THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

I have a basic objection to the title the writer (or his editors) decided to give this commentary, which is otherwise very much on the mark
about the infamous record of 'the world's most famous Muslim' - he who always sounds deliberately 'moderate' in the statements he makes
to the world at large, while remaining consistently resolute in his advocacy of Muslim extremism when addressing Muslims in Arabic.

Al-Tayyeb did not 'play Pope Francis for a fool' to get him to co-sign the Abu Dhabi Declaration. It was most likely the pope's
suggestion to begin with, since he first met with the imam at the Vatican, in 2016. That was a much-publicized occasion when he 'repaired'
the breach Al-Tayyeb caused by 'breaking off relations' with the Vatican in 2011 after Benedict XVI called for better protection of Egypt's
Christian minority following a New Year's Day massacre of Copts by Egyptian jihadists. If I remember right, Al-Tayyeb was offended because
he said Benedict XVI ought to have expressed his concern for suffering Muslims as well! But that's the man Bergoglio has taken for a BFF...

How the world's most famous Muslim
played Francis for a fool
[Did he? Both have been playing each other since 2016 for propaganda reasons]
By Rev. Dr. Jules Gomes

February 14, 2019

"The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" Stalin supposedly asked Churchill in the waning days of World War II.

"The Pope? How many Arabic translators has he got?" Al-Tayyeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar University, presumably asked his advisors before signing the document "Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together" in the United Arab Emirates earlier this month with Pope Francis.

The grand imam speaks the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in Arabic. This is his in-house discourse. He is an open scroll to Sunni Muslims, who comprise 85–90 percent of the world's Islamic population. On the other hand, Grand Sheikh Al-Tayyeb speaks in carefully crafted cant to Western leaders. This is his public relations glossolalia.

Last year, Al-Tayyeb crossed London Bridge to play the game of taqqiya (Islamic dissimulation) with the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury. Pro-gay Justin Welby was tweeting Al-Tayyeb's praises from Lambeth Palace's minarets.

"You are a sign of hope for our world," gushed Welby like the Trevi Fountain. The alt-media dug up Al-Tayyeb's Arabic orations denouncing homosexuality as a disease and exposed Welby as a Western sucker who fell for the grand imam's weasel words.

The Archbishop of Canterbury tweeted:

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@JustinWelby
Tonight, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar and I shared our gratitude and admiration for the Christian and Muslim #EmergingPeacemakers who have been with us at @LambethPalace this week. You are a sign of hope for our world. #EPForum18
Jul 18, 2018

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Now, Al-Tayyeb has adroitly twisted the pontifical mitre into a dunce cap.

Doesn't Pope Francis know that Islam rubber-stamps peace treaties with infidels only if it is advantageous for Muslims? When Muhammad signed the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah with the Meccans in 628, he used it as a Trojan Horse, furthering his ultimate objective of capturing Mecca.

Islamic jurists define a treaty as a form of‘aqd (literally, a tie) which has legal consequences. According to the Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought: "Muslims can make treaties with their enemies, even if they are polytheists, and they are expected by God to keep to their treaties," provided non-Muslims maintain the treaty.

But "Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together" is neither a treaty nor a convention. It is a declaration. Theologically and legally, such a declaration is not legally binding. Strategically, though, it is a masterstroke for Islamic mission (dawa). Muslims will use the document to intensify dawa in the West, but will extend no such reciprocity to Christians.

The declaration is a tour de force of Islamic taqqiya. Al-Tayyeb gently leads Pope Francis down the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole where "a word means just what I choose it to mean." Christians "should be aware that things are not always what they first seem on the surface" when dialoguing with Muslims, cautions Robert Reilly in The Prospects and Perils of Catholic-Muslim Dialogue. "A Muslim can see the same word and understand it differently," he notes.

Indeed, the very first sentence of the Al-Tayyeb-Francis document demonstrates this attempt at dissimulation: "Faith leads a believer to see in the other a brother or sister to be supported and loved." This is a particularly Christian reflection, based on the Genesis notion of humans created in God's image and likeness. In the Quran, humans are not made in God's image or likeness. The very idea of the "image of God" in humanity is a blasphemous one in Islamic revelation.

Not surprisingly, Islam trumps Christianity in the document by calling the believer to support the "other" not on the basis of humans created in the imago Dei but based on the Islamic doctrine of humans as "equal on account of his (Allah's) mercy" — which is insidiously inserted into the text in parenthesis.
- But Allah has mercy only on those who submit to him by becoming Muslims!
- Further, Muhammad alone is the embodiment of Allah's mercies (21:107).
- The Quran emphatically teaches that those refusing to submit to Allah are not equal to Muslims.
- Rather, Muslims are "the best people that hath been raised up for mankind" (3:110), while non-Muslims are "as the cattle" (7:179) and "unclean" (9:28).
- Even the "People of the Book and the idolaters, will abide in fire of hell. They are the worst of created beings" compared to the Muslims who "are the best of created beings" (98:6–7).

The next sentence in the document calls "believers to express this human fraternity" through "faith in God." But the God of Islam, defined by tawhid (the unity of God), categorically repudiates the Trinity and the deity of Jesus. Even though Nostra Aetate states that the Muslims "adore the one God," it does not say that it is the same God. [That's splitting hairs wrongly. The words 'the one God' in the phrase from Nostra aetate uses the definite article, meaning in plain English that it refers to 'the one God' of those who wrote the document. Otherwise, the phrase would have been 'Muslims adore one God" - without the definite article, that 'one God' is a generic god,not necessarily the same God that Christians worship, and certainly not the Trinitarian God.]

The document talks about "We, who believe in God." It is clear from the following words that this God is not Yahweh, but Allah who will judge humanity "in the final meeting with Him and His judgment." And, pray, who is a believer in God? True believers are only those who believe in Allah and his Messenger (24:62, 49:15). If one doesn't believe in Muhammad, then he is a kaafir! [Non-Muslim, but its connotations are contemptuous and dismissive.]

When Pope Francis and Al-Tayyeb speak of "fraternity," do they both understand it to mean "brotherly" from the Latin root frater, i.e. brother? Does Pope Francis not understand that the Quran forbids Muslims from "fraternal" (in the sense of brotherly) relationships with non-Muslims?

Muslims are permitted three types of relationships with non-believers.
- First, Shariah allows Muslims to have dealings like entering into purchase and sale transactions, hiring, etc. with non-Muslims (Mu'aamalaat).
- Second, Muslims may feel the pain of others and sympathize with them (Muwaasaat).
- However, in the third type of relationship, a Muslim is not permitted to enter into a "close bosom" or brotherly friendship (Muwalaat) with a non-Muslim as he may compromise his Islamic faith (5:51).

Al-Tayyeb's sophistry peaks when the document adapts the following verse from the Quran (without referencing it): "In the name of innocent human life that God has forbidden to kill, affirming that whoever kills a person is like one who kills the whole of humanity, and that whoever saves a person is like one who saves the whole of humanity."

Muslim apologists often cite this text when touting Islam as a religion of peace. However, this is a partial, out of context and highly misleading paraphrase of Sura 5:32, which, read in its entirety, actually permits violence "for murder or for spreading mischief in the land." In fact, the next two verses explain how Muslims should apply the principle, particularly regarding those who cause "mischief."

"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land" and Hell in the hereafter unless they repent (Sura 5:33–34). The grand imam knows that physical jihad against kaafirs is not an option but an obligation (fard kafaayah) on the Islamic community as a whole.

What fard kafaayah means is that if jihad is not undertaken by enough people, then all the people are guilty of sin, but if enough people undertake it, the rest will be relieved of blame. "Jihad is an obligation upon the community; if some people undertake it, the rest are relieved of the obligation" (Ibn Qudaamah).

If the Vatican doesn't have an Arabic translator, Pope Francis could at least have learned about Al-Tayyeb's double-speak on YouTube. While the document talks about reinforcing "the bond of fundamental human rights" for "all the men and women of East and West" and "avoiding the politics of double standards," the grand imam is telling his in-house Arabic audience the opposite.

"We should be aware that the concept of human rights are full of ticking time-bombs," Al-Tayyeb said in an interview on Arabic television.

While the grand sheikh co-signs a document with the Pope calling for "freedom of belief," he is telling his Arabic audience that "apostasy is a crime" and insisting that "the apostate must either renounce his apostasy or else be killed."

In July 2016, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights (CIHR) issued a statement asking Al-Tayyeb to "back down from his statements against the freedom of belief, which provide support for violent extremism."

The CIHR statement explicates:

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In March 2016 before the German parliament, Sheikh Al-Tayyeb made unequivocally clear that religious freedom is guaranteed by the Koran, while in Cairo he makes the exact opposite claims. ... Combating terrorism and radical religious ideologies will not be accomplished by directing at the West and its international institutions religious dialogues that are open, support international peace and respect freedoms and rights, while internally promoting ideas that contribute to the dissemination of violent extremism through the media and educational curricula of Al Azhar and the mosques.

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The world's most famous Muslim has played the world's most famous Catholic for a fool. Grand Imam Al-Tayyeb has turned Pope Francis into a dhimmi and a dummy.

"Is the Pope Catholic?" doesn't sound like a rhetorical question anymore. [And has not been ,since this Argentine bonhomme with his supreme religious indifferentism became pope. He has been anything but Catholic, and how could a supposed Vicar of Christ fail to affirm Christ whenever he is among non Christians?]

[I have been saying for some time that Bergoglio has turned into the world's most submissive dhimmi - and all of his own volition, gladly so! As if all the noble-sounding but ultimately empty platitudes about fraternity and peace could neutralize his willing betrayal of the faith to its worst enemies - similar but perhaps worse than his betrayal of the faith in coming to his 'secret agreement' with China about the appointment of bishops and its corollary recognition of China's 'official church' to the obvious detriment of the underground Church which gets nothing but more repression and persecution under Bergoglio's deal.]

