Just a bit of chronological context: 'INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY', which became an almost-instant theological classic, was published one year before Jorge Bergoglio was ordained a priest.
ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI
See previous page for earlier posts today, 8/30/18.
Thanks to Father Z for leading us to this most timely message.
Tolkien's lost prophetic message
on abuse in the Church
by Billy Ryan
August 28, 2018
“Besides the Sun there may be moonlight but if the Sun were removed there would be no Moon to see. What would Christianity now be if the Roman Church has in fact been destroyed?”
– Letter 250, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien was not only the author of the best-selling novel ever written, but a fierce Catholic. Nearly 55 years ago in a letter penned to his son, Tolkien offered a prophetic message on having unwavering Faith despite grave scandal in the clergy.
In the last resort faith is an act of will, inspired by love. Our love may be chilled and our will eroded by the spectacle of the shortcomings, folly, and even sins of the Church and its ministers, but I do not think that one who has once had faith goes back over the line for these reasons (least of all anyone with any historical knowledge).
‘Scandal’ at most is an occasion of temptation – as indecency is to lust, which it does not make but arouses. It is convenient because it tends to turn our eyes away from ourselves and our own faults to find a scapegoat.
But the act of will of faith is not a single moment of final decision: it is a permanent indefinitely repeated act > state which must go on – so we pray for ‘final perseverance’.
The temptation to ‘unbelief’ (which really means rejection of Our Lord and His claims) is always there within us. Part of us longs to find an excuse for it outside us. The stronger the inner temptation the more readily and severely shall we be ‘scandalized’ by others.
I think I am as sensitive as you (or any other Christian) to the scandals, both of clergy and laity. I have suffered grievously in my life from stupid, tired, dimmed, and even bad priests; but I now know enough about myself to be aware that I should not leave the church (which for me would mean leaving the allegiance of Our Lord) for any such reasons: I should leave because I did not believe, and should not believe anymore, even if I had never met anyone in orders who was not both wise and saintly. I should deny the Blessed Sacrament, that is: call our Lord a fraud to His face.
If He is a fraud and the Gospels fraudulent – that is: garbled accounts of a demented megalomaniac (which is the only alternative), then of course the spectacle exhibited by the Church (in the sense of clergy) in history and today is simply evidence of a gigantic fraud.
If not, however, then this spectacle is alas! only what was to be expected: it began before the first Easter, and it does not affect faith at all – except that we may and should be deeply grieved. But we should grieve on our Lord’s behalf and for Him, associating ourselves with the scandalized heirs not with the saints, not crying out that we cannot ‘take’ Judas Iscariot, or even the absurd & cowardly Simon Peter, or the silly women like James’ mother, trying to push her sons.
It takes a fantastic will to unbelief to suppose that Jesus never really ‘happened’, and more to suppose that he did not say the things recorded all of him – so incapable of being ‘invented’ by anyone in the world at that time: such as ‘before Abraham came to be I am’ (John viii). ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’ (John ix); or the promulgation of the Blessed Sacrament in John v: ‘He that he eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life.’
We must therefore either believe in Him and in what he said and take the consequences; or reject him and take the consequences. I find it for myself difficult to believe that anyone who has ever been to Communion, even once, with at least a right intention, can ever again reject Him without grave blame. (However, He alone knows each unique soul and its circumstances.)
And for this piece from the Onion...
Satan Refuses To Accept
Any More Catholic Priests In Hell
NINTH CIRCLE, HELL— Stressing that the situation in the underworld was quickly spiraling out of control, Satan, the Great Tempter and Father of Lies, announced Wednesday that he would not allow any more Catholic priests to enter hell.
“This place is completely overrun with those monsters, and frankly, they kind of creep me out,” said the Prince of Darkness, adding that every time he looked up, he saw another recently deceased member of the Roman Catholic clergy being cast down into the fires of hell, where each is expected to be tortured until the end of time by Satan and his minions.
“We’re used to having every manner of unrepentant sinner down here, but those guys are beyond messed up. I swear, if I see one more of those sick bastards, I’m going to throw myself into the eternal flames.”
In response, God has reportedly instituted a secret policy whereby the priests would no longer face damnation but would instead attend mandatory counseling sessions and then be quietly transferred into heaven. [I don't like this line at all - in which, even if in jest or irony, God's mind is equated to that of tolerant 'merciful' pastors and popes!]
Best of all, as an exercise in what-ifs, consider Father Z's scenarios below...
I can dream, can't I?
If Francis resigned, then what?
August 29, 2018
I’ve had a lot – A LOT – of emails about various aspects of the possibility of Pope Francis’s resignation. There is talk about this, since The Viganò Testimony. More and more people are calling for Francis to resign. That’s a popular trend these days, however. If someone has a bad hair day, they MUST RESIGN!
Seriously, this is a far graver situation than that, but it is hard for me to imagine that Francis would consider abdicating even for 2 full seconds.
Nevertheless, I am getting questions along this line.
From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
Hi Father, If in whatever way, Pope Francis stopped being Pope; Canonically, could Pope Benedict renounce his resignation and return to the Papacy? Mentally, it seems that he is very alert and he could be in office just long enough to remove bad members of the hierarchy and replace them with good ones and then again and then a conclave could be called and a new Pope could be elected?
Let’s think this through.
If Francis were to resign…
Scenario 1: There would be a conclave, the cardinals would come and elect a successor. They are free to elect whom they wish. They could re-elect Benedict! He could then accept or refuse.
Say he accepts. He is again, indisputably, the Pope hopefully until the natural end of his days. Enough of this resignation stuff.
Scenario 2: Francis resigns. However, enough evidence is produced to prove that there was something wrong with Benedict’s resignation in 2013. They say Benedict was pressured out of office and his resignation was null. That means that Benedict is still the Pope now. He can’t be reelected. Any conclave that would be called after Francis resignation from an office he never held would be seriously compromised because a) lots of the cardinals in it aren’t really cardinals and b) the man elected would be an anti-Pope.
Benedict would be Pope thereafter until his dying day. Unless he resigned for real.
Scenario 3: Benedict really did resign, but there were enough shenanigans in the conclave, violations of JP2’s and B16’s regulations, that the electors or the elected were somehow banned from licit participation or holding office. That would mean that the results of the election were faulty and that there is now an anti-Pope. But there isn’t a true Pope either because Benedict legitimately resigned. That would mean that the cardinal electors who were cardinals at the time of Benedict’s resignation in 2013 would have to convince every one that they alone should be in a new conclave and elect Benedict’s successor. They could re-elect Benedict if they wanted to. Then, see the end of Scenario 1.
Scenario 4: Francis resigns and two factions of cardinals gather in separate, rival conclaves. They might elect different guys… or the same guy! A third party? Benedict? Probably different guys. Then we have a problem that is harder to work through.
Shades of the Council of Constance!
And in that time, there were rival claimants and questionable cardinal electors and saints on both sides and post factum sanations of acts. Whew.
Anyway, one could write a rip-snorter TV series out of this!
Anyway, I would once again be able to dust off my old “RE-ELECT BENEDICT” Swag in my online shop from before the 2013 conclave and we could reform the “Committee To Re-Elect The Pope“. I shut that shop down after the 2013 conclave, of course. But there was some fun stuff in it! Car-flags, stickers, campaign buttons, yard signs.
How the media are covering up for Pope Francis
If the head of any other organisation were guilty of such complicity,
he or she would not only be forced to resign but could also end up in the dock
by Damian Thompson
August 29, 2018
It’s depressing to see the media – both Catholic and secular – shielding Pope Francis from the explosive allegation made by his own former nuncio to the United States, that he knowingly covered up for and revived the career of serial gay predator Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, in testimony published on Saturday, says he personally told Francis in 2013 that McCarrick, retired Archbishop of Washington, had ‘corrupted generations of seminarians and priests’.
The Pope shrugged this off, says Viganò, and went on to lift canonical sanctions placed on McCarrick by Benedict XVI. McCarrick was his close ally – as was retired Cardinal Danneels of Belgium, who had concealed incestuous abuse by one of his bishops. Fully aware of this, Francis invited Danneels to a synod on the family – something that didn’t trouble the Pope’s most fanatical supporters in the media, known as ‘Team Francis’. It still doesn’t bother them.
Confronted by these new grave and credible charges against the Pope, members of Team Francis writing in the liberal National Catholic Reporter, the Tablet and America magazine have desperately sought to discredit Viganò.
They’ve had very limited success. Yes, the former nuncio is an ideological opponent of Francis; assisted by fellow conservatives, he timed his statement in order to cause maximum embarrassment to the pontiff. Also, it appears that Benedict’s sanctions against McCarrick were delayed, ineffective and flouted.
But we know that the old cardinal was forced out of the seminary where he was living, and on the orders of Benedict. That may be as far as the sanctions went. It wouldn’t surprise me if McCarrick’s continued insubordination – supported by fellow cardinals aware of his dirty reputation – played a part in Benedict’s decision to resign the papacy in despair.
The evasive coverage of this scandal by Team Francis hardliners is impossible to justify. Certain ‘reporters’ should ask themselves whether they have become complicit in concealing sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, most of the secular media – now almost bereft of religion specialists – are lazily clinging to the narrative of Francis as a ‘Great Reformer’.
He is nothing of the sort. He’s a man whose ruthless and cynical modus operandi was well known in Argentina before he was elected pope. (I urge everyone to read the book The Dictator Pope by Henry Sire, which gives chapter and verse.) Note that Francis has not set foot in his home country since leaving for the 2013 conclave. He dare not: he has too many enemies there.
Especially disappointing is the biased coverage of the Viganò affair by the
New York Times, which broke the original McCarrick story. Why did the respected Jason Horowitz begin a long report this week with the following paragraphs?
Since the start of his papacy, Francis has infuriated Catholic traditionalists as he tries to nurture a more welcoming church and shift it away from culture war issues, whether abortion or homosexuality. “Who am I to judge?” the pope famously said, when asked about gay priests.
Just how angry his political and doctrinal enemies are became clear this weekend, when a caustic letter published by the Vatican’s former top diplomat in the United States blamed a “homosexual current” in the Vatican hierarchy for sexual abuse. It called for Francis’s resignation, accusing him of covering up for a disgraced cardinal, Theodore McCarrick.
With the letter – released in the middle of the pope’s visit to Ireland – an ideologically motivated opposition has weaponised the church’s sex abuse crisis to threaten not only Francis’s agenda but his entire papacy. At the very least, it has returned the issue of homosexuality in the Roman Catholic Church, which many conservatives are convinced lies behind the abuse crisis, to the centre of debate.
None of this is untrue, though it perhaps misinterprets the line ‘who am I to judge?’ Francis was answering a question about Mgr Battista Ricca, a Vatican diplomat caught up in a colourful gay scandal whom the Pope nonetheless appointed to help reform the Vatican bank. But
much of Horowitz’s piece reads as if it has been dictated by Team Francis.
Liberal Catholics and the mainstream media are misleading us on two crucial points:
1.
Viganò’s motives in releasing the testimony are fundamentally irrelevant. We need to know whether his claims are true. Did Francis ignore what Viganò told him about McCarrick – which, let us not forget, was the truth? I reckon he did, but then
I’ve long been convinced that this Pope is prepared to overlook all manner of offences so long as the offender is useful to him. Read my blog post about the shady papal confidant Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga of Honduras, whom Francis declared innocent before the investigation of allegations of financial wrongdoing had even begun.
2.
The reputations of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis have all been damaged by the McCarrick scandal.
- John Paul made McCarrick Archbishop of Washington and a cardinal even though he was already widely rumoured to be a predator – and his previous archdiocese of Newark had paid money to adults claiming that they had been sexually assaulted.
- Benedict acted very late in the day against McCarrick, after the latter’s retirement, and his low-key canonical sanctions amounted to very little.
- Francis, however, is credibly accused of a far greater degree of complicity in McCarrick’s crimes. If the head of any other organisation were guilty of such complicity, he or she would not only be forced to resign but could also end up in the dock.
Team Francis must understand this.
To their eternal disgrace, and helped by ignorant secular news outlets, they want to make sure that the public doesn’t understand it and continues to believe in Francis the Reformer. Who does not exist.
Indeed, articles so far in the mainstream US press bear out the validity of Father Zuhlsdorf's interpretation of Bergoglio's dodge against having to answer the Vigano expose:
[Fr Z's comment: In my cynicism – please forgive me for being a little cynical right now? – what the Pope said is along the lines of:
“You, the press, have been on my side till now. If you think about it for a while, you should still be on my side. If you weigh the alternatives you will remember that I am your guy.”
This is not a happy man. But that’s not much of a conclusion. Listen to, however, what he is trying to say.
Here is what I think he said, without saying it.
The Pope is calling on the press to do the necessary work to make this go away.
I dunno. Have I read that wrong? Sincerely… do you get something else from that?
One might say that the Bergogliacs who make up the mainstream media have taken an inexplicable, even treasonous, choice for liberals of any stripe: defend Bergoglio rather than stand up against criminal priests and bishops. Where is all the outrage they feigned to high heavens with the release of the Pennsyvania Grand Jury report? An outrage that, in retrospect, they failed to manifest to the degree it required the final outing of McCarrick's double life (after all, he had been long one of their favorite poster boys for 'liberal' no-longer-Catholicism!).
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/08/2018 13:24]