BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI



Please see preceding page for earlier posts today, June 25, 2017.




What follows may be a lampoon, but Cardinal Siri was never so on-the-mark as he was about the anti-Catholic Jesuits...


For the past two Sundays, Marco Tosatti has been writing a lampoon on proposed Bergoglian changes to the Catechism. Such changes are
apparently in the works, though not likely to be the ones described by Tosatti. But one never knows with the church of Bergoglio.

Another Bergoglian novelty
to be afflicted on the Church?
New Jesuit ideas for the Catechism
Translated from

June 18, 2017

In the proliferation of secret or almost secret commissions named by the reigning pope in order to turn traditions and obsolete practices ‘out of step with the times’ inside out like a used sock, we cannot ignore the latest from our source who goes by the psuedonym Romana Vulneratus Curia (literally, ‘wound in the Roman Curia’), to wit:

A small group of Jesuit theologians are said to be studying ‘great changes that need to be done’ to the Catechism of the Catholic Church [Published in 1992, it took six years to compile by a committee supervised by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the CDF, and chaired by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who in the past several years, has publicly deviated from what the Catechism says about homosexual relations before he threw his support for the Bergoglio-Kasper line on sacramental leniencies ‘codified’ in Amoris laetitia.]

]. For now, my ‘insider’ source’ only knows of those that have to do with general precepts of the Church, although he knows other eventual propositions that will be made to the pope.

The six general precepts would concern:
1. To go to Mass on Sundays and other mandatory holidays even if the service is ecumenical
2. Never to eat meat so as not to offend people like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
3. To make a Confession at least once a year, but only if the absolution is preventative. [???]
4. To go to Communion whenever one wants to, but one must receive the Host in the hands, not in the mouth, and without having to kneel.
5. To help the Church meet its material needs, thus helping it to remain poor
6. Not to get married except after an adequate period of living together..

June 25, 2017

Dear friends, my mysterious informant, Romana Vulneratus Curia, about the ‘most secret’ goings-on in the Bergoglio Vatican – has written to fulfill the promise to keep me up-to-date on other proposed Bergoglian changes to the Catechism. Yesterday, I was sent the following updates:

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Until now, the Catechism on Christian doctrine spelled out the ‘four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance”, namely:

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• The "blood of Abel": homicide, infanticide, fratricide, patricide, and matricide
• The "sin of the Sodomites": sodomy, homosexual practices [
• The "cry of the people oppressed in Egypt, the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan": slavery and marginalization
• "Injustice to the wage earner": taking advantage of and defrauding workers

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Now, the new directives from the reigning Rahnerian church of Bergoglio appear to look at that doctrine as a questionable abstraction, if not downright abuse.

That is because ‘the Church’ [Bergoglians intend everyone to think they mean the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church when they say ‘the Church’, but of course, it's really only their 'church' with a small c, and that is, the church of Bergoglio] – so, the church’ then
- should stop thinking it has the right and the duty to morally influence society, since both natural law and moral law are no longer valid.
- has decided to do away with any doctrines that separate it from ‘the world’ and should only concern herself with practices that reconcile her with ‘the world’
- should cut out any intention to judge and condemn.
- should only understand, welcome and justify.
- should, above all, stop the concept of sins against nature and against chastity.

Thus, the team of Jesuit ‘doctrinal evolutionists’ are probably proposing the following changes to the ‘sins that cry out to heaven’:
- Voluntary homicide of insects, even if they are annoying (like mosquitoes etc) and contaminating the sewers by too much hand-washing.
- A sin against nature that is also a sin of impurity would be having conjugal relations with procreative ends if the couple already have two children.
- Fear of immigrants asnd failure to contribute one’s own personal resources towards welcoming and accommodating them.
- Fraud committed against the Italian bishops’ conference by denying them the 0.008 percent church tax which has become indispensable for the Italian bishops to help immigrants and to clean out the sewers.

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In the next installment, we shall hear what changes they propose about the six sins against the Holy Spirit.

June 25, 2017 headlines

PewSitter


Canon212.com

Cardinal Burke led the annual Pentecost pilgrimage to Chartres this year with more than 17,000 faithful making the pilgrimage.

Interview with Cardinal Burke:
On the Chartres pilgrimage, Fatima,
10th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum,
and the DUBIA
Translated for Rorate caeli from
TV Libertés via Infocatho
June 20, 2017

During his recent stay in France, Cardinal Burke gave an exclusive interview to TV Libertés. We have transcribed the main points:
***
The Cardinal was in France for the Chartres pilgrimage. He celebrated Mass at the close of the pilgrimage on Monday, June 5, in Chartres Cathedral.

He stated that he was very impressed by his visit to the camp and his meeting with all those who put themselves at the service of the pilgrims. He recalled that pilgrimages, which existed even in the Old Testament, were undertaken in the early Church and practised by Christ Himself.

He also underlined the importance of making pilgrimages even today, of leaving behind the circumstances of our everyday existence to go in prayer and penance to a holy place in order to rediscover the supernatural in our lives.

The Chartres pilgrimage, which is centred on the Sacred Liturgy, the fullest and highest expression of our life in Christ, is becoming increasingly attractive and the number of participants is set to increase in the years to come.

A month earlier, the Cardinal was in Fatima for the canonisation of Jacinta and Francisco.

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“The apparitions of Fatima are very relevant because the Mother of God, when she appeared in Fatima in 1917, addressed the problems of the modern world: secularisation, atheism, materialism, in particular under the political form of communism.

Unfortunately this situation has not changed and today we are faced with a particularly virulent form of secularisation in the world and also within the Church. The call of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to do penance and to follow God’s plan is even more relevant today than at the time of the apparitions. It is an appeal, a message for the Church.”

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Regarding the writings of Sr. Lucia, who explained that the final battle will be centred on the family:

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“Yes, Sr. Lucia wrote to Cardinal Caffara - then Mgr. Caffara - the first president of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. He had requested prayers from Sr. Lucia because of the many problems he faced in the early days of the Institute.

Sr. Lucia wrote to him, stating that the attack of the evil one in the Church will be against the family. In our time, Satan has attacked the world — and even the Church — with errors concerning the family and rebellion against the union of man and woman in marriage which constitutes the family. We must recognize this challenge and fight to save the family in the original form in which God created it at the beginning of the world.”

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Cardinal Burke (and Bishop Schneider) have both mentioned the benefits which an official Consecration of Russia to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary would bring to the Church. On this subject, he explains:

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“I am not questioning the fact that in 1984, St. John-Paul II consecrated the entire world, including Russia, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But I think that in the present time, in which Russia continues to be an important political power in the world while having undergone a certain conversion from communism to a more Christian form of government, it is more important now to make a specific consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, as the Mother of God requested at Fatima.”

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He also spoke about the 10th Anniversary of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, which authorized the celebration of the extraordinary form of the Roman rite:

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“The Motu proprio responded to a situation following Vatican Council II where the liturgical reform desired by the Council Fathers was falsely interpreted. According to this false interpretation, the new form of the Sacred Liturgy should be completely different from the form of the Sacred Liturgy adopted throughout the centuries.

This is a contradiction, because the Sacred Liturgy is organic, transmitted throughout the centuries by the apostolic tradition. Thus, the Motu proprio has given us the possibility to restore unity in the form of the Sacred Liturgy so as to emphasize the unchanging reality of Jesus present among us.

I think that the celebration in the extraordinary form is going to increase, because in all my visits I see many young people who are attached to the extraordinary form of the Mass. What attracts them is the holiness of this rite.

The liturgy is after all an action of God Himself: Jesus, seated in glory on the right hand of the Father, comes down on the altar to be present once again in His sacrifice. The extraordinary form is more obviously holy. Young people, young families, are very attracted by the extraordinary form. I am not saying that the ordinary form is not holy! Certainly it is, but the reform has, in a certain sense, stripped bare the form of the rite and has made this holiness less visible.”

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The final topic explored in the interview were the Dubia, the questions concerning the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and in particular article 8, addressed last autumn to the Holy Father along with Cardinals Brandmüller, Caffara and Meisner:

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“These questions are very important, because following the publication of the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, there has been great confusion in the Church, confusion among the faithful, among priests, among bishops.

This confusion is extremely serious because it affects the salvation of souls. For married people, the sacrament of marriage is linked to eternal salvation. For the Church, marriage is the building block of the life of the Church and of society. This confusion also affects the sacraments of the Eucharist and of Penance: the necessary dispositions to receive these sacraments are not clear.

We have, therefore, respectfully put these questions to the Holy Father, to offer him the possibility of clarifying the most important points in the post-synod exhortation. We are still hoping for a response from the Holy Father, and we will continue to implore a response for the good of the entire Church.

This confusion is difficult, especially for priests. In my travels in various parts of the world, priests in particular tell me that is difficult for them because the faithful are asking impossible things. For example, a person living in an irregular matrimonial situation asks to receive Holy Communion without correcting his situation…It is very difficult for priests. I have great sympathy and compassion for priests who find themselves in this situation.”

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To conclude, the Cardinal finished with a strong message of encouragement:

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“The situation in the world and the Church can lead to a sense of discouragement. I would say “fear not”, because the Lord is always with us. When we are faced with challenges like those of today, very great challenges, we should count even more on Him, by prayer, penance, but also by our commitment to bring the truth and the love of Christ into the world. He will never fail to respond to our prayers, to our efforts to evangelize in these times.”

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Cardinal Burke celebrated the Mass concluding the 2017 Pentecost pilgrimage to Chartres.

Left: "Martin Luther" (1526) by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
Right: "Sir Thomas More" (1527) by Hans Holbein the Younger.
It is not often we find two contemporaneous portraits of two such historical figures as Luther and More done by two masters.

Martin Luther: Defender of erroneous conscience
The key issue in debating Luther’s legacy on conscience in the entails whether the teachings of the Church
are subordinate to one’s own conscience or whether conscience is bound by the teaching of the Church.
by Dr. R. Jared Staudt

June 25, 2017

Two trials, two appeals to conscience.

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Trial 1: I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.

Trial 2: If the number of bishops and universities should be so material as your lordship seems to think, then I see little cause, my lord, why that should make any change in my conscience.

For I have no doubt that, though not in this realm, but of all those well learned bishops and virtuous men that are yet alive throughout Christendom, they are not fewer who are of my mind therein. But if I should speak of those who are already dead, of whom many are now holy saints in heaven, I am very sure it is the far greater part of them who, all the while they lived, thought in this case the way that I think now.

And therefore am I not bound, my lord, to conform my conscience to the council of one realm against the General Council of Christendom.

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What is the difference of these two quotes?

The first, from the friar Martin Luther, asserts the primacy of conscience over the universal consent of the Church and the tradition.

The second, from the layman Thomas More, notes the agreement of conscience to the faith of Christendom, the history of the Church, and the saints of Heaven.

Why are these appeals to conscience significant? I think Belloc is fundamentally correct in his assessment of the nature of Protestantism as a denial of religious authority resting on a visible Church:

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The Protestant attack differed from the rest especially in this characteristic, that its attack did not consist in the promulgation of a new doctrine or of a new authority, that it made no concerted attempt at creating a counter-Church, but had for its principle the denial of unity.

It was an effort to promote that state of mind in which a “Church” in the old sense of the word - that is, an infallible, united, teaching body, a Person speaking with Divine authority - should be denied; not the doctrines it might happen to advance, but its very claim to advance them with unique authority.

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[Perhaps Jorge Bergoglio has not paid attention at all to this fundamental principle of Lutheranism, not to mention Luther's foul-mouthed attacks on the Papacy, because even as he has spared nothing to show he can be as Lutheran as any Protestant can be, he has also spared nothing to show Catholics that he is pope and therefore, in his mind, can do just about anything he pleases, including proclaiming or amending Catholic doctrine by papal fiat even if he is not really allowed to do that!]

The individual quickly emerged to fill the vacuum left by the Church, as the dominant religious factor in the modern period.


In this year of the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, we have to take stock of the legacy of the renegade, Catholic priest, Martin Luther. What were his intentions? It is commonly alleged, even among Catholics, that he had the noble aim of reforming abuses within the Church.

In fact, Martin Luther discovered his revolutionary, theological positions about a year before he posted his 95 theses. Probably in the year 1516, while lecturing on [Paul's epistle to the] Romans at the seminary in Wittenburg, Luther had a pivotal experience, which shaped the way he viewed the Christian faith. Essentially, his “tower experience,” resolved his difficulty of conscience. He saw God and His commandments as a moral threat:

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But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn’t be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got angry at God. [All this sounds quite Bergoglian, right?]

I said, “Isn’t it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and through the Gospel threaten us with his justice and his wrath?” [More Bergoglio channelling his inner Luther.] This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience.

I constantly badgered St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know what he meant.

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Reading Romans 1, while in the tower of his monastery, Luther suddenly saw the resolution of his troubled conscience through faith: “All at once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates. Immediately I saw the whole of Scripture in a different light.”

As we see in Trent’s teaching on justification and the Joint Declaration of Faith, there is nothing wrong with the realization that righteousness (same word as justification) comes through faith alone, moved by the grace of God. The problem is the re-reading of Scripture and all of the Christian tradition in a different light through this realization.

Luther’s troubled conscience and experience of faith led him eventually (as it took him a while to work it out) to reject many of the Sacraments, books of the Bible, and the Church’s authority all in the name of liberty of conscience. A great schism would follow from Luther’s personal experience.

No doubt reforms were needed in the Catholic Church in 1517. Contrary to popular opinion however, Luther primarily sought to spread his understanding of the Gospel, not to correct abuses. Catholic practices became abuses precisely because they contradicted his tower experience of 1516. [In the same way, one might say Bergoglio is primarily seeking to spread his 'understanding' of the Gospel instead of building on what 2000 years of the best minds created by God had put into our deposit of faith to transmit the right understanding of the Gospel. In his mind, he is better than any of all of them put together, and in fact, in some ways, better than Jesus himself!

I cannot understand why Bergoglio's most intelligent followers cannot seem to see beyond his unprecedented hubris at all. In a way, this is a boundless self-pride - for that is what hubris is - that far overshadows the original sin of Adam and Eve. ]

One of Luther’s early tracts, Appeal to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), lays out the implications of his view in more detail:

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Besides, if we are all priests, as was said above, and all have one faith, one Gospel, one sacrament, why should we not also have the power to test and judge what is correct or incorrect in matters of faith?

What becomes of the words of Paul in I Corinthians 2:15: “He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man,” and II Corinthians 4:13: “We have all the same Spirit of faith”? Why, then, should not we perceive what squares with faith and what does not, as well as does an unbelieving pope?? [Someone has remarked that in Protestantism, every Protestant is his own pope!]

All these and many other texts should make us bold and free, and we should not allow the Spirit of liberty, as Paul calls Him, to be frightened off by the fabrications of the popes, but we ought to go boldly forward to test all that they do or leave undone, according to our interpretation of the Scriptures, which rests on faith, and compel them to follow not their own interpretation, but the one that is better...

Thus I hope that the false, lying terror with which the Romans have this long time made our conscience timid and stupid, has been allayed...

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Luther never condoned license (though he did condone Philip of Hesse’s bigamy), as he said his conscience was captive to the Word of God, but he did separate the decision of his conscience from the authority of the Church. This proved absolutely foundational for Protestantism and modern, religious experience.

The claim that Luther stands at a crucial moment between medieval Christendom and the modern world is not contentious. This is need for care, however. His separation of faith and reason and insistence on the spiritual nature of the Church, in my opinion, did quicken the advance to secularism.

However, Luther did not directly intend the creation of the modern, secular world as know it. Yet his stand on conscience and his individualistic interpretation of faith did lend itself to modern individualism, which I would even say is the heart of modern culture.

Cardinal Ratzinger suggested that Luther stood at the forefront of the modern movement, focused on the freedom of the individual. I recommend looking at this piece, “Truth and Freedom” further, but his central insight on Luther follows:

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There is no doubt that from the very outset freedom has been the defining theme of that epoch which we call modern. . . . Luther’s polemical writing [On the Freedom of the Christian] boldly struck up this theme in resounding tones . . . At issue was the freedom of conscience vis-à-vis the authority of the Church, hence the most intimate of all human freedoms. . . . Even if it would not be right to speak of the individualism of the Reformation, the new importance of the individual and the shift in the relation between individual conscience and authority are nonetheless among its dominant traits (Communio 23 [1996]: 20).

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These traits have survived and at times predominate our contemporary religious experience. The sociologist, Christian Smith, has noted in his study of the faith life of emerging adults, Souls in Transition, that an evangelical focus on individual salvation has been carried over into a new religious autonomy. He claims that…

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the places where today’s emerging adults have taken that individualism in religion basically continues the cultural trajectory launched by Martin Luther five centuries ago and propelled along the way by subsequent development of evangelical individualism, through revivalism, evangelism and pietism...

Furthermore, the strong individualistic subjectivism in the emerging adult religious outlook — that “truth” should be decided by “what seems right” to individuals, based on their personal experience and feelings — also has deep cultural-structural roots in American evangelicalism.

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Luther’s legacy clearly points toward individualism in religion, setting up a conflict with religious authority and tradition. The average Western Christian probably follows his central assertion that one must follow one’s own conscience over and against the Church.

The key issue in debating Luther’s legacy on conscience in the Catholic Church entails whether the teachings of the Church are subordinate to one’s own conscience or whether conscience is bound by the teaching of the Church.

I know an elderly Salesian priest who told me with all sincerity that the purpose of Vatican II was to teach us that we could decide what to believe and how to live according to our conscience. This is clearly the “Spirit of Vatican II,” as Gaudium et Spes, while upholding the dignity of conscience, enjoins couples in regards to the transmission of life: “But in their manner of acting, spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed arbitrarily, but must always be governed according to a conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive toward the Church’s teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in the light of the Gospel” (50).

Dignitatis Humanae, Vatican’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, holds together two crucial points, stating that one cannot “be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience,” (3) as well as that “in the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church” (14). The Council upheld the dignity of conscience as well as its obligation to accept the authority of the Church.

The misinterpretation of the Council’s teaching on conscience as license found its first test case just three years after the Council closed in Humanae Vitae.
- Theologians such as Bernard Häring and Charles Curran advocated for the legitimacy of dissent from the encyclical on the grounds of conscience.
- The Canadian Bishops, in their Winnipeg Statement*, affirmed: “In accord with the accepted principles of moral theology, if these persons have tried sincerely but without success to pursue a line of conduct in keeping with the given directives, they may be safely assure that, whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.”

[I have been holding on to a recent article about the Winnipeg Statement and its analogy to the current pro-Bergoglio interpretation of AL. I shall post it shortly.]

Conscience also stands at the center of the current controversy over the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia. I’ve already written on how Amoris stands in relation to the Church’s efforts to inculturate the modern world in relation to conscience.

Cardinal Caffarra claimed that the fifth dubium on conscience was the most important. He stated further: “Here, for me, is the decisive clash between the vision of life that belongs to the Church (because it belongs to divine Revelation) and modernity’s conception of one’s own conscience.”

Recently, the German bishops, following those of Malta, have decided: “We write that – in justified individual cases and after a longer process – there can be a decision of conscience on the side of the faithful to receive the Sacraments, a decision which must be respected.”

In light of the current controversy on conscience, it is troubling that Luther is now upheld as genuine reformer. The most troubling is from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in its Resources for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and throughout the year 2017: “Separating that which is polemical from the theological insights of the Reformation, Catholics are now able to hear Luther’s challenge for the Church of today, recognising him as a ‘witness to the gospel’ (Conflict to Communion 29). And so after centuries of mutual condemnations and vilification, in 2017 Lutheran and Catholic Christians will for the first time commemorate together the beginning of the Reformation.”

The Vatican also announced a commemorative stamp (which to me sounds like the United States issuing a stamp commemorating the burning the White House by British troops).

Pope Francis has spoken of Luther several times in the past year, including in an inflight press conference returning from Armenia: “I think that the intentions of Martin Luther were not mistaken. He was a reformer. Perhaps some methods were not correct.”

In response I ask, what did Luther reform? Francis pointed to two things in his journey to Sweden. The Reformation “helped give greater centrality to sacred scripture in the Church’s life,” but it did so by advocating the flawed notion of sola scriptura. Francis also pointed to Luther’s concept of sola gratia, which “reminds us that God always takes the initiative, prior to any human response, even as he seeks to awaken that response.”

While the priority of God’s initiative is true and there are similarities to Catholic teaching in this teaching (that faith is a free gift that cannot be merited), Luther denied our cooperation with grace, our ability to grow in sanctification and merit, and that we fall from grace through mortal sin.

Francis also noted, while speaking to an ecumenical delegation from Finland: “In this spirit, we recalled in Lund that the intention of Martin Luther 500 years ago was to renew the Church, not divide Her.” Most recently he spoke of how we now know “how to appreciate the spiritual and theological gifts that we have received from the Reformation.” [And once again, Bergoglio is hubristically rejecting all of the Council of Trent, Pius V and the great Jesuit theologians of Trent, not to mention the great Counter-Reformation it produced, including many of the greatest saints in our history (among them, Ignatius of Loyola). He, Bergoglio, sees and thinks better than anyone the Church has ever produced in more than 2000 years.]

It is true that Martin Luther did not want to divide the Church. He wanted to reform the Church on his own terms, which was not genuine reform. [Sounds really really familiar doesn't it? He isn't Jorge Martin Bergluther for nothing!]

Luther said he would follow the Pope if the Pope taught the pure Gospel of his conception: “The chief cause that I fell out with the pope was this: the pope boasted that he was the head of the Church, and condemned all that would not be under his power and authority; for he said, although Christ be the head of the Church, yet, notwithstanding, there must be a corporal head of the Church upon earth. With this I could have been content, had he but taught the gospel pure and clear, and not introduced human inventions and lies in its stead.” [Again, does that not ring very very familiar today???]

Further he accuses the corruption of conscience by listening to the Church as opposed to Scripture: “But the papists, against their own consciences, say, No; we must hear the Church.” This points us back to the crucial issue of authority, pointed out by Belloc.

We should not celebrate the Reformation, because we cannot celebrate the defense of erroneous conscience held up against the authority of the Church. [Certainly one of the underlying reasons why we should not, but the main reason is certainly "How can the Church celebrate the second greatest schism in its history?" and one that has caused infinitely more spiritual havoc on souls than the schism of the Orthodox Churches in 1080.]

As St. Thomas More rightly said in his “Dialogue on Conscience,” taken down by his daughter Meg: “But indeed, if on the other side a man would in a matter take away by himself upon his own mind alone, or with some few, or with never so many, against an evident truth appearing by the common faith of Christendom, this conscience is very damnable.” He may have had Luther in mind.

More did not stand on his own private interpretation of the faith, but rested firmly on the authority of Christendom and, as Chesterton put it, the democracy of the dead: “But go we now to them that are dead before, and that are I trust in heaven, I am sure that it is not the fewer part of them that all the time while they lived, thought in some of the things, the way that I think now.”

More is a crucial example of standing firm in a rightly formed conscience. We should remember why he died and not let his witness remain in vain. He stood on the ground of the Church’s timeless teaching, anchored in Scripture and the witness of the saints. If we divorce conscience from authority, we will end in moral chaos.

As Cardinal Ratzinger asked in his lucid work, On Conscience:

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“Does God speak to men in a contradictory manner? Does He contradict Himself? Does He forbid one person, even to the point of martyrdom, to do something that He allows or even requires of another?”

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These are crucial questions we must face.

Rather than celebrating the defender of erroneous conscience, let’s remember and invoke the true martyr of conscience, who died upholding the unity of the faith.

Dr. Staudt works in the Office of Evangelization and Family Life Ministries of the Archdiocese of Denver. He earned his BA and MA in Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN and his PhD in Systematic Theology from Ave Maria University in Florida. Staudt served previously as a director of religious education in two parishes, taught at the Augustine Institute and the University of Mary, and served as co-editor of the theological journal Nova et Vetera. He and his wife Anne have six children and he is a Benedictine oblate.

Now, let us recall the objectionable positions taken in AL on conscience (from a critique by Fr. George Woodall, professor of moral theology and bioethics at Rome's Regina Apostolorum university, and former director of the Pontifical Academy for Life's Secretariat).

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Magisterial texts in AL are distorted when quoted selectively or ignored almost completely.

Repeatedly presenting conscience as the sanctuary where man finds himself alone with God (Gaudium et spes, 16) suggests it is only a private matter between the individual and God, while references to invincible ignorance and to other factors reducing responsibility risk implying that people rarely sin or are rarely culpable.

Grave misinterpretations of conciliar doctrine on conscience, corrected in Veritatis splendor, are basically ignored in AL.

Conciliar and papal teaching that no one can act in good conscience who disregards magisterial teaching or who treats it as mere opinion (Dignitatis humanae, 14; John Paul II, Allocution, Nov., 1988) is not mentioned.

Distinguishing right from wrong by dialogue and example in families and beyond does not occur automatically.

It lacks the clarity, the coherence and the justification afforded by education also on the Decalogue and on the Church’s moral teaching, necessary for youngsters to be convinced and to defend objective moral truth before their peers.

Ignatian discernment is no substitute for proper formation of conscience.

AL [purports to] reject(s) legalism and casuistry. St. Thomas’s statement that, applied concretely, moral law binds in the majority, but not in a minority, of cases is mis-represented.

Thomas had excluded earlier all intrinsically immoral acts (murder, adultery, perjury, etc.); his axiom applies to choosing between different positive, morally good actions and to merely human laws when these do not preclude intrinsic or objective moral wrong.

Love is incompatible with immorality. Morally good living demands the virtue of prudence (informing conscience through advice — and on the basis of magisterial teaching — distinguishing common and exceptional features in different situations — casuistry).

Ignatius knew this, as did Suarez and Vasquez - Jesuit moralists who helped form consciences of people in the midst of persecution, war and injustice. Later, priests advising kings often manipulated moral truth, inventing excuses to permit or condone immorality. Genuine Ignatian discernment excludes this.

AL, though, could well give the impression of something even worse, of privatising conscience, of encouraging or permitting persons to refer to priests ignorant of or dissenting from magisterial teaching.

The risk of situation ethics, of laxism, of moral relativism and of widespread contradictory pastoral practice, despite the Pope not wishing anything like this, seems to be considerable.

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Just seeing the name of James Martin, SJ, (who now forms a triad with the two other most obnoxious Bergoglian Jesuits today, Spadaro
and Abascal Sosa) puts me in the throes of a fullblown Obama/Hilary/Democrat derangement fit because yes, I am that intolerant for all
smugly sanctimonious closed minds.

I am somewhat protected from the same affliction in the case of Jorge Bergoglio because I read enough impassioned denunciations of
his most obnoxious habits and qualities - and often contribute to it - to have an adequate release valve. But whereas I must follow
Bergoglio enough to add my say about him, however insignificant it may be, I can and do ignore all my other betes noires unless I give
vent, once every long while, in the case of the Obamacrats... So here goes a commentary on Fr. Martin's latest and favorite crusade pro
all things LGBT...

Bp Paprocki’s norms
on ‘same-sex marriage’

June 23, 2017

A few days ago, doubtless in response to pastoral questions he had been receiving from ministers in his local Church, Springfield IL Bp Thomas Paprocki issued diocesan norms regarding ministry toward persons who had entered a ‘same-sex marriage’.

These norms, hardly remarkable for what they say, are nevertheless noteworthy for being necessary and for Paprocki’s willingness to state them clearly while knowing what kind of vilification he would suffer in their wake.

Predictably New Way’s Ministry attacked Paprocki’s norms using equally predictable language and arguments and by hosting a combox replete with personal attacks on the bishop. All of this is sad, but none of it is newsworthy.

Worth underscoring, though, is the glibness with which Robert Shine, an editor at New Ways, attempts to school Paprocki, of all people, on canon law, of all things. A little background.

Paprocki has, besides the master’s degree in theology that Shine claims, a further licentiate degree in theology and, even more, a licentiate and doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

While I can’t quite say that Paprocki “wrote the book” on the defense of rights in the Church, he certainly wrote a book on it, his 580 page doctoral dissertation, Vindication and Defense of the Rights of the Christian Faithful through Administrative Recourse in the Local Church (1993), which tome I can spy from my desk right now. And before his canon law studies, Paprocki had already earned a civil law degree from DePaul University and had centered his legal practice around services to the poor.

And now Shine (sporting zero legal credentials) is going to tell Paprocki how canon law should be understood? Okay …

According to Shine, among the “other things wrong with Paprocki’s new guidelines” is their use of Canon 1184 which, as Shine correctly notes, restricts ecclesiastical funeral rites for, among others, “manifest sinners” whose funerals would provoke scandal. But then Shine attempts to explain what Canon 1184 means by the phrase “manifest sinners”.

Per Shine, “It is discrimination to target LGBT people when, in a certain sense, all Catholics could be deemed ‘manifest sinners.’” Channeling Fr. James Martin’s outrageous claim that “Pretty much everyone’s lifestyle is sinful”, Shine apparently thinks that, because it is manifest that everyone sins, everyone’s sins must be “manifest”. But Paprocki, having actually studied canon law, knows what canon law means by the phrase “manifest sinners”.

Paprocki knows, for example, that the CLSA New Commentary (2001) discussing Canon 1184 at p. 1412, understands one in “manifest sin” as one “publicly known to be living in a state of grave sin”. That’s a far cry from Shine’s rhetorical jab, delivered as if it were the coup de grace to Paprocki’s position, “Who among us, including Bishop Paprocki, does not publicly sin at different moments?” Hardly anyone, I would venture, and so would Paprocki.

But the law is not directed at those who, from time to time, commit sin, even a public sin; it is concerned about those who make an objectively sinful state their way of life. Fumble that distinction, as Shine does, and one’s chances of correctly reading Canon 1184 drop to, well, zero.

Yet Shine goes on, thinking that offering some examples of supposedly-sinning Catholics who yet are not refused funeral rites should shame Paprocki into changing his policy, citing, among other debatables, “Catholics who … deny climate change.” Yes. Shine actually said that. And this sort of silliness is supposed to give a prelate like Paprocki pause?

There are several other problems with Shine’s sorry attempts to explain the canon law of ecclesiastical funerals, but I want to end these remarks by highlighting a much more important point: Paprocki’s decree is not aimed at a category of persons (homosexuals, lesbians, LGBT, etc., words that do not even appear in his document) but rather, it is concerned with an act, a public act, an act that creates a civilly-recognized status, namely, the act of entering into a ‘same-sex marriage’. That public act most certainly has public consequences, some civil and some canonical.

Bp Paprocki, by long training and awesome office, understands what the consequences of ‘same-sex marriage’ are and are not, and he is much more likely to be thinking clearly about them than is Mr Shine.

Fr. Z has a follow-up post today...

'Homosexual sex'-obsessed Jesuit
vs. Bp. Paprocki of Springfield, IL
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

26 June 2017

A little while ago, His Excellency Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki, Bishop of Springfield, Illinois, issued a Decree “Regarding Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ and Related Pastoral Issues.”

This Decree reaffirmed Catholic teaching that a marriage is only possible “between one man and one woman.” The Decree included the following directives:

---

- No member of the clergy or representative of the Diocese should assist or participate in a same-sex marriage;
- No Church property should be used to host same-sex marriage ceremonies or receptions;
- Persons in a same-sex marriage should not present themselves for Holy Communion, nor should they be admitted to Holy Communion;
- Those in a same-sex marriage can be restored to communion with the Church through the Sacrament of Reconciliation;
- In danger of death, a person living in a same-sex marriage may receive Holy Communion “if he or she expresses repentance for his or her sins.”

---

You saw how Ed Peters handled one critic. But Immediately, homosexual sex obsessed Jesuit James Martin blasted Bp. Paprocki:

---

If bishops ban members of same-sex marriages from receiving a Catholic funeral, they also have to be consistent.

They must also ban divorced and remarried Catholics who have not received annulments, women who has or man who fathers a child out of wedlock, members of straight couples who are living together before marriage, and anyone using birth control. For those are all against church teaching as well.

Moreover, they must ban anyone who does not care for the poor, or care for the environment, and anyone who supports torture, for those are church teachings too.

More basically, they must ban people who are not loving, not forgiving and not merciful, for these represent the teachings of Jesus, the most fundamental of all church teachings.

To focus only on LGBT people, without a similar focus on the moral and sexual behavior of straight people is, in the words of the Catechism, a “sign of unjust discrimination” (2358).

---

This, friends, is the raving of a lunatic.

For a complete review of homosexual sex obsessed Jesuit James Martin v. Bp. Paprocki, try HERE,
josephsciambra.com/james-martin-blasts-bishop-thomas-p...
a blog by a Catholic man who suffered with same-sex affliction and is now striving to live a holy life.

URGENT: In his post he makes a great suggestion: drop Bp. Paprocki a supportive note! The diocese’s contact form and addresses:
www.dio.org/about/contact-the-diocese.html

The ff book review gives an idea of what Fr. Martin stands for:

A bridge to nowhere:
Fr. James Martin and the Catholic/LGBT divide
by R.J. Snell

June 26th, 2017

Fr. James Martin, SJ, has attempted to build a bridge between the Catholic Church and the LGBT community, but by shirking the difficulty of confrontation, he has traded genuine encounter for a thin and generic substitute.

Before YouTube, access to diverting video was controlled by middle-school teachers. If students were particularly good, the film-projector appeared to offer relief from the day’s lessons. My favorite, and I’m confident this judgment is shared by others, was footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse of 1940.

The world’s third-longest suspension bridge, it famously swayed in the wind, earning the nickname “Galloping Gertie.” Collapsing just months after opening, it provided spectacular, even mesmerizing images as it twisted and bucked, cars sliding from side to side, before falling into Puget Sound.

Those images came to mind upon reading the new book by Fr. James Martin, SJ, Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion and Sensitivity. Like the Tacoma Narrows, a bridge is needed, but Martin’s is too flawed to serve its purpose.

Fr. Martin is a winsome and accomplished voice, a sophisticated and media-savvy author of numerous books on religion, with a knack for explaining how Jesuit (or Ignatian) spirituality relates to the contemporary world.

He has also, as he explains in Building a Bridge, “ministered to and worked with LGBT people, most of them Catholics,” for many years, attentively and compassionately listening “to their joys and hopes, their griefs and anxieties, sometimes accompanied by tears, sometimes by laughter.” He also knows many in the hierarchy of the Church, and between these two he has “discovered a great divide.”

According to Martin, the LGBT community remains largely “invisible in many quarters of the church,” with LGBT Catholics ignored or insulted by the hierarchy. Consequently, “one part of the church is essentially separated” from another, and “a chasm has formed.”

While he hesitates to “refer to two ‘sides,’ since everyone is part of the church,” many LGBT Catholics have told him “they have felt hurt by the institutional church — unwelcomed, excluded, and insulted.” [It's all part of the LGBT victimization spiel! Let them narrate actual accounts when they were 'unwelcomed, excluded, insulted' - as if anyone had the time to waste even if they were so inclined, which I very much doubt, in this all-permissive Western society!]

Instead, Martin offers a bridge, drawing on the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s instruction to treat homosexuals with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity.” It is, he insists, a “two-way bridge,” and he offers guidance to both the hierarchy and members of the LGBT community on approaching and accompanying the other.

Fr. Martin is correct about the need for a bridge. The Church includes all the baptized, and as Pope Francis notes in Amoris Laetitia, all its members are “able to live and grow in the Church and experience her as a mother who welcomes them always, who takes care of them with affection and encourages them along the path of life and the Gospel.” No one of good will or sound conscience would wish for another to wander from “the path of life.”

This is true, but an incomplete truth often ends up a falsehood. [Yet this is an all-too-frequent Bergoglian ploy!] To take a theological example, if I affirm that Jesus is God, I have told the truth as orthodox Christians understand it; if I affirm that Jesus is a human, I have told the truth as orthodox Christians understand it. But if I affirm only one of these statements I no longer tell the truth. Unless I include both, the partial truth has become false.

It is certainly true that LGBT Catholics ought to be treated with respect, compassion, and sensitivity, just as LGBT Catholics ought to treat the hierarchy similarly, but leaving it at that is such a partial truth as to turn out false, and Martin does leave it at that, utterly bypassing the central claims at stake, namely, whether homosexual acts are morally permissible or not. In fact, bypassing the central claims is essential to Martin’s vision of the bridge.

Responding to a review of his book in Commonweal by the theologian David Cloutier, Martin notes that Building a Bridge intentionally “never mentions sex, specifically the church’s ban on homosexual activity” since the Church’s “stance on the matter is clear,” as is the LGBT community’s rejection of that teaching. So, Martin continues, “I intentionally decided not to discuss that question, since it was an area on which the two sides are too far apart.”

Despite skirting the point, Martin maintains the importance of encounter, which is “not something to dismiss as out of date, tired or stale... And fundamentally, since the desire for ‘encounter’ is a work motivated by the desire for truth and culminating in the desire for welcome, it must be seen as a work of the Holy Spirit.”

Yet genuine encounter, rooted in the desire for truth, could hardly occur in the absence of substantive discussion of the claims made by the Church and those who dissent.

Martin’s vision of the bridge turns out to be remarkably facile. It’s a call for civility, but the sort ignoring the substance of the issues and asking both sides to affirm what they believe to be false. I have no doubt the book is well-intentioned, but it is startling in its shallowness.

Fr. Martin avoids all discussion of what the Church teaches regarding sexuality, and of the arguments of those who dissent from that teaching, replacing actual encounter with flaccid and abstract interpretations of respect, compassion, and sensitivity. [How does one purport to take a stand on such an issue and then avoid discussing the key aspect that defines the inherent problems of a homosexual lifestyle?]

When defining “sensitivity” Martin appeals to Merriam-Webster’s rather than the Church’s own understanding, long-developed and long-argued, of agape, inculturation, the preferential option, human dignity, solidarity, and so on.

That is, in asking for encounter, Martin does not ask the Church to do so in the Christian understanding of encounter, which always includes an anticipation of repentance and conversion. Genuine encounter, for the Church, is not just a respectful meeting, not merely a compassionate sharing, not only a sensitive dialogue — it is always an invitation to the path of life. And given real and substantial disagreements about the truths of that path, it is often a confrontation.

The same occurs with Martin’s discussion of respect. Certainly, all persons are owed respect, but what does that mean? According to Martin, it means,
- First, that the Church must recognize “that the LGBT community exists” and should receive “the same recognition that any community desires and deserves.”
- Second, respect means “calling a group what it asks to be called,” for everyone “has a right to the name they wish to be called by.” - Third, respect means acknowledging that “LGBT Catholics bring unique gifts to the church—both as individuals and as a community.”
- Finally, respect means fairness in the workplace, not singling out LGBT employees of the Church in ways not enforced against others who are divorced, or cohabitating, or using birth control, or Protestants, or “not being forgiving, or for not being loving,” or violating Church teaching in some other manner.

All of that contains aspects of the truth, but it asks the Church to jettison its understanding of the truth, that is, to lie about itself in the name of respecting the other.

Martin is surely right that it is “common courtesy” to call someone by the name he prefers. If a friend wishes not to be called “Timmy” but “Timothy,” we oblige. Similarly, decency require us to avoid racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual terms that might have previously been common but are now rejected.

But Martin does not merely ask the Church to refrain from the term “‘homosexual person,’ which seems overly clinical to many,” but also the phrase “‘objectively disordered’ when it comes to describing the homosexual inclination.”

Acknowledging that the phrase describes not the person but the orientation, Martin says it is nonetheless “needlessly hurtful” and “needlessly cruel,” as it says “that one of the deepest parts of the person — the part that gives and receives love — is ‘disordered.’”

However off-putting to contemporary norms, this is not optional phrasing. The Church does in fact claim that homosexual acts — as indeed similar acts between heterosexuals — are “acts of grave depravity,” “intrinsically disordered,” “counter to the natural law,” which can never be approved (Catechism 2357).

If the acts are disordered, a desire for those acts is also disordered, and objectively so, for they can never be performed or desired in an ordered, virtuous manner. There’s no way to sugarcoat this — it’s a difficult teaching. Many will find it unpalatable. Many will find it false. [Perhaps that is the reason Bergoglio cannot bring himself to quote what the Catechism says about homosexual acts - he told the newsmen on the plane returning from Rio, "Look it up in the Catechism!']

But it is, nevertheless, what the Church teaches, and it is true. Asking the Church to set aside the phrasing is tantamount to asking the Church to set aside its understanding of the truth.

A more helpful vision of encounter can be found in a famous essay on interfaith discussions by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, tellingly entitled “Confrontation.” The Rav provides a much richer (and more bracingly honest) sense of the difficulties of encounter.

He begins at the encounter of Adam and Eve, when “two individuals, lonely and helpless in their solitude, meet, and the first community is formed.” From their solitude, they must “in a unique encounter begin to communicate” when the “miraculous word rises and shines forth.” Adam speaks, addressing himself to Eve, and they can begin to “break through to each other.”

But, notes Soloveitchik, the word is paradoxical and “contains an inner contradiction,” both opening and uniting but also “manifesting distinctness, emphasizing incongruity, and underlining separateness.” The word brings commonality even as it confounds, highlighting the stark unknowability of the other: “the closer two individuals get to know each other, the more aware they become of the metaphysical dance separating them.” Genuine encounter does not ignore difference.

With respect to religious difference, Soloveitchik indicates “a double confrontation.” On the one hand, the person of faith is a human being like every other, sharing the common destiny and nature of Adam. On the other hand, he is a member of “the exclusive covenantal confrontation.”

Given this duality, it is naïve (and false in the end) to assume the stance of “single-confrontation,” where the religious simply “stand(s) shoulder to shoulder with mankind” in a universal and generic parlance. Doing so reduces the person to an unencumbered self without thick beliefs and commitments, values and stories, ultimate concerns and traditions; it is possible, says Soloveitchik, only when individuals “are converted into abstractions.”

Individual persons are not abstractions, nor are faith communities. In fact, faith communities do not, says Soloveitchik, understand “the divine imperatives and commandments” as “equated with the ritual and ethos of another community,” for eeach community is “engaged in a singular normative gesture... and it is futile to try to find common denominators.”
Second, each believes, “and this belief is indispensable to the survival of the community — that its system of dogmas, doctrines and values is best fitted for the attainment of the ultimate good.”

In other words, one cannot understand a faith community — Jewish or otherwise — if the imperatives and commitments of that community are redacted, bracketed away in favor of thin and generic commitments to civility. Such civility produces a false encounter, an encounter of ghostlike abstractions rather than between the flesh and blood of real persons and their commitments. The same would be true between disputants within a community, such as the orthodox and the dissenters on sexual morality.

If a faith community is viewed only as a sociological or political reality, a community in which belonging and recognition are the fundamental point, that is, if one viewed the covenantal community as just another liberal democratic institution whose very mandate was to prescind from substantive truth claims, then, says Soloveitchik, we would have no problem at all meeting “the other on the basis of equality, friendship, and sympathy.”

But covenantal faith, to be itself, must maintain a sense of uniqueness, distinction, and difference. Ignoring or evacuating that difference — the hardness of encounter — denies the duality of confrontation by bracketing the community’s ethos, beliefs, and imperatives — which is not respect but negation, not compassion but absorption, not sensitivity but dishonesty.

Such flabby versions of encounter seek commonality, yes, they even seek a kind of truth held in common, but the truth sought is so generic, so abstract, so thinned out as to render particular commitments irrelevant. This is the search for a “truth” so partial, leaving out so much that matters, as to become false. Far better, a bridge going somewhere, is the honest work of confrontation.

Not confrontation in the sense of hostilities or battle, but as Soloveitchik articulated, an attempt to communicate that reveals and (sometimes) reinforces differences. After all, a bridge is needed when there is a chasm or a gulf or a river that cannot be easily crossed. It does no good to paper over differences, to make paper bridges, for reality, as the builders of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge discovered, has a way of making faulty construction known.

R. J. Snell directs the Center on the University and Intellectual Life at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, and is senior fellow of the Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good. His books include The Perspective of Love: Natural Law in a New Mode, and Acedia and Its Discontents.

June 25, 2017 headlines

Canon212.com


PewSitter

Do the latest Italian vote and new surveys
say anything to the Italian bishops and the pope?
They have been backing the wrong horses!
Translated from

June 26, 2017

The latest IPSOS survey says 54% of Italians oppose the ‘ius soli’ legislation in favor of which the Italian bishops’ conference (CEI), the Vatican, and the reigning pope have flaunted what would in other times be called scandalous interference by supporting it head-on, and let their opponents pull out their hair!

[The so-called 'ius soli' ('law of the soil' in Latin) bill hit the floor of the Italian Senate last week and was expected to be passed despite stiff opposition from the rightwing LN, the small rightwing Brothers of Italy party, and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which has said it will abstain amid a new hardline stance against migrants and gypsies.

The ius soli law would grant citizenship to foreign babies born on Italian soil and to children who have spent at least five years in the Italian school system. Currently the children of immigrants must wait until they are 18 to apply for Italian citizenship.

Rightwing and centre-right parties argue that citizenship should only be granted to those who have earned out by integration. Leftwing, centre-left and liberal parties say the law is a basic right granted in many other countries.]

Mayoral elections Sunday roundly rebuffed the Partito Democratico [a center-left party trounced by the center-right parties which include former PM Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia] with which the CEI has been flaunting forms of collateralism and contiguity that was unthinkable even in the heyday of the Christian Democrats

Just think of the law on civil unions, the Galantino-Cirinna ‘feeling’ [Italians like to use this English word to describe ‘an emotional state of mutual affection or reciprocity, or a particular transport which a person feels about something he is passionate about; Galantino is Bergoglio’s enforcer at the CEI as secretary-general, and Cirinna is the Italian senator who sponsored the civil union law that legalizes same-sex unions], not to mention the conversation filled with congratulations and best wishes from Mons Paglia, then president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, with the now-unseated PM Matteo Renzi under whom the Cirinna law was passed.

And the deafening silence from the Vatican on sensitive issues having to do with parental rights over education and what is being taught in Italian schools (sex education and gender ideology starting with six-year-olds).

We might add – this is not demonstrable but take my word, if you will – the growing intolerance one notices in the comments made in the social networks of which I am a member, as well as in casual conversations, towards the obsessive propaganda in favor of uncontrolled immigration preached by this pope and other advocates in the Catholic world who may not all be and always as disinterested in the worldly and financial aspects of the phenomenon as the pope may be.

These commentators may well be considered hardhearted Pharisees and other assorted insults. But they are also members of a community whose culture probably merits the same respect, attention and defense as the Yanomami and other indigenous cultures of South America!

Perhaps we may even expect – alas, not too much – that any of these issues mentioned will cause the hierarchy of the Church in Italy [starting with the pope, who is the Primate of Italy] to think a bit and take off their foot from the accelerator towards a demagoguery and populism which back in the 1970s and 1980s already showed their fallacy and failure in Latin Americ (its results, from an ecclesial point of view, are clear to everyone) and which now appear to be as appropriate and uptodate as a pair of violet elephant-leg pants!

Last week, there was this interesting item about Bergoglio’s partisanship in the ‘ius soli’ debate.

Bergoglio once more
hand in hand with Emma Bonino
by Antonio Righi
Translated from

June 21, 2017

Parliament discusses the Cirinna proposal [now law] recognizing same-sex unions. Bergoglio says nothing.

Parliament discusses 'wombs for rent' [surrogate uterus]. Bergoglio says nothing.

The radicals of the majority Partita Democrata seek to pass a law to legalize recreational drugs. Bergoglio says nothing.

Parliament discusses the legalization of euthanasia.Bergoglio says nothing.

Parliament discusses ius soli for the children of new ‘immigrants’ to Italy. Now he talks.

Today, June 21, he said: “I express sincere appreciation for the campaign ‘Ero straniero, l’umanità che fa bene’ (I was a stranger - humanity that does good) in favor of a new immigration law which has the full support of Caritas Italiana, Migrantes and other Catholic organizations”.

About that campaign, from the site ‘radicali italiani’ of the Italian Radical Party [of which Emma Bonino, Grande Dame of Italian abortionists, who has been praised by Bergoglio as ‘one of the greatest Italians of our time’, has long been a leading light, along with the late Marco Pannella, champion of homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia, who was so eulogized at his death last year by the perverse Mons. Paglia:

---

The campaign was launched officially on April 12 at a news conference in the Italian Senate by Emma Bonino and other organizations which, together with Radicali Italiani, promote legislation of popular initiative to replace the old Bossi-Fini law and change government policy on immigration to emphasize inclusion and work. (http://www.radicali.it/campagne/immigrazione/)

---

The appalling implications of Father James Martin's fallacious apologia pro LGBT and advocacy of Bergoglian-style 'accompaniment'
of Catholics with abnormal sexuality has provoked reactions from many serious Catholic commentators,. Carl Olson ties the question in
to a broader analysis of how bourgeois values have largely
taken over the thinking of most Catholics in the Western world...


Church authority, anthropology, and
the bourgeois morality of Fr. Martin
For decades, majority of Catholics have embraced bourgeois values instead of Christian virtues, and
the vacuum created by confused and ambiguous teaching is being filled with opportunistic falsehood.
by Carl E. Olson
Editor

June 26, 2017

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“About sex especially men are born unbalanced; we might almost say men are born mad. They scarcely reach sanity till they reach sanctity.”
— G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

“For this reason the Second Vatican Council states that all the Pope’s teaching should be listened to and accepted, even when it is not given ex cathedra but is proposed in the ordinary exercise of his Magisterium with the manifest intention of declaring, recalling and confirming the doctrine of faith.”
— Saint John Paul II, General Audience, March 17, 1993

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The Church, for decades now, has faced several crises involving a host of related, if not always obviously connected, issues. Two of these are authority and anthropology.

As the spiritual, cultural, and moral authority of the Church has been attacked from without and, far too often, undermined from within, a key point of contention and dissension has been the nature of man. And, in many ways, the fulcrum has been sexuality and, by extension, marriage and family.

There is a sad irony in that just when the Second Vatican Council was emphasizing the intimate connection between marriage, procreation, and “the eternal destiny of men” (Gaudium et Spes, 51) [Just one of those parts of G&S - and of Vatican II as a whole - that he 'spirit of Vatican II' progressivists choose to ignore quite blatantly] the West was flying down the slippery, disastrous slopes of contraception, the sexual revolution, and legalized abortion.

The conciliar fathers, in what is one of more overlooked texts of the Council (GS, 47-52), spoke of the “sexual characteristics of man and the human faculty of reproduction” and how “the acts themselves which are proper to conjugal love and which are exercised in accord with genuine human dignity must be honored with great reverence.”

They emphasized that “the moral aspects of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective standards,” noting that these, “based on the nature of the human person and his acts, preserve the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love.”

In many ways, the pontificate of John Paul II — especially (but not limited to) his [three-year-long] catecheses on the “theology of the body” — was an elucidation and defense of both Humanae Vitae and the aforementioned section of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.

The rifts that emerged quickly and so destructively following the Council were fixated on sexual matters, especially contraception, but were ultimately aimed at both Church authority and the traditional Catholic understanding of human nature.

While the Council is often, and not without some good reason, criticized for having a too positive view of matters, there are in fact a significant number of sober warnings, such as: “Relying on these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law” (GS, 51).

Fast forward to the current situation. Over the past three years, Pope Francis has sought to address various challenges and questions facing the family. As I’ve noted, the result has been, on the whole, “much discord, confusion, and frustration, quite a bit of it revolving around that one question: ‘Are divorced and civilly remarried Catholics now able to receive Holy Communion?’” And the two big issues again, it seems to me, are authority and anthropology.

So, regarding the first, what sort of authority does the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia claim and possess? Stephen Walford, in a February 2017 essay for La Stampa, argues that it is part of the ordinary papal magisterium and as such we must conclude the following:

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From the teaching of popes through history, we must affirm that Pope Francis cannot possibly be in error in his ordinary magisterium concerning issues of faith and morals, and thus his teaching that under certain, carefully considered cases, Holy Communion can be given to persons in irregular situations is perfectly valid and influenced by the Holy Spirit; to come to any other conclusion is to then call into question the teaching authority of previous popes and consequently the entire fabric of Catholicism is called into question. Do we then pick and choose which teachings of which popes to accept? That would be tantamount to a form of Protestantism.

---

[The audacity, wrongness, and anti-Catholicism of these statements is simply breathtaking!]
Much could be said here about the nature of the papal magisterium (and here I recommend a recent detailed analysis* provided by Steve Skojec), but I want to make three basic points.

First, as has been pointed out countless times, but apparently needs to be pointed out again, St. John Paul II, in Familiaris Consortio, stated clearly and without qualification, the following:

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However, the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist.

Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage. (par 84) [Words pointedly and flagrantly not to be found anywhere in AL - because to 'overturn' them (on the Bergoglian presumption that he could do so by his papal fiat) was, we might say without being untruthful, the single specific aim of the two 'family synods' that this pope convoked.]

---

Put simply, we have the ordinary papal magisterium of John Paul II stating that Catholics who have been divorced and remarried cannot receive Holy Communion. We then have the ordinary papal magisterium of Pope Francis, as interpreted by Mr. Walford, stating that some Catholics who have been divorced and remarried can receive Holy Communion. The problem here is obvious.

Secondly, there are bishops (Malta, Germany, etc) who have interpreted Amoris Laetitia as Mr. Walford has, and there are others (Poland, Abp. Chaput, Abp. Sample, etc.) who have interpreted Amoris Laetitia in keeping with John Paul II and the until now consistent and clear teaching of the Church. The problem here, again, is obvious.

Third, there is this glaring and uncomfortable fact: Amoris Laetitia lends itself so readily to clashing, contradictory interpretations. Which in turn raises this obvious question: If a pope is supposed to define and defend doctrine, but instead causes confusion and disagreement about doctrine, in what way is it “magisterial” and “authoritative”? After all, as Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., argued in Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith (Sapientia Press, 2007), the Magisterium has three basic duties: to “herald the apostolic faith”, to “defend the faith against opposed errors,” and “clarify the faith.”[Essentials which the reigning pope apparently chooses to ignore, going by his own definition of what Magisterium is. Remember this?

Mr. Walford’s quotation from John Paul II’s 1993 General Audience is problematic for a few reasons, but one will suffice here - that the late Polish pontiff provided an important qualifier when he stated: “For this reason the Second Vatican Council states that all the Pope’s teaching should be listened to and accepted, even when it is not given ex cathedra but is proposed in the ordinary exercise of his Magisterium with the manifest intention of declaring, recalling and confirming the doctrine of faith.”

In what way was Francis declaring, recalling, and confirming the doctrine of faith articulated so clearly by John Paul II? Put another way, if you claim to confirm something but instead cause widespread confusion, of what value or purpose is your act of confirmation? And if you were being misinterpreted by one party or another, wouldn’t you be anxious to say so? Simply put: what exactly did Pope Francis intend in the famous eighth chapter of his apostolic exhortation?

I had the privilege of studying theology under Dr. Mark Lowery, a brilliant moral theologian at the University of Dallas, whose course in Moral Theology covered the various forms of magisterial teaching. It is, needless to say, a daunting and complicated topic. But Dr. Lowery’s remark about the ordinary papal magisterium, which can be found in his online notes, is worth pondering:

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The ordinary papal Magisterium consists in Popes teaching “authentically,” usually in documents such as encyclicals or apostolic exhortations. [But when a pope habitually second-guesses Scripture and the words of God himself, as this pope does - on top of saying something different from what the best and brightest minds of the Church have said over two millennia - how can he be teaching 'authentically' at all? I cannot fathom why this thought does not seem to occur at all to Bergoglio's so-called 'Catholic' followers, the paladins of 'Bergoglio-right-or-wrong-and-he-is-never-wrong'!]

These documents may contain truths that are taught infallibly, but the documents as a whole are not infallible. Rather, they require the “assent of mind and will” of the faithful, an assent which is distinct in nature from the “assent of faith” required of items infallibly taught.

Humanae Vitae, for instance, is not an infallible document. It contains ideas which require respectful assent but which, while not being erroneous, may be incomplete or partially flawed. However, in article 12 the pope touches upon a matter that, it can be argued, is infallibly taught: the inseparability of the unitive and procreative dimensions of each conjugal act.

---

At the very best, then, it seems we can conclude that Pope Francis did not teach or proclaim error in Amoris Laetitis, in large part because it is not readily evident what he taught, wanted to teach, or wanted others to conclude. (I say this as someone who is quite convinced that Pope Francis is trying to open the door to Communion for couples in “irregular” situations; but this, I think, is the best [the most charitable]that can be said about the document.)

In short, the impression given in many quarters is that the pope can, by virtue of his ordinary magisterium, alter and even bypass the ordinary magisterium of his predecessors, as if his office was established for the purpose of innovation, as if the Holy Spirit can offer us contradictory statements about matters of faith and morals. [Which is, of course, manifestly and objectively WRONG - BOTH UN-CATHOLIC AND ANTI-CATHOLIC!]

Which brings us to the person, project, and propaganda of Fr. James Martin, S.J., who has been making the rounds of the secular media circuit in support of his book Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity (see this detailed CWR review by Dr. Eduardo Echeverria). In a recent piece published in Newsday, Fr. Martin invokes Pope Francis and the Holy Spirit to the cause of welcoming, embracing, and apparently celebrating those in the “LGBT community”:

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Catholics are realizing, in greater numbers, that LGBT people have been excluded like no other group in their church. This is becoming clearer because more people are hearing their voices, and because Pope Francis has allowed Catholics to speak about these issues more openly.

This thaw is not happening everywhere. In many U.S. parishes, LGBT people still feel excluded; in some parts of the world, they are treated with contempt. And some people feel the pope has not done enough by way of change, pointing, for example, to the section in the Catechism that labels homosexuality as “objectively disordered.”

However, these steps are a good start and the work of the Holy Spirit. As such, these changes not only shouldn’t be stopped. They cannot be stopped. [All the lines in purple are Martin's highly-biased personal opinions which he extrapolates to make them into misleading FACTOIDS.]

---

As both Dr. Echeverria and Deacon Jim Russell point out, this call to “welcome” this so-called “community” is fraught with serious problems, not least Fr. Martin’s obvious acceptance and promotion of the basic tenets of The Reign of Gay: that the inclination to homosexuality is not “objectively disordered,” as the Catechism states (par 2358), but instead is the mark of someone “differently ordered” (as Fr. Martin suggested in this interview); that homosexuality is normal and healthy; and that the Church’s teaching about homosexuality is backward, hurtful, and bigoted.

Since Fr. Martin implies the Holy Spirit wishes to change and “update” Church teaching, I can only conclude that Fr. Martin believes the Holy Spirit and the Church have been in error about the nature of man, woman, sexuality, and love for two thousand years, and that the “God of surprises” has finally come around to the wisdom of the current age.

Of course, this reflects the madness mentioned by Chesterton; we are not dealing here with a man interested in objective truth but in promoting passion under the guise of soft-focused sentimentality.

Fr. Martin admits he is not a theologian, but he does not hesitate in insisting the Catechism be changed, remarking: “But, as I say in the book, saying that one of the deepest parts of a person — the part that gives and receives love — is disordered is needlessly hurtful.”

Such a statement, frankly, is embarrassing; coming from a priest who belongs to an order once known for its theological rigor and doctrinal fidelity, it is scandalous. However, it is also instructive, for it indicates how poorly Fr. Martin understands the logic of Church teaching and the truth about human nature.

Readers would do well to carefully consider the insights provided by Daniel Mattson in his book Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay: How I Reclaimed My Sexual Reality and Found Peace (Ignatius Press, 2017), who points out how a homosexual man, in reading the Catechism’s short section, “hears the Church’s teaching not as an invitation to authentic human fulfillment, but as a rejection of himself and the person he cares about.” Mattson then quotes from Benedict XVI during an ad limina visit by U.S. bishops, in which Benedict stated:

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In this great pastoral effort there is an urgent need for the entire Christian community to recover an appreciation of the virtue of chastity. The integrating and liberating function of this virtue (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2338–43) should be emphasized by a formation of the heart, which presents the Christian understanding of sexuality as a source of genuine freedom, happiness and the fulfilment of our fundamental and innate human vocation to love.

It is not merely a question of presenting arguments, but of appealing to an integrated, consistent and uplifting vision of human sexuality. The richness of this vision is more sound and appealing than the permissive ideologies exalted in some quarters; these in fact constitute a powerful and destructive form of counter-catechesis for the young.

---

Mattson then writes, in a quite profound passage:

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As I was coming to know who God is, and who I am as his son, this was the most important lesson for me to learn: that God loves me, that it is good that I exist, and that God has a plan for my life to bring me happiness and blessings.

When I understood this divine plan of God, and finally believed that God’s plans truly were to prosper me and not to harm me (cf. Jer 29:11), I could finally begin to see the moral claims proposed to me by the Church, not as an onerous demand, but instead as an invitation to reclaim the dignity that was given to me in the Creation, and redeemed by the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In this context, the phrases “objectively disordered” and “intrinsically disordered” become helpful signposts on the journey of life, urging me to seek and follow the path, the order, that God has established for my life and my relationships.

The Church understands that human beings are wounded creatures: the natural unity of body and soul, and the natural harmony of the mind, will, and emotions, are damaged by the Original Sin of Adam and by our own personal sins.

Natural feelings and desires, which were created to guide us to choose good and avoid evil, can become distorted, sometimes pulling us in the opposite direction, toward choices that are truly not good for us.

Though Christ has saved us from sin, its effects remain in us, which means that we all can be led astray by disordered appetites — urges and desires for things that are not part of God’s plan for human life and relationships.

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And then he sums it up by stating: “I need this teaching in order to understand who I am, why I am here, and where I am going.”

Fr. Martin would have us believe — again, in direct denial of both divine truth and natural reason — that, as he told The New York Times, “Pretty much everyone’s lifestyle is sinful…”

Of course, it should go without saying that we are all sinners in need of God’s mercy and grace. But that is not what Fr. Martin is saying. A master of skewing and skirting, he distorts the truth in order to gloss over the fact that all of us are called, by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, to be true and holy children of God. [Again, a trademark Bergoglian tactic of 'lying by deliberate omission and/or deliberate half-truths'. Omitting any part of a whole truth because that part does not jibe with your thinking is an outright lie - which is what Bergoglio has been doing with Paragraph 84 of JPII's Familiaris consortio, and most egregiously, with the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman, in which Bergoglio only recounts the forgiveness but not Jesus's parting words to the woman, "Go and sin no more!]

Martin prefers Catholics to bow before the golden calf of this age of sentimentality rather than admit that he not only does not possess the authority to rewrite the Catechism, he does not possess the power or right to question the Author of Life and Love, who has created us to be ordered to everlasting beatitude, not some shallow, passion-driven counterfeit pretending to offer “happiness” and “affirmation”.

And now Fr. Martin is blasting Bishop Thomas Paprocki, who recently issued diocesan norms regarding ministry toward persons who had entered a ‘same-sex marriage’. Over at a faux Catholic rag, a shrill columnist declares that Bishop Paprocki “should be sacked,” and then provides various quotes from Fr. Martin and Pope Francis.

The buzz words now are “inclusion” and “mercy”; truth, fidelity, and discipleship are of little interest. To be fair, this has been coming for decades, and I am actually in full agreement with those who argue that the acceptance of contraception, divorce, adultery, and cohabitation on the part of “straight” men and women have brought us to this point. Absolutely right.

And all of those issues, again, are bound together by a failure of authority — most notably in how often truth has not been proclaimed and defended — and a failure of anthropology. But lines must be drawn, and the drawing of those lines are only going to infuriate those who feel that every line is an attack on their rights, their needs, their desires, and their happiness.

For decades, the majority of Catholics have embraced bourgeois values instead of Christian virtues, and the vacuum created by confused and ambiguous teaching is being filled with opportunistic falsehood.

The Venerable Fulton Sheen wrote many years ago:

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“In the domain of morality, is it not an accepted principle of our Western bourgeois world that there is no absolute distinction between right and wrong rooted in the eternal order of God, but that they are relative and dependent entirely upon one’s point of view?

Hence when the Western world wishes to decide what is right and wrong even in certain moral matters, it takes a poll — forgetful that the majority never makes a thing right… The first poll of public opinion taken in history of Christianity was on Pilate’s front porch, and it was wrong.”

---

The ordinary magisterium of the Church has always taught and held that homosexual acts — as well as fornication, contraception, adultery, masturbation, and pornography — are serious sins.

But, in the near future, when representatives of the porn industry demand to be accepted, included, and embraced by the Church, without any reference to the evils of pornography, what will we say? It seems likes a ridiculous question. I’m not so sure, as ridiculous is now the new normal, and the love that once dare not speak its name now demands to be proclaimed from the pulpit.

The last 10 years of the Church in China:
From the Letter of Benedict XVI to
the Vatican silence on the arrest of Mons. Zhumin
The silence on the persecution of Chinese Catholics and their bishops in Wenzhou and Shanghai.
The agencies Benedict XVI did not accept (Patriotic Association and Chinese Bishops' Conference)
because 'incompatible with Catholic doctrine' now govern the Church. Vatican-China dialog must address
the issue of underground bishops out in the open and not in secrecy.
An analysis from a northeast Chinese Catholic, as the Vatican celebrates a new round of China-Holy See talks.
by 'Joseph'

June 26, 2017

Editor's Note: Marking the 10th anniversary of the Letter from Benedict XVI to Chinese Catholics, we received this analysis from a Catholic in northeastern China, named Joseph.

In it he traces these 10 years evidencing how - though Pope Francis has proclaimed it still relevant and valid - the facts show that it is being betrayed bit by bit. Citing facts and situations, the author also points out how the power of the Chinese government is increasingly determining the life of the Church while appointing bishops, choosing and ordaining candidates who live in "gray pragmatism" as described in 'Evangelii Gaudium', 83.

[That part of Par. 83 refers to “the gray pragmatism of the daily life of the Church, in which all appears to proceed normally, while in reality faith is wearing down and degenerating into small-mindedness”, which is a quotation taken from Cardinal Ratzinger's address, 'The Current Situation of Faith and Theology' at the 1996 Meeting of Presidents of Latin American Episcopal Commissions for the Doctrine of the Faith, in Guadalajara, Mexico, 1996.]

Joseph also complains that there is too much silence on persecution as bishops, priests and lay people endure in China and fear that the talks between China and the Vatican - a session of which took place June 20-21 in the Vatican - will lead to the elimination of the unofficial Church...

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Recently, the fourth detention of Bishop Shao Zhumin, Bishop of Wenzhou, caught the attention of the German ambassador to China and many people in the country and abroad.

Additionally, this year marks the 10th anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s Letter to Chinese Catholics and the 5th anniversary of the forced house arrest of Bishop Ma Daqin July 7, 2012. It is the perfect occasion to briefly review recent Church events in China.

The Letter of Benedict XVI
Ten years ago, Pope Benedict XVI published his famous Letter to Chinese Catholics, in which he indicated that some bodies, which were placed above the Church, namely the Chinese Patriotic Association and the Episcopal Conference [In Chinese, "Yi hui, yi tuan" - One Association, One Conference], are incompatible with the specific nature of the Catholic Church. The Pontifical Letter aroused a strong reaction. Later, the Holy See also published a Compendium of the same Letter.

Nine years after its publication, Pope Francis acknowledged that the Letter still guides the Church's affairs in China.

In addition, two initiatives were undertaken with the Letter:
- the first, the observance of May 24 as the Feast of Our Lady of Help of Christians and the Day of Prayer for the Church in China and Pope Benedict’s special prayer to Our Lady of Sheshan for this purpose. T
- the second initiative is a permanent study commission formed under Benedict XVI which convened at regular intervals to consider the problems of the Church in China and the relations between China and the Vatican.

Its official statements have expressed concerns and remonstrations against cases in which the Beijing authorities had obviously forced so-called 'democratic' episcopal ordinations.

Yet 10 years later, when Pope Francis recalled the Day of Prayer of the Universal Church for the Church in China, the offices of the Holy See no longer mention the Letter of the Emeritus Pope or that the Special Commission has been suspended without reason.

The bishop of Shanghai and "free" episcopal ordinations
With regards the Church in China, five years ago, at the episcopal ordination of the auxiliary bishop of Shanghai, Mons. Ma Daqin (appointed by Beijing’s One Association/One Conference as coadjutor bishop), he refused the imposition of hands by an illegitimate bishop and after the blessing, he announced that he was withdrawing from the Patriotic Association. This fact went down in history as 'the change of July 7'.

Bishop Ma's gesture was welcomed with a huge applause both in China and abroad. But at the same time, it led to the virtual paralysis of the Diocese of Shanghai,sheep without a shepherd, which is still the case even today. Bishop Ma has been under compulsory house arrest for five years, and has been unable to exercise his episcopal ministry. The Vatican does not recognize the only existing bishop in Shanghai [an 'official' one], so the situation is fraught with unpredictable variables.

Over the course of five years, Beijing has not directly ordered any democratic episcopal ordination, but the appointment and ordination of bishops reveal evident signs of being under the full control of local authorities.

Such cases include Monisgnors An Shuxin, Wu Qinjin, and other bishops who were officially installed on the initiative of local authorities, following the consent of the One Association/One Conference officials.

In recent years, bishops who have been officially ordained have all been chosen by the diocese and the Patriotic Association, with the permission of the One Association/One Conference and with registration by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, at the same time as the announcement of the appointment by the Holy See.

On the eve of ordination, the decree for the appointment of the Holy Father is read to the clergy, but during the ceremony of ordination or installation itself, what is read to the faithful is the document of permission from the Chinese Bishops' Conference.

The new bishop must then state that he supports the party and the government, that he loves the Church and the Homeland, whose Constitution and laws he will obey. Both legitimate and illegitimate bishops take part in the ordinations, while the ceremonies are previously prepared in detail by the official authorities to ensure perfect execution down to the last detail'.

Dialogue and persecution
In the context of the many and strong rumors of an agreement reached in the negotiations between China and the Vatican, the two Cardinals of Hong Kong, emeritus Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun and the current bishop, Cardinal John Tong Hon, have published different comments: the first illustrating his pessimism and disappointment, the second some optimism.

China's semi-official cultural circles hastened to visit the Vatican to establish contacts and friendship. But the news that is spreading today is that the negotiations between China and the Vatican have faltered. They are reportedly preparing to resume then with a change of stakeholders. [What does that mean? Will there be a change in the negotiators, too?]

From another point of view, Msgr. Ma's gesture led to him be thought by many to be 'a good mascot for the Church in China', and he attracted interest in the underground Church. But last year the bishop published five articles on line, in which he reflected deeply on what he called his impetuous action five years ago and humbled himself with a public retraction.

During these five years, an underground priest Yu Heping died of suspected drowning, Msgr Shi Enxiang, an elderly bishop who had been under house arrest for a long time for a long time, died in detention. At least two bishops and a number of clandestine priests are frequently detained, taken away and pressured to enter the Patriotic Association of the official Church.

Yet all these facts seem to be ignored by many who had been led on by the news that the day of the possible diplomatic agreement between China and the Vatican is near.

Neither has the Holy See uttered a word or even an appeal on behalf of their situation: they seem to have become a group vulnerable to rejection.

Meanwhile, some dioceses in the nation are divided into factions, some of which are considered 'faithful' to the unofficial Church. This phenomenon can be seen in areas of Fujian and Hebei.

The case of suspended priest Rev. Paul Dong Guanhua of the Diocese of Zhengding, who proclaimed himself a bishop in secret, is a particular example of this: it prompted the Holy See to publicly express its disapproval (even as it seems that the Holy See is no longer worried about illegitimate bishops who are autonomously nominated and ordained).

At present, the official Chinese authorities, in addition to severely enforcing law and promoting the 'sinicization' of religions, are stepping up their efforts to put some of the unofficial Church's strongholds under control. In particular, bishops like Shao Zhumin, Guo Xijin and others who hold fast to the principles of the Church of Rome, who are being forced to bend and adhere to the official Church.

Most recently, both in China and abroad, many have been concerned and have protested against the detention and the danger that Bishop Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou finds himself in.

The AsiaNews Symposium and gray pragmatism
In the context of the decade of the Letter to Chinese Catholics of Pope Benedict XVI, two different conferences were held in Rome.

The first, organized by AsiaNews, was entitled 'China: The Cross is Red'. Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin had been invited and his participation eagerly awaited. But he failed to do because of 'other commitments'.

The General Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Archbishop Savio Han Tai-Fai, gave a lecture during the symposium, in which he emphasized that a "gray pragmatism" is spreading in the Church in China.

(An archbishop who is a supporter of gray pragmatism and who is close to Beijing but who has not yet been officially recognized, even thinks that the Church in China needed this in the past, but now the circumstances have changed, and to his mind, there is no longer any reason for the underground Church 'to exploit the flag of fidelity'. Because of this, the faithful of
Zhejiang and Hebei no longer go to his church to receive the sacraments, especially since he now belongs openly to the Patriotic Association.)

The other symposium was organized by the St. Egidio Community on the subject of trade between China and the Vatican, during which the representative of the Chinese delegation received strong applause for his speech on the 'Sinicization of religions from a historical point of view and the present situation' .

In general, any agreement reached in the negotiations between China and the Vatican would be good [as long as the Vatican does not agree implicitly and de facto to Chinese leadership of the Church in China], but the fate of the unofficial Church remains uncertain in all this.

What many Chinese Catholics worry about is that the spiritual foundation of faith no longer centers on the Lord, but unconsciously without realizing it, the concern has become "rendering to God what is God's due and to Caesar what is Caesar's".

As for the clergy and faithful of Shanghai, the current situation is still confusion and concern. It is hoped that the Holy See can clearly express appropriate concern for Msgr. Shao Zhumin and the future of the entire unofficial Church, and strive to resolve the problem that 30 or more bishops of the underground Church, not recognized by the government, be openly given the necessary recognition.

And of course, 'gray pragmatism' and secularization, which are corroding the Church in China, are problems that require greater consideration.

Joseph
Faithful of a gray Northwestern church in China

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An interesting sidebar to all this is provided by Sandro Magister in a June 26 Post-Scriptum to his blogpost on June 22 [see my translation in the preceding page] commenting on the silence of the Bergoglio Vatican on recent developments having to do with official persecution of underground bishops and priests in China.

June 26, 2017

Today, four days after we published our comment on June 22, the Vatican Press Director Greg Burke distributed the following statement in Italian, English and Chinese:

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In response to questions from journalists regarding the case of Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou (Continental China), I can state the following:
"The Holy See is observing with grave concern the personal situation of Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou, forcibly removed from his episcopal see some time ago. The diocesan Catholic community and his relatives have no news or reasons for his removal, nor do they know where he is being held.

In this respect, the Holy See, profoundly saddened for this and other similar episodes that unfortunately do not facilitate ways of understanding, expresses the hope that Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin may return as soon as possible to the diocese and that he can be assured the possibility of serenely exercising his episcopal ministry.

We are all invited to pray for Bishop Shao Zhumin and for the path of the Catholic Church in China.

---

Magister duly notes that AsiaNews had come out on the same day with the analysis of 'Joseph' who had lamented the Vatican's silence about Mons. Zhumin's fate - a silence duly broken by Mr. Burke's note. At least, they reacted.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/06/2017 21:42]

The person who posted this item on Rorate caeli used the term 'The Australian Catholic collapse', but from the graph above, the more appropriate term is 'decline' not 'collapse'(which would have seen the Catholic line plunge down to near-zero.).

Australia's declining number of Catholics:
A 'Francis effect'?


A sharp decline appears to come during the latter half of the 2006-2016 decade (2011-2016, if the graph is drawn to scale), practically entirely inside the Pope Francis period. [Last two years of B16 and first 3 years of JMB, to be more exact].

During this time, the Church had a similar decline to all other Christian communities in Australia. But perhaps the most concerning data from the graph is that those who profess 'no religion' are now the largest 'faith' group in the Australian population.

The graphic clearly shows a degree of Catholic stability, with a gentle decline in the second part of the Wojtyła years and during the Ratzinger pontificate, followed by a strong decline in the Bergoglio period, as the Church finally follows the same path of the Protestants.

And, indeed, why should any unsure Catholic, baffled as well by the abuse crisis, remain a Catholic when the signs from Rome seem to indicate that being a Catholic is completely dispensable?

A propos, one might have expected a blockbuster book by now on 'The Francis effect' if the initial anecdotal enthusiasms in 2013 about a 'significant shot in the arm for Catholicism' had translated to actual positive data, instead of which the data all show negative trends for any important parameter of Catholic life since Bergoglio became pope... Indeed, it's hard to see how more people might become Catholic under a pope for whom Catholicism is just one 'religion' among many, and whose real interest is to impose Bergoglianism in its place, and not just as a dominant world religion but as 'the' prototype and model for the 'one world religion' that Hans Kueng had hoped to be his legacy! (Sorry, Hansie, you have to be pope to impose your will as Bergoglio does now.)

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi speaks
on the resignation of the Vatican’s first auditor and
the Vatican’s continuing problem with financial transparency

Translated from

June 26, 2017

The sudden unexpected resignation on June 20 of the first ever Vatican auditor, Libero Milone, has raised a series of questions that remain unanswered. [The Vatican did not give a reason for the resignation, only that the pope had accepted it.]

But they are part of a history that has been troubled for decades - that of the Vatican’s finances. The relationship between faith and money has generated scandals, problems and seemingly endless trouble. We asked Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, former president of IOR, to answer some questions.

Some have said that those who are given the responsibility for Vatican finances seem to be cursed. Is there something to that? Where does the curse lie?
To resolve a complicated situation, and before proposing an prognosis, we must be sure to have a good and correct diagnosis. And that cannot be done if the original causes of a problem are not thoroughly investigated. People will continue to be replaced or shuffled – without allowing them to resolve these causes – thinking that miraculously, they will succeed. But since miracles are not wrought by common mortals, they do not normally happen, and then people say that “There is a curse that afflicts Vatican finances”. In their dreams!

But there is a lack of will to resolve the true causes of the problems being generated – and that is the ‘poison’ in the system. Beyond the chatter that Vatican communicators manage to circulate successfully in the media in various ways, the explanation for the fundamental problem why this apparent ‘curse’ will continue – and won’t be exorcised until the necessary order is established – was in the change and execution of the process of transparency desired by Benedict XVI and which he decreed in a motu proprio in December 2010.

What did this process of transparency entail?
Since the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001, the international norms of transparency in the management of financial activities underwent a change towards greater rigidity, in order to combat not just laundering of dirty money but also the financing of terrorism.

From then on, all ‘fiscal and monetary paradises’ were supposed to disappear, and the standards for financial transparency became more wide-ranging. This obviously also affected the financial activities of the Holy See even if these are principally directed to works of religion.

His Holiness Benedict XVI immediately understood that accepting these norms would mean accepting international rules on transparency which were necessary and timely, and constituted a true opening to the world, in the form of agreements about regulating financial transactions with the financial world. [This was a truly historic decision because it was the first time ever that the Vatican had ever agreed to be 'inspected' by an outside agency.]

Moreover, it was clear to Benedict XVI that the credibility of the Pope and of the Church were of utmost value to bestow prestige on such international standards so that they would be better heeded. He wanted the Vatican to be exemplary in this respect, even for other countries.

And what does a process of financial transparency mean? It means a system of laws that promote and regulate it, with specific procedures for the practical application of such laws, plus a system that guarantees such application, internally and externally. This was what the Vatican did in 2010 and 2011.

But shortly thereafter (between the end of 2000 and the start of 2012), the system was ‘mysteriously’ changed – since when there has been no ‘peace’. Even poor Pope Francis, while taking into account the complexity and the risks of having so many financial agencies within the Vatican, manifestly never received enough adequate recommendations.

One of his first decisions was to unify everything that had to do with Vatican finances and economy in a single dicastery. Which, however, has been gradually losing its powers. Was that reform not practical? Or are there too many forces within the Vatican that have become too strong and too consolidated for the dicastery to function well?
As Benedict XVI wrote in Caritas in veritate, when a situation is too complicated and serious, it is not enough to change your instruments for dealing with it – one must change the men who use these instruments. But choosing the right men who have specific competences and characteristics appropriate for executing reforms is not easy. One must have adequate competent advisers who can suggest adequate solutions.

Much has been said about APSA (Administration for the Patirmony of the holy See], of IOR and other agencies in the Vatican, but very little is said about the Economic Section of the Secretariat of State. Is it important? Does it figure significantly in the overall context of Vatican finances, or not at all? Did it have a role in recent events [like Milone’s resignation] as some have speculated?
I don’t know what role it may have played. I believe that its role and functioning depends also on who is the Secretary of State. The present one appears to me – and it is confirmed by everyone – to be intelligent, competent, trustworthy, as well as a man of God. It would be important to know if he knows how to delegate authority.

But I think that more than that Economic Section, there is another organ that is very important, though it is normally forgotten when Vatican finances are discussed This is the Authority for Financial Information (AIF), which was the controlling organ desired by Benedict XVI and which he entrusted to the late great Cardinal Attilio Nicora, who headed it in its first two years. He was subsequently replaced during an uneasy and controversial period by other persons who seemed to have competed in changing the original law on financial transparency and against money laundering that Benedict XVI had promulgated.

According to the standards adopted in 2010, AIF was supposed to be the agency that would control the adequacy of the financial laws and regulations and their conformity to the procedures defined for every order of financial activity within the institutions of the Holy See. Today, I do not know what it does principally. Its auditors would normally be limited to establishing and evaluating the conformity of written accounts with accepted accounting principles. [For the past three years, however, AIF - under a high-profile lay director - hs made annual news by reporting the number of cases of potential financial malfeasance it has investigated and how many prosecutions have resulted from these ivnestigations.]

Is this a ‘game’ that is principally played within the Vatican, or are there other important protagonists outside the Vatican, and what role would they have?
It would seem obvious. But it is the AIF that should answer these questions.

In January 2015, you wrote an open letter published in the Catholic Herald that was addressed to the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, Cardinal George Pell. What prompted you to do that?
Because one month earlier, also in the Catholc Herald, Cardinal Pell gave an interview in which he said that “finally, in this new pontificate, the finances of the Holy See are under control”. I took on the liberty and responsibility of correcting him, to point out that those finances were already ‘under control’ with the norms, procedures and structures legislated by Benedict XVI – and I had to explain when and how those came to be modified and with what consequences.

I also explained which facts, in my opinion, motivated my dismissal as president of the IOR, an infamous event about which, for the good of the Church, I had requested many times, but in vain, for my side to be heard. I also told him which documents he ought to examine to understand what happened from 2011 to the end of May 2012 [when Gotti-Tedeschi was voted out of IOR] and determine who was responsible for what happened. Also to read the interview given by Mons. Georg Gaenswein in Otober 2013 about those events, and to ask about what happened on February 7, 2013, at 6 pm in an apartment in the Citta Leonina. But I have never learned if Cardinal Pell did as I suggested.

What was it that happened?
Cardinal Bertone personally communicated to me – at the home of a cardinal (as I refused to enter the Vatican) – that the Holy Father Benedict XVI had decided on my immediate ‘rehabilitation’ and asked me to be available in Rome during the next few days. But the Holy Father announced his renunciation on February 11, and I was never called after that. [To my knowledge, this is the first time that Gotti Tedeschi has revealed these specifics although he has referred to it in general terms before.]

[The whole story about the changes made in 2011 to the original transparency rules and regulations promulgated by Benedict XVI in 2010 and Gotti Tedeschi’s later ‘defenestration’ by the IOR Board of Directors has never been clear – and Gotti Tedeschi does not help clear it up by never saying who was responsible for the changes he obviously disagreed with.

In all the reporting at the time, it appeared that Cardinal Bertone, who headed the Cardinal’s Committee responsible for oversight of the IOR, was principally responsible for said changes, but I could never understand why and how he could simply override Benedict XVI on this matter.

Especially since the original norms and regulations set down by Benedict XVI – and principally drafted by Gotti Tedeschi and his team - had been the basis for the Council of Europe’s Moneyval bank supervisory agency to evaluate the financial operations and procedures of the Holy See in order to include it on the White List of countries whose financial institutions were certified to be compliant with international banking regulations specifically against money laundering and denying funds for terrorism.

It appeared at the time that the changes to the original norms were made in 2011 prior to the second evaluation of Vatican financial operations by Moneyval, ostensibly to be more compliant with Moneyval requirements.]  

The photo shows a 1933 picture from a convent school in Queensland, Australia.

As a product of a convent school education from kindergarten to all of elementary school, I could not agree more with this title...

No matter what their detractors say,
convent schools provided a great education
by Francis Phillips

June 23, 2017

Almost all who have had the privilege of being educated in convents remember nuns whose lives were ones of fulfilment, vigour and purpose.

On reading Tales out of School: Recollections of Ex-Cnovent-School Girls, published by the Pastoral Research Centre Trust, two thoughts occurred to me:
a. that you only realise how important something is when it is no longer there and
b. you shouldn’t trust everything you read in the newspapers. They are clichés, obviously, but they matter.

These recollections of 40 women, who attended convent schools between the 1930s and the 1970s in response to a letter to The Tablet of 18 February 2012, make fascinating reading – but as historical documents.

This is because almost all the convent schools they describe have either closed altogether or have been taken over by lay Catholic management and staff, so have changed their status. My own old school is a case in point; once a convent boarding school it is now a day Catholic school. The nuns have long gone.

In the 1960s and 70s the teaching orders began to shrink as vocations dried up. This means that Catholic girls growing up today no longer have the opportunity to grow in their Faith under the influence and example of dedicated lives. Many of the ex-convent girls who relate their experiences in these pages echo one woman who, writing of the Sisters of Notre Dame, states, “I remember them now with profound gratitude, admiration and respect.”

Another contributor wrote, “Some of the Sisters had a strong influence on me – I asked one Sister whose life was spent scrubbing and polishing the endless corridors if she minded all the work and she replied that her prayer was her work and she was lucky to be able to spend so much time in the company of the Lord. I think this was the best religious lesson I learnt.”

Faith is caught before it is taught. Almost all who have had the privilege of being educated in convents remember nuns whose lives, regarded as peculiar or frustrated in the media and by today’s secular society, were ones of fulfilment, vigour and purpose.

Generally, these contributors recalled schools that were small enough for each pupil to “feel wanted, appreciated and loved [by the Sisters] for what we were.” Again, a contributor echoed others when she wrote that she “owed a great deal to the Sisters…for their example and encouragement in developing in every student a sense of vocation and commitment.”

Not all the respondents to the letter in The Tablet had a happy experience or kept their Faith. But most did or returned to it after a period of lapsation. These ex-convent girls evoke a world of the Penny Catechism [for us, it was the Baltimore Catechism, that great teaching aid for people of all ages], saints’ lives, school retreats, processions, high standards of personal behaviour, holy pictures and regular chapel [I remember we had Thursday Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, at which each class spent an hour at chapel, and endless occasions to gather to pray the Rosary. But I would also include memories of unusual punishments like having to kneel on a mat of little round beans for five minutes, or staying after class to write 100 times "I shall not talk at class when Sister is giving a lesson". Believe me, you would not again transgress to avoid such an ordeal.]

“It was not considered odd to suggest to one’s friends, after drinking the government-provided milk, that we should go into the chapel for a few minutes”, wrote one woman. Another wistfully mentioned her memories of “the glorious Latin language and plainchant music of the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei of a sung Mass.”

Reading these memories it is clear that it is a matter of regret that this world has gone for good. Such lives of generosity and self-sacrifice, with the example they offer, are irreplaceable. “Nuns in general have been seriously underrated”, wrote one woman. I heartily concur.

June 27, 2017 headlines

Canon212.com


PewSitter

After the Academy for Life,
the JPII Institute for Family Studies
gets a new face under Bergoglio
[In both cases, the face is embodied in Mons. Paglia]

June 28, 2017

After every prospective member is carefully sifted [for ideological appropriateness, one supposes], the new members of the Pontifical Academy for Life appointed on June 13 by Pope Francis have new surprises in store every day.

The same thing is going on at the Lateran University-based John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family - like the Academy for Life, assigned by this pope to be under the supervision of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia.

At the Academy, the first big uproar was over the appointment of the Anglican moral theologian Nigel Biggar, who openly advocates abortion
up to “18 weeks after conception.”

Asked to comment on this appointment by Vatican Insider, Mons. Paglia sought to justify the appointment by asserting that Biggar - apart from words he exchanged in 2011 with the staunchly pro-abortion philosopher Peter Singer - “has never written anything on the issue of abortion” and that on the end of life “he has a position absolutely in keeping with the Catholic one.”

But it didn’t take much to discover that neither statement corresponds to the truth, and that Biggar has expressed his liberal positions on abortion in a 2015 article for the Journal of Medical Ethics, and on euthanasia in his 2004 book Aiming To Kill. The Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia. [Is there any other way to put it? Lying has become SOP for Bergoglians starting with the founder himself!]

Then it was noted that other new members of the academy are rather far from the Church’s positions:
- Katarina Le Blanc of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, who uses stem cells taken from human embryos fertilized in vitro;
- Japanese Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka, who in spite of his fame for producing pluripotent stem cells artificially has by no means ruled out continued research on the use of embryonic stem cells, and explains why in an article in the scientific journal Cell & Stem Cell.
- the Israeli Jew Avraham Steinberg, who admits abortion should be allowed in some cases and who approves of the destruction of 'unwanted' human embryos for scientific use;
- Maurizio Chiodi, a leading Italian moral theologian, who in his book Ethics of life makes allowances for artificial reproduction, if it is supported by an “intention of fertility.”
[But what other intention is there for artificial reproduction??? To create embryos that can be destroyed for scientific research? How diabolically monstrous is that!]

Meanwhile, as at the Academy, the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family is also about to get new statutes, via papal chirograph.

First of all, the name of the institute will be changed, dropping the name of the Pope who created it, [Who would have thought any pope would have the shameless chutzpah to do this???] but will be called “Institute of Studies on the Family” or something similar, and will be incorporated within the Pontifical Lateran University under the direct authority of its current rector, Bishop Enrico dal Covolo.

The proponents of the new course are justifying this loss of autonomy for the institute saying it would reinforce the value of the graduate degrees in moral theology, doctorates, and master’s degrees that it confers, and that it would be able to expand its curriculum by integrating it with that of the university and extending its international scope.

But apart from the fact that the John Paul II Institute already has numerous branches in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia, one initial practical effect of this change will be that its faculty can be reshaped at will, bringing in new professors and new scholars from the Lateran University and from other universities, pontifical or not.

This would suffice to get around the wall of doctrinal discipline erected by its current professors, almost all of them united in holding firm to the course of John Paul II and the institute’s first three presidents: Carlo Caffarra, Angelo Scola, and Livio Melina.

Melina was removed last summer and replaced with the Milanese theologian PierAngelo Sequeri, contextually with the appointment of Archbishop Paglia as Grand Chancellor of the institute. Scola, who went on to become cardinal, then Patriarch of Venice and currently archbishop of Milan, was the big loser to Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the conclave of 2013.

Caffarra, who also became a cardinal and is now archbishop emeritus of Bologna, is known for his frankness of speech toward Pope Francis. He is, of course, one of the four cardinals who have publicly asked him to bring clarity on the “dubia” generated by his magisterium specifically on the subject of marriage and family, and have recently written to him asking to be received in audience. In both cases without the pope dignifying them with a reply.

One example of the Wojtylian course inherited from the previous management and along which the present group of professors continue is the “Handbook” on the interpretation of “Amoris Laetitia” edited by professors José Granados, Stephan Kampowski, and Juan José Pérez-Soba, in complete continuity with the preceding magisterium of the Church.

But the first changes of allegiance are showing up, too. The most sensational is that of Gilfredo Marengo, since 2013 a professor of theological anthropology at the institute. He was one of Scola’s favorite disciples when he was president, and even afterward, but now he has cast his lot with Mons. Paglia.

It is not by chance that Marengo has been made coordinator of the commission (which includes Institute president Sequeri) that is supposed to open the way to a reinterpretation of Paul VI’s encyclical on contraception, Humanae Vitae, in the light of “Amoris Laetitia.” [The horror, the horror! The hubris, the hubris!]

It remains to be seen what will happen with the satellites of the institute, which are also hardly inclined to submit to the new course. The most powerful is that of Washington, with a pugnacious faculty wholly on the Wojtylian course and well financed by the Knights of Columbus, whose supreme head, Carl Anderson, is also professor and vice-president there.

In any case, the students and professors still at the John Paul II Institute are forging ahead, without giving up.

In the next issue of the Institute’s magazine, Anthropotes, there will be an article by a doctoral student from Milan, Alberto Frigerio, presenting a thorough critique of the book [B]“Amoris laetitia: a turning point for moral theology” [A Satanic turning-point, indeed!] edited by Stephan Goertz and Caroline Witting, published in Italy by San Paolo, and which expresses the most progressive positions of German theology.

It was with none other than the most noted 'moral theologian' of Germany today, Eberhard Schockenhoff – author of a recent essay in Stimmen der Zeit that made a big stir - that dismissed Institute president Livio Melina crossed swords during a conference in Nysa, Silesia, for a hundred Polish moral theologians, in the presence of two auxiliary bishops from Poznan and Lublin.

The episcopal conference of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden asked him to lecture during a day of study on “Amoris Laetitia” held in Hamburg two months ago.

In Poland, Melina contradicted the positions of Schockenhoff point by point, demonstrating the baselessness of the presumed “paradigm shift” that many associate with the magisterium of Pope Francis. And the bishops of Poland, in their guidelines for the application of “Amoris Laetitia,” completely agree with him.

Melina’s talk, given on June 12, will also be published in the next issue of Anthropotes, with the title: “The challenges of ‘Amoris laetitia’ for a moral theologian.”

Benedict XVI receives the new cardinals
and speaks with them in various languages

2017-06-28

After formally creating them cardinals, Pope Francis accompanied the five new 'Princes of the Church' in a visit to a very special Vatican tenant, Pope Benedict XVI, who took off his zucchetto when he saw his successor.

The cardinal of Laos was first to present himself, and spoke to the pope emeritus in French.

Benedict XVI met the five new cardinals and spoke with all of them in their native tongue, demonstrating once again his capacity for languages.

For example, he spoke Spanish with the cardinals from Spain and El Salvador. Monsignor Juan Jose Omella told him about the Holy Family, a temple that Benedict XVI consecrated during his visit to Barcelona.

"Next Sunday we will start Mass every Sunday in the basilica."

He also spoke French with the cardinal of Mali. Then, the pope emeritus addressed the new cardinals with a few words and left them this message. "The Lord wins in the end. Thank you all.”

Before leaving, Benedict XVI, along with Pope Francis, imparted a blessing to the five new cardinals.


This is the second time that the reigning pope accompanies his new cardinals to meet the Emeritus Pope, and while we can all consider it as a thoughtful gesture because Benedict XVI has been unable to attend these last two consistories, you will forgive me some cynicism in thinking that by bringing his new cardinals to the emeritus, the current pope thereby seeks to imply acceptance and approval by his predecessor of his choices, or at the very least, to associate them with him.

Not that it is for the Emeritus to do that at all, but he is being so skillfully and calculatedly co-opted by Bergoglio in many significant ways that make me increasingly think of B16 as a prisoner of the Bergoglio Vatican.

If it had been a 'normal' occasion at all, I would have expected B16 to remark to the new cardinals that the last time a pope named only five cardinals at a consistory was when Paul VI named him, Joseph Ratzinger, along with four others, in June 1977, 40 years ago, in what was to be Paul VI's last consistory.

June 28, 2017 headlines

PewSitter


Canon212.com

So the Aussie police have finally filed charges
Australian Catholic Church says
Cardinal Pell 'strenuously denies'
sexual assault charges


SYDNEY, June 28, 2017 (reuters)- The Catholic Church in Australia said on Thursday Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican treasurer, "strenuously denies" multiple sexual assault offenses brought against him by Australian police.

"Cardinal Pell will return to Australia, as soon as possible, to clear his name following advice and approval by his doctors who will also advise on his travel arrangements," the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney said in a statement.

"He said he is looking forward to his day in court and will defend the charges vigorously," it said.

Australian police charged Pell by summons on Thursday to appear before Melbourne Magistrates Court on July 18.

SYDNEY, June 28, 2017 (Reuters) - Australian police said on Thursday they have charged the Vatican's treasurer, Australian Cardinal George Pell, with multiple sexual assault offences.

"Cardinal Pell is facing multiple charges in respect of historic sexual offences," Victoria state police deputy commissioner Shane Patton told a news conference in Melbourne.

"There are multiple complainants relating to those charges," he said. Pell was charged by summons to appear before Melbourne Magistrates Court on July 18, Patton said.

I pray the cardinal will be able to clear himself of all charges. Even if he has been not too kind and loyal to Benedict XVI since the renunciation, he has managed to remain orthodox in his positions and statements on the faith.

US Supreme Court decides 7-2
for religious liberty
by THOMAS ASCIK

June 28, 2017

In its decision in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer this week, the Supreme Court took another significant step in furthering its contemporary jurisprudence emphasizing the free exercise of religion.

Trinity Lutheran Church operates a daycare and early-learning center on its church property in Boone County, Missouri. The church explicitly states that its early learning program is one of its ministries, and that it includes “daily religion … activities” according to “a Christian world view.” The church applied to a program of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources for a grant to repave its playground with recycled automobile tires.

Denying the grant solely because the applicant was a church, the state of Missouri cited a section of the Missouri constitution which provides: “That no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion, or in aid of any priest, preacher, minister or teacher thereof, as such; and that no preference shall be given to nor any discrimination made against any church, sect or creed of religion, or any form of religious faith or worship.”

According to the decision of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against the church, that section was placed in the Missouri state Constitution in 1870. And although neither the Eighth Circuit nor the Supreme Court elaborated, it is one of the explicitly anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments that swept the country in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century and which still exist in the constitutions of many other states. As the Eighth Circuit did acknowledge, Missouri has maintained not just a wall of separation between church and state but a “very high wall,” and its state constitution is “more restrictive than the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution.”

By a 7-2 margin, with only Justices Sotomayer and Ginsburg dissenting, the Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, ruled in favor of Trinity Lutheran.

As a preliminary matter, the Court noted a remarkable and perhaps historic element of the case, namely, that the two parties, the church and the state of Missouri, had agreed that the state could have decided to fund the playground on an equal basis with other applicants. Therefore, there was no Establishment Clause issue.

This agreement of the parties as well as seven justices of the Court is remarkable because during the approximately forty years after the seminal “wall of separation” case, Everson v. Board of Education in 1947, the state of Missouri could have been confident that Supreme Court jurisprudence would have allowed it to contend that the Establishment Clause simply forbade it to fund a religious entity.

But in this case which commenced in 2013, the only question before the Court was under the Free Exercise Clause. Did the rejection of the church’s application solely on the basis of religion cause an injury to the church’s free exercise of religion?

The most important precedent that the Court relied upon was its decision in Church of Lukumi Babala v. City of Hialeah (1993) in which it ruled that a city’s prohibition of animal sacrifice violated the precepts and prevented the free exercise of the Santera religion. That was one of the more recent cases that changed the tone and direction of the Supreme Court’s religion-clauses jurisprudence. It has been and continues to be a landmark for its holding that “the Free Exercise Clause protects religious observers against unequal treatment.” [How ironic that in matters that can be litigated, this is so, but that in practice today, and in the most mundane matters, Catholics are the most unequally treated among the USA's faith groups simply because they are Catholics. And Christians in general find themselves constantly being demeaned by increasingly strident protests against the very 'Christ' in 'Christmas', never mind that secular USA generates its greatest commercial profits out of the celebration of CHRISTmas!]

Applying the same principle to Trinity Lutheran, the Court ruled that a government program cannot require a church “to renounce its religious character in order to participate in an otherwise generally available public benefit program for which it is fully qualified.”

The majority also had to deal with the case of Locke v. Davey (2004), especially as an answer to the sharp dissent of Justice Sotomayer joined by Justice Ginsburg. In Locke, the Supreme Court upheld a prohibition by the state of Washington excluding theology majors from a state college scholarship program.

Comparing Locke to the present case, Chief Justice Roberts argued that the theology-major plaintiff in Locke was denied funding for what he planned “to do,” while the Trinity Lutheran playground was discriminated against for “what it is — a church.”

The state of Washington had excluded a category of major instruction, theology, from funding but had not forced students to choose between their religious beliefs and the scholarships, Roberts said. In fact, the state scholarships could be used at religious colleges and could be used to enroll in religious courses at secular or religious colleges.

This line of reasoning was not enough for Justice Sotomayer who maintained that there was little difference between funding the education of religious leaders and funding one of the ministries, playgrounds, of churches. Additionally, Justice Sotomayer strongly maintained that this should have been an Establishment Clause case: “constitutional questions are decided by this Court, not the parties’ concessions.”

There have now been four cases since 2012 in which the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of religious liberty.
- In probably the most important of those cases, Hosanna Tabor (2012), the Court unanimously held that federal disability law could not interfere in hiring decisions of a Lutheran church and its school.
- And in the Hobby Lobby (2014) decision and the remand of the Little Sisters of the Poor case (2016) to the lower courts, the Supreme Court effectively ruled that Christian people must be allowed to live their faith all the time, including in business, not just on Sunday morning.

The federal government was not involved in the Trinity Lutheran case. It was very much involved in the other three cases, which were major losses by the Obama administration in its campaign to restrict religious liberty.

And combatting this 'gay creep'...

Milan faithful to have a procession rally
and prayers tomorrow in reparation for Gay Pride
Other Italian cities have been doing this recently
Translated from

June 28, 2017

In Milan tomorrow, there will be a procession and prayer rally in reparation for the Gay Pride event that took place on June 24 in that city.

As in Reggio Emilia, Pavia, Varese and other cities before this, the lay faithful – lay, mind you! – of Milan have mobilized to publicly comply with an ancient and traditional Christian gesture of reparation: namely, to ask pardon from God for the ostentatious support and proud affirmation in our day of an act that the Church has always considered sinful – sodomy [which just happens to be the most obvious homosexual practice in the catalog and which derives its name precisely from the major sin of perversion and unchasteness for which God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah].

Yet at the very least, one would think that this could be and should be a concern for priests. But it evidently is not so. Of course, there are still priests like don Giuseppe Virgilio of Sassari who wrote his mayor – in the face of his bishop’s silence – to protest that Vladimiro ‘Luxuria’ Guadagno had obtained a permit to present his book on homosexuality at the piazza facing Virgilio’s church.

Was it a provocation or a mere happenstance? We don’t know, but nonetheless, the priest was right to protest the location approved for an offend that should offend the sensibility of Catholics who are serious about following Church teaching.

The Church hierarchy in Italy has chosen to be silent in recent years and not to distance the Church officially from ‘spontaneous’ manifestations like Gay Pride parades. Here are some reflections by Paolo Deotto on the Milan ‘gay pride’ event from the blog site Riscossa Cristiana:

---

Recently, speaking with persons whose faith I should not rightfully doubt, I have heard statements that have struck me because they demonstrate how a strident (un)culture displayed incessantly can contaminate minds and lead them to forget what is essential.

They were speaking of the procession that will be held on June 29 in Milano in reparation for the Gay Pride event that took place earlier this week in the city of St. Ambrose. There were those who expressed their doubts about the ‘timeliness’ and ‘appropriateness’ of this pray because “people today no longer understand about reparation”.

[How Bergoglian that in the centenary of the Fatima apparitions, ‘reparation’ which was such a key element of Our Lady’s message is considered as something that ‘people no longer understand’. It is all a piece of course with the Bergoglian mercy myth which is all about mercy without justice, forgiveness without reparation, confession without firm purpose of amendment, communion even if not in a state of grace – from a pope who said in Fatima that the main message of Our Lady was ‘peace’ and never once mentioned her refrain of ‘penance, penance, penance’, nor that the prayers and devotions she urged on the faithful were to be in reparation for the sins of the world.]

Some said that perhaps we ought to think of an ill-defined ‘something else’ that would attract the interest and attention of more people [the way the modern world seems obsessed by sexuality as the defining element of a human being].

So people no longer understand certain things that ought to be be [and used to be] second nature to Catholics?Probably so, since the official structures of the ‘new church’ under Bergoglio are in the service of the world, and it is a world that does not pray. The prince of this world is the devil, let us not forget. It is very probable that so many ‘good’ persons who devotedly never miss Sunday Mass are not even aware that there is such a thing as praying for reparation, because who has been speaking to them about it?

So, if ‘the people no longer understand’, it is all the more reason to pray in reparation for sins, to take part in a procession, to pray the Holy Rosary. And perhaps, clueless Catholics may start to see gestures which, since there was a visible Catholic Church, were commonly known and practised.

The example was first set in Reggio Emilia where many people were amazed at a procession held in reparation for Gay Pride, and yet many, after their initial surprise, joined the procession or made the sign of the Cross as it passed by them.

---

The reasoning behind the practice is logical. Christians can and should pray to ask forgiveness for a sin that is most clearly an offense to God. But we still have to see whether sodomy continues to be considered a sin by ‘the church today’. Certainly, it is not a novelty, considering the origin of the term. It is not something brought about or discovered by modernity, because since Biblical times, it has been condemned, as Christianity has done.

Jesus spoke of Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of maximum evil – the destruction of those cities was cited four times by him as an example of punishment for those who persist obstinately in sin (Mt 10,15 and 11,24; Lk 10,12 and 17,29).

St. Paul said very clearly that sodomites – and other kindred sinners – will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet today we have a prominent American Jesuit who was appointed by the pope for whatever reason to be a consultant on the communications policy of the Vatican, who sent his best wishes to Italian LGBTQs for their Gay Pride parade. (Clement XIV, where are you?)[The pope who suppressed the Jesuit order in the late 18th century].

Apropos... Here is one upright US Catholic bishop who talks the talk and walks the walk that he should...

Bishop Paprocki responds to controversy
and criticisms over his decree on SSM
'All those who have sexual relations outside of valid marriage, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual,
should not receive Holy Communion unless they repent, go to confession and amend their lives.'
Interview by Jim Graves

June 28, 2017

On June 12, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, issued a decree regarding same-sex “marriage” (SSM) and “related pastoral issues”. In it, he reaffirmed traditional Catholic teaching that marriage can only be “a covenant between one man and one woman …” and promulgated diocesan norms relating to SSM.

Norms included that
- No member of the diocesan clergy or staff is allowed to participate in a SSM service in any way, nor is church property to be used for SSM services or receptions.
- Persons in SSM relationships may not receive Holy Communion, and when in danger of death, persons in SSM relationships may not receive Holy Communion in the form of Viaticum unless they express repentance for their lifestyle.
- Additionally, persons in SSM relationships may not receive a Catholic funeral unless they offered some signs of repentance before their death, nor may they serve as lectors or extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion at Mass.
- Children of parents in SSM relationships may receive the sacraments and attend Catholic schools; however, such parents should be aware that their children will be instructed in the fullness of Catholic teaching.

In a follow-up statement released June 23rd, Bishop Paprocki added that “the Church has not only the authority, but the serious obligation to affirm its authentic teaching on marriage and to preserve and foster the sacred value of the married state.”

While the decree was applauded by some Catholic commentators and pundits, it drew vehement criticism from others.
- Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter said that the bishop should be “sacked,” and that the decree is “so completely at odds with the direction Pope Francis is trying to take the church.”
- Christopher Pett, the incoming President of DignityUSA, described the decree as “mean-spirited and hurtful in the extreme. It systematically and disdainfully disparages us and our relationships. It denies us the full participation in the life of our Church to which we are entitled by our baptism and our creation in God’s image.”
- Fr. James Martin, SJ, who frequently comments on issues related to same-sex attraction, complained, “To focus only on LGBT people, without a similar focus on the moral and sexual behavior of straight people is, in the words of the Catechism, a ‘sign of unjust discrimination’ (2358).”

Bishop Paprocki spoke with CWR about his recent decree and the controversy that has followed.

What prompted you to issue this decree on issues related to same-sex “marriage”?
These norms regarding same-sex “marriage” and related pastoral issues were prompted by changes in the law and in our culture regarding these issues. Jesus Christ Himself affirmed the privileged place of marriage in human and Christian society by raising it to the dignity of a sacrament. Consequently, the Church has not only the authority, but the serious obligation, to affirm its authentic teaching on marriage and to preserve and foster the sacred value of the married state.

Have you been surprised at the extensive national media coverage it has received?
Yes, to the extent that the decree is a rather straightforward application of existing Church teaching and canon law. The Catholic Church has been very clear for two thousand years that we do not accept same-sex “marriage,” yet many people seem to think that the Church must simply cave in to the popular culture now that same-sex “marriage” has been declared legal in civil law.

From a pastor’s perspective, it is quite troubling to see that so many Catholics have apparently accepted the politically correct view of same-sex “marriage.” This just shows how much work needs to be done to provide solid formation about the Catholic understanding of marriage.

Fr. James Martin, SJ, has complained (on his Facebook page) that this decree is “discrimination” against people with same-sex attraction because it does not include heterosexuals who commit sin or non-sexual sins. Additionally, relating to people in same-sex “marriages” receiving Holy Communion, he recently told The New York Times, “Pretty much everyone’s lifestyle is immoral.” How do you respond?
Father Martin gets a lot wrong in those remarks. Everyone is a sinner, but not everyone is living an immoral lifestyle. Since we are all sinners, we are all called to conversion and repentance.

He misses the key phrase in the decree that ecclesiastical funeral rites are to be denied to persons in same-sex “marriages” “unless they have given some signs of repentance be­fore their death.” This is a direct quote from canon 1184 of the Code of Canon Law, which is intended as a call to repentance.

Jesus began his public ministry proclaiming the Gospel of God with these words: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Applying this biblical teaching to the specific issue of funeral rites, people who had lived openly in same-sex “marriage,” like other manifest sinners that give public scandal, can receive ecclesiastical funeral rites if they have given some signs of repentance before their death.

Father Martin’s comments do raise an important point with regard to other situations of grave sin and the reception of Holy Communion. He is right that the Church’s teaching does not apply only to people in same-sex “marriages.”

According to canon 916, all those who are “conscious of grave sin” are not to receive Holy Communion without previous sacramental confession. This is normally not a question of denying Holy Communion, but of people themselves refraining from Holy Communion if they are “conscious of grave sin.” While no one can know one’s subjective sinfulness before God, the Church can and must teach about the objective realities of grave sin.

Speaking objectively, one can say, for example, that all those who have sexual relations outside of valid marriage, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual, should not receive Holy Communion unless they repent, go to confession and amend their lives. This includes the divorced and remarried without an annulment, as is well known from all the recent media attention on that issue.

Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director of New Ways Ministry, said that the decree will drive people with same-sex attraction away from the Church. What is your response?
The real issue is not how many people will come to church, but how to become holy, how to become a saint. The Church is a means on the path to holiness. [But in the church f Bergoglio, no one is asked - or expected - to go beyond his 'comfort level': In the church of Nice and Easy, do as you please, and there is no incentive to be holy because that would be to aim for an ideal, which, vide Bergoglio and Kasper, is just too much to ask of anyone! You will be fine if you just do what you can!] ]

Jesus teaches us how to be holy, but not everyone accepted His teaching, for example, the rich young man who walked away from Jesus sadly because he did not want to sell his possessions to follow Jesus (Matthew 19:16-22). People are free to accept or reject Church teaching, as they are free to accept or reject Jesus Himself. It is disappointing when people leave the Church, just as it surely must have been disappointing for Jesus when people walked away from Him.

When you read the press coverage relating to the decree, are there any common misunderstandings or misinterpretations you see?
A lot of people seem to have missed the whole point of the call to repentance and conversion. They seem to think that the decree is a blanket condemnation of people who are gay and lesbian. It is not.

My decree does not focus on “LGBT people,” but on so-called same-sex “marriage,” which is a public legal status. No one is ever denied the sacraments or Christian burial for simply having a homosexual orientation. Even someone who had entered into a same-sex “marriage” can receive the sacraments and be given ecclesiastical funeral rites if he repents and renounces that “marriage.”

What comments are you receiving privately about the decree? Have any of your fellow diocesan bishops spoken to you privately about it (if so, what are they saying)?
I have received many supportive comments and assurances of prayer.

What reaction have you received from your diocesan priests? My first reaction is that many must be grateful that you have taken the heat off them. For example, should a person in a same-sex “marriage” come for Holy Communion or asking for a Catholic funeral for a recently deceased (and unrepentant) lover, the priest can simply say, “I’m sorry, I work under the authority of the diocese and its bishop, and diocesan regulations do not permit me to do that.”
I have received positive reactions from my priests for the clarity of the Church’s teaching and expressions of gratitude for providing guidance regarding how to respond to such situations as they may arise.

Do you believe other dioceses will issue similar decrees?
I believe some already have, but for whatever reason they did not receive much, if any, publicity.

Has the negative press on this issue been difficult for you personally, or have you come to see that it goes with the office you hold?
I’ll take my cue on that question from my patron saint, Sir Thomas More, who said, “I do not care very much what men say of me, provided that God approves of me.”

Any other thoughts?
Gay activists have harassed my staff and me with obscene telephone calls, e-mail messages and letters using foul language and profanity, supposedly in the name of love and tolerance. I am sorry that people around me have been subjected to such hateful and malicious language.

Is there anything you’d like to see Catholics who support the decision do to help?
Please pray for the conversion of sinners. [And that, Padre Jorge, is one way of internalizing the message of Fatima. Prayers in reparation of sin are also prayers for the conversion of sinners, starting with our own selves.]

Meanwhile, let us thank God that the reigning pope has apparently done right this time and corrected himself about the leniency he gave to a sex-abusive Italian priest who was laicized by Benedict XVI in a decision Bergoglio revoked - but the priest underwent a second trial last year and was found guilty again of sex abuse charges...

Pope Francis laicises abuser priest
he had earlier reinstated from
his laicization by Benedict XVI

28 June 2017

Pope Francis has laicised Fr Mauro Inzoli, a priest convicted of the sexual abuse of young people.

La Stampa reports that the Pope has reduced Fr Inzoli to the lay state, after the priest’s second Church trial[??? No, it was an Italian criminal trial.]

Fr Inzoli had been convicted before, and Pope Benedict XVI had laicised him. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had recommended that Benedict’s sentence be upheld. But Pope Francis, as with some other cases, preferred a more lenient sentence, and allowed Fr Inzoli to return to priestly status. In 2015, the priest attended an Italian conference on the family.

Fr Inzoli had been convicted of abusing five boys aged from 12 to 16, between the years of 2004 and 2008. His expensive lifestyle had also earned him the nickname “Don Mercedes”.

The only surprise here is to finally get some numbers... These are dismaying indices of secularization.

Nearly two thirds of UK Catholics
support abortion, more approve of SS relations and
even more, of premarital sex, survey suggests

28 Jun 2017

A record percentage of Catholics support abortion, same-sex marriage and premarital sex, according to the latest British Social Attitudes survey.

The annual poll by NatCen Social Research found over three fifths of Catholics think a woman should be able to have an abortion if she simply does not want to have the baby.

Meanwhile, 62 per cent of Catholics now believe same-sex relationships are “not wrong at all”, while more than three quarters see nothing wrong with pre-marital sex.

A higher percentage of Catholics than Anglicans now approve of homosexual relationships and sex before marriage, according to the survey.

The findings, if true, will come as a blow the Church hierarchy in Britain, suggesting they are fighting a losing battle in educating Catholics in the key moral teachings of the faith.

However, the report itself urges readers to be careful with the data, saying “small sample sizes mean caution should be used when looking at figures for the Roman Catholic group in 2012 and 2016”.

The total number of Catholics surveyed is 260, compared to 442 Anglicans and 1,551 of no religion.

Meanwhile, the definition of “Catholic” is also based on respondents who choose to describe themselves as such, and does not take into account how religiously observant – how often they attend Mass etc – they really are.

BSA data previously hit the headlines when an analysis by the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society found only 17.1 per cent of cradle Catholics attended Mass at least once a week, although 55.8 per cent still identify as Catholic.

The centre’s director Dr Stephen Bullivant told the Catholic Herald: “However depressing our retention stats are, they’re actually the strongest of the main denominations. To put it a bit crudely, it’s a losing game for everyone, but we’re doing something less catastrophic than others.”