On belief without faith
[And what it has to do with the forthcoming 'summit' in Rome]
by David Warren

February 15, 2019


Belief, to my mind, is a comfort to many. This pertains to those who “believe” in God, those who believe in Dawkins’s Flying Spaghetti Monster, those who believe in the benignity of adders, those who believe in Bitcoin, and those who believe their pensions are safe with the government. (Descending order of probability.)

I believe in reason, because it seems to work, but more fundamentally I believe in it as a matter of faith. This is because I am a Catholic, a religion fairly unique in its insistence not only that God exists, transcending all natural existence (“supernatural” is the term the atheists mock), but that the universe He created has a natural order.

Moreover, that within our natural limitations, we can make sense of it. For instance, we can usually distinguish men from women, clouds from dragons, up from down and so forth. Not always I must add, especially not when we are being wantonly and aggressively insane.

I believe in insanity, incidentally. There is plenty of evidence for it – all around – and as reason tells me, it is a hopeful thing. This is because beliefs founded in madness will go away when sanity is restored; and it will be restored, by nature.

Not first thing tomorrow morning, however. Or even in one lifetime, as those who have died by violence or in political prison camps would confirm. (That they can’t do so in person, being dead, I trust gentle reader to understand.)

I said that belief is comforting, and that would include the one just presented. Humans are themselves sufficiently supernatural that we may see a little beyond the horizon of our own material lives. Not far, but far enough to cope, I believe. And yes, I take comfort in this.

I have noticed that those who believe that the universe is senseless – that men can impose any order they like, arbitrarily – must act just as if the sun will rise in the east even while it is setting in the west, and do innumerable little things in the course of the intervening day that assume other continuities. For reason seems to work whether or not one believes in it.

There are people who genuinely believe that reality can be altered by human law, even when laws already on the books have been undermined. Instead of asking themselves, “But what if we enforced them?” they go campaigning for new laws that won’t be consistently enforced, either.

It was, for instance, already against the law to murder people or molest them in several other ways – whether for one’s own hateful pleasure, or convenience. (This is why abortions are and should be such a big issue.) The belief that inventing supplementary “hate crimes” will stop or deter anyone is a good example of our post-modern battiness.

Another good example is happening in Rome, just now. Heads of bishops’ conferences are meeting to discuss – “whatever.”

As Cardinal Burke says – and he should know, if you examine his credentials – we have had severe laws in place against priestly and episcopal malfeasance, including sex crimes, for many, many centuries. The (ignorant) belief that we haven’t seems to guide not only public opinion, but the behavior of many prominent churchmen.

Civil law is irrelevant, or was irrelevant, through most of that time. The Church herself had the means to do something, quite decisive, about perverts wearing collars or in embroidered robes.

She had been teaching that, e.g., homosexuality is disordered, all along – a matter of some interest when four of five alleged criminal sex acts by our (all-male) priests have been committed against boys past puberty. Until recently, she wasn’t shy about “disordered.”

Nor was she shy about resisting passing fashions until, “in the spirit of Vatican II,” her will to resist suddenly evaporated. But now she is so timid that when barefaced lies are told against her – I count the rot about “clericalism” and “synodality” among these, as neither term is used accurately – she truckles and apologizes, circling her own, like a herd of musk-oxen.

The absurdity of wasting jet fuel and hotel expenses on an international gathering to discuss a “problem” whose “solution” is self-evident, tends to undermine not only the authority but the plausibility of Holy Church.

Among the most absurd contemporary beliefs is in talk shops and committees that prattle all day, then draft long, incredibly boring, and counter-productive documents. The alternative is to appoint good men to established offices, and let them do their jobs.

The “problem” is described as a “culture” of deformity. Whether it is publicized or not, there are obviously homosexual cabals, reaching right up to the Curia and into the papal office itself. We can talk about this until we are bleeding in the lips, but the solution will be hard as it is simple: Root it out!

Which takes us to Faith.

It is my contention that a large proportion of our clergy, and of our laity, at every level, have undertaken to believe in things they have no faith in. What is the proportion I do not know – the gathering of statistics for what cannot be counted is another sign of the times.

But a priest, or any man, who perceives a duty, and does not act upon it, has no faith. He can believe anything he wants, and will, in order to comfort himself. “People believe what they want to believe.”

Right and wrong – Themis, Iustitia, Lady Justice – is no mere “belief,” as in some myth. Rather it is, in the teaching of our Church, a necessity. It goes beyond reason, to the heart of our God-created habitation. We have faith in it, or we have nothing.



Fr Vaughn Treco at his former Ordinariate parish of St Bede the Venerable.

The following is the tragic tale of an American priest who did act upon his duty and simply told his flock the truths of the faith - for which he was relieved of his pastoral duties and prohibited from exercising his priestly functions by none other than his bishop, Steven Lopes, who heads the only Ordinariate for ex-Anglicans in the USA, and about whom I had read only good things before. But with what he did, he has shown himself to
be just another Bergoglian who will not tolerate Christian truth and the Christians who say it like it is.

At the time the punishment of Fr. Treco was reported - I don't think anyone in the Catholic media picked up on it - I wondered in my post what Fr. Hunwicke would have to say about it, seeing that he too wrote
admiringly about Bishop Lopes in the past. Sadly, he seems to have been unaware of it, and I hope that this story in 1Peter5 will finally reach him.


'O Father, My Father!'
The story of Fr. Vaughn Treco
by Jonathan Schwartzbauer

February 15, 2019 0 Comments

On a winter day in early 2016, after months of attending the traditional Latin Mass at my local FSSP apostolate, I was asked what I thought of the Mass at a little parish called the Church of St. Bede the Venerable in St. Louis Park, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis.

You see, the Church of St. Bede is a parish of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, and I was told the Mass was very traditional and not too dissimilar from the TLM. The parish was so small that it shared space with a Novus Ordo parish that had miraculously restored what was lost in the wreckovation of the ’60s and ’70s.

I had heard of the Ordinariates and the use of the “Anglican Patrimony” within the Catholic Church, but I had no idea what that really looked like. Curious, I decided to take my wife one Sunday and see what it was all about.

I was surprised how similar to the old Latin Mass it really was. Although the liturgy was in English, it was a sort of sacral English — something different from the vernacular we use every day. The priest faced God instead of man and celebrated at the high altar. The hymns were traditional, and chant was used for all the propers.

After the consecration, but before the elevation, the priest genuflected in worship of God, just as it is in the traditional Mass. Communion, although offered under both species, was received kneeling at the altar rail, with the Sacred Host on the tongue. And in what would turn out to be the most significant detail, the priest preached his homilies as a priest of God should.

After each Ordinariate Mass in the undercroft of the church was a time of fellowship and refreshment. Those gathered were a unique group, each with his own idiosyncrasies. In the best possible way, they were a group of misfits, and found that I, as a traditionalist, fit right in.

It was here that I met Fr. Vaughn Treco, parochial administrator and priest of this small community, who would become not just my pastor, but my friend. I found Fr. Treco a unique man with a penetrating mind, quick to discern truth from falsehood. I could hear in his words immediately that this was a man of tradition.

I still remember our first conversation. He was speaking of how even the typeface used in the first edition of the new Roman Missal was printed in a sans serif type — something our brains instinctively see as less formal. He also spoke of how, when he did celebrate the Novus Ordo Mass for the archdiocese, he would use only the Roman Canon. He spoke clearly and concisely and in a way that made it clear that he was a priest to take note of.

Over the following several months, my wife and I attended Sunday Mass there more and more. The Mass time worked well with our schedules, and we were a part of a developing community there of the sort that never seemed to coalesce at the FSSP apostolate we had been attending. Furthermore, we had direct access to our pastor, and he was always happy to discuss tradition and the struggles we face in the Church today. He gave concrete examples of how to be a good Catholic in these difficult times.

After a few months, Fr. Treco encouraged my wife and me to commit; he wanted us to pick a parish and stick with it. He reminded us that this is how Catholics had always lived — not going from place to place, but rooted in one parish. I will never forget the words he used: “Let me propose this: come to St. Bede’s, make this your parish, and help me to build the kingdom of God.”

How could I refuse such an invitation?

So the following week — the better part of two years ago now — my wife and I registered as parishioners of the Church of St. Bede the Venerable. We do still attend the FSSP parish once a month to be nourished by the traditional liturgy of the Roman Rite, but our weekly Mass is at this tiny parish. We’re a small group just trying to get holy.

Fr. Treco’s motto is just two little words: “Get holy.” It’s clear to me that this has been his goal in all my interactions with him. Get holy.
- You’re worried about the state of the world? Get holy.
- You’re worried about the state of the Church? Get holy.
- God ordained that you be born in this time for a specific purpose. Get holy.
- You struggle with a sin? Get holy.
- You suffer from depression and anxiety? Get holy.
God needs saints. So get holy. [It is Benedict XVI's admonition to the children of St Mary's in England, "Be saints!"]

The Scripture that reads “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” is something never taken as hyperbole by Fr. Treco. Jesus said to do it, so Father encouraged us to believe it’s possible, because Jesus said so.

After daily Mass, my wife and I would often walk back to the sacristy to engage Father in conversation. We would discuss everything from exegesis of Scripture to Church politics, as well as the successes and failures of daily life. He would always give us exactly what it was we needed, whether it was encouragement, chastisement, or something in between.

Through his ministry, I have made much more progress with a particular anxiety disorder I suffer from than any amount of therapy or medication ever accomplished. I have learned how to be a husband in accord with the teaching of the Church, and how to be head of the house without lording it over my family. My wife has learned how to be a godly wife.

I have ridden along with Fr. Treco as he runs errands and meets the elderly and sick for anointing and confession. He has taught us how to “get holy” in the midst of the insanity of this world. He even sent us recordings of his homilies when my wife and I were on vacation, just for the sake of encouragement. What other priest does this? The priest I want most to compare Fr. Treco to is that great pastor of souls, the Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney.

