Abp Chaput calls on pope
to cancel synod on 'youth'
in light of abuse crisis
by Maike Hickson
August 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia told a conference that had met to discuss the “young people” of the Church that in light of the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church he had written to Pope Francis asking him to cancel the upcoming Youth Synod set to take place in Rome.
“The bishops would have absolutely no credibility” in the upcoming Youth Synod, Chaput told the Cardinal’s Forum, an annual gathering to provide academic formation of seminarians and continuing education for lay people, yesterday. The synod's planned dates are set for October 3-28, 2018.
The August 30 panel discussion, which took place at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, was on the topic of “Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment.” Some 300 participated in the event.
Archbishop Chaput said the Youth Synod should be canceled.
“I have written the Holy Father and called on him to cancel the upcoming synod on young people. Right now, the bishops would have absolutely no credibility in addressing this topic,” he said.
Instead of having a youth synod, the Archbishop proposed that a synod should be held to address the topic of the bishops themselves. “I have called on him (Pope Francis), in its place, to begin making plans for a synod on the life of bishops,” he said.
Chaput's call for a synod on bishops reflects a similar call by Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth, England.
Egan has also written to Pope Francis asking for an "extraordinary synod" on priestly life so as to deal with the "clerical sex abuse" crisis.
“I suggest the Synod be devoted to the identity of being a priest/bishop, to devising guidance on life-style and supports for celibacy, to proposing a rule of life for priests/bishops and to establishing appropriate forms of priestly/episcopal accountability and supervision,” Egan wrote in the letter that he made public.
Archbishop Chaput’s call for the youth synod to be canceled comes at a time when accusations of clergy-abuse cover-up plague top leaders within the Church, including Pope Francis. Last week, Archbishop Viganó release a detailed testimony in which he claimed that Pope Francis covered up for now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick despite having been given information that the Cardinal was a serial abuser who preyed on seminarians.
A working document for the upcoming Synod on Youth released in March — allegedly drafted by young people — stated that Catholic teaching on “contraception, abortion, homosexuality, cohabitation” is “especially controversial” and that “they may want the Church to change her teaching.”
Faithful Catholics have raised concern that just as the two Synods on the Family were used by key figures within the Church to undermine the Church’s teaching on marriage and the Eucharist, so too do they fear that the Youth Synod will have an analogous agenda
[this time, focused on 'normalizing' deviant sexual lifestyles in keeping with the obvious agenda of Bergoglio-agreeing-with-the-world].
Of course, Abp Chaput and Abp Egan both know their appeal will change nothing, and this 'youth synod' will take place as programmed. Because
1) the Bergoglio Vatican staunchly proclaims that Bergoglio will say and do nothing more about the abuse scandal than the 'letter to the people of God' he wrote four days after the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report and which, according to the Vatican, was 'exhaustive'.
2) two of Bergoglio's mini-me's - Cardinals Parolin and Cupich - have said, respectively, that [ "Certainly, the situation is not worrying at all", following the Vigano expose; and "This is not some massive, massive crisis" following the McCarrick exposes and on the eve of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report which Wuerl knew would implicate him 'massively'.
3) cancelling the 'youth synod' would mean acknowledging a crisis they willfully indulge in a lunatic denial of reality.
4) Bergoglio cannot afford to delay his program of 'merciful inclusiveness' to normalize sexual deviancy ASAP.
Slowly, and one by one, some bishops are coming out to demand action by the pope for a public investigation of the McCarrick abuses and of the many plausible allegations made by Mons Vigano.
Bishop of Charleston, SC, writes papal nuncio
urging him to encourage the pope to answer
the Vigano allegations directly
CATHOLIC MISCELLANY
August 31, 2018
His Excellency Christophe Pierre
Nuncio, Apostolic Nunciature
Dear Archbishop Pierre,
Our Church is in crisis and as the leader of the Catholic faithful in the State of South Carolina, I write with urgency to express my sentiments and echo those of the people in my care. We feel betrayed, angry and misled.
Something must be done now. I have several recommendations that support the statement from Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
- It is imperative that the Holy See take a leadership role in investigating the rise of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, despite the reported knowledge of his prior sexual misconduct and monetary settlements during his earlier diocesan assignments. It is absolutely necessary for all of us to know how and why this happened. Action must occur immediately and publicly.
- I, too, strongly support an investigation by the Holy See along with a national lay commission with its own authority to seek the truth about the statements made by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano.
These recent reports have triggered many different versions of what has actually happened - and it is necessary that the Holy Father respond to the allegations made by the Archbishop. Please encourage the Holy Father to address these allegations directly. This is in everyone’s best interest; lack of knowledge and uncertainty contribute to the confusion so much a part of our people’s lives today.
Our Church is called to be a beacon of light in the darkness. I ask that you be an ambassador of truth and assist in the securing of actionable change.
- Also, I wholeheartedly endorse every effort to reform and renew our initiatives to protect survivors in allowing the national review board to serve as an independent entity that will review allegations made against bishops. This work must be entrusted to the laity.
This time of scandal requires especially strong and courageous leadership. I pray that all bishops commit to a new era of transparency and action. We must dedicate ourselves to the healing of all whose faith has been undermined and work to do all we can to prevent such crimes from happening in the future.
Please know that I support all of your efforts to assist our Church here in the United States.
In the Lord’s Peace,
Most Reverend Robert E. Guglielmone
Bishop of Charleston
I have yet to post about a letter to Pope Francis from concerned Catholic women - it deserves a full reading - and an online petition requesting prayers and support for Abp Vigano. The letter to the pope will, of course, go into the same dead letter drawer at Casa Santa Marta along with the DUBIA and God knows how many online petitions - many of them signed by hundreds of thousands of Catholics - have been addressed to this pope over the past five and a half years to protest his anti-Catholic actions and statements.
Why in the name of God is media
protecting Pope Francis?
by Ben Shapiro
Editor-in-chief, DAILY WIRE
August 31, 2018
In 2003,
The Boston Globe won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on a massive sex abuse cover-up inside the Roman Catholic Church, led by the archdiocese of Boston. The Pulitzer board praised the newspaper’s “courageous, comprehensive coverage of sexual abuse by priests, an effort that pierced secrecy, stirred local, national and international reaction and produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church.” Hollywood made the Oscar-winning movie Spotlight about the effort.
In 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Vatican ambassador to the United States, released an 11-page memo alleging that Pope Francis and other top members of the Vatican had reinstated Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to a public position despite credible allegations of sexual abuse of seminarians and minors. The memo rocked the Catholic Church; Pope Francis has refused to comment; and other sources have come forward to back Vigano’s claims.
Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago made the near-unbelievable claim that
Pope Francis shouldn’t comment, since he has “a bigger agenda. He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.”
So, did the press leap to investigate Vigano’s claims? Did they demand answers from Pope Francis? Did we see the same type of courageous, comprehensive coverage of Francis’s activities [past and present] that we saw from the Globe team circa 2003? Of course not.
Instead, mainstream media outlets have gone out of their way to portray Vigano as a disgruntled conservative angry at Pope Francis’ progressive interpretation of Catholic doctrine. The New York Times headlined, “Vatican Power Struggle Bursts Into Open as Conservatives Pounce.” Their print headline was even worse:
“Francis Takes High Road As Conservatives Pounce, Taking Criticisms Public.”
Yes, according to the Times, the story wasn’t the sitting Pope being credibly accused of a sexual abuse cover-up — it was conservatives attacking him for it. The problem of child molestation and sexual abuse of clergy took a back seat to Francis’s leftist politics, as the Times piece made clear in its first paragraph:
“Since the start of his papacy, Francis has infuriated Catholic traditionalists as he tries to nurture a more welcoming church and shift it away from culture war issues, whether abortion or homosexuality. ‘Who am I to judge?’ the pope famously said, when asked about gay priests. Just how angry his political and doctrinal enemies are became clear this weekend…”
It wasn’t just the Times.
- On Wednesday, Reuters headlined,
“Defenders rally around pope, fear conservatives escalating war.”
- On Thursday, Reuters doubled down with this headline:
“Conservative media move to front line of battle to undermine Pope Francis.”
- The Telegraph (U.K.) reported,
“Vatican analysts say the attack appears to be part of a concerted effort by conservatives to oust Pope Francis, who they dislike for his relatively liberal views…”
But why in the name of God is calling on the Vatican not to defend sexual abusers a political issue for the press? Why isn’t this something we can all agree upon? Why aren’t the press asking the pope tough questions, instead of focusing on the supposed motivations of the whistleblowers?
The media’s disgraceful attempts to cover for Francis because of their love for his politics merely exposes the actual malign motivations of many in the media: they were happy to expose misconduct and evil inside the Catholic Church when the pope was a conservative; they’re happy to facilitate a cover-up when the pope is a liberal.
That’s vile. And
most Catholics understand that if the members of the media — an overwhelmingly secular group of people — are steadfastly defending a papacy accused of sexual abuse cover-ups, it’s not out of goodwill for the Church generally. It’s out of a belief that traditionalist doctrine must be rooted out at any cost, even including the abuse of minors and the violation of basic canon law.
The media’s coverage of the burgeoning potential cover-up scandal by Pope Francis and his associates doesn’t call conservative Catholics into question. I
t calls into question members of the media themselves, who seem eager to uncover wrongdoing only when it serves their political interests, and eager to subordinate the interests of the innocent to their political agenda when they must.
On the other hand, Steve Skojec at 1Peter5 may be seriously under-estimating the power of the media to impose their narrative of choice on their readers, and therefore on 'the world', which willy-nilly adapts whatever is the 'single idea'/aka ideology that the dominant culture chooses to push at any moment in the age of the Internet:
I don’t know how long they [the Bergogliac media] can keep this narrative. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse, and 2018 is a dangerous time to take the side of a predator, no matter their ideology. Just ask Harvey Weinstein.
[Surely, Skojec cannot think that Bergoglio as the highest-possible-profile advocate/leader of the current pagan, un-Christian, anti-Catholic dominant culture is as easily expendable and disposable to that culture as Harvey Weinstein was!]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/09/2018 05:40]