THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

Once more, I find I am completely unable to put myself in the shoes of those who call the shots at the Bergoglio Vatican. I fully expect the pope's internal (obviously handpicked)
investigators to shred into never-existence any documents that might tend to substantiate Mons. Vigano's claims about the McCarrick case. And that blame would be laid in spades
on John Paul II for having made McCarrick Archbishop of Washington and then cardinal, and on Benedict XVI for not having disclosed what he learned about McCarrick. But
certainly not that they would try to concretize the blame they assign to JPII by digging up what it seems they have dug up. Even if Church Militant is openly super-militant indeed
about exposing, reporting and investigating on the sexual abuse and cover-up aspects of THE PRESENT CRISIS in general, the details in this report are too many to suspect them of
making it all up...

October 10, 2018

Church Militant has learned that anti-Viganò forces in the Vatican are rigging the upcoming papal investigation into the McCarrick situation in an effort to shield the homosexual network in the Vatican.

The plan is to release a final report shifting as much blame as possible for McCarrick's rise to power onto Pope St. John Paul II.

The plan is to point to what will be called the undue influence on the pope of a longtime female friend, who herself had fallen victim to McCarrick's scheming, lavishing her with his charm and financial assistance, in an effort to gain her confidence.

In other words, the fix is in, and the final report will be nothing but a massive whitewash, misdirecting the public from Pope Francis's direct involvement to that of John Paul speculated involvement.

But that narrative deliberately masks and ignores one very important and influential person very close to John Paul, who has direct involvement in the promotion of McCarrick.

As a quick review, some 80 U.S. bishops have been calling for a thorough and independent investigation into McCarrick's rise following Abp. Carlo Viganò's bombshell testimony that Viganò himself, while acting as papal ambassador to the United States, had personally informed Pope Francis of McCarrick's homosexual predation of seminarians and priests as early as 2013, shortly after Francis was elected.

Pope Francis brushed off Viganò's warning as well as the restrictions placed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI. Francis then elevated McCarrick [for all intents and purposes] to the status of close of papal adviser.

When the small U.S. bishops' delegation led by Cdl. Daniel DiNardo finally got an audience with the Pope last month after waiting nearly a month, they asked Francis to launch a full investigation into McCarrick's situation as well as Viganò's charges of a homosexual network.

The Pope flatly refused.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, this past Saturday, news suddenly broke that the Pope had reversed course and was now authorizing an investigation.

Here is a key quote from that Vatican statement, "a thorough study of the entire documentation present in the Archives of the Dicasteries and Offices of the Holy See regarding the former Cardinal McCarrick."

But now Church Militant has learned from sources in both Rome and Poland who are all very close to the situation that part of the "entire documentation" to be examined by the Holy See is more than 30 years worth of private correspondence to Pope John Paul.

The letters themselves were, in the past, the source of speculation and controversy about the relationship between St. John Paul and the author of them, a longtime personal friend, the late Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, a Polish-born American philosopher who corresponded with the Holy Father throughout the course of their 32-year friendship.

The anti-Viganò Vatican operatives recently contacted the Polish National Archives in Warsaw and obtained the letters, a move that raised eyebrows with sources who immediately informed Church Militant.

In fact, there is now deep speculation that Pope Francis at first turned down last month's request of the DiNardo delegation for an investigation because details were still being worked out on how to make him appear as guiltless as possible.

The plan was hatched to try and pin it all on John Paul, and so the hunt was on for the letters to him from Tymieniecka, which were easily obtained and then scoured over. Once the letters were obtained, the approval was given for a go-ahead with the investigation whose outcome has already been determined, according to well-placed Church Militant sources. =

Those sources repeat and stress to Church Militant that the Vatican's goal in using the letters from Tymieniecka, is to lay as much blame as possible for the McCarrick scandal on the saintly pope.

It appears McCarrick had befriended Tymieniecka as soon as he discovered she was a close personal friend and had the Pope's ear, so he decided to launch a financial and charm offensive with her. Tymieniecka's letters to John Paul II are thought to have many glowing references to McCarrick who sought to ingratiate himself with her in hopes that she would speak favorably of him to the Holy Father.

The pre-determined outcome will then be presented as Tymieniecka clouded the judgment of Pope John Paul II, who then promoted McCarrick contrary to the evidence of his sordid behavior.

On the surface, scapegoating John Paul II may seem to have merit, as it was under John Paul II that then-Bp. McCarrick became archbishop of Washington, D.C. in November of 2000 and it was the same pope who made him a cardinal the following year in February of 2001.

However, again, according to sources, the whitewash investigation will leave out two very critical pieces of information.

Firstly, in 1991, the Holy Father was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and by 2000 he was becoming increasingly impaired.

That's an important point because, and this is the second point, as a result of his declining health, John Paul II had to rely ever more on his papal advisor, then-Msgr. Stanisław Dziwisz who was made bishop by John Paul in 1998 and a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006.

Multiple Vatican insiders knew that Dziwisz was the gatekeeper of all information going to Pope John Paul at the time, and was the power behind the throne, essentially, the de facto Pope.

[What follows seems to me openly slanderous unless CM has reasonable proof - other than long-circulated rumors - about what is alleged regarding Dsiwisz.]

It was Dziwisz, who had the complete trust and confidence of Pope John Paul, who multiple sources tell Church Militant he sold to the highest bidder.

Our sources tell us in fact that anyone who wanted to see the Pope had to pay Dziwisz $3,000 for him to arrange a private audience. It was passed off as a donation to the Holy See.

Sources tell Church Militant that Dziwisz was also regularly receiving large cash donations from McCarrick, who was infamous for regularly making quiet cash payments in envelopes to various members of the Curia during his multiple visits to Rome over the years.

Much of the secret cash payments made by McCarrick to Dziwisz were allegedly directed to the hospital that Dziwisz was building in Poland.

Further, our sources tell Church Militant that it was Dziwisz who called the D.C. nunciature in 2000 with the instructions to appoint McCarrick as its new archbishop in 2000.

Sources who were in the nunciature at the time that Dziwisz called and spoke with then-U.S. Nuncio Abp. Gabriel Montalvo, tell Church Militant Montalvo was greatly surprised by the request from Dziwisz.

[Will Cardinal Dziwisz reply to all the above??? It seems to elevate what was always on the level of rumor to fact. Though as we know from the McCarrick case, it could very well turn out to be so.]

Indeed, Abp. Viganò, who became nuncio in 2011, testified in August that Montalvo himself had urged Fr. Boniface Ramsey to blow the whistle on McCarrick the day after his appointment to D.C. — the very next day.

In his testimony, Viganò affirms that, "According to what Nuncio Pietro Sambi wrote, Father Boniface Ramsey, O.P.'s letter dated November 22, 2000, was written at the request of the late Nuncio Montalvo."

Viganò further relates the contents of Ramsey's letter to the Holy See.

In the letter, Father Ramsey, who had been a professor at the diocesan seminary in Newark from the end of the '80s until 1996, affirms that there was a recurring rumor in the seminary that the Archbishop "shared his bed with seminarians," inviting five at a time to spend the weekend with him at his beach house. And he added that he knew a certain number of seminarians, some of whom were later ordained priests for the Archdiocese of Newark, who had been invited to this beach house and had shared a bed with the Archbishop.

Viganò also notes that then-Vatican Secretary of State Cdl. Angelo Sodano never informed the nunciature in Washington of any measures taken by the Holy See following Ramsey's letter, leaving open the question, was anything ever done at all.

It should be noted here too that Sodano, along with Dziwisz, were the men in the Vatican most responsible for protecting the notorious Fr. Marcial Maciel, the now-disgraced homosexual predator and founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who many fault John Paul II with not censoring.

Sodano and Dziwisz continually shielded Maciel from a torrent of revelations about his degenerate lifestyle.

To that point, when Dziwisz was made a bishop in 1998, Maciel threw a grand party in Rome, thus opening speculation regarding one portion of the highly placed homosexual current within the Vatican itself - Maciel and McCarrick, both known sexual predators,s and both extremely friendly with Dziwisz and Sodano.

All these men were trusted by Pope John Paul and worked in concert with each other to present the best possible picture of each other to the sickly saint. In getting McCarrick appointed to Washington, not only did Dziwisz call Washington's nuncio, then-Abp. Montalvo, in D.C, but also personally contacted the Congregation for Bishops in Rome.

Church Militant has also confirmed that in the run-up to McCarrick's transfer from Newark to D.C., it was Dziwisz who picked up the telephone to tell the prefect of Bishops, then-Abp. Giovanni Battista Re, that "It would please the Holy Father" if McCarrick were to be translated from Newark to Washington.

Incidentally, Re, who initially opposed McCarrick's appointment to Washington in 2000 was made a cardinal along with McCarrick the following year in February of 2001.

John Paul has received a lot of criticism for his failure to act with regard to Maciel, who raped each of his own two illegitimate teenage sons — among many others, including multiple young children.

But what's important here is to note that the same dynamic was at play with McCarrick, which created a blind spot for John Paul. Homosexual predators aligned themselves with greedy powerbrokers in the Vatican and used their money and influence to buy protection and cover for their sexual evils.

Church Militant sources explicitly confirm the veracity of Viganò's statement that McCarrick had the "financial means to influence decisions."

So any final report of the investigation coming out from the anti-Viganò forces in the Vatican which tries to lay the blame for the McCarrick scandal at the feet of John Paul being unduly influenced by a longtime female friend will conveniently overlook and ignore the sinister activities of known homosexual predators and their allies very close to the Pope.

Our sources tell us any final report not revealing this bottom line will be a flat-out lie.

And here's a final note: There is a grave doubt whether St. John Paul was ever even told the truth about McCarrick. There is no doubt that Pope Francis was told, and revived his career anyway.


In the following article, which I post belatedly, Phil Lawler notes all the self-evident errors in the Vatican's two 'own goal' blunders recently regarding the McCarrick case, but has a very powerful concluding paragraph...

On McCarrick scandal,
Vatican responses are tardy
and not at all reassuring
By Phil Lawler

October 8, 2018

Finally there is some movement. This weekend the Vatican began responding to the dismay of the laity over the McCarrick scandal. The responses are certainly tardy, and still not terribly reassuring. But they are responses, at least; the “stonewall” approach is breaking down.

The first response, issued by the Vatican press office on October 6, was a notice that Pope Francis, “aware of and concerned by the confusion that these accusations are causing in the conscience of the faithful,” was taking further steps to investigate the scandal.

Confusion? Who is confused? The statement attributes the “confusion” to the “accusations regarding the conduct” of McCarrick. Actually there is very little confusion on that score; there is now a good deal of testimony about the former cardinal’s behavior. And the public responses to that testimony is not so much confusion as outrage: righteous anger.

If there is confusion about the case, it is due to the conflicting claims over how the Vatican responded to the revelations about McCarrick’s misconduct.
- The Vatican statement feeds any such confusion, by creating the impression that the problem first came to light a few short weeks ago.
- There is no acknowledgment that in fact the Vatican was made aware of McCarrick’s homosexual escapades at least 15 years ago.
- Nor is there an acknowledgment that before Pope Francis ordered McCarrick to remove himself from public life, Pope Benedict XVI had already issued the same sort of order, only to see it flouted by the American prelate and then (if Archbishop Vigano’s charge is accurate) rescinded by Pope Francis.

For that matter, the October 6 statement never mentions the basic complaint against McCarrick. The word “homosexual” does not appear. There are a few references to abuse and to cover-ups — and, in keeping with the current vogue [a 'vogue' initiated by this pope and parroted endlessly and mindlessly by his minions], to “clericalism” — but the word “homosexual” does not appear. So the statement immediately fails the test of candor.

The main thrust of the statement is the promise that Pope Francis has authorized a “further thorough study of the entire documentation present in the Archives of the Dicasteries and Offices of the Holy See regarding the former Cardinal McCarrick.” That is a small step in the right direction.
- But who will conduct this study?
- And when, and under what conditions?
- If the investigation will be done by the same people who are accused of covering up the evidence initially, lay Catholics have every right to remain “confused.”

Just two weeks earlier, we learned — by inference, not thanks to any forthright announcement — that Pope Francis had apparently declined a request from the American bishops for an apostolic visitation, a sort of investigation that would have carried the clout necessary to turn up all the available evidence.

Now we learn the Pope is due to meet with the leaders of the US bishops’ conference again this week. Could the October 6 statement indicate that he might reconsider the American request? That, too, would be a step in the right direction — particularly if, following the advice from the American contingent, he took some steps to ensure that the work was done by reliable, independent investigators. [Though it seems, from the Church Militant report above, that the change of heart may have come about because the pope's agents obtained the files of private correspondence between John Paul II and a Polish-American friend whom McCarrick apparently used shamelessly to gain traction with the Polish pope at the time of his first episcopal nomination to Newark. In other words, because Bergoglio now feels he can scapegoat the deceased and defenseless Wojtyla and distract attention from his failings in re McCarrick.]

A final observation about that October 6 statement: the Vatican warned that the results, when they are released, might show “that choices were taken that would not be consonant with a contemporary approach to such issues.”

On one level that is a considerable understatement; we already know that “choices were taken” (notice the passive voice, skirting the question of who made those choices) that were irresponsible and indefensible. But the reference to a “contemporary approach” is particularly noisome. Again there is a hint that until recently, Catholic bishops could not have been expected to know that the serial molestation of seminarians was a moral failing. St. Peter Damian (1007-1072) would disagree.

If there is a serious investigation into Vatican files pertaining to the McCarrick scandal, the bulk of the evidence would likely be found in the archives of the Congregation for Bishops. So it is noteworthy — and I wonder, is it coincidental? —t hat the second major Vatican announcement of the weekend came from the prefect of that dicastery, Cardinal Marc Ouellet.

And if the October 6 announcement left key questions unanswered, the Ouellet statement actually added to the “confusion” of the laity —that is, the mounting suspicion that the Vatican in general, and Pope Francis in particular, had handled the McCarrick affair very, very badly.

In a Wall Street Journal news story [that I could not post because the WSJ has a paywall,] Francis X. Rocca captured the essentials in his opening sentence:

---

A senior Vatican official on Sunday denounced what he called the “monstrous accusation” that Pope Francis ignored reports of sexual misconduct a favorite U.S. cardinal, but he also confirmed that the cardinal had already been under disciplinary measures when the pope took office.

---

Cardinal Ouellet was responding to a public challenge from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who had urged him to confirm that Pope Benedict XVI had imposed sanctions on McCarrick, ordering the American cardinal to withdraw from public life.

Although he denounced the Vigano testimony as “monstrous” and “blasphemous” and “extremely deplorable,” Cardinal Ouellet essentially confirmed the essential point that Archbishop Vigano had asked him to make.

On the surface, the Canadian cardinal seemed to deny that point, writing:

---

After re-examining the archives, I can ascertain that there are no corresponding documents signed by either Pope, neither is there a note of an audience with my predecessor, Cardinal Giovanni-Battista Re, giving Archbishop Emeritus McCarrick an obligatory mandate of silence and to retire to a private life, carrying canonical penalties.

---

However, a careful reading of that long sentence reveals that Cardinal Ouellet had inserted several conditions. The key question was whether or not McCarrick had been ordered out of public life. Whether such an order appeared over a papal signature, or carried formal canonical penalties: these were secondary issues.

As to the primary issue, Cardinal Ouellet allowed that McCarrick had been “strongly advised not to travel and not to appear in public.” The cardinal even admitted that he had told Archbishop Vigano that McCarrick “was supposed to obey certain conditions and restrictions.” So even if “sanctions” is not the proper term, there were restrictions in place.

Cardinal Ouellet then went on to deplore Archbishop Vigano’s complaint that McCarrick had remained in office, and even gained power and influence, long after charges against him had been brought to the attention of Vatican officials.

Cardinal Ouellet wrote that “at that time, unlike today, there was not sufficient proof of his alleged guilt.” In a revealing sentence, he continued, “It seems unjust to me to conclude that the persons in charge of the prior discernment are corrupt even though, in this concrete case, some suspicions provided by witnesses should have been further examined.”

Here Cardinal Ouellet betrayed the symptoms of the very problem that created this scandal. He acknowledged the existence of rumors about McCarrick, but argued that no action was required since there was no proof of the American prelate’s guilt.
- Wouldn’t a more responsible approach have been to investigate the rumors, to ascertain whether there was a cause for concern?
- How often have Vatican officials dismissed charges of clerical misconduct, classifying them as “rumors,” rather than taking them seriously? Has this lesson still not sunk in?

A charge, a report, or a rumor is not sufficient reason to dismiss a priest or a bishop. But a serious charge is sufficient reason to think twice about promoting that cleric. And when the reports multiply, as reports about McCarrick multiplied, that is ample reason to question whether the object of those charges should be given greater influence. T

hese questions were not raised, in McCarrick’s case, and that failure to respond to obvious signs of trouble is a sign of negligence — or something worse than negligence.

Cardinal Ouellet concluded his open letter with several paragraphs of fulsome, cloying praise of Pope Francis, paired with a round denunciation of Vigano’s “open and scandalous rebellion.”

It is remarkable that the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who in this very letter cautions against questioning the motivations of other bishops, does not hesitate to say that Archbishop Vigano is suffering from “bitterness and delusions” that have led him to inflict “a very painful wound on the Bride of Christ.”

Until very recently it was rare to see one bishop engage in such open criticism of another. No doubt Archbishop Vigano realized that he would be bringing such criticism on himself, when he dared to raise public questions about the leadership of Pope Francis.

But isn’t it revealing that the bishop who has become the target for the most vituperative public criticism is not the bishop who preyed on his seminarians, nor the bishop who used diocesan funds to pay for the silence of an old lover, nor any of the bishops who lied to aggrieved parents, but the one bishop who, by telling inconvenient truths, put himself outside the protection of the clerical club?

The following analysis that reveals the appallingly amoral and relativistic assumptions of the Bergoglio-Baldisseri 'working document' for the misnamed 'youth synod' was written by a man who holds a doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of America. He is the author of John Paul II on the Vulnerable (CUA Press, 2013). Some of his recent articles have appeared in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, and he posts others on his own website, trulycatholicmatters.com.

The synod's Instrumentum Laboris
promotes the ecclesial gay agenda
by JEFFREY TRANZILLO

October 9, 2018

There has been much commentary about Pope Francis’s self-imposed “silence” regarding Archbishop Carlo Viganò’s allegation that Francis had lifted Pope Benedict’s sanctions against sexual predator Theodore McCarrick, and then made the ex-cardinal a trusted—and very influential—advisor.

It might be, however, that Francis did, in fact, give a resounding —and contemptuous — reply to the allegation, just three days after its publication on August 25.

While perhaps merely a preplanned and ill-timed coincidence, the fact is that on August 28, the pope announced his naming of unabashedly pro-gay Cardinal Joseph Tobin, who heads the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, as a delegate to the synod on youth now taking place in Rome. Newark is ex-Cardinal McCarrick’s former diocese. Archbishop Viganò testified that McCarrick had helped orchestrate Tobin’s appointment there.

Only four months after taking charge of the Newark archdiocese in January 2017, Tobin allowed a gay pilgrimage, including Mass, to take place in the cathedral. While he could be on hand only to deliver the initial welcome, he nevertheless permitted the pilgrims, some of whom were “married” to same-sex “spouses,” to receive Holy Communion unconditionally.

Rather than encourage the openly gay and lesbian pilgrims to live chastely, Tobin thought it appropriate, on this occasion, simply to “call them who they were.” In other words, God made them that way. This is particularly significant relative to the youth synod, for it suggests that Tobin would have “affirmed” youth in the L, G, B, T, or other false identity that they might claim for themselves.

As it turns out, however, the cardinal has since requested, and been granted, a release from his obligation to attend the synod, for he has his hands full trying to control the fallout from the McCarrick scandal.

Regardless of whether the pope was intentionally signaling his contempt for Archbishop Viganò’s allegation by appointing Tobin as a delegate to the youth synod so soon after Viganò’s testimony appeared, it seems that the cardinal’s steadfast allegiance to the gay cause is what qualified him to serve in that capacity, if the other cardinals the pope has appointed to vote at the synod, to say nothing of some of the lay persons he invited to attend as collaborators and observers, serve as any indication.

It speaks volumes that Pope Francis has seen fit to augment, with numerous gay-friendly episcopal delegates of his own choosing, the number of bishops chosen by their own Bishops’ Conferences to represent them at the synod.
- So does the fact that the pope has, since the beginning of his pontificate, consistently surrounded himself with, and given high-profile appointments to, bishops and priests who are promoting the gay agenda.
- Also telling is the fact that Francis and his clerical retinue continue to lay the primary blame for clerical sexual abuse at the feet of clericalism, so as to deny its root in active homosexuality.

All this suggests that Francis has no intention of purifying the Church of sodomitic clergy, except when a high profile case, such as that of McCarrick, leaves him no choice but to act.

Indeed, Cardinal Müller recently confirmed what anonymous sources in the Vatican revealed, namely, that Francis blocked efforts by the CDF to laicize priests found guilty of sexual misconduct. It seems, rather, that the pope is determined to place his collaborators in positions that afford them strategic opportunities to promote the gay cause. The robber synods on the family held in 2014 and 2015 provided two such opportunities.

The youth synod seems to have been devised to provide another one. Its architects seem intent on realizing the infernal, subversive plan of the late Cardinal Carlo Martini, who dreamed of exploiting youth by organizing them into the revolutionary means by which to advance the gay agenda (among others) in the Church.

Let us consider how the Instrumentum Laboris (IL), or working document, for the youth synod embodies that plan. We will do well first to get an overall sense of the document’s deliberately skewed perspective.

The IL's subjectivism on young people
It follows the same, general pattern as Amoris Laetitia (AL), whose flawed and fuzzy teaching on conscience and discernment it presupposes and employs.
- Like AL, the IL presents a massive amount of information, in the midst of which its architects have buried land mines set to explode later on, so as to generate revolutionary changes in Church teaching and practice.
- The preponderance of data from sociology, psychology, and other social and human sciences is supposed to convince us that the IL lays out the “real,” empirically verifiable situations of contemporary young people, and that the cultural and anthropological problems they now face are so vast and unprecedented that the Church has to adopt wholly new ways of addressing them.

The other “incontestable” reality with which the document confronts us is that of everyday, human experience — the awareness and the understanding of self, others, and the world that accrues to each of us as we relate (or are related) consciously to the people and things around us.

Our experience of God seems to arise from and reflect this more primary, “concrete” experience. “Personal experiences,” we are told, “cannot be placed in question” (IL, 55). In order to know truth, therefore, one must experience it in one’s own way, through one’s activity in the concrete situation in which one finds oneself. Accordingly, the IL informs us that the way young people approach reality “is based on the priority of concreteness and action over theoretical analysis” (IL, 26). They understand “by doing,” resolving problems spontaneously as they arise.

The document asserts that this is not an anti-intellectual attitude. But that is exactly what it is: act first, then decide how you feel about your experience.

In effect, the IL is saying to youth: Reinvent the wheel for yourself as you go along. Neither the Church, nor your elders, nor even the wisdom of the ages has anything definitive to tell you. Times have changed, and your humanity has evolved! The Church is there merely to accompany you, to listen to you, and to learn from you what she should think, say, do, and be, as you discover yourself by abandoning “the constant search for small certainties” (IL, 145).

Human knowledge, after all, can never really be certain of anything, except how you feel. Basing yourself, therefore, on the feelings and wishes elicited by your concrete experiences, conscience will help you “discern” the path you should choose (IL, 112), even if you don’t always live up to your ideals because of personal and circumstantial limitations (IL, 116; see the even more pernicious version of this sappy subjectivism in AL, 303, which the IL intentionally echoes here).

Tellingly, the IL regards “discernment” as “an act of human freedom” (IL, 114). Rather than being a decision of free will, however, true discernment is an act of judgment by the intellect regarding the real truth of something. In the practical sense, such judgment pertains to the real truth about the moral good that freedom ought to choose here and now, for the sake of genuinely human flourishing.

But the operative principle in the IL (taken from Evangelii Gaudium, 231) is: “Realities are greater than ideas” (IL, 118). In itself, this principle is philosophically meaningless; however, in Francis-speak, it smacks of the following: In my real, concrete situation, I feel I must (continue to) do “x,” even though the Church’s moral doctrine tells me, ideally, to do “y.” Thus reconceived, “discernment” becomes willful self-assertion and freedom from moral restraint.

The accompaniment of youth by elders is supposed to facilitate this murky process of “discernment.” But God forbid that a mentor should ever make any moral demands on the freedom of youth, and thus “mortify their choices” (IL, 79)— never mind that biblical morality expresses, concretely, the essential requirements of human nature, by which freedom is set free and personal fulfillment realized. On the contrary, the IL tells us that major religious institutions just can’t seem to get in tune with our modern “conscience” (see IL, 25).

Even when the Gospel is brought to bear on one’s experience, the IL seems to suggest that the latter is the measure for interpreting the truth of the former, and not the reverse (see IL, 192, 208).

The document’s insistence that all moral judgment on youth be suspended exposes its anti-intellectualism, its want of objectivity, and its disregard for the moral law, both natural and divinely revealed (IL, 3, 26, 68, 132, 142).

In a word, the problem with the IL, as with AL, is epistemological and metaphysical. The document conveys the false view that we cannot attain to truth — and even less, to absolute truth — merely by hearing and intellectually assimilating the Word of God; rather, we discover truth once we experience it from God, whom alone we can trust (IL, 55).

Sure, we can refer to the Bible to help us interpret our experience. But in the Church there “coexist different ways of interpreting many aspects of doctrine and Christian life”; hence, we must “acquire an open spiritual dynamism” (IL, 3).

It follows from this dehumanizing hermeneutic of radical rupture —passed off as doctrinal and moral “development” nowadays — that all truth is provisional. In order to make life choices, therefore, we must overcome “the fear of abandoning our beliefs to open up to God’s surprises” (IL, 61).

Translation: there are no objective and absolute truths, hence, no universally binding moral norms that express and actualize the true human and personal good in every “concrete situation.” We can therefore do whatever we feel like doing, all in the name of the God of surprises.

The IL’s subjectivistic take on experience - subtly depicted as the sole locus and interpreter of truth – is nothing but a thinly disguised form of Modernism, which has its parallel in various theologies of liberation. I have written specifically on that topic elsewhere.

The IL's subversive subtext about young people
A subjectivistic view of experiential truth that combines Modernism and liberationism is sure to yield revolution, no holds barred. This is why the considerable attention that the IL devotes to the topic of accompanying youth, while good in itself, can be so dangerous, depending on exactly who it is that’s doing the accompanying, and why.

The authors of the document acknowledge that young people can “easily fall prey to manipulation by adults,” among whom they mention unscrupulous religious leaders, “who know how to exploit young people’s idealistic ambitions for their own gain” (IL, 128). Sad to say, it seems that a plan for precisely this kind of exploitation underlies the Vatican document on youth.

To be more specific, the clerical gay network in the Church, with the blessing of Pope Francis, it seems, wants to accompany “LGBT youths” (as IL, 197 calls them, in a nod to secular, gay propaganda); that is, it wants to organize them to be “prophetic” protagonists who will usher in a change to the Church’s teaching condemning homosexual activity as an intrinsic moral evil, and identifying the sexual orientation that inclines toward it as objectively disordered.
- By encouraging them to rebel against nature, those “accompanying” these youths can more readily manipulate them into rebelling against the Church, so as to try and force this change, initially by instigating a change in “pastoral” practice.
- Such “accompaniment” would also provide sodomitic clerics with a handy opportunity to recruit and network with more of their own.
- And as the Church’s sense of sodomy’s gravity lessens further with the implementation of “pastoral” practices that are more “inclusive” and “merciful,” the likelihood of a cleric’s being canonically sanctioned for committing that sin will proportionately diminish. The talk of “intergenerational alliances” in the IL, particularly as exemplified in the relationship between Eli the priest and young Samuel (see IL, 81), is therefore rather disturbing.

It is in light of the subversive undercurrent described above that we must read statements on youth throughout the IL that might otherwise seem benign and wholly unrelated to the homosexual issue. Accordingly, it is “LGBT” youth who, as “true protagonists,” bring the Church “into being” (see IL, 142).

It seems no longer true, then, that the Church conceives and gives birth to her children through her sacramental life and perennial teaching.
- If the Church were to exercise her authority both by proclaiming her traditional moral teaching and by recourse to traditional ecclesiastical disciplines for moral transgressions (“it has always been done this way”), it would amount to a form of “control that holds people down and keeps them captive” (IL, 141).

But if she is going to insist on preaching morality, then she must do so, as AL recommends, in a gradual fashion that makes no immediate moral demands on the individual. At least this approach, we are told, respects a person’s pace of growth in freedom (see IL, 175).
- The Church’s mission is to set freedom free, so that young “LGBT” people can be who God wants them to be (see IL, 141).
- Indeed, the Church is obliged to listen to them, since these young prophets, who speak more credibly than adults do on issues such as sexuality (see IL, 165), “are fully entitled to participate in the sensus fidei fidelium” (IL, 138). Or was that the sensus fidei infidelium?

- “LBGT” youth want a relational Church that welcomes and integrates them without judging them (see IL, 68).
- They want a (gay-)friendly Church, which would share their “basic awareness of the existence of other lifestyles” and make “a deliberate effort toward their inclusion,” even when the “pluralism of differences,” or diversity, takes on “radical forms” (IL, 26).
- Indeed, the Church must not become trapped in a closed ideology, but must rather learn from “free and open societies” how “different identities need to engage in dialogue” (IL 149).
- She must resist becoming like societies that employ “immunization tools against diversities” (IL, 135), so as to justify discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, among other grounds (see IL, 48).
- The Church’s supreme, operative principle must be dialogue: dialogue with her young “LGBT” members, and dialogue with the world (see IL, 140).

Some Bishops’ Conferences are nevertheless wondering “what to suggest ‘to young people who decide to create homosexual instead of heterosexual couples,’” and yet still “‘would like to be close to the Church’” (IL, 197).
- Perhaps these poor, befuddled bishops will decide to suggest that the inherently non-procreative “lifestyle” of such “couples” is laudable because they are consistent with their moral obligation to promote environmental sustainability (see IL, 152).
- After all, in an age that exalts freedom to the point of placing an absolute value on each individual’s personal interpretation of his concrete experiences, it is no longer possible to render a moral judgment on how people choose to live. The “signs of the times” therefore demand that we commend them for the “positive” elements “discernable” in the lifestyle on which they have freely decided.

Bishops who subscribe to such godless nonsense, together with IL’s architects, have ultimately denied human dignity and personal transcendence, having denied our inherent power to rise above the concrete situation of our experience, through an intellectual judgment about, and a free choice to enact, the objectively true moral good.

Evidently, they no longer believe that persons who freely “decide” to conduct themselves in a gravely sinful way cannot, by that very fact – despite their solipsistic discernment — “be close to the Church,” nor, therefore, to Jesus Christ, her divine Spouse. And in forsaking Him thus, they are forsaking their only real hope for eternal salvation.

The truth about the moral good is enshrined in the perennial moral teaching of the Holy Catholic Church.
- To express a true love of God and neighbor, we are bound to live by that truth unconditionally.
- The diabolical winds blowing from Rome, which are fiercely threatening to invert human perception about what is morally good and what is morally evil, are powerless to change the unchangeable truth of natural and revealed morality.
And that’s the message that young people, like the rest of us, need to hear.

An earlier commentary in Crisis magazine that I missed seeing right away was this one by Fr. Schall on THE PRESENT CRISIS:


On 'the Church’s greatest crisis'
by JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

October 8, 2018



On September 21, the well-known German magazine, Der Spiegel, featured a long article on the whole career of Pope Francis under the title “The Greatest Crisis in the History of the Church.”

The immediate issues brought up concerned the pope’s handling of abuse issues while he was still in Argentina. Most people are by now also familiar with the issues in this same area brought up by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vaganò’s testimony concerning former Cardinal McCarrick’s unfortunate record. In a situation such as this, most people also want to be as fair as possible to the pope. And most people want to know the facts.

People are also puzzled by the pope’s refusal to answer what seem to be quite legitimate and straightforward questions about what he teaches. Common sense would normally suggest that, if someone is not guilty, he would be anxious to state why, to clear the record, as it were. The pope’s silence, fairly or unfairly, suggests to most people of good will that something was covered up, something is not quite right.

People at all levels and particularly Catholics strive to know what is at stake.
- They are not interested in gossip or innuendo.
- They rightly want to know the truth.
- They want to hear a fair assessment of the situation from the pope himself.
- But they do not want their concerns dismissed.

Their spiritual wellbeing depends on a Church sound enough to proclaim the truth, including the truth about its own members who are sinners.
- Catholics are not afraid of sin unless they cease to believe in the Church’s major teaching about sins, namely, that Christ came not to deny them but to forgive them.
- Even if the Church is no longer credible, we still remain in sin.
That is good Pauline teaching.

Admittedly, this on-going saga brought up by Der Spiegel need not be the greatest crisis in Church history. Whatever ranking we want to give it — the worst, the second worst, the tenth worst, or a minor glitch — in the public eye, it certainly is a crisis of major proportions that challenges the credibility of the Church on its own terms.

We would all like to see it just go away. Indeed, we would all like to think it never happened. But we are realists. What happened, happened. We must deal with it, but not before knowing the truth of what went on.

Pope Bergoglio himself seems willing to talk about almost every subject but his own beliefs and record. They seem most at issue.
- The crisis at this stage, whether we like it or not, is precisely about the present pope, what he believes and which decisions he made.
- It is not directly about whether Catholicism is objectively true or not.
- Rather it is a question of whether the Catholic Church, in its own testimony about itself, is consistent with its own teachings.

As the reporting in Der Spiegel and the New York Times shows, people from outside the Church, not just Catholics, are now carefully watching this drama. They realize the long-term implications to our culture if Catholicism can no longer claim for itself a consistency with its past or with the integrity of its teaching. It is analogous to a question of whether, say, the Communist Party in its hey-day was consistent with its own tenets, and whether it was objectively consistent with its own premises or not.

The headlines in the September 7 issue of L’Osservatore Romano presented the pope’s Letter on the World’s Day of Prayer for Creation. The Letter is about access “to clean water.” The ancient Romans were famous for building aqueducts to bring water into cities. If anyone lacks water today, it is not because we do not know how to purify and distribute water resources. It is almost entirely due to economic and political choices.

The technical means or know-how for providing water is not a major theological concern of Christianity as such. Christ walked on water, turned water into wine, helped a woman at a well draw it up, and was baptized with it in the Jordan. He never designed a dam to provide water for Nazareth or Jerusalem. He evidently assumed that men could eventually figure this task out without the need of revelation.

A pope can mention the problem of water availability or other such issues, but his is not the task to provide technical solutions even if he had a doctorate in water engineering. One can question whether the pope’s views of economics and politics that tend toward socialism encourage a system that easily provides water on a large-scale basis.

Many people of good will wonder why, if the pope can talk of clean water, he cannot talk about his own record or the views he holds on issues that certainly do fall within his competency. These latter issues are what perplex people and give impetus to the reportage of Der Spiegel.

II.
We might reasonably ask ourselves: “What would the Church’s ‘greatest’ crisis be, if it were to have one?”
- It would have something to do with pride, as in placing a human opinion over a divinely revealed or rational teaching.
- It would have to be an embracing of “this world,” spoken of in John’s Gospel as a world that rejects Christ’s coming and his Cross.

Passages in 2 Timothy and in Matthew 25 do indicate that a serious crisis can erupt when unworthy priests and prelates are found within the Church itself. The pope speaks much of clericalism and Pharisees in the Church itself. People are fond of citing Paul VI’s “smoke of Satan” in the Church. Ezekiel and St. Augustine give us warnings that unworthy shepherds might prevail among us.

On the other hand, at least the papacy was supposed to have been a place where “the gates of hell” did not prevail. Popes could be sinful in their personal lives but still would not teach false doctrine or approve immoral activities.

By implying that this crisis is the “greatest” in the Church’s history, Der Spiegel is taking the Church at its own word. It compares the Church’s own teachings with what is practiced or proposed by Pope Francis.

Ross Douthat’s book, To Change the Church, is along these lines also. The implication is that the crisis is of the Church’s own making.
- It is not due to some barbarian invasion, a Masonic plot, or some other outside force imposing on it or threatening it.
- It is being threatened by its own ministers not only for not living according to Christian moral standards but also in not teaching what is good.

The irony, to be specific, is that disordered man-man sexual relations have become a civil “right” in many countries but the same relationship is a natural law aberration according to Church teaching.

The world watches to see if the Church will join the world in approving these relations as “rights” in the public order and in the Church. Or will it reject them?

In other words, the Church is being watched to see if it upholds the natural law in its own teachings and practices or whether it joins the world and thereby undermines its claim to consistency and truth of doctrine since its beginning.

The “greatest crisis” of the Church, then, would not be the discovery that clerics are themselves sinners. Christ was sent not for the just but the unjust. He was sent to grant forgiveness to whoever asked for it. But he also told us to stop sinning.

Therefore, the fact that sinners populate the world and the Church, even after Christ established rules to live by, cannot surprise anyone. There are, of course, many kinds of sin. The current flare-up is over the sixth commandment in its many consequences. They all relate to the integrity of the family and its members.

Indeed, the current issue is largely the result of ingrown, acquired habits that are difficult, but not impossible, to break. Generally speaking, in seeking to make a fair judgment on priest and bishop sinners, their victims were neglected. This latter concern is now central, as it should be.

The greatest “crisis” is not about the fact of sin or sinners. It is about the internal order of the Church itself, whether it believes and upholds its own doctrines, whether true or not.

Many do not think that the aberrations some priests and bishops are accused of committing are sins or disorders. But even these realize that the Church is the last bastion of moral integrity as seen in its classical philosophic and religious form. They also see that the serious troubles the Church itself is in are primarily due to its own actions.

We can say that the issue is not over whether the pope is a sinner, naïve, or weak, but whether he has approved teachings or moral behaviors that he is obliged to oppose. If he has taken this step in some obviously authoritative way, then Der Spiegel will be proved right.

A reversal of fundamental teaching at the highest levels of the Church would constitute the “greatest crisis” in Catholic history. It is an act of faithfulness to respectfully hope Pope Francis clarifies his own teachings. It does not seem like too much to ask and many, including Der Spiegel, are asking it.

Did the Bergoglio Vatican remember in any way that October 11 marked the 55th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II? Aldo Maria Valli remembered and wrote this off-the-beaten track commentary
on John XXIII's allocution to open that Council.


To open Vatican II, John XXIII’s address was entitled
‘Gaudet Mater Ecclesia’ (Mother Church rejoices)
In which, despite an optimism which proved to be quite naïve,
he repeatedly said that the Church must reaffirm and confirm its Magisterium.
[Yet Bergoglio et al who profess to practice the true 'spirit of Vatican II'
choose to dismiss all Magisterium before the present pope's]
Translated from


October 11th is the anniversary of the solemn opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 (that year like this year, it was a Thursday,) and Pope John XXIII’s historic allocution entitled Gaudet Mater Ecclesia [which I shall henceforth refer to as GME]. (I would have liked to write this earlier but as a grandfather, I had to celebrate a granddaughter’s third birthday today.)

I shall be frank: There was a time that I identified with Pope John’s address – when I, too, thought that the ‘prophets of doom’, as Papa Roncalli called them, were truly just that. But eventually, I had to acknowledge that they had more than enough reason for their pessimism.

When I hear the incipit of the pope’s allocution [the first three words which gives the document its title], I am assailed by a mixture of emotion and discomfort. Emotion because I imagine the dreams of those who believed in good faith in what the Council could do (I say ‘I imagine…’ because I was only four years old at the time). And discomfort because many of those dreams turned into nightmares, as we see in our day.

Still, it is good to recall that in GME, Pope John – despite an optimism which in the light of the current situation of the Church can seem to us ingenuous – he repeatedly declared that the Church must reaffirm and confirm her Magisterium.

In fact, he says, in a central passage:

---

In calling this vast assembly, the latest and humble successor of the Prince of Apostles who now speaks to you intended a renewed affirmation of the Church's teaching authority which is unfailing and perdures until the end of time. This teaching authority, taking into account the errors, needs, and opportunities of our age, is through this Council being exhibited in an extraordinary way to all people throughout the world.

---

He would say farther on:

---

The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this, that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be more effectively defended and presented… But for this teaching to reach many fields of human activity which affect individuals, families, and social life, it is first of all necessary that the Church never turn her eyes from the sacred heritage of truth which she has received from those who went before …The twenty-first Ecumenical Council… wishes to transmit whole and entire and without distortion the Catholic doctrine which, despite difficulties and controversies, has become the common heritage of humanity.”

---

As we see, the pope reiterates his intention to confirm his brothers in the faith without changing that faith. However, GME also contais some words that have allowed its initial premise to be set aside.

---

“But our task is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with an antiquity. Eagerly and without fear, we must devote ourselves to the task our age demands, pursuing the path which the Church has followed for twenty centuries… For the deposit of faith, the truths contained in our venerable doctrine, are one thing; the fashion in which they are expressed, but with the same meaning and the same judgement, is another thing.”

---

It was this fissure – the manner of presenting doctrine - that the champions of ‘renewal’ availed of to push their cause in a way that led to abuses. [Because they have completely ignored that pregnant condition that John XXIII underscored, “but with the same meaning and the same judgment”.]

It is the same fissure used even now to change that doctrine which, John XXIII insisted, should remain unchanged.

The paladins of ‘renewal’ [it’s really ‘wreckovation’ – wrecking what has stood for over two centuries to replace it with the church of Bergoglio and its ad hoc dicta institutionalizing Bergoglio’s personal opinions as his church’s doctrine. Besides, Vatican-II ideologues have always insisted that the council marked the birth of a 'new church'. That is not renewal at all. It's creating a 'new church' altogether.] have chosen a word to be their slogan and standard: pastoral.

In doing so, they have availed of yet another passage in GME in which the pope says “types of presentation must be introduced which are more in accord with a teaching authority which is primarily pastoral in character”. From which was born a sort of ideology of the ‘pastoral’, a ‘pastoralism’w hich has since led to numerous maladies, such as spontaneism (think of the new liturgy!) and activism, but also the surrender to laicism and secularism.

Pope John had a beautiful line that “it is clearer than ever before that the truth of the Lord remains forever”. But the very moment when he invoked the ‘pastoral spirit’, he opened the door to doctrinal contestation.

But there is another passage in GME that was widely instrumentalized: “At the present time, the spouse of Christ prefers to use the medicine of mercy rather than the weapons of severity”. Another fissure that has allowed equivocation, abuse and heterodoxy. Next to ‘pastoral’, ‘mercy’ has become the slogan of the extreme ‘renewalists’. [I still prefer to call them ‘wreckovators].

In short, GME already contained the viruses that led the Church to sickness. Pope John’s attempt to establish a balance was of little worth. It is true he said that “the Catholic Church, as she raises the torch of religious truth in this Ecumenical Council, wishes to show herself to be the most loving mother of all, kind, patient, and moved by mercy and goodness towards her separated children”, but in fact, the torch of Catholic truth was soon set aside, as more and more, the idea of mercy was detached from the idea of justice.

I advise young people, who have not already done so, to read GME. Fifty-six years have passed since then, and Peter’s barque, governed by John XXIII’s successors through often tempestuous waters, has continued somehow to navigate through. But GME in itself already contains in nucleus the entire history and the entire tragedy of the post-Vatican II Church.
 

For this 'big news' today, I shall lead off with a prompt commentary which says all there is to say about this matter... This time, so clearcut are the facts that Christopher Altieri isn't even allowing any 'benefit of the doubt', as he usually tries to do for Bergoglio.

Cardinal Wuerl is gone — or is he?
Once again, the pope has officially removed someone
while effectively keeping him in place
by Christopher Altieri

posted Friday, 12 Oct 2018


In Pope Francis’s acceptance of Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl’s resignation from the See of Washington, DC, we see an unmistakable pattern emerging. By accepting Wuerl’s resignation, but also keeping him on as Apostolic Administrator, the Pope shows he is working to a particular modus operandi.

There seem to be three basic steps:
(1) ignore criticism and impugn critics’ motives;
(2) when that becomes impracticable make a big show of doing something, without actually doing much of anything;
(3) if necessary, remove a high-profile figure, but not really.

With Cardinal Wuerl, Pope Francis has done exactly this: he is officially out, and also officially in.

The Pope’s letter expresses support for Cardinal Wuerl and confidence in his record of leadership. It also indicates reluctance to accept the resignation. “You have sufficient elements to ‘justify’ your actions and what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to commit some mistakes,” Pope Francis writes. “However, your nobility has led you not to choose this way of defense,” he continues. “Of this, I am proud, and thank you.”

The New York Times reports Wuerl as saying he expects to keep his roles in various powerful dicasteries, including the Congregation for Bishops [to which, you will recall, Bergoglio named him to replace Cardinal Burke whose appointment to that dicastery was not renewed, and in which Wuerl will be the advocate for all papal nominees for bishop in the USA].

The Pope did something very similar in his management of the dust-up at his Secretariat Dicastery for Communication and in his handling of the crisis in Chile.

In March of this year, Pope Francis’s hand-picked prefect of the Secretariat for Communication, Mgr Dario Edoardo Viganò (not to be confused with whistleblower Carlo), landed himself in hot water over doctored photographs and manipulative claims about a letter from Benedict XVI.

Mgr Viganò resigned after several days of increasingly intense media scrutiny — but, in the same letter announcing acceptance of Viganò’s resignation, Pope Francis also praised him and announced he had created a special ad hoc position for him within the Secretariat [DIM=pt][where, one can well imagine, he may still be running the whole show despite the civilian figurehead Paolo Ruffini named to be the new communications prefect].

In Chile, Pope Francis first accused the now-disgraced and retired Bishop Juan Barros’s principal accusers of calumny, then said he’d seen no actual evidence against Barros even though he’s had a letter from one of Barros’s accusers since 2015.

Then Francis ordered an investigation into the whole hierarchy, then he summoned the bishops of Chile for a pow-wow at the Vatican, obtained their resignations, and began to sit on all but seven of them while the Chilean government continues to raid chanceries and offices of the national bishops’ conference.

Meanwhile, three central figures remain in place, despite serious misconduct allegations pending against them (allegations all three strenuously deny): Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati continues in peaceful possession of his see — the capital Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile — while Ezzati’s predecessor, Cardinal Francisco Errázuriz, remains a member of the Pope’s C9 “kitchen cabinet” of cardinal-advisers, and Archbishop Ivo Scapolo remains in place as Apostolic Nuncio.

There have been varying degrees of emphasis on different parts at different times, but the basic pattern is fairly straightforward.

[Does anyone need more proof of how shamelessly, brazenly duplicitous Bergoglio is, among his many forms of dishonesty?]

Rorate caeli's commentary was just as prompt...

Wuerl I, Wuerl II and Wuerl III
The pope finally accepted Cardinal Wuerl's resignation as Archbishop
of Washington but keeps him on o run the diocese as interim administrator
by Kenneth J. Wolfe

Otober 12, 2018

Far from a dismissal or firing of any kind, Wuerl and Francis managed to turn the action into a retirement party. In the pope's "beautiful letter" (Wuerl's words this morning in a 6:09 a.m. listserv email) to the outgoing archbishop, Wuerl was praised by Francis:

---

"You have sufficient elements to 'justify' your actions and distinguish what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to commit some mistakes. However your nobility has led you not to choose this way of defense. Of this I am proud and thank you."

---

The Archdiocese of Washington has created a tribute page to Cardinal Wuerl, highlighting all of the archbishop's accomplishments and defending his reputation. All that is missing is the presentation of a gold watch during a luncheon to celebrate such a successful career heading into retirement.

An interesting detail in today's action: Wuerl remains in charge of the Archdiocese of Washington. So, even after his resignation was accepted by Francis, he has been appointed apostolic administrator of the archdiocese. To those who have ever been fired from a job, imagine being asked to stay on until the vetting and paperwork clears for your successor. This was hardly a termination; Don Wuerl is still in complete control of his mafia.

Lastly, remember Wuerl is one of only two American members of the Congregation for Bishops, the Vatican body responsible for choosing new bishops to be appointed by the pope. It is a very safe bet to assume Wuerl has handpicked his successor. The entire process has been orchestrated, as demonstrated in the pre-arranged friendly interview in, of course, America [journal of the Jesuits in the USA].

Wuerl I was the archbishop of Washington.
Wuerl II is the apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Washington.
Wuerl III will be the protege of the outgoing archbishop, who will remain on the Congregation for Bishops. This is reform in the Bergoglio pontificate.

Perhaps we will be proven wrong, and an honest, traditional-leaning archbishop of Washington will be appointed by Francis. The new archbishop would then need to reset the tone, including enforcing Canon 915 for Catholics within the troubled Archdiocese of Washington (including politicians and Jesuits) who receive communion while openly dissenting from core teachings of the Church.

This would likely require cleaning house in the chancery, currently comprised of Wuerl acolytes from top to bottom. Best wishes.


Cardinal Wuerl's resignation
a case of lost credibility
More than anything else it was because his priests didn’t
believe he was telling the truth about Archbishop McCarrick
by Raymond J. de Souza SJ

October 12, 2018

In the normal course of events, the resignation of a bishop nearly three years after his 75th birthday would be unremarkable. But these are not normal times, and Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s fall is most remarkable.

The two low points of the summer of shame for the Church in the United States — the Pennsylvania grand jury report and the revelations about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — both put Cardinal Wuerl on the hot seat. His time as bishop of Pittsburgh was subject to examination in the grand jury report, and what he knew about his predecessor in Washington, Cardinal McCarrick, led to many uncomfortable questions.

But it would have been possible to imagine Cardinal Wuerl surviving either, or both. It was that he lost the confidence of his priests that led to today’s resignation.

When Cardinal Wuerl traveled to Rome to meet with Pope Francis in August about this future, the Holy Father told him to return home and consult with his priests. The cardinal did so in early September and soon after announced that he would be asking Pope Francis to accept his resignation, which he submitted in accord with canon law on his 75th birthday in 2015. It had been expected that Cardinal Wuerl would continue in office until his 80th birthday in 2020.

And why did his priests lose confidence in him?

It was not his record in Pittsburgh, where he served as bishop from 1988-2006. While the general reaction to the grand jury report was fierce toward Cardinal Wuerl — his name was removed from a school named after him in Pittsburgh — the priests of both Pittsburgh and Washington would have had a more nuanced view.

There were cases, early in his time in Pittsburgh, that were not handled as they would have been after the Dallas Charter of 2002. But as bishop, Cardinal Wuerl was ahead of his time on the sexual abuse issue, and by the early 1990s he already had in place measures that other bishops would take another decade to implement.

Indeed, in his Oct. 12 letter accepting Wuerl’s resignation, Pope Francis goes out of his way to praise Cardinal Wuerl’s handling of abuse cases — a brave statement given that it will be poorly received in the aftermath of the grand jury report.

“You have sufficient elements to ‘justify’ your actions and distinguish between what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to commit some mistakes,” Pope Francis wrote. “However, your nobility has led you not to choose this way of defense. Of this, I am proud and thank you.”

That is not entirely true. When the grand jury report was released, Cardinal Wuerl launched a special website precisely to defend his record in Pittsburgh. That was so grave a miscalculation of the public mood that Cardinal Wuerl took it down within a day.

On many other matters — catechesis, Catholic education, priestly formation — Cardinal Wuerl was exemplary and more than earned the praise Pope Francis showered upon him.

It was the McCarrick matter that brought him down. Precisely, his repeated insistence that he did not know about Cardinal McCarrick until the Archdiocese of New York announced in June that an allegation of sexual abuse of minor had been “substantiated.”

His priests did not believe him. They thought that he was lying in public and lying to them. When Archbishop Carlo Viganò wrote that Cardinal Wuerl “lies shamelessly” in his “testimony” published in late August, it confirmed conclusions that many Washington priests had already arrived at.

Further details from Archbishop Viganò’s testimony have subsequently been confirmed by the Vatican, most recently by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who acknowledged that the nuncios in Washington were informed about Archbishop McCarrick and the restrictions placed upon him.

It is simply not possible that the nuncio in Washington, communicating restrictions from the Holy See upon Archbishop McCarrick for sexual misconduct, would not have told Cardinal Wuerl about what was being done to his predecessor, still resident in the archdiocese.

But it is not necessary to conclude that Cardinal Wuerl was lying about his ignorance regarding his predecessor [even if, in fact, he was???]; the important factor in his resignation now is that he could not convince his priests that he was telling the truth.

And therein, possibly, lies a significant milestone in the ongoing reform of the clergy.

Priests, in fact, have much experience of their bishops not telling the whole truth. Or speaking in a manner, while technically truthful, that is aimed more at obscuring rather than revealing. Or, on occasion, telling lies, plain and simple.

A culture of clerical mendacity can take hold in which violations of the Eighth Commandment no longer have the power to shock and are treated as routine. And when clerical culture accommodates itself to routine violations of the Eighth Commandment, matters violating the Seventh Commandment — embezzlement, fraud, theft — and the Sixth Commandment — failing in chastity of all kinds, including sexual abuse — are not far behind.

It may be that the priests of Washington, after Pennsylvania, after McCarrick, were just tired of a culture that was less than forthright.

Cardinal Wuerl was not helped by Cardinal Kevin Farrell, now in Rome but previously the vicar general for Cardinal McCarrick in Washington for six years. Cardinal Farrell, despite insisting in October 2017 that he “knew everything” that happened in Washington, pronounced himself shocked that there was anything untoward about Archbishop McCarrick. That denial was widely met with disbelief.

How deep can the culture of clerical mendacity go?

Consider last March, when Msgr. Dario Viganò, the prefect of the Vatican secretariat for communications — the chief communications officer of the Holy See — manipulated a letter from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI to make it seem that he was endorsing a series of booklets on the theology of Pope Francis. Benedict had refused to do so, and given explicit reasons why he would not endorse the project. When caught in his manipulation, Msgr. Viganò blatantly lied about what he had done.

The consequence? He resigned as prefect, but was immediately installed in a new senior position created for him in the same communications department, that of “assessor” — a sort of deputy to the prefect. That the Vatican communications chief was not fired absolutely for deliberate falsifications and lies about the pope emeritus is an indication of how entrenched a culture of clerical mendacity can be.

The resignation of Cardinal Wuerl brings to an end decades of service that will be tarnished, at least for time, until a fuller appreciation becomes possible. Yet the resignation might serve another purpose too, that of cleansing the culture of the clergy of one of its most serious vices, the failure to tell the truth. [Hard to do that at this time when the man at the very top no less has shown himself to be a habitual violator of the Eighth Commandment - and worse, of the Third Commandment ('Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain') as well, every time he misquotes Jesus by commission or omission to falsely support whatever point he is making!]

At the synod, the Church’s culture war
looks a lot like class war
Progressive bishops want to replace 'rigid' codes and
speak of sexuality 'without taboo'. How very bourgeois!
by Matthew Schmitz

October 12, 2018

When Pope Francis was elected five years ago, he announced that he wanted to build a “poor Church for the poor.” At the Synod on Youth taking place this month in Rome, a different kind of Church is coming into being: one that caters to the bourgeoisie.

The Youth Synod is the latest battle in the Church’s long-running culture war – which is also a class war. On one side are the managerial and professional classes clustered in wealthy countries, especially Germany, the UK, and the US. On the other side are objectors from the developed world, allied with Africa’s bishops.

Journalists often suggest that the election of an Argentine pope has perforce put the Church in touch with the world’s poor. But this is misleading. For the first twenty-five years of Pope Francis’s life, Argentina had a higher per-capita GDP than Japan, Italy, and Austria. Poland, the home of St John Paul II, is still a poorer country than Argentina. So is conservative Hungary.

In public controversies preceding the Synod, the two sides tangled over the Synod’s Instrumentum laboris (working paper). As its critics have pointed out, the Instrumentum makes scant reference to Scripture and the Church’s tradition in favor of a sociological summation of the needs and experiences of today’s “young people.”
- It indulges in the Sixties-era illusion that young people have prophetic insight, and insists on their desire to be “listened to” by an institutional Church that sometimes seems out of touch. But out of touch with what? The Instrumentum seems to assume that all young people are bourgeois Westerners.

The 'young people' of the Instrumentum want a Church that “listens”; they want to be able to speak of sexuality “without taboo”; they want to exercise discernment and not be bound by “rigid” codes. These are bourgeois desires. As the anthropologist Mary Douglas argued, the poor do not want to dispense with “rigid” codes; those codes distinguish their style of religious practice, which emphasizes obedience over discernment.

When elites destroy these codes – as they did with Friday abstinence after the Second Vatican Council – they deprive the poor of the means of faith. Pope Francis’s exhortation to “Make a mess!” is oddly reminiscent of “Break s–t” – Silicon Valley’s favourite phrase. Those with ample moral, social, and financial capital will thrive in this moral economy. The poor will not.

One flashpoint in the Instrumentum controversies has been the use of the term “LGBT,” a small matter with high symbolic stakes. As Richard Florida has argued, endorsing LGBT rights is a way for countries and organizations to signal their openness to the bourgeois members of the “creative class.”
- These people may care very little about actual LGBT people, but they associate openness to LGBT identity with their own values of consumption, cosmopolitanism, and spontaneity.
- Embracing what Communists used to call “the bourgeois vice” is a way of signalling respectability.

Oscar Wilde once said that the Catholic Church was “for saints and sinners. For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.” The Francis party seems to want the Catholic Church to resemble the Anglican in this sense.
- They suggest that the most forgivable sins are those of the bourgeoisie – those done with planning, foresight, and an eye to respectability.
As Archbishop Mark Coleridge put it at the last synod, “A second marriage that is enduring and stable and loving and where there are children who are cared for is not the same as a couple skulking off to a hotel room for a wicked weekend.”

Every time a bishop urges Catholics to speak with parrhesia of the importance of the new pastoral paradigm of discernment in dialogue and encounter with the concrete situations of the lay faithful whose well-formed consciences [certainly not formed by Catholic teaching!] must be respected in light of the new historical reality of our increased understanding of human dignity, I want to chew off my hand.

Progressive Catholicism has become so obsessed with avoiding offence that it now offers little more than a concatenation of clichés. [Its lexicon derives completely from the gospel of political correctness.] Its jargon is far more incomprehensible than the Latin Mass, which at least communicates a sense of wonder and dread.

Happily, when the forces of blandness seek to remake the Church, they meet organized resistance. Characters as disparate as Cardinal Robert Sarah and Gloria, Princess of Thurn and Taxis, can find something to hate in bourgeois Catholicism. Ultimately, I think these people will be able to build a Church that is more capacious and welcoming, more tolerant of human variety, than the one that the organisers of the Synod on Youth are trying to sing into being.

Matthew Schmitz is senior editor at First Things and a Robert Novak journalism fellow.

Cardinal Ouellet's role
in Vatican soap opera
by Mark Lambert

October 10, 2018

Cardinal Ouellet is another one of those Cardinals who we once thought was on the side of the Church. Under Pope Benedict XVI he appeared very orthodox and holy, but under Pope Francis, we have seen a much more political side to the Canadian prelate.

In his 2015 book Mystery and Sacrament of Love published prior to Amoris Laetitia, the Cardinal explained that it is impossible for the divorced and remarried to receive Communion.

Yet in a talk he gave last year, he expressed the opposite opinion, stating that the Pope’s 2016 exhortation Amoris Laetitia “may open a door” for civilly-divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion. He said that some saw in the Pope's teaching "the good news of an openness."

In my post on Raymond Arroyo's World Over interview with Cardinal Gerhard Müller, I noted that the Cardinal said that the Pope is influenced by "friends" who seek to change Church teaching in order to be more accommodating to the world. It is not difficult to see what that world looks like either:

Detail of homoerotic mural commissioned by Bergoglio pet Mons. Paglia for the Cathedral of Terni when he was bishop there. Paglia is depicted among a group of entangled males being drawn up towards heaven, presumably, at the Last Judgment. The painter made sure Paglia was probably identified by his purple bishops' skullcap.

Now Cardinal Ouellet, whose malleable credentials we have just qualified, is wheeled out to launch a blistering and quite personal attack on Archbishop Viganò.

This is a strategy which has become familiar over the course of this papacy.
- First the Pope says he will not say a single word about the allegations.
- He then spends a whole week attacking his critics, using the holy Mass as a vehicle for his vitriol
- Then he wheels out some friends to defend him. [Or they just come crawling out of their wormholes to do so to prove their vassaldom to Bergoglio.] Friends with sympathies that might effect their position? Like Cardinal Ouellet's brother who has a conviction for abuse?

Notwithstanding his attack, Cardinal Ouellet's letter does confirm a central claim made by the archbishop — namely, that allegations about Cardinal McCarrick were known well before June of this year and resulted in some sort of censure, even if informal. Mgsr Charles Pope notes today that this helps to confirm his main thesis: that in these difficult days, many are compelled to speak out and express rightful anger. And, though these methods have become regretfully necessary, they are effective and must continue if reforms are to happen.

There's much been made of all this, there's lot of very interesting analysis easily found on Twitter:

[IMG]http://u.cubeupload.com/MARITER_7/TWEET181008CATHSATON.png
[/IMG]

But for me, the idea that Vatican officials protect prelates accused of abuse, but take the offensive against an archbishop who, by questioning policies, puts himself outside the protection of the episcopal club is the clearest example of 'clericalism' in action I can envisage. [Hear that, 'Your Holiness'???]


Phil Lawler had a priceless rejoinder to Cardinal Ouellet's reprimands of Mons Vigano, particularly the preposterous one asking him 'how he could celebrate Mass and mention the pope's name in the Eucharistic Prayer'.

Cardinal Ouellet to Archbishop Vigano:
"How could you..?"
By Phil Lawler

Oct 11, 2018

“How can you celebrate Mass,” Cardinal Ouellet angrily demands of Archbishop Viganò, “and mention the pope’s name in the Eucharistic Prayer?”

An excellent question. It forces us to ask whether we have ever imagined that in praying for our shepherds we were thereby paying tribute to their rectitude and decency. Think of the faithful whose priests, over, say, the last 30 years, have invited them to pray for John Paul our pope, or for Benedict our pope …

“… and for Rembert our bishop”—who used $450,000 of his flock’s contributions to buy the silence of his partner in sodomy.
“… and for Lawrence our bishop”—who throttled a male prostitute who was in the act of fellating him.
“… and for Thomas our bishop”—who struck a pedestrian with his Buick and drove off leaving him to die.
“… and for Patrick our bishop”—who outfitted his catamite with a beeper to summon him for sex.
“… and for Theodore our bishop”—who slept with priests and seminarians and fondled boys.
“… and for Robert our bishop”—who gave $30 million in no-bid construction contracts to a tri-athlete and “special friend” and paid out $100,000 in another settlement with an unhappy (male) roommate.
“… and for Donald our bishop”—who turned up at the hospital beaten to a pulp and claimed he fell down the stairs.
“… and for Daniel our bishop”—who had a screaming spat with an angry rent-boy in his driveway.
“... and for Joseph our bishop”—who tweeted “Nighty-night, baby” to a chum and claimed he was texting his sister.

Now that you mention it, Your Eminence, “Francis our pope” fits into the roster with hardly any trouble at all.

Fr Hunwicke has an interesting addendum to the Wuerl-igig....


Cardinal Wuerl finally had
his resignation accepted...

October 13, 2018

Many a blameless cleric would be delighted to receive as extravagant a send-off as PF has given Wuerl. What do we all have to do to earn ...

My own unease concerning Wuerl began with a story I heard the veracity of which I cannot guarantee. So, if I've got this wrong, apologies to the clerics concerned; apologies to my readers for misleading them. I welcome any corrections from anybody who knows the facts more accurately than I do. I would not wish the record to be anything other than straight! The following account is, therefore, provisional. It may well be totally withdrawn, with apologies.

It relates to North America and to the Ordinariate of the Chair of S Peter in the time of the previous Ordinary, Mgr Steenson..

My recollection is of being told that a parish in that Ordinariate had started an Extraordinary Form Mass on a weekday, which attracted quite a congregation. A stop was put to this by Cardinal Wuerl, who instructed Mgr Steenson to explain to his subjects that the EF was not part of the Anglican Patrimony, and should not be celebrated in Ordinariate churches.

If true, this is preposterous. The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus says that Ordinariate clergy may use either the Roman Rite or the Ordinariate Rite. It does not distinguish between the two forms of the Roman Rite, the Ordinary and the Extraordinary.

By decreeing that Ordinariate clergy can celebrate the Roman Rite, and making no distinction between its two forms, those Ordinariate clergy are placed in exactly the same position as every other presbyter of the Latin Church, by virtue of Summorum pontificum.

Is the EF "part of our Patrimony"? In one sense, clearly not. The provinces of the Anglican Communion never authorised the Missal of St Pius V.

But, equally, those provinces never authorised the Novus Ordo of Paul VI. So, by the "not part of our Patrimony" argument, Cardinal Wuerl would prevent us from using that too.

In another sense, the EF clearly is part of our Patrimony. It has been in use by our clegy and Laity for roughly a century. When I was in the Diocese of Oxford in the Province of Canterbury, I used it, in Latin, most weekday mornings. It was also used in various Missals such as the English Missal, which provided it partly in Latin and partly in English and with the possibility of interpolating some formulae from the Book of Common Prayer. I knew it as a schoolboy in the 1950s and as an undergraduate in the early 1960s.

The same is not true of the Novus Ordo! That is totally alien both to the elegant but Zwinglian formulae in the 'official' Book of Common Prayer, and also to the de facto liturgical culture which prevailed in 'Anglo-Catholic' circles.

The old Mass is very much an integral part of our liturgical history. Our greatest liturgist and mystagogue, Dom Gregory Dix, used it daily, in Latin, in his monastery at Nashdom, and insisted on doing so in the Lutheran Churches during a lecture tour in Sweden!

In the Anglican shrine of our Lady of Walsingham, there still are dozens of examples of the Missale Romanum (well, there were last time I said Mass there about ten years ago), and of the English Missal, surviving in storage from the happy days when the twenty or so altars in the Shrine Church would have been in constant use, during the pilgrimage season, by priests saying their private masses according to what, in those happy days, we called "the Western Rite"!

So ... can anybody fill me in with regard to this American business? [I would not be surprised at all if this were verified!]

This pope can't seem to get rid of
many of the 'wrong people' close to him

October 24, 2018

Ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick is not the only wrong person on whom Francis has betted for high stakes. Because at least three others can be pointed out, in the upper levels of the hierarchy, each one doubly 'tied' to the changes that this pope wants to introduce into 'the Church'.

Francis too had known for some time about McCarrick’s bad conduct, his grooming of young people and seminarians, taking them on outings and then to bed. And yet he kept him right with him until the end, as his chief adviser on appointments aimed at tipping the balance of power among the bishops of the United States in favor of the progressive wing. Blaise Cupich in Chicago, Joseph Tobin in Newark, Kevin Farrell as president of the Vatican dicastery for laity, family and life - all 3 of whom whom Francis also immediately promoted as cardinals - are part of the McCarrick brood, whose careers advanced miraculously with him, even if today they too are in danger of being damaged by the collapse of their tutelary deity, whom last June, even the pope himself could not defend after it came to light that years ago he had also abused a minor.

Then there is Belgian cardinal Godfried Danneels, one who prides himself on having been the kingmaker in the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope, together with that “mafia of St. Gallen,” as he hisemlf called the group, a Who’s Who of cardinals hostile to John Paul II and Benedict XVI who held periodic meetings in that Swiss city to strategize how to take over the papacy.

In the two synods on the family of 2014 and 2015, both times Pope Francis put at the head of his guest list none other than Danneels, because he is a supporter of that “openness” to communion for the divorced and remarried, which in practice means approving of divorce and remarriage. It was no secret Pope Bergoglio wished at all costs to push Communion for remarried divorcees living in adultery, as he did eventually in the postsynodal exhortation “Amoris Laetitia.”

But Danneels is far from a paragon of virtue as one might think from Bergoglip's conspicuous tokens of appreciation for him. In 2010 an audio recording came out in Belgium of him telling a young man to shut up and not report that he was the nephew and sexual victim of the archbishop of Bruges at the time, Roger Vangheluwe, his friend and protege.

Then again there is the Honduran cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, for some time the target of serious accusations of embezzlement that were investigated by an apostolic visitation in his diocese, and whose auxiliary bishop and pupil, Juan José Pineda Fasquelle, was removed last July 20 because of continuous homosexual activity with his seminarians. And yet Pope Francis continues to entrust to him the coordination of the “C9,” the council of nine cardinals who assist him in the governance of the universal Church.

On top of which, last August 15, Pope Francis appointed to the key role of Deputy Secretary of State for internal affairs (Sostituto, as the office is known in Italian) he Venezuelan archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, former adviser at the nunciature in Honduras from 2002 to 2005, and closely connected to Maradiaga and Pineda, whose appointment as auxiliary bishop of Tegucigalpa he backed in 2005.

Last but not least there is Monsignor Battista Ricca. Who is not a cardinal but is nevertheless the emblem of the personal secretariat that Bergoglio has built around himself, parallel and often alternative to the offices of the curia. In the organizational structure of the Secretariat of
State, Ricca figures as a diplomatic adviser of the first class, but when he was working in diplomacy in the field he stood out for the scandals he sowed. In Uruguay in particular, where he lived with his lover at the nunciature, whom he had brought down there from Switzerland, the previous stage of his career.

Francis knew about this, and yet named Ricca as prelate (spiritual director) of the IOR, the Vatican “bank” where he serves as the pope's 'eyes and ears', while keeping him in place as director of the Casa Santa Marta, his residence. It was in response to questions about Ricca that he uttered his now infamous “Who am I to judge?” [during which he also claimed he had ordered an investigation into Ricca's past and found 'nothing' questionable!]

In short, Francis wants to reform the Church, but is placing much of his trust in persons from whom he should first of all free himself if he truly wants a renovated and purified Church.

This commentary was originally published in "L'Espresso" no. 42 of 2018 on newsstands October 14, on the opinion page entitled "Settimo Cielo" entrusted to Sandro Magister.

I have not taken the trouble to post anything about the canonizations today because every news site has the story. But I take the occasion to highlight Christopher
Ferrara's three-part series in THE REMNANT about 'The Canonization Crisis' that I will eventually post on the Forum for the record - because it is a remarkable well-
researched document that highlights what the canonization 'process' has become in the last few decades.

Parts I and II are here:
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/3753-the-canonization-crisis-part-1
remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/4137-the-canonization-crisis...

Part I ends by summarizing the writer's main DUBIA about the canonization process as it is today:

---

- Could the validity of a canonization, even if it cannot be called an error as such, be doubted if it could be shown that the investigation of the candidate has been compromised by human error, bias or mendacity?

- Would a papal act of canonization by way of recitation of the canonization formula during the canonization rite be infallible ex sese (of or from itself) even if there were no prior investigation of the candidate?

- If the papal act of canonization is infallible ex sese, is there any necessity for the investigatory process preceding canonization­—developed by the Popes themselves to provide safeguards to ensure the veracity of miracles and the holiness of a candidate; and if it is necessary, why is it necessary?

- If a papal act of canonization is not infallible ex sese, then is integrity of the investigatory process preceding it not essential to the claim of infallibility, and if not, why not?

These questions can be answered definitively only by the Magisterium. And the need for that answer is urgent. The accelerating operation of the “saint factory” and the clearly expedient move to canonize every Pope since the Second Vatican Council on the basis of increasingly slim evidence, while neglecting or completely forgetting the causes of great pre-conciliar Popes renowned for their heroic virtue and plenitude of undeniable miracles — for example, the cause of Blessed Pius IX — has induced a kind of “canonization crisis” in the minds of millions of the faithful.
- Is the answer to the crisis blind faith in the infallibility of canonizations, which has never been defined as an article of faith? - Or are the faithful permitted to raise today, with greater urgency than ever before, the sorts of questions that have been presented without a definitive answer from the Magisterium since the development of the papal canonization process began?

This series should be understood as an appeal for magisterial clarity by a mere layman who, along with Catholics the world over, is struggling to understand how the infallibility of canonizations can be reconciled with a process that seems increasingly, as Prudlo so rightly observes, to be subject to abuse in order “to promote interests and movements, rather than being a recognition and approval of an extant cultus.”

With all of these concerns in view, Part II of this series will consider the problematic character of the alleged miracles attributed to Paul VI as a prime example of why it is reasonable to consider whether the integrity of the investigative process affects the integrity of a canonization, all prior attempts to solve this conundrum notwithstanding.

---

I a grateful to Rorate caeli for the following piece apropos today's canonizations...It expresses what I feel about how Pius XII has been sidelined unjustly and unfairly...


REMINDER: The Case for Pacelli

October 14, 2018



Rorate Note: Re-posting this from April 2014.
Vatican II, Liberation Theology and the near destruction of the liturgy and the Church were canonized today.

While we are now asked to pray to Pope St. Paul VI, we are also asked to ignore the last traditional pontificate of Pius XII, whose case for canonization has been thwarted. Yet, while Paul VI laicized so many priests and religious, and oversaw the destruction of the Roman Rite, Pope Pacelli reigned over a glorious flourishing of the Church in almost all measurable aspects. See below for some staggering statistics.

Original post:

---

The canonizations of Pope John XXIII and John Paul II will take place this Sunday, with many flocking to Rome to be a part of the historic event.

Without questioning the two already-mentioned canonizations, the question still remains: Why not Pacelli?

Let it not be forgotten that his cause for beatification was expressly launched by Paul VI together with that of John XXIII precisely to combat their "almost being turned into symbols or banners of opposite tendencies within Catholicism". In beatifying and canonizing one but not the other -- does this not imply something about the relative strength of these "opposite tendencies" within the Church?

Clearly, a very strong case can be made for Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (Pope Pius XII), from a standpoint of sheer numbers alone.

For those who say we are now living in the greatest age of the Church, let us consider the numbers below, just for the dioceses of the United States during the reign of Pius XII. They are remarkable, to say the least -- if the canonization of a Pope also takes into consideration the appraisal of his pontificate (other than his personal holiness and his prophetical wisdom, both of which are irreproachable regarding Pope Pacelli), then these surely deserve observation:

While all these numbers may make one yearn for the Church of old, a few of them are truly staggering for the modern mind to comprehend in today's Catholic-lite world: a 200+% increase in American converts; a nearly 250% increase in seminaries built; a 200+% increase in seminarians; and a 50% increase in priests. All of this happened over Pius XII's glorious 19-year-reign.

While we do not question the canonization of a saint, we can say, looking at these numbers, that there is a strong case to be made that the lineup on April 27 is short one great man. [Whose cause for sainthood has not advanced an iota since Benedict XVI declared him Venerable. Pius XII has a special place in my heart because he was the first of the seven popes I have lived through so far.]

---

Fr H's prayer - whetheror not you believe Paul VI is what a saint should be - is certainly very apropos:

Oratiuncula hodierna
(A little prayer for today)

October 14, 2018

---

Saint Paul VI, pray that the smoke of Satan which entered the Church may, by your intercession, be driven back. Pray that the the whole Church may hear with docile obedience the moral teachings which, handed down by your predecessors, you handed down to our generations. Pray especially for your successor Pope Francis, that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, he may devoutly, powerfully, and joyfully set forth the tradition received through the Apostles, the Deposit of Faith.

---

A schism in the Orthodox world???


Patriarch Kirill presides at Holy Synod on October 15, 2018 which voted to break with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Unfortunately, CNA was quite deficient and/or simply lazy in backgrounding this story and does not really tell us the implications of the Russian Orthodox Church's 'break' with
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

In the Orthodox Churches, the Ecumenical Patriarch is considered 'primus inter pares' - first among equals - just as historically and canonically, the Orthodox Church of Constantinople
is considered 'first among equals' among all the Orthodox Churches because it was the original Church that broke away from Rome (the Western Church) in 1054 and therefore is the
core of Orthodox Christianity which resulted from that schism.

Today, there are 15 Orthodox Churches and each of them is considered autonomous and autocephalous - autonomous because they have no other allegiance except to themselves,
and auto-cephalous because they are each self-governing. (In addition, there are 9 Churches that are autonomous but not recognized by all of the autocephalous church as
autonomous). Moscow therefore had a perfect right to break with Bartholomew in his capacity as Pariarch of Constantinople, which does not affect either the Patriarchate of Moscow
nor the Patriarchate of Constantinople insofar as they are autonomous and autocephalous churches.
- But does it mean then that Moscow can now ignore whatever the Ecumenical Patriarch says about the Orthodox Churches in general, even if the other Orthodox Churches give
their explicit assent to what he says in their name?
- What will the other Orthodox Churches do about the situation? Will they take sides between Moscow and Constantinople, and if so, what would it mean for Orthodox unity?
- What mechanism do the Orthodox Churches have, as a whole, to promulgate or ratify any measure that will effectively define their ecclesial reality today?

Moscow has virtually always contested the internal primacy of Constantinople in the Orthodox world and considers itself, not Contantinople, as the 'second Rome'. The Ukraine
issue could possibly be the pretext they were waiting for to cement their claim into reality - because after all, Moscow already accounts for ___ of the world's Orthodox population.
(Constantinople which has been under the Turks for the past six centuries only has a tiny token Orthodox population.)
Whether the other Orthodox Churches unanimously approve or reject Bartholomew's move on the Ukrainian Church would have to be decided by a synodal vote of each of
the Churches.
- Assuming there is unanimity, one way or the other, how do they go about putting it into practice without 'isolating' either Constantinople or Moscow from the worldwide Orthodox
community?
- Does Moscow really care what the other Orthodox Churches think? It is so overwhelmingly powerful compared to any of the others that it can simply go ahead and do what it wants.
- What does this mean for the attempts for a Catholic-Orthodox dialog (begun in 2007) aiming first of all to resolve the issue of papal primacy which the Orthodox dispute,
as a first step towards greater de facto ecumenism between the Western and Eastern churches?

Russian Orthodox Church splits from Constantinople to protest
recognition of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church

October 16, 2018

The Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow has cut ties with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, claiming his recognition of an independent Orthodox Church in Ukraine departed from Orthodox Christian norms.

Metropolitan Hilarion, who heads foreign relations for the Russian Orthodox Church, said Russian Orthodox leaders decided to “break the Eucharistic communion” in response to actions it called “lawless and canonically void.”

“The Russian Orthodox Church doesn’t recognize those decisions and won’t fulfill them,” Hilarion said in Belarus after a meeting of the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“The church that acknowledged the schismatics has excluded itself from the canonical field of Orthodoxy.”

“We are hoping common sense will prevail and that the Constantinople Patriarchate will change its relations to existing church reality,” Metropolitan Hilarion said.

The break comes in response to the decision of Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and the “first among equals” leader of the global Orthodox Church, to issue a statement Oct. 11 confirming plans for an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church and restoring ties with the previously schismatic Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate.

The announcement also removed the traditional right of the Russian Patriarch to ordain the Metropolitan of Kyiv, a move which observers predicted would be perceived as a deliberate slight to Moscow. The right dated back to a canonical letter first issued in the year 1686.

Archbishop Yevstratiy, chief spokesman for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate and whose rehabilitation by Constantinople contributed to the current break with Moscow, said the Russian synod’s decision was a move towards “self-isolation.”

Writing in a Facebook post, he said “Sooner or later this will be fixed and the Russian Orthodox Church will return to communion.”

According to the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Press Service, Yevstratiy claimed that Orthodox Christians must choose whether to follow the Russian Orthodox “into schism” or “remain in unity with the Ecumenical Patriarch (Bartholomew I of Constantinople) through the Local Ukrainian Church.”

Among the backers of Constantinople’s move are Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who is running for re-election in March 2019. He had previously asked the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant independence to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, the Associated Press reports.

While the recent push for an independent, autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine emerged as a serious movement in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it gained further momentum following the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and Russian backing of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine in response to the unseating of Ukraine’s pro-Russia former president Viktor Yanukovych.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which claims traditional and canonical authority over the Orthodox community in Ukraine, has denied taking political sides in the conflict and said it has worked for peace in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian Church has also voiced concern that the Constantinople patriarchate’s actions could deepen religious divides in Ukraine and inspire breakaway branches to take over church buildings, Reuters reports.

Kyiv, now the capital of Ukraine, is the site of the 988 baptism of Vladimir the Great, Grand Prince of Kiev, which resulted in the Christianization of Kyivan Rus’, a state whose heritage Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus all claim.

Orthodox Christians in Ukraine have recently been divided into three separate groups.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate effectively declared itself independent from Moscow in 1992, and is considered by the Russian Church to be a schismatic group. Until now, the other Orthodox Churches have recognized Ukraine as under Moscow’s jurisdiction and honored the excommunication.

The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, re-founded in 1990, is similarly seen as a breakaway group.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is under the authority of the Russian Church and has been the officially recognized Orthodox Church in the country.

Patriarch Bartholomew’s plan to create a single, self-governing Church in the Ukraine, led by its own patriarch, is motivated by a desire to unify the country’s 30 million Orthodox Christians. The Russian Church sees the move as an infringement of its jurisdiction and authority.

There are about 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide. The Orthodox Church split from the Catholic Church in 1054.


Fortunately, there is more explicit information from the Moscow Patriarchate itself, which says that it no longer consiers itself in communion with Bartholomew and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, along with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church it has recognized. At least one autocephalous Orthodox Church, that of Serbia, has publicly sided with Moscow on this question:

Metropolitan Hilarion says Constantinople
has lost the right to be called
the coordinating center for the Orthodox Church

October 16, 2018

‘The way to returning from a schism is always open and this way lies through repentance’, said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relation, speaking in the Big Game analytical TV program about ways of coming out of the situation caused by the anti-canonical actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople because of which the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, on October 15, 2018, had to recognize as impossible to remain any further in the Eucharistic communion with it.

As is known, by its decisions of October 11, the Patriarchate of Constantinople ‘revoked’ the decision made over 300 years ago to transfer the Metropolis of Kiev to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, thus encroaching upon the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church and stated its readiness to implement the project for ‘Ukrainian autocephaly’.

In addition, the Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in defiance of canonical order admitted into communion the leaders of the Ukrainian schism.

‘The Patriarchate of Constantinople has joined the purely political project, which has existed already for over a quarter of a century, to create the so-called autocephalous Ukrainian church’, the DECR chairman reminded the audience, ‘the project was initiated and supported by political leaders but it is not supported by the basic mass of the church people in Ukraine. It is evident from the thousands-strong processions with the cross held in Kiev; it is evident from the overcrowded churches of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. And we regret that the Patriarchate of Constantinople, for its selfish reasons, has embarked on the path of support for the schism – this anti-church political project’.

It is not the first case of this kind in history, Metropolitan Hilarion stated with regret: ‘we remember how Constantinople used to support the Renovators’ schism and delivered blows on the Russian Orthodox Church every time when she found herself in a hard situation’, the archpastor noted, ‘Here is the price of fraternal love so often assured by the Patriarchate of Constantinople’.

‘We have now come to face a new church reality: we no longer have a single coordinating center in the Orthodox Church, and we should very clearly realize that the Patriarchate of Constantinople has self-destructed as such’, Metropolitan Hilarion stressed.

He reminded the audience that for several decades the Moscow Patriarchate and other Local Churches participated in preparing a pan-Orthodox Council; their representatives and Primates would get together for meetings, which were organized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

‘But having invaded the canonical boundaries of another Local Church, by legitimatizing a schism it has lost the right to be called the coordinating center for the Orthodox Church’, the hierarch said.

Is there a possibility that the Patriarchate of Constantinople will disavow the steps it has made?

‘A possibility for repentance is always there, though the logic of the recent actions do not presuppose any steps in the opposite direction’, His Eminence assumed, ‘but we still very much hope that reason will prevail. Patriarch Bartholomew has been often called ‘the spiritual leader of the 300 million-strong Orthodox population of the planet’, but from these 300 million at least a half should be subtracted; for he is not the spiritual leader for either the Russian Orthodox Church or the Local Orthodox Churches, which I think will not support his predatory actions. Precisely for this reason I say that he has now lost the right to be called the coordinating center for the Orthodox Church’.

The Moscow Patriarchate will continue communion with other Local Orthodox Churches, the DECR chairman said, ‘we will continue visiting each other, coordinating our efforts, our views, but the Patriarchate of Constantinople has now fallen out of this process and we should very clearly realize it’.

The New York Times graphic on 10/12/18 depicts the massive cover-up of the clerical/episcopal sex abuse crisis that begins from the man at the top, and offers new proof that even for his once-staunch champions in the media, the bloom
has faded off the Bergoglian pontificate.


The pope ignores the damage
as another prelate 'falls'
Others were more complicit in covering up priestly abuse,
but Cardinal Donald Wuerl still committed serious mistakes.
By The Editorial Board

October 12, 2018

Editors' Note:The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

In his letter on Friday accepting the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Catholic archbishop of Washington, Pope Francis praised the departing prelate for his “nobility” in not trying to defend “mistakes” in his handling of sexual-abuse allegations.

The pope misses the point. [HE SIMPLY DOES NOT 'GET IT' - AND IT SEEMS HE NEVER HAS ON THE CLERICAL SEX ABUSE ISSUE.]

The archbishop may not be as culpable as other bishops who more systematically covered up sexual predation, and in at least one case he took action that was initially thwarted by the Vatican.

But a devastatingly detailed grand jury report on widespread child sex abuse in Pennsylvania churches showed that Cardinal Wuerl, as bishop of Pittsburgh, was immersed in a clerical culture that hid pedophilic crimes behind euphemisms, conducted unprofessional investigations and evaluations of accused priests, kept acknowledged cases of sex abuse secret from parish communities and avoided reporting the abuse to police.

In an anguished letter to his archdiocese, Cardinal Wuerl accepted responsibility for actions described in the grand jury report. “I wish that I could redo some decisions I have made in my three decades as a bishop and each time get it right,” he wrote.

Pope Francis’s warm feelings for Cardinal Wuerl may be understandable, given that the archbishop has been a supporter of the social changes the pope is trying to achieve in the Catholic Church. Conservative prelates who have fought those changes have accused the pope of covering up accusations that the previous archbishop of Washington, the former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, sexually harassed and abused seminarians.

Cardinal Wuerl’s standing was weakened by his association with his predecessor, although he insists he knew nothing about the allegations. Pope Francis saw Cardinal Wuerl’s resignation as a sacrifice for the good of the church amid the attacks by critics like Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Vatican ambassador to the United States who has vigorously pressed charges of a church cover-up.

Yet by indicating that he regards Cardinal Wuerl’s past actions simply as “mistakes,” and by allowing him to remain a member of the powerful Congregation for Bishops, the pope reinforces the sense that he does not understand the extraordinary damage done by clerics who cruelly and shamelessly abused their power over trusting children and adults. What the Pennsylvania grand jury report and other reports chronicle is not “inappropriate contact,” as diocesan records so often claimed, but the brutal and repeated rape of innocents who have been marked by this for life.

Pope Francis was similarly slow to understand the gravity of sexual abuse cases in Chile, initially defending bishops and acting only after he listened to survivors. [It was not a question of 'slowness' at all on the part of the pope but of his obstinate resistance to anything and anyone that dares oppose his dicta - until he realizes that persisting in his obstinacy is doing him more harm than good.]

To restore the trust of its faithful and its standing in the world, the Vatican needs to make a more vigorous and sincere effort to acknowledge the damage done by abusive priests and Vatican officials who perpetuated the abuse.

Cardinal Wuerl seemed to understand this when he said he was making way for younger bishops consecrated since the crisis burst into the open in 2002, and for that he deserves credit. [He's not exactly making way for anyone just yet, because Bergoglio has kept him on as Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese, and he can well keep him on as such until

But if the church is to make amends for the scars it has inflicted on thousands of its members, the pope must do a far better job of demonstrating at every opportunity that there is no “nobility” whatsoever in the way sexual predation was allowed to spread through the church, that he will not tolerate the slightest of “mistakes” in the handling of such abuse and that he will upend a rotten Vatican culture that let it all happen.

Of the triad of media giants that worked together and independently in 2010 to force Benedict XVI to resign by seeking - IN VAIN - to find anything that linked him directly to a sex abuse case or its cover-up, Der Spiegel and the New York Times have now turned against
Bergoglio in a big way because of the sex abuse issue and what it says about what someone rightly called the culture of mendacity that has pervaded the Church for a long time and which led to all the cover-ups about sexual crimes and misconduct by priests and bishops in the past several decades.

AP, the third colossus in the anti-Benedict triad, so far continues to give Bergoglio the benefit of the doubt, although the very Bergoglian Nicole Winfield, AP's Vatican correspondent, did devote at least one story to reports of how Cardinal Bergoglio ignored, glossed over, or covered up incidents of clerical sex abuse as Archbishop of Buenos Aires and president of the Argentine bishops' conference. Der Spiegel investigated these reports in Argentina and made them part of its 19-page J'Accuse against Bergoglio. But few in the Anglophone world - other than LifeSite News and 1Peter5 on the blogosphere - seem to attach any importance to it at all.

Why are the rest all giving Bergoglio a pass on his dubious past? One would think that they presaged his papal record of making pets out of the likes of McCarrick, Mons. Ricca, Cardinal Coccopalmerio and his proteges like 'Don Mercedes' Inzoli and the cardinal's orgiast secretary, Mons Capozzi, not to forget Mons. Paglia of the homoerotic cathedral mural. And I am sure they are just the tip of the iceberg in the Curia's homo-hierarchy.

About Damian Thompson's reaction to the farcical resignation of Cardinal Wuerl, I would say Bergoglio threw in that eulogy of Wuerl to 'justify' why he was keeping him on anyway as apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese he is supposed to be vacating. Moreover, he remains president of the DC-based papal gravy train called the PAPAL FOUNDATION.

I was going to say that more importantly, he is also keeping him on at the Congregation for Bishops where theoretically, his support would be critical, if not essential, to any progressivist US bishops Bergoglio decides to name in the future. But I remembered that this particularly congregation has long become Bergoglio's personal fiefdom, where he has two 'agents' calling the shots for him, effectively castrating Cardinal Marc Ouellet of any but rubberstamp functions in the congregation he is supposed to head. (It was that Ouellet in his role as assiduous Bergoglian courtier who willingly allowed himself to be instrumentalized in an attempt to put down Mons. Carlo Vigano. That hardly worked out at all, did it?) So no, Bergoglio does not need Wuerl in Bishops for any pragmatic reason at all, other than as yet another display of how he has the congregation completely under his thumb.

Pope Francis was wrong
to shower praise on Cardinal Wuerl
by Damian Thompson

Oct. 12, 2018

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who is under intense pressure to explain what he knew about his disgraced predecessor, the sex abuser and ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Wuerl had asked to resign. He knew his position was untenable: not only is there widespread scepticism about his claim that he didn’t know McCarrick routinely assaulted seminarians, but he’s also under fire for alleged mishandling of abuse cases when he was Bishop of Pittsburgh.

His departure hasn’t come as a surprise: he is past retirement age anyway. But many Catholics are disconcerted – to put it mildly – by the Pope’s letter to Wuerl, in which he praises the embattled cardinal in language more appropriate to a canonisation than resignation under a cloud.

Francis told Wuerl:

---

‘You have sufficient elements to “justify” your actions and distinguish between what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to commit some mistakes. However, your nobility has led you not to choose this way of defence. Of this, I am proud and thank you.’

---

It’s a confusing statement, but one thing is clear: Donald Wuerl remains one of the Pope’s favourite cardinals. This talk of ‘nobility’ is a classic example of his determination to defend his allies, almost irrespective of what they have done or are accused of doing.

Cardinal Wuerl is no villain, unlike McCarrick. His rise in the Church has as much to do with his passion for evangelism as his networking skills. His record of handling sex abuse cases is genuinely mixed: if he made mistakes in Pittsburgh, it’s also true that in other cases he showed greater willingness to punish miscreants than some of his fellow bishops.

What brought him down – and what makes Pope Francis’s letter so bizarrely tone-deaf – is the monumental scandal of McCarrick.

To understand how, read the Vatican observer Fr Raymond de Souza, editor-in-chief of the influential Convivium magazine, writing in the National Catholic Register today. Wuerl had to go because his own priests in Washington ‘thought he was lying’ about what he knew about McCarrick, writes de Souza (who adds that this doesn’t prove that Wuerl actually was lying). As he puts it (my emphases in bold):

---

It was the McCarrick matter that brought him down. Precisely, his repeated insistence that he did not know about Cardinal McCarrick until the Archdiocese of New York announced in June that an allegation of sexual abuse of minor had been “substantiated.”

His priests did not believe him. They thought that he was lying in public and lying to them. When Archbishop Carlo Viganò wrote that Cardinal Wuerl “lies shamelessly” in his “testimony” published in late August, it confirmed conclusions that many Washington priests had already arrived at.

Further details from Archbishop Viganò’s testimony have subsequently been confirmed by the Vatican, most recently by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who acknowledged that the nuncios in Washington were informed about Archbishop McCarrick and the restrictions placed upon him [by Pope Benedict XVI].

It is simply not possible that the nuncio in Washington, communicating restrictions from the Holy See upon Archbishop McCarrick for sexual misconduct, would not have told Cardinal Wuerl about what was being done to his predecessor, still resident in the archdiocese.

---

According to Fr de Souza, the Pope had told Cardinal Wuerl that he would have to accept his resignation if he had lost the confidence of his clergy. Wuerl discovered that he had indeed lost this confidence and his fate was sealed.

Pope Francis could have accepted his resignation in language that, while recognising Wuerl’s many virtues, acknowledged that his credibility had been called into question.

Instead, he showered him in compliments and, as a sign of papal favour, has made Wuerl ‘apostolic administrator’ of Washington until a successor can be found. There are rumours that the job will go to Cardinal Joseph Tobin, another Francis loyalist who was close to McCarrick. Meanwhile, Christopher Altieri, writing in the Catholic Herald, reckons that Wuerl will remain the Pope’s unofficial man in DC. As Altieri puts it:

---

By accepting Wuerl’s resignation, but also keeping him on as Apostolic Administrator, the Pope shows he is working to a particular modus operandi.

There seem to be three basic steps: (1) ignore criticism and impugn critics’ motives; (2) when that becomes impracticable make a big show of doing something, without actually doing much of anything; (3) if necessary, remove a high-profile figure, but not really.

At the very least, Francis’s letter is an implied rebuke to Washington priests who criticised Wuerl and who are worried by what de Souza calls a ‘culture of clerical mendacity’. That culture is reflected not only in the chorus of ‘I never suspected a thing!’ coming from McCarrick’s bishop friends, but also a string of little episodes in the Vatican, whose communications department was caught photoshopping a letter from Benedict XVI to make it look as if he was endorsing a series of booklets celebrating the theology of Pope Francis.

---

‘How deep can the culture of clerical mendacity go?’ asks de Souza.

Good question – but you might also ask how high it goes. Donald Wuerl is not the only bishop accused of concealing what he knew about McCarrick. So is the Pope himself.

As Der Spiegel put it:


Incidentally, did Fr Spadaro, Fr Rosica, Andrea Tornielli or any other Bergoglio spinmeister even think of writing a letter to the editor of DER SPIEGEL to protest what the magazine
accuses Bergoglio of having done? Isn't it BEYOND REMARKABLE that not a peep came out of the usual suspects after the Spiegel expose? And this time, they can't
answer by orchestrating a smear campaign against Spiegel the way they did against Mons Vigano. Besides, how can any of them credibly deny that Bergoglio is a habitual
liar, who does not think there is anything wrong with taking the Word of the Lord in vain - in order to claim that Jesus approved, if not initiated, the anti-Catholic
measures and statements that Bergoglio has been disseminating relentlessly - and therefore he blasphemes Christ habitually?

'All are welcome' -
to what exactly?

October 15, 2018

I have not been paying much attention to the Youth Synod because it comes across to me as a carefully crafted PR exercise to promote the current trendy agenda at the Vatican, but the few bits I have seen have confirmed my prejudice.

Chilean Youth Silvia Teresa Retamales Morales says many non-Catholics asked for a “more open Church” being a “multicultural Church open to all, not judgmental, not discriminate against minorities, or people with different sexual orientations, or the poor.” That sounds more like the United Nations than a church.

I was reminded of this piece Patrick Reardon contributed to the National Catholic Reporter some years ago:

It’s called “A Church Refreshed: A dispatch from an American Catholic Future.”Her e are a few extracts from Reardon’s American Catholic Never Never Land:

---

Song leader Sophia Santiago stood to the right of the altar of St. Gertrude Church in Chicago and invited those in the crowded pews and in folding chairs to greet their neighbors. “All are welcome,” she proclaimed.

To the simple notes of a single piano, the parish choir and the congregation sang a sweet, lilting version of “Come to the Water” as liturgical dancers, altar servers, ministers of the word, parish chancellor Emma Okere and pastor Fr. Antonio Fitzgerald processed up the center aisle. The song filled the soaring interior of the 131-year-old structure. On a banner high behind the altar, in large, easily readable lettering, was a quotation from Pope Francis: “Who am I to judge?”

This was one of thousands of celebrations across the globe marking 50 years of rejuvenation and renewal dating from the election of Pope Francis in 2013, popularly called “refreshment of the faith.”

Reardon sees a Chicago Catholic church that has kept a few of those fusty old buildings with "their stained-glass windows, gold ornamentation and other finery”, but they’re supplemented by store front congregations with a preacher a piano and a soup kitchen.

In a strip mall a mile and a half to the south, another celebration was being held in a simple storefront. On the large glass window, hand-painted in red and blue, were the words “Lazarus Pastoral Center.”

“For I was hungry and you gave me food.” Deacon Liam Saranof was reading the Gospel of Matthew to 27 men, women and children seated on folding chairs in the long, narrow space, the former home of an Ethiopian restaurant.

This strip mall was also the home to a bedding showroom, a Subway sandwich deli, a $10 store and a bicycle repair shop, all of them open on this early Tuesday evening.

A short time later, Saranof’s teenage son Karim opened up a small folding table in the center of the space, then carried over a small, brightly painted plastic box containing consecrated hosts that, a few hours earlier, had been delivered by one of the parishioners from St. Gertrude.

“Some of us here think of ourselves also as members of St. Gertrude,” machinist Chloe Pardo explained. “But others are only affiliated with the community here. They like the community work we do; they like how close we become.”

Reardon’s future church is complete with female “chancellors” who really run the show, Popes named “Martin” (after dePorres) and Oscar (after St Romero) and the two big slogans are “All Are Welcome” and “Who Am I to Judge?”

---

This article is a breathtaking display of liberal insanity which I commented on here. This kind of feel good, fuzzy wuzzy Christianity has virtually wiped out Catholicism in America, so the obvious remedy is “We clearly didn’t have ENOUGH feel good, fuzzy wuzzy Christianity. So let’s destroy more old churches, write more banal hymns, put up more felt banners, hire more social workers and do more left wing posturing…”

I could vent a very long time about this, but first grumble about this silly nonsense from the Youth Synod is the straw man set up that somehow the Catholic Church is not “multicultural” and not “open to all”. What? The Catholic Church is the most diverse and multicultural institution on earth.

It’s been seeking to welcome diverse peoples ever since the great missionary movements of the Counter-Reformation and the nineteenth century. That’s what we’ve done since the Great Commission: reach out to the marginalized, the dispossessed, the poor, those in moral and spiritual darkness and those who are lost.

The Catholic Church is more global and multiracial than any other group. Catholic means universal for goodness’s sake.

Consider: I am pastor in an admittedly conservative town and an unapologetically conservative Catholic parish, but when I look around on any particular Sunday my congregation is amazingly multicultural and diverse. A heart surgeon or an international business executive might be sitting next to a body shop worker who I know belongs to AA. Behind them is a family of refugees from El Salvador and next to them an African American-Indian family or a Mexican laborer. Up front some converts are next to cradle Catholics. We have the whole range of ages, nationalities, races and people: Nigerians and Indians, Italians, English, French, Polish, Philippino, Vietnamese, Chinese, Colombian and Mexican.

All are welcome and all belong to our parish family.

All are indeed welcome….but to what exactly?

The obsession with inclusivity is something mouthed by Cardinal Marx who said, ““Nobody is excluded [from the church],” he said. “Nobody is superfluous. Exclusion is not in the language of the church.”

Total inclusivity can only be proposed by a church that is used to being a wealthy establishment institution. “All Are Welcome” is the slogan of Christian leaders who know they are on the top of the social heap and feel guilty about it.
- They live in their palaces: (BTW did you know that Cardinal Marx also spent $13m refurbishing his palace and another $11m on a guesthouse in Rome) and their middle class rectories but they proclaim “All Are Welcome” to salve their consciences and make themselves feel like good Christian folk.

My question remains, “To what exactly are all welcome?”

Are people welcome to the Catholic Church? Of course all are welcome. All have always been welcome, but what are they welcome to?
- What kind of Catholic Church?
- Why should anyone want to join the Catholic Church anyway?
- What would a liberal Catholic answer?
- Is it for their soul’s salvation?
- Is it to escape the fires of hell?
- Is it to worship and serve the Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe?
- Is it to learn how to love God and his Son Jesus Christ, to venerate and love his Blessed Mother and worship in the communion of all the saints and angels?

Probably not.

Instead all we hear is the mantra, “All Are Welcome”.

The fact is, from the very beginning all have been welcome. The only people who can’t be Catholic are the ones who don’t want to be Catholic.

I’m reminded of a gay activist who was interviewed about the church. He was yelling that he wanted the church to be more inclusive, then the interviewer said, “So if you felt the church was more inclusive which church would you attend every Sunday?”

The guy looked at the interviewer like he was a martian, “Not me. I’m not really a churchgoer.”

Correct. It seems the liberals who are unlocking the doors to empty churches are the ones crying out, “All are welcome!” but the churches aren’t empty because people are unwelcome, but because they don’t want to go to that kind of church.

The churches that are full, on the other hand, are the ones that actually preach the Christian gospel.

Without a full blooded, historic Catholic faith which preaches the need for repentance and seeking the face of the Lord for eternal salvation what are you welcoming people to?
- A luncheon club where they sing hymns and carry banners with trite slogans?
- A soup kitchen and shower facility where they hold Bible studies? - A rehab center where they find their inner goddess?
People aren’t dumb. They’ll soon ask, “Why bother with all that religious-spiritual stuff? We can do soup kitchens, rehab centers and shower facilities without all those dreary hymns, bad Christian pop music and dull homilies delivered by a fat, middle class half educated minister.

I agree that “All Are Welcome”.
- All are welcome to come face to face with the living Lord Jesus Christ in the fullness of the Catholic faith.
- All are welcome to fall on their knees in Eucharistic Adoration. - All are welcome to be received into the Catholic Church, learn how to make a good confession and share the work and worship of Christ’s one flock under one shepherd.
- All are welcome to walk in the path of perfection, to learn how to emulate the saints, love the Sacred Scriptures and share the gospel of life with others, ministering Christ’s peace and justice to a starving world.
- All Are Welcome to leave everything to follow Christ.
- All Are Welcome to repent of their sins, confess their faith and be baptized. All Are Welcome.

But some future church in which “All Are Welcome” is the only creed? You’re welcome to it.


I had started out with the good intention of reporting something everyday about the so-called youth synod, but after the first two days, news from that event confirmed if not worsened the worst fears one had about this pre-fabricated Bergoglian set-up that is even more brazen in its evil intentions than the two 'family synods'. So I have spared myself the anguish of having to comment on what has been happening, But Father Z points to a blogger priest who tells us of the worst features so far of the 'youth synod', even as he gives testimony of the young Catholics he is privileged to serve and accompany - not at all the 'youth' selectively invited to take part in the current synod...

'A leaven in the world'?
Youth synod repeats old errors
by Fr Kevin Cusick

October 15, 2018

We are now making things up as we go along. As if the Church had been founded yesterday. This nonsense was already tried in the sixties and found wanting.

Paolo Ruffini [the recently named Vatican communications czar] reported on Twitter that at a press conference for the 2018 Youth Synod now underway in Rome a speaker called for “a liturgy that is better suited to present times, more participatory, more understandable, otherwise the youth might consider it dull.”

Dull! Heaven forbid! Let’s bring back the guitars and tambourines! Everybody who can play an instrument should bring theirs and we can have a talent show. The resulting laughter at least will ensure a scarcity of boredom.

The problem with this approach is that young people do not come to the discussion with a tabula rasa as they might have in the past.
- They do not believe the Church was founded yesterday.
- Social networks, the Internet, and other factors make young people today more knowledgeable about our tradition.
- All the books that were thrown away or left on the shelves, even when I was in the seminary, are all being made available on the Internet.
- Young people are meeting other young people on social networks and inviting each other to attend and learn the Traditional Liturgy.

The Latin texts were left on the shelf. Those priests who did know Latin decided that we who were not yet priests did not need Latin so chose not to teach us. We lobbied to get one semester of Latin. The course was thereafter discontinued and that was the end of Latin for men in formation to offer the Holy Mass, the use of Latin in which was called for by Vatican II documents.

From the beginning of my priesthood whenever I offered Mass alone, I exclusively used the Latin texts. I was all the more ready to learn the Traditional Latin Mass in 2010 when assigned as pastor at St. Francis de Sales in Benedict, Md., where the old Mass has been available on Sundays since John Paul II’s Ecclesia Dei gave permission for its recovery in limited cases.

Men studying for, and discerning, the priesthood show a consistent interest in the Traditional Liturgy. For example, a young man no longer attends Mass with his family about 20 miles distant and has chosen instead to attend our Latin Mass consistently on Sundays, recently joining the parish. He has informed me that he is discerning the priesthood.

Our parish has also this month sent a young man to discern his vocation over a three-week stay with an order that exclusively offers the Traditional Liturgy.

We have additional potential religious vocations in the parish pipeline. Our altar server society encourages all the young men involved to consider the priesthood. One of our senior servers is planning to apply to a Traditional order for seminary. A young lady looks forward to a discernment visit with a Traditional order in Missouri.

Rome, deaf to this phenomenon that we hear of in so many places, continues to peddle the tried and failed ruses of the postconciliar period where the only methods not used were the Traditional ones, in flagrant violation of the Vatican II documents themselves.

Young people can go to any group today and find a self-celebratory, homemade liturgy or celebration that serves as a projection of self.
- But they come to the Church to find Christ.
- The Church owes all persons the honesty of recognizing and that the liturgy did not come down to us as a multiple choice smorgasbord.
- Rather, the revelation of Christ through the Spirit is a one-size-fits-all source of grace.
- Only God can satisfy all the longings of the human heart.
- God comes only through the integral means established by Christ handed down as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Either those in Rome the Pope invites to churn out new documents about liturgy will listen to young people and learn — or young people will simply ignore the documents coming from Rome and continue to study and learn the old Missals and Kyriales.

True joy is never boring. Neither is the drama and love of the cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ which we touch and enter through the Holy Mass. I am very blessed and joyful to pray the Traditional Latin Mass, a liturgy that is timeless instead of “keeping up with the times.”

The LGBT network is also present at the synod with official approbation. These recruiters encourage young people to label themselves not as Christian believers but rather to add the LGBT qualifier which undermines that very identity with a subversive and heretical agenda.

Avera Maria Santo is a 22-year-old U.S. Catholic who lives in Alabama and blogs at her website, “Inside My Holy of Holies,” about being same-sex attracted and remaining faithful to the goodness, truth, and beauty of what the Church teaches about human sexuality.

In an open letter circulated in Rome to the bishops participating in the October 3-28 Youth Synod, Santo told them she had been “devastated” to learn of the ongoing campaign by pro-“LGBT” groups that are trying to utilize the synod as a vehicle to shift Church teaching on homosexuality.

She wrote: “I wish then to lay my heart bare, and to share some of my story and my convictions with you, dear bishops of the Holy Catholic Church, and plead with you to keep the Church’s teachings on homosexuality good, true and beautiful.”

These are the kinds of young people that should have been invited to the synod, not LGBT advocates. (See “Pope Selects Youth From Pro-Gay Vatican Consultant’s Media Org To Attend Synod” in LifeSiteNews.com, October 8.)

Another rigged Synod is now underway with predictable results. All we need to know to verify that is the information that Archbishop Bruno Forte is on the drafting committee again for this confab. He is responsible for inserting pro-LGBT propaganda in the written record of the earlier Family Synod.

Lorenzo Cardinal Baldisseri says the drafts of the final document of Synod 2018 will be kept confidential and will not be published. What has been made public thus far indicates that the synod counts on another ruse to manipulate Church teaching for ill purposes.