Before knowing this Fr. Treco, the idea of a priest as a father was an abstract concept that was best expressed in theological terms. But now I know what it means for a priest to be father, and even to be a dad.
- A dad is there when you need him.
- A dad provides wise counsel and intervenes when you need it.
- A dad tells you when you’re being stupid and encourages you when you’re down.
- A dad praises your successes and tells you to not linger there, but move on to the next one.
This is what Fr. Treco is, for me, for my wife, and for all of his parishioners. He knows the cost of being a priest and his responsibility before God. Always his encouragement or chastisement or whatever it is his listener needs at that moment has one goal: get holy.

I heard Fr. Treco preach without fear of retribution on many occasions, speaking the hard truth. He has no illusions about the current state of the church and has no fear in telling his parishioners exactly what they need to hear so that we might be saved. I love this man like a father, and he loves us as his children and so will tell us the truth. It is this he also sought to do and faithfully did on November 25.

That’s when everything changed.

On the Feast of Christ the King in the Ordinariate calendar, November 25, 2018, one week before Advent, Fr. Treco delivered this a 38-minute homily in which he attempted to provide a deeper understanding of the current crisis in the Church and to offer a safe way forward in the years that lie ahead of us.

Father showed us a clear picture of the post-conciliar church and the concessions to modernity and the world that the post-conciliar popes have made. He pointed out how this faithlessness is what allowed this rot in the Church to fester for so long and provided several ways for us simple faithful to move forward. The homily was a labor of love — one he spent 10 weeks carefully crafting to be as accurate and clear as possible.

A few days after the homily was preached, it was posted online by The Remnant. Before sharing it, The Remnant offered Father Treco the option of publishing it anonymously, but he declined, saying, “If I am going to speak the truth, then I am going to do so with my name attached to it.” (As of this writing, the homily has over 33,000 views.)

For some weeks, Fr. Treco continued to labor faithfully, preaching the truth. But around the Third Sunday of Advent, his homilies, though still full of Catholic truth, began to seem less pointed and more subdued. My wife and I began to wonder about possible consequences for Fr. Treco in response to his November 25 homily. There were some small hints that maybe something was amiss.

As I was vesting and preparing to serve at the altar of God on January 20, 2019, I noted that Fr. Treco was absent. In his place was Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, ordinary emeritus of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, who has served as a substitute on a number of occasions when Fr. Treco needed to be absent.

Despite our familiarity with Msgr. Steenson, something about his being there felt off. I looked at our weekly bulletin and saw that Fr. Treco’s email and phone number were no longer there and that there was a notice that read that “daily Masses are cancelled until further notice.”

At the end of Mass, Msgr. Steenson read a letter from our bishop, His Excellency Steven Lopes. The bishop explained that the November homily — the one that had gained so much attention for its unflinching evaluation of the crisis — was, in fact, the reason for his removal.

Further, the bishop wrote, the homily was contrary to the teaching of the Church — he did not explain how — and that, even after a personal meeting in Houston between himself and Father Treco, Father refused to recant what he had said. The bishop’s letter then announced that Fr. Treco has been removed as parochial administrator of the Church of St. Bede and that Msgr. Steenson had been assigned as parochial administrator pro tempore.

When I heard these words, I was angry, dismayed, and saddened — but not exactly shocked. What else have we come to expect from Church authorities today? Over and over, we hear about abusive priests being protected and moved around by their bishops, but a priest who is too openly orthodox or critical of what is happening in the Church he serves? Apparently, that was unacceptable. I had to keep my composure until the final blessing and the recessional. The instant I made it to the sacristy, however, I de-vested and left.

I was struggling to control my emotions, since rage, which is what I felt, certainly would be of no use. I’d heard of stories like this of priests being removed because they dared to speak the truth, but now it was my pastor — the man who had made me feel welcome, had helped me with so many of my own problems, had taught me to “get holy” and invited me to help him to “build the kingdom of God.”

I had recently watched the 1989 film Dead Poets Society. The plot is essentially as follows: Robin Williams stars as an English teacher named Mr. Keating at an all-boys boarding school in 1959. In the film, Mr. Keating, an alumnus of the school, is hired to replace the previous English teacher, who passed away before the start of the film. His education methods are unconventional and thus not in accord with the curriculum of the school. The impact Mr. Keating has on the lives of his students is explored throughout the film. He awakens something in them — a love of words, of language, of poetry, and independent thought — that had been dormant.

Toward the end of the film, Mr. Keating is forced out by the powers-that-be because he won’t follow the program. At the very end, a seemingly disgraced Mr. Keating comes to his classroom while the headmaster teaches in his place so he can pick up a few last personal items. He walks through the room sheepishly, but just before he is about to leave, one of the young boys stands up on his desk and cries out a line from a poem by Walt Whitman that Mr. Keating had taught them the first day of class: “O Captain, my Captain!” In short order, all the other boys in the class stand up on their desks and salute the man who had made such an impact on their lives, shouting, “O Captain, my Captain!”

I texted this message — “O Captain, my Captain!” — to Fr. Treco immediately after I left the sacristy. He is guilty of nothing other than speaking out against a hierarchy that has perverted Catholic teachings, led countless souls astray, and protected an unknown but unimaginable number of despicable clerics who have sexually abused children or young adults under their spiritual care.

Fr. Vaughn Treco spoke out against the status quo,
- and so he has been silenced.
- For this “crime,” he was been removed as parochial administrator, functionally pastor, of my parish.
- He had his faculties for hearing confessions withdrawn.
- He was forbidden to preach or offer any reflections or anything of the sort.

Nor was the bishop content merely to silence him. Despite the fact that Fr. Treco made a profession of faith in the presence of his bishop, despite repeating his oath of obedience to his bishop,
- he has been threatened with excommunication under a charge of schism.

What sort of schism he is alleged to be guilty of I cannot say, but he will not take back the true words he spoke in his homily about what has gone so horribly wrong in the Church.

Today, my cry is not “O Captain, my Captain!” but rather “O Father, my Father!” Fr. Treco has become my father, the father of my wife, and the father for many others. He is being taken away because he would not stand silently by while the attacks on the Catholic Faith from within the Church continue.

So many priests fail to speak out, certainly publicly, because this is exactly what they fear. I do not fault them for it. Instead, I fault their bishops and superiors, who refuse to acknowledge the contradictions of the Second Vatican Council and the problems of the post-conciliar pontificates.

Please pray for Fr. Treco and his family. As a former Anglican priest, he is married. He has a wife, grown children, and grandchildren he cares for. Pray for the bishops and other chancery officials responsible for this decision. And pray for Holy Mother Church. Also, share the homily Fr. Treco was removed for preaching. You, and those you share it with, will be nourished by the truth.

And most of all: Get holy! Our Lord needs saints!

St. John Vianney, pray for us.

'Zero tolerance' and what it really means
The watchword of a church without mercy
for all that it continually vaunts it


February 15, 2019

There are two types of sinners for whom, in the preaching of Pope Francis, there has never been a shred of mercy: the corrupt, and those guilty of the sexual abuse of minors. [Only two? Magister forgets all those Catholics he derides as rigid, Pharisees, neo-Pelagian whachamacallits and the whole lexicon of Bergoglio insults launched from the pulpit of Casa Santa Marta. Or maybe, given his vitriolic contempt for them, he considers them all 'corrupt' so that would place them in one of Magister's two categories.]]

Against these latter the watchword is “zero tolerance.” Francis, during the press conference on the way back from the journey to Chile and Peru, identified Benedict XVI as the first to adopt this formula. But in reality it does not appear in any document or discourse of Papa Ratzinger, nor in the 2002 “Dallas Charter” of the bishops of the United States.

Instead, it is continually proposed by the current pope as his pole star in the effort to combat abuse, most recently in the “letter to the people of God” of last August 20 [his two-week delayed but rather perfunctory and ‘blah’ reaction to the Pennyslvania Grand Jury Report.]

“Zero tolerance” - as explained at the February 12, 2015 consistory by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, whom Francis had named to head a new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors - implies “the binding obligation that no member of the clergy who has abused a child will be allowed to continue in the ministry.”

In practice, this means that someone who committed even one offense of this kind, perhaps decades ago, would be excluded forever from the exercise of the ministry, on a par with a serial abuser. And this even before the accusation would be confirmed by a regular canonical process.

The relentless pressure of public opinion against the Catholic Church on the issue of clerical sex abuses explains this recourse to “zero tolerance.” The summit between the pope and the presidents of the whole world’s episcopal conferences, scheduled at the Vatican from February 21 to 24, will be the latest of many episodes in this public opinion siege. But this does not justify - in the judgment of many experts - the Church’s surrender to procedures that violate the fundamental rights of the accused, including those who may be found guilty after due process.

Since 2001, exclusive jurisdiction over crimes of pedophilia has been assigned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This implies that when a bishop finds himself presented with a complaint for clerical sex abuse, after a quick initial verification of the reliability of the accusation, he must pass the case on to Rome.

Since then, several thousand cases have accumulated at the Vatican. But as reported by Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna, for many years a promoter of justice [akin to a prosecutor in the civilian justice system] at the CDF, only two out of ten cases go through a genuine canonical process that may be judicial but more often administrative. All the other cases are resolved by extrajudicial means.

One sensational case of extrajudicial procedure concerned, for example, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Marcial Maciel. The CDF simply questioned the authors of the accusations [and also sought factual corroboration of the charges, starting with Maciel's double life as a priest and family man]. After which, with the explicit approval of Pope Benedict XVI, on May 19, 2006, it released a statement to “exhort the father to lead a discreet life of prayer and penance, giving up any public ministry.”

Another sensational case of hasty resolution concerned the sexual violence against minors imputed to the Peruvian Luis Figari, founder of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae. Cardinal Pedro Barreto Jimeno, archbishop of Huancayo and vice-president of the episcopal conference of Peru, described what happened with the Figari case in the latest issue of Il Regno [biweekly magazine of the Dehonians in Italy]:

---

The pope said that Figari received a heavy verdict, but we were not informed of the sentence. When we went to Rome and asked to talk about it, no one responded to us. And when they delivered to us a statement to make public about the case, we thought it would talk about the sentence, but it did not.

---

[It’s hard to understand such blanket secrecy about cases that have been ‘adjudicated’ in some way. The public – especially the community where the guilty priest committed his crimes – has a right to know: what were the accusations, when did the offenses take place, who were the victims, what kind of investigation was conducted, what if anything did the accused say in his defense, the final verdict on him and the corresponding penalty(ies) imposed. No one expects the CDF to release any details of the crimes imputed to the priest, but to at least indicate the nature, scope and magnitude of these offenses. The public gets to know all that routinely about persons accused in civilian courts. Why should the Church be exempt from such basic obligatory reporting?]

Getting to the present day, the anticipated reduction of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to the lay state would also be the result not of a judicial process but only of an administrative one, in which the judge is also the prosecutor and decrees the fate of the guilty.

It is as if the phenomenon of clerical sex abuses is now perceived in the Church as a permanent state of emergency, the obligatory reaction to which is a body of rules also of an emergency nature, as inflexible as possible.

The United States is the country in which this intransigency is at its peak, especially since the increasingly infamous “Dallas Charter” of 2002 [behind which was the Macchiavellian mind and hand of one Theodore McCarrick].

During those years it was Cardinal Avery Dulles, a theologian of undisputed authoritativeness, who denounced the very high cost, in terms of the violation of the most basic rights, of the puritanical intolerance to which the Church in the United States was yielding. He did so in a crystal-clear article for the June 21, 2004 issue of the magazine America.
> Rights of Accused Priests: Toward a Revision of the Dallas Charter and the Essential Norms

Dulles begins by pointing out that in 2000, the bishops of the United States had criticized - in a document entitled “Responsibility and Rehabilitation” - the judicial system of the country as being too rigid and vindictive, without prospects for a future readmission of the condemned into society.

But with the “Dallas Charter”, he said, the bishops adopted a line of conduct that they had rightly condemned in the civil justice system. In particular, the cardinal showed how
- for someone accused of sexual abuse the presumption of guilt replaced the presumption of innocence;
- the sanctions strike equally at the perpetrator of a single act of abuse and the serial abuser, without any proportion between the fault and the penalty;
- the sanctions introduced in 2002 were applied, retroactively, to the actions of decades before, in substantially different contexts;
- the abolition of the statute of limitations engulfed the CDF with cases that were very difficult to verify because they took place so long ago;
- the reduction of the abuser to the lay state was a de facto exoneration of the Church from providing for his recovery and from monitoring his behavior toward potential victims;
- the reduction of an ordained minister to the lay state raised some theological issues, given the indelible imprint conferred by the sacrament of orders;
- outlawing the guilty ruled out any sort of future conversion and reintegration into the ecclesial institution.

In short - Cardinal Dulles concluded - in the name of “zero tolerance” everything seemed to have been set up so that the parable of the prodigal son does not apply to someone who had committed sexual abuse – even if he sincerely repents and wishes to turn his life around.

Since the “Dallas Charter” ,17 years have gone by, but the “dubia” raised at the time by Cardinal Dulles remain more relevant than ever. And at the summit of February 21-24, we will see to what extent the hierarchy of the Church will be capable of translating them into positive actions, in defense of victims but also in fairness to the the accused. [That’s assuming anyone will ever bring up Cardinal Dulles’s dubia. Who would, in a summit organized by four of Bergoglio's most ideologically driven paladins?]

It cannot be said too often that the Church’s current credibility is at stake in how this summit will handle the topic of clerical sex abuse which, it appears from the title given to the summit, will be secondary to the ‘protection of minors’ which is the real theme.

[I don’t think there can be any serious objections to many reasonable measures already being done and/or are being proposed to protect minors from priestly predators- but as the pope and his organizers know, the real issue is to confront the presence in the Church of enough homosexual and homosexualist priests and bishops who will resist any intrusion in their ‘disordered’ lives so they can continue wreaking their havoc on the church, directly or indirectly.]

But in addressing the crisis, the Church hierarchy cannot separate justice and forgiveness, because only by this means will it be able to remove it, and thereby make visible - as Benedict XVI said in a memorable discourse in Freiburg on September 25, 2011 - the first and true “skandalon” of the Christian faith, that of the Crucified and Risen One.

In his historic Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland in March 2010, Benedict XVI addressed this to the priest-offenders – as far away from anti-Christian zero tolerance as his successor sees it, because it emphasizes both justice and mercy.

---

7. To priests and religious who have abused children

You betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents, and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals. You have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonour upon your confreres. Those of you who are priests violated the sanctity of the sacrament of Holy Orders in which Christ makes himself present in us and in our actions. Together with the immense harm done to victims, great damage has been done to the Church and to the public perception of the priesthood and religious life.

I urge you to examine your conscience, take responsibility for the sins you have committed, and humbly express your sorrow. Sincere repentance opens the door to God’s forgiveness and the grace of true amendment. By offering prayers and penances for those you have wronged, you should seek to atone personally for your actions.

Christ’s redeeming sacrifice has the power to forgive even the gravest of sins, and to bring forth good from even the most terrible evil. At the same time, God’s justice summons us to give an account of our actions and to conceal nothing. Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God’s mercy.

---

What the h... is happening?
Mueller flipping again????




When he was CDF Prefect under Bergoglio, Cardinal Mueller had the infuriating habit of speaking from both sides of his mouth about
Bergoglio and his more egregious anti-Catholic statements and actions. Most of the time as on AL and the dubia, he really straddled
the fence as much as he could that I feared for the integrity of his nether parts.

Then, I thought he had gone past all that with his decision to issue his much-praised Manifesto. And now comes this...

Gloria.TV is not on my A-list of news sources because I find their treatment of the news too superficial, even if they never hold back
on their sting. But their newsbits often mention their sources, and as poorly as they may convey the information and color their r
eporting with their obvious biases, they do not purvey falsehoods. Unless this is one...

So let the apparently back-to-flipflopping-and-fence-straddling cardinal explain himself. Is he really blaming everything that he
criticized and corrected in his Manifesto on the people around Bergoglio, and not on Bergoglio himself? They don't prompt him when
he makes all those extemporaneous venom-laden remarks from the chapel of Casa Santa Marta [I often think the saint must feel her name
being taken in vain whenever any anti-Catholic or even anti-Christian toxin emanates from the hotel named after her] - nor
during his inflight news conferences and his loose undisciplined blathering. Even if one can imagine the high-fives and backslapping
they must share with the pope over any of his ideologically driven insults!

Now let me lighten up with this amusing item from a satirical British blog...


What does a Camerlengo do?

February 15, 2019

The purpose of this blog is to provide education as well as spiritual nourishment, and many readers have asked me, "What is a camerlengo? Is it some sort of sexual practice known to Cardinal Coccopalmerio? Is it one of Massimo Faggioli's favourite ice creams? Is it an obscure papal garment like a fanon?"

Well nearly. When a cardinal is widely-respected and trusted, perhaps because he lived with Cardinal McCarrick but never actually met him, he may be appointed to the position of camerlengo.



Some widely-respected cardinals
[Tobin, Farrell, Cupich - McCarrick's musketeers. They'll carry on the havoc.]

The camerlengo's duties really begin when a Pope dies, and his first task is to check that the Pope is really dead (and not simply resting, like Benedict). "WAKE UP, POPEY, I'VE GOT A NICE CUP OF TEA FOR YOU!" he shouts, perhaps hitting the possibly-deceased with a small hammer called a farrell. Another test that can be applied is to ask the presumed ex-pope some questions, called Dubia, which no pope can refuse to answer.

All right, let's suppose that all tests have failed, and that the Pope is really dead. We have to get a new one! Now democracy isn't necessary the traditional way to go about this - for, remember that when Judas was disgraced, he purchased a field, and fell over, so that his bowels gushed asunder (Acts 1), and it was not long before the lot fell upon Matthias.

But let us suppose that we are going to have a papal conclave. Then the camerlengo has to organize it. He kicks the seminarians out of the cardinals' beds (where applicable), locks up the supplies of drugs, and in general does all he can to make the participating cardinals look like holy princes of the church.


"Come on, Cocco, get that lampshade off your head and try and look holy."

What goes on in the conclave is a solemn secret, and we can only get to hear about it from tweets sent out by the cardinals.

---

Someone nominated Cupich! LOL

Send in more gin, I can't take much more of this!

The last time the St Gallen Mafia put a horse's head in my bed -
but they're being very quiet this time.

---

All in all, camerlengo is an important position: not exactly acting Pope, but still not one that you want to give to anyone who was in the least tainted by scandal. So we are greatly relieved that Kev the Rev has got it, and the last laugh will be Pope Francis's.


"Guess who the new camerlengo is!" [Uncle Ted and chums yukking it up!]

Yet all concerned pretend it's not there...

Homosexuality is the root of the Catholic
Church’s clerical sex abuse problem
But neither the Church nor the media will admit it
By PETER WOLFGANG

February 15, 2019

“All eyes and ears will be on the Vatican during an unprecedented gathering Feb. 21-24,” reports Catholic News Service, “to discuss the protection of minors in the Catholic Church.” That’s true — unfortunately, because the gathering is going to be a bust.

The Catholic sex-abuse crisis is not primarily heterosexual or pedophiliac. The Catholic crisis is primarily homosexual. The gathering is going to be a bust because it is only about “the protection of minors in the Catholic Church.”

Seventeen years after the first wave of clergy sex abuse scandals hit the Catholic Church, “the [pink] elephant in the sacristy” is still “the part of the Catholic Church’s priest-abuse scandal that no one talks about.”

That it is primarily homosexual has been known with sociological certainty since the 2004 John Jay report. That revealed that 81% of the victims were male. And most of that 81% were post-pubescent males.

That’s homosexuality, not pedophilia. Pedophilia is the sexual abuse of pre-pubescent children. And yet both the Church and the media would rather talk about the crisis as if it was mostly just about the abuse of minors in general.

In response to the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, dioceses across the country are now releasing lists of priests they deem to have been “credibly accused” of the sexual abuse of minors. Many are also hiring outside investigators to do more detailed reports of their records.

It is an admirable step in the direction of greater transparency and making a fresh start. But it fudges the issue. To be sure, “minors” is a legal term, not a biological one. It includes both pre- and post-pubescent victims.

The public has already known since 2002 that Catholic bishops had covered up clergy sex abuse of minors. Despite the extra and quite gory details, the Pennsylvania report told us something we already knew.

So, for instance, my own Archdiocese in Hartford releases its list of 'credibly accused' priests, a list that by its very nature does not include Fr. Kevin Gray. He baptized my oldest child. He’s also the guy sentenced to three years in prison for stealing a million dollars to fund a secret gay lifestyle in New York City. He used the money to pay for male escorts, strip clubs, the works.

It doesn’t include Fr. Michael F.X. Hinckley. He baptized two more of my children. He left the priesthood, “married” a man, and now promotes various gay and transgender causes on his Facebook. And worse? He was once our archdiocese’s bioethics expert. He had a regular column in the diocesan newspaper.

In fact, he was my pastor when I was leading a campaign to overturn our State Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling. My wife was near tears for several Sundays that October, wondering why the Family Institute of Connecticut executive director’s own seemingly faithful pastor was refusing to even mention the campaign from the pulpit. The Church asked every pastor to do so. Now we know why.

And it doesn’t include any reference to this strange story. The subheading says it all: “A 2012 investigation at the Connecticut seminary found evidence of a homosexual network that extended into several dioceses, and despite its findings, some of those involved were subsequently ordained to the priesthood.”

And it is not only the Church that is avoiding the elephant in the sacristy. The media is, as usual, worse.

When the Archdiocese of Hartford released its list of accused priests, The Hartford Courant did its due diligence. It reported that one of them was in the Hall of Fame of the Connecticut State Firefighters Association.

But when the neighboring Norwich Diocese released its own list of priests credibly accused of abusing minors, the Courant did not inform its readers that the list included a priest who got a glowing obituary from the newspaper for his out and proud gay ministry.

The Church and the press are talking about one so as to avoid talking about the other. We have to talk about homosexuality in the priesthood. That is what the new wave of scandals that have rocked the Church since last summer are primarily about.

Did the 20,000 men who left the priesthood in the U.S. after Vatican II, most of them to marry, leave us with a priesthood that is disproportionately homosexual? Did that, in turn, create a homoerotic subculture within the priesthood that made the current scandals possible? If so, how can we turn it around?

These are the questions that ought to be discussed, from our local dioceses all the way up to Pope Francis’s sex-abuse summit. Bishop Wilton Gregory, then the head of the American bishops, said back in 2002: “It’s an ongoing struggle to make sure the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men.” Almost no one in the Church’s hierarchy is actually struggling. And no one in the media is urging them to.

The voluntary release of lists of priests credibly accused of abusing minors shows good will on the part of the Church and a desire for greater transparency. Unless Church leaders address the elephant in the sacristy, they are just kicking the can down the road. The crisis will only grow worse.

More about SODOMA, a book that Vatican insiders appeared to have facilitated and encouraged to help its author push the homosexualist-LGBTist agenda and get the Bergoglio Vatican to 'normalize' sexual deviancy.

New book by gay sociologist claims
rampant homosexual subculture inside
the Vatican is well covered up
by Maike Hickson and John-Henry Westen



February 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – A new book to be released on the first day of the February 21-24 Vatican summit on sexual abuse is likely to upset many on both sides of the supposed ideological divide in the Church.

The author, Frederic Martel, is a sociologist and homosexual activist. He is all for changing the Church’s teachings against homosexuality, even suggesting that bishops who fight homosexuality strenuously are themselves repressed homosexuals.

Nonetheless, the book reveals, at times from purported first-hand accounts, that high-ranking prelates in Rome – many of whom are named in the book – were aware of the active homosexuality of clergy but only expected them to keep it secret, rather than take remedial action.

Professor Roberto de Mattei, a leading defender of orthodoxy in the Church, has condemned Martel’s book as a “fiasco” seeking to “disqualify the Churchmen faithful to Tradition; to prevent the debate on the scourge of homosexuality in the Church, especially at the next summit.”

Prof. de Mattei adds, however, that “the LGBT support to Pope Francis will certainly not help” the Pope in an agenda to liberalize the Church. The “cardinals and bishops demonized in the book will come out stronger after this attack so badly conducted,” he adds.

One advocate for the LGBT cause, Father James Martin, S.J., praises the book for exactly the same reasons de Mattei condemns it. But Martin is worried the book will “backfire.”
- It will, the pro-homosexual Jesuit worries, “lead to a renewed and intensified witch hunt for gay priests.”
- It will also, he warns, “based on admittedly deep reporting on one part of the church, serve to confirm the stereotype of the sexually active gay priest in all parts of the church. It will therefore make it less likely for gay priests to speak openly about their situations.”

Martel claims in his book that the majority of the clergymen working in the Vatican are homosexuals, but this claim must be tempered by his patently false belief that all those who fight homosexuality are themselves homosexual.

However, it’s plausible that he spoke with many high-ranking prelates and priests and, being himself a homosexual, has had direct access to some homosexually active clergymen in the Vatican.

Martel’s specific description of the state of affairs in the Vatican, he says, is based on interviews with 41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignors, and 45 papal nuncios, as well as 200 priests and seminarians (and with the help of some 80 correspondents, translators, and collaborators).

Monsignor Battista Ricca, the controversial head of Santa Marta – the Pope’s residence – is said to have invited Martel for a visit at Santa Marta. Ricca, notorious for his homosexual exploits, seems to have been a key player granting Martel access to the Vatican and its homosexual network.

The first chapter of the book, made available to LifeSiteNews, shows a homosexual network in the Vatican similar to the one described by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò – a presence even the Pope himself acknowledged when he spoke of a “gay lobby” in the Vatican.

“Homophilic cardinals,” Martel explains, “privilege those prelates who have the same inclination and who themselves choose gay priests. The nuncios – the ambassadors of the Pope who are charged with the selection of bishops – among whom the percentage of homosexuals reaches records, themselves work on a ‘natural’ selection.”

Many priests, he adds, are being promoted for a “given favor.” Thus, Martel claims that “the higher one is in the Church’s hierarchy, the higher the number of homosexuals.” He says for the Vatican, the rule is that “homosexuality is the norm, heterosexuality the exception.”

Although not released, those who have read the book tell LifeSite that it shows that Pope Francis is working with various cardinals and bishops in the Vatican to alter the Church’s teaching to normalize homosexuality.

Martel praises Pope Francis and even calls him “the most gay-friendly pope of the modern popes.” According to the French sociologist, due to his liberalism, the Pope is being exposed to a “violent campaign” by “conservative cardinals who are very homophobic.”

Martel makes it clear that his book is intended to help Pope Francis in his attempt to stop the “rigidity” behind which “there is often to be found a double life.” (Martel reads the Pope as suggesting it is the “traddies” and “conservatives” who are the “rigid” ones leading “double [lives].”)

In line with the Pope’s warning about people who lead “a double life,” Martel hopes that the Vatican will drop the facade and just come out as being mostly homosexual, thus normalizing homosexual relationships within the Church. Martel says: “50 years after Stonewall [1969 riots in New York City organized by LGBT activists] – the homosexual revolution in the U.S. – the Vatican is the last bastion to be liberated!”

The book reveals the lax way the Vatican has treated homosexuality for decades. The homosexual author, however, proposes solutions contrary to the 2,000-year-old tradition of the Catholic Church. For example, Martel says that “by forbidding priests to marry, the Church became sociologically homosexual,” and thereby points to celibacy as the underlying problem which promotes this double life of the prelates (including sexual abuse they commit) that he claims to be calling out.

Martel quotes in his first chapter an archbishop who tells him that 80 percent of Vatican clergy are homosexual and that three out of the last five popes have been “homophilic,” to include “certain of their assistants and Secretaries of State.”

He also often extensively quotes as a key witness in his first chapter laicized priest Francesco Lepore. Lepore was ordained in 2000 and worked as a Latin translator at the Vatican. In conversations with Martel, Lepore names cardinals and other high-ranking prelates he says are homosexuals.

Most importantly – and this story has been confirmed by some of the prelates themselves – Lepore describes how, after he started to work at the Vatican, he became more lax in his priestly life. He was not celebrating Mass regularly and began wearing civilian clothes more and more. Due to this evident change of life – he started to live out his own homosexuality when he came to Rome for his work – some Vatican officials thought it was fitting to remove him entirely from the Vatican.

However, Lepore told Martel, at the time there were two influential men in the Vatican who protected him: Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz – then John Paul II's personal secretary – and the editor of L'Osservatore Romano at the time. Both men “succeeded in my remaining at the Vatican,” Lepore tells Martel.

Subsequently, Lepore was removed from his translation post, but named special secretary to Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican's “foreign minister,” who he says knew of Lepore's moral problem.

When Lepore's Vatican computer was years later (around 2015) found to have various opened homosexual websites on it, he was removed from his position. However, Lepore says Cardinal Tauran at the time only told him that he “should have been more careful.” “He did not rebuke me for being gay, he only accused me of letting myself caught!” Lepore told Martel.

Lepore describes the reaction of a bishop and other high-ranking prelates whom Lepore told about his first homosexual relationship.
- He says they just told him to “keep it secret,” but that he “should not feel guilty about it.”
- According to Martel, after he had left the priesthood, Pope Francis thanked Lepore for having kept his life “discreet.”

“Toleration with discretion” is the Vatican motto, says Martel.

It is this very secrecy and double life that Martel says he wants to end. Deprived of any belief in supernatural grace, Martel cannot imagine a celibate priesthood and thus sees hypocrisy everywhere. His deplorable attacks and insinuations against Cardinal Raymond Burke – insinuating that he is a drag queen – are a case in point.

While fraught with admitted bias, the book may reveal some of the underbelly of the rampant homosexual network in the Vatican. The difficulty with the book comes down to discernment of what is the author’s conjecture and what is worthwhile information to be gleaned about the state inside the Vatican.

One has to wonder whether Martel's book contains some degree of concordance with the report commissioned by Benedict XVI from three retired cardinals in 2012. A report Bergoglio appears to have ignored altogether after it was turned over to him by his predecessor, along with the documentation provided for the report. Will we ever get to know what was in it?

Copies of the report were supposed to have been given all the cardinals before the 2013 Conclave. It is most unusual that not one of them has broken omerta on the issue. If there were nothing to it - or it was 'no big deal, really' - they would have gladly stepped up to say so. Will we ever get to know what was in it?


The following has been widely expected so I will include the report in this post about things related because it represents for now the worst possible example of the clerical sex abuse crisis in the Church. Its unreported implications are far more consequential regarding genuine clericalism and abuse of power in the Church, not to mention implicit confirmation of the homosexual subculture that has appeared to dominate the Church hierarchy including the Vatican Curia in those who enabled the dazzling career ascent and influence of a patently evil man. But we come to that later...


McCarrick laicized by Pope Francis
by Hannah Brockhaus


VATICAN CITY, February 16, 2019 CNA/EWTNNews) - Pope Francis and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered this week the laicization of Theodore McCarrick, a former cardinal and archbishop emeritus of Washington, and a once powerful figure in ecclesiastical, diplomatic, and political circles in the U.S. and around the world.

The decision followed an administrative penal process conducted by the CDF, which found McCarrick guilty of “solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power,” according to a February 16 Vatican communique.

The conviction was made following an “administrative penal process,” which is a much-abbreviated penal mechanism used in cases in which the evidence is so clear that a full trial is unnecessary.

Because Pope Francis personally approved the guilty verdict and the penalty of laicization, it is formally impossible for the decision to be appealed.

According to a statement from the Vatican on February 16, the decree finding McCarrick guilty was issued on January 11 and followed by an appeal, which was rejected by the CDF on February 13.

McCarrick was notified of the decision on February 15 and Pope Francis “has recognized the definitive nature of this decision made in accord with law, rendering it a res iudicata (i.e., admitting of no further recourse.)”

This week, CNA contacted McCarrick’s canonical advocate, who declined to comment on the case.

McCarrick, 88, was publicly accused last year of sexually abusing at least two adolescent boys, and of engaging for decades in coercive sexual behavior toward priests and seminarians.

The allegations were first made public in June 2018, when the Archdiocese of New York reported that it had received a “credible” allegation that McCarrick sexually abused a teenage boy in the 1970s, while serving as a New York priest. The same month McCarrick stepped down from all public ministry at the direction of the Holy See.

In July, Pope Francis accepted his resignation from the College of Cardinals, ordering McCarrick to a life of prayer and penance pending the completion of the canonical process concerning the allegations. Since the end of September, McCarrick has been residing at the St. Fidelis Capuchin Friary in Victoria, Kansas.

Key among McCarrick’s accusers is James Grein, who gave evidence before specially deputized archdiocesan officials in New York on December 27.

As part of the CDF’s investigation, Grein testified that McCarrick, a family friend, sexually abused him over a period of years, beginning when he was 11 years old. He also alleged that McCarrick carried out some of the abuse during the sacrament of confession – itself a separate canonical crime that can lead to the penalty of laicization.

The CDF has also reportedly received evidence from an additional alleged victim of McCarrick – 13 at the time of the alleged abuse began – and from as many as 8 seminarian-victims in the New Jersey dioceses of Newark and Metuchen, where McCarrick previously served as bishop.

As emeritus Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and before that Bishop of Metuchen and Archbishop of Newark, McCarrick occupied a place of prominence in the US Church.

He was also a leading participant in the development of the 2002 Dallas Charter and USCCB Essential Norms, which established procedures for handling allegations of sexual abuse concerning priests.

Though laicized, McCarrick does not cease to be a bishop, sacramentally speaking, since once conferred, the sacrament of ordination and episcopal consecration cannot be undone.

The penalty of reduction from the clerical state – often called laicization – prevents McCarrick from referring to himself or functioning as a priest, in public or private. Since ordination imparts a sacramental character, it cannot be undone by an act of the Church. But following laicization he is stripped of all the rights and privileges of a cleric including, in theory, the right to receive financial support from the Church.


All of which leaves the far thornier issue in the McCarrick case still wide open. The Vatican may think it has closed the book on McCarrick but far from that.

- All the questions raised by Mons. Carlo Viganò remain unanswered, despite the fact that the pope himself promised back in September 2018 that the Vatican would look into all its documents to answer Viganò's allegations.

[The papally-prompted rebuke from Cardinal Marc Ouelet to Viganò promptly backfired because Ouellet basically confirmed much of what Viganò claimed (except, of course, the truth or untruth of his June 2013 conversation with the pope when Viganò says he informed him of McCarrick's record, but was seemingly ignored, because McCarrick's closeness to the new pope was almost immediately confirmed when shortly after that conversation, he,McCarrick, gloatingly informed Viganò that the pope was sending him to China as his personal envoy. And so on to the high-profile appointments of McCarrick proteges Cupich, Tobin and Farrell and McCarrick missions to China, Iran, Cuba, who knows where else in behalf of Jorge Bergoglio.]

- What happened to that investigation? Will there ever be a report on it, or will the Vatican consider it moot and academic now that McCarrick has been laicized?
- So the man has received his 'just reward' - some at least - for his misdeeds. What about his enablers?
- The Catholic faithful still have a right to know who were McCarrick's principal enablers, so to speak, at the Vatican since he was appointed Archbishop of Washington, DC, in 2000, retiring in 2006 when he turned 75 and ended up being one of the reigning pope's most trusted associates despite penalties previously imposed by Benedict XVI on McCarrick.

[Considering how prominent McCarrick was with his high-profile activism in the Church, didn't people wonder in 2006 why Benedict XVI would have promptly accepted his resignation when he turned 75? Bishops far less prestigious than McCarrick, when not frankly incompetent or unsatisfactory, are usually allowed to stay on a few more years, some even until they reach 80.]

No, the book on McCarrick is far from closed, and if Jorge Bergoglio is determined to - falsely - blame 'clericalism' for the sexual abuses of priests and their episcopal cover-ups, what could be worse clericalism than that which prevails at the Vatican that allowed the rise and undue influence of an evil man like Theodore McCarrick?

Bergoglio probably thinks now that he will go into the Feb 21-24 'summit' on the 'protection of minors' wearing the halo of 'the pope who laicized McCarrick' - and I can even imagine someone in the synod hall proposing some time during the opening ceremonies a round of applause and alleluias for the pope for having done so - and all of them deliberately ignoring that McCarrick's laicization in time for the summit is classic scapegoating, in the vain hope that the now hapless scapegoat will expiate even the sins of those who enabled him and favored him with undue influence in the Church.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/02/2019 15:26]

JESUS CALMING THE TEMPEST, Gustav Dore (1832-1883)


The following is the contribution sent by Archbishop Carlo Viganò to a symposium sponsored by the National Catholic Register to be held in Rome
next week. The former Nuncio to Washington was invited to be one of the speakers but he continues to be in hiding for security reasons.

'I continue to have hope, because
the Lord will never abandon his Church'
by Archbishop Carlo Viganò


I thank you for inviting me to take part in this symposium on “Abuse and the Way to Healing” in anticipation of the upcoming bishops’ summit at the Vatican. My contribution will draw on my personal experience of 51 years of priesthood.

It is evident to all that a primary cause of the present terrible crisis of sexual abuse committed by ordained clergy, including bishops, is the lack of proper spiritual formation of candidates to the priesthood. That lack, in turn, is largely explained by the doctrinal and moral corruption of many seminary formators, corruption that increased exponentially beginning in the 1960s.

I entered a pontifical seminary in Rome and began my studies at the Gregorian University when I was 25 years old. It was 1965, just months before the end of Vatican II. I couldn’t help but notice, not only in my own college but also in many others in Rome, that some seminarians were very immature and that these houses of formation were marked by a general and very serious lack of discipline.

A few examples will suffice. Seminarians sometimes spent the night outside my seminary, as the supervision was woefully inadequate. Our spiritual director was in favor of priestly ordination ad tempus — the idea that ordained priesthood could be a merely temporary status.

At the Gregorian, one of the professors of moral theology favored situation ethics. And some classmates confided to me that their spiritual directors had no objection to their presenting themselves for priestly ordination despite their unresolved and continual grave sins against chastity.

Certainly, those who suffer from deep-seated same-sex attraction should never be admitted to seminary. Moreover, before any seminarian is accepted for ordination, he must not only strive for chastity but actually achieve it. He must already be living chaste celibacy peacefully and for a prolonged period of time, for if this is lacking, the seminarian and his formators cannot have the requisite confidence that he is called to the celibate life.

Bishops have the paramount responsibility for the formation of their candidates to the priesthood. Any bishop who has covered up abuse or seduction of minors, vulnerable adults or adults under a priest’s pastoral care, including seminarians, is not fit for that responsibility or for any episcopal ministry and should be removed from his office.

I am praying intensely for the success of the February summit. Although I would rejoice greatly if the summit were successful, the following questions reveal that there is no sign of a genuine willingness to attend to the real causes of the present situation:

- Why will the meeting focus exclusively on the abuse of minors? These crimes are indeed the most horrific, but the crises in the United States and Chile that have largely precipitated the upcoming summit have to do with abuses committed against young adults, including seminarians, not only against minors. Almost nothing has been said about sexual misconduct with adults, which is itself a grave abuse of pastoral authority, whether or not the relationship was “consensual.”
- Why does the word “homosexuality” never appear in recent official documents of the Holy See? This is by no means to suggest that most of those with a homosexual inclination are abusers, but the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of abuse has been inflicted on post-pubescent boys by homosexual clerics.

It is mere hypocrisy to condemn the abuse and claim to sympathize with the victims without facing up to this fact honestly. A spiritual revitalization of the clergy is necessary, but it will be ultimately ineffectual if it does not address this problem.

- Why does Pope Francis keep and even call as his close collaborators people who are notorious homosexuals? Why has he refused to answer legitimate and sincere questions about these appointments? In doing so he has lost credibility on his real will to reform the Curia and fight the corruption.

In my third testimony, I begged the Holy Father to face up to the commitments he himself made in assuming his office as Successor of Peter.
- I pointed out that he took upon himself the mission of confirming his brothers and guiding all souls in following Christ along the way of the cross.
- I urged him then, and I now urge him again, to tell the truth, repent, show his willingness to follow the mandate given to Peter and, once converted, to confirm his brothers (Luke 22:32).

I pray that the bishops gathered in Rome will remember the Holy Spirit, whom they received with the imposition of hands, and carry out their responsibility to represent their particular Churches by firmly asking for, and insisting on, an answer to the above questions during the summit.

Indeed, I pray that they will not return to their countries without proper answers to these questions, for to fail in this regard would mean abandoning their own flocks to the wolves and allowing the entire Church to suffer dreadful consequences.

Despite the problems I have described, I continue to have hope, because the Lord will never abandon his Church.

The full program of the NCReg symposium:


Two early reactions to the McCarrick news:

In his blog Stilum Curiae, besides pointing out that Mons. Vigano's questions remain unanswered, Marco Tosatti writes: 'McCarrick may have been beheaded', but McCarrickism continues...' and directs his readers to an article he wrote for La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana today to the effect that 'McCarrick may be gone, but his dauphin's career is rising', meaning former McCarrick vicar-general and roomie in Washington, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, just named Camerlengo by the pope in a completely insensitive move. Surely Jorge Bergoglio must have been raised by his grandmother conscious of the importance of delicadeza, that innate sense of propriety good people ought to have.

And from New Catholic in Rorate caeli: "Faithful mocked: McCarrick laicized - while his closest friend and confidante will run next Conclave setting... He will run the show when Francis is gone. That is his prize for being the ultimate McCarrick Man."

From Father Zuhlsdorf:

---

...While I take little pleasure in any of this, I find it grimly pleasing. I had long held McCarrick as one of the most loathsome people at large in the Church, based on what I had heard of him decades ago, and on his blatant lying about Ratzinger’s letter to US bishops and about what Arinze said in a presser when I was present.

Good riddance. The barque is a little less grimy today.

What remains to be determined is to what extent McCarrick was involved with Francis and Team Francis before and after the 2003 conclave.

That will come out. [You think???] After all, the Devil makes good frying pans, but he doesn’t make covers for them. Eventually, things come out.

---

Fr Kirk wields his trademark sarcasm in this brief post:

One down, one up

February 16, 2019

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has finally got his comeuppance. This morning the Holy See announced his laicization. His notorious career of flagrant ‘clericalism’ is at an end.

But according to ancient laws of ecclesiastical polity, what goes down must come up. Almost simultaneously the Vatican has announced that Cardinal Kevin Farrell has been nominated Cardinal Camerlengo by Pope Francis.

The Camerlengo – who takes charge of the See during an interregnum, organises the papal funeral and arranges the ensuing conclave – obviously needs to be a man of the utmost integrity, untainted by scandal. Which is why the lot fell on Farrell.

Francis clearly wanted someone unconnected with the disgraced McCarrick. And who better than one who, despite living at close quarters with McCarrick for some years, has so repeatedly and vociferously denied all knowledge of his patron’s proclivities? Would a prince of the Church prevaricate?

Thus it comes about that we have a clean pair of hands to supervise the inauguration of a new era!

I don't know if the new Camerlengo has found time to research the first thing he needs to do in his new job - which is to confirm that the pope he served is indeed
dead, as the image and account above show. Cardinal Farrell would have to pray hard and constantly from now on to keep that day away for as long as possible!

I came upon the above illustration [from the Hawaiian Gazette on July 21, 1903, the day after Leo XIII died] while desperately trying to Google 'what did Leo XIII
die of' in as many ways as I could, since none of the official accounts in various encyclopedias nor the Vatican site itself gie a cause of death. It turns out,
from a 1903 Sede Vacante bulletin, that he died of complications from senile pneumonia, 17 days after he first felt its symptoms while taking a walk in the Vatican
Gardens. The story itself announcing his death did not say what he died of.I had always thought it must have been a long illness, given he was 93 when he died.

I then wondered what was done when John Paul II died, for which I found this article from the Baltimore Sun (it didn't seem like anyone else wrote about it).
And it appears as if the ritual might have been just as it was with Pius IX and Leo XIII, though there may have been variations as to the official functions of the people who were present.

---

Ritual specifies
who does what
when the pope dies
by John Rivera
THE BALTIMORE SUN
April 3, 2005

Like the ceremonial formalities that surrounded Pope John Paul II in life, his death has set in motion an elaborate choreography of centuries-old ritual. The formal process of papal succession is set in motion by Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, a 77-year-old veteran of the Vatican curia who serves as the camerlengo, or papal chamberlain.

He will be responsible for the administration of the Vatican and the worldwide Roman Catholic Church during this period, called the interregnum, which will last until the College of Cardinals chooses a new pope.

Somalo's first duty is to verify the death of the pope. According to tradition, the camerlengo does this by calling Pope John Paul's baptismal name, Karol, three times without answer. He does this while tapping the pope's head with a silver hammer, although this symbolic gesture may be substituted by simply placing a veil over the pope's face.

Once the camerlengo is satisfied, tradition holds that he must make a pronouncement, in Latin, to those gathered around the deathbed:

Vere, Ioannes Paulus II mortus est -- "Truly, John Paul II is dead."

He must do this in the presence of two officials: the master of papal liturgical celebrations and the secretary-cardinal, Camillo Ruini, who then conveys the news to the waiting people of Rome, probably through a television announcement.

The camerlengo then authorizes the death certificate and seals the papal apartment, posting a guard outside.

He takes possession of the pope's Fisherman's ring and seal, which will be ceremoniously smashed with a hammer at the first gathering of the arriving cardinals as a symbol of the end of the papacy (although the original purpose was to prevent forgery or other misuse).

A new Fisherman's ring, with the pope's name around the circumference and an image of St. Peter casting his fishing net in the center, will be struck for the next pope.

Bells toll in St. Peter's Square and throughout Rome. The doors to the papal palace are bound with heavy chains, a sign that life has come to a halt. The white-and-gold Vatican flags are lowered to half-staff.

And the Vatican begins minting coins and striking medals commemorating the Sede Vacante, the period in which there is no pope, the sale of which helps defray the cost of the funeral.

Vatican officials officially notify heads of state around the world of the pope's death and summon the College of Cardinals to Rome by telegram. Customarily, it is a terse message. The telegram that cardinals received after the death of Pope Paul VI simply stated: "Pope is dead. Come at once."

The pope's confessors dress him in his funeral garments: a white cassock, a scarlet chasuble (a long, sleeveless liturgical vestment) and red silk shoes, and then take the first watch at vigil.

The pope then lies in state for three days, first in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace, and then is taken in solemn procession to St. Peter's Basilica, where the faithful file past his body as Vatican guards urge them on with cries of "Avanti! "

Traditionally, the funeral takes place on the fourth day after a pope's death.

It was held inside St. Peter's until Pope Paul VI decreed that his service be held in St. Peter's Square so more people could witness it. The funeral of John Paul I followed suit, despite a chilly downpour.

---

Benedict XVI's Camerlengo, Cardinal Bertone, (most of the time, since the 19th century, the Secretary of State was also the Chamberlain) did not have to do that, of course. His first task after 8:00 p.m., Roman time, on February 28, 2013, was to proceed to the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace to lock it up until it had a new occupant (which it turns out it would not have).

On the new Camerlengo, Aldo Maria Valli does a most appropriate reportage:

Cardinal Farrell is the new papal chamberlain:
Bingo! - Right man for the right position!
Translated from

February 15, 2019

Cardinal Kevin Farrell has received from the pope the prestigious appointment to be the Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church.

What can you say? Right man for the right position, right??? [Par excellence, one might add.]

This cardinal, in fact, has demonstrated so far a remarkable propensity for not noting what is happening around him. On which propensity he has constructed his career.

It must be recalled that Farrell, born in Dublin in 1947, joined the Legionaries of Christ in the mid-1960s and knew at close range the order’s founder, Mexican Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, decades later to be adjudged guilty of sexualling abusing boys and young men, including his own seminarians, a monster who led a double life with at least two mistresses, one of them since she was a minor, and fathering as many as six children, two of whom he was said to have abused as well. [He died in 2008 at age 87, about two years after Pope Benedict XVI removed him from active ministry in 2006 following investigations made by the CDF starting in 2004 under John Paul II, with whom he had been in great favor as he was considered "the greatest fundraiser of the modern Roman Catholic church" and acknowledged as a prolific recruiter of new seminarians.]

And yet Farrell claimed not to have known any of this, and years later, when he left Maciel’s legion, claimed he never had contact with him. But while in the Legion, Farrell occupied certain positions that required him to spend time in Maciel’s company often, which makes his claims implausible that he never even harbored any suspicion. [Wasn’t it also reported that at times, his duties required him to drive Maciel around? Besides,it turned out in the investigation into the Legion after Maciel’s punishment that the founder’s misconduct was well-known not just to most of his leaders and associates but even to the rank and file – but all of them muzzled by the personal vow of loyalty to Maciel required of every member of his orders.] [P.S. Farrell's Wikipedia biography says that he became General Administrator of the Legion of Christ with responsibilities for seminaries and schools in Italy, Spain, and Ireland. That's pretty senior!]

But let’s go forward. Having left the Legion, Farrell was incardinaetd in the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, where in 2001, he became the auxiliary bishop. To whom? To the new Archbishop, Cardinal McCarrick, serial abuser Uncle Ted.

McCarrick’s appointment to DC, climax of a career that had been prestigious, already caused some perplexity and much grumbling at the time, because enough had leaked out about his sexual appetites. Nonetheless, the appointment came through, and one year later, he was made cardinal.

But even Farrell’s appointment to be McCarrick’s vicar, reportedly at the latter’s insistence, raised eyebrows. How could it be that a onetime Maciel aide who claims to have suspected nothing of his boss’s double life was now the #2 man to a prelate whose sexual proclivities were already much gossiped about?

But such questions did not bother McCarrick- who wanted Farrell for his #2 and got him. Then he personally ordained him as bishop. On top of which he also decided that his vicar should share his living quarters.

So Farrell was once more in a situation similar to his experience with Maciel [only this time, on a much higher and closer level]. But once again, Farrell claims he knew nothing of McCarrick’s double life, and to this day maintains that he never even so much heard a whisper of a rumor about it.

In 2006 when McCarrick turned 75, he retired as Archbishop of Washington although he remained very influential. [Even Valli apparently does not wonder why Benedict XVI would have immediately accepted the usually pro forma resignations handed by bishops who turn 75, especially someone like McCarrick whose nfluence was uch that he was practically a fixture in the Obama White House.]

The following year, Farrell also left Washington. Thanks to his retired friend’s support, he was appointed bishop of Dallas where, amidst the bitter confrontation of Catholic progressives and conservatives, he proved to be a master of camouflage, blending in wherever he had to.

With Benedict no longer pope and the advent of Pope Francis [whose world view he shares enthusiastically], Farrell came out of anonymity to range himself with the Cupiches and Tobins and other exponents of progressivism in the US Church, who would all support Amoris Laetitia and declare themselves in favor of communion for remarried divorcees.

Farrell’s enthusiasm was rewarded – in 2016 Bergoglio named him Prefect of the new Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, and made him cardinal that same year.

Among Farrell’s other distinctions, meanwhile, was to write the preface for homexualist-LGBTQist activist James Martin’s book Building a Bridge. How the Catholic Church and the Lgbt Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity; and in his capacity as Prefect of the Dicastery responsible for organizing events like the world Meeting of Families and World Youth Day, his first such task was the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in 2018 where, despite the protests of many Catholics who launched an online petition, he invited Martin to give a lecture for homosexual couples from around the world.

So really, how can anyone deny him the title of ‘right man for the right position’?

There’s just one slight question: As Papal Chamberlain, according to the norms, Farrell will have the task, at the right time, “of officially ascertaining the death of the pope”. Quite a responsibility, yes? But being Farrell, with his record of not seeming to register what is happening around him, will he even note that the pope has died?

Finally, might his appointment as Chamberlain not be a tactical move by Bergoglio because given the nature of the Chamberlain’s first task, which is to certify the death of the pope, he is therefore not allowed to leave Rome after he is appointed?

Might this not be a way to legally keep Farrell from having to go to the USA where he may be summoned to make depositions about Uncle Ted’s misdeeds? [After all, it’s one thing to lie to the public at large, another to lie under oath and be liable for perjury.]

It would be all too easy for a skimmer as well as for the more earnest reader to miss a few lines that are genuinely headline-making in a 600-page book intended to portray a heroic reforming gay-friendly pope undermined by a substantial 'gay' subculture in the Vatican that seeks to oppose reforms they fear will undercut their power and influence in the Vatican [a hypothesis that is at the very least questionable]. But those telltale lines are in the book - as Marco Tosatti shares it with us.

Do we finally have an answer
to whether Vigano told the pope
all about McCarrick back in 2013?
Author of gay expose book facilitated by
the pope's men say they told him Vigano did
Translated from

February 17, 2019

Sodoma, the book by Frederic Martel we have been dealing with in recent days, actually has a genuine news headline in its 600 pages. According to the author, in the English version of the text, Pope Bergoglio was really informed by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò about McCarrick's predatory past targetting seminarians and young priests, but the pope apparently did not consider the fact so important.

Consequently, not only did he relieve him of the restrictions that Benedict XVI had imposed on him (restrictions confirmed by Cardinal Marc Ouellet in a letter to Vigano), but he also used him as an adviser for Church appointments in the United States [and to the cardinalate] (the appointment of of Kevin Farrell as Camerlengo and of Blase Cupich to the organizing committee of the summit on child abuse [papal moves made after McCarrick's double life was finally made public]further confirm the pope's faith and trust in the proteges McCarrick recommended for promotion - if anyone needed any such confirmation [and thanks to Bergoglio, McCarrick lives on in his proteges], and as his personal diplomatic envoy in the United States (to Obama, specifically) and to China, Armenia, Iran and Cuba.

This is a case of extraordinary 'friendly fire', because if there is someone of whom Martel speaks well in his long work, and often enthusiastically, it is really Pope Bergoglio. Martel, as we know, was helped and hosted by prelates in the Vatican, to carry out his task. In a television interview, he mentioned at least four high prelates close to the Pope who favored and encouraged him [starting with the pope’s most famous ‘who am I to judge’ beneficiary, Mons. Battista Ricca, who Martel claims opened all Vatican doors to him and enabled him to live within the Vatican one week a month during the five years it took him to research the book].

He said he met several times with Fr. Antonio Spadaro, the editor of La Civiltà Cattolica, Antonio Spadaro [certainly one of the reigning eminences grises behind Bergoglio]. His book contains an interview with Spadaro as well as with Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, who orchestrated all three Bergoglio synods towards ‘achieving’ their predetermined outcomes. Baldisseri is, of course, a high-profile Bergoglio famiglio [Italian word for 'trusted servant', obviously derived from the word for family, so someone you consider 'family'].

So we have to believe Martel, who encloses the central part of his 'revelation' in quotes, in this pertinent passage from his book.. After referring to

---

...cardinals and bishops of the Roman Curia and the American episcopate who... took part in this huge cover-up... an endless list of names of prelates, among the most important in the Vatican, who were thus “outed”, whether right or wrong. When the Pope dismissed the allegations, his entourage indicated to me that Francis "was initially informed by Viganò that Cardinal McCarrick had had homosexual relations with adult seminarians, which was not enough in his eyes to condemn him").

---

If Martel writes the truth – and there is no reason to believe otherwise since he is certainly not a conservative homophobe nor a moralizing and hypocritical Pharisee – some considerations are called for:

The first: Even though [Uncle Ted's] seminarian victims were not under age, it is no longer a question of sex between ‘consenting adults’ but a form of violence if a person in a high position, who can decide the fate of his subordinates, demands and gets sexual relations with a subordinate. Now, we know from the reigning pope’s own words, much quoted recently, that he considers ‘sins below the belt’ minor offenses. [It is a measure of the ‘passe partout’ Bergoglio has from the media hat his outrageous and utterly relativistic measure of sin did not raise more protest – at a time when there s so much hype over a summit he convened to discuss ‘protection of minors’ precisely from ‘sins below the belt’ which he now claims to be minor offenses.]

And so McCarrick’s reported offenses did not seem ‘important’ to him – not so important that he continued to favor and use the abuser until their bond became too embarrassing, and he had to sacrifice him to public opinion.

Second: it has been months and months that Catholics have been waiting to hear the Vatican answer to the question: Did Viganò lie, or not? It seems that according to Martel, citing what was told him by members of the pope’s entourage, he did ‘tell all’ to Bergoglio about McCarrick but was simply ignored.

So why does the pope not simply admit it? Why not say, as a man and a Christian, “It’s true I was warned, but I thought the matter was not so serious. I was wrong in my judgment, forgive me”? [After all, he already made a similar admission about the Barros case.]

Yet the pope allowed his propagandists, assisted by the obliging media [secular and Catholic], to turn instead against Viganò, attacking him ad hominen, while ascribing the responsibility for McCarrick’s ecclesial ascent and glory to Bergoglio’s predecessors, and denying that Benedict XVI had imposed any restrictions on McCarrick - restrictions lifted and cancelled by their pope. (Let us not forget, incidentally, that while Vigano was still Nuncio to the USA, he wrote to Cardinal Secretary of State Parolin to ask whether the sanctions aganst McCarrick could be considered ‘abolished’, but he never got an answer.) [Oh,the duplicitous stratagems of the Bergoglio Vatican!]

A final consideration is, of course, the cynicism implied by the Pontiff’s reaction to the information about McCarrick. [Not that anyone believes it was the first time he was hearing about it when Vigano took the opportunity to ‘inform’ him. As they warn all trial lawyers, never ask a question if you have no idea what the answer will be... Something else just occurred to me: Vigano recalls that shortly after his June 2013 meeting with the pope, he crossed paths with McCarrick somewhere, who greeted him with the smug announcement that ,”Guess what, the pope is sending me to China as his personal envoy!” Might one conjecture that during Uncle Ted’s meeting with the pope when he got this particular order, the pope would have told him about his conversation with Vigano – which is why McC so smugly made his gratuitous announcement. ]

I do try to pool all posts about this pope and his pontificate in one box for the day if possible. Here are two from William Kilpatrick this weekend, published in two different outlets. Kilpatrick is a familiar byline online, and is the author of Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West, and a new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad. He was also a professor for years at Boston College, which has since become a major outpost of Jesuit liberalism in the USA.

His first essay this weekend is speculative...But why not? He does not imagine any far-out scenarios, though with Jorge Bergoglio, perhaps one cannot rule out the most bizarre possibilities. Like he could announce he was turning Muslim.. