pope Francis here.
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/one-priests-plea-to-pope-francis
2. Let’s assume that Fr Kalchik has emotional and psychiatric issues and that he may be suffering from post traumatic stress. Is this how you administer proper pastoral care for a vulnerable priest? Call the cops?
3. Fr Kalchik has a right to dissent from church authority if that authority contradicts church teachings. Consider how New Ways Ministry - which has been formally condemned by the highest church authority – is treated compared to Fr Kalchik. New Ways Ministry and Fr Martin SJ are feted and supported for their open dissent, but Fr Kalchik does not have the right to express his views?
4. The two priests Cardinal Cupich sent to punish Fr Kalchik both have links to the Chicago gay mafia. Fr Kalchik writes in his letter to Pope Francis about his knowledge of the gay sex abusers in Chicago.
- If the Cardinal knew about Fr Kalchik’s history of being a victim of gay sex abuse, how could he have sent two priests who have themselves been under a cloud to deal with him? How dumb is that?
What a PR fiasco!
- Was there no awareness that this whole affair would hit the headlines?
- Did the Cardinal really threaten to bring in the police to evict Fr Kalchik?
It would seem that Cardinal Cupich has learned absolutely nothing about public relations after his crazy TV interview saying homosexual abuse was no big deal and the pope has other more important things to deal with like the environment and plastic water bottles. The level of incompetence in the handling of this from a public relations point of view is mind boggling.
5. Is Cardinal Cupich so completely unaware that he and the rest of the red robes are perceived as sixteenth century prelates – living in their palaces, jetsetting off to Rome and mouthing pious words about immigrants and climate change while in fact an increasing number of the faithful regard them as corrupt, devious, Machiavellian Renaissance cardinals desperate to defend themselves and deflect all blame no matter what? Did he think threatening a faithful priest would help?
6. We’re all about building bridges and listening aren’t we? So you build bridges and listen by threatening police action and eviction?
7. The threat of police action was bad enough, but what about the threat of “removal to a pastoral center for psychiatric evaluation”? This is the stuff of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the re-education camps of the Gulag. Is this what will happen to anyone who dissents from the gay agenda? That’s what it feels like.
8. This disaster contributes to the impression that the whole hierarchy from the Pope downward are intent on continuing to cover for gay sex abusers, and they will take every measure possible to shut down dissent from their disastrous decisions.
- Will we see a humble apology from Cardinal Cupich to Fr Kalchik and his people? Will we see an attempt at reconciliation and repentance? Don’t bet on it.

The only possible bright side of this horrible affair is that Cardinal Cupich and the rest of his liberal cronies are being revealed for what they really are.

This is the face of their “mercy”: So we have a priest who has been traumatized by gay sex abuse and who dissents from being steamrollered by the rainbow brigade? Fire him. Kick him out. Send him to the looney bin. Write him off. Throw him under the bus. Call the police.

Dr Gregg brings up a little-known Vatican-II document about safeguarding the Church's full liberty when it comes to bishop's appointments. Which, as George Weigel
pointed out in a recent article, was turned into Church law in Canon 377.5 of the Code of Canon Law: "No rights or privileges of election, appointment, presentation,
or designation of bishops are conceded to civil authorities”.

Obviously, the Bergoglio Vatican has been going about promoting its anti-Catholic agenda without bothering to consult previous Church teaching. But why should it?
Didn't Fr Rosica spell it out clearly for us recently?

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Pope Francis breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants because he is “free from disordered attachments.” Our Church has indeed entered
a new phase: with the advent of this first Jesuit pope, it is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even
its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture.

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If Bergoglio disdains to follow even Scripture, what does he care about canon law, or even a Vatican-II decree that neither he nor his advisers probably never even read or hear about?


The China agreement:
Beijing, Rome, and the Church’s liberty
The Holy See must show that its provisional agreement with China accords
with Vatican II’s teachings on religious freedom and the office of bishop.
by Samuel Gregg

September 23, 2018

From the Catholic Church’s very beginning, its relationship with Caesar has been 'complicated'. Christianity has always respected legitimate state authority. It has equally insisted, however, that there are parts of life where the state’s writ simply doesn’t apply.

But the state can be a jealous god. I say “god” because, at different times and places, the state and its rulers have claimed divine or semi-divine attributes. When medieval and absolutist monarchs described themselves as the Lord’s Anointed, they were deadly serious. This often translated into their realms claiming certain rights over the Church, including that of determining who might be named a bishop within their kingdoms.

Against this, there’s a long history of bishops — including the bishop of Rome — contesting the boundaries and substance of such claims. Between 1056 and 1122, for instance, the papacy challenged many Western European monarchs’ insistence that they had the authority to appoint bishops, abbots and other church officials within their realms. The subsequent conflict produced a series of compromises that weakened temporal rulers’ ability to involve themselves in these matters.

Legal historians such as Harold J. Berman have stressed that this 'papal revolution' contributed to a renewal of efforts to desacralize state authority: a process which helped facilitate growing demands for individual, social, economic, and constitutional liberties throughout the West.

Since the French Revolution, regimes grounded on foundations other than the divine right of kings have claimed similar or even greater authority over the Church’s internal affairs. Hard-authoritarian governments, for example, are generally reluctant to concede much meaningful autonomy to those institutions which have traditionally restrained state power. As far as totalitarian regimes are concerned, there is nothing outside the state and everything is under the state.

This brings us to the character of the regime —t he People’s Republic of China — with which the Vatican has formally entered into what’s described as a provisional agreement.

Since the late 1970s, mainland China has engaged in a limited and inconsistent economic opening to the world. Contrary to expectations, however, this hasn’t morphed into greater liberty in many other spheres of Chinese life. China’s Communist rulers have shown no interest in diluting their highly-authoritarian grip on the country.

That’s especially true with regard to religion. Article 36 of China’s constitution formally guarantees “freedom of religious belief.” It also affirms that “the state protects normal religious activities.” What constitutes “normal” is plainly at the state authorities’ discretion. Moreover, the regime’s policy is that “normal religious activities” may only occur in the context of state-recognized and controlled religious associations like the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA).

In practice, any attempt by religious believers and communities to evade the Chinese regime’s controls — let alone rigorously assert anything like the religious liberty to which believers in other countries are now accustomed — is met with systematic repression. That includes imprisonment, labor camps, house-arrest, confinement to asylums for the mentally-ill, and the destruction of unauthorized places of worship.

The Chinese state’s oversight of religion extends into religious organizations’ internal governance. This is especially the case regarding something specifically forbidden by the Chinese constitution. “Religious bodies and religious affairs,” Article 36 states, “are not subject to any foreign domination.” That has obvious implications for a transnational and unified religious organization like the Catholic Church.

For a long time, the Holy See has sought to arrive at an arrangement with Beijing that restores the full communion between the Pope and all Catholic bishops in China which was broken in the 1950s. For the Church, reestablishing this communion is a doctrinal necessity. The vital question, however, is what the provisional agreement says about the role that the Chinese regime has surely insisted that it must be given in bishop appointments.

It could be, for example, that the agreement allows officials from the United Front Work Department (the Communist Party organ that has supervised religious affairs in China since March 2018) a role in selecting future bishops. Would this give the Church in China some freedom from state control? Or would it enable the government to consolidate its grip on Chinese Catholics, particularly those who have kept their distance from the CPCA?

Given the Chinese regime’s record, it’s reasonable to suppose that the second possibility is more likely. That would also fit with recent government efforts to ramp up state control over religion.

Since the promulgation of its new “Regulations on Religious Affairs” in February 2018, the regime has engaged in concerted efforts to “Sinicize” Christianity in China.
- This has resulted, for instance, in Christians being required to sing songs from the Cultural Revolution or which extoll the Chinese Communist Party in church.
- Many churches have been forced to remove crosses and install images of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
- Perhaps most chilling have been government attempts to prohibit Christians from taking their children to church or giving them a religious education.

But it’s precisely these ongoing and heightened violations of religious freedom which remind us that something else is at stake with the Holy See’s agreement with China.

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council famously issued Dignitatis Humanae: its Declaration of the right of religious liberty. Properly understood, this is considered to be a right of individuals and communities to be free from unreasonable restrictions by the state as they seek to know religious truth and live in accordance with their conclusions about this matter.

Less well-known is that just 40 days before Vatican II issued Dignitatis Humanae, it promulgated a document on the office of bishop, Christus Dominus. In an echo of disputes from a millennium ago, paragraph 20 of Christus Dominus solemnly declared the Catholic Church’s insistence on its full liberty when it comes to bishop appointments:

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Since the apostolic office of bishops was instituted by Christ the Lord and pursues a spiritual and supernatural purpose, this sacred ecumenical synod declares that the right of nominating and appointing bishops belongs properly, peculiarly, and per se exclusively to the competent ecclesiastical authority.

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“Properly, peculiarly, and per se exclusively” — it’s hard to imagine a more definite and clearer statement that an ecumenical council could make on this topic. There is of course no sense in which a Chinese government or party official could be deemed a “competent ecclesiastical authority.”

Spelling out this teaching’s full logic, the Council then stated:

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Therefore, for the purpose of duly protecting the freedom of the Church and of promoting more conveniently and efficiently the welfare of the faithful, this holy council desires that in future no more rights or privileges of election, nomination, presentation, or designation for the office of bishop be granted to civil authorities. The civil authorities, on the other hand, whose favorable attitude toward the Church the sacred synod gratefully acknowledges and highly appreciates, are most kindly requested voluntarily to renounce the above-mentioned rights and privileges which they presently enjoy by reason of a treaty or custom, after discussing the matter with the Apostolic See.

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The first sentence above appears to rule out the Church agreeing to any provision that allows state authorities any involvement in any part of the process of selecting bishops. Does the Holy See’s provisional agreement with Beijing permit any such participation? Indeed, the second sentence — again, I stress, declared by an ecumenical council — effectively asks governments to do the opposite of what the Chinese regime has long demanded of Rome.

This is entirely consistent with how the Catholic Church conceptualized and articulated a right to religious liberty in Dignitatis Humanae. For this liberty wasn’t confined to individuals. Dignitatis Humanae insisted that it extended to religious communities.

Securing some sphere of religious freedom for the Church in a country like today’s China was always going to be difficult. Yet creating conditions in which Catholics can more easily access the sacraments and Catholic bishops can be ordained without impairing their communion with Rome is indeed what the Vatican has been seeking to do.

Catholicism, however, has never accepted that Catholics’ pastoral needs aren’t subject to the requirements of Catholic doctrine. [But the opposite is exactly what the church of Bergoglio has been proactvely pushing for the past five and a half years.]

Orthopraxis (right action) can only flow from orthodoxy (right thought). No pope, no Catholic bishop, and certainly no Holy See diplomat is exempt from the claims of doctrine.

That presumably includes Vatican II’s teaching concerning the religious liberty of individuals and communities and the same Council’s declaration that the Church’s choice of bishops should be free from any external involvement at every single step of the appointment-process.

Yes, Rome has made arrangements in the past with odious governments in an effort to carve out a space for its clergy to undertake their most basic responsibilities to the faithful. Others have noted, however, that it’s highly questionable whether many such twentieth-century agreements bolstered the Church’s freedom or facilitated its ability to administer the sacraments.

Medieval and absolutist kings are one thing. Modern totalitarian or hard-authoritarian regimes — whether based on Communism, Fascism, or the combination of Socialism, cronyism, personality-cult, and Confucianism which undergirds the Chinese government — are a different beast altogether.

Whatever the details of the Vatican’s provisional agreement with mainland China, the Holy See is surely obligated to demonstrate that the arrangements for the selection of Chinese bishops meet Christus Dominus’s requirements.

If they don’t, then Rome owes the rest of the universal Church an explanation of why there has been a departure from church doctrine and how it will resolve the contradiction.

Diplomacy matters, much more than many people realize. But for the Catholic Church, its freedom and the truth — always together and never apart — should matter even more.


As much as I loathe the increasingly - and unnecessarily - vulgar 'tone' of Canon2i2.com's headlines, the following stories seem worth looking up re BAD CHINA DEAL.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/09/2018 22:25]

As I point out in my 2018 page banner:
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.



This is taking place at the University of Notre Dame, which has not been a bulwark of Catholicism in many decades, but we must be grateful nonetheless that it is taking place. I am not aware that
any German or Italian institution, for example, has taken such an initiative.






Sorry about the poor reduction above of the 3-page PDF program, which I will try to improve if I can. But here is the alphabetical list of
confirmed speakers, and it is reassuring to note some familiar many names who are definitely 'Ratzingerian'. I can't say about the speakers
who come from Notre Dame itself. I just hope this conference does not hijack the book and make it out to be - as some Italian theologians
have lately done - a manual of 'progressive' theology.

Catherine Cavadini
Assistant Chair & MA Director
Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame

John Cavadini
Professor of Theology &
Director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame

Leonard J. DeLorenzo
Academic Director, McGrath Institute for Church Life
Concurrent Faculty, Department of Theology
University of Notre Dame

Patrick Gardner
Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies
Christopher Newport University

Rev. Robert Imbelli
Professor Emeritus of Theology, Boston College

Jennifer Newsome Martin
Assistant Professor of Program of Liberal Studies
University of Notre Dame

Francesca A. Murphy
Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame

Timothy P. O'Malley
Editor, Church Life Journal
Concurrent Faculty, Department of Theology
University of Notre Dame

Cyril O'Regan
Huisking Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame

Anthony Pagliarini
Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies
University of Notre Dame

Rev. Aaron Pidel, SJ
Assistant Professor of Theology, Marquette University

Tracey Rowland
Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame, Australia

Rev. Richard Schenk, O.P.
President Emeritus
Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany

Anthony Sciglitano
Associate Professor of Religion, Seton Hall University

Clemens Sedmak
Professor of Social Ethics, University of Notre Dame

Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer
Bishop of the Diocese of Regensburg, Germany

Donald Wallenfang
Associate Professor of Theology, Walsh University

Archdiocesan shake-up continues
in wake of NY attorney general's criminal probe
by Christine Niles


NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 2018 (ChurchMilitant.com) - New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan is reportedly trying to leave his post to become new head of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

Well-placed sources inform Church Militant he possibly wants out of New York before the NY State Attorney General Barbara Underwood gets too deep into her sex abuse investigation of the archdiocese. Underwood announced Sept. 6 she had subpoenaed personnel files and records related to clerical abuse from all eight Catholic dioceses in New York.

The information of Dolan's possible departure comes amid news that longtime vicar general Mustaciuolo is leaving his position to take over as CEO of the Cabrini Health Foundation, with assets of $3.2 billion.

Although Dolan is painting Mustaciuolo's new role, which begins in the new year, as a continuation of work he had already been doing behind the scenes, sources confirm that Mustaciuolo's move is a direct response to the New York attorney general's criminal probe into the Catholic Church, a move long feared by the archdiocese.

Also in response to the criminal probe, Dolan announced Thursday he had appointed former judge Barbara Jones to be special prosecutor to review archdiocesan policies on sex abuse. He is vowing to give her "complete access" to personnel records, including his own.

A former prosecutor, Jones oversaw the review of documents in the case of Michael Cohen, former attorney for President Trump. Jones is a pro-gay Catholic Democrat, who as district judge struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 2012. With pro-LGBT sympathies, Catholics are wondering how vigorously she'll pursue homosexual misconduct in the New York archdiocese.

Dolan's announcement of Jones's appointment comes a day after he was blasted by his own priests and seminarians during a listening session, where they criticized him for failing to speak up or act strongly enough in the wake of the clerical abuse cover-up crisis wracking the Church in America.

Aside from his June 20 announcement that Abp. Theodore McCarrick had been suspended for an abuse allegation, Dolan had remained uncharacteristically quiet for weeks. Even as fellow bishops were issuing statements responding to the explosive allegations of Abp. Carlo Maria Viganò, Dolan maintained his public silence — broken only after news that Attorney General Underwood was launching an investigation into his archdiocese and others.

If Dolan were to become new head of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, he would be replacing Cardinal Edwin O'Brien, Grand Master of the order since 2011, who has deep ties to New York. O'Brien once served as rector at St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie, where he was close to then-seminarians Peter Miqueli, Greg Mustaciuolo and others who went on to be priests in the archdiocese, Mustaciuolo rising in the ranks to become chancellor, moderator of the curia and vicar general.

It remains unclear where Cardinal O'Brien will go. [???? I am not aware that anyone else in the media, outside of Church Militant, is on O'Brien's case, much less that any official notice has been made by the Vatican (in his position, he is directly responsible to the pope) about the cardinal's seemingly questionable record.]

O'Brien is named in Viganò's testimony as a member of the "homosexual current" in the Church, implicated in the cover-up of Fr. Peter Miqueli, a priest accused of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars to use on drug-fueled parties with gay-for-pay prostitute Keith Crist.

Multiple sources confirmed with Church Militant that, in addition to Mustaciuolo, O'Brien had special relationships with Miqueli and Crist, who would chauffeur him from the airport when O'Brien flew in from Rome (when he was rector of the Pontifical North American College) to offer Confirmation Masses at Miqueli's small, isolated parish in Roosevelt Island — an unusual act for a cardinal of such high rank — as well as at St. Frances Cabrini in the Bronx.

Crist, who is forbidden to be on archdiocesan property, reportedly picked up O'Brien from the airport during most visits, and was present at "special dinners" with O'Brien's small coterie of friends, who invariably included Miqueli, Bp. Gerald Walsh (Vicar for Clergy) and others from the chancery.

Parishioners confirmed with Church Militant that Miqueli and Crist were open about the fact that they stayed with Cdl. O'Brien when they were in Rome.

O’Brien was reportedly Crist’s protector. Multiple parishioners once witnessed Crist screaming at a Catholic in Miqueli's parish, shouting, "I will tell O'Brien — and O'Brien will destroy you."

Retired Navy Chaplain Gene Gomulka, a former monsignor who worked under O'Brien when he was archbishop for the military services, confirmed with Church Militant that O'Brien deliberately underreported the incidents of priest sex abuse.

O’Brien also covered up homosexual misconduct committed by Chaplain Fr. Matt Lee, whom Gomulka reported to O’Brien as engaging in inappropriate homosexual relations with a live-in boyfriend. In spite of Gomulka's report, O'Brien did nothing, allowing Lee to be transferred to a more prestigious position at Quantico, where he went on to commit sexual assault and served prison time. After his release, he was arrested for male child porn and is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence in Delaware.

O'Brien's alleged misdeeds seem just as bad as McCarrick's, but why is no one outraged? Better yet, why don't other news agencies investigate if Church Militant's leads about O'Brien are valid? If any of it is true, he cannot go unpunished - and I would feel even worse because he was made a cardinal by Benedict XVI, at which time, his CV read as pure as driven snow.

Dolan's alleged maneuverings above really pale compared to the new charge that has now come up against the reigning pope for having quashed a CDF investigation of one of his Grand Electors, the late Englich Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who was a member of the 'Sankt-Gallen mafia'.

Vatican source says pope blocked
investigation of abuse allegations
against a cardinal who helped elect him
by Maike Hickson


September 24, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis told Cardinal Gerhard Müller in 2013 to stop investigating an abuse allegation against British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, according to a highly-placed Vatican source who spoke to Marco Tosatti.

Murphy-O'Connor was a member of the 'Sankt Gallen mafia' [as Cardinal Daneels called the cardinals' group, of which he was a member, that met regularly in Sank Galle, Switzerland, since 2003 to block the possibility that Joseh Ratzinger would succeed John Paul II and came up with Bergoglio as their candidate in the 2005 Conclave] played a pivotal role in getting the latter elected Pope in 2013.

A source from England with inside knowledge of the case told LifeSiteNews that a woman alleges the cardinal was present when she was abused by a priest as age 13 or 14, and that her case was that investigated by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

Tosatti and LifeSiteNews have worked together on this joint story for some weeks now. We have shared our findings with each other.

Tosatti had previously revealed what he learned in September 2013 from a high-ranking Vatican source – “an extremely good source, who was then in the government of the Curia,” and he adds that his source has “learned [it] from those directly concerned.” – that Cardinal Müller, then Prefect of the CDF, was interrupted by the Pope while saying Mass at the Church of Santa Monica (next to the CDF building) for a small group of German students. But now Tosatti reveals that the reason for the interruption was to demand that an investigation into Cardinal O’Connor be halted.

As Tosatti put it in an article for First Things last year:

---

His secretary joined him at the altar: “The pope wants to speak to you.” “Did you tell him I am celebrating Mass?” asked Müller. “Yes,” said the secretary, “but he says he does not mind—he wants to talk to you all the same.” The cardinal went to the sacristy. The pope, in a very bad mood, gave him some orders about a dossier concerning one of his friends, a cardinal.

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This event took place in June of 2013, not long after Pope Francis had been elected Pope.

According to Tosatti’s newly released report, that cardinal and friend of the pope was Cardinal Murphy O'Connor, former Archbishop of Westminster, England and President of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. “He was accused of abuse by a woman,” and that woman had insisted for years on her claims and “had finally filed a complaint with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

Tosatti describes his source as a “high-ranking official in the Curia.” He reports that the source “was very amazed” at this event involving the Pope, both about the way in which the communication took place, and also about the message itself.

“He [the Pope] should have said: let me see the dossier, bring me the results. Do not order the investigator to act in a specific way a priori. These are things that leave us very perplexed,” said Tosatti’s source.

Tosatti then “asked for confirmation from the competent offices, without receiving an answer.” LifeSiteNews reached out to the office of Cardinal Müller, asking for a denial or a confirmation of the story, but the answer was only that there would be no comment made. That is to say, we received a non-denial. LifeSiteNews also reached out to the Vatican Press Office, asking for a confirmation or denial of the story. Should they respond, we will update the report.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor died on September 1, 2017, a year ago, without ever seeing a proper investigation of these charges.

After hearing this story as related by Marco Tosatti, LifeSiteNews reached out to a reliable source from England who is very well informed about the lady who was accusing the English cardinal. According to this English source, the lady has never gone public with her charges.

But she has been in contact with Church authorities for about 15 years now, without ever having received a thorough investigation of her claims, although she received a settlement from the Archdiocese of Brighton-Arundel when it was under Murphy-O'Connor.

The lady says she was abused, when she was 13 or 14 years of age, by Father Michael Hill. She claims that when Hill abused her in the late 1960s, there were several other priests present and involved. - one of them being Murphy-O'Connor. In the early 2000S, she accepted a settlement of £40,000 from the Archdiocese.

Murphy-O'Connor, as bishop of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, had appointed Hill in 1985 chaplain at Gatwick Airport. Hill then was charged with abusing a retarded who had missed a flight and was visiting the airport's chapel.

The pedophile Father Hill was imprisonedwice for abusing children - first in 1997, then again in 2002 (a five-year-term for abusing 3 children aged 10-14). He is thought to have abused about 30 boys between his ordination in 1960 and the late 1980s. As The Guardian reported in 2002:“His case is particularly notorious because the church's leader, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, gave him a post despite warnings that he had abused young boys.” Hill had been moved to different parishes, in spite of the ongoing complaints of parents. Finally he underwent therapy in the 1980s.

Later reports showed that Murphy-O'Connor had been warned by therapists that Hill would be abusive again. Murphy-O'Connor agreed that the diocese should pay compensation to those victims of Hill, but requested their silence on the matter of their abuse.

Murphy-O'Connor had also been accused of trying to pay hush money to Father Hill – some £50,000 to buy his silence when he was released from prison. It was said that a junior bishop made the offer on his behalf during a visit to Hill's Belmarsh prison in London. Murphy-O'Connor “utterly” denied that claim.

Another sign of the cardinal's indulgent leniency toward child abusers is the case of Father Tim Garrett. Fr. Garrett, then a priest in the Portsmouth diocese, was convicted, according to media reports, of taking indecent photographs of boys in the 1980s. Following the advice of a risk assessment team showing that Garrett would not be dangerous, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor allowed him to transfer to his own Diocese of Arundel and Brighton. He later regretted that permission, just as he apologized for his mishandling of the Hill case.

Murphy-O'Connor was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton from 1977 to 2000, when he was appointed Archbishop of Westminster.

The story of the female victim of abuse is a story of delayed justice and denial of due process. Since she now lives in the Diocese of Portsmouth, she started to express her accusations to Church officials there. But sometime between 2009 and 2010, she also contacted the Archdiocese of Westminster with her allegations. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who has been Archbishop of Westminster since 2009 – and thus the successor of Murphy-O'Connor – refused to investigate the matter.

When Murphy-O'Connor was asked, in 2010, by Pope Benedict XVI to be the head of the Apostolic Visitation to Ireland in order to examine the abuse crisis there, people in the Diocese of Portsmouth were concerned that the abuse allegations against Murphy-O’Connor would then come to light and destroy the credibility of the Apostolic Visitation.

In 2011, according to our English source, the Diocese of Portsmouth, together with the Diocese of Northampton, contacted the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then under Cardinal William Levada, in order to request an investigation of the claims of that female victim by Rome and to protest Westminster’s refusal to follow the national safeguarding protocols.

The CDF's chief prosecutor at the time, Mons. Charles Scicluna, now Archbishop of Malta, who requested that all the files from England be sent to him in person. A person from the Diocese of Portsmouth flew to Rome and delivered the files to Scicluna. It is understood that he began an investigation. However, in 2012, Scicluna became the Auxiliary Bishop of Malta and was thus removed from the Murphy-O'Connor case at the CDF. It was then Monsignor Robert W. Oliver who, after the departure of Monsignor Scicluna, met in 2013 with one of the English bishops in Rome in order to discuss the matter.

During that time, the Archdiocese of Westminster finally agreed, for the first time, to meet with the female victim. One of the auxiliary bishops – now a diocesan bishop elsewhere in England – met with her together with the diocesan safeguarding head, but still did not agree to start an investigation, according to the source.

Those within the Catholic Church in England who support this victim's cause argue that, independently of whether this lady speaks the truth or not, the Church must follow her own rules as they are now set up. That means that the accused clergyman should first be withdrawn from the exercise of his office, and then an investigation should be started. Depending on the result of the investigation, when it is completed, the accused clergyman is to be either reinstated or punitively removed. The protocols make no distinction between the treatment for a priest or deacon and that for a bishop or a cardinal. [But what office other than that of cardinal could have been withdrawn from Murphy-O'Connor in 2013, when he retired in 2009?]

As our source in England relates, there have been repeated attempts, on the side of good bishops, to request a Church investigation into the case of this female victim. They insisted that the Church has to follow the standing rules. Yet, as our source says, Murphy-O'Connor has been treated “as if he were above the law.”

Our source points out that, in his own career, Murphy-O'Connor always “stood very lightly with regard to the Church's moral and doctrinal teaching.” [Typical of all the progressivists in the Church.]

In one interview, Murphy-O'Connor made it clear that he is not opposed to non-practicing homosexuals being in the priesthood. He then said: “I think the Church must judge the people who are ordained on what kind of person they are, not on their sexuality. And I think that there will be men, probably a very small minority, who might have a homosexual orientation. Obviously, if they are practicing, this would exclude them [from ordination]. But I would not say that a person who has a homosexual tendency is necessarily debarred.”

He also rejected the claim of a connection between homosexuality and child abuse: “All I would say is that it does seem to be established that the question of child abuse has nothing directly at all to do with homosexuality.”

The Englishman John Smeaton, chief executive of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, the world’s oldest pro-life group, and co-founder of Voice of the Family, told LifeSiteNews the following about Cardinal Murphy O'Connor: “However deeply disturbing it is, it is very much for the good of the Church that evils which have been deliberately hidden by Church leaders are coming to light.”

He gave as an example that the “late Cardinal Murphy O’Connor is on record for seeking to cover up evil. In 2008 it was revealed that the Cardinal had approved an ethics code for St. John and St. Elizabeth’s hospital which effectively accommodated referrals for abortion and other unethical procedures.”

Professor Luke Gormally, a former member of the hospital’s ethics committee commented at the time: “How can the Church in this country effectively defend the sanctity of life when its Chief Shepherd is prepared to approve a code which effectively accommodates referrals for abortion?”

John Smeaton concluded: “Church officials at the very highest level, including the Holy Father, must learn the lesson of recent revelations which have so scandalized the faithful: The cover-up of evil has got to stop.”

Perhaps most importantly, Murphy-O'Connor is said to have helped Pope Francis to get elected. Austen Ivereigh, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor’s former assistant, said that days prior to the March 12 conclave in Rome, Murphy-O’Connor was tasked by the St. Gallen “mafia” to inform Jorge Bergoglio of a plan to get him elected.

As Ivereigh described in his 2014 book on Pope Francis, Murphy-O’Connor was also tasked with lobbying for Bergoglio among his North American counterparts as well as acting as a link to those from Commonwealth countries. So, when Bergoglio met the English cardinal after his election, he jestingly said, “You're to blame!”

As The Guardian reported: “A few months after his election, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was apparently lightheartedly to credit Murphy-O’Connor, when the two met at a papal audience. The pope pointed to his old friend and said, 'You’re to blame!'”

As The Guardian's obituary for the cardinal stated, Murphy-O'Connor called Pope Francis “my man”: “And, of course, his [Murphy-O'Connor's] presence in Rome in 2013 [was in order] to witness the election of his friend as Pope Francis. He looked on in pleasure at the impact made by the Argentinian whom he liked, jokingly, to refer to as 'my man.'”

So, based on the revelation from Marco Tossati’s source in the Vatican, it would seem that Bergoglio, after his election, especially thanked Murphy-O'Connor by telling Cardinal Müller to halt the investigation against him. [Which makes Mueller complicit if he agreed to halt it, as it seems to have halted. His office's refusal to answer the questions asked by Lifesite and Tosatti lately would seem to bear this out.]

As of this date, the abused lady's complaints have never been thoroughly investigated, neither in England, nor in Rome. And with the help of Tosatti's own report, we now know some of the reasons why.

Similar to McCarrick, Murphy-O'Connor is known to have later speciously shown himself to the public as being a hardliner with regard to abuse cases. “Roman Catholic bishops found to be flouting the new guidelines on child protection will be held to account, or expected to resign,” is the headline of a 2003 article quoting Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. However, as with the McCarrick case in the U.S., the truth is now gaining upon the Church's hierarchy that has been evasively looking the other way.

In England, there is currently a government-commissioned independent investigation into all sex abuse cases in society, to include those in the Catholic Church. This investigation has the legal power to compel the production of evidence. For this investigation, a so-called “Truth Project” has been set up, whereby victims of sexual abuse of minors may now come and relate their story.

Our source tells us this female victim may have contacted that same Truth Project, since several weeks ago, the investigators requested the Archdiocese of Westminster the release of all the files pertaining to allegations against Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor.

It would be important now that four dioceses release their files to the Truth Project concerning this woman's case: Arundel and Brighton; Westminster; Portsmouth, and Northampton (which submitted the case to the CDF, together with Portsmouth). Bishop John Arnold (now of Salford), who was at the time involved in refusing to investigate the case in Westminster, should also release his files.

Thus, as it seems, the Catholic Church is now sitting upon a ticking time bomb. And on top of that time bomb sits Pope Francis.

This report was consciously published on September 24, the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham – Patroness of the Catholic Church in England – and on the day of the beginning of the English bishops' Ad Limina visit to Rome.


The episcopal crisis comes to England

September 25, 2018

We all knew about Fr Hill, the priest-abuser of Gatwick Airport, long ago; we learnt about Bishop Kieran Conry more recently. One of the links between the cases is the involvement of the late Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, who moved Fr Hill to fresh pastures after earlier victims came forward, and promoted Bishop Conry's career.

In both cases he was only doing what most bishops seemed to be doing: giving abusers new opportunities for abuse and seeing priests clouded by questions about their chastity as ideal candidates for promotion: that was just what happened in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, isn't it?

Remember that Bishop Kieran was chosen by the Bishops' Conference to be head of their catechetical initiatives and 'Bishop for Youth'. (The official website summary of his career somehow neglects to mention his extra-curricular activities.) He must have had the support of a lot of other bishops as well.

But now further allegations have surfaced. They are focused around Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor and the Hill case but the implications draw in a number of other people in England and in Rome, including Pope Francis. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor's reputation is of less importance than that of these others, who are still in office.

The central contention is that abuse accusations against the Cardinal himself were not investigated, despite the Bishops' Conference's adoption of the policy of investigating every allegation.

The problem now becomes not so much whether a dead Cardinal engaged in abuse in the 1970s, but whether various living individuals failed to follow their own protocols for investigating allegations. This question is in principle much easier to answer, and it is an important one: it is ultimately the question of credibility and moral integrity of the bishops, the question which is now overwhelming the Catholic Church in America.

It is perhaps too much to hope that the Rome side of the story be cleared up, but there is a paper trail in filing-cabinets all around England which could tell us if the claims about the behaviour of the English actors in this drama are true. If the Bishops of England and Wales have any sense, they will settle the matter publicly, taking any necessary bad-publicity hit right away, and not allow the issue to fester.

It may not have been picked up by the mainstream press here yet, but I don't think it is simply going to go away.

So far, the Vatican has not commented on the DER SPIEGEL critique of the pope which, of course, faults him for other things besides his silence on the Vigano testimony. However, it ought to have prompted, at the very least, the release of the reported 'response' to Vigano reportedly approved by the pope on Sept. 18 (unless Luigi Accatoli's Vatican source was wrong about this).

In the following commentary, the writer calls THE PRESENT CRISIS in the Church as a crisis of leadership, as well, and rightly so, because it involves cardinals and bishops who are supposed to be the successors of the Apostles, and the Successor of Peter himself. It seems quite clear from the article that Altieri has had a change of heart about this pope, and not for the better.


Pope Francis and the current crisis of leadership
We need to know the extent of the rot, which may go
all the way up, and all the way through
by Christopher R. Altieri

September 24, 2018

The crisis of leadership in the Catholic Church is protracted, persistent, and global. It is already almost unbearably awful in its details, and has barely begun to be reported. What follows is neither reportage — except incidentally — nor analysis, strictly speaking — but commentary, and it is personal.

In January, I predicted that 2018 would be a make-or-break year for Pope Francis — a year in which he would have to decide whether to use his gifts to set his project of curial reform and Church renewal on track, or whether to continue his efforts to remake Rome into “Buenos Aires-on-Tiber”. [Not in the sense of a cultural makeover, as it were, but as the personal fiefdom that he appears to have made of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires when he was there. For all his talk of humility, he has really behaved as Pope the same way he behaved as Archbishop - by sovereign fiat: "Let it be done according to my word"!]

In March, on the fifth anniversary of Francis’s election, I considered that the year had got off to a rough start, but noted that we were still in the first quarter. Now the third quarter is rapidly approaching its end, and things have not improved for Francis, who, whatever the external pressures on him, just can’t seem to get out of his own way.

The election of Francis thrilled me, as it did many others, despite my concerns at having a Jesuit pope — concerns perhaps paradoxically rooted in my love for the Ignatian charism and my many personal spiritual debts to great Jesuits, living and dead — and I must say his early forays into pot-stirring and mess-making did not dissuade me from my hope that he was most, at any rate, of what he was cracked up to be.

His remark about gay priests — “Who am I to judge?” — read in context, was unexceptionable, and had enough of the wily Jesuit in it to make me think that his play was inspired. He brought faithful Catholics of every age and state of life in the Church out of the woodwork and into the public conversation to say what the Church really teaches — and people who otherwise wouldn’t have, perked up and listened.

It was more gambit than gamble — there was a downside — but I was game for it, even after I had read reports regarding the case of the specific figure, which gave rise to the question that elicited the now famous answer — Msgr. Battista Ricca — whom Francis apparently trusted, based on limited personal acquaintance and the absence of any official condemnation in Ricca’s jacket, even though the Apostolic Nuncio under whom Ricca had worked in Uruguay did not (trust Ricca), owing to serial ambiguities in Ricca’s personal moral conduct.[I think there was an even more direct reason for the Nuncio's 'mistrust' - Ricca brought his Swiss lover to Uruguay not just as a live-in, but according to Sandro Magister's reports from Uruguay, even had him hired by the Nunciature.]

It is worth revisiting Pope Francis’s full response to the question from Brazilian journalist Ilze Scamparini:

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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. [For the simple reason that 1) Ricca's dossier at the Secretariat of State had been whitewashed, perhaps by him personally, after he was recalled to State from his Uruguay assignment and before he was made manager of the Vatican hotels for priests visiting Rome including Casa Santa Marta; and 2) who knows how perfunctory that 'preliminary investigation' was? Was the Nuncio under whom Ricca served even questioned? Let alone, were the Uruguay police records involving Ricca ever looked at?]

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, sin.

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. [What 'they'? Jesus alone 'made him pope'! At the time, after the Resurrection, Peter had more than repented for his denial - and of course, went on to die for the Lord and for the faith. Why does the pope of 'infinite mercy' appear to imply that the Lord did not forgive Peter for his sin but 'made him pope' despite it???]] 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. [This, from someone who had received from Benedict XVI the report he commissioned about a gay lobby in the Curia! Which, apart from a couple of bloggers, no one in the media - after the Vigano Testimony and its specifications of the extent of the gaysubculture in the Roman Curia and the American episcopacy - has bothered to ask about. Whatever happened to it?... When I first Bergoglio's words quoted above in July 2013, my immediate conclusion was that he did not think the report from Benedict XVI was any big deal at all - "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. [Not that he has done anything at all about these lobbies, which includes the like of George Soros and his ilk, and all those anti-Catholic pro-abortion leaders invited to the Vatican every few weeks for some big interenational conference where they can freely pitch their agenda.]

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That was then. This is now. The pope’s basic instinct may well be sound — he’s not wrong to say, “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?” There are many men in priestly ministry who experience same-sex attraction and struggle to live chastely. Sometimes they fail. They are not to be lumped in automatically with the evil men who sought Holy Orders for the target-rich environment and protection a collar affords, while never intending even to attempt a life of chastity.

The real lavender mafiosi groom boys for membership in their ranks, but that is not all they do — they work their work across the board, and may exploit a straight priest’s dalliance just as easily as they might a gay one’s. Exploiting the confusion and naiveté of an adolescent struggling to understand his identity is worse, on the whole, but exploiting the foibles of a grown man is still very bad. The more disorderly men there are in the clergy, the more powerful the lavender mafia will be, regardless of their status as members or affiliates of the syndicate.

We need to know the extent of the rot, which may — as I have noted elsewhere — go all the way up, and all the way through.

A month has passed now, since the former papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, published his 11-page “testimony”, and while pundits and professional Catholics continue debate whether the Francis pontificate will survive the scandal, the pope himself keeps silence. Sort of.

Two weeks ago, Pope Francis devoted his morning reflections — billed as homilies, though they aren’t really homilies [????], but brief moral exhortations based loosely on the Readings of the Day — or fervorini to use the Italian word for the genre [They are still homilies because the exhortations are delivered at Mass - and Bergoglio takes advantage of whatever Reading of the day he can twist for his purposes - which makes them part of the liturgy, as the GIRM reminds all priests, and about which Bergoglio seems oblivious since he has chosen to use these homilettes to get back at his critics] to the Great Accuser, saying he attacks bishops especially, trying to expose their sins and scandalize the faithful, whose default disposition is to love their bishops.

Last week, he returned to the theme and enlarged upon it, saying that it was the people who cried out for Jesus’s crucifixion, and it was Jesus, who kept compassionate silence because “the people were deceived by the powerful.” Francis went on to say the true shepherd chooses silence when the Great Accuser attacks him “through so many people.” On Thursday, Pope Francis offered:

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The Church, when she journeys through history, is persecuted by hypocrites: hypocrites, within and without. ['Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the biggest hypocrite of all?']

The devil has nothing to do with repentant sinners, because they look upon God and say, “Lord, I am a sinner, help me!” and the Devil is impotent; but he is strong with hypocrites. He is strong, and he uses them to destroy, to destroy the people, to destroy society, to destroy the Church. Hypocrisy is the Devil’s workhorse, for he is a liar. He makes himself out to be a prince, powerful and beautiful, though from behind he is an assassin. [Oh, yes indeed! That's why old Screwtape has been on a permanent champagne binge since Bergoglio became pope and cannot praise Wormwood enough for his work. Bt I suspect Wormwood really had little to do except work on his target's narcissism.]

---

On a good day, comparison of the bishop — who stands among his flock in Christ’s stead, as their pastor — to Our Lord, ought to be aspirational. In the midst of worldwide outcry for accountability from bishops, who have sinfully miscarried in their duty of care and used their power to coverup terrible wrongdoing — their own, and that of others in their charge — and coupled with juxtaposition of the faithful thus alarmed with the people who sought Christ’s blood, such comparison is so far beyond the bounds of reasonable discourse, that one is embarrassed for all those who saw the remarks published on their watch.

If when he uttered those words,Pope Francis did not have the current crisis of leadership in mind [a crisis of which he is very much a part, however, so how can he even think there is a crisis of leadership???] then it is fair to say he ought to have been more careful in his choice of them. That he did not, frankly beggars credulity. In any case, he cannot have it both ways: silence is silence, and talk is talk.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/10/2018 18:32]

The Pandora's box of evil and misdeeds by the Church's ministers all the way to the Pope is now open, and the evil is, of course, not limited to sins of the flesh and of corruption by power.
Here is one of the more serious financial scandals that involves the pope and two of his pets, ex-Cardinal McCarrick and Cardinal Wuerl...

Financial corruption and sexual immorality
in the heart of the Church

September 24, 2018

I tweeted a few days ago that in my study of church history, sexual immorality and financial corruption have always been side by side when the church is on the slide.

You may remember last year when Pope Francis asked the USA based Papal Foundation for $25m to bail out a scandal-ridden hospital in Rome called the Immaculate Dermatological Institute. (IDI) Just as a reminder, the Papal Foundation was established by Pope John Paul II to help fund special papal projects to assist the poor in the developing world. Most of their grants were for small, local projects and amounted to about $200,000 to $300,000.

I first came across the Papal Foundation through a friend whose brother works for the foundation, and I was blessed to visit one of their pet projects in El Salvador. It was an inspiring village where the poor were enabled to buy homes, get jobs, educate their kids and practice their faith. It was real. It was local and it was working.

When I heard that Pope Francis asked not for a reasonable small grant for a local project for the poor, but for $25M to bail out a hospital in Rome it all seemed pretty fishy.

John Allen has investigated and tells the whole story here.
https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2018/09/20/how-obscure-italian-hospital-became-the-eye-of-a-global-storm/

In just three years, IDI has received three major infusions of cash from the Vatican and the Italian government, amounting to well over $70 million, and each time opinions were split between those who wished to save the institution and those ready to pull the plug.

What was once a Roman story drew global attention when the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, charged with financing the pope’s charitable initiatives, was asked by Pope Francis to help IDI with a $25 million payment. The request divided the foundation, with mostly clerics on one side supporting the pope ,and mostly lay people on the other skeptical of an institute many see as a poor investment at best, corrupt at worst.

While $13 million of that payment had already been sent to IDI, the remaining $12 million, approved in April 2018, remains for the time being in the foundation’s own account, inside sources told Crux.

Allen recounts the history of the hospital and how it gained a prestigious reputation over the years. Then the shady business started:

---

The hospital offered a walk-in service that offered treatment with no appointment and, as its fame grew throughout Europe, between 300 and 600 people would purchase a ticket every day.

“The daily income was guaranteed and monstrous,” a former employee who asked to remain anonymous told Crux.

Since the congregation that owned the hospital was a non-profit entity, all the money coming in had to be spent, hence employees took home massive checks and IDI was able to purchase the best and latest machinery.

The hospital was strongly unionized, to the extent that at the height of its power, mayoral candidates would visit for their campaigns. IDI began to expand, creating auxiliary clinics around Rome and increasing the number of departments.

The 2008 global financial crisis hit IDI hard, and the hospital eventually declared bankruptcy. But what really crippled the institute, sources say, came from within. Several sources close to IDI told Crux that starting in 2011, Father Franco Decaminada, the congregation’s representative at IDI, began to bring in “strange characters.”

“They looked out of place,” one IDI insider told Crux. The men had bodyguards and spoke with a heavy Neapolitan accent the source said, and rumors abounded that shoe boxes full of cash were being secreted out of the hospital.

Subsequent reporting by Italian journalists, especially the Italian public television service RAI and the news magazine L’Espresso, led to the discovery that money was being funneled out of the hospital to tax havens around the world and even to fund oil extraction projects in Africa.

---

Eventually the hospital went bankrupt and looked to the Vatican and Italian government to bail them out. When those efforts faltered Pope Francis turned to the Papal Foundation and none other than an old friend and ally – you guessed it – Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Allegedly he and his successor Cardinal Donald Wuerl pressured the wealthy donors of the Papal Foundation to cough up $25M to bail out the IDI.

This caused the uproar a year ago and since then Cardinal McCarrick – who was instrumental in setting up and oiling the wheels of the Papal Foundation – has been disgraced.

As with the other secrets and lies that have been going on one wonders just where the money from the Roman hospitals trickled out to, and into whose pockets would the Papal Foundations’ millions have ended up?

The wealthy Americans gave the money to help the poor in the developing world, and gave the funds trusting the pope to use them wisely.

But this pope, along with his seminarian-cuddling cardinal and his disgraced successor, pressure the Catholic laymen for a whopping $25M?

It feels like there is more than one mafia operating within the Vatican – and this one isn’t lavender.

'OUT OF LOVE FOR MY PEOPLE, I WILL NOT STAY SILENT': Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of Benedict VXI's Letter to the Catholics of China,
by Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, Chora Books, Rome, 2018)

Marco Tosatti and Aldo Maria Valli both write about a new book by Cardinal Zen... Tosatti's is the more ineresting because of some explosie passages he chooses to cite from the book.

A book by Cardinal Zen
at the time of theVatican-China agreement
Translated from

September 24, 2018

Precisely when Beijing and the Holy See announced their provisional agreement for the appoinment of bishops, a book by Cardinal Joseph Zen has been publihed in Italian.

A text that demonstrates his great love for the Church. And a dramatic one. Dramatic and tragic because it bares the profound incomprehensions that have accompanied the ‘road to reconciliation’ betwene the Catholic churc and the Chinese Communist government.

A road that the Cardinal says could well lead to failure because the agreement enormously disfavors the Church and punishes the members of China’s underground Church – those who, at the price pf enormous suffering and sometimes, of life itself – never wished to join the ‘official’ church and have paid dearly for their loyalty to the Vatican.

At a time when religious persecutions are intensifying in China, and religious freedom in that country is increasingly constrained, one must ask, he says, if it is rational to have an agreement that truly does little for the Church’s mission of evangelization.

Reflecting on the tenth annviersary of Benedict XVI’s Letter to Chinese Catholics, Cardinal Zen sheds light on the strategy towards China that the Church has had in place in recent decades, within which there has been no lack of luminous momments, but certainly, a lack of faliures, cleary denounced by Zen as a direct witness of events.

Here are some passages:

---

When Pope Benedict made me a cardinal, I understood that he wanted me to help him do something for the Church in China, but to confirm this, I asked him for a brief audience in September 2006. When I got his confirmation, I thought it was necessary for me to inform the new Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples [the late Indian Cardinal Ivan Dias, named Prefect by Benedict XVI in May 2006; he retired in 2011 and was succeeded by Cardinal Filoni, a China expert, appointed Prefect by Benedict XVI in 2011).],

As soon as he saw me, he said, “Don’t be too agitated. The Lord has his own time”. And I replied, “Yes, the Lord has his time, but we can also be impatient after so many years…”

I told him that I liked Psalm 44[43] which we priests recite every two weeks in the Breviary, and which ends with the words: “Awake! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Rise up! Do not reject us forever!”

And he said to me: "Cardinal Zen, do not forget that the Communists are also our brothers. The Lord died on the Cross even for them.” I replied: “But Eminence, don’t you think I believe that too? Yes, the Communists are my brothers, but the bishops they imprison are also my brothers. Whose side should I take?”

He ended our covnersation by saying, “There are so many things that we [presumably the Congregation] can do which you cannot”. In short, he wanted me to stay out of the question. So I replied: “Yes, you have the possibility to commit many errors, but we don’t!”

---

And here is what he says about the appointment of Mons. Pietro Parolin to be Secretary of State:

---

Even I was among thpse who applauded his appointment. But to my sorrowful surprise, he soon showed himself to be arrogant and overbearing, with greater regard for diplomatic success which is wordly rather than the triuph of the faith.

My first surprise was when, during an address commemorating his mentor, Cardinal Casaroli [former Secretary of State and architect of the Vatican’s Ospolitik during the Cold War], he described the heroes of the faith in that era (Cardinals Wyszynsko, Mindszenty and Beran, although he did not name them) as “gladiators, men who systematically opposed the government, who wished to place themselves in the political spotlight”! But to discredit them this way was to discredit the faith!

The other surprise was when he secretly dissolved the Commission for the Church in China [instituted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 to study the questions of major importance concerning the life of Church in China, and met yearly till 2012], abandoning the tradition of good diplomatic manners in the Holy See even in the worst of times. Evidently, he no longer wished to hear my discordant voice.

Then there was the underhanded way of getting rid of the input of Mons. Savio Hon [a theologian from HongKong who had been a member of teh International Theological Commission for many years when it was headed by Cardinal Ratzinger as CDF Prefect, he was named by Benedict XVI in 2010 Secretary of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith – in his time, the highest ranking Asian in the Curia], who was sent away from Rome [first as Apostolic Administrator in Guam, and then as Nuncio to Greece] but making sure he was muzzled as an employee of the Secretariat of State.

But what concerns me most is his lack of respect for the truth. Intelligent as he is, the sophisms and half-truths he says canno but be lies said consciously.

Having gotten rid of me and Savio, Cardinal Parolin then had the field all to himself, without obstacles. He pushed the pope forward along the slope of his optimism about China. But Parolin knows very well the horrible face of Chinese Communism! Why has he kept the truth from the pope? [Maybe because the pope prefers to hear Parolin’s version of ‘the truth’!]

---

At the end of his book, Cardinal Zen writes: “Don’t the powers that be at the Vatican say that the purpose for getting an agreement with China was to favor the evangelization of this great nation? Let them not forget that Communist power is not eternal. If today they back this regime, then tomorrow, our Church may not be welcome for the reconstruction of a new China.

At this time, the whole world is seeing a terrible worsening of the restrictions on religious freedom in China. Are we to expect any gain from coming to terms with this government? It is not just a quip when I say that it is almost like expecting that st Joseph would have gained anything by talking to Herod.

What then must we do? Go back to Pope Benedict’s letter, in which he prays to the Lord that “you [the Catholics of China]may be’ filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding… strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (From Paul’s Letter to the Colossians).

“Gaslighting,” writes Dr. Stephanie Sarkis at Psychology Today, “is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their [sic] reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders.”

For those who have only recently become aware of the alarming cognitive dissonance in the pontificate of Pope Francis, Sarkis’s article, entitled “11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting,” offers some valuable insights into what Catholics around the globe are being subjected to by the Vatican – often completely unawares.

Gaslighters, explains Sarkis, tell blatant lies.
- They deny what they’ve said, even if there’s evidence.
- They use things you care about to gain leverage.
- They wage a long-term campaign of manipulation that breaks down their victims over time.
- They say one thing and do another.
- They use positive reinforcement – saying things you agree with or make you feel good – to trick you into thinking “they aren’t so bad” and doubting your own perception.
- They intentionally use confusion to uproot your “sense of stability and normalcy” so you’ll “constantly question everything.” - They project their bad behavior on you.
- They form alliances of people against you – either real or imagined – and use them to isolate you.
- They dismiss their victims as “crazy” to damage their credibility when they speak out against the abuse.
- And they accuse others of lying so they can be the source of “truth.”

With these warning signs in mind, let’s look at the most recent example of papal gaslighting. We’ve already examined how the pope has recently been hammering home of the idea that his critics – particularly in his handling of sexual abuse among the clergy – are in league with Satan, the “Great Accuser,” and that he and his fellow complicit bishops are innocent and being persecuted like Christ.

Today, in an address given in Estonia, the pope took things farther, saying young people “become outraged when they do not see a clear condemnation of sexual and economic scandals.”

A clear condemnation? Who is in the best position to do that? Who is the person of highest authority in the Church who has been accused of complicity in covering up abuse? Who is it who said, “I am not going to say a word about this“?

But wait, there’s more: Francis spoke Sept. 25 after hearing testimonies from several young Estonians.

---

He told them that young people have an ability to tell adults when they are ignoring “a reality that already exists.”

“Some of you … have the courage to say: ‘Don’t you see that nobody is listening to you any more, or believes what you have to say?’” said the pontiff.

“We … need to be converted, to realize that in order to be at your side we need to overturn many situations that, in the end, keep you at a distance,” he said.

---

- Nobody is listening to what the pope has to say anymore, because he has lost all moral credibility.
- Nobody believes him because he is a liar, saying one thing one day and another the next.
- We are kept at a distance because we have the distinct impression that he despises the faith we hold dear and that he will do or say anything to hold on to power just long enough to destroy that faith.

And yet here he is, once again, offering “positive reinforcement” in his message today, saying exactly what the people in his audience are feeling as though he cares about it, trying to convince them he’s not part of the problem. “This,” writes Sarkis, “is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter – and again, to question your reality.”

From Lettergate to the Scalfari Strategy, from near-constant self-contradiction to editing or intentionally mistranslating papal remarks after the fact to make them appear more acceptable, and through the frequent and deliberate exercise of the Perón Rule, it has become undeniably clear that this is a Vatican that can’t be trusted.

But for Catholics, the Vatican – and particularly, the person of the pope – is the one thing in this world we should most be able to trust. That’s arguably the most damning bit of gaslighting in this whole fiasco. Sarkis writes that gaslighters “know confusion weakens people”:

Gaslighters know that people like having a sense of stability and normalcy. Their goal is to uproot this and make you constantly question everything. And humans’ natural tendency is to look to the person or entity that will help you feel more stable – and that happens to be the gaslighter.

Now that you know the warning signs, watch out for them. Your filial devotion to the papacy does not mean you must silently endure the abuse of the man who should be your spiritual father. Stand up, speak out, and push back.

So, we must add 'gaslighting' to the more familiar 'narcissism' as a psychological attribute [or mental disorder] of Jorge Bergoglio. I wonder if the term, so widely used in pop psychology, is already in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistal Manual of Mental Disorders), as narcissism has long been. The Wikipedia article on gaslighting notes that "Sociopaths and narcissists use gaslighting tactics".

BTW, the term comes from a popular 1940s film starring Ingrid Bergman [and the play from which it was adapted] in which a husband who has committed murder attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of their environment and insisting that she is mistaken, remembering things incorrectly, or delusional when she points out these changes.

Bergoglio, who sees himself as church law all to himself and by himself, demonstrates it once again... But my greater interest in this story is all those claims of miraculous events produced by water blessed by the pope. Perhaps Cardinal Becciu should investigate even just the first miracle claimed here, and then he can go ahead and make precedent by declaring Bergoglio a saint while he is still alive. If he is indeed a miracle worker, who cares if he never visits China and never answers Vigano? The Lord may be sending all of us a message!!! You think?


Couple in civil union claims
Pope Francis married them
in unexpected Vatican 'ceremony'
by Jeanne Smits


September 24, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis has done it again. During a private audience at Santa Marta in Rome, which preceded the general audience in St. Peter's Square last Wednesday, the Pope blessed a civilly married couple in a whirlwind ceremony including a general absolution for all those present.

We all remember the (not so) spontaneous in-flight wedding of two crewmembers in the airplane flying Pope Francis over Chile last January. This time, the Uruguayan couple involved appears really to have been taken by surprise, and there is a complete video of the one and a half-minute event to prove it.

Noelia Franco and Omar Caballero were united in a civil marriage 24 years ago. Five daughters, two sons-in-law and one granddaughter later, they were hoping not so much to regularize this irregular situation as to obtain Pope Francis’s blessing.

This story commences with what they feel was the miraculous healing of their youngest daughter, Sara, 4 years old, who was in intensive care with respiratory distress. One of Noelia’s friends in Montevideo, Uruguay had brought back holy water from Rome, blessed by Pope Francis. The distraught mother poured a few drops of it on her daughter's forehead: Sara, she says, immediately took a turn for the better and was soon out of intensive care.

The news spread (Noelia started her career at 17 as a journalist and for the last 12 years, she’s been running a public relations company with her husband Omar). In April 2017, she decided to bring her little daughter to Rome in order to thank Pope Francis during a public audience. She also took holy water blessed by the Pope back to Montevideo. She started handing it out to friends in need – and obtained, so she says, a number of miracles, thanks to the Francis-blessed water.

At this point, the Franco-Caballeros decided they needed to go to Rome to tell the Pope about what was happening, to thank him and to ask for his blessing. Last July, Noelia Franco sent an email to Monsignor Fabian Pedacchio, Pope Francis’s private secretary who was before that, according to Henry Sire’s Dictator Pope, Cardinal Bergoglio’s eyes and ears in Rome. She asked for an invitation to the Pope's public audience on September 19th, adding a letter to Pope Francis himself that has been published by the Uruguayan press.

Its most important excerpts read as follows:

---

“Blessings kept coming, up to the point where all the people to whom I had given holy water I had brought back from the Vatican received a miracle: a journalist friend got pregnant (it was one of the last possibilities she had), the daughter of another journalist who had a congenital illness was healed, another journalist friend won her battle against cancer and today she is pregnant.

“We would like to thank you for all these blessings received from the moment you made us return to our faith in the church, and we want you to bless our marriage.

“This year, we celebrated the 24th year of our marriage, my husband and I. When we got married we had no money for wedding rings and even less for a party or for the white dress. We always had the idea that we would have to get married in church, but being able to see you with our family would be the greatest blessing that we could receive.

“In all, there will be four adults, two teenagers and two children.

“We don't want to ask too much, we’re just asking you for 30 seconds to say thank you; we shall be on a trip to Rome from the 13th to the 20th of September, we would like yourself and your team to accept to have this meeting with our family on the day that will fit you best, or during the Wednesday audience on September 19.

“May God bless you, Francis.”

---

The response came quickly, and it was a surprise: the Pope himself had fixed a meeting at the Casa Santa Marta on September 19th, three-quarters of an hour before the general audience.

The meeting itself lasted a quarter of an hour. That is a great deal more than the “30 seconds” the family had asked for, Noelia and Omar hoping only for a quick blessing, but even so it is still difficult to speak of a fully fledged marriage ceremony.

The father, the mother, three of their daughters, two sons-in-law and one granddaughter had a relaxed talk with the Pope. Family pictures were shown, photos were taken, they talked and joked. Pope Francis gave them his advice on having a lasting wedding.

“With you, bread and onions”, he said. It's a Spanish expression that harks back to ancient Egypt when bread and onions were staple food for the poor who couldn’t afford much else. It means staying together even during the hard times.

The whole group sat around a low table in armchairs and they were still all sitting there when the Pope decided it was time for a collective absolution. He spoke about some of the sins they could have committed, and of the “hitches that there had certainly been in their marriage”. He added that this was also the time to thank God for His grace that had “kept this family so united” and also for “so many fruits” it had given: “It is truly a great grace.”

The grace of the sacramental union? Hardly… Then he blessed them all, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, saying that he absolved them “of all their sins”.

Collective or general absolutions in the Catholic Church are normally strictly reserved for emergency situations, such as an impending disaster or the moments before a battle when a military chaplain has no time to hear individual confessions. Much abuse has been recorded during the decades following Vatican II, with priests organizing penitential celebrations with collective absolution and no individual confessing of sins.

The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith published pastoral norms as early as 1972 which make all this clear. Among others, when circumstances allow, penitents should at least say an act of contrition, and when grave sins are involved, survivors should confess them individually within a year.

The video of the Pope’s general absolution does not show any of this. Perhaps because that part was not filmed – but it does not seem likely. It all sounds more like a friendly conversation where a sacramental absolution suddenly appears out of the blue.

This raises the question: is living together as man and wife in a civil, non-sacramental marriage on the part of Catholics still a mortal sin, or not? Pope Francis appears to point to an answer which is a departure from Catholic teaching and tradition when he opined in June 2016: “I’ve seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitations, and I am sure that this is a real marriage, they have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity.”

Seconds later, Pope Francis asked the couple to hold hands, posing the question: “Do you want to stay together?” The video then shows Noelia turning to Omar: “Are you sure?”, she said. “Of course”, he replied. The Pope then looked inquiringly at Noelia, who said: “Yeees…” He blessed them again without words, before asking God to “keep them always together” and to give them “the grace of having many grandchildren”. And that was it.

Noelia, visibly surprised and moved, observed: “There we are, we’re married.”

The same day, she would post the video on twitter with these words: “Then one day… the Pope who speaks your language marries you in private under the eyes of your children. I have no words, 15 minutes of private audience with @Pontifex_es at Saint-Marta where our dream of marrying in church and having our marriage blessed.”

According to the Uruguayan daily El Pais, Noelia Franco told their reporter she was “in tears” during the ceremony. She recounted more details.

“Then Francis entered. He greets us, we start making jokes and telling anecdotes. He asked us whether we wanted to stay together and whether we wanted to get married and that after the Vatican would send the certificates. Our sons-in-law acted as witnesses and we got married,” she said.

The Uruguayan news-site Telenoche says Noelia Franco is a Catholic. It is not clear whether Omar Caballero is also a Catholic (that is the whole point of having engaged couples produce their baptism certificates before obtaining a church wedding, and doing other sorts of paperwork to check identities, make sure there was no previous sacramental marriage and so forth), nor does anyone seem to know or even care whether their five daughters were baptized.

The question is not whether Caballero and Franco are sincere in their desire for marriage and their commitment to remain faithful to each other as long as they both live (although that question was not put to them). The critical issue is the banalization of the sacrament of penance and of that of marriage, which here appears to be devalued to the point of being an on the spot blessing that simply completes a lasting civil union.

No matter how much lipstick the pope is slathering on the enormously gross pig that is his treasonous 'provisional agreement' with China on the appointment of bishops (see the prettifying lies he said in his inflight news conference yesterday), the pig is still very much a pig... The following commentary is by Douglas Farrow, Professor of Theology and Christian Thought at McGill University.

St. Paul tells us in 2 Thessalonians that the Day of the Lord cannot come “unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness, the son of perdition,” is revealed. But “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work,” he adds.

The man who gives full expression to that mystery, who completes the evolution of lawless humanity and leads its final rebellion, is the last but not by any means the first such man. Therefore, Paul’s warning is as useful today as at the end of the age.

Paramount Leader Xi Jinping is one such man of lawlessness. He has shown himself willing “to oppose and exalt himself against every so-called god or object of worship,” ruthlessly suppressing freedom of religion in China, stripping houses of worship of their crosses or other symbols, and subjecting everything and everybody to the interests of the Party.

Xi’s policy of “Sinicizing” all religious expression renders religion entirely subservient to the state. [As it already is in any totalitarian state, especially the atheistic ones, for whom nothing is sacred but 'the party' and its 'maximum leader' - as it is in China and as it has become for the church of Bergoglio]

Paul said the man of lawlessness would eventually seat himself in the temple as if he were God — some fathers believed that meant the Church, which Paul taught was the new temple of God — and Xi seems set to do just that.

This is the man with whom Cardinal Parolin and his colleagues in the Secretariat of State, at Pope Francis’s behest, are prepared to do business. On Saturday they signed a deal that reportedly gives the Party the primary role and final decision in appointing Chinese bishops in the Catholic Church.
- This deal requires the Church to reverse previous excommunications, permitting the Party to dictate even sacramental discipline.
- It brings the Party directly into the internal deliberations and deeds of the Church, whether administrative or evangelical or sacramental.
- It would be fundamentally wrong even if the state in question were the Holy Roman Empire rather than a godless, merciless, and murderous state like Communist China.
The unity of which Cardinal Parolin has spoken will be a unity, not under God, but under Xi, who will stamp out the underground churches and force everyone into one Party-approved fold.

Canon law and Christus Dominus declare this action not merely imprudent, but also illegitimate.
- Francis has not revoked or suspended canon 377 §5, which states that “in the future no rights or privileges of election, appointment, presentation, or designation of bishops are conceded to civil authorities.”
- He and his representatives are themselves acting lawlessly in making this deal with China’s man of lawlessness.

Moreover, as Cardinal Zen has courageously said, in their lawlessness they are “giving the flock into the mouths of the wolves.” They are betraying the Chinese martyrs and China’s living witnesses who have suffered so long for faithfulness to Christ.

“The brothers and sisters of the Chinese mainland,” as he said earlier, are not afraid of poverty, of prison, of shedding their blood; their greatest suffering is to see themselves betrayed by ‘family.’”

The pope is betraying Christians of every place and time who have bravely resisted attempts to make the Church of Jesus Christ do obeisance to the state. In former days, all that was required was a pinch of incense to the emperor — which Christians refused to offer, often at the expense of their lives.

But now Chinese Catholics are not only asked to offer the pinch of incense to the paramount leader, but also to allow his officials to vet and appoint the bishops and clergy who will do so on their behalf. The scandalous practice of lay investiture has returned, and in a more scandalous form than it took in days of old. The path that led to Henry VIII and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in France is to be walked again.

This is no mere question of prudential judgment.
- If the state has oversight of the Church, that already witnesses to the falsity of the Church’s gospel.
- It puts the lie to the Church’s most basic confession, “Jesus is Lord,” since even in the Church the state becomes Lord.
- And in return for the Vatican’s confession that in China the state is Lord, China will acknowledge the pope as the titular head of all its Catholics.

Of what value is that? Actually, China’s Catholics, like Catholics elsewhere, have but one head, Jesus Christ. The pope is not the head of Catholics, he is the head of the apostolic college. And his function as head of the apostolic college is the very thing Xi is depriving him of. [Let not the blame lie on Xi completely. Bergoglio and his negotiators willngly put forward their heads on the block for this - to get any agreement, however treasonous for the Church, humiliating for the pope, and more disadvantageous than ever for China's underground Catholics, as long as the Vatican can crow it has an agreement with China.]

How is it that we have a pontiff and a Secretariat of State who either do not understand these things or do not care about them? To revoke or suspend Canon 377 §5 would have made their action less lawless on the mundane level, since it would no longer contravene Church law. But it would not have made it one whit less lawless on the theological level.

For this action contravenes divine law—the decree that raised Jesus from the dead and set him at the Father’s right hand. It also contradicts the very nature of the Church.

What is the Church, if not an ambassadorial mission charged with declaring to the rulers and ruled of this world that all authority has passed to him who sits at the Father’s right hand and will come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead?

But the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association was set up by the Chinese authorities to ensure that this message would not be properly heard in China. It was set up so that the host state could itself staff and manage the ecclesial embassy of Jesus Christ.

Those who are inclined to say of Francis, “Well, he is the pope, after all, and may do as he pleases,” should think again. Will they appeal to canon 1404, “the First See is judged by no one,” to justify their acquiescence and inaction?

That canon condemns the pontiff himself in this matter. He is accountable directly to the Lord, yes, rather than human courts.
- But that means that he cannot be accountable, nor make himself accountable, to Xi Jinping or any secular leader in anything that concerns the Church qua Church.
- It means rather that he is bound to confess the true Lord as Lord. Apart from that constant and faithful act of confession he is not really acting as “Peter,” occupant of the First See, at all.

In the words of Vatican II’s Theological Commission, because the pope is especially accountable to the Lord, he is “also bound to revelation itself, to the fundamental structure of the Church, to the sacraments, to the definitions of earlier councils, and other obligations too numerous to mention.”

All this is at stake in Francis's decision to give the Communist Party of China the right to initiate and supervise episcopal appointments. Faithful bishops are bound, for their part, to refuse to recognize the legitimacy of this concordat and to recognize as brother bishops those who were appointed before it rather than those appointed under it. Or has the mystery of lawlessness progressed so far even in the Church itself that light can have fellowship with darkness, and Christ accord with Belial, just because the Secretariat says so?


Now, go read Bergoglio's Letter to the Catholics of China, which makes no mention whatsoever of the new wave of anti-Catholic manifestations by the Chinese government such as the demolition of cathedrals and forbidding children to be brought to Mass.
http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2018/09/26/180926b.html
It is all false 'sweetness and light', with only a token reference to what led to the clandestine church in China - falsely claiming that it was the appointment of bishops that led to that clandestinity. It calls for unity of the Chinese Catholics without saying exactly how this is to be achieved in the face of historic wrongs that have now been stepped up.

Obviously this letter was prepared long before the announcement of the 'provisional agreement' - and as usual with Bergoglio, it studiously omits to mention real and concrete problems of the here and now, undoubtedly written in the deluded state of denying any reality that clashes with his wishful thinking. Bergoglio's studied half-truths and deliberate omissions constitute mendacity - which has become habitual with him. What to think about a pope who is, in effect, a habitual liar (which is not the worst of his problems)?

The Big Ugly
by Steve Skojec

September 26, 2018

If you’re a Catholic and you have a pulse, you feel it: we’ve entered into a moment in Church history that is wholly unique. Some will seek historical parallels in this or that heresy, this or that crisis, and mostly fail to do so. In large part, they fail because they’re wrong, but also because they analogize to trivialize. They want to console themselves, or others, with the thought that “we’ve been through all this before, and we’ll get through this again.”

Except we haven’t, and many of us won’t. And a growing number of us have become acutely aware of that fact. This is a battle for souls, and you’d better believe that some will be lost.

Yes, there were bad popes in history. Terrible popes. There were Borgia popes and murderous popes and even rapist popes (like John XII) and corruptions of every kind in the papacy.

Yes, we’ve also had a couple of popes who were a little too fond of playing with heresy. John XXII did it, though he didn’t mean to, and it was on something not yet defined. (He also recanted his error after being duly confronted about it.) Honorius also liked heresy (though we can’t say for certain he ever truly embraced Monothelitism). But to borrow a line from the bard, “if it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath Honorius answered it.”

The Third Council of Constantinople gave old Honorius a posthumous pile-driver. “We anathematize Honorius,” it said, “who did not seek to purify this apostolic Church with the teaching of apostolic tradition, but by a profane betrayal permitted its stainless faith be surrendered.”

In a separate letter to the bishops of Spain, Pope Leo II also condemned Honorius as a pope who “did not, as became the apostolic authority, quench the flame of heretical doctrine as it sprang up, but quickened it by his negligence.”

Bad popes happen. The history of papal lapses is something we have covered in these pages before, and I do not intend to rehash it all here.

What I do intend is to propose that we know through our examination of history that there really has never been any situation quite like the present moment. We are apparently the [UN]lucky ones. We have a pope who has not only been accused of covering up for the perpetrators of the ghastliest of sexual crimes, both before and during his pontificate, and of filling his council of closest curial advisers with similarly corrupt men, but of more heretical utterances and doctrinal errors than was previously believed possible under the charism of papal infallibility – which, despite the horrors of sexual abuse, is actually the greater crime.

And with the pope himself as the centerpiece of corruption rather than the standard of orthodoxy, we see all around the world the tolling of the bells for the Church as we know it: corruption, abuse, perversion, complicity, heresy, and even sacrilege that would put a smile on a Satanist’s face, all happening within our clergy, everywhere, for seemingly all of living memory, much of it hidden, a great deal of it now coming to light.

If people don’t start tearing down churches with their bare hands by the end of this, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Of course, they won’t have to, because dioceses around the world will sell them off to property-developers who will turn them into high-rent residential spaces or maybe even gay nightclubs. After all, something we’ve learned from all the sexual abuse cases is that co-opting religious imagery is a feature of degeneracy.

When I talk about what has infected the Church, I am not talking about run-of-the-mill sin, as some have characterized it. I’m not even talking about the kind of habitual mortal sin that drags so many of the faithful, shame-faced and sorrowful, back into the confession lines each week.

I’m talking about the kind of rooted deep, “twisting mind and heart,” “unrepentant dedication to the pursuit of self at the expense of the Church” kind of sin that warps men’s souls and leads them into the flames of eternal perdition.

I’m talking about what can perhaps best be described as demonic parasitism.

The definition of parasite is “an organism that lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host’s expense.” I’d say the majority of bishops appear to fit that definition. Many of the clergy probably do as well, though fewer of them really stand to benefit materially quite as much.

If it weren’t for the temporal perks, I’m not sure why so many of these men, who apparently don’t believe in God (or at least in His justice), would ever sidle up to the altar. They certainly don’t appear to give a damn about their flocks.

The edifices and offices of the Church, with few exceptions, have become infested. The Catholics who care about the Church are angry, but mostly powerless. They can try to withhold money, but they know the Church has long since found a better endowed teat from which to suck – that of national governments willing to pay them exorbitant sums for things like “refugee resettlement.”

In Germany’s case, there’s the Kirchensteuer – a mandatory Church tax that has stuffed the pockets of the corpse of German Catholicism with billions of euros and untold influence in the Vatican, without which the entire German episcopacy and all its empty parishes and seminaries would surely collapse in a heap like a headless zombie.

The faithful can – and should – close their wallets, but the worst bishops won’t even bat an eye.

I don’t know enough about the vision Pope Leo XIII is said to have had about Our Lord giving Satan free rein in the Church for a hundred years to say with 100% certitude that it’s true, or that it’s coming to its inevitable dénouement. Nevertheless, I do know that if it is true, it couldn’t possibly have looked very different from what we’re seeing now.

These parasites have spread through the body, leaving no limb untouched. The few pockets without infection remain the statistical outliers, while the Mystical Body of Christ as a whole lies corrupted, feverish, riddled with sepsis, and on death’s door.

The True Church has been skinned alive and worn like a spiritual meatsuit by an anti-Church that has produced many empty signs and wonders but whose comeuppance is at last at hand. The wheat and chaff will be sifted. The false Church will be separated from the real. The Church’s split personality – making her often seem like a woman possessed – will be exorcised.

It will not happen overnight, however. It will get worse before it gets better. It will appear to a great many of us, at some point or another, that the Church’s promises must surely be lies, that the gates of Hell have prevailed, and that our hope has been misplaced all along.

Our Lord didn’t ask the question idly: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Lk. 18:8). He didn’t promise us that the gates of Hell would fail out of some whimsy; implicit in that guarantee was a warning: it will appear very much as though they have prevailed, so hold fast.

Many of us, intent on searching for comforting answers, will have to learn to be satisfied with mystery. “How will God solve this?” we’ll ask. And the answer will present itself only when He is ready to reveal it.

I am friends with people who have spent decades of their lives studying Catholic prophecy. They know far more about every credible Marian apparition and saintly vision than I could possibly hope to discover. They do not know with any certainly where we are in the timeline of events they anticipate, but they know we are in a precarious place, indeed.

Some whisper now that the Antichrist can’t be far off. Others say there are trials and triumphs we must endure first. Most seem to agree that if we are not at the end, we are at least at the beginning of it.

I will be honest with you. As I write this, I look outside, and I see the sun shining, and the garbage truck driving by, the mess on my kitchen counter from a frantic morning spent getting children ready for school, the computer monitor sitting at my desk with tabs open leading to far less apocalyptic things, and I can’t help but wonder: Are we really at the exit ramp for the Eschaton? Or will this all just continue, unabated, as it has for my entire life?

I am in no hurry for the tribulations and persecutions of the Antichrist, which will be worse than any that the faithful have ever endured. Take some time reviewing the tortures perpetrated upon the saints, and ask yourself if you’re really more excited about being flayed or roasted alive instead of grabbing a beer from the fridge and catching another episode of your favorite show on Netflix.

I have small children. I want to see them grow. I want to see them live full lives, marry wonderful people, and fill my home with grandchildren. I do not want to spend the rest of our days living out our faith in caves and catacombs, hunted by the Son of Perdition and his minions, enduring a time, and times, and half a time (Dan. 7:25). I’ve never even been to Hawaii, for Pete’s sake.

But the hand we’ve been dealt is the hand we have to play. There’s no escaping what’s coming. We can only hope it’s better than we fear. We can only trust that unlike our unfaithful shepherds, the True Shepherd will shield His flock from the wolves.

We are smack-dab in the midst of what I find myself increasingly referring to as “The Big Ugly”: this morass of confusion, corruption, infighting, contempt for orthodoxy, and general chaos in the Church. There is no way to greener pastures except through this fetid swamp.
- We will watch our beloved Church diminished and laid low before men.
- We will watch her stripped, scourged, crowned with thorns, marched beaten and bloodied through the streets and ultimately crucified like her beloved Divine Spouse.
- We will be afraid – at times even ashamed – to look upon her.

But we must stay the course. We must not be scandalized out of the Ark of Salvation. “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68).

Or, as the old hymn says: “Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee; E’en though it be a cross. That raiseth me.”

I’m not here to tell you it’s going to get easier soon. I’m not here to give you an official interpretation of prophecy. I don’t know if the full Third Secret will be revealed, if we’ll ever see the Great Monarch or the Angelic Pope, or whether the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart comes now or later.

To be honest, it doesn’t even matter. It’s not our call how this goes down. Our job is to stay faithful and to trust.

What I do know is that we’ve got a hell of a battle on our hands, and we’re going to need stamina more than power.
- So find a place where the liturgy doesn’t drive you out of your mind.
- Identify friends and community where you can go to talk about these things rather than keeping them all to yourself.
- Make conscious efforts to find beauty in the practice of your faith.
- Try, even though you’re going to be tempted like mad not to, to ignite your prayer life, and extend it to your family.
- And recognize that you will be attacked – viciously, without mercy, without quarter, in every way you can imagine that will cut you off from your strongest spiritual support. I don’t just mean by the creatures of this world; I mean by the unseen enemy, who is ancient, intelligent, and powerful, who prowls about the world seeking whom he may devour.

This is the time where mettle is tested. This is, to borrow another phrase, the time that tries men’s souls. None of us asked for this. Some of us have only come to the recognition of the kind of battle we’re facing recently.

Nobody is too late to work for the harvest-master. Put your armor on. Give your shield a few good thumps with your sword. You were told at your confirmation that you were a soldier for Christ, and that wasn’t just a metaphor. Basic training is over.

There’s a war on, and it’s time to ship out.

How the China deal betrays
the Second Vatican Council
by Matthew Schmitz

Thursday, 27 Sep 2018

Last week, the Vatican signed a concordat with a totalitarian regime. The Chinese government, which has harassed and tortured millions of Christians, will now have a role in selecting Catholic bishops. The agreement is provisional and the details are vague, but that much is clear.

Whatever one makes of the deal, it inarguably constitutes a break with the Church’s support of religious freedom as expressed in the Second Vatican Council. Before Vatican II, Church officials generally had not sought to secure freedom for the Church by appealing to neutral and broadly applicable principles of religious freedom. Instead, they signed concordats that granted the Church certain privileges, often in exchange for the authorities’ receiving some say in Catholic life.

The China deal is an agreement of this older kind. In exchange for a role in choosing bishops, China will effectively acknowledge the Pope’s authority over Chinese Catholics – something the regime has never before conceded.

Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo has defended the deal by claiming that China “observes the common good and it has proved its ability to great missions like fighting against poverty and pollution”. This is a novel way to describe the regime.

According to a UN report in August, Chinese authorities are currently detaining a million people (out of a total population of 11 million) in the western province of Xinjiang, home to the Uighur Muslim minority. An additional two million people in the province are undergoing some form of re-education. Cadres monitor and report on every family. Cameras have been placed inside some homes.

Restrictions on religious life extend well beyond Xinjiang.
- Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has bulldozed and burned Protestant and Catholic churches.
- Gao Zhisheng, a Protestant human rights lawyer, released a book last year describing his torture at the hands of Chinese officials. They beat and electrocuted him before secretly imprisoning him in a camp, where he suffered further psychological torture.
- Gao calls the regime “totalitarian”. Unlike authors who apply that descriptor to Western governments, he was secretly detained following the book’s publication.

How could the Catholic Church make a deal with such a regime? Critics of the agreement have tended to present it as yet another blunder by Pope Francis. But it indicates a broader loss of confidence in the political vision of Vatican II.

After World War II, many Catholics concluded that concordats with Mussolini and Hitler had discredited the Church. Shame regarding these deals, combined with a certain optimism about the direction of history, led many to assert that a “free Church in a free society” was the future in the West and across the world.

Conservative Catholics trained their ire on socialist regimes, while liberal Catholics focused on right-wing dictatorships. But both used anti-totalitarian rhetoric to argue that the Church should stand on the side of liberty.

This outlook received its fullest expression in Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae, which suggested that the Church should support neutral religious liberties rather than seek privileges from the state. The Church continued to arrange concordats with smaller countries like Haiti and Vietnam, but broad-based defence of religious liberty was the ideal. The fall of the Berlin Wall seemed to vindicate the liberal belief that the world would turn toward freedom.

The China deal reflects a retreat from the political vision of the council fathers. Vatican II, which sought to disentangle Church and state, taught that the Pope alone should appoint bishops: “For the purpose of duly protecting the freedom of the Church and of promoting more conveniently and efficiently the welfare of the faithful, this holy council desires that in future no more rights or privileges of election, nomination, presentation, or designation for the office of bishop be granted to civil authorities.”

Popes had only gained this exclusive power of episcopal appointment at the end of the 19th century as liberal and secular states renounced the rights once claimed by Christian powers. In 1829, 555 of 646 bishops who recognised the Pope owed their appointments to the state. By the end of the Second Vatican Council, the Pope had almost untrammeled freedom in picking bishops.

Counter to expectations, this change did not create a hierarchy notable for courage and independence. As John O’Malley has observed, it made for an episcopacy that was “more docile in all spheres”. If bishops chosen by the Chinese state are supine before secular powers, if they lack apostolical courage, then they merely resemble their brother bishops in jurisdictions where the Church enjoys perfect liberty.

Some Catholic commentators have insisted that the agreement with China is not a concordat. Like Sánchez Sorondo’s minimisation of the Chinese regime’s crimes, this is an attempt to avoid facing reality. Church leaders can no longer pretend to be much purer or more committed to human rights than the authors of the Reichskonkordat. Without anyone noticing, the age of Catholic liberalism has come to an end.


Did Pope Francis just make China Protestant?
The long-term consequences of the new provisional agreement
By GEORGE WEIGEL

September 24, 2018

Attempts to defend the recent provisional agreement between the Vatican and the People’s Republic of China, which was signed on September 22, have rung increasingly hollow over the past few days.

That pattern began before the ink was dry in Beijing, as Pope Francis’s secretary of state, Pietro Parolin, issued a statement claiming that now “for the first time all the bishops in China are in communion with the Bishop of Rome, with the Successor of Peter.” Really? Weren’t “all the bishops in China” in full communion with the pope before the Chinese Communists set up their front church, the Patriotic Catholic Association?

Parolin also tried to justify the provisional agreement on the grounds that Pope Francis, like his immediate predecessors, “looks with particular care to the Chinese people” — a claim that, translated from Vaticanese, suggests that John Paul II and Benedict XVI would have made the same deal Francis and Parolin reportedly did. But that deal was available to John Paul II and Benedict XVI and they didn’t make it, because they knew that giving first rights of nomination over Chinese bishops to the Chinese state or the Chinese Communist Party was both a violation of the Church’s own canon law and a prescription for a puppet episcopate.

Then there was Andrea Riccardi, one of the founders of the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Catholic renewal movement firmly lodged in the progressivist camp. “Today,” Riccardi wrote, “the pope’s representative enters Peking [sic] through the front door. No more secret negotiations, but an official agreement that recognizes the dignity of the Holy See and Chinese Catholicism.”

How utterly, totally Italianate: Bella figura [literally, 'beautiful figure', but the idiom more or less means putting lipstick on a pig, i.e., trying to prettify something inhrently ugly] trumps again, and “dignity” is imagined to be a substitute for courage and fidelity to the truth.

And of course Riccardi was spouting nonsense about “no more secret negotiations,” for the text of the provisional agreement is itself secret, and the charade by which the Chinese Communist Party will nominate bishops for a Vatican thumbs-up or thumb-down will be as transparent as mud.

What has happened, one wonders, to the commitment to lift up the witness of the “new martyrs” of the 20th and 21st centuries, which the Sant’Egidio Community honors at the Church of San Bartolomeo all’Isola in Rome? Will those martyred in China while Vatican diplomats were caving in to Chinese Communist demands be remembered at that shrine?

There were a few adults left standing in the wake of the provisional agreement.
- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (Taiwan) issued a measured but pointed statement, expressing the wish that “this accord will enhance religious freedom in China and allow the Chinese Catholic Church to become an integral part of the universal Church.”
- Then the Taiwanese noted what Cardinal Parolin, in full Neville Chamberlain mode, could not bring himself to say last week when the agreement was signed: “The world watches China increasingly tightening control over religious practices.”
- Then came an expression of hope, perhaps forlorn, but in any event necessary: “Taiwan trusts that the Holy See has made appropriate arrangements to ensure that Catholic adherents in China will receive due protection and not be subject to repression. Taiwan hopes that once the agreement is implemented, members of the Catholic community in China will enjoy true religious autonomy.”

The redoubtable Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, made every conceivable effort to put some sense into Vatican diplomacy in the matter of deal-making with the PRC over the past decade. But having failed in that mission, the cardinal, in a new book, For Love of My People I Will Not Be Silent, underscored, once again, the crucial point that the Vatican diplomats could never grasp: that this should have been about evangelization, not politics.

Throughout the negotiating process, those diplomats and the mouthpieces of the current pontificate kept insisting that the Holy See had to have a place at the table in Beijing, for China was the rising global hegemon. (How, precisely, kowtowing to the hegemon was supposed to win his respect, and therefore his ear, and perhaps even his cooperation, was never specified.)

Cardinal Zen knew better, however. As he argues in his book, the Vatican was jeopardizing Catholicism’s future in China by making this deal. The Chinese Communist regime is not eternal, Zen wrote; and if today “you line up behind the regime, tomorrow our Church will not be welcome in the reconstruction of a new China.”

And this, of course, has been all along the crucial reason not to play Let’s Make a Deal with the regime of Xi Jinping. It is not atavistic Cold Warriorism — another charge that Vatican apologists fling at critics of the provisional agreement — to see in the present deal an obstacle to the evangelization of China in the future.

An immense moral capital is being built up in China by those religious communities that refuse to bend to Communist repression. By contrast, religious communities identified with the regime will bear the stigma of that regime when it collapses, as Communist regimes inevitably do.

-Xi Jinping’s increasing repression, which is not limited to religious persecution, does not bespeak a regime confident of its stability;
- neither does his reversion to Maoist one-man lifetime rule.
- China has immense social problems, bad demographics, increasing corruption, and an educated population restive about income distribution and Big Brother social control (not least of cyberspace).
Add up those factors and it seems more than likely that Cardinal Zen is right: Chinese Communism is mortal. And when the regime disappears, then what?

Then, I suggest, China will be the greatest field of Christian mission since the Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere in the 16th century.
- Unlike India, where a thick, culturally transmitted religious system makes Christian evangelization difficult, China will be open mission territory.
- For Mao’s Cultural Revolution essentially destroyed traditional Chinese religion, and a post-Communist society looking for meaning as well as for equitably distributed material prosperity will be fertile ground for the offer of the gospel.

And who will make that offer plausibly?
- Those who have suffered for the sake of Christ and the truth, such as the Protestant house churches that are rapidly growing in the PRC? - Or those who have made deals with the old persecutors? The questions, asked, seem to answer themselves.

Pope Francis and his Italian curial diplomats may think that they are setting in motion a process that will give Catholicism a voice in China. It is just as possible, however, and indeed it is far more likely, that they have made a deal that will give a massive evangelical advantage to Protestantism in the China of the future.

Viganò releases new ‘testimony’ reacting
to Pope’s silence on McCarrick cover-up
Challenges Cardinal Ouellet, who told him of B16 sanctions
against McCarrick, to show relevant documents
by Diane Montagna


ROME, September 27, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has today issued a new extraordinary testimony, responding to Pope Francis’S refusal to answer the charge that he knew of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexual abuse, yet made McCarrick “one of his principal agents in governing the Church.”

In the four-page document (see below), the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States also responds to the Pope’s recent homilies which seem to cast himself in the role of Christ and Viganò as the diabolical “Great Accuser.”

“Has Christ perhaps become invisible to his vicar? Perhaps is he being tempted to try to act as a substitute of our only Master and Lord?” Archbishop Viganò asks in the new statement, sent to LifeSiteNews today.

Given the symbolic date of September 29, the liturgical feast of St. Michael the Archangel, and bearing the Archbishop’s episcopal coat of arms and motto, Viganò:
- explains why he believes he had a duty to come forward despite his oath to keep the “pontifical secret,” adding that “the purpose of any secret, including the pontifical secret, is to protect the Church from her enemies, not to cover up and become complicit in crimes committed by some of her members”;
- restates with vigor his central charge that “since at least June 23, 2013, the Pope knew from me how perverse and evil McCarrick was in his intentions and actions, and instead of taking the measures that every good pastor would have taken, the pope made McCarrick one of his principal agents in governing the Church, in regard to the United States, the Curia, and even China, as we are seeing these days with great concern and anxiety for that martyr Church”;
- points to the Pope’s initial response that he would “not say a word” but then notes that he contradicts himself, in comparing “his silence to that of Jesus in Nazareth and before Pilate,” and Viganò to “the great accuser, Satan, who sows scandal and division in the Church, though without ever uttering my name”;
- raises concern over revelations that Pope Francis played a role in covering up for or blocking investigations into other priests and prelates, including Fr. Julio Grassi, Fr. Mauro Inzoli, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor; and
- says it was Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who told him of Pope Benedict’s sanctions against McCarrick.

Addressing the Cardinal, he writes: “You have at your complete disposal key documents incriminating McCarrick and many in the curia for their cover-ups. Your Eminence, I urge you to bear witness to the truth...”

“My decision to reveal those grave facts was for me the most painful and serious decision that I have ever made in my life,” Viganò writes. “I made it after long reflection and prayer, during months of profound suffering and anguish, during a crescendo of continual news of terrible events, with thousands of innocent victims destroyed and the vocations and lives of young priests and religious disturbed.”

“The silence of the pastors who could have provided a remedy and prevented new victims became increasingly indefensible, a devastating crime for the Church,” he writes. “Well aware of the enormous consequences that my testimony could have, because what I was about to reveal involved the successor of Peter himself, I nonetheless chose to speak in order to protect the Church, and I declare with a clear conscience before God that my testimony is true.”

In the statement, Archbishop Viganò also encourages the faithful to “never be despondent!” Exhorting them, he writes:“Make your own the act of faith and complete confidence in Christ Jesus, our Savior, of Saint Paul in his second Letter to Timothy, Scio cui credidi, which I choose as my episcopal motto. This is a time of repentance, of conversion, of prayers, of grace, to prepare the Church, the bride of the Lamb, ready to fight and win with Mary the battle against the old dragon.”

Here below is the official English text of Archbishop Viganò’s new testimony.






Marco Tosatti on his blog comments on the involvement of Cardinal Ouellet, who as Prefect of Bishops, would have had the very same files, if not more, than his predecessor, Cardinal Re had when the latter informed Vigano earlier about the McCarrick sanctions. Vigano has challenged Ouellet to make those documents known. My translation:

---

I don't believe Ouellet will do it (release the documents). He has been substantially deprived of powers as Prefect of Bishops (under this pope). Shortly after Bergoglio's election, he nominated to be Secretary of the Congregation [i.e., its number-2 man] - and consecrated as bishop - someone who had been a mere functionary, Ilson de Jesus Montanari, a great friend and longtime intimate to the Argentine priest Fabian Pedacchio Leaniz, who became Bergoglio's private secretary but anomalously retains his position at the Congregation [where he served for a long time as Bergoglio's 'eyes and ears in Rome]. [i.e., Ouellet, like Cardinal Bagnasco when he was still president of the Italian bishops conference, was assigned a Bergoglio minder as his #2 man (for Bagnasco, it was the infamous Mons. Galantino) whose function is really to keep the top man under vigilance and control.]

The absolutely extraordinary appointment of Montanari was necessary to a total expropriation of the Congregation for Bishops as to the approval of bishops' appointments. One must recall an episode that ha been widely reported concerning the appointment of a Canadian bishop:

Three names were discussed [the usual terna, or short list of 3, that the Nuncio submits as the top candidates for a post]. Ouellet, who is Canadian and knew one of the candidates quite well, said immediately, "This person will not do, this second candidate is good, but the third one is the best". It appears that Ouellet's objection was based on morality-related issues. In the light of what has been happening in this pontificate, we can imagine this 'bad' candidate' must have had friends in high places in Rome.

Because the next day, Leaniz arrived at the Congregation to say, "The pope wants him" - precisely the man Ouellet had ruled out... Ouellet had no choice but to swallow the toad and to go on toadying to his lord and master the pope, hoping to remain in place (he was appointed in 2010) long enough to be papabile once more in the next conclave. [But Ouellet - whom I would have accepted readily if he had been elected pope in 2013 (fool that I am, in hindsight) - almost immediately began toadying to Bergoglio while denigrating Benedict XVI (this I minded very much: let him toady all he wants, but why at the expense of B16?] And he has just slid downhill very fast - being among the most passionate defenders of Amoris laetitia, and of everything else Bergoglio has said, done and decreed.]

---

Meanwhile, John Allen tries to bend backward as far as he can to 'soften' his critique of the reigning pope and what Allen himself calls his 'trust deficit'. But even a Bergogliac like Allen can't really hack out a plausible defense for their idol in the face of mounting evidence.

Both on China and the abuse crisis,
Pope Francis faces a trust deficit
by John L. Allen Jr.
Editor

Sept 27, 2018

ROME - Five days after announcing a landmark deal with China over the appointment of bishops, Pope Francis released a letter to Chinese Catholics on Wednesday. The gist of it amounts to, “Trust me.”

Specifically, Francis asked the roughly 13 million Catholics in China to “place your trust ever more firmly in the Lord of history and in the church’s discernment of his will.”

The idea is to ask for faith despite whatever uncertainty Chinese Catholics may be experiencing, especially those of the “underground” church who have been tenacious in their opposition to the Communist government out of loyalty to Rome and now feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them.

One core reason the pope needed to appeal for trust is that while a deal has been announced, few details of what precisely it contains are known. Thus it’s impossible to say at this stage exactly how much freedom of movement the pope has sacrificed in order to get the Chinese authorities to sign on the dotted line, or what its implications may be for the future of the faith in China.

In some ways, the situation isn’t entirely dissimilar from the approach Francis has taken on the charges leveled a month ago by Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former papal ambassador in the US, that Francis knew of sexual misconduct charges against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2013 and failed to act.

When those charges first arose, Francis refused to address them, and essentially did so again Monday night during a new conference aboard his plane returning to Rome from a four-day trip in the Baltics.

Francis declined to respond to any question that wasn’t specifically related to the trip, although he did volunteer some thoughts on the clerical abuse scandals - among other things, arguing that the Pennsylvania grand jury report released in mid-August shows progress in the Church’s fight against child abuse, since the number of cases from recent years is dramatically lower than the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

However, the pope didn’t say a word about Viganò’s allegations, nor did he answer the obvious question journalists aboard the plane really wanted to ask: Will he order the disclosure of records showing what the Vatican knew about the McCarrick case, and when it knew it? [I still do not understand what keeps a journalist from following up on a question the pope refuses to answer. At least go on the record that you did not just give up! They can't throw you off the plane then and there for doing that. (Though you probably won't ever again get invited to be on the papal plane, or God knows what other punishment may await you!) Or why don't all the journalists on the papal plane tell Greg Burke: "If the pope does not want to answer any question that's not about this trip, then let's just not have a news conference at all!" It's not as if the world is waiting with bated breath to see what earthshaking news may have happened - unlikely as that is - behind the scenes during his trip to the Baltic nations!]

In other words, here too the pope is basically asking people to trust him.

In some ways, it’s an understandable request. From the beginning of his papacy, Francis has shown himself to be a friend of victims, underdogs and oppressed peoples everywhere, and to have a keen pastoral heart for those shoved to life’s peripheries. It’s thus perhaps not unreasonable for him to think that he could rely on a certain benefit of the doubt. {C'mon, that's a load of Bergogliac BS, and you know it, Allen!]

The problem he faces, however, is two-fold.

First, Francis suffers from an institutional trust deficit that didn’t begin with him, but he inherited it and it’s part of his reality. Underground Catholics in China often feel the Vatican has betrayed them repeatedly since the era of Paul VI, while abuse survivors have long experience of hearing declarations of resolve from church leaders only to be disappointed when it comes to follow-through.

Moreover, both constituencies are feeling a little ambivalent about Francis himself these days, wondering if despite the new tone the underlying music from the Church really hasn’t changed that much.

In other words, Francis is dealing with two groups for whom a plea of “trust me” from any Church leader, even him, is especially hard to swallow.

Perhaps even more basically, as the saying goes, trust is a two-way street. If Francis or any leader wants public trust, once in a while they have to be prepared to take the kinds of steps that earn it.

If Francis is looking for somewhere to begin right now, he might consider transparency - a word that’s been frequently invoked as a goal of his reforms, but a practice that sometimes seems more honored in the breach than the observance on his watch.

If Francis wants the trust of Chinese Catholics, he might consider telling them what exactly they’re being asked to trust him about - in other words, the content of the new deal the pontiff has inked with the Chinese government.

Once Catholics know how the deal is structured, what’s been given away and what’s been maintained, they might be more inclined to withhold judgment until they see how it works out on the ground.

Similarly for abuse survivors, if they saw Francis committed to getting to the bottom of what went wrong in cases such as McCarrick’s, and having sufficient faith in the Catholic rank-and-file that coming clean won’t destroy their faith or shatter whatever illusions remain, they might be willing to give the pope a bit more breathing room as he tries to figure out a path forward.

Transparency, in other words, isn’t just a “best practice” in both avoiding and remedying scandals, though it certainly is that. It’s also a down payment on trust - a payment that can’t just be made once, but regularly, like gas and water, because otherwise the service gets turned off.

Both on China and on sex abuse, making that payment may be costly for Francis and his Vatican team, but experience may prove that doing is no longer a luxury but a necessity. [That'a more like it, Mr. Allen. Attaboy!]



I'm surprised at Phil Lawler's conclusion about the following report. So they're grumbling. That's all it will ever amount to. I wish I could share Lawler's optimism...

Grumbling among Vatican journalists
about Bergoglio's stonewalling:
An ominous development for the Pope
By Phil Lawler |

September 26, 2018


Pope Francis gave his usual in-flight press conference on Tuesday, as he returned from a visit to the Baltic region. But the Pope did not make any shocking statements. Instead, reporters were mumbling about what the Pope didn’t say.

Pope Francis didn’t answer questions about sexual abuse.

After fielding several questions from reporters about his time in the Baltics, the Pope was asked by an Austrian reporter about a statement he had made in Estonia, about responding to sexual abuse. The Pontiff said that he would not answer the question at that moment; he wanted more questions about his trip. But he did promise to address the issue, saying “it will be the first question after the trip.” [Oh yeah? Like when?]

One more question followed, about Lithuanian immigration. Then the papal spokesman, Greg Burke, acknowledged that there were no more questions about the trip. Rather than answering questions about the abuse issue, the Pope addressed it himself, in the course of a lengthy, rambling statement.

After touching on other topics,
a) he said that things are much better than they once were, and the grand-jury report in Pennsylvania reflected “the way of thinking in previous times…”
b) He assured reporters that he had never offered leniency to a priest who was convicted of sexual abuse by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. [LIE! What about Fr. 'Mercedes' Inzoli????]

If the Holy Father had allowed questions on the topic, an enterprising reporter might have pressed him to speak about former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, whose name he had not mentioned. Or about Archbishop Vigano, whose name was also missing from the Pope’s remarks. Or about Mauro Inzoli, who was removed from ministry by Pope Benedict XVI but restored by Pope Francis — temporarily, until new abuse charges forced his laicization. But the Pope wasn’t taking questions.

And reporters were not happy. A Twitter comment by Cindy Wooden conveyed the mood:

---

“Shot down by Pope Francis. He only wanted questions on the trip to the Baltic countries. I said that I had questions left unanswered since returning from Dublin. They were travel questions. But not for this trip. #frustratadi new # Viganò “ [sic]

---

Cindy Wooden is not a troublemaker; not a gadfly, not a sensationalist. She is the Rome bureau chief for Catholic News Service, the agency owned and operated by the US bishops’ conference. If she was giving voice to her feelings, you can be sure that other reporters felt at least equally frustrated.

Thus far in his pontificate, Pope Francis has enjoyed remarkably favorable media coverage. He has not been pressed to answer awkward questions: about the dubia, about the dismantling of the Secretariat for the Economy, about declining morale in the Roman Curia, about Chile and McCarrick and Vigano and Wuerl and Pennsylvania and Germany. But now reporters are grumbling. [COWARDS ALL!]



Those who criticize Vigano for his 'omissions'
say nothing about the most scandalous omission of all:
The pope's failure to respond to one question
Translated from

September 28, 2018

“Viganò, a new statement with the same accusations and the same omissions” is the headline on a pra-Vatican site about Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s second ‘Testimony’, with a call for ‘parrhesia, transparency, clarity and dialog’ from him. [Familiar words from Bergoglio's Casa Santa Marta tirades but which one seeks in vain for him to manifest on the questions that matter.]

Speaking of omissions, yes, there is a huge omission. As huge as the pink elephant that a Twitter habitue has posted (see banner), for which we thank him.

The omission is of course the pope’s failure to anwer Viganò’s statement on August 26, as the latter reoterates it in his Sept. 27 letter:

---

The center of my testimony was that since at least June 23, 2013, the pope knew from me how perverse and evil McCarrick was in his intentions and actions, and instead of taking the measures that every good pastor would have taken, the pope made McCarrick one of his principal agents in governing the Church, in regard to the United States, the Curia, and even China, as we are seeing these days with great concern and anxiety for that martyr Church.

---

So, is vigano’s statement true or not? All it takes is a few seconds to answer. This morning, a colleague who was interviewing me for a foreign TV network said that McCarrick’s case has spanned three pontificates and that perhaps it is because of this that we have to wait for the Vatican to make its ‘eventual and necessary’ clarifications.

Already, the choice of adjectives is diverting: If such clarifications are necessary, how can they be ‘eventual’, meaning, perhaps there may be, or perhaps not.

But even if this were true, and the study of all relevant documents will take time (provided these have no already been destroyed as what we know has happened to some personnel dossiers kept at the Second Section of the Secretariat of State) [we know of one such dossier that was whitewashed of anything negative – Mons Ricca’s – so that the pope could claim that the ‘investigation’ he ordered on his past turned up ‘nothing at all’], the reply to Mons Viganò’s question simply requires a few seconds. [Fraction of a second, even, if the pope can answer either Yes or No.]

But it must be very difficult for the pope, judging from his expression when Cindy Wooden of CNS sought to ask him a question about McCarrick on the return flight from Tallinn. The photograph is an icon of embarrassment.


In Vigano’s new testimony released one month after the first, there are two points that I find ‘pregnant’ with significance. The first is when he says it was the most difficult decision of his life when he decided to speak out. The second was the statement that “I declare with a clear conscience before God that my testimony is true”.

Well, we would all like to hear from the Pontiff his testimony and hear him say the same thing about it that Viganò has said about his.

And I would be happy if our other colleagues in the media – once they have exhausted all the possible motivations (conspiratorial, personal, psychological, career-driven and motives of temperament they would attribute to Viganò’s testimonies – could finally come to ask themselves, and the pope: “Is what Viganò said of his June 13, 2013 conversation with the pope true or not?

For the sake of all those Catholics who would like to know if this pope covered for and coddled, for five years, a serial predator of seminarians and young priests. That’s all we want to know.
 

Another commentary from an Argentine-American writer who lives in Buenos Aires...

Light shining on hidden things
Carlos Caso-Rosendi

September 24, 2018

In the last month or so, various Catholic news outlets have asked me to research the veracity of various accusations made against Pope Francis while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Did he cover up wrongdoing? Was he involved in financial scandals? What was his level of collaboration, if any, with the corrupt Kirchner administration?

The German magazine Der Spiegel, one of Europe’s most prestigious publications and generally supportive of liberal positions, found reasons to believe that scores of abuse victims may have been kept from speaking with Cardinal Bergoglio. In addition, he seems to have taken a central role in defending at least one abuser, and perhaps others.

Der Spiegel made this claim – and several sharp complaints about ways that Pope Francis had divided the Church – in this week’s cover story, under the title: Du sollst nicht lügen, Der Papst und die Kirche in ihrer größten Krise (“Thou shalt not lie: The pope and the Church in their greatest crisis”).

If true, these charges could provoke a greater explosion than the 11-page Testimony by the former nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.

Many uncertainties, of course, surround such charges. Given the present state of affairs in Argentina, it is hard to find unbiased answers to questions. But one thing is certain: “there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.” (Luke 8:17)

In fact, light is now shining on many once-hidden things.

The lack of official response and the vicious attacks on the reputation of Viganò have had a clarifying effect. Just this week Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, a figure very close to the pope and his sometimes ghostwriter, described Viganò as suffering from a delusional mental illness “marked by feelings of personal omnipotence and grandeur.” He did not seem to care whether Viganò’s allegations, even if the ravings of a madman, are true.

I have the impression that we are living days like those described by St Paul in 2Timothy. The Church – infiltrated by her enemies – is now being shaken in her very structure.

Pope Paul VI said in 1972: “the smoke of Satan has entered the Temple of God through some crack in the wall.” Through years of surreptitious action, seducers “made their way into the household” of God and began to hold sway over the weak. Homosexuality among the clergy has now “become plain to everyone,” as honest prelates, the media, and government investigators uncover the ugly truth.

As undeniable evidence piles up, it should not surprise us if evil is exposed even in the highest echelons of the hierarchy. We should not be confounded if “wicked people and impostors . . . go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived.” We’re at a point of no return.

Not content with having introduced false pastors among the clergy, the enemy is now trying to introduce a false religion. He wants to destroy the Church by destroying the faith. He needs to replace the Catholic religion with a counterfeit version.

The false spirit of that “counterfeit faith” produces many pseudo-commandments, interfaith gestures, ceremonies, and liturgical shows of unity. There’s plenty of praise for the disobedient and the heretic “holding to the outward form of godliness” but rejecting the doctrinal truth and the sacramental integrity of the true faith.

Holy Tradition, Holy Scripture, the Catechism, and even Natural Law are attacked:

---

You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them! (2 Timothy 3:1-9)

---

This is a very dangerous time because many souls may be lost. Many may walk away, disgusted by all that filth. That is why we have to reflect on the causes of the crisis, so we can counter that evil effectively. All the lies and half-truths taught to the faithful in this age of darkness are the result of bad Catholic formation.

The first part of the devil’s attack consisted in eliminating good catechesis. For the near future, the teaching of the true faith may have to rest with a handful of people remaining loyal to God. That is why we must be busy creating ways to develop a rapid, deep, and precise knowledge of the faith.

False pastors will not deceive well-formed Catholics. In fact, the folly of those false pastors will become evident as the light of the true faith shines on their wicked ways. It is true that “they will not make much progress” because they are the “wicked servants” of Jesus’ prophetic parable.

It is up to us to keep the faith by being “good servants” minding the counsel of Christ:

---

Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. . . .But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, “My master is staying away a long time,” and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 24:45-51)

---

Are the accusations against Pope Francis while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires true? All I can say is that no one can stop God from revealing the truth. Wise men will work with God, lest they end up working for the father of lies.

Read this for a tangled web of personal, financial and homo-episcopal interests revolving around McCarrick and involving new accused abusers in the imbroglio:

www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/09/the-papal-foundation-mccarricks-conflict-of-...

An update about the Papal Foundation:

Papal Foundation's prelate trustees
are a Who’s of sexual abuse cover-up


Most of us learn early on in life that we are often judged by the company we keep. We can have the best intentions at doing the right thing, but our efforts can be thwarted if we collaborate with the wrong kind of people. Sometimes we might associate with an individual who appears to share our values, only to later learn we have been deceived and betrayed.

The lay members of the [increasingly infamous McCarrick-Wuerl-backed] Papal Foundation are findint this out now. The Papal Foundation was founded in 1988 as a response to the desire of Catholic clergy and laity in the United States for a unique, sustainable way to support the Holy Father and his witness in the world.

The Foundation has grown to over $215 million with a total of $121 million awarded in grants and scholarships. Income generated from the investment of capital creates a perpetual source of revenue.

The foundation’s executive committee of the board of trustees is composed of active and retired cardinals who live in the US, along with eight laymen. In 2016, it received contributions of $6 million, $3 million of that from new “stewards,” and granted out almost $10 million. In order to be considered a steward of the foundation, one must commit $1 million to be paid in no more than ten years, at least $100,000 a year.

Members include some of the largest Catholic donors in the United States (see the Foundation’s annual report). Members have the opportunity each year to meet as a group with the Pope in Rome.

In February this year, leaked internal documents revealed that Pope Francis personally requested, and obtained in part, a $25 million grant for a corruption-plagued, Church-owned dermatological hospital in Rome accused of money laundering. Records from the financial police indicate the hospital has liabilities over one billion USD – an amount larger than the national debt of some 20 nations.

The foundation customarily gives grants of $200,000 or less to organizations in the developing world (see a grant list for 2017 here) via the Holy See. According to the internal documents, the Pope made the request for the massive grant, which is 100 times larger than its normal grants, through Papal Foundation board chairman Cardinal Donald Wuerl in the summer of 2017.

On January 6, the steward who until then served as chairman of the Foundation’s audit committee submitted his resignation along with a report of the committee’s grave objections to the grant.

“As head of the Audit Committee and a Trustee of the Foundation, I found this grant to be negligent in character, flawed in its diligence, and contrary to the spirit of the Foundation,” he wrote in his resignation letter accompanying the report. “Instead of helping the poor in a third-world country, the Board approved an unprecedented huge grant to a hospital that has a history of mismanagement, criminal indictments, and bankruptcy.”

“Had we allowed such recklessness in our personal careers we would never have met the requirements to join The Papal Foundation in the first place.”

In June, the New York Times reported that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had been removed from ministry due to credible accusations of sexual abuse. The public later learned that McCarrick had a history of sexual predatory behavior that spanned several decades. Public scrutiny soon fell on McCarrick’s long list of associations, including the Papal Foundation which he co-founded in 1988.

In August, the Pennsylvania Grand Jury published the results of a 2-and-a-half year investigation into allegations of sexual abuse in six dioceses. The scathing report revealed that over 1000 children had reportedly been abused at the hands of 300 priests over the course of the past 50 years.
- The report specifically identified Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the current Chairman of the Papal Foundation Board of Trustees, as having been responsible for covering-up multiple cases of abuse when he was Archbishop of Pittsburgh.
- The report also mentioned that Archbishop David Zubik, the current Archbishop of Pittsburgh and a current Trustee of The Papal Foundation, was responsible for covering-up cases of sexual abuse. - In addition, the report identified that the Rev. Thomas Benestad, the first Executive Director of The Papal Foundation, had been accused of sexually molesting a 9-year-old boy.

The identification that three Papal Foundation associates had been involved in sexual abuse and/or cover-up prompted a review of current and past clerical members of the Foundation to see if any additional individuals may have been involved in these types of behaviors. Below is a list of the findings:
- Rev. Thomas Benestad (born 1945), Original Executive Director: Accused of repeatedly abusing a 9-year-old boy, including forcing the boy to perform oral sex and then instructed him to rinse his mouth out with holy water.
- Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua (born 1923), Former Chairman: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse while Archbishop of Philadelphia.
- Bishop Michael Bransfield (1943-present), Current President: Accused of sexually fondling a high school student in the 1970s and reportedly linked to sexual abuse incident in early 1980s.
- Edward Cardinal Egan (1932-2015), Former Trustee: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse while bishop of Bridgeport bishop and Archbishop of New York.
- Timothy Cardinal Dolan (born 1950), Current Trustee: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse while Archbishop of Milwaukee.
- William Cardinal Keeler (1931-2017), Former Vice-Chair: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse while Bishop of Harrisburg and Baltimore, including the case of Father A. Joseph Maskell, on which the documentary, The Keepers, is based.
- John Cardinal Krol (1910-1996), Co-Founder, Former Chairman: Accused of covering-up hundreds of incidents of sexual abuse while Archbishop of Philadelphia.
- Archbishop William Levada (1936-present), Former Trustee: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse by priests in Portland and San Francisco.
- Roger Cardinal Mahony (born 1936), long-time member of the Board of Trustees: Barred from public ministry for failure to protect young people from sexual abuse while Archbishop of Los Angles.
- Archbishop Adam Maida (born 1930), former Trustee: Accused of financial mismanagement associated with the John Paul II Center while Archbishop of Detroit.
- Archbishop Theodore McCarrick (born 1930), Co-Founder and long-time President: Accused of sexually abusing minors, seminarians and priests over several decades.
- Seán Cardinal O’Malley (1944-present), Current Trustee, Archbishop of Boston, President, Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors: Accused of failing to act on letter detailing abuses by Theodore McCarrick.
- Archbishop Justin Rigali (1935-present), Current Trustee: Accused of mishandling sexual abuse scandal in Philadelphia.
- Archbishop John J. Myers (born 1941), Former Trustee: accused of covering-up sexual abuse, including a financial payout involving abuse claim against Theodore McCarrick.
- Kevin Cardinal Farrell (born 1947), Former Trustee: Lived with Theodore McCarrick for 6 years in Washington, D.C. Appointed vicar-general for the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. by McCarrick in 2001. McCarrick supported Farrell’s promotion to Bishop of Dallas and Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life. Farrell designed his Dallas crest in tribute to McCarrick. Farrell claims to know nothing about McCarrick’s history of abuse.
- Joseph Cardinal Tobin (born 1952), Current Trustee: Author of the notorious “Nighty Night” tweet. Denied knowledge of gay subculture in Archdiocese of Newark. Dissident priest in his diocese allowed to celebrate Gay Pride Mass.
- Donald Cardinal Wuerl (born 1940), Current Chairman: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse while bishop of Pittsburgh and then lying about it.
- Archbishop David Zubik (born 1949), Current Trustee: Accused of covering-up sexual abuse in Pittsburgh by state’s attorney general.


From the Papal Foudation's Annual Report for 2017.

Molester McCarrick lives in comfort near
near a grammar school in Kansas:
Here's why he has been untouchable
by JOHN ZMIRAK

September 30, 2018

What does a priest have to do in today’s Church to get in really serious trouble? Recent events have made that clear.

If you’re a Catholic priest, you’re courting doom if you try any of the following:
- Give a sermon criticizing the pope’s handling of sex abuse. That might get you thrown out of your parish at a moment’s notice, then ordered out of town. That happened to Juan Carlos Gavancho, a priest in Santa Barbara, California.
- Refuse Holy Communion to a vocal, self-styled “Lesbian Buddhist.” Doing that won Fr. Marcel Guarnizo a suspension from the priesthood, ordered by Cardinal Donald Wuerl and enforced by (now-bishop) Barry Knestout.
- Take down and burn the blasphemous banner linking the cross and the gay “rainbow” flag which the priest before you hung in the church’s sanctuary. That was before the previous priest died by auto-erotic asphyxiation when attached to a “sex machine.” The Chicago Archdiocese told parishioners he’d had a heart attack, and threw him a hero’s funeral. Fr. Paul John Kalchik allowed his long-suffering parishioners to burn that banner. (The archdiocese had already removed and burned that pastor’s “massive gay porn collection.”)
That lost Fr. Kalchik his parish and got him a visit from two menacing Church officials, who made vague threats against his life, and tried to bundle him off to the booby hatch. Convinced they’d use the police to have him committed against his will to an apparently gay-run Catholic psychiatric institute, Fr. Kalchik fled the scene and remains in hiding.

Okay, so you know to avoid all that.

What’s a safer course of action? Let’s say that you’re homosexual, with a taste for young seminarians and even the occasional teenage boy…. If you rise in the ranks, keep copious files on other gay clerics so they won’t rat you out, and rise to the rank of cardinal, you’re probably pretty safe. That’s the lesson of the fate of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

He was widely known to be a practicing homosexual for decades. To single out handsome seminarians and bring them into his bed. Then promote their careers, and stymie the men who’d turned him down. Some bishop might end up hanging from a bridge, like one-time Vatican banker Roberto Calvi.

But none of that stopped McCarrick’s rise to the most prominent position in the U.S. Catholic Church: Archbishop of Washington. And none of his flaws might have mattered, if it hadn’t come out that he molested a teenage boy whom he’d baptized himself. That really did cross the line.

Because, and only because, that fact got out to the press, Pope Francis cancelled McCarrick’s status as cardinal. But he still remains a priest. Indeed, he’s still an archbishop. He still lives in comfort with a Church stipend, free healthcare, free housing, and presumably free legal counsel. Church authorities just moved him to a well-appointed monastery in walking distance of a grammar school. And locked away from reporters.

Now you might be a little confused as to why a known molester is getting such kid-gloves treatment. I know I was. Why not follow Canon Law and remove him from the priesthood? Cut off his cash, cancel his insurance, and drop him off by the side of the road like a convicted sex criminal who just got out of prison?

I think have the answer. It comes in the form of a really fine piece of journalism over at First Things magazine.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/09/the-papal-foundation-mccarricks-conflict-of-interest
[The article can be accessed through the above link with which I started this post two days ago.]

Allow me a short digression here:
The pastor died by auto-erotic asphyxiation when attached to a “sex machine.” The Chicago Archdiocese told parishioners he’d had a heart attack, and threw him a hero’s funeral.

There’s a journalism deficit. No, not the breathless recycling of half-baked partisan rumors you see in the mainstream media. (That goes all the way up the feeding chain nowadays to The New Yorker.) Nor the lackluster pabulum of press releases from bishops that makes up most of the output in the “mainstream” Catholic press. Nor even well-crafted opinion columns like those by … well, let’s not name any names. We’re all stocked up on those.

I mean the real deal, the slow-worked, carefully researched reporting pieces that outfits like the New York Times used to boast of. Stories that take weeks or months to finish. Done by reporters who talk to dozens of sources. Sift through hundreds or thousands of documents. Coax unwilling sources to tell the truth.

Not many outlets are paying people to do that anymore, so not many writers do it. I’ve done it just a few times myself, and let me tell you: it’s grueling labor. The kind of thing nobody does for fun. You’re essentially doing the kind of work an FBI agent should. But you have no power of subpoena, no access to search warrants, no jail time to threaten liars with.

But God bless him, Matthew O’ Brien did just such work over at First Things. (I hope he was well-compensated.) And he gave us, I think, the answer to why McCarrick was given a lavender velvet parachute. McCarrick knows too much.

It turns out that Theodore McCarrick, when he wasn’t treating future priests like rent boys and slurping daiquiris in the hot tub, was running the $200 million Papal Foundation. And apparently that Foundation served as a secret slush fund for corrupt Vatican enterprises, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. The Foundation’s records are shoddy and full of holes. Its directors could face legal trouble for allowing things to get that bad.

Meanwhile, there’s a Catholic dermatological hospital in Italy that keeps mysteriously losing vast sums of money. (To whom, one wonders? Maybe organized crime figures?) Pope Francis demanded that the Papal Foundation bail it out. (What would we do without specifically Catholic dermatological hospitals, that offer Christian answers to ethically fraught issues like skin peels?)

And over the protests of laymen on the Foundation’s board, it duly paid up.

If the Church gave McCarrick the kick to the curb he deserves, he could bring down other bishops. Cardinals. Officials inside the Vatican. Clerics from the Papal Foundation’s board. And that might earn the ire of Mafia figures who lurk behind the scenes. Some bishop might end up hanging from a bridge, like one-time Vatican banker Roberto Calvi.

I won’t try to unpack O’Brien’s dense, scrupulously reported story on the Papal Foundation. Please go read it yourself. It’s dense with carefully vetted, unsettling facts.

It helps explain why well-connected, corrupt priests like McCarrick get sweetheart deals from cardinals like Donald Wuerl. It’s the Lavender Mafia’s version of the Witness Protection Program. In return for a cozy retirement, they’re protected from being witnesses.

McCarrick needs a golden cage to stop him from singing.

Christ's Charge to Peter, Peter Paul Rubens, 1611 (Wallace Collection, London)

Thinking the unthinkable
by Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky
Pastor, St Catherine of Siena, Arlington, Va.

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

The word “unthinkable” is an amusing expression, an oxymoron wrapped in a single word. Nevertheless, it points us towards some very unpleasant things we are forced to think about, such as nuclear war or a Church in crisis.

Until very recently, the prospect of a pope promulgating significant doctrinal error was unthinkable. But many of us are now fretting about ambiguous papal pronouncements said to be “authentic magisterium” that directly oppose Scripture and Tradition.

It is always helpful to remember that a pope does not create doctrines; he elucidates doctrines to conserve the Faith he has received. The Fathers of the First Vatican Council defined the teaching authority of the pope. But they link his authority to Scripture and Tradition, the Church’s entire doctrinal history:

---

The Roman pontiffs... sometimes by summoning ecumenical councils or consulting the opinion of the Churches scattered throughout the world, sometimes by special synods, sometimes by taking advantage of other useful means afforded by divine providence, defined as doctrines to be held those things which, by God’s help, they knew to be in keeping with Sacred Scripture and the apostolic traditions. (Vatican I, Chapter 4).)

---

The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council Fathers likewise link the authentic magisterium to Tradition and Scripture:

---

But when either the Roman Pontiff or the Body of Bishops together with him defines a judgment, they pronounce it in accordance with Revelation itself, which all are obliged to abide by and be in conformity with, that is, the Revelation which as written or orally handed down is transmitted in its entirety through the legitimate succession of bishops and especially in care of the Roman Pontiff himself, and which under the guiding light of the Spirit of truth is religiously preserved and faithfully expounded in the Church. (Vatican II, LG 25)

---

For example, the infallible teachings about Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Assumption emerged from unsettled Catholic theology. But the deeper understanding could be explained in light of Tradition and in relationship with the rest of Catholic doctrines and dogmas.

On sexual matters, the Church’s constant teachings in her ordinary magisterium on the nature and goods of marriage – and intrinsic sexual disorders such as contraceptive acts and homosexual behavior – are well-defined infallible teachings of the Church rooted in Scripture and Tradition. These clear doctrines not only provide precise moral guidance but opportunities for fruitful theological reflection bringing even greater clarity.

The Council Fathers carefully defined the authority of bishops – and assumed their fidelity and goodwill in conserving and faithfully teaching Catholic truth. But the Fathers surely knew the many ways that unfaithful bishops betray their office, usually by neglect but sometimes by flawed teachings.

The Fathers apparently did not see the need to state the obvious: doctrinal violations of Church teaching by bishops cannot bind the faithful in conscience. It is at least conceivable that a pope might also reject and abuse the graces of his office in a similar way. Such errors may muddy the waters of the ordinary magisterium, but obviously cannot bind in conscience.

Of course, deliberate ambiguities in papal teaching, incompetence, and infidelity that tamper with the “authentic magisterium” would be disastrous: sowing confusion and even suggesting the unthinkable, that the gates of Hell have prevailed in the Church.

But this cannot be the case as a matter of logic. The truth of Christ remains. His Gospel is handed down in Scripture, Tradition – and the cumulative magisterial teaching of popes, bishops, councils, and synods throughout history.

Grace perfects nature and the pope’s teaching authority is not magic. Every presumed magisterial thought that a pope eventually decrees must always be judged against Scripture and Tradition. Even conciliar pronouncements, including the pronouncements of Vatican II, must also be aligned with Scripture and Tradition.

Does this imply a “pick and choose” magisterium? No. The interlocking strength of Scripture and Tradition, and the authentic magisterium throughout history, ensure that the truth of Christ will not be circumvented by innovations. Sometimes corrections need to be made – as Paul corrected Peter at Antioch. (cf. Galatians 2:11-21)

Hence, bishops (supported by orthodox theologians) must recognize their obligation to respond to papal pronouncements that are dangerously ambiguous or contradict Scripture and Tradition. They need to do so respectfully but firmly and without fear, both because – under the guidance of the Holy Spirit – they have solemnly promised to do so by their oaths of office and because they have the historical content of Revelation on their side.

Corrections may also come from the faithful who are, after all, endowed with the sensus fidei (sense of the faith). But the elimination of doctrinal distortions and errors (and restoration of doctrinal clarity) is difficult. As widespread clerical dissent from Humanae Vitae demonstrates, doctrinal repair and restoration can lead to generations of painful conflict.

Unfortunately, like the prospect of nuclear war, the thought of significant papal doctrinal missteps is no longer unthinkable. But we should be confident that doctrinal error and schism can be avoided, with God’s grace, by a careful and insistent logic that protects the integrity of the Faith: Authentic papal magisterial authority cannot be in opposition to the doctrinal history of the Church. [An obvious Cathoic fact that Jorge Bergoglio chooses to ignore and defy - almost habitually now. But who can change Lucifer's primary and overweening sin of hubris?]

People, priests, and bishops need not shrink from the obligation to defend the Faith. We should consider it a privilege: “Since we have the same spirit of faith as he had who wrote, ‘I believed, and so I spoke,’ we too believe, and so we speak.” (2 Cor. 4:13)


Bishops now have to learn:
Stop waiting 0n (or for) Peter
[Lucifer seems to be wearing the 'shoes of the fisherman']
by Stephen P. White

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

Two weeks ago, members of the USCCB executive committee traveled to Rome to ask for the Holy Father’s help in addressing the crisis engulfing the Catholic Church in the United States. They came back empty-handed.

The primary goal was to convince the Holy Father to appoint an Apostolic Visitator to investigate the rot and corruption that enabled Theodore McCarrick to flourish – an investigation that the American bishops themselves have neither the capacity nor, frankly, the credibility to undertake on their own. The pope “nixed” that idea, according to Crux. Francis suggested the bishops go on retreat, instead of holding their annual November meeting in Baltimore.

Meanwhile, 70-million exasperated American Catholics wait for some response from Rome that might indicate that the nature and scope of the current crisis have finally, been understood.

Undoubtedly, the Viganò affair – and the American episcopate’s refusal to dismiss the allegations out of hand – has left a very sour taste in the pontifical mouth. But one wonders if the Holy Father understands how his silence – and his daily touting of it in his homilies – gives ordinary Catholics the painful impression that Rome is more concerned with making an example of its enemies than in meeting the needs of the suffering flock.

And while Pope Francis’s condemnation of the sexual abuse of children has been unequivocal (one would expect no less), it’s still not entirely clear that he grasps just how dire is the crisis of confidence in the bishops themselves.

While the Holy Father has been silent – even the papal press corps is growing frustrated – some of his closest associates are talking.

Cardinal Cupich was publicly blasted for telling an interviewer that “the pope has a bigger agenda” than dealing with the allegations of Archbishop Viganò and that, “We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.”

The most charitable interpretation of his remarks might acquit the Cardinal of insouciance, but his eagerness to downplay and move beyond the Viganò allegations also tends to obscure the fact that the crisis of confidence in the American Church was brought about, not by the intemperate missive of Archbishop Viganò, but by the manifest failures of bishops – including many bishops we have right now.

Another papal confidant, Antonio Spadaro, S.J., ventured to defend the Pope’s response to these matters: “The Pope draws energy from the conflict,” Fr. Spadaro wrote on Facebook, “and sees it as a sign that his action riles. The driving force of the pontificate of #PapaFrancesco manifests itself precisely in the paroxysm of the backlash that generates and that are thrown at him.”

It’s not news that the Holy Father has a certain fondness for creative destruction in spiritual and ecclesiastical life – ¡Hagan Lío! Make a mess! – but sometimes a mess is just a mess. When conflict and division are presumed to be the hallmarks of wise governance and sound judgment, things begin to take on a conspiratorial tone. Everything is great; it proves we must be doing something right! Look at this colossal mess; it proves we must be doing something right!

That self-fulfilling quality of this pope’s relationship with the Church in the United States has a certain tragicomic tone. Ponder, for example, the following absurdity:
- The Holy Father seems to have learned much of what he knows about the American Church – i.e., that the American episcopate is full of right-wing ideologues – from the mendacious Theodore McCarrick.
- And yet the Holy Father also appears to have interpreted the events surrounding McCarrick’s disgrace as confirmation of the veracity of McCarrick’s account of the American episcopate.

Rome seems to have little sense of how demoralizing it is for Catholics who, already twice-betrayed by their own bishops, are told that growing impatience with the pope’s silence is taken by Rome to be further evidence of ideological agitation against the Holy Father. The whole thing has more than a whiff of paranoia about it.

Meanwhile, the hits keep coming for the American flock. As of this writing,
- Cardinal Donald Wuerl, though the lamest of ducks, is still Archbishop of Washington.
- Bishop Richard Malone in Buffalo is facing increasing pressure to resign in light of reports that he buried allegations of abuse against his priests.
- Bishop Michael Hoeppner in Minnesota is accused of strong-arming an abuse victim into silence.
Forthcoming government investigations in Illinois, Missouri, and New York all but guarantee the drum-beat of bad news will continue for the foreseeable future.

The American bishops, absent the help needed from Rome to police their own ranks, are left dangling in the wind. Rome seems willing to leave them there, at least for now.

If Rome won’t assist the American bishops, they’ll have to make do with the resources they have at the conference level. Last week’s letter from USCCB president, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, indicates what that might look like.

The USCCB can’t remove bishops from ministry – nor force them to resign – but what they can do is worth doing. Plans include the establishment of a third-party reporting system for complaints against bishops and a full-as-can-be-under-the-circumstances investigation, with meaningful lay involvement, into the McCarrick affair.

Again, without the backing of Rome, these efforts will lack the teeth they might otherwise have, but the fact that our American bishops are moving on these issues now, rather than waiting on Rome, is a good sign.

Americans are accustomed to making demands, a trait that does not always endear us to Rome, or anyone else. Still, the hope is that the American bishops’ reform efforts will ultimately find backing from the Vatican. And that may yet happen if American churlishness and Roman intransigence don’t prevent it.

Asked why the help sought for from Rome hasn’t been forthcoming, Cardinal Dolan spoke for millions of American Catholics: “I tend to get as impatient as you obviously are, so I don’t know the answer to that.”

For now, our bishops aren’t waiting on Peter.

German paper 'exposes' Coccopalmerio,
says Pope is ditching bishops' abuse tribunal
by Marco Tosatti
Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino for

September 28, 2018

After the important investigation of Der Spiegel on the pope entitled “Thou Shalt Not Lie,” now another German daily, Herder Korrespondenz, which certainly not even the most frenzied Bergogliac could condemn as conservative, is examining the authority of the Church, its questionable characters, and its ambiguities.

Benjamin Leven, a well-known German theologian and editor, explains in an essay that, according to his Vatican sources, it was Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, one of the closest counselors of Pope Bergoglio, who promoted an attitude of indulgence at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith toward priests who were responsible for sexual abuse.

Thanks to the English translation of Maike Hickson, we are able to offer this report to our readers, which is definitely of interest, given both the source and the means of communication. According to several sources, Coccopalmerio interceded with the pope in favor of Don Mauro Inzoli, the Comunione e Liberazione priest whom the Benedict CDF laicized for his sexual abuses but was subsequently reinstated by Bergoglio in his priestly ministry. [Only to laicize him again after a civilian court in Italy sentenced Inzoli to prison time for a number of sex crimes.]

Coccopalmerio was president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts until April 2018. In 2010, he was named as a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). In 2015, Pope Francis named him as a member of a new arm of the CDF that was commissioned to examine the appeals of priests accused of abuse. According to the testimony of Archbishop Viganò, Coccopalmerio is a part of the pro-gay “current” in the Vatican.

The author of the essay in Herder Korrespondenz, Benjamin Leven, lives in Rome and has close contacts in the Vatican. His essay entitled “Francis and Abuse: The Papal Secret” discusses the problem of abuse and the role of the pope.

Leven writes about the drug-fueled homosexual party that took place in the apartment of the palace of the CDF occupied by Msgr. Luigi Capozzi, Coccopalmerio’s secretary. Leven confirms the story that Capozzi obtained this apartment, “which was destined for another person,” thanks to the personal intervention of the pope. Leven adds that “the warnings which had been given were ignored” by the pope, since “the elevation of Capozzi to the role of bishop was being planned.”

Leven recalls that Coccopalmerio “generally spoke against using laicization as a punishment for a priest” because it would mean being treated like “someone condemned to death.” This is a position the cardinal consistently maintained, and, in fact, writes Leven, “he regularly proposed light penalties” to the CDF for abusers.

Leven says that it may well have been Coccopalmerio who opposed Cardinal Müller’s hard line against sexual abuse, when the former CDF prefect revealed that there were “persons close to the pope” who thought Müller had a “lack of mercy” in dealing with those responsible for abuse. Only 20% of those found guilty were laicized, “but even this was too much for some of those holding influence with the pope [Papsteinflüsterer].”

Leven relates how, through the personal intervention of the pope, several priests who were working in the disciplinary section responsible for handling cases of abuse were dismissed from the CDF. “These positions still have not been filled.”

And, in passing, we recall that these arbitrary dismissals, which Müller protested, gave the pope the occasion to publicly tell a lie in front of journalists: “He (one of the dismissed officials) did a great job but he was a little tired and he went back to his homeland to do the same work for his bishops.”

The ambiguous role of the pope on abuse does not stop here. Leven reveals that it was Pope Francis himself who intervened to stop the plan “to establish a permanent criminal tribunal for bishops” implicated in cases of sexual abuse.

The CDF does not have jurisdiction over bishops: “here, the pope in person is the judge”, but according to Leven, the pope abandoned the plan of having a tribunal for bishops. [Obviously true, because after the hullaballoo of announcing its creation, nothing more has been heard about it - i.e., it was never constituted.]

Leven concludes that “thus, there seems to be here an ambivalent image: the pope addresses the problem, has the power to intervene, and he meets with victims of abuse. But at the same time he turns a blind eye to individual cases and shows himself impermeable to the advice being given to him.”

In another part of the essay, Leven writes that his Vatican sources have told him that the testimony of Viganò is true but that also “in reality things are even worse.”

There are many people in the Vatican who do not like its current state of vice, and if somebody decided to speak, “not a stone upon a stone would remain standing.” [What on earth are they waiting for before they do anything????] The essay concluded with a dramatic question: “Will the Catholic hierarchy have the strength to purify itself?”

[More importantly, will the man at the top - he who was elected to lead the Church of Christ but has been more occupied with building the church of Bergoglio - be able to rid himself of Lucifer? Purification will be impossible while he allows Lucifer to have the upper hand - in his pontificate (if he is not alrady in possession of it). It was like a sick joke to read about Bergoglio asking "all the faithful to pray for the Church attacked by the devil" - an ultimate manifestation of his denial of reality that he does not realize the devil is in himself, if it has not already taken him over and his accursed church (that has nothing to do with the indefectible but nonetheless martyred Catholic Church).]

So it seems things are going from bad to worse for 'know-nothing' Cardinal Wuerl (and this is without mentioning his apparent flagrant misdeeds at the Papal Foundation of which he is the current chairman)...

Wuerl was part of an abuse
settlement with McCarrick in 2005
Yet he has repeatedly claimed he knew nothing of McCarrick's
sexual misconduct until it became public knowledge last June
By Michelle Boorstein and Julie Zauzmer

September 29, 2018

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who has said repeatedly that he didn’t know about years of sexual misconduct complaints involving his predecessor in the District, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, was named in a 2005 settlement agreement that included allegations against McCarrick, according to the accuser in the case and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Two of the three alleged abusers, including McCarrick, were not mentioned by name in the settlement.

Robert Ciolek, who left the priesthood and later became an attorney, spoke for the first time publicly this summer about the $80,000 settlement he reached in June 2005 with three New Jersey dioceses over his allegations against McCarrick and a teacher at his Catholic high school. McCarrick led the church in Newark and Metuchen before coming to the District in 2001; Ciolek’s high school was in New Jersey as well.

In an interview with The Post this month, Ciolek said for the first time publicly that the settlement included allegations against a third person, a Pittsburgh priest Ciolek says made unwanted sexual contact with him in seminary, where the priest was a professor.

The first page of the settlement agreement lists the Diocese of Pittsburgh and Wuerl, who supervised the priest as bishop of Pittsburgh at the time, among the numerous parties to the settlement. The agreement was signed by Ciolek and the three New Jersey dioceses. The Pittsburgh priest was also not mentioned by name in the document.

Ciolek shared a copy of the settlement with The Post.

The presence of Wuerl’s name on Ciolek’s settlement agreement raises questions about the cardinal’s assertion that he did not know about any allegations against McCarrick before they became a topic of public discussion this summer.

Wuerl’s D.C. spokesman, Ed McFadden, said this week that Wuerl had been unaware of the legal agreement. “As he has stated consistently ... Cardinal Wuerl had no knowledge of the settlements until the existence of the settlements was made public” this summer, McFadden said.

Pope Francis in June suspended McCarrick, a hugely popular cleric known as a prolific fundraiser for the church, after he was accused of groping an altar boy. Since his suspension, another alleged young victim has emerged, as have years of rumors about McCarrick’s alleged inappropriate treatment of seminarians and young priests.

McCarrick has made no comment about the various allegations against him since the first allegation. At the time, he said he had no memory of the incident and maintained his innocence but accepted the pope’s decision.

An increasingly vocal segment of Catholics in the District has expressed skepticism about Wuerl’s claim that he didn’t know about either the rumors about McCarrick’s alleged behavior or the settlements, and they have demanded more transparency.

A bombshell letter in August from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador, alleging Wuerl knew about sexual misconduct accusations against McCarrick has intensified the skepticism. The letter, which offered no proof, came shortly after a detailed grand jury report by Pennsylvania prosecutors described a rampant coverup in the Catholic church of clergy sex abuse — including mishandling of cases by Wuerl, when he was bishop for the Diocese of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006.

Wuerl issued a statement right after the letter from Vigano, denying the allegations in the letter — including that Vigano himself had communicated about McCarrick’s misconduct to Wuerl. The statement suggested the Vatican investigate Vigano, along with McCarrick.

Ciolek said he waited to publicly discuss the Pittsburgh connection in his settlement until after he sought legal permission from the Diocese of Pittsburgh to speak about it. He spoke to various media earlier this summer about the other two alleged abusers — McCarrick and his high school teacher — after his name spread and the New Jersey dioceses released him from the document’s confidentiality clause.

He spoke to The Post about the Pittsburgh priest on the condition the priest not be named because Ciolek said he considers the details of that encounter too personal. He said “there was inappropriate sexual contact toward me" in the 1980s by the priest, who was a faculty member at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, in Emmitsburg, Md., when Ciolek was a student there. The priest was not mentioned in the recent grand jury report.

The settlement document does not mention McCarrick by name, nor does it specify Ciolek’s allegations beyond saying Ciolek was making “numerous claims of sexual misconduct by various priests” in the various dioceses. The signatories to the agreement were Ciolek, and officials of the three New Jersey dioceses – Newark, Trenton and Metuchen – who paid into his settlement.

Pittsburgh and Wuerl are mentioned along with the Archdiocese of Baltimore and its then-archbishop, Cardinal William Keeler, because Mt. St. Mary’s is under Baltimore’s purview.

They are all listed with the New Jersey dioceses as “released” parties, meaning Ciolek promised to release them from future liability. They did not pay into the settlement and did not sign it.

Asked what Pittsburgh knew about the Ciolek settlement, the diocese initially put out a statement saying it was unaware that it was mentioned on the document.

“The Diocese of Pittsburgh was surprised to learn in early July 2018 that it was named as a release in the settlement agreement with Mr. Ciolek. The Diocese of Pittsburgh was not a party to this agreement and was not a signatory,” the diocese said in a statement. “This summer, when Mr. Ciolek asked the Diocese of Pittsburgh to be released from a confidentiality provision, the diocese responded that since we hadn’t signed the agreement we had no authority to release him.”

The Post also asked whether anyone on the Pittsburgh staff was told about Ciolek’s allegations against his alleged abusers, which included McCarrick. Ann Rodgers, a spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh diocese, answered that the staff did not know, then or now “about the settlement until early July 2018.”

But Rodgers’s statement appears to conflict with the contents of a 2004 letter between officials with the dioceses of Metuchen and Pittsburgh.

On Aug. 11, 2004, letter to Metuchen officials, Ciolek laid out all of his allegations, and Metuchen soon contacted Pittsburgh. In a letter dated Aug. 17, 2004, Metuchen’s then-Vicar General Monsignor William Benwell alerted then-auxiliary Pittsburgh Bishop William Winter about the Pittsburgh priest, who Ciolek says was still in ministry at the time. Ciolek shared both letters with The Post.

The letter notes that, at the time, Metuchen “is currently engaged in mediation” with Ciolek about alleged abuse by his high school teacher and that, in that process, Ciolek had told church officials in New Jersey about the Pittsburgh priest. McCarrick is not mentioned.

Asked about the 2004 letter, the diocese issued another statement that didn’t directly address the question of whether any other abuser — besides the Pittsburgh priest — came up.

“The letter did not raise the issue of the Diocese of Pittsburgh being involved in any mediation, and certainly did not mention or invite the Diocese of Pittsburgh to participate in any settlement agreement,” the statement read, in part.

Ciolek said he met in October 2004 with the Pittsburgh diocese’s review board about his allegation against the priest-professor. Ciolek said he was told by Pittsburgh officials shortly after this period — and again this summer — that the priest-professor was removed from ministry as a result.

He does not recall if in that meeting he mentioned the two other abusers — McCarrick and the high school teacher — and says when he asked recently to see the notes from that session, Pittsburgh told him that was a privileged document, Ciolek says. Pittsburgh also declined to share details of the session with The Post.

In asking this summer to be released from the confidentiality clause, Ciolek says he spoke with Charles Carella, counsel for Newark now and in 2005 when the settlement was signed. Ciolek says that Carella recalled to him that, in 2005, then-Metuchen Bishop Paul Bootkoski was going to call Wuerl in Pittsburgh about the settlement. Ciolek says Carella told him that he — Carella — was unaware if Bootkoski did so.

Carella did not return a call or email from The Post.

Asked what communications took place between the Newark and Pittsburgh dioceses regarding Ciolek’s case, and if Wuerl had been called, Newark spokesman Jim Goodness declined to comment.

“I won’t discuss particulars about any settlement agreement or conversations that might have taken place,” he wrote.

Erin Friedlander, spokeswoman for Metuchen, denied that Pittsburgh and Baltimore were part of the settlement and did not respond to a follow-up question about whether Bootkoski called Wuerl.

Bootkoski did not return request for comment.

Ciolek said he finds it “inconceivable” that none of the three dioceses in New Jersey would have mentioned to Wuerl that they’d just reached an $80,000 settlement involving both McCarrick and Wuerl’s own priest.

The release of Ciolek’s settlement follows other news that has led many Catholics to question whether Wuerl has been fully transparent about what he knew and when he knew it. Their anger led to Wuerl’s announcement earlier this month that he would ask Francis to accept his resignation.

In an unprecedented public letter released in August, former Vatican ambassador Vigano alleged, without offering evidence, that many higher-ups in the Vatican — including popes Francis and Benedict — knew about McCarrick.

Vigano alleges Benedict in fact had put a kind of secret series of restrictions on McCarrick, who had retired and was living in Washington, in Wuerl’s jurisdiction.

Vigano’s letter argued that there was no way Wuerl didn’t know, and pointed to incidents including Wuerl’s decision to cancel a public appearance by McCarrick at an event around 2010, in front of a group of seminarians. The letter also alleged that McCarrick’s housing was moved, inexplicably, out of a seminary around the same period. Putting space between McCarrick and seminarians was part of the restrictions, Vigano’s letter alleges.

“The Cardinal lies shamelessly,” Vigano wrote about Wuerl. Vigano has refused to answer questions about his controversial letter since but on Thursday published another public letter reiterating his claims.

Left, the retracted tweet; right, an incomplete translation by Radical Catholic who caught the screenshot of the tweet before it was taken offline.

Schoenborn retracts tweet on female deacons -
but he has made stronger statements before
that he is in favor of having them
Translated and adapted from

September 30, 2018

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has once again called the attention of the media to himself. After the much discussed recent episode of giving a mealtime blessing to a homosexual couple who are friends of his, now it is about female deacons.

Last Saturday morning, he tweeted this:

---

“I have a strong relationship with my priests and deacons. Recently I was able to consecrate new deacons. A great joy. Perhaps one day I will be able to consecrate female deacons… Dear priests, have the courage to work as a team! Collaboration and trust are the A and O” [presumably for Alpha and Omega].

---

But the Tweet was taken out quickly. But not before at least one person was able to take a screenshot of it and relaunch it.

Manwhile, German-language Catholic media sites have underscored that in fact, Schoenborn has referred earlier to “opening the debate on female deacons. There were female deacons in the early church, and in some Oriental churches, they still exist,” as the Vienna archdiocese’s own official news agency Kathpress reported recently.

It was quoting remarks made by the cardinal in his cathedral, St. Stephen’s, to a diocesan assembly of 1,700 delegates from parishes, religious orders and the community, who gave their opinions on the next steps in a reform process that has been going on for several years in the Archdiocese. The assembly was held days after he had consecrated 14 married men as permanent deacons. “Fundamentally”, he went on to say, “the debate is open”.

Kathpress notes that last June, Schönborn said in an interview that he was in favor of female deacons. “The introduction of this first phase of consecration for women is therefore already under discussion."

But at the same time, the cardinal ruled out ordination of women as priests. “There have never been priestesses in the Catholic Church, he said. “It would be too profound a rupture in the tradition of 2000 years, and even Pope Francis has said that such a move is not predicted”. [But why then did Schoenborn refer to the ordination of female deacons as 'the first phase of consecration for women'??? As to what Pope Francis has said on the subject of women priests, I'll reserve judgment until after the Amazon synodal assembly, which will probably be Bergoglio's opportunity to wedge in a 'synodal' (read Bergoglian) opening towards ending priestly celibacy and ordaining women priests.]

Wealthy US Catholics to fund probe of cardinals
credibly accused for scandal, abuse or cover-ups
by Christopher White

Oct 1, 2018

ROME - As U.S. bishops work to formulate an official response to clerical sexual abuse and cover-up, a new watchdog group backed by wealthy Catholics is seeking to take matters into their own hands.

A new organization, which held an RSVP-only event on Sunday evening, plans to spend more than $1 million in the next year investigating every member of the College of Cardinals “to name those credibly accused in scandal, abuse, or cover-ups.”

“The Better Church Governance Group” held its launch on the campus of the Catholic University of America (CUA) with the stated intention of producing its “Red Hat Report” by April 2020.

The U.S. bishops founded the Catholic University of America, and all six residential U.S. cardinals are members of its Board of Trustees.

In a statement to Crux, a CUA spokesperson said, “A space on campus was reserved by a student in accordance with our space reservation procedures. The event was not sponsored by The Catholic University of America nor a university-sponsored organization.”

The organizers of the Better Church Governance group confirmed that it was a private event, and in an e-mail to Crux said there was no association between the university and the organization.

The Red Hat Report, dubbed as the group’s “flagship project,” is designed to audit all 124 current papal electors. Organizers say it will be conducted by a team of, to date, nearly 100 researchers, academics, investigators, and journalists, with the aim “to hold the hierarchy of the Catholic Church accountable for abuse and corruption, and to develop and support honesty, clarity, and fidelity in Church governance.”

In an audio recording obtained by Crux of the event’s launch, Better Church Governance’s Operations Director, Jacob Imam, said the organization was not meant as an attack on Pope Francis, though he asked the crowd of nearly forty attendees: “What if we would have had someone else in 2013 who would have been more proactive in protecting the innocent and the young?”

“Had we had the Red Hat Report, we may not have had Pope Francis,” stated one of the slide presentations accompanying his remarks.

Imam, who is currently a Marshall Scholar of the University of Oxford and converted to Catholicism from Islam three years ago, alleged that following the 2013 conclave that elected Francis, many major news outlets based their knowledge of the newly elected pope on what they could find on Wikipedia. [Perhaps the cardinal electors who got sold on the St. Gallen Mafia's roseate image of Bergoglio didn't even bother to look up the little there was on Wikipedia (though they probably rushed to do that after the Conclave) but merely bought it all on sheer though terribly misguided 'faith'. "Look, if McCarrick and Silvestrini and Murphy-O'Connor and Danneels are all for him, then he must be the great white hope indeed for the reforms that Vatican II midwifed but which have mostly been aborted or stunted!"]

While insisting that he wasn’t maligning the pontiff, he added: “I think it’s fair to say that a defender of traditional values is not something he would identify himself with.”

Given the lack of knowledge many electors have about each other, Imam argued, it is an “extremely precarious situation…when the doors of the Sistine Chapel close.”

According to its prospectus, the Better Church Governance Group aims to produce its report before the next papal conclave. The estimated first-year expenditures are listed at $1,126,500.

“Many of us who were raised in a liberal democratic society don’t always know how a hierarchy can be reformed,” Imam told attendees. “But there are many tips and tricks that history gives us, and we at Better Church Governance started to systematize some of these strategies. We are here to help create transparency in the Church and we’re here to help support integrity.”

At present, the Report’s organizers are seeking graduate students to serve as research assistants with plans to offer an hourly rate of $25, working alongside a team of academic researchers and investigators.

The launch of the organization comes after a brutal summer of sex abuse fallout in the United States. The downfall of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who resigned from the College of Cardinals in August after revelations that he serially abused seminarians and at least one minor, has led to calls from numerous individuals for greater lay leadership in holding bishops accountable for cover-up.

Further, the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing seven decades of abuse by more than 300 abuser priests has resulted in a pledge from the U.S. bishops for a full review of their policies on reporting and accountability.

Imam said that report revealed that local individuals were aware of ongoing abuse and cover-up, hence the Red Project Report will seek to, whenever possible, carry out its research where each cardinal is based.

He went on to describe the two-fold purpose of their report: to provide information to every cardinal in hopes of better informing them about their fellow papal-electors, as well as to make the information available publicly so that lay Catholics can have access to it.

“Cardinals need to be held accountable publicly, so there has to be some sort of culture of shame,” he said. “They know if they vote for this person…the people that they shepherd, and their pastors, will know about it.”

“This is difficult. There is a dark side to this decision. We recognize that,” he added. “We are willing to take this on with prayer and fasting…because we can’t allow people to continue to allow our kids, the innocent, the young, seminarians to be devoured the ways that they are.”

Imam also said that 10 former FBI agents are involved in the investigation, with two individuals being the agency’s former lead investigators on ecclesiastic matters.

In an e-mail obtained by Crux, sent by the managing editor of the Red Hat Report, Philip Nielsen, to potential interested individuals last month, he outlined how each cardinal will be investigated.

“Each dossier will have a rating at the top for the cardinal’s connection to scandal and abuse, such as ‘severe guilt, credible accusations of guilt, clean.’ This final verdict on each will be based on our best evidence and the recommendations of best experts,” he wrote.

A revised rating system was distributed on Sunday with Cardinals receiving a rating based on “Strong Evidence of Abuse/Corruption, Some Evidence, Positive Evidence Against Abuse/Corruption.”

Imam said that, in time, they hope to expand to provide a full audit of bishops as well. He told those in attendance on Sunday that the organization did not seek to further an ideological agenda but will seek to answer how each cardinal is in “agreement” with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog. [Which Bergoglio and his absurd mini-me, Mons. Fernandez, have often said should simply be ignored!]

When asked by one attendee if the report would note whether cardinals are homosexual, he replied that the report would follow civil law as necessary, but it would also follow the Church’s moral law, adding: “If there is a rumor of him being homosexual, it will be noted very carefully…but we need to be sure.”

Although the organization’s official materials maintain that it does not intend to attack any of the cardinals, the Nielsen e-mail seems to suggest otherwise.

“For example, Cardinal [Pietro] Parolin, the very corrupt Vatican Secretary of State’s wikipedia page is currently very benign, with no links to scandal included, despite the fact that he has repeatedly been linked with banking scandals and was named in the Viganò letter,” he writes.

The reference was to an 11-page letter from Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former papal ambassador in the U.S., alleging that he briefed Francis in 2013 on misconduct concerns surrounding McCarrick, but the pontiff failed to act.

“We can change that … by the next conclave, he needs to be known, worldwide, as a disgrace to the Church. Our plan would be to make sure that his Wikipedia page shows “Church Watchdog The Better Governance Group, names Parolin, ‘Extremely Guilty of Abuse’ etc. with a link to the report. At the same time, we would add all the pull-quotes from other sources that connect him to all the financial corruption, etc.,” Nielsen continued.

The e-mail also stated that plans were underway for a launch at a Napa Institute meeting in D.C. this week, however Nielsen told Crux that as of now there are no official plans for a public announcement there.

The Napa Institute, a California-based organization founded by Tim Busch, a prominent Catholic conservative, whose annual summer conference brings together several hundred wealthy Catholic philanthropists and high-ranking Catholic prelates at his resort, is hosting a conference on Tuesday on “Authentic Reform” at the Mayflower Hotel in D.C.

As for its own oversight, the Nielsen e-mail states that the group is still in the process of forming its Board of Directors, and only one member is named in its current materials: Phil Scala, who is CEO of Pathfinder Consultants International, Inc. and previously worked at the FBI.

In addition, three individuals are named as research editors for the Red Hat Report: Professors Jay Richards of Catholic University of America’s Busch School of Economics, and Michael P. Foley and Melinda Nielsen of Baylor University.

While the organizational materials insist “we are not a faction or a lobbyist group,” Richards has previously worked for the Acton Institute, a libertarian think tank, and has been a vocal critic of Francis. Foley and Neilsen have also been associated with a number of conservative institutions and publications, including Hillsdale College, Crisis, The Catholic Thing, and First Things.

In addition, the organizational materials list the Center for Evangelical Catholicism (CEC) as its “fiscal sponsor,” which is currently collecting donations until the organization is granted official non-profit status. According to its website, the CEC is a not-for-profit corporation in South Carolina that “seeks to advance the New Evangelization by forming Evangelical Catholics equipped to fulfill the Great Commission.”

Nielsen told Crux that while many participants working at certain Catholic universities would not want their affiliation made public, the larger network is much broader than conservative allies.

He added that the group seeks to make its “aims and objections something everyone can agree with,” adding that some of the worst cases of abuse dating back to the founder of the Legion of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel, were among groups or individuals typically identified as conservative.

When asked by an attendee for the full timeline for the project, Imam replied “this project never ends.”

“We always have to be ready for a conclave,” he warned.

Pope's friend and one-man brain trust says Mons. Vigano
is only 'a retired prelate who just wants some fame'
[Is this then what Bergoglio thinks of the ex-nuncio? The friend does not deny any of Vigano's
factual claims which he calls attacks. Instead, we get a systematic denial of reality]
Translated from

Oct. 2, 2018

What does Pope Francis think of Mons. Viganò? And how has he reacted personally to the testimonies published by the former Nuncio to the USA?

We know that the pope has said nothing so far directly on the matter. He first asked the media to judge for themselves, and then went on to launch a series of [continuing] oblique references to the case, especially during his [so-called] morning homilies at Casa Santa Marta.

[One needs to write a serious analysis of this uniquely Bergoglian institution – a pope’s personal daily Masses shared openly with selected members of the community (John Paul II did this too but strictly in private), and in which the celebrant’s ‘homilies’ are immediately shared with the whole world in all possible multimedia forms and channels by the official Vatican media…. Yet he has habitually used these 'homilies' as a platform to inveigh against all Catholics - and only Catholics - whom he dislikes or disapproves of for strictly ideological reasons (they are 'conservative' where he is ultra-progressive) and/or because they criticize him openly. He is thereby using liturgy for his personal purposes, injecting his persona into what should be purely an act of worship to God. If that is not blasphemy, what is? But even his fiercest Catholic critics seem to overlook this blasphemy!]

But to have an idea of what this pope probably thinks about Viganò, it could be useful to listen to the man who is perhaps his number one adviser and a friend of long-standing, Mons. Víctor Manuel Fernández, whom he recently named Bishop of La Plata, one who is often in Rome and is certainly among those closest to Bergoglio.

Interviewed by [ultra-Bergogliac] José Manuel Vidal of the Spanish website Religion Digital
https://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/america/2018/09/17/alguien-necesitado-de-un-minuto-de-falsa-gloria-iglesia-religion-dios-jesus-papa-francisco-argentina-plata-victor-fernandez.shtml
Fernández claims the the pope is ‘strong and wants to work' but he does not think that disciplinary actions should be taken against Viganò, whom he sees as a man who is only after the limelight, “someone who needs a minute of false glory and is not resigned to have a low profile in retirement”.

Commenting himself on Viganò, the pope’s friend said: “I was always taught to place the People of God in the first place. [Not God himself???] In this case, I see a consecrated person who gives priority to his well-known ideological interests above the good of the people who end up being confused and hopeless”. [One can write a book about everything that's wrong with this statement. People have been confused since Day 1 of this pontificate, Vigano or no Vigano. And if some now feel 'hopeless' about the Church, the entire blame lies with another man with an Italianate three-syllable surname, Bergoglio.]

The interviewer asks: Are we back to the intrigues of Vatileaks or is the plague of sexual abuse being used to undermine papal authority?

Fernandez: “I think this man has two objectives: to discredit Pope Francis using a problem that has high visibility in the media, and to seek to show that he had no resposibility at all for the slowness of response to sexual abuse cases in the country where he was Nuncio.”

[And what responsibility can a Nuncio take for local sex abuses? Only 2 cases come to mind:
1) if abuses and cover-ups are caused by bishops whose appointments he recommended (none of which applies to Vigano, who was Nuncio only from 2012-2016, and whose espicopal recommendations were clearly ignored by Bergoglio in favor of McCarrick's recommendations in at least 2 cases - Cupich and Tobin; and
2) if he failed to report credible and plausible accusations sent to him about erring priests and bishops (as accusations were sent to his predecessors about McCarrick). Moreover, a nuncio has no powers to compel local bishops (especially not if they are cardinals who do rank aboe him) to do anything - as Vigano's predecessors were unable to compel McCarrick to observe Benedict XVI's santions. So how can Fernandez blame Vigano for the slow response of US bishops - a record of decades - during the four short years he was nuncio?]

Q: So is Viganò just a pawn in the hands of others?
Fernandez: Some persons forget the law of God and fall into the same moral relativism which they criticize. They think that their supposed defense of traaditional doctrine authorizes them to give false witness and tell lies. For them, calumny and defamation are licit.

According to Fernández, this is the entire problem: Vigano is a retired prelate who, unable to resign himself [to being out of office], needed some notoriety [i.e., public attention], and who, with the aid of ‘supposedly Catholic’ blogs, "succeeded to be on the front pages for a few days as ‘a martyr for truth’, but "he will suffer much when he finally manages to see the danger he has caused in the ‘simple hearts’ of many". [Shouldn't Fernandez be saying this of Bergoglio as pope and as Archbishop of Buenos Aires?] Finally, according to Fernandez, Vigano’s decision was not the result of power struggles in the Curia. [DIM=8pt][Whoever said it was?]

“I have been in Rome these past days,” Fernandez continues, “and I perceived above all a lot of sorrow. No one understands how it is possible who was a Nuncio to an important country, could behave this way, like an adolescent”. [And I cannot understand, despite the many stupidities in the Fernandez-Bergoglio papal documents, how the pope's one-man brain trust can speak so stupidly!]

As for the bishops of the United States, Fernandez says it is ‘surprising’ that no one has sought to distance himself from Viganò [and his accusations, more importantly]. One can see that there are ideological obsessions stronger than mental sanity”. [Oh yes, we can certainly say that of Bergoglio and all his followers, starting with Fernandez, who is probably more mentor and not just follower.]

He says he does not think the pope will take disciplinary measures against Viganò. “In recent years [i.e., since he became pope], he has done it on rare occasions. [WHEN????] He did it about Vatileaks because the target was Benedict XVI, but it would be strange if he did it now hat the attacks are against him”.

[1) What exactly did he do about Vatileaks for offenses against Benedict XVI????
2) Recalling certain events as Vigano did, starting with his June 13, 2013 conversation with Bergoglio and all that followed it, is NOT AN ATTACK AT ALL. If Viganò was lying, all Bergoglio had to do was to say, “NO – we never even spoke about McCarrick at that June meeting” .If he can't, it is because Vigano was not lying, and Bergoglio may blaspheme Jesus as often as he misquotes him but he will not willingly perjure nor self-incriminate himself... Which leaves the question of his subsequent use of McCarrick to go to China on his behalf and to heed his advice on episcopal, cardinal and curial appointments involving US bishops, because he did actually elevate McCarrick’s proteges to bishops, cardinals and one Curial prefecture – none of which he can deny. For most people, 2+2 is still 4, whatever Bergogliac Spadaro may say.]

On the sexual abuse scandals, he says all it needs is “to have present norms respected”. [He can't even try to show more concern about it! But then, didn't the Vatican say that Bergoglio's 4-page 'Letter to the People of God" was 'exhaustive', saying all he had to say on the matter, and that we should expect nothing more?]

Let us say it again: The words of Fernandez are not those of just any bishop, but of a prelate very close to the pope, his intimate work associate for decades, and his theologian of reference.

To better place Fernandez in context, it will not be useless to recall that precisely as the pope’s theologian of confidence, he was among the principal ideators [if not actually the principal ghostwriter] of Amoris laetitia, Laudato si and Evangelii gaudium. Entire sections of AL, especially in the controversial Chapter 8, which opens the way for remarried divorcees to receive communion [despite remaining in adultery] were virtually lifted from articles written in 2005 and 2006 by Fernandez, who had long been the one-man brain trust of the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

In those years, Fernandez was a theology professor at the Catholic University of Buenos Aires, and in his pubished articles, opposed John Paul II’s Veritatis splendor on the fundamental questions of the Church’s moral teaching, and advocated situation ethics which is the guiding principle of AL Chapter 8.

Mostly because of those articles, the Congregation for Catholic Education blocked Fernandez’s candidature at the time to be rector of the Catholic University of Buneos Aires, only to yield in 2009 to the insistent requests of Cardinal Bergoglio who did manage to impose the promotion of his friend.

In 2013, shortly after he became pope, Bergoglio consecrated Fernandez as a bishop, assigning him an extinct titular see, whereas the career of Dominican theologian Jean-Louis Brugues, who had opposed Fernandez’s nomination when he was secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, has stalled. [Benedict XVI named Brugues Vatican Archivist and Chief Librarian in 2012 but last June, Bergoglio named a controversial Portuguese theologian to replace him although Brugues is not yet 75.]

“Since then,” Sandro Magister wrote, “Fernandez has spent more time in Rome than in Buenos Aires, fully occupied as his friend’s ghostwriter, without improving his credentials as a theologian, which had been anything but brilliant since the start”.
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351303.html

Indeed, Fernandez’s merits as a theologian are not immediately appreciable. A book of his entitled Guariscimi con la tua bocca. L’arte di baciare (Heal me with your mouth: The art of kissing), published in Argentina in 1995, is rather ‘singular’, being presented by the author himself in these words:

---

“In these pages, I wish to summarize the popular sentiment, that is, what people experience when they think of a kiss, what mortals feel when they kiss. For this, I talked at length with so many people who have much experience on the matter, and also with many young people who learn to kiss in their own way. Moreover, I have consulted so many books and I wish to show how poets speak of the kiss. Thus, with the intention of synhesizing the immense richness of life [sic - 'l’immenza ricchezza della vita’], I have come to write this book in support of kissing, which I hope will help you to kiss better, and will impel you to liberate in each kiss what is best about your being”.

---

[I never paid attention to this Foreword before, but does it not give you the creeps? I wonder whether he explains in the book how a priest, who vows chastity, manages to do without this ‘immense richness of life’???]

As the pope’s friend, Fernandez ought to have at heart that parrhesia and synodality which his friend often speaks of. Instead, on the contrary, he has taken positions that are dismissive of the Roman Curia, believing, he says, that Christ has assured “special guidance and illumination for the pope and all the bishops, but not to a prefect or other structure”. [As if Curial heads and officials were not also bishops.]

“This, then,” Magister wrote, “is the person Francis holds close as his ‘thinker of reference’.”

Who now explains that Mons. Vigano, with his ‘testimonies’, is nothing but a miserable retired prelate who, unable to accept his condition, set off in search of notoriety [and his 15 minutes of glory.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/10/2018 04:14]

In its game with the Vatican,
China calls all the shots

Sept. 30, 2018

Responding to the gesture of Pope Francis who on the same day as the signing of the provisional agreement with China on the appointment of bishops, lifted the excommunication of seven bishops forcibly installed in recent years by the Communist Party without the approval of the Holy See, the Chinese authorities promptly designated by themselves the two bishops they are sneding to take part in the imminent synodal assembly on 'the youth'.

It is the first time that this has happened, and the decision seems to be a taste of what is to come with future episcopal appointments, on the basis of the agreement stipulated with the two sides. An agreement whose contents have not been made known, but that, evidently, is not impartial.

While in the past, first in 1998 and then in 2005, the Chinese bishops invited to the synods of those years by John Paul II and Benedict XVl respectively, never received authorization to go to Rome, now the Beijing authorities have themselves designated the bishops to send to the synod, and Rome has not raised any objections. Wang Zuo’an, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, made the announcement.

The two bishops are John Baptist Yang Xiaoting, bishop of Yan’an-Yulin, and Joseph Guo Jincai, bishop of Chengde. Both of them have long been very obedient executors of the commands of the Chinese authorities, and the latter - one of the seven who have been 'un-excommunicated' - also General Secretary of the pseudo episcopal conference of Chinese bishops, which still does not include the “clandestine” bishops who are in communion with Rome but not recognized by the regime.

Today the known “clandestine” bishops number 17, 7 of whom are well above the age of 75. And two of them now find themselves flanked, in their respective dioceses, by two government-appointed bishops pardoned in recent days by the pope.

In the diocese of Shantou, the “clandestine” bishop is 87 and could be replaced easily. But in that of Xiapu-Mindong, the “clandestine” bishop Vincent Guo Xijin, 56, will have to step aside for his competitor Vincent Zhan Silu, bowing to the “sacrifice” asked of him by the Vatican last winter. Here too is confirmation of how the Chinese regime easily trumps the Vatican.

Of all the bishops currently present in China - on whose names the Annuario Pontificio is silent, except for those of Hong Kong and Macao - Settimo Cielo furnished a detailed organizational chart last February, on the basis of the highly informative book by the vaticanista Gianni Cardinale that came out at the beginning of this year from the presses of Libreria Editrice Vaticana:
> Chinese Bishops Illegitimate, Official, Clandestine… Which Ones Francis Is Rewarding and Which He Is Not

But it must be added that in the diocese of Ningbo, where the last known bishop, named Hu Xiande, “clandestine,” died on September 25, 2017, the Holy See limited itself to stating that “the successor has taken possession of the diocese”: a sign that there must be a new bishop there, also not recognized by the Chinese government, but whose identity has not been revealed.

A further observation concerns the strange case of the eighth bishop from whom last September 22 Pope Francis lifted the excommunication - who was already dead at the time.

In the papal act of lifting the excommunications, it is written that this bishop, Anthony Tu Shihua, a Franciscan, who passed away on January 4, 2017, “before dying had expressed the desire to be reconciled with the apostolic see.”

L’Osservatore Romano did not publish an obituary for this bishop, and has not done so for every illegitimate bishop who has passed away without being reconciled with the Church, either publicly or in the internal forum.

There are therefore two possible explanations for the “post mortem” absolution granted by Pope Francis in recent days: Either the Holy See found out only long after his death that he wanted to be reconciled. Or the Chinese government absolutely demanded from Rome his posthumous rehabilitation. And got it.


The Vatican's agreement with China:
A step backwards
Translated from


It’s not easy to express a judgment on the recent “Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China on the Appointment of Bishops” for two reasons.

First of all, as a matter of principle: This is an extremely complex and deicate matter about which only those who are ‘in’ at the Vatican and who have firsthand knowledge of the agreement can say something. Anyone else might as well be making barroom chatter.

Then there is a practical reason. We have not been told the terms of the agreement. How can one judge something one knows virtually nothing about?

But not being able to express a judgment does not keep one from making observations. As a simple observer who takes note of what is happening around him.

1. The first observation is precisely about the secrecy on the gareement. We are living in a communications era when we are informed of what is taking place around the world in real time. So much talk about transparency. Yet when an agreement is finally reached between the Vatican and China after five years, both parties make the official announcement but fail to disclose the text of the agreement. It seems to me something is wrong somewhere.

But despite the secrecy of the text, all observers appear unanimous in concluding that the agreement gives the Chinese government the right to name bishops, leaving the Pope with nothing but a veto power which has not been defined.

2. Just over 50 years ago, the Church had an ecumenical council (Vatican II), of which Church authorities today are particularly proud and lose no occasion to sing its praises. Rightfully, in my opinion. But what does Vatican II say about the apoointment of bishops?

---

20. Since the apostolic office of bishops was instituted by Christ the Lord and pursues a spiritual and supernatural purpose, this sacred ecumenical synod declares that the right of nominating and appointing bishops belongs properly, peculiarly, and per se exclusively to the competent ecclesiastical authority.

Therefore, for the purpose of duly protecting the freedom of the Church and of promoting more conveniently and efficiently the welfare of the faithful, this holy council desires that in future no more rights or privileges of election, nomination, presentation, or designation for the office of bishop be granted to civil authorities.
The civil authorities, on the other hand, whose favorable attitude toward the Church the sacred synod gratefully acknowledges and highly appreciates, are most kindly requested voluntarily to renounce the above-mentioned rights and privileges which they presently enjoy by reason of a treaty or custom, after discussing the matter with the Apostolic See.
- Christus Dominus,
DECREE CONCERNING THE PASTORAL OFFICE
OF BISHOPS IN THE CHURCH
October 28, 1965

---

Vatican-II affirmed a principle (“the right of nominating and appointing bishops belongs properly, peculiarly, and per se exclusively to the competent ecclesiastical authority”) and expressed the hope that “in future no more rights or privileges of election, nomination, presentation, or designation for the office of bishop be granted to civil authorities”.

What was a wish by the Council became a precise directive in the subsequent revision of the Code of Canon Law.

---

Can. 377 §1. The Supreme Pontiff freely appoints bishops or confirms those legitimately elected…
[Sections 2-4 describe the procedure for naming bishops.]
§5. In the future, no rights and privileges of election, nomination, presentation, or designation of bishops are granted to civil authorities.

---

That one must often come to a compromise in order to reach an agreement is in the nature of things. But in general, during negotiations, there are principles which the negotiators must bear in mind. And for the Church, this was her native and exclusive right to nominate bishops. A principle for which she has fought through the centuries. Yet now, just for the sake of signing an agreement, the Vatican has yielded on a point that ought to have been mandatory and unchallengeable.

3. We come to a third observation which is historical in nature. I will limit myself to an excursus found in a jurdico-pastoral commentary to the Code of Canon Law edited by Luigi Chiapetta (Edizioni Dehoniane, Napoli, 1988, vol. I, pp. 465-466), though it is not clear if it is thee ditor’s text or a citation taken from another periodical. But what matters is what it says:

---

It is known that, in the early secnturies, the bishops were elected by the clergy and people, with the approval of viciniori bishops or the metropolitan who would consecrate the new bishop. Such a procedure – which starting from the fourth century, was often violated by the Byzantine emperors who directly appointed bishops, especially for patriarchal sees – lasted much longer in the Western Church.

The intervention of European sovereigns began with Charlemagne, and grew with the creation of ecclesiastical fiefdomes by Otto I the Great of Saxony (912-973). The situation became very serious in the following century which saw the ‘battle for investitures’ which was carried on with heroic firmness by Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085).

The Concordat of Worms, on Sept. 23,1122, between Pope Callistus II and Henry V, which took away the power of the Holy Roman Emperor to name bishops, officially ended the power struggle that had lasted half a century. In practice, though, it meant that canonical elections passed completely to the hands of Cathedral chapters with the exclusion of other ecclesiastics and the laity.

Subsequently, the Roman Pontiffs asserted their right as Head of the Church in the 13th century, reserving for the pope alone the right to name bishops. This became the general rule in the 14th century, but afterwards, under pressure from the European monarchs, the Holy See was forced to yield, and many kings and princes (for example, Francois I of France, with the Concordat of 1516), obtained the right to name bishops for their territories.

Today, except for some sees in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, in which the election of a bishop still rests with the Cathedral chapter, the Holy See nominates all the bishops in the Latin Church. The present Code of Canon Law does ntr suppress this privilege, therefore Canon 377, § 1 provides that “The Supreme Pontiff freely appoints bishops or confirms those legitimately elected”, a law that obviously applies to the Latin Church. (Communicationes, a. 1986, p. 119, can. 4, § 1; p. 121, n. 1).

---

Regardless of whatever political or pastoral judgment one may make of it, the agreement recently signed with China objectively constitutes, from the historical viewpoint, a step backwards. To 500 years or a century back, you decide.
 

As I have consciously chosen not to post, at least not immediately, anything about the various relatively minor 'sidebars' that have arisen from the broad picture of the Church's
failure to deal with the clerical/episcopal sex abuse and cover-up scandal epitomized in Mons. Vigano's two testimonies, I welcome the following news review to keep track of these sidebars.

The week in review: China, Viganò, Chile,
the U.S. bishops, Baltimore, and more
Meanwhile, signs of frustration and impatience with Francis
have also started to emerge in the worldwide press.
by Christopher R. Altieri

September 28, 2018

This week has been another that has kept reporters and analysts on the Church beat dizzyingly busy. A full list of the week’s stories would run to the length of a broadsheet page before it was done — and stories are breaking and moving so rapidly, that any such list would likely be dated before it got published.

Here, however, are a few of the highlights, with a few other stories readers might have missed along the way, followed by a look at some of the most salient news analysis, and then a brief take on where things stand in general.

The first piece of big news — that the Vatican has done its deal with China — actually broke Saturday, though it continued to dominate headlines for several days. The Catholic World Report had ample coverage of that news, including pieces by Samuel Gregg, Anthony E. Clark, and Ines Murzaku.

On Thursday, the Viganò saga returned to the forefront of attention, after the former nuncio to the United States released another letter — a follow-up to his spectacular 11-page 'J’Accuse! 'of August 26th — in which he accuses Pope Francis of engaging in a “subtle slander” against the archbishop, who has not-so-subtly accused the Holy Father of complicity in a decades-long and systematic cover-up of serial misconduct by the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, DC, Theodore Edgar “Uncle Ted” McCarrick.

On Friday, Pope Francis laicized Chile’s most notorious abuser-priest, Fernando Karadima. The measure was an extraordinary one, not only because Karadima had been convicted and sentenced to a life of prayer and penance in 2011. To say there are outstanding issues in Chile quite apart from Karadima is to put oneself in the running for understatement of the year. How the move fits into Francis’s larger plan to repair the crisis in Chile is anyone’s guess, since Francis’s approach there as elsewhere has been to play his cards close to his cotta.

Three Polish dioceses have published information regarding their records on abuse, in an effort — they say — better to understand the phenomenon and so the better to prevent it. A statement from the Polish bishops’ conference says, “[Our position] in the matter of Church sex abuse is still valid and unchangeable: Zero tolerance for the sin and the crime of pedophilia in the Church and in society.” The Polish bishops go on to reiterate their “determination to fight this sin and crime, stressing the need to care for the victims and the need to build a culture capable of preventing such acts.”

In the United States this week, news came of an investigation begun by Maryland’s Attorney General into the historical records of the Archdiocese of Baltimore — the “premier see” of the United States — where Archbishop William Lori currently leads the Church.

Archbishop Lori is himself currently leading an ecclesiastical investigation into the former head of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, Bishop Michael Bransfield, whose resignation Pope Francis accepted earlier this month — for reached limits of age — amid allegations of sexual misconduct involving at least one adult man.

Archbishop Lori has welcomed the Attorney General’s investigation into his archdiocese, saying, “I have informed the attorney general that the archdiocese is supportive of the review and will be fully cooperative throughout the process.” That line was from a letter Archbishop Lori delivered to the clergy of Baltimore on Wednesday, in which he also said, “It is clear that we are a Church in crisis and that crisis is one of trust.”

Also this week, Catholic News Agency reported a story out of Crookston, Minnesota, containing details of an abuse allegation in which the person making the charge was a candidate for the permanent Diaconate, and the bishop — Michael Hoeppner — admittedly less than perfectly ready in his response.

Broadly speaking, however, the bishops of the United States do seem to be coming to terms with the idea that their credibility is tattered beyond their ability to mend it unaided, and have sought the help of the Apostolic See to repair the damage — help that has not been forthcoming.

On Friday, John Allen of Crux floated a four-point plan to break the apparent impasse, the essence of which is: create the conditions in which Pope Francis can do what he needs to do, by presenting him with a way to save face while doing it. That the US bishops should have to provide the Pope with an out in the first place, is itself a fairly shocking idea.

The not-quite-explicitly-stated-as-such premise of Allen’s analysis appears to be that Pope Francis feels himself boxed in politically as a result of the Viganò letter, and quite possibly perceives the US bishops’ calls for an Apostolic Visitation as contributing to the pressure created by Viganò’s epistolary exploits.

That is no real reason not to do what the US bishops are asking him to do, though — and if the Pope really is worried about a plot to delegitimize his pontificate — as some of remarks in recent morning fervorini suggest he might be — the best thing to do would still be to order an Apostolic Visitation.

Meanwhile, signs of frustration and impatience with Francis have also started to emerge in the worldwide press.

Last weekend saw the release of an in-depth look at Pope Francis in the German weekly, Der Spiegel, a left-of center publication generally well-disposed to Pope Francis and what Der Spiegel’s editorial board perceives to be his agenda.

The 19-page treatment goes over a good deal of already trodden ground, but concentrates significant focus on the Pope’s record as archbishop of Buenos Aires, especially insofar as his leadership record in the fight against clerical sex abuse is concerned.

Reporters on the return flight to Rome at the end of the Pope’s four-day, three country trip to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — yes, that happened — were flummoxed by a Pope who refused to answer their questions. A few of them wrote about it, including the National Catholic Reporter’s Joshua McElwee.

Popes do not rule by consensus, but in this day and age — in which the papacy as an institution is either a prophetic moral voice on the global stage, or it is nothing — a trust deficit such as the one facing Francis as a result of his own unforced errors is debilitating, even if it is not disqualifying. [A trust deficit, BTW, which John Allen himself articulated in an 'analysis' that preceded his deranged 'help-save-face-for-Francis' proposal.]



On the 'H' affliction that the Vatican continues to ignore and that Bergoglio and his Bergogliacs choose to call 'clericalism', LifeSite
correspondent Matthew Cullinan Hoffman who translated St Pier Damian's treatise against sodomy in all its forms, especially among priests,
'resurrects' the writings of the 11th century Doctor of the Church for his striking relevance today...

St. Peter Damian’s battle against clerical
homosexuality offers useful lessons for today
Much of the saint's reform struggle seems strikingly relevant to the modern situation of the Church,
offering an incisive and useful critique of sexual immorality and laxism among the clergy.
by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

September 27, 2018

When the eremitic monk and reformer Peter Damian cast his critical gaze upon the Catholic Church of the mid-eleventh century, he encountered a panorama of corruption that would have appeared daunting even to the most hardened observer of the modern ecclesiastical scene.

The “household of God” was in a catastrophic state of moral disorder, admitting of no easy remedy. The crisis of the period, and Damian’s heroic response, offers much of historical value to us as we confront our own explosion of clerical vice and doctrinal infidelity.

The Church of Damian’s time had been rocked by almost two centuries of political and social chaos, and the doctrinal ignorance, scandalous personal behavior, and petty venality of the clergy had reached intolerable levels.
- Bishops and priests were involved in every kind of immorality, publicly living with concubines or illicit wives, or furtively engaging in homosexual practices.
- Many had purchased their ordinations and the lucrative benefices that accompanied them, and spent their free time in scandalous secular amusements.
- An outraged laity was beginning to rise up against ecclesiastical authority, sometimes in riotous outbursts of violence that threatened the civil order.

The pinnacle of the crisis was reached in the year 1032 with the election of Pope Benedict IX, a raucous and libertine youth of no more than twenty-two years of age, and the latest and worst in a long succession of compromised popes who served wealthy and powerful secular patrons. Mercifully, few details of Benedict’s personal behavior have been preserved in historical accounts, but the pope’s “vile and contemptible life,” his “rapine, murders, and other nefarious deeds,” and his “depraved and perverse acts,” in the words of the future Pope Victor III, were widely known in his day.

However, by 1049 a new generation of reformers was on the rise, beginning with the pontificate of Pope St. Leo IX, and running through the pontificate of Hildebrand (St. Gregory VII), in 1073. Peter Damian, who was famous for his life of austerity and penance, would act as the principal theorist of the counter-revolutionaries against the Church’s corrupt establishment.

Damian provided the rhetorical firepower for their reform projects, publishing a constant stream of open letters that often took on the dimension of pamphlets or small books on every conceivable theological and disciplinary controversy. When it was necessary, he showed up in person to confront corrupt actors and to stand them down – including the Holy Roman Emperor himself.

In many ways the crisis of Damian’s day seems foreign to our own; thankfully, we seem not to be suffering from a plague of illicit clerical marriages, nor do we find ourselves in a crisis of nepotism and simony, even if such problems continue to exist in isolation. However, much of St. Peter Damian’s eleventh century reform struggle seems strikingly relevant to the modern situation of the Church, offering us an incisive and useful critique of sexual immorality and laxism among the clergy, as well as an inspiring example of a reformer of immense personal integrity, whose courage never seemed to waver, even in the darkest of moments.

Most relevant to our own age is Damian’s famous Liber Gomorrhianus, or “Book of Gomorrah,” a long letter in the form of a libellus [booklet] addressed to Pope St. Leo IX sometime between 1049 and 1054. The book, which is written against an epidemic of sodomy “raging like a cruel beast within the sheepfold of Christ” has deep resonance with us today, and offers many insights into the contemporary crisis in the priesthood.

Damian’s opening words almost seem addressed to the contemporary Church, as he warns the pope that "the cancer of sodomitic impurity” is threatening the integrity of the clergy itself, and urges him to act with all speed, adding that “unless the force of the Apostolic See opposes it as quickly as possible, there is no doubt that when it finally wishes for the unbridled evil to be restrained, it may not be able to halt the fury of its advance.”

One of the most important elements offered to the modern reader by Damian’s work is his understanding of “sodomy” not merely as a sexual perversion involving two people of the same sex, but rather a continuum of sins that progressively depart from the nature of the sexual act.

This continuum begins with acts such as contraception and self-abuse, which then ranges to various acts involving accomplices, each more unnatural and shameful than the other. It is significant to note that in Damian’s eyes, the majority of Catholics today are practicing a form of “sodomy,” one that may easily lead to worse perversions. This insight may offer a useful explanation for the pervasive indifference to homosexual behavior among modern Catholics – most of them are engaged in behavior that is fundamentally similar.

Damian is also concerned with a phenomenon that has become disturbingly familiar for us: the tendency of those involved in sexual perversion to seek promotion and advancement in the Church, and to recruit others into their lifestyle.

“Why, I ask, O damnable sodomites, do you seek after the height of ecclesiastical dignity with such burning ambition?” writes Damian. “Why do you seek with such longing to snare the people of God in the web of your perdition? Does it not suffice for you that you cast your very selves off the high precipice of villainy, unless you also involve others in the danger of your fall?”

Much of the saint’s critique is focused on the existence of falsified penal canons in the penitential manuals of his day, which often allowed clerics guilty of sodomy to do brief and light penances for their offenses and to easily continue in their destructive vices.

Damian urged the discarding of such canons, holding that the worst offenders should be removed permanently from the priesthood, and that all those guilty any grade of sodomy should be required to do the much longer and more difficult penances established by the episcopal synods of the first millennium. Such penances involved many years of gradual restoration to full communion with the Church.

The saint holds that such measures are necessary to impress upon the guilty the severity of their offense, arguing that as long as the “carnal man . . . does not fear losing his honorable state by his indiscreet discretion, he is also inclined to take up new vices and to remain longer in those he has taken up with impunity, so that, so to speak, as long as he is not struck where it hurts more severely, he lies serenely in that pigsty of filthy obscenity in which he first fell.”

In a rebuke against the 11th century equivalent of covering up scandals of sexual misbehavior, Damian blames lax ecclesiastical superiors for their “silence” with regard to clerical sodomy, and regards them as sharing in the guilt of those under their authority.

“Undoubtedly, those who turn a blind eye to the sins of their subjects that they are obligated to correct, also grant to their subjects a license to sin through their ill-considered silence,” writes Damian, later adding that he would rather be persecuted than to fail to speak out: “Indeed, I prefer to be thrown innocent into a well with Joseph, who accused his brothers of the worst of crimes to their father, than to be punished by the retribution of divine fury with [the high priest] Eli, who saw the evil of his children and was silent.”

One penitential canon approvingly quoted by Damian directly addresses the case of a cleric guilty of child sex abuse, that is, he who “persecutes adolescents or children, or who is caught in a kiss or other occasion of indecency.”
- Such a cleric was to be “publicly beaten and lose his tonsure, and having been disgracefully shaved, his face is to be smeared with spittle, and he is to be bound in iron chains, worn down with six months of imprisonment, and three days every week to fast on barley bread until sundown.”
- Following this he was to be “separated in his room for another six months in the custody of a spiritual senior” and should “always walk under the guard of two spiritual brothers, never again soliciting sexual intercourse from youth by perverse speech or counsel.”

Although Damian cited St. Basil as his source for this canon, his unreliable penitential manuals had deceived him. Its true author seems to have been St. Fructuosus of Braga, who had applied it to his monks in the seventh century. The canon had then passed into the penitential literature and later the attribution to Fructuosus had been dropped. Finally, in later manuals it began to be erroneously attributed to Basil.

The penalty of confinement in a monastery for clerical offenders would later be extended by the Third Lateran Council to all clergy caught in acts of sodomy, a measure that now seems to have totally disappeared from the Church’s practice.

The canonical penances of ancient councils are no longer in effect under current ecclesiastical law, but the problem of moral indifferentism and disciplinary laxism has obvious relevance for our own context, in which homosexual tendencies in the clergy are often ignored or dismissed, and homosexual unions are increasingly treated as morally legitimate. How can it be doubted that the current sex abuse crisis would have been avoided if Church authorities had applied St. Fructuosus’s canon, or something like it, to the guilty?

For Damian, the issue of homosexuality within the clergy is deeply related to the dignity of the priesthood, and in particular the sacrifice of the Mass, which he sees as defiled by the offending priest, who is “unworthy” of offering the sacrifice, asking if such a priest “is barely permitted to enter the church to pray with others, how is it that he can approach the altar of the Lord to intercede for others?”

The incompatibility of such behavior with the dignity of the sacrifice of the Mass offers a useful explanation for the modern correlation between liturgical abuse and an effeminate clergy indifferent to the moral demands of the gospel.

The notion of “homosexuality” as a deep-rooted psychological tendency wouldn’t come into existence for another seven centuries, but Damian’s work offers a profound analysis both of the irrationality of same-sex attraction and the devastating psychological and spiritual effects of homosexual practice. The saint expresses a deep concern for the spiritual welfare of those involved in such behavior, and offers them encouragement in the struggle to extricate themselves from it.

For Damian, the practitioner of homosexual sodomy suffers from a fundamental disorientation regarding the natural complementarity of the sexes. “What do you seek in a man, that you are unable to find in yourself — what difference of sexes, what diverse features of members, what softness, what tenderness of carnal allurement, what pleasantness of a smooth face?” he asks the homosexual, adding , “whatever you do not find in yourself, you seek in vain in another body.”

Damian tells us that the practitioner of the vice is tormented spiritually and even physically. “His flesh burns with the fury of lust, his frigid mind trembles with the rancor of suspicion,” he writes. “Chaos now rages hellishly in the heart of the unhappy man while he is vexed by as many worries as he is tortured, as it were, by the torments of punishment.”

However, far from dismissing or dehumanizing those who appease such urges, Damian insists that they are redeemable and implores them not to give up hope. He expresses grief over the “noble soul, made in the image and likeness of God and united with the most precious blood of Christ,” and adds, “You who hear Christ the reviver, why do you despair of your own resuscitation? Hear it from his own mouth: ‘He that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live.’” He assures his reader that he may extricate himself from his captivity to sin through faith and penance, and rise to greater spiritual heights than ever before.

It is safe to say that, as wretched as the situation of the Church was in his own day, Damian could hardly have conceived of the possibility of a revisionist movement that would seek openly to vitiate the historic Christian doctrine on the immorality of sodomy, or to treat homosexual unions as “analogous” to marriage, as Cardinal Walter Kasper does in his most recent book, The Message of Amoris Laetitia: A Fraternal Discussion.

Damian’s work is therefore devoid of any explicit response to the tenets of modern LGBT ideology and to the clerics who defend it. However, the saint’s critique of sodomy in the Book of Gomorrah has been perceived as such a threat to the revisionist project that scholars seeking to legitimize homosexual behavior in a Christian context have argued against its credibility for decades, most notably the historian John Boswell.

Such scholars have latched on to an erroneous narrative that originated in the early twentieth century, which claimed that Pope St. Leo IX in some way rejected Damian’s recommendations, either by reducing Damian’s suggested penalties for sodomy or even by repudiating the Book of Gomorrah altogether and distancing himself from Damian personally. As I show in my preface to my translation of the Book of Gomorrah, this “rejection thesis” is not only baseless, but contradicts the clear text of Leo’s own letter to Damian, as well as the pontiff’s official acts in response to Damian’s book.

Leo praised the Book of Gomorrah and Peter Damian personally in soaring terms, expressing his desire that it be “known with certitude by all that everything that this little book contains has been pleasing to our judgment, being as opposed to diabolical fire as is water,” and predicting Damian’s future reward in heaven.
-The pope then decreed a more rigorous scheme of penalties for those guilty of sodomy than Damian had asked for.
- He also approved a canon decreeing excommunication for those guilty of sodomy at a synod at Rheims, during one of his reform tours in Europe.
Revisionists have sought to counter these facts by claiming a different letter by Damian to Leo mentioning tension between them is really about the Book of Gomorrah, although the letter makes no reference to the book.

In short, Leo’s unreserved and enthusiastic endorsement of the Book of Gomorrah cannot be reasonably questioned, a fact conceded in the recent scholarship of William McCready, professor emeritus of history at Queen’s University and author of Odiosa sanctitas: St. Peter Damian, Simony, and Reform (2011). In Europe, scholars seem generally to be unaware of this Anglophone controversy, and have found little reason to question Leo’s support for Damian’s cause.

However, St. Peter Damian’s brilliant analysis of the crisis of his day and his recommendations for firm discipline in the face of the moral corruption of the clergy appear to have succumbed to the more devastating effects of oblivion and disuse, as casualties of the historical amnesia of our age. A remedy, perhaps, may be found in Damian’s closing prayer, addressed to Pope Leo:

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May almighty God grant, O most reverend father, that in the time of your apostolate the monster of this vice may utterly perish, and the condition of the prostrate Church might everywhere be restored in accordance with the laws of its youth.

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Poll: Pope's popularity in the U.S. drops
amid widening priest sex abuse scandal
By JAWEED KALEEM

OCT 02, 2018

Amid the biggest sex abuse scandal of his five-year papacy, Pope Francis’s support has declined sharply among U.S. Catholics, according to a new survey.

Just 3 out of 10 American Catholics say the pope has done an “excellent” or “good” job handling the church’s sex abuse crisis. The approval percentage is the lowest that Catholics in the U.S. have given the pope since the Pew Research Center began tracking views of his performance more than four years ago.

While 7 out of 10 Catholics still give the pope an overall favorable rating, 6 out of 10 surveyed by the center say he's doing an “only fair” or “poor” job regarding sex abuse. The pope’s negative rating — 36% of Catholics say he’s done a “poor” job on sex abuse — has doubled since a Pew survey in January and tripled since 2015.

The survey results are based on interviews of 1,754 American adults, including 336 Catholics between Sept. 18 and Sept. 24. Among the general population, about half said they had an overall favorable view of Pope Francis. That is the lowest rating he has received since Pew began surveys about Francis after he became pope in 2013.

The poll also registered a dip in support of the pope on matters outside of his handling of abusive priests, said Greg Smith, associate director of research at the center.

”We’ve seen declines in the share of U.S. Catholics who give the pope positive marks for his work appointing new bishops and cardinals, standing up for traditional morals, and spreading the Catholic faith, as well as a decline in the number of Catholics who say their overall opinion of Francis is favorable,” Smith said.

The poll from Pew, a nonpartisan Washington-based research center that regularly tracks religious trends, is its first about the pope since calls for his resignation began in August after allegations from a Vatican official that he covered up for a disgraced cardinal accused of sexually abusing minors and adult seminarians.

Those allegations came in the form of an 11-page public letter from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., who claimed that Francis and several American cardinals and archbishops protected Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for years while knowing of his sexual misconduct.

McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., who was among the most powerful figures in the U.S. Catholic Church, resigned in July after it was reported that he sexually abused children, teens and seminarians over his decades-long leadership.

Vigano blamed church leaders for protecting a widespread “homosexual current” in the Vatican and said Francis should resign. He also criticized church leaders for having a “pro-gay ideology.”

Francis has avoided speaking specifically about the allegations or denying them outright.

The scandal is just one of several sex abuse developments that the U.S. Catholic Church and the pope have recently had to confront.

In August, a Pennsylvania grand jury report found bishops engaged in a cover-up as more than 300 priests sexually abused minors in the state over decades. The report prominently featured Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., who was bishop of the Pittsburgh diocese for nearly two decades and followed McCarrick in leading the Catholic archdiocese in the nation’s capital. Last month, Wuerl said he would travel to Rome to discuss his possible resignation with the pope.

Last month, the pope also accepted the resignation of West Virginia Bishop Michael J. Bransfield after allegations arose of sexual misconduct with adults.

Complaints over the church’s handling of sex abuse have also grown Ireland, Germany, Chile and the Philippines.

The criticism recently prompted Francis to call for a global meeting of bishops in February to discuss the sex abuse crisis. The unusual meeting is the first time presidents of bishops conferences around the world — more than 100 — have been called to the Vatican specifically to tackle sex abuse concerns.

In trademark pink or lavender no less!

Concerns generated by lack of clarity
on Synod voting procedures
[Aren't we all psyched up already for another rigged Bergoglio synod?]

Oct. 1, 2018

Pope Francis’s apostolic constitution, Episcopalis Communio, allows for the final synod document to have magisterial weight, but the question remains whether there will be propositions.

The organizers of the Synod on 'Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment' [What a load of pompous claptrap signifying nothing!], which begins Wednesday, are not being clear whether propositions will be included in the final document and voted upon, as they have been in past synods.

Although the final document has to be approved in its entirety by a two-thirds majority of the synod’s voting members, Bishop Fabio Fabene, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, has said it remains an open question if propositions will be part of the final document, each of which would require a two thirds majority to pass.

“We have to see how the document will turn out,” Bishop Fabene told the Register Oct. 1 at a presentation of the synod at the Vatican, but added: “If there are various numbers like last time, they will need two-thirds.”

The absence of a vote on each proposition has previously been thought to limit debate. Ahead of the 2015 Ordinary Synod on the Family when the idea of shelving propositions was suggested, 13 cardinals voiced their disapproval, among other concerns, in a letter to Pope Francis ahead of the meeting. The cardinals' initiative enabled the ballot on propositions to stay.

“The absence of propositions and their related discussions and voting seems to discourage open debate and to confine discussion to small groups,” the cardinals wrote. “Thus, it seems urgent to us that the crafting of propositions to be voted on by the entire synod should be restored.” They also said “voting on a final document comes too late in the process for a full review and serious adjustment of the text.”

If an attempt at the upcoming synod to omit the propositions were to succeed, it potentially could be even more problematic now that the final document may become part of the papal magisterium, subject to the Pope’s approval, as decreed by Pope Francis in his recent apostolic constitution, Episcopalis Communio (Episcopal Communion). In the past, final documents did not hold such weight, but Episcopalis Communio changed that last month.

Some believe that not having synod fathers vote on individual propositions would enable the synod organizers to more easily push through contentious proposals, such as the inclusion of 'LGBT,' the acronym used by the homosexual lobby. Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, said yesterday he had no intention of removing the acronym from the Instrumentum Laboris, the synod working document, despite young people not asking for it to be included.

Knowing the number of votes for each proposition has proved a useful tool for revealing the points of unity, and of division, at various synods.

At the end of the Ordinary Synod on the Family in 2015, 265 synod fathers voted on 94 propositions, all of which obtained a two-thirds majority. But the most controversial ones, related to admitting some remarried divorcees to Holy Communion, only barely managed to do so (No. 85 scraped by with just one vote but was deemed enough of a mandate for the Pope to include the change in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia).

Furthermore, the numbers revealed that those controversial propositions would not have passed had the Pope’s personally-chosen synod fathers not been present.

The two-thirds rule for propositions was equally instructive during the first Synod on the Family in 2014, as two paragraphs on admitting some remarried divorcees to Holy Communion and a third on welcoming homosexuals failed to obtain a two-thirds majority.

Pope Francis nevertheless controversially broke with custom, which he can do, and authoritatively insisted that all three rejected proposition be kept in the document, thereby enabling them to be carried over into the working document for the Ordinary Synod on the Family the following year.

The lack of clarity from the synod secretariat on the voting procedures during this synod is therefore a cause for concern for some observers who believe that, coupled with other problematic aspects, possible manipulation may again be afoot. [Does anyone really doubt that at this point? We have seen enough examples cited earlier in this blogpost alone that Bergoglio will do anything, is hellbent indeed, to get what he wants by hook or by crook (and I don't mean his papal crook!)]

Here is a very appropriate reflection about young people - in every generation - on the eve of this fatally flawed farce of a synod:

From the Gen-X file:
What has become of those
'Pope John Paul II Catholics'?

10/1/2018

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“We’ve had enough of exhortation to be silent! Cry out with a hundred Thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence.” – St. Catherine of Siena

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Early in his papacy, St. Pope John Paul II told young people that he had given up on the “generation of people my age” and would be directing his efforts to catechize the “young generation” — now called “Gen X” — about their vocation as Catholics.

It wasn’t simply that the former had their day to witness to the faith, John Paul II said, re-echoing the aphorism “the future belongs to the young.” No, if the Church was to enter a new Springtime — a new Easter — it would be those young people at the vanguard.

Putting recent revelations and events into context, the heinous misconduct and its coverup that is currently being brought forth from the darkness into the light of day — what perhaps may be (and quite likely is) only the tip of the iceberg — transpired at the behest of the some of those in that “generation of people my age” about which St. Pope John Paul II spoke. To paraphrase St. Catherine of Siena, the Church is rotten because of their silence.

St. Pope John Paul II reiterated his challenge to the youth of the United States several times beginning in the late 1970s and through the 1990s, most notably at the Louisiana Superdome in 1987 when he said:

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Yes, dear young people, I too want to speak about your mission, theReason for your life on earth, the truth of your lives. It is extremely vital for you to have a clear idea of your mission, to avoid being confused or deceived.

In speaking to the Christians of his time, Saint Paul explicitly Urged them: “Let no one deceive you in any way” (2 Thessalonians 2-3). And today I say the same to you, young people of America: “Let no one deceive you in any way” — about your mission, about the truth, about where you are going. Let no one deceive you about the truth of your lives.

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Three years later, John Paul II once again told the nation’s youth who had gathered in St. Louis:

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Ask yourselves: Do I believe these words of Jesus in the Gospel? Jesus is calling you the light of the world. He is asking you to let your light shine Before others. I know that in your hearts you want to say: “Here I am, Lord. Here I am. I come to do your will” (Responsorial Psalm; cf. Hebrews 10:7). But only if you are one with Jesus can you share his light and be a light to the world. Are you ready for this?

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Those young people today are in their 30’s and 40’s. Some were “ready for this” and have been belittled as “John Paul II Catholics.” Why? They love the Catholic faith and the Mass (in both its pre- and post-1962 form), understand the truth of Humanae Vitae, detest the murder of innocent babies and those judged a burden on society, and want basic, common morality taught in every school to every child. In short, they stand foursquare against what St. Pope John Paul called the “voices of the culture of death.”

In light of those recent disclosures of heinous, criminal clerical sexual misconduct, pedophilia, and coverup on the part of some of that “generation of people my age,” I ask about that generation of young people :
- Are they going to sit by in silence and allow the smoke of Satan in the temple of God to destroy the Church?
- Are they going to sit by in silence and despair as the false voices of the world exploit their hope?
- Are they going to sit by in silence, seeking spiritual and moral comfort elsewhere or nowhere?

St. Pope John Paul II charged these now-middle-aged adults with ushering a new Springtime into the Church. More importantly, they are the spouses and parents who are hopefully smack in the middle of raising a new generation of saints.

Are they, as the first and best teachers of their children in the faith, instructing them by the words and actions to hold to the truth of Christ and to be invincible in hope, the onslaughts of doubt, and the cancer of despair that threatens the Church from within today?

Silence is not an option for Catholics!