Pleas to stop the synod in order to give room for a response to Archbishop Viganò and to deal with the homosexual scandals were ignored. Perhaps a pre-planned useful distraction like the Youth Synod was an opportunity to good to pass up.

As the men in Rome act like a self-protective group carrying on a closed discussion, they will not frustrate the work of the Holy Spirit speaking through so many sincere young Catholics all over the world who are doing the work of genuinely evangelizing other youth.

Please pray for our group of pilgrims journeying to the holy places in Italy as you read this.

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


Fr Cipolla looks beyond the current travesty of a synod in Rome to exult about the signs he sees that have somehow transcended the sorry morass that this Pontificate has made of 'the Church'...



This evening, I saw the future of the Church:
It is the Traditional Mass
by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla

October 13, 2018

This evening I saw the future, the real Future of the Church, not the one being imagined by the crowd in Rome who mistake the future because of the mindless bureaucracy that thinks it has the Spirit imprisoned in the 1960s under the title of the “spirit of Vatican II.”

When the present Pontiff was elected, I wrote an essay called “Back to the Future”, which predicted that the Church would have to relive the sixties but this time with a vengeance. All those prelates and their briefcase carrying followers who went underground during the pontificate of John Paul II would meet and talk with great nostalgia during those dark (for them) years under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. They talked about the “unfinished work” of the Council - that work that had little to do with Council documents but much more to do with their image of the New Church that would be updated to fit the needs and desires of Modern Man.

Poor things. They did not realize that Modern Man died in the sixties and that Post-Modern Man was emerging and was slouching towards Bethlehem.

When you live in a sealed container that is the Vatican and its bureaucracy, there is little chance you will be conversant with what is really happening in the world and in the mind and hearts of people. But the 60s crowd are back and with a vengeance.

The only 60s program that kept on going during their exile was the program of the moral corruption of the clergy. That continued to grow and flourish.

The destruction of the liturgical life of the Church was for a time halted, and it seemed that there might be a possibility of questioning the basis of liturgical reform following the Council and of at least thinking that there was in fact a discontinuity in the liturgical life of the Church that resulted in the emptying out of our churches.

But a bureaucrat cannot possibly conceive of a discontinuity in the life of the Church, for the bureaucrat must believe that whatever happens is by definition the work of the Holy Spirit, and so the only thing that he must do is to rethink and change course according to what he hears and what he is told is the latest manifestation of the Spirit, be it in a synod, or a sermon, or an encyclical, or a press conference, or what is whispered in the hallways and the loggia.

It is the bureaucrats at all levels of the clergy who kept the apparatus alive for fifty years, so that when a Pope resigned, they only had to change the direction in which they faced when they woke up in the morning: from the East to the West.

One need not wonder how the double coup of a resignation of a Pope and an election of a 60s bishop to the papacy did not result in confusion and chaos. For when those formerly in power and then underground for fifty years came into their own once again, back to the future, the supporting bureaucracy in all levels of the Church were ready and able to support them in their project of remaking the Church in their own 60s image.

And part of the glue holding this together and making it possible was the damnable success of the moral corruption of the clergy at all levels, a corruption that enabled the bureaucracy to control by intimidation based on incriminating knowledge and to advance their agenda unimpeded, except for a few gadfly cardinals and bishops.

So it is precisely while the Synod for Youth is meeting in Rome in quasi-secrecy that I saw the Future this evening. I was invited to sit in choir during a Traditional Solemn Mass in a parish church of my diocese. The celebrant, the pastor of the parish, the deacon and the sub-deacon were each young priests of the diocese.

The Mass was celebrated with no frills, no excesses, no sign of aestheticism. The Feast was the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, instituted by Pius XI to celebrate the anniversary of the Council of Ephesus, at which Mary was proclaimed as Theotokos, the bearer of God, affirming the full divinity of the person of Christ.

The music of the Mass was all Gregorian chant, Mass IX. The servers were all young men, some new to this, some quite practiced in serving this Mass. It was the worship of God in its purest form, in its traditional form, a form whose liturgical modesty and reticence invites prayer and therefore worship.

The sacred ministers gave themselves over to their roles in the Mass in a naturally self-effacing way. They knew the proper tones for the various chants and sang them well. The sermon was intelligent and truly Catholic. These three men made worship possible by getting themselves out of the way and letting the rite speak for itself.

Many of the young priests in my diocese have learnt the Traditional Roman Mass, aka the Extraordinary Form.
- They love this Mass in a sober way without any hint of “high church” prancing or panting.
- They love Christ and his Church. They are loyal to the teaching of the Magisterium.
- They are priests who are at home in any situation and who enjoy each other’s company.
- They enjoy the company of both men and women in their parishes.

The bureaucrats who run the Church do not know that these priests exist. And that is good. For while the bureaucrats are running around at synods and conferences and trying to put out noxious fires without the water of moral purity and therefore failing every time, these young priests, not only in my diocese, but in most dioceses through the Catholic world, are just learning once again how to worship and are discovering the beauty of worship, and they are teaching this to their flock. And they, and the Traditional Mass they love — they are the Future of the Church.

Here's a belated post of an October 10 blog by Edward Pentin where he discourses on the men handpicked 'to draft the final statement' of the current travesty of a synod - not that we hope to be able to see that statement at all as circusmaster Cardinal Baldisseri has already said it won't be published at all. And not that there is anything that has to be drafted, since it is almost a certainty that the 'final statement' and the post-synodal exhortation for this synod (the two documents are perhaps virtually identical, differing only in form and presentation) have long been pre-written by Bergoglio's expert doctrinal and lexical spin doctors exactly as he wants them to be... For both reasons, I did not feel any journalistic urgency to post this information but it must go on the record, nonetheless.


This Gloria.TV cartoon depicts the idea of many Catholics about Bergoglio's rigged rubber-stamp synods.

5 out of 12 Commission members
elected to draft final document of 'youth synod'
[The seven others were handpicked by the pope]


October 10, 2018

The Vatican released today the names of those who will be responsible for drafting the final document of the Synod on Youth, and although they are geographically representative, concerns surround some of them and their views on aspects of Church teaching.

The commission for drafting the final document of the Oct. 3-28 synod on “Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment” consists of 12 members, five of whom were elected today by synod members, and come from the world’s five continents.

They comprise Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, the archbishop of Mexico City and one of 41 delegates personally chosen by the Pope to attend the synod; Archbishop Peter Comensoli of Melbourne, Australia, also a papal delegate; Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, the prefect of the Vatican dicastery for Integral Human Development; Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the archbishop of Mumbai, India, and a member of the Pope’s ‘C9’ Council of Cardinals advising Francis on Church reform; and Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti, Italy, a member of the synod’s organizing council.

Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, the secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, and Cardinal Sérgio da Rocha of Brasilia, Brazil, the general relator of the synod, automatically have places on the commission.

The Pope has personally chosen three others to help draft the final document: Brazilian Father Alexandre Awi Mello, the secretary for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life; Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; and Father Eduardo Gonzalo Redondo, the director of vocations ministry in Cuba.

Two other priests have been chosen who have so far helped with preparations for the synod and will serve as special secretaries on the commission: Brazilian Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa, one of the main authors of the instrumentum laboris, the director of the magazine Aggiornamenti Sociali, and the vice president of the “Carlo Maria Martini Foundation;” and Father Rossano Sala, the professor of youth pastoral outreach at the Pontifical Salesian University and director of the Italian magazine Note di Pastorale Giovanile.

The Pope’s personal choices are naturally well known to him: Father Mello was among those helping then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to draft the final document of the Fifth Latin American Episcopal Conference in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007. The document came to be seen by some as a road map for the entire Church. The Pope also knows Archbishop Shevchuk well having mentored him when the Ukrainian prelate was a young auxiliary bishop in Buenos Aires in the 2000s.

It’s not clear how the Pope knows Father Redondo, but in a 2014 interview, the Cuban vocations director said young people were the “solution not the problem.” He also said the Church is Jesus whose plan for mankind is “revolutionary and transformative” and that to “implement the kingdom, we must begin here and now.” This means “the first thing we must do is banish the old structures,” he said, adding it is “faith that moves us to realize” Jesus’ plan for us.

Among those elected to the commission, Archbishop Comensoli gave a spirited intervention today at the synod, asking whether the Church had lost her “missionary fire” and become beholden to a “fake gospel” of “religious maintenance.”

“Let a pebble of spiritual disruption be dropped into our stagnant pools, to stir us back to Pentecost!” he implored. “It is time to leave behind a Church that only sits around waiting. Our task is to rediscover a young Church that goes out; not to re-create a Church for the young to come to.”

[The man seeks to reformulate Bergoglio's tired and fallacious formula about a 'church going out'. As if the Church had not been doing that since Jesus's Great Mandate to "Go and baptize all nations..."! The Church did not become the universal institution that she is by 'sitting around waiting'! This is to ignore the evangelization carried out by the Apostles and all the missionaries who spread the Gospel in the past 2000 years. Evangelization that many missionaries did with heroic zeal and at the cost of their lives. Yet Bergoglio as pope has been far from mission-friendly, but how could he without being a hypocrite, since he is so anti-Catholic he proactively claims he does not wish tp convert anyone to Catholicism and that all faiths are basically equivalent?]

But concerns surround other commission members elected today whose views on homosexuality appear questionable. This is particularly noteworthy given the controversy over the inclusion of the loaded acronym ‘LGBT,’ often used by the homosexual lobby, in the instrumentum laboris, the synod working document, and the strong criticism at the synod from Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia about its inclusion.

Together with outside pressure from a coalition of ‘LGBT’ groups, the concern is that the final document will include some phrasing that will amount to an acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. However, the issue has hardly been raised in discussions and has yet to be mentioned at all in the small groups, but that did not stop it being included in the discussions during the first Synod on the Family 2014.

Archbishop Forte was widely known to have been behind an attempt to introduce the issue, using the highly controversial mid-term report of that synod. Despite not figuring in the discussions, the document talked about the “precious support” homosexual couples can give each other, and the “gifts and qualities” they offer the Christian community. The document was foisted on the synod fathers by releasing it to the media before the synod fathers had seen it.

An uproar followed, especially from African delegates, but despite the developing world usually having more traditional views on the issue where it is generally still a taboo, Cardinals Turkson and Gracias have views that appear to have softened in comparison to many of their peers in both Ghana and India.

In 2012, Cardinal Turkson told the Register it is important to understand the reasons behind the stigma of homosexuality in Africa. “Just as there’s a sense of a call for rights, there’s also a call to respect culture, of all kinds of people,” he said. “So, if it’s being stigmatized, in fairness, it’s probably right to find out why it is being stigmatized.”

But three years later, he told the Christian homosexual rights group, New Ways Ministry, that Western countries “have grown in regard to this issue.” He said when he studied in the United States in the 1970s, science considered homosexuality “a sickness and a disease” but that “over the years that evaluation has changed. Other countries have to grow in the same way and it can take time.”

In 2013, Cardinal Gracias opposed a ruling by India’s Supreme Court to overturn a decision taken by the High Court of Delhi in 2009, which had decriminalised homosexual acts. “For me it’s a question of understanding that it’s an orientation,” he said.

Father Costa, meanwhile, has promoted same-sex couples’ struggle for “social and civil rights.” And as vice president of the “Carlo Martini Foundation,” he is also likely to support the late cardinal’s endorsement of same-sex civil unions, as well as his opposition to Blessed Paul VI's encyclcial, Humanae Vitae.

But just how much influence these commission members will be able to have is unclear. Asked today about the challenges of drafting the final document, Cardinal Aguiar said it’s “a very taxing job” while another challenge “is time, we have to do it by midnight,” leading some to think that the bulk of the document has to have already been written.

The “biggest challenge,” he said, “is to be faithful to what was discussed, to what was agreed upon in the working groups.” As the issue of homosexuality has hardly been raised, and Humanae Vitae so far completely omitted, many will therefore be curious to see how much these topics figure in the document. Similarly, a Belgian bishop today surprised some in the synod hall by suggesting that married clergy need to be considered, but that has also been a subject hardly raised.

The Mexican cardinal, who Pope Francis raised to the College of Cardinals 2016, said a further challenge is “not for it to be a final document but that it should reflect what was discussed by the bishops in a collegial way” and then “given to the hands of the Holy Father” who could use it for his “post-synodal apostolic exhortation,” or summary document at the end of the synod.

The document also has to be voted on by all the synod fathers, either in its entirety, or section by section, and obtain a two-thirds majority, but the synod secretariat has not been clear precisely which procedure will be used. [Or if there will be a vote at all.]

Cardinal Aguiar added: “What I think is going to be reiterated is that the Church has to change a lot in its way to open spaces and go to the places where young people are.” The Church must “go out on a mission,” he said, “to be present where young people are, for example the digital world.”

He also said the second aspect is to find ways to help “accompany them, always complying with their own freedom, their own decisions, while looking and trying to offer them spiritual help so they can be conscious of themselves, and can benefit from this throughout their lives.” [Pardon me but what a load of hypocritical Bergoglio-correct BS!]

The following lengthy interview shows why it is practically impossible for even the bravest cardinal (or cardinals) to remove a heretical, apostate or otherwise anti-Catholic pope such as Jorge Bergoglio. They may censure him all they want and issue one 'fraternal correction' after another, but if the object of these corrections ignores them, as Bergoglio does (obviously he thinks he does not need correction at all), then what can they do?

Mundabor and Louie Verrecchio may deride and be as contemptuous as are of those Mundabor calls 'cowardinals', but I would use the term for those who refuse to speak out at all about Bergoglio's anti-Catholicism or even just specific errors, not for Cardinals Burke et al who have spoken truth to power - and know better than any of us laymen that they have no way at all of forcing this pope out of office, much less of deposing him.

A 'rump session' could be held by all the cardinals who feel that Bergoglio should no longer be pope - or is no longer pope ipso facto, according to the canonical criteria mentioned below - but how many cardinals are there who are willing to do that when there weren't any even just to support the DUBIA publicly? So that won't happen. And it won't happen unless at least 50 out of the existing 200 or so cardinals agree to convene.

And assuming that by some miracle, they did so, and emerged with a declaration saying that Bergoglio has excommunicated himself from the Church for all the reasons given below, and that therefore they no longer recognize him as pope, what validity exists for such a precedent in canon law or history? It would be a most dramatic event but futile ab initio.


'Unity can only be achieved in truth'
An interview with theologian Mons. Nicola Bux
Translated from

October 13, 2018

The question of clerical sex abuses has somewhat put aside the debate over Amoris laetitia and all its consequences in terms of the Magisterium’s adherence to right doctrine. But obviously the two questions are linked.

So it is right to take up the discussion of both with a specialist, Monsignor Nicola Bux, a theologian who is a consultant to the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, as he was earlier to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Office of Pontifical Celebrations [Pope Francis did not renew his appointments to these bodies].

The author of several books, including Pietro ama e unisce. La responsabilità del papa per la Chiesa universale (Peter loves and unites: The pope’s responsibility for the Universal Church) (Edizioni Studio Domenicano), Mons. Bux has just returned to Italy from Argentina, where he was invited to take part in the XXIst Encounter for Catholic Formation with the tmee “Liturgy – source and expression of the faith”.

Don Nicola, heresy and schism are two words which seemed to have disappeared from the vocabulary of Catholics but have returned in the past five years in numerous analyses and observations on the current situation of the Church. Can we speak about where we are on the status quaestionis re AL and the debates that followed about it?
I think that after the publication on September 24, 2017, of the Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis (Filial correction regarding the propagation of heresies), and the Declaration of the April 7 conference in Rome, in which Cardinals Burke and Brandmueller took part, the idea that the pope himself, through his magisterium, has made some heretical statements has become the center of a vast debate that continues to be more passionate every day.

The 40 original signers of the Correctio (since increased to 250, in addition to thousands who have signed online to indicate their support) say that there are at least seven heretical affirmations in AL about matrimony, the moral life and the reception of the sacraments. But one must say that the problems, at least with AL, have been remarkably aggravated and complicated.

As we know, the Acta Apostolicae Sedis has published a letter from the pope to the Argentine bishops in the Buenos Aires region on the criteria approved by the latter to allow access to Communion by remarried divorcees, along with a rescript ex audientia santissimi by the Cardinal Secretary of State who, with the approval of the pope, states that these two documents are considered an expression of the ‘authentic magisterium’ of this pope and therefore, a teaching to which the faithful are obliged to obey by their intellect and will.

In parallel, Cardinal Brandmüller, one of the Four Dubia Cardinals, wrote an article proposing that the pope make a formal Profession of Faith, as I myself had earlier suggested.

In this regard, Don Nicola, and in the light of a recent statement by Cardinal Mueller of the need for a public disputation over AL and on Cardinal Parolin’s statement that “It is important to dialogue within the Church herself”, is it realistic to think that the pope could make a response and/or agree to make a profession of Faith to dissipate all doubts and shadows?
Authentic unity in the Church can only come about in the truth. The Church was established - by Him who said “I am the Truth” – as ‘the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Tim 3,15). Unity cannot subsiat without the truth, and without the truth, charity would be false. Yet the idea that the Church is a federation of ecclesial communities, somewhat like the many and varied Protestant communities, would make it difficult for the pope to make a profession of Catholic faith.

Indeed, after the two ‘family synods’, we have seen faith and morals proceeding on a double track, so to speak, since in some places, communion to remarried divorcees is allowed and in others not. And of course,enot a few bishops and parish priests find themselves in a great quandary because of a pastoral situation that has become unstable and confused.

That being so, I think it is realistic to think of a ‘roundtable’ discussion within the Church to understand what is Catholic and what is not. It has to be a doctrinal confrontation because pastoral practice can only depend on doctrine. And doctrinal development [in the sense of deeper understanding of the Church’s unchanging doctrine] always benefits from such internal discussions. The example comes from Joseph Ratzinger, who, first as CDF Prefect, and then as Pope, met with various dissenting theologians to confront their ideas with that of the Church.

And if there is no such confrontation?
Then I think the apostasy will deepen, and the de facto schism will widen. But rational confrontation within the Church in the name of charity would make a papal Profession of Faith necessary, in which he would obviously have to abjure the errors and erroneous opinions that have been declared up to then, in order to reaffirm the Catholic faith as the only standard of comparison, the rule of faith for every Catholic.

The situation has become even more urgent following the latest novelties introduced by this pope, such as defining that the death penalty is ‘anti-evangelical’ – a definition he arrived at in a dubious manner, thereby changing an article of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which poses a series of problems. Even of conscience. And all the more so because all the preceding official catechisms – the Roman or the Tridentine or that of St Pius X – taught that the death penalty is legitimate and in full conformity with Divine Revelation.

The Tridentine Cathechism secifically defined the norm that allows state authority to punish a person found guilty of serious crimes with a just penalty, not excluding capital punishment, as a matter of ‘divine law’.

So the problems posed by the pope’s singlehanded reversal of the Church’s bimillennial teaching on the death penalty are remarkable: either one thereby admits that the Church has been teaching the legitimacy of something that is ‘anti-evangelical’ for two thousand years, or that it is the pope who errs by calling something that conforms abstractly to Revelation anti-evangelical. It is a very sensitive question. But one that has to be posed sooner or later. And not only for the death penalty.

Many are asking: If the pope feels free to change an article of the Catechism according to what he perceives to be changing demands by the people of God or the changed sensibility of contemporary man, then could he be able to do it on any other points that may be of more general relevance?
Returning to the first question, I think we need today a papal Profession of Faith similarly to that made by Paul VI in 1968
For the purpose of reaffirming what is Catholic in the face of the errors and heresies that became widespread soon after the Second Vatican Council, especially with the publication of the Dutch Catechism in 1966 [it was the first post-Vatican II Catholic Catechism, and its lead authors were two theologians whose works had been censured by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on more than one occasion, because of problematic Christological views].

In the situation today, it must be about reaffirming some truths about the sacraments, on morals and the social doctrine of the Church while rejecting whatever is dubious or erroneous that is being disseminated, in many cases, unwillngly, on these issues.

Some observers have noted that the initiative of the Correctio, as ‘sensational’ as it is, is not a novelty, because even in the ponitificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and before them, of Paul VI, there had been manifestations and petitions by Catholic dissenters – theologians, clerics and laymen – both individually and in some organized manner. These dissenters maintained that Vatican II, by its anti-dogmatism or a non-homogeneous development of dogma, had introduced a rupture with the ‘preceding’ Church, and therefore accused the popes of centralism and of being closed to the circumstances of modernity. Do you think that situation is really analogous to what is happening today?
No, because that situation was an anti-Catholic attack against Catholic magisterium. In like manner, other theologians and laymen who had doubts about Vatican II manifested their objections even to healthy propositions from the Council. But in both cases, it was about protesting, not about correction.

Now, it is those dissenters against the previous popes, who have since reached key positions in the Church estabishment, who now are either silent about what this pope is doing or who are outspoken in making an official defense of him, without ever getting into the merits of the heresies which are being questioned, especially those found in AL. We must remember that St. Pius X, in his encyclical Pascendi domenica gregis, warned that it is typical of modernists never to profess their heresies openly because that way they can remain ‘hidden’ within the Church herself.

But why do you think a papal Profession of Faith is to be desired? And if the pope refuses to make such a Profession – as everything about him and his record would lead us to believe – then what could happen?
The Decretum Graziani* (Par 1, Chap 6) contains this canon: “No mortal will presume to speak of a sin by the pope because, he himself being entrusted with judging everyone, he should not be judged by anyone, unless he deviates from the faith”.
[The Decretus Graziani was a collection of Canon law compiled and written in the 12th century as a legal textbook by the jurist known as Gratian; it forms the first part of a collection of six legal texts, which together became known as the Corpus Juris Canonici, used by the canonists of the Church until May 1918, when the Code of Canon law promulgated by Benedict XVI came into force. This Code was revised in 1982.]

Distancing and deviation from the faith is heresy, a word that comes from the Greek airesis, which means the choice and absolutization of a truth, minimizing or denying others which are included among the Catholic truths (Hans Urs von Balthaar wrote a book entitled “Truth is symphonic’). Obviously, such deviation should be manifest and public.

In the case of manifest heresy, according to St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church,[who defended doctrine under attack during and after the Reformation, and wrote two catechisms], a pope can be judged. Bellarmine had also been Prefect of the Holy Office [now the CDF], who had the explicit duty to watch that every Catholic respected the orthodoxy of the faith, including the pope, who is above everyone else, responsible for safeguarding the deposit of faith.

The pope is called by the Lord to spread the Catholic faith, but to do this, he must also show that he is capable of defending it. The Orthodox Christians - who broke off from Rome in the 11th century – are called ‘orthodox’ precisely because they underscore the primacy of the true faith as a condition for the true Church. Otherwise, the Church ceases to be a ‘pillar and foundation of truth’.

Consequently, anyone who does not defend the true faith forfeits his ecclesiastical office. [In an ideal world, but it obviously is not followed in the real world. It means nothing to say that Bergoglio has ‘forfeited’ his office as pope because he not only faies to defend the true faith but is openly setting up his own church, though of course, he will insist it is still the ‘one true Church of Christ’ regardless of what he chooses to make it over into.]

Excuse me, Don Nicola, are you saying that in case of heresy, just as any Christian heretic ceases to be a member of the Church, the pope too would cease to be pope and head of the ecclesial body, and loses all authority?
Yes, heresy damages the faith and the condition of being a member of the Church - both of which are the root and foundation of ecclesial jurisdiction. This is what the Fathers of the Church thought, especially of Cyprian, who said it of Novatian, who was an anti-pope (251-258) during the papacy of Cornelius.

Every Catholic, the pope included, separates himself from the unity of the Church through heresy. The pope, while head of the Church, is also a member and part of the Church, because as Lumen gentium (no. 18) says, the Churhch hierarchy is within the Church not above it.

In the face of such an eventuality, which is sp grave for the faith, some cardinals, or even the Roman clergy or a diocesan Roman synod can admonish the pope with a fraternal correction – they can ‘resist him in his face’ as Paul opposed Peter in Antioch. Hye can confute what he says and does, and if necessary [PROVIDED HE GIVES THE THE CHANCE TO CONFRONT HIM FACE TO FACE! What if Peter had refused to let Paul into the Antioch meeting room?], to interprellate him in order to push him to reconsider his heretical views.

In case the pope is pertinacious in his error, then his ministers must distance themselves from him, according to what Paul said (cfr. Titus 3,10-11). [“After a first and second warning, break off contact with a heretic, realizing that such a person is perverted and sinful and stands self-condemned”].

Moreover, his heresy and his contumacy must be declared in public so that he may not provoke harm to others, and that every Catholic may thereby be forewarned. The moment the heresy is made known publicly, the pope ipso facto loses his pontificate.

In theology and canon law, the heretic is pertinacious if he places a truth of the faith in question or in doubt consciously and voluntarily, that is, with the full awareness that such truth is a dogma of the faith, and with the full force of his will.

A heretic can be obstinate or pertinacious in the sin of heresy even if he commits it out of sheer weakness. Moreover, if a pope does not wish to maintain his union and communion with the entire Body of the Church, such as when he attempts to excommunicate everyone in the Church who does not follow him or to subvert the liturgical rites based on Apostolic Tradition, he could be considered schismatic.

If the pope does not conduct himself as a pope and terrestrial head of the Church should, then the Church is not in him nor is he in the Church. By disobeying the law of Christ, or ordering anything that is contrary to natural or dine law, that which has been universlly ordered by ecoumenical councils or popes before him, the pope separates himself from Christ who is the true Head of the Church, and it is our relationship with Christ that constitutes the unity of the Church.

Pope Innocent III said that one must obey the pope in everything except when he opposes the universal order of the Church – in which case he must not be followed because in behaving that way, he is no longer subject to Christ and therefore separates himself from the Body of the Church.

But I will not deny that however clear and smooth that all sounds in theory, it will meet with many difficulties in practice, and much of it would be inconvenient in terms of canon law.

But we are saying that we can get to such a point. What would the consequences for the faith and for the Church?
Whoever becomes pope or wants to be a pope cannot deny Catholic truth – indeed, he must adhere to it in full of he wishes to claim magisterial authority.

What Joseph Ratzinger wrote years ago is valid here, when he underscored that a pope ‘cannot impose his own opinion’ but he ‘must remember precisely that the Church cannot do whatever she wants, and that even he – especially he - does not have the faculty to do as he pleases, either” because “on matters of faith and the sacraments, as also in fundamental problems of morality”, the Church can only “conform to the will of Christ”.

In case of an opposition beyween the text of a papal document and other testimonies in the Church Tradition, it is licit for an informed member of the Church who has carefully studied the question to suspend or refuse his assent to said document.

In the case of AL, it has been demonstrated that the document is muddled and contradictory in not a few points, and that citations of St. Thomas Aquinas are made in support of propositions that are contrary to the thinking of the Angelic Doctor.

Thus one understands why Joseph Ratzinger wrote at one time:

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“On the contrary, a criticism of papal pronouncements would be possible and necessary to the degree that they are not covered by Scripture and the Credo in the faith of the universal Church. Where neither an agreement with the universal Church nor clear testimony from the sources of the faith, it is not possible for a papal decision to be mandatory and binding. If such a pronouncement is made formally, it would lack the indispensable conditions and it would be dutiful to raise questions about its legitimacy”. (Joseph Ratzinger, Fede, ragione, verità e amore, Lindau, 2009, p. 400).

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In short, if the pope does not safeguard Church doctrine, he cannot demand obedience. And if he loses the Catholic faith [or fails to profess it in toto], then he would forfeit the Apostolic Chair.

“The power of Peter’s keys does not extend to the point where the Supreme Pontiff can declare that a sin is ‘not a sin’, nor that what is not a sin is sin. Because this would be to call evil good, and good evil, which would be, always was and will always be very far away indeed from Church who is the Head of the Church, pillar and foundation of the truth” (cfr. Roberto Bellarmino, De Romano Pontifice, lib. IV cap. VI, p. 214; also Lumen gentium, n. 25). Consequently, the pope who as a private person identifies himself with a heresy, would no longer be Supreme Pontiff nor Vicar of Christ on earth.

But you yourself say that there would be considerable practical difficulties in doing anything about a heretical pope…
Because in effect, a pope enjoys a sort of immunity from jurisdiction. That is why, even if in theory, cardinals could establish his heresy, it becomes difficult in practice because of the fundamental principle Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur (No one can judge the Apostolic See), from Canon 1404 c.i.c. Which means that no local church, as a daughter church, can judge her mother, namely, the Apostolic See. Much less can any sheep from the flock rise up to judge his pastor.

If we look at how this principle has been applied in the hhistory of the Church, and of the papacy in particular, we note that even in cases when the pope is accused of heresy, or even of true and proper apostasy [THE TERM I FAVOR AS MORE APPROPRIATE THAN HERESY TO DESCRIBE BERGOGLIO’S ANTI-CATHOLICISM], everything ended up with nothing really done about it.

I will cite two examples. The first that comes to my mind is that of Pope aMrcellinus. According to ancient sources, especially the Liber Pontificalis, during the great Diocletian persecutions of the 4th century, the pope yielded and offered incense to idols – i.e., he committed apostasy – even if we do not have a historical certainty for this (some authors and scholars of the ancient Church, like Eusebius of Caesarea and Teodoretus of Ciro, deny that he did so, and that in fact, he ‘shone’ in his actions during the Great Persecution).

Nonetheless, a synod was called in Sessana (between Rome and Naples) in 303 to ascertain whether the pope did commit public apostasy. Now, it is true that the acts of this synod are considered apocryphal and only reported in the sixth century, but without a doubt, the synodal fathers clearly refused to condemn Marcellinus for his act of apostasy. Rather, they asked him to judge himself what he did and impose his own punishment, recognizing the pope’s immunity from the jurisdiction of others arising from the principle I cited above. [The Liber Pontificalis, in an addendum to its report on the pope’s apostasy, says:

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“After a few days a synod was held in the province of Campania in the city of Sessana, where with his own lips he professed his penitence in the presence of 180 bishops. He wore a garment of haircloth and ashes upon his head and repented, saying that he had sinned. Then Diocletian was wrot,h and seized him and bid him sacrifice to images. But he cried out with tears, saying, 'It repenteth me sorely for my former ignorance,' and he began to utter blasphemy against Diocletian and the images of demons made with hands. So, inspired by penitence, he was beheaded”.

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So he died a martyr, and is venerated as Pope and martyr in the universal Church (feast day April 26).

The second case is that of Pope St. Leo II and his famous oath, painted by Raphael in a celebrated fresco in the Vatican Apostolic Palace. Leo II is shown in his pontifical garments taking an oaht on the Gospels, before Charlemagne and a crowd of dignitaries, lay and ecclesiastical, on December 23, 800, in St Peter’s Basilica.

Leo II had been accused – even if the ancient sources are not very precise about it – of perjury and adultery (it is not said with whom) by the grandsons of his predecessor, Adrian I. Charlemagne came to Rome to referee the dispute between the pope’s supporters and opponents, and the pope, freely, “without having been judged or corrected by anyone, spontaneously and voluntarily” purified himself before God, declaring and professing his innocence of the accusations made against him. He concluded: “I declare this spontaneously to eliminate any suspicions – not that this is prescribed by the canons, nor that I would thereby wish to create a precedent and impose such a practice to my successors and to my brothers in the episcopate”.

To the Catholic Church:
Where are you going?

October 16, 2018

I encourage you to listen to my church history podcast Triumphs and Tragedies. I’m not a historian by any stretch, and I’m afraid the podcast is more than rough around the edges. It was simply my attempt to give a quick roller coaster ride through twenty centuries of church history so that we can make better sense of where we are by understanding where we’ve come from.

One of the things you’ll gather is not only the history of the Catholic Church, but through that lens, a good overview of European history from the Roman Empire to the present day. The Catholic Church is the only institution from that time period that still not only survives, but thrives. Think about it!...

One of the interesting things that has come out of my research for the series is a 500 year pattern. I know we tend to impose patterns on things where they may not exist, but think about this pattern within Church history.

The first five hundred years is the Roman period. The Church grows, goes through persecution, then is established and the fortunes of the Church rise as the Roman Empire slowly crumbles.

The second 500 years are the Dark Ages. Europe drifts into chaos, anarchy and lawlessness. The barbarian tribes invade, but St Benedict establishes monasticism in the East, while the Celtic church is flourishing and sending out missionaries from the West. The hierarchy and papacy disintegrate in an ongoing war between what are essentially Italian crime families.

The third 500 years sees the great flourishing of Christendom. Monasticism blossoms, learning expands, universities are established, art and architecture flower into greatness. The Middle Ages enjoy a unity across Europe united in loyalty to a papacy that is growing in power, organization and domination of European civilization.

The fourth 500 years are are time of revolution. First the Protestant revolution, then the dissent and division of nation states, the English Protestant revolution, the French revolution, the revolution of rationalism, secularism and humanism and the American revolution. Then the industrial revolution, Russian revolution, Spanish, Mexican and Italian revolutions. Two world wars and finally the sexual revolution and technological revolution. These 500 years have been tumultuous, and they have sent the church reeling.

These last 500 years have seen the church struggling to cope with the revolutions of the modern world in a multitude of different ways, and the church’s reaction to Protestantism, rationalism, secularism, liberalism, modernism and all the other “ism’s” has sometimes been to pull up the drawbridge, man the battlements and attack from a position of defense.

The other approach has been the attempt to baptize what is good about the new ideas and embrace them as new insights into the wholeness of God’s truth.

That struggle – both to withdraw and defend, and the attempt to embrace and baptize the new insights – has been a long, hard, beautiful[???] struggle.

But where are we now?

I believe we are at the end of a 500 year cycle and about to enter a New Age in the church. This means great uncertainty.
- Some respond by a blind attempt to return to an earlier age – preserving all the externals of a bygone Catholic age.
- Others respond in exactly the opposite way – by embracing everything new and adapting the church completely to the Spirit of the Age.

I believe the true answer is a balance of both approaches.
- Firstly, there must be a return not just to a form of Catholicism from some arbitrarily selected golden age, but a return to the core message and values of the gospel itself.
- The heart of the new age must be a return to the old, old story of God’s love for a fallen and wayward race, the surprise of his entrance into this world through the incarnation of his Son, and the redemption of the world through the blood of Christ.

This story is forever old, but it is never out of date. It is the story of Jesus Christ who is the same, yesterday, today and forever. This must remain the core of our message and life. The rest is window dressing.

At the same time we should be prepared for a Church in the twenty- first century which is young, alive and Southern (not the southern United States, but the world's southern hemisphere) [generally used figuratively for the underdeveloped Third World]. John Allen’s book The Future Church presents ten trends of the future – a Church in which many of our current concerns simply disappear as the young Churches of Africa, Asia and South America surge forth. This new 500-year cycle will see a truly global Catholic Church – one that has its roots in Europe and Rome, but which is now surging strongly in China, India, Africa and around the world.

If my predictions are accurate – and every trend suggests they are –then the Catholic Church is on the cusp of huge changes which will not be brought about by some sort of reform movement or some manipulated synod about this or that. The changes will sweep away both the tired old liberalism of the West as well as the hide- bound traditionalist response.

In other words, the next 500 years will be exciting because God does not forsake his church, and while Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, he is also the one who makes all things new. AMEN!!!

Christopher Altieri who worked for a long time in the English section of Vatican Radio and now writes for the Catholic Herald and Catholic World Report - and who, in the past two years, often tried his best to give this pope the benefit of the doubt even in his most critical articles, but seems to have taken a harder line lately - has written the only commentary I have seen so far about the pope's recent grandstanding stunts regarding the Chilean bishop scandals. In which the pope has played, cleverly he thinks, to a watchful media audience, in laicizing Fr Karadima and more questionably, two Chilean bishops (Does the pope have the faculty to laicize bishops at all, especially without due process?) for abuse-related misdeeds. But this is all random and devised for theatrical and media effect rather than as part of a rational and prescribed course of justice that is applied uniformly to everyone.

So he still keeps Cardinal Errazuriz on his advisory Council of Nine despite the latter's admitted failures to act on Karadima at all and to simply ignore complaints against other bishops during the long time he was Primate of Chile; as well as Cardinal Ezzati of Santiago, Errazuriz's successor, who is being investigated by Chile's civilian justice system for his role in covering up cases of clerical abuse. Not to mention Bergoglio's Teflon-encased 'vice pope', Cardinal Maradiaga who coordinates the C9 and whose home diocese of Tegucigalpa Bergoglio himself ordered investigated for sexual and financial anomalies by one of his bishop agents from Argentina. In short, Bergoglio is as capriciously selective as ever as to whom he punishes and whom he chooses to keep close to him. (See Sandro Magister's recent commentary on the persons Bergoglio can't seem to be rid of.) Too bad Altieri does not look at this side of the coin in his analysis.

Justice by papal fiat points to serious
lack of trust within the Church
Pope Francis cannot earn back trust simply with piecemeal displays
of raw power exercised capriciously over relatively 'small fry'
by Christopher R. Altieri

October 15, 2018

The Vatican announced on Saturday that Pope Francis has reduced two Chilean bishops to the lay state. One of the defrocked is an 85-year-old man reported now to be suffering senile dementia, Francisco José Cox Huneeus, who was bishop of La Serena from 1990 to 1997. The other is 53-year-old Marco Antonio Órdenes Fernández, who served as bishop of Iquique from 2006 to 2012.

Allegations against Mr. Cox go back at least to 1974, the documentation of which contains gruesome details. Mr. Órdenes had what can only be described as a meteoric rise, becoming in 2006 the youngest bishop in Chile’s history, at age 42. He would retire a half-dozen years later, citing ill health.

Órdenes has apparently lived a quiet and secluded life since handing in his letter, while Cox bounced around for a while — with the help of another high-ranking Chilean prelate (and Cox’s confrère in the Schönstatt fraternity, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz — before settling at the Schönstatt General House in Germany sometime in 2002.

(The best nutshell version of Cox’s and Órdenes’s stories is to be found in the e-pages of Crux, where readers will also find a succinct rehearsal of the Vatican’s involvement in the rise of both men, along with details regarding the management of each man’s fall.)

There can be no real doubt that the men merit the most severe punishment.

While no one can reasonably deny that the men thus reduced deserved at least what they got from Pope Francis, the manner in which the Holy Father has done the thing brings questions of his ability to govern the Church into tight focus. The statement announcing the moves came on Saturday. CWR’s translation from the Spanish follows:

---

The Holy Father has dismissed from the clerical state Francisco José Cox Huneeus, Archbishop emeritus of La Serena (Chile), member of the Institute of the Schönstatt Fathers, and Marco Antonio Órdenes Fernández, Bishop emeritus of Iquique (Chile).

In both cases, Article 21 § 2.2 of the motu proprio Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela has been applied, as a consequence of manifest acts of abuse of minors.

The decision adopted by the Pope last Thursday, October 11, 2018, admits no recourse.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has already notified the interested parties, through their respective superiors, in their respective residences. Francisco José Cox Huneeus will continue to be part of the Institute of Schönstatt Fathers.

---

Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela is the piece of special legislation governing the gravest delicts — the most serious crimes — in canon law. Article 21 § 2.2 states that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has ordinary jurisdiction over such crimes, may present the gravest of the most grave cases to the Pope for his decision with regard to dismissal from the clerical state or deposition, together with dispensation from the law of celibacy, when it is manifestly evident that the delict was committed and after having given the guilty party the possibility of defending himself".
- The Vatican, in other words, was at pains to make it clear that this was Pope Francis’s decision.
- It was also a decision taken outside the Church’s normal system of judicial procedure: in short, Cox and Órdenes were laicized with no judicial process — no trial — to speak of.

Even in normal circumstances, canonical trials are paperwork affairs — conducted in secret, to boot — and that is a problem. Said simply: (at risk of sounding like a broken record) justice must be seen to be done. There must be independent investigations conducted in the light of day, and reasonably transparent processes for the adjudication of criminal charges against clerics high and low.

Vatican City has the rudiments of such investigative and judicial mechanisms, and has used them recently in connection with crimes both financial and moral. For reasons both juridical-political and practical, the Vatican City system could not possibly be used to process canonical cases.

Nevertherless, the existence of the system shows that the Church at the highest levels of governance is not unfamiliar with either the process or the reasons for it

In any case, Cox and Fernandez received summary justice by papal fiat — and that is a bigger problem.

If the Church’s continued use of secret trials is a hindrance to the recovery of trust, insofar as it renders reasonable persons incapable of confidence in her capacity to administer justice, so much more will naked exercises of raw power serve to undermine and indeed destroy the very ground on which any such confidence must be based: the reasonable belief in the Church’s own bona fide commitment to doing justice at all.

With specific regard to the Chilean theater of the global crisis, there can be no doubt, but that Pope Francis faces a terrible dilemma.

When the bishops of Chile resigned en masse in May of this year, they created a serious conundrum for Pope Francis. Basically, they left him with a set of three alternatives: accept all the resignations and start from scratch; accept some of the resignations and sit on others; accept none of the resignations and proceed piecemeal.

Each of the three options poses its own set of peculiar dangers, and none of them is without a downside. Francis seems to have opted for an out-of-the-box hybrid solution in Chile, somewhere between door number two and door number three. Seems, one says, because Pope Francis has not shared his plan with the faithful — not even in broad strokes — even as he has constantly insisted we are all in this together. [Because he is playing it by ear, it seems, and not with any particular rhyme or reason!]

While the breakdown in trust among bishops and bodies of the faithful in virtually every ecclesiastical jurisdiction is heartbreaking and truly scandalous, there appears to be an even more grievous breakdown in trust within the bishops’ own ranks. The dilemma facing Pope Francis with regard to the world’s bishops is even more terrible than the one facing him in Chile: he can’t trust any of them.

Pope Francis also appears also to be wary of the faithful. In his recent letter to Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl accepting his resignation and congratulating him on a job well done after the Cardinal’s defensiveness and lack of candor lost him the confidence of the clergy and the faithful in his archdiocese, Pope Francis wrote:

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I recognize in your request the heart of the shepherd who, by widening his vision to recognize a greater good that can benefit the whole body (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, 235), prioritizes actions that support, stimulate and make the unity and mission of the Church grow above every kind of sterile division sown by the father of lies who, trying to hurt the shepherd, wants nothing more than that the sheep be dispersed (cf. Matthew 26:31).

---

Whatever else these lines do, they certainly tend to confirm the worst suspicions of those, who read his series of September fervorini as showing that he believes the faithful to be a ginned-up mob, and at best the tools and playthings of the Devil.

From his dismissal of the faithful in the small Chilean diocese on which he foisted the hapless and unready Bishop Juan Barros — “Osorno is suffering because it is dumb,”— to his juxtaposition — if not comparison — of the faithful desirous of transparency and accountability from the Church’s leaders to the bloodthirsty crowds calling for Christ’s crucifixion, Francis has shown astounding insensitivity to the concerns of the faithful. If his eyes were ever opened to the callousness of his disregard for the real hurt of the people he professes to love, it appears he has repented of his discovery.

Perhaps it is the case that Pope Francis himself believes — as the Catholic News Agency’s level-headed and judicious JD Flynn in an excellent piece of news analysis recently speculated Vatican officials may believe — that the crisis in the Church is somehow playing out as a referendum on his leadership?

It is certain that elements in the Church are using the crisis to make political hay. This weekend, during a press conference to mark the anniversary of the final apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, the bishop of Leiria-Fátima, Cardinal Antonio Marto called l’Affaire Viganò an “ignoble attack” on Pope Francis. “[The whole business] is nothing more than a political montage, with no real foundation,” he said. At best, he’s half right.

Even without Viganò’s extraordinary “testimonies” — the original 11-page letter and the follow-up, to both of which Cardinal Marc Ouellet responded last weekend — we have more than enough to know there is rot in the Church that reaches the Curia. We need to discover the extent of its spread and the vectors of its spreading.

The Archbishop of Munich and Friesing and C9 member, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, admitted as much at a press event October 5th to launch a training initiative on safeguarding efforts at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University. “[The crisis with its fallout] has not been caused by the press doing their job properly,” he said. “It’s caused by the Church leadership.” [Does Marx - who has a preeminent position of Church leadership not just in Germany but as a member of the pope's C9 - include himself in this denunciation?]

Said simply, the faithful have a right to know.

In order to begin to address the crisis at its root, Pope Francis needs to earn back some small measure of trust. He simply cannot do that by displays of raw power given piecemeal against old men who used to be someone, or secluded perverts that nobody likes and few even realized were still breathing.

Instead, he needs to come up with a plan for reform apt to produce the necessary transparency in governance — especially insofar as the administration of justice is concerned — and he needs to be transparent about that. If he has such a plan, he needs to submit it to the faithful, who have rights in the Church both moral and legal.

Even the Archbishop-emeritus of Washington, DC, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl — a close adviser and papal favorite — admitted as much when pressed. “Yes,” he told CWR this past August, “the laity do have a place: they have a moral place — a right in that sense — to participate in whatever is going on in the life of the Church.” So, do victims of wicked clerics. So, do the men accused of wicked deeds, though it does not gratify our thirst for vengeance to say so.

Even if they did not, the laity are a resource Pope Francis simply cannot afford not to tap.

“Give him time,” said Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, at a recent press briefing on the doings of the Synod Assembly underway in Rome, in response to a question regarding what the attitude of the faithful should be with respect to Pope Francis’s leadership.

With due respect to Archbishop Scicluna — who may be the closest thing to a good guy one is like to find in this whole sordid business — Pope Francis has had plenty of that.[And in all the cases we are aware of, 'acted' only when faced with no other choice but to 'show' he was doing something about this problem. Otherwise, he has simply shrugged off negative facts about his pets (as with Ricca to this day, and McCarrick before July 2018 and the New York Archdiocesan investigation that concluded the latter had sexually molested a teenager four decades ago.

As to Altieri's remark about Scicluna: Does Joseph Ratzinger, the man who, among the long list of things he did as CDF Prefect and Pope to correct the internal conditions that led to the 'pandemic' of clerical sex abuse in the 1970s through the 1990s, gave Scicluna the function and authority to investigate and prosecute high-profile Church offenders, get no credit at all as 'a good guy in this whole sordid business'?]


Meanwhile, the Washington Times has done a great job of illustrating the following article - not just the pope's mouth is locked but his entire face...



The pope at a loss for words
By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

October 16, 2018

Back in late August, Pope Francis declared that he would “not say a word” about a letter from a former Vatican envoy to Washington who claimed, among other things, that the pope had ignored sexual abuse charges made against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, formerly archbishop of Washington.

The letter was written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, and it also implicated the present archbishop of Washington in a cover-up of Archbishop McCarrick’s decades of misbehavior. That would be Cardinal Donald Wuerl. Well, now as of Friday Cardinal Wuerl’s resignation as archbishop has been accepted by the pope. So is the pope going to continue to remain mum?

In accepting Cardinal Wuerl’s resignation Friday, the pope said [COLORE=#B200Forls in centuries?
- Is that all that he is going to say?

His continued silence is characteristic of the pope and typical of the Vatican. He has still said very little about the predatory behavior of an astonishingly large number of American Catholic priests. [I think the little he has said speaks volumes in itself - he underlined that that the situation has greatly improved since most of the abuse incidents reported in the USA took place before 2002 (when the CDF was given the lead responsibility for dealing with all abuse complaints ignored or unacted upon by local bishops)]. In the diocese of Pittsburgh alone, 300 errant priests were mentioned in an August grand jury report that goes back 70 years.

Why is the pope so reluctant to speak out? Archbishop Vigano also leveled charges against the pope himself. Is the pope going to address those charges honestly? His silence and euphemistic references to the heinous acts committed by American clerics is going to ensnare him in an even bigger crisis. Archbishop Vigano has already asked the pope to resign. This could get much worse. Around the world other voices could sound for the pope’s resignation.

Now there are indications that Cardinal Wuerl and the pope are working on Cardinal Wuerl’s replacement as archbishop. It is suspected that they are angling toward a candidate very similar to Cardinal Wuerl. That could be a disaster.
- It is time that the hierarchy of the church understood that the laity will not tolerate sending its children to schools and churches where abusive priests lurk.
- It is time for the laity and the faithful clerics in the church to take action and eliminate these predators.

The hierarchy has charge of the church in doctrinal matters and even in administrative matters. The laity, however, controls the purse strings. We are not living in the late Middle Ages.

There has sprung up a middle class over the past 500 to 600 years that has changed things radically for the Catholic hierarchy. It controls a huge amount of the church’s assets. Moreover, the hierarchy controls very little wealth. Its vast land holdings have vanished. The bishops and cardinals ought to adjust their arrogance to these realities. Already American Catholics, rich and not-so-rich, are calling for the faithful to pull back on their donations. It will set back the bishops’ budgets very rapidly.

Donations are already down. I am told that parishes are experiencing as much a 50 percent decline in their weekly collections. My guess is that very soon church budgets are going to have to be adjusted to the new reality brought on by disgruntled parishioners. The cuts will be made quickly.

Already seasonal galas are being canceled. At one parish in St. Augustine, Florida, its fall celebration has been called off. The gala was scheduled for this month, but with the present scandals still going on contributions have cratered. Such cancellations are going to be repeated in the months ahead all over America. The smug hierarchy of the church ought to take heed.

The pope can dispense with his talk of the “nobility” of “mistakes” that were made by men such as Cardinal Wuerl. These “mistakes” were in most cases heinous crimes. They left a scar on thousands of the faithful, both those who were accosted by these degenerate clerics and those who were the young people’s parents and friends. There is no denying the fact that the behavior of a few has weakened the church of all the faithful.

It is time for Pope Francis to acknowledge that he has presided over the Catholic Church in a time of unparalleled crisis. He has to stop speaking in the euphemisms of a political spin-meister and serve as spiritual leader. Either that or he should vacate the Vatican, as Archbishop Vigano has suggested.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. He is the author most recently of “The Death of Liberalism,” published by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Pole that he was, Karol Wojtyła had a well developed sense of historical irony. So from his present position in the Communion of Saints, he might be struck by the ironic fact that the Synod on “Youth, Faith, and Vocational Discernment,” currently underway in Rome, coincides with the fortieth anniversary of his election as Pope John Paul II on October 16, 1978.

What’s the irony? The irony is that the most successful papal youth minister in modern history, and perhaps all history, was largely ignored in Synod-2018’s working document. And the Synod leadership under Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri seems strangely reluctant to invoke either his teaching or his example.

But let’s get beyond irony. What are some lessons the Synod might draw from John Paul II on this ruby anniversary of his election?

1. The big questions remain the same.
Several bishops at Synod-2018 have remarked that today’s young people are living in a completely different world than when the bishops in question grew up. There’s obviously an element of truth here, but there’s also a confusion between ephemera and the permanent things.

When Cardinal Adam Sapieha assigned young Fr. Wojtyła to St. Florian’s parish in 1948, in order to start a ministry to the university students who lived nearby, things in Cracow were certainly different than they were when Wojtyła was a student at the Jagiellonian University in 1938-39.

In 1948, Poland was in the deep freeze of Stalinism, and organized Catholic youth work was banned. The freewheeling social and cultural life in which Wojtyła had reveled before the Nazis shut down the Jagiellonian was no more, and atheistic propaganda was on tap in many classrooms.

But Wojtyła knew that the Big Questions that engage young adults —What’s my purpose in life? How do I form lasting friendships? What is noble and what is base? How do I navigate the rocks and shoals of life without making fatal compromises? What makes for true happiness? — are always the same. They always have been, and they always will be.

To tell today’s young adults that they’re completely different is pandering, and it’s a form of disrespect. To help maturing adults ask the big questions and wrestle with the permanent things is to pay them the compliment of taking them seriously. Wojtyła knew that, and so should the bishops of Synod-2018.

2. Walking with young adults should lead somewhere.
Some of the Wojtyła kids from that university ministry at St. Florian’s have become friends of mine, and when I ask them what he was like as a companion, spiritual director, and confessor, they always stress two points: masterful listening that led to penetrating conversations, and an insistence on personal responsibility.

As one of them once put it to me, “We’d talk for hours and he’d shed light on a question, but I never heard him say, ‘You should do this.’ What he’d always say was, ‘You must choose.’” For Karol Wojtyła, youth minister, gently but persistently compelling serious moral decisions was the real meaning of “accompaniment” (a Synod-2018 buzzword).

3. Heroism is never out of fashion.
When, as pope, John Paul II proposed launching what became World Youth Day, most of the Roman Curia thought he had taken leave of his senses: young adults in the late-twentieth century just weren’t interested in an international festival involving catechesis, the Way of the Cross, confession, and the Eucharist.

John Paul, by contrast, understood that the adventure of leading a life of heroic virtue was just as compelling in late modernity as it had been in his day, and he had confidence that future leaders of the third millennium of Christian history would answer that call to adventure.

That didn’t mean they’d be perfect. But as he said to young people on so many occasions,

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“Never, ever settle for anything less than the spiritual and moral grandeur that God’s grace makes possible in your life. You’ll fail; we all do. But don’t lower the bar of expectation. Get up, dust yourself off, seek reconciliation. But never, ever settle for anything less than the heroism for which you were born.”

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That challenge — that confidence that young adults really yearn to live with an undivided heart — began a renaissance in young adult and campus ministry in the living parts of the world Church. Synod-2018 should ponder this experience and take it very, very seriously.


The following is not so much about the fact that the outcome of this 'youth synod' was already pre-determined and its dispositive documents already drafted to be simply rubberstamped by the synodal fathers - hence the article's title is really rhetorical - but about the cast of homosexualist characters Bergoglio deployed beforehand for various tasks to 'prepare the way', as one of them describes it, that will best accommodate the LGBT agenda in the synod's 'recommendations'.

Is the synod's final document
already written?
by JULIA MELONI

October 17, 2018

Shortly after the youth synod began, Edward Pentin — the authoritative chronicler of the rigging of the Bergoglian family synods — reported that an Italian cardinal close to Pope Francis had prophesied a great “surprise,” convinced that the pope would “for sure invent something.”

Pentin said some sources had indicated that the final document’s main substance was in fact already written — hence the synod’s deep secrecy, lack of a mid-term report, and nebulous voting procedures.

As the synod progressed, increasingly ominous voices spoke confidently and buoyantly about being “open” to a new definition of family. One synod father announced at a press conference: “As old folks we should not be afraid to embark on this new path that the pope is pointing out to us. It is a path that is leading us to new kinds of families, new family relations, in a way, and we should not be afraid to open up to this.” [No fool like an old fool, indeed!]

Meanwhile, bishops alarmed by potentially rigged voting rules planned a public group protest; synod leaders then said old procedures would remain in force.

Archbishop Forte — a member of the final document’s stacked writing committee — said, on October 11, that it was “impossible” for the text’s draft to already be written; then Crux reported that Cardinal Baldisseri’s office had already presented its own “preliminary draft” to those writers.

I believe that text’s most likely principal writer is Fr. Giacomo Costa, S.J. - the writing committee member who has already helped author the Preparatory Document and Instrumentum Laboris and published multiple articles on the synod’s aims. He has also, as I will show, already loaded the Instrumentum Laboris with subversive plagiarizations of his own writings on “discernment.”

Fr. Costa is the Vice President of the Carlo Martini Foundation—dedicated to the cardinal who led the St. Gallen mafia, attacked Humanae Vitae, and endorsed same-sex civil unions. Fr. Costa has praised the 2014 synodal report on the “precious support” found in same-sex relationships — rigged by none other than Archbishop Forte, the Martini disciple who joked about how he and the pope wouldn’t speak “plainly” about their plan to endorse Communion for adulterers at the family synod.

That coup was accomplished, in great part, because Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez loaded both the 2015 final synodal document and Amoris Laetitia with plagiarizations of his old writings promoting situational ethics. Now, Fr. Costa has planted key plagiarizations of his book Il Discernimento into the Instrumentum Laboris, as these examples show (with common words in bold):

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IL 117:
Questa valorizzazione della coscienza si radica nella contemplazione del modo di agire del Signore: è nella propria coscienza che Gesù, in dialogo intimo con il Padre…

Costa 17:
Questa valorizzazione della coscienza si radica nella contemplazione del modo di agire del Signore: è nella coscienza di Gesù che si svolge il suo dialogo intimo con il Padre…

IL 117:
…l’esercizio della coscienza rappresenti un valore antropologico universale: interpella ogni uomo e ogni donna, non soltanto i credenti…

Costa 18:
…il valore antropologico universale dell’esercizio della coscienza, che interpella ogni uomo e ogni donna, non soltanto i credenti…

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[One does not have to know Italian to note the near-verbatim 'lifts'!]

Most importantly, Fr. Costa has fixed the Instrumentum Laboris’s section on conscience (116-117) to ventriloquize two of his book’s key claims (pp. 16-17):

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[B]We must “make room” for consciences (Amoris Laetitia 37), increasing their role in the Church’s “praxis” (AL 303).

Conscience can discern that God is asking for the “gift” of committing an intrinsically wrong act (euphemized as a departure from the “ideal”) (AL 303).

This notion is supported by Gaudium et Spes 16: conscience is the “sanctuary” where man “is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths.”

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AL 303 is already an atomic bomb set to explode every moral law — and when it is strapped onto that decontextualized line about conscience’s “sanctuary,” it will be ready for mass distribution to souls.

In February, Cardinal Cupich quoted those very lines to presage a “paradigm shift” on morality — for the revolutionaries are now ready to openly blow up the very concept of intrinsically wrong acts.

Then, out of the rubble and ruins, there will arise the synod’s great “surprise”: the advance of the “anti-creation” movement — the worldwide subversion of marriage and the family.
- The synod group led by Cardinal Cupich has called on the Church to recognize “other forms of family” — to “accept and even honor” every “family unit.”
- The group led by Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga has pushed for “pastoral care” on “realities such as marriage between homosexuals, surrogate pregnancy, and adoption by same-sex couples.”

Both synod fathers, notably, appear in Archbishop Viganò’s testimony. Rodriguez Maradiaga, ex-Cardinal McCarrick’s fellow “kingmaker” for Church appointments, has been embroiled in multiple homosexual-related scandals; Cupich, a top revolutionary regarding homosexuality, was reportedly elevated on their recommendation.

Outside the synod, Fr. James Martin, S.J., defended the agenda to embrace the ideological term “LGBT” —a nd “acknowledge that gay couples can form a ‘family’” and enhance society’s “flourishing” by adopting children.

“LGBT” had appeared in the Instrumentum Laboris under Cardinal Baldisseri’s false pretense that it was merely a quotation from a pre-synodal document by young people. When the cardinal was asked if he would expunge the term because it never, in fact, appears there, he said, “Look, I am not removing anything.”

Then it emerged that the secretary of the pope’s C-9 council had told a radical “LGBT” group that their input to the synod’s leaders had been worked into that very section on “LGBT youths” and “what to suggest” to young homosexual couples (197).

“Trust in the Spirit,” he said of the synod.

It was yet another example of the “Catholic deep gay state,” crusading with cultural Marxists outside the Church to spread the brave new world of anti-creation.

Another speaker at that conference was Fr. Martin himself, the celebrity priest who helped bring a “gay tsunami” to Italy and starred in Ireland’s pro-“LGBT” World Meeting of Families, organized by a top McCarrick protégé.

Before he arrived at the World Meeting of Families, Fr. Martin told a young “LGBT” activist: “See you soon. Prepare the way!” That young “preparer” — whose article on “How to Be Gay in the Catholic Church” features lines like “Jesus said to love my neighbor, and I can’t help that Grindr says the nearest one is 264 feet away” — then starred in a parallel conference announcing a global crusade to push the “LGBT” agenda at the youth synod. Its architect successfully led the “gay marriage” referendum campaigns in Ireland and Australia.

Then Fr. Martin used the World Meeting of Families to promote the young preparer’s group, Out at St. Paul — which boasts “Pride Masses,” trips to “gay bars,” and priests who endorse active homosexuality, according to one member.

Fr. Costa himself contributed to a 2008 project encouraging the legal recognition of a bond between two people of the same sex. His article promoted homosexual couples’ struggle for “social and civil rights,” valorizing their attempt to shed invisibility and thus contribute “positively” to society (432).

Archbishop Forte has said that defining the rights of homosexual couples is a matter of “being civilized.” These two men are the likely principal writers of a final document that could, if approved by the pope, become part of his “ordinary magisterium” under new synod rules.

Recently, Archbishop Forte sanguinely praised Pope Francis’s “enthusiasm towards God’s surprises.” Four years earlier, the pope had approved Archbishop Forte’s rigged report on same-sex relationships, released the very day that two Italian political parties backed homosexual unions. The pope preached that day of being “open to the God of surprises” and now he is portentously repeating the theme — a cry that comes from Martini himself, the “ante-pope,” and the man who plotted all of this.

Shortly before this synod started, I wrote an open letter to Archbishop Chaput supporting his call to cancel the event in light of the sexual abuse crisis. I noted the alarming number of participants who are named in Viganò’s testimonies and said I was deeply scandalized that this synod would now be targeting youths with a homosexual agenda championed by Martini, McCarrick, and the St. Gallen mafia.

As a young Catholic, I want to thank Archbishop Chaput and every other bishop who is directly resisting this synod’s subversive agenda. I pray that, with their leadership, we may still avert this synod’s looming “surprise.”

Chesterton and the current crisis:
“If we boast of our best,
we must repent of our worst”
Like other prophets, he talks about the need for repentance

by Dale Ahlquist

October 14, 2018

In every Catholic Church, there is a gruesome sight. It is the image of a man who was tortured to death. We should turn away from it in horror, but instead we don’t even notice it, that he hangs there in public humiliation, his clothes torn off, bloodied from a cruel beating, nailed by his hands and feet to a wooden cross, thorns wrapped around his head in a mock crown.

Then we begin each Mass by being reminded why he is there. Because in our thoughts, in our words, in what we have done and what we have failed to do, we have sinned against God. We deserve the death that this man is dying. But this man died for us instead.

And this man is the very God we have sinned against.

There is nothing better than finding God. There is nothing better than being forgiven. The two go together. It is why we need the Catholic Church.

It was G.K. Chesterton who helped me find my way into the Catholic Church, where I would find a different sort of clergyman from the church where I had grown up, a church that identified itself as “protesting” against the Catholic Church. There was something different about that robed figure who stood at the altar. Go there, said Chesterton, go to that Church and find the priest, “and he will give you God out of his hand.”

That’s what I did. And after partaking in that feast of thanksgiving, which is what the word “eucharist” means, it has been my great reward to tell everyone about that Church, where they, too, can find God and enjoy his forgiveness, and join the feast where he feeds us with himself from the hand of a priest.

And I tell everyone about the wise and witty man who pointed me in the right direction. Chesterton has continued to be my trusted companion, as he has proved himself to be a teller of truth about the Church and also about the world.

But now the Church faces a grave crisis. Priests, bishops and even cardinals are in the grip of sin and corruption, and the faithful are in a fog of doubt and disappointment. People have been asking me, “What would Chesterton say about this?” I can only tell you what he has already said.

First of all, he says, “The Church is proved right, not when her children do not sin, but when they do.”
- We are sinners. That is why we are Catholics.
- We need the forgiveness and redemption of the man who hangs on the cross in each of our churches.
- Yes, the world holds us up to a higher standard, but that is a compliment to us. It is only holding us up to our own standard.

Chesterton says:

---

The fact obviously is that the world will do all that it has ever accused the Church of doing, and do it much worse, and do it on a much larger scale, and do it (which is worst and most important of all) without any standards for a return to sanity or any motives for a movement of repentance.
- Catholic abuses can be reformed, because there is the admission of a form.
- Catholic sins can be expiated, because there is a test and a principle of expiation.
But where else in the world today is any such test or standard found; or anything except a changing mood…?

---

There have been times when the Church, rather than adhering to its own standard, has attempted to abide by the world’s standard. It has never worked.

There have been times, says Chesterton, when the Church has been wedded to the world, but it is always widowed by the world.

And though the world tries to justify its own sins, it is still repulsed by certain sins. In the Father Brown story “The Worst Crime in the World,” Chesterton makes clear that the worst sin is the corruption of the innocent and debasement of virtue.

Chesterton, who is a prophet, talks like any other prophet. He talks about the need for repentance.

“If we boast of our best, we must repent of our worst.” He says that, unfortunately, the warning, “Repent, before it is too late,” is hardly uttered until it is too late.

“We have lost the idea of repentance; especially in public things.” And we have “an unfortunate habit of publicly repenting for other people’s sins.” But he also says, “I am convinced that no crimes, let alone confessions of crimes, arouse so much hatred as the spiritual insolence that refuses to confess anything.” And, he says, it is one of the glories of our faith that the very men who have to condemn sins also have to confess them.

He points out that when Christ says, “You are the salt of the earth,” he is addressing his disciples, that is, his priests. - “Salt is not a piece de resistance. It is a corrective. It is the priest, not the man.
- The meaning of salt is that there exists something which we cannot live on, but cannot live without.”
- The laity needs the priests. But the priests also need the laity. - riests hold the laity accountable, but the laity also hold the priests accountable.

And what of the Pope? Chesterton offers an amazing insight: [auote]When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its corner-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward – in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it.

All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.

Questions arise about new #2 man
at Vatican Secretariat of State
[Is he another 'lavender mafia' biggy elevated to prominence by Bergoglio?]



Vatican City, Oct 18, 2018 (CNA).- An Italian newsmagazine has raised new questions about a Vatican official mentioned in the August “testimony” of Archbishop Carlo Vigano. The report from L’Espresso, an Italian newsweekly, could be seen to provide support for at least one claim made in Vigano’s controversial testimony.

L’Espresso, an Italian newsweekly, reported Oct. 12 that Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, 58, who began serving Oct. 15 as 'sostituto' at the Vatican Secretariat of State [in effect, deputy Secretary of State for internal affairs, responsible for the administrative supervision and coordination of all Vatican offices and agencies, and the #2 man at the Secretariat] might have been dismissed from a seminary where he studied because he was thought by seminary administrators to have a homosexual orientation.

As Sostituto, he is tasked with overseeing much of the day-to-day business of the Vatican’s Curial offices.

The magazine published a February 1985 letter from Archbishop Domingo Perez, then Archbishop of Maracaibo, the archdiocese in which Parra was later ordained. The letter was written to the rector of the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, at which Parra did the first part of his seminary studies before being dismissed.

In the letter, Perez said that he had received negative reports about Parra from the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, and acknowledged that Parra had been dismissed from studies there. Perez said that he subsequently sent the student to another seminary in Caracas, and had received positive reports about him there.

However, Perez wrote that he had received an anonymous letter alleging that Parra had been expelled from his first seminary because he had a homosexual orientation and was, he wrote “a sexually sick person.”

Perez asked the seminary rector to make inquiries into those allegations. L’Espresso did not report any additional communications between the archbishop and the seminary rector. Parra was ordained six months after Perez sent the letter.

Parra is among the bishops mentioned in Vigano’s Aug. 25 “testimony” regarding Archbishop Theodore McCarrick. In that document, Vigano claimed that at the time he oversaw personnel for Vatican diplomatic offices, he had received “worrisome information” about Parra, who worked at that time in the Vatican diplomatic corps.

Vigano did not specify what “worrisome information” he had received, but the questions raised about Parra’s seminary formation could seem to fit with the tenor of Vigano’s testimony.

The archbishop’s testimony made claims about the sexuality of other Vatican officials, while arguing that “the virtue of chastity must be recovered in the clergy and in seminaries. Corruption in the misuse of the Church’s resources and of the offerings of the faithful must be fought against. The seriousness of homosexual behavior must be denounced. The homosexual networks present in the Church must be eradicated.”

The credibility of Vigano’s claims has come under fire lately, as some Vatican officials have denounced his testimony as an attack on Pope Francis.

Nevertheless, an Oct. 7 letter from Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Bishops, corroborated Vigano’s central claim, that McCarrick had been directed by the Vatican to withdraw from public life because of reports about his alleged sexually abusive behavior toward priests and seminarians.

On the other hand, Ouellet’s letter refuted the notion that the measures against McCarrick were formal “canonical sanctions,” a claim initially made by Vigano that seems to mostly have been disproven.

A September report from Catholic News Service corroborated Vigano’s claim that the Vatican had received at least some reports about McCarrick as early as 2000.

CNA independently confirmed another Vigano claim, that McCarrick had been ordered by a Vatican official to move out of the Washington, DC seminary where he had been living after his retirement.

On Oct. 18, L’Espresso added to its report, noting that Parra had a longtime close relationship with Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, the coordinator of the pope’s C9 Council of Cardinals. Vigano had also noted this friendship.

The magazine also claimed that the archbishop had developed a friendship with Bishop Juan Jose Pineda, former auxiliary bishop of Maradiaga’s Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, who resigned recently after having been accused of sexual misconduct involving seminarians and other adult men.

[But no one in the media seems to remember that more than a year ago, the pope sent one of his Argentine bishops on an apostolic visitation to Tegucigalpa to investigate financial and sexual anomalies in that archdiocese, involving both Maradiaga and Pineda in different ways. But the pope never acted on the report, nor in fact, did he ever disclose what the report said. Pineda resigned several weeks ago after more testimony about his sexual misconduct surfaced from seminarians in Tegucigalpa... In short, as with McCarrick, only the public revelation of Pineda's misdeeds forced his hand - and the Vatican's. The Vatican's July 20 announcement of Pineda’s resignation provided no explanation, stating only that it had been accepted by Pope Francis.]

L’Espresso reported Oct. 18 that the Vatican declined to respond to its questions about Parra.

Roberto De Mattei argues briefly what Peter Kwasniewski and especially Christopher Ferrara have written about the simplified saint-making 'process' that has seen the Church turn
out hundreds of saints in the past few decades. Perhaps the greatest anomalies are connected with recently canonized contemporary popes, like John XXIII, who as universally
beloved as he was for his grandfatherly persona, was canonized without benefit of a second miracle as required, and Paul VI, whose beatification and canonization
'miracles' both seem medically dubious. Then there is Oscar Romero, who was beatified without need for a miracle because Pope Francis declared him a martyr for
the faith, even if his death was clearly political and not religious in nature.

These shortcuts - evidently decided in order to advance some political agenda - are not just unseemly but WRONG. Standards and norms ought to be applied uniformly,
including the traditional requirement that some popular religious cultus had sprung around the candidate saint, which was not the case in any of the three
examples I cited...


Do Catholics have to accept new saints
whose saintliness they doubt?
by Roberto de Mattei
Translated for Rorate caeli by 'Francesca Romana' from

October 17, 2018

Among the anniversaries of 2018 there is one that has gone unnoticed: the sixty years since the death of Venerable Pius XII, after a 19-year reign, at Castelgandolfo on October 9th 1958.

Yet today his memory still lives on, especially, as Cristina Siccardi notes, as an icon of holiness, worthy of the Vicar of Christ, and for the vastness of his Magisterium, in the context of tragic events, like the Second World War, which erupted six months after his election to the Papacy on March 20th 1939.

The death of Pius XII closed an era, which today is referred contemptuously as “pre-conciliar” or “Constantinian”. With the election of John XXIII (October 28th 1958) and the calling of the Second Vatican Council, a new era in the history of the Church opened: that which had its moment of triumph, on October 14th, with the canonization of Paul VI, after that of Pope Roncalli.

Blessed Pius IX is still awaiting canonization, and Pius XII has still not been beatified, but all the Council and Post-Council Popes have been canonized, with the exception of John Paul I. It seems that what they want to canonize, through its main actors, is an age, which however, is perhaps the darkest the Church has ever experienced in Her history. [DIM=9pt]['They' in this case refers to Jorge Bergoglio who is principally responsible for these canonizations taking place NOW, instead of waiting a reasonable period of time, especially in the absence of multiple 'miracles' attributed to his saints, and the obvious lack of a cultus around any of them, and the shortcuts to obviate the need for genuine miracles that can stand scrutiny.]

- Immorality has spread through the entire body of the Church, starting from the highest levels.
- Pope Francis has refused to admit the reality of the tragic scenario brought to light by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. - Doctrinal confusion is total, to the point that Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht, has publically stated that: “the bishops and especially the Successor of Peter are falling short in faithfully and in unity, maintaining and transmitting the Deposit of the Faith.”

This drama has its roots in the Second Vatican Council and the Post–Council, and those primarily responsible were the Popes who have governed the Church over the last sixty years. Their canonization proclaims heroic virtues in the governing of the Church. The Council and Post-Council have rejected the primacy of doctrine over ‘the pastoral’ [which ought to serve doctrine and not 'determine' it], refusing to define truth and condemn error in the name of this ‘pastoralism’.

The only truth which is proclaimed solemnly today appears to be the impeccability of the conciliar Popes - and they alone.
and in canonizing them, the intent appears to be to suggest that their political and pastoral choices were therefore infallible. [i.e., It is their governance that is canonized, rather than their persons.]

But what credit must we give to these canonizations? Even if most theologians retain that canonizations are an infallible act of the Church, we are not dealing with a dogma of faith. The last great exponent of the “Roman Theological School”, Monsignor Brunero Gherardini (1925-2017), voiced all his doubts about the infallibility of canonizations in the publication Divinitas.

He believed that the decree of canonization is not infallible as the conditions of infallibility are lacking, starting with the fact that the canonization does not have as direct or explicit object, a truth of the faith or morals contained in Revelation, but only a fact indirectly linked to dogma, without strictly being a “dogmatic fact”. Indeed, neither the Codes of Canon Law of 1917 and 1983, nor the old or new Catechisms of the Catholic Church, make clear the doctrine of the Church on canonizations.

Another valid contemporary theologian, Father Jan-Michel Gleize, of the Fraternity of Pius X, admits the infallibility of canonizations, but not those after the Second Vatican Council, for the following reasons:
- The reforms in the canonization process after Vatican-II entailed certain insufficiencies in the procedure and introduced a new collegial intention - two consequences which are incompatible with the certainty of the beatifications and the infallibility of the canonizations. [???]
- Thirdly, the judgment that is expressed in the process allows for an ambiguous conception, at the very least, of sanctity and heroic virtue, which raises questions about whether the candidate saints [and those canonized] qualify in terms of sanctity and heroic virtue.

Infallibility is premised on a rigorous complex of investigations and verifications. But after the canonization reforms promulgated by John Paul II in 1983, the process of verifying truth about the candidate saints has become more 'fragile' [and consequently more doubtful], while there has been a change in the concept of sanctity itself.

Other important contributions have recently been published along the same line. Peter Kwasniewski notes on Onepeterfive that the worst change in the canonical process is in the number of miracles required:

---

“In the old system, two miracles were required for both beatification and canonization – that is, a total of four investigated and certified miracles. The point of this requirement is to give the Church sufficient moral certainty of God’s “approval” of the proposed blessed or saint by the evidence of His exercise of power at the intercession of this individual.

Moreover, the miracles traditionally had to be outstanding in their clarity – that is, admitting of no possible natural or scientific explanation. The new system cuts the number of miracles in half, which, one might say, also cuts the moral certainty in half – and, as many have observed, the miracles put forward often seem to be lightweight, leaving one scratching one’s head: was that really a miracle, or was it just an extremely improbable event?”

---

Christopher Ferrara in The Remnant, after stressing the decisive role that the testimony of miracles [used to] play in canonizations, noted that none of the miracles attributed to Paul VI and Monsignor Romero satisfy the traditional criteria for the verification of the divine in a miracle: “Those criteria are (1) a cure that is (2) instantaneous, (3) complete, (4) lasting, and (5) scientifically inexplicable, meaning not the result of treatment or natural processes of healing but rather an event originating outside the natural order.”

John Lamont, who dedicated a wide and convincing study on the authority of canonizations on Rorate Caeli, concluded his investigations with these words:

---

“We need not hold that the canonizations of John XXIII and John Paul II were infallible, because the conditions needed for such infallibility were not present. Their canonizations are not connected to any doctrine of the faith, they were not the result of a devotion that is central to the life of the Church, and they were not the product of careful and rigorous examination. But we need not exclude all canonizations whatsoever from the charism of infallibility; we can still argue that those canonizations that followed the rigorous procedure of former centuries benefited from this charism.”

---

Thus, since canonization is not a dogma of faith, there is no positive obligation for Catholics to lend assent to it. The exercise of reason demonstrates plainly that the Conciliar papacies have been of no advantage to the Church. Faith transcends reason and elevates it, but doesn’t contradict it, since God, Truth in essence, is not contradictory. Hence we may in [good] conscience maintain our reservations about these canonizations.

The most devastating act of Paul VI’s pontificate was the destruction of the Old Roman Rite. Historians know that the Novus Ordo Missae was not Monsignor’s Bugnini’s, but it was desired, prepared, and carried into effect by Pope Montini, causing, as Peter Kwasniewski writes, an explosive internal rupture: “This was the equivalent of dropping an atomic bomb on the People of God, which either wiped out their faith or caused cancers by its radiation”.

The most commendable act of Pius XII’s pontificate was the beatification (1951) and subsequently the canonization of St. Pope Pius X (1954), after a long and rigorous canonical process and four inconfutable miracles. It is thanks to Pius XII that the name of Pius X shines in the firmament of the Church and represents a sure guide in the midst of the confusion of our times.

Does anyone at the Vatican realize that with every half-truth and lie they try to foist on the public, they are just digging themselves deeper into the stonewell (rather than stonewall) of denial - which is how they have chosen to deal with Mons. Vigano's factual accusations? I realize Cardinal Ouellet may have chosen to abandon (or at the very least, to compromise) his core principles as a priest and theologian when he consciously - and most gladly, it appears - chose to cast his lot ten times over with Jorge Bergoglio as pope, but did Ouellet abandon all common sense as well when he allowed himself to be the patsy for the open letter sent out in his name to 'refute' Vigano? (A letter sent out 'with papal permission', as Ouellet informs us, but which I like to believe was written by someone like Fr Antonio "2+2=5" Spadaro who simply ignores elementary logic and common sense.) For Ouellet, Mons. Vigano's 'J'accuse!' number-3 must be an embarrassing reminder of everything that was wrong with 'his' letter....


Viganò tells Ouellet: Yes, the Vatican
had detailed proof of McCarrick’s wrongdoing
[In short, Ouellet and others in the Vatican who received any information
in this regard but did nothing are complicit in covering up for him]
by Dan Hitchens
Deputy Editor

Friday, 19 Oct 2018

In a third letter on the Archbishop McCarrick affair, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has named key documents which, he says, show that Vatican officials had detailed knowledge of McCarrick’s sexual corruption.

It is two months since Archbishop Viganò, the former Vatican representative (nuncio) to the US, accused Vatican officials of failing to act against McCarrick. Viganò even alleged that Pope Francis had known about McCarrick’s offences and nevertheless brought the American prelate into his inner circle.

Viganò claimed that he had told Francis in June 2013 that McCarrick had “corrupted generations of seminarians”.

He further claimed that, while Benedict XVI had imposed restrictions on McCarrick, these had been lifted by Pope Francis, who made McCarrick a “trusted counsellor”.

The Pope has not directly responded. But Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, denounced Viganò’s letter two weeks ago, calling it “unjust” and “abhorrent”. Addressing Viganò as “Dear brother”, Cardinal Ouellet said that, until recently, the Vatican had not been fully aware of McCarrick’s true character.

“Unlike today,” Ouellet wrote, “there was not sufficient proof of [McCarrick’s] alleged culpability”. Rather than having “recent and definitive information”, according to Ouellet, the Vatican knew only “rumours” . [But there were letters containing information that should have been investigated but were not. Not to mention the settlements made by three New Jersey dioceses with some of McCarrick's victims!]

But in his new letter, Viganò claims that “the Holy See was aware of a variety of concrete facts, and is in possession of documentary proof”, but officials failed to act or were prevented from doing so.

He names several documents which, he claims, the Vatican had in its possession, most of them from the time of Benedict XVI. These include a letter from an American priest, Fr Boniface Ramsey, describing what he had heard about McCarrick; records of civil settlements which two US dioceses had reached with McCarrick’s alleged victims; and a 2008 letter from the psychotherapist Richard Sipe offering to detail McCarrick’s offences.

Viganò also says that he, as well as his two predecessors as nuncio, Archbishops Montalvo and Sambi, had informed the Vatican about McCarrick.

The documents, Viganò says, are kept in the “appropriate archives” of the Vatican. They “specify the identity of the perpetrators and their protectors, and the chronological sequence of the facts”.

Addressing Ouellet, the former nuncio asks: “Are all these just rumours? They are official correspondence, not gossip from the sacristy.”

Viganò also says Ouellet’s letter confirmed that Benedict imposed restrictions on McCarrick. “Cardinal Ouellet concedes the important claims,” he writes.

The archbishop concludes by appealing to other Vatican officials to give their own testimony.

The full text of Archbishop Viganò’s letter:

---

On the Memorial Feast Day of the North American Martyrs

To bear witness to corruption in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was a painful decision for me, and remains so. But I am an old man, one who knows he must soon give an accounting to the judge for his actions and omissions, one who fears Him who can cast body and soul into hell. A judge, even in his infinite mercy, will render to every person salvation or damnation according to what he has deserved. Anticipating the dreadful question from that judge — “How could you, who had knowledge of the truth, keep silent in the midst of falsehood and depravity?” — what answer could I give?

I testified fully aware that my testimony would bring alarm and dismay to many eminent persons: churchmen, fellow bishops, colleagues with whom I had worked and prayed. I knew many would feel wounded and betrayed. I expected that some would in their turn assail me and my motives. Most painful of all, I knew that many of the innocent faithful would be confused and disconcerted by the spectacle of a bishop charging colleagues and superiors with malfeasance, sexual sin, and grave neglect of duty.

Yet I believe that my continued silence would put many souls at risk, and would certainly damn my own. Having reported multiple times to my superiors, and even to the pope, the aberrant behavior of Theodore McCarrick, I could have publicly denounced the truths of which I was aware earlier. If I have some responsibility in this delay, I repent for that. This delay was due to the gravity of the decision I was going to take, and to the long travail of my conscience.

I have been accused of creating confusion and division in the Church through my testimony. To those who believe such confusion and division were negligible prior to August 2018, perhaps such a claim is plausible. Most impartial observers, however, will have been aware of a longstanding excess of both, as is inevitable when the successor of Peter is negligent in exercising his principal mission, which is to confirm the brothers in the faith and in sound moral doctrine. When he then exacerbates the crisis by contradictory or perplexing statements about these doctrines, the confusion is worsened.

Therefore I spoke. For it is the conspiracy of silence that has wrought and continues to wreak great harm in the Church — harm to so many innocent souls, to young priestly vocations, to the faithful at large. With regard to my decision, which I have taken in conscience before God, I willingly accept every fraternal correction, advice, recommendation, and invitation to progress in my life of faith and love for Christ, the Church and the pope.

Let me restate the key points of my testimony.
• In November 2000 the U.S. nuncio Archbishop Montalvo informed the Holy See of Cardinal McCarrick’s homosexual behavior with seminarians and priests.
• In December 2006 the new U.S. nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, informed the Holy See of Cardinal McCarrick’s homosexual behavior with yet another priest.
• In December of 2006 I myself wrote a memo to the Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone, and personally delivered it to the Substitute for General Affairs, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, calling for the pope to bring extraordinary disciplinary measures against McCarrick to forestall future crimes and scandal. This memo received no response.
• In April 2008 an open letter to Pope Benedict by Richard Sipe was relayed by the Prefect of the CDF, Cardinal Levada, to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone, containing further accusations of McCarrick’s sleeping with seminarians and priests.
[One must ask
- why the letter was relayed only to Cardinal Bertone and not to the addressee himself, Benedict XVI.
- Or was the pope given a copy of the letter, too?
- How eventually did he come to learn of the accusations against McCarrick to the point that he decided to impose 'restrictions' on him?

I understand they had to be 'private' because no canonical trial was ever called for McCarrick, and that this, in turn, was out of consideration for his age (he was 78 in 2008). As much as I love B16, I think he missed a great opportunity here to highlight a cardinal's misconduct, and erred seriously in not ordering an investigation of the charges by the CDF. Consideration for McCarrick's age was surely secondary to arriving at the truth, given the weight of the accusations and that the Vatican could have easily found out about the settlements by the NJ dioceses with McCarrick, if it did not already know about them by then. Yes, it would have been very messy, but it would have been the only course of action consistent with Joseph Ratzinger's otherwise unblemished record of dealing with clerical sex abuses. If this had all come out in the open then, we would not have McCarrick to 'kick around' anymore, because all the 'kicking' would have been done if the Vatican had investigated him in 2008.]
• I received this a month later, and in May 2008 I myself delivered a second memo to the then Substitute for General Affairs, Archbishop Fernando Filoni, reporting the claims against McCarrick and calling for sanctions against him. This second memo also received no response.
• In 2009 or 2010 I learned from Cardinal Re, prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, that Pope Benedict had ordered McCarrick to cease public ministry and begin a life of prayer and penance. [Obviously, this was Benedict's response to information that finally reached him about McCarrick - probably Sipe's letter and Vigano's memorandum from 2008. Why else would he have imposed those specific restrictions including 'a life of prayer and penance'?] Nuncio Sambi communicated the Pope’s orders to McCarrick in a voice [that witnesses said could be] heard down the corridor of the nunciature.
• In November 2011 Cardinal Ouellet, the new Prefect of Bishops, repeated to me, the new nuncio to the U.S., the Pope’s restrictions on McCarrick, and I myself communicated them to McCarrick face-to-face.
• On June 21, 2013, toward the end of an official assembly of nuncios at the Vatican, Pope Francis spoke cryptic words to me criticizing the U.S. episcopacy.
• On June 23, 2013, I met Pope Francis face-to-face in his apartment to ask for clarification, and the Pope asked me, “il cardinale McCarrick, com’è (Cardinal McCarrick — what do you make of him)?”– which I can only interpret as feigning curiosity in order to discover whether or not I was an ally of McCarrick. I told him that McCarrick had sexually corrupted generations of priests and seminarians, and had been ordered by Pope Benedict to confine himself to a life of prayer and penance.
• Instead, McCarrick continued to enjoy the special regard of Pope Francis and was given new responsibilities and missions by him.
• McCarrick was part of a network of bishops promoting homosexuality who, exploiting their favor with Pope Francis, manipulated episcopal appointments to protect themselves from justice and to strengthen the homosexual network in the hierarchy and in the Church at large.
• Pope Francis himself has either colluded in this corruption, or, knowing what he does, is gravely negligent in failing to oppose it and uproot it.

I invoked God as my witness to the truth of my claims, and none has been shown false. Cardinal Ouellet has written to rebuke me for my temerity in breaking silence and leveling such grave accusations against my brothers and superiors, but in truth his remonstrance confirms me in my decision and, even more, serves to vindicate my claims, severally and as a whole.

• Cardinal Ouellet concedes that he spoke with me about McCarrick’s situation prior to my leaving for Washington to begin my post as nuncio.
• Cardinal Ouellet concedes that he communicated to me in writing the conditions and restrictions imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict.
• Cardinal Ouellet concedes that these restrictions forbade McCarrick to travel or to make public appearances.
• Cardinal Ouellet concedes that the Congregation of Bishops, in writing, first through the nuncio Sambi and then once again through me, required McCarrick to lead a life of prayer and penance.

What does Cardinal Ouellet dispute?
• Cardinal Ouellet disputes the possibility that Pope Francis could have taken in important information about McCarrick on a day when he met scores of nuncios and gave each only a few moments of conversation. But this was not my testimony. My testimony is that at a second, private meeting, I informed the Pope, answering his own question about Theodore McCarrick, then Cardinal archbishop emeritus of Washington, prominent figure of the Church in the US, telling the pope that McCarrick had sexually corrupted his own seminarians and priests. No pope could forget that.
• Cardinal Ouellet disputes the existence in his archives of letters signed by Pope Benedict or Pope Francis regarding sanctions on McCarrick. But this was not my testimony. My testimony was that he has in his archives key documents – irrespective of provenance – incriminating McCarrick and documenting the measures taken in his regard, and other proofs on the cover-up regarding his situation. And I confirm this again.
• Cardinal Ouellet disputes the existence in the files of his predecessor, Cardinal Re, of “audience memos” imposing on McCarrick the restrictions already mentioned. But this was not my testimony. My testimony is that there are other documents: for instance, a note from Card. Re not ex-Audientia SS.mi, or signed by the Secretary of State or by the Substitute.
• Cardinal Ouellet disputes that it is false to present the measures taken against McCarrick as “sanctions” decreed by Pope Benedict and canceled by Pope Francis. True. They were not technically “sanctions” but provisions, “conditions and restrictions.” To quibble whether they were sanctions or provisions or something else is pure legalism. From a pastoral point of view they are exactly the same thing.

In brief, Cardinal Ouellet concedes the important claims that I did and do make, and disputes claims I don’t make and never made.

There is one point on which I must absolutely refute what Cardinal Ouellet wrote. The Cardinal states that the Holy See was only aware of “rumors,” which were not enough to justify disciplinary measures against McCarrick.

I affirm to the contrary that the Holy See was aware of a variety of concrete facts, and is in possession of documentary proof, and that the responsible persons nevertheless chose not to intervene or were prevented from doing so.
- Compensation by the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen to the victims of McCarrick’s sexual abuse,
- the letters of Fr. Ramsey, of the nuncios Montalvo in 2000 and Sambi in 2006, of Dr. Sipe in 2008,
- my two notes to the superiors of the Secretariat of State which described in detail the concrete allegations against McCarrick -
Are all these just rumors? They are official correspondence, not gossip from the sacristy.
- The crimes reported were very serious, including those of attempting to give sacramental absolution to accomplices in perverse acts, with subsequent sacrilegious celebration of Mass.
- These documents specify the identity of the perpetrators and their protectors, and the chronological sequence of the facts.
- They are kept in the appropriate archives; no extraordinary investigation is needed to recover them.

In the public remonstrances directed at me I have noted two omissions, two dramatic silences.
- The first silence regards the plight of the victims.
- The second regards the underlying reason why there are so many victims, namely, the corrupting influence of homosexuality in the priesthood and in the hierarchy.

As to the first, it is dismaying that, amid all the scandals and indignation, so little thought was given to those damaged by the sexual predations of those commissioned as ministers of the gospel. This is not a matter of settling scores or sulking over the vicissitudes of ecclesiastical careers. It is not a matter of politics. It is not a matter of how church historians may evaluate this or that papacy. This is about souls. Many souls have been and are even now imperiled of their eternal salvation.

As to the second silence, this very grave crisis cannot be properly addressed and resolved unless and until we call things by their true names. This is a crisis due to the scourge of homosexuality, in its agents, in its motives, in its resistance to reform.
- It is no exaggeration to say that homosexuality has become a plague in the clergy, and it can only be eradicated with spiritual weapons.
- It is an enormous hypocrisy condemn the abusre, claim to weep for the victims, and yet refuse to denounce the root cause of so much sexual abuse: homosexuality.
- It is hypocrisy to refuse to acknowledge that this scourge is due to a serious crisis in the spiritual life of the clergy and to fail to take the steps necessary to remedy it.

Unquestionably there exist philandering clergy, and unquestionably they too damage their own souls, the souls of those whom they corrupt, and the Church at large. But these violations of priestly celibacy are usually confined to the individuals immediately involved. Philandering clergy usually do not recruit other philanderers, nor work to promote them, nor cover-up their misdeeds — whereas the evidence for homosexual collusion, with its deep roots that are so difficult to eradicate, is overwhelming.

It is well established that homosexual predators exploit clerical privilege to their advantage. But to claim the crisis itself to be clericalism is pure sophistry. It is to pretend that a means, anw instrument, is in fact the main motive.

Denouncing homosexual corruption and the moral cowardice that allows it to flourish does not meet with congratulation in our times, not even in the highest spheres of the Church. I am not surprised that in calling attention to these plagues I am charged with disloyalty to the Holy Father and with fomenting an open and scandalous rebellion.

Yet rebellion would entail urging others to topple the papacy. I am urging no such thing. I pray every day for Pope Francis — more than I have ever done for the other popes. I am asking, indeed earnestly begging, the Holy Father to face up to the commitments he himself made in assuming his office as successor of Peter.
- He took upon himself the mission of confirming his brothers and guiding all souls in following Christ, in the spiritual combat, along the way of the cross.
- Let him admit his errors, repent, show his willingness to follow the mandate given to Peter and, once converted, let him confirm his brothers (Lk 22:32).

In closing, I wish to repeat my appeal to my brother bishops and priests who know that my statements are true and who can so testify, or who have access to documents that can put the matter beyond doubt.
- You too are faced with a choice.
- You can choose to withdraw from the battle, to prop up the conspiracy of silence and avert your eyes from the spreading of corruption.
- You can make excuses, compromises and justification that put off the day of reckoning.
- You can console yourselves with the falsehood and the delusion that it will be easier to tell the truth tomorrow, and then the following day, and so on.

On the other hand, you can choose to speak. You can trust Him who told us, “the truth will set you free.” I do not say it will be easy to decide between silence and speaking. I urge you to consider which choice– on your deathbed, and then before the just Judge — you will not regret making.

October 19, 2018
Memorial Feast Day of the
North American Martyrs

+ Carlo Maria Viganò
Tit. Archbishop of Ulpiana
Apostolic Nuncio[

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Steve Skojec gives Vigano his due:

How Mons Vigano has become the kind of hero
that the Church is desperately looking for
by Steve Skojec

October 19, 2018

It is striking the way in which Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has become, in many ways, the kind of hero the Church is so desperately looking for.

Today, on the occasion of the Feast of the North American Martyrs — Jesuits who, unlike many of the modern-day variety, gave their lives for the salvation of souls — he has released a third testimony. And with each iteration he becomes more resolute, and the force of his accusations grow stronger.

He is a man who speaks with the authority of one who has foregone earthly accolades and benefits in a genuine concern for the answers he will have to give at his particular judgment. It is a theme he has referenced before, and does so again, more forcefully, in his opening paragraph:

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To bear witness to corruption in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was a painful decision for me, and remains so. But I am an old man, one who knows he must soon give an accounting to the Judge for his actions and omissions, one who fears Him who can cast body and soul into hell. A Judge who, even in his infinite mercy, will render to every person salvation or damnation according to what he has deserved. Anticipating the dreadful question from that Judge — “How could you, who had knowledge of the truth, keep silent in the midst of falsehood and depravity?” — what answer could I give?

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While promises of a formal correction from Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller have fizzled and faded, and talk of a self-deposing pope have disappeared from their public commentary, Viganò’s clear, firm voice has become like a clarion call: the pope must “admit his errors, repent, show his willingness to follow the mandate given to Peter and, once converted let him confirm his brothers (Lk 22:32).”

In his latest testimony, Viganò principally dissects the public response he received from Cardinal Marc Ouellet, affirms what most commentators have already observed — that Ouellet “concedes the important claims that I did and do make, and disputes claims I don’t make and never made” — and repeats his call for the Canadian cardinal, and any who have the documentation that would help make the facts known, that they can choose to continue in falsehood, or “trust Him who told us, ‘the truth will set you free.'”

“I do not say it will be easy,” concludes Viganò, “to decide between silence and speaking. I urge you to consider which choice– on your deathbed, and then before the just Judge — you will not regret having made.”

Viganò also re-iterates that his claims are “not gossip from the sacristy” but that “official correspondence” exists — documents that “specify the identity of the perpetrators and their protectors, and the chronological sequence of the facts.”

“They are kept in the appropriate archives,” writes Viganò. “No extraordinary investigation is needed to recover them.

He also adds his voice to the chorus saying that we are in

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a crisis due to the scourge of homosexuality, in its agents, in its motives, in its resistance to reform. It is no exaggeration to say that homosexuality has become a plague in the clergy, and it can only be eradicated with spiritual weapons. It is an enormous hypocrisy to condemn the abuse, claim to weep for the victims, and yet refuse to denounce the root cause of so much sexual abuse: homosexuality. It is hypocrisy to refuse to acknowledge that this scourge is due to a serious crisis in the spiritual life of the clergy and to fail to take the steps necessary to remedy it.

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We urge the reader to consider, once again, that Viganò has given up all earthly security to make his claims known.
- There is no fund filling up with cash on his behalf from grateful members of the faithful. [Fortunately, he has private means as he comes from a family that made its fortune in industry and has inherited his share of it.]
- He has given up what life the Church would have provided for him in retirement in exchange for the life of a fugitive, a hunted man, unable even to finish out his remaining years in the country of his birth.
What possible motive do his detractors think is animating him to repeat his claims?

“This is not a matter,” he seems to thunder, “of settling scores or sulking over the vicissitudes of ecclesiastical careers. It is not a matter of politics. It is not a matter of how church historians may evaluate this or that papacy. This is about souls. Many souls have been and are even now imperiled of their eternal salvation.”

His is a voice that rings with the unmistakable note of truth; he is the one man — the only shepherd in the Church — who has taken the example of St. Paul in Galatians 2:11 and rebuked Peter to the face, because he is to be blamed.

Please continue your prayers for Archbishop Viganò, as well as for the intention that the facts of the matters he describes herein will be brought to light swiftly, and that justice will be served.


'THE VIGANO CASE: The dossier that has revealed the greatest scandal within the Church'

In Aldo Maria Valli's brief report on Mons. Vigano's third testimony, he announces he has just published a little book on
THE VIGANO CASE, which does not, of course, include the Oct. 19 testimony.

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[...Precisely in these days my little book IL CASO VIGANO has been published
https://www.aldomariavalli.it/book/il-caso-vigano/
including all the articles I have written about it on my blog, from the time the monsignor consulted me about his first testimony and I made it public. Obviously, the book does not include this third document which has just reached me.

But I believe that reading the preceding two testimonies along with the one today, which is the memorial feast day of the North American Jesuit martyrs (St Isaac Jogue and companions), will allow the reader to have an exhaustive idea of a situation from which no baptized person nor any person of good will should turn his eyes away...

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Should Pope Francis resign?
Nothing short of resignation would show
a firm purpose of amendment
by William Kirkpatrick

October 20, 2018

Should the Pope resign? Ever since Archbishop Vigano called for Pope Francis to resign in the wake of several high profile sex-abuse cover-ups, that has been a burning question for Catholics.

The chief objection to resignation is that it would create a dangerous precedent. Following closely on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, it would create an expectation that all future popes would at some point have to resign.

Writing in The Weekly Standard, Jonathan Last suggests that “two abdications in a row would have the practical effect of breaking the modern papacy.” It would turn the papacy, he says, “into an expressly political office.”

Nevertheless, Pope Francis should resign. And he should heed Vigano’s call to accept the resignation of “cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses.”

Why? Because the gravity of the scandals — in the U.S., Chile, Honduras, Germany, England, Ireland, Australia, and elsewhere — must be matched with an equally serious response. And it’s hard to imagine anything short of resignation that would show a firm purpose of amendment on the part of the Pope. [I find the statement too sweeping, but what are the alternatives? Not that Bergoglio would ever consider resigning. But he would never admit his errors either - at least, not his errors against Catholic doctrine, practice and Tradition, and even his errors of governance He's the know-all pope, remember? Who knows better than Jesus what to preach, and knows better than Jesus what 'the Church' ought to be. So, in many ways, discussions over whether he should resign or not are as futile and fruitless as discussions about what can be done with a heretical pope assuming one establishes this fact sufficiently in the public mind?]

Vigano’s accusations are of a radical nature, and, if they are accurate, then the response to them must also be radical.
- Vigano doesn’t merely criticize the Pope, he accuses him of colluding with evil.
- He refers to the “grave, disconcerting and sinful conduct of Pope Francis.”
- He charges Francis with “multiplying exponentially with his supreme authority the evil done by McCarrick.”
He adds: “And how many other evil pastors is Francis still continuing to prop up in their active destruction of the Church!” If Vigano’s charges are true, then, of course, the Pope should resign.

But how about the objection that two resignations in a row would turn the Church into a contentious two-party system? That’s possible, but it’s not inevitable. Moreover, that possibility has to be weighed against the reality that Pope Francis has already politicized the Church to an extent that few could have anticipated at the beginning of his papacy.

As detailed by George Neumayr in The Political Pope, the pope’s political agenda is decidedly left of center, and he seems to have few qualms about imposing his brand of radical politics on the Church even at the expense of doctrine. Now that he is under fire, he might be tempted to accelerate the process of modernizing Catholic morals and teaching.

As Peter Kwasniewski writes in LifeSite News, “One wonders if Pope Francis is worried about how many years he’s got left, and wants to make sure he changes as much as he can, as quickly as possible.” [One does not have to wonder. His chief lieutenants, among them Maradiaga and Fernandez, have said that more than once, and McCarrick himself is quoted somewhere as having echoed those two at the start of this papacy by saying that this pope would change 'the Church' in five years. [Except, of course, that no genuine Catholic would consider the church of Bergoglio as 'the Church' at all! A travesty of it, yes, because Bergoglio and his followers would keep referring to it as 'the Roman Catholic Church' even if the church of Bergoglio does not possess any of the four hallmarks of the one true Church of Christ - it is neither holy nor Roman nor apostolic nor Catholic. Rather, it is profane, Bergoglian, non-apostolic and anti-Catholic.]

In that light, Pope Benedict’s resignation should be looked upon not as a bad precedent, but as a providential one. For the good of the Church, Francis ought to resign, but without Benedict’s precedent, few would dare to broach the possibility.

More to the point, Francis himself would probably not consider resigning without that precedent as a goad. Although he cultivates an image of openness and flexibility, he is, as I have observed elsewhere, decidedly stubborn on many matters.

He may be humble in certain respects [all of which reek of faux humility], but he seems to have no intellectual humility. Rather, he is quite sure that he is right about the environment, global warming, capitalism, capital punishment, the benefits of Muslim migration, and a host of other issues.

Moreover this stubbornness extends to his appointments. Francis is not taking any chances with the success of his radical agenda. As a result, his top appointments are men who are made in his mold. And once appointed, he defends them, as Archbishop Vigano puts it, “to the bitter end.”

Take for example two extremely significant global gatherings: The World Meeting of Families (WMOF) which was held in Dublin in late August, and the Youth Synod which is being held in Vatican City between October 3-28.

The WMOF included a number of talks which focused on sensitivity to the needs of LGBT individuals and their families. One of the featured speaker was Fr. James Martin, S.J., a controversial pro-LGBT priest who wants Catholics to “see how normal it is to be LGBT.”

Other speakers included Cardinal Blase Cupich, who is mentioned in the Vigano statement as being “blinded by his pro-gay ideology.” Vigano writes that “the appointments of Blasé Cupich to Chicago and Joseph W. Tobin to Newark were orchestrated by McCarrick, Maradiaga and Wuerl, united by a wicked pact of abuses by the first, and at least of cover-up of abuses by the other two.” Archbishop Tobin claims not to have known about McCarrick’s abuses, even though as Archbishop of Newark he should have known about the settlements that the Newark diocese had paid to two of McCarrick’s victims.

Cardinal Wuerl who is mentioned several times in the Vigano statement was also scheduled to participate in the WMOF, but was unable to attend due to the controversy generated by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report which implicated Wuerl for having covered-up several abuse cases.

The organizer of the WMOF conference was Cardinal Kevin Farrell who is also mentioned in the Vigano statement. Farrell shared a house with Cardinal McCarrick for six years but claims he had no idea of the abuses committed by McCarrick.

Another prominent participant in the conference was Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa who, according to Vigano, “had become the kingmaker for appointments in the Curia and United States.” Perhaps the Pope’s closest advisor, Maradiaga currently stands accused of covering-up widespread sexual abuse in Honduras’s largest seminary. Maradiaga’s talk at the World Meeting of Families was entitled “Pope Francis on the Revolution of Tenderness.”

When I read that, I couldn’t help but think of one of Frank Sinatra’s standards, “The Tender Trap.” If you’re not careful, warns Sinatra, you’ll find that: “you’re hooked, you’re cooked, you’re caught in the tender trap.” In many ways, the WMOF was an attempt to trap Catholics into believing that all forms of families are equally pleasing in the eyes of God.

Not coincidentally, another “tender trap” has been laid in Vatican City for the youth of the world. Most of the participants for the Youth Synod are chosen by conferences of bishops. But thirty-nine special delegates are appointed by Pope Francis.
- His choices include Cardinal Reinhard Marx who wants ritual blessings for same-sex unions, and — once again — Cardinals Cupich and Tobin (although Tobin has bowed out “as a result of the [sex-abuse] crisis that continues to unfold” in his diocese).
- Cardinal Farrell will also be present by virtue of his office.

If you’re beginning to see a pattern here, so are others. Several prominent Catholics have called for the Synod to be cancelled. They include Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, and Dutch bishop Robert Mutsaerts who has pulled out of the Synod because “the whole thing will lack credibility.” Others, such as George Weigel, have criticized the Instrumentum Laboris (working document) for the Synod, calling it a “bloated tedious doorstop full of sociologese but woefully lacking in spiritual or theological insight.”

More on that later, but first a little more on the delegates. Skipping over the German bishop who is accused both of covering up abuse cases and allowing teen LGBT love stories to circulate in his diocese, let’s focus on another of the special delegates personally chosen by Pope Francis to enlighten World Youth.

His name is Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia. He’s is known in Italy for having commissioned a billboard-size homoerotic mural in his cathedral church.

Not content to merely commission the mural, Paglia had himself included in it, wearing his skull cap but not much else, and embracing a nude man whose private parts are covered by a floating ribbon.

To say the least, Bishop Paglia displayed poor judgement — but nowhere near the poor judgement exhibited by two pontiffs. The aging and often poorly-advised Benedict XVI appointed him as President of the Pontifical Council for the Family in 2012. [Unfortunately, it was widely said at the time that Benedict XVI appointed Paglia to the position vacated by retired Cardinal Ennio Antonelli on the recommendation of the ultra-liberal Community of Sant'Egidio of which Paglia had been spiritual director for a long time. At that time, no one had heard of Paglia's self-indulgent homo-erotic mural in the Terni Cathedral nor of the subsequent charges of serious financial mismanagement of the diocese.]

Under Paglia’s direction, the Council produced a sex-education program [not under Benedict XVI, but under Bergoglio, for the World Youth Day in Poland in 2015] which, according to the Cardinal Newman Society, "makes frequent use of sexually explicit and morally objectionable images, fails to clearly identify and explain Catholic doctrine… and compromises the innocence and integrity of young people…”

Apparently pleased with his efforts, Pope Francis then shifted Paglia to the presidency of both the Pontifical Academy for Life and the renamed/re-booted [and almost completely overhauled in the Bergoglian vision] Pope John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences.

Of related interest is that Paglia was replaced at the Pontifical Council for the Family (renamed as the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life) by the ubiquitous Bishop Farrell—the one-time housemate of Cardinal McCarrick who, like Paglia, was elevated by Pope Francis to high office despite his well-known proclivities.

You don’t have to study homoerotic murals to get the picture. Francis has surrounded himself with highly suspect people who, for the good of the Church, can no longer be given the benefit of the doubt. Yet instead of demoting or dismissing them, the Pope keeps placing them in central roles. Why? Because their progressive agenda is his also.

One major part of that agenda is to make peace with the sexual revolution.
- When the Paglia-orchestrated sex-education program was released, LifeSiteNews headlined the event as “Vatican sex-ed ‘surrenders’ to sexual revolution.”
- Significantly, that’s the way the Instrumentum Laboris for the Youth Synod is being characterized by its critics.
- George Weigel upbraids the authors of the IL for being “embarrassed by Catholic teaching” and for failing to challenge the world’s “fanatical commitment to the sexual revolution in all its expressions.”
- Likewise, an open letter addressed to members of the Synod by eight young Catholic priests contends that the working document “concedes too much to the sexual revolution, which has caused such great harm to young people.”

Should the Pope resign?
- His willingness to pack the WMOF and the Youth Synod with the men who are most deeply implicated in the sex-abuse cover-ups, suggests that he doesn’t take the scandals seriously. Either that, or - he considers the success of his progressive agenda to be more important than the damage being done to the Church.
In the face of all the destructive forces that have been unleashed against the Church from within and without, Francis seems determined to conduct business as usual — full speed ahead and damn the consequences.

Toward the end of his statement, Archbishop Vigano has this to say:

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“Francis is abdicating the mandate which Christ gave to Peter to confirm the brethren. Indeed, by his action he has divided them, led them into error, and encouraged the wolves to continue to tear apart the sheep of Christ’s flock.”

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The man who has led the sheep to the wolves [or put his fellow wolves to lead them, in the Bergoglian form of 'subsidiarity'] is not the man to lead the Church. He should step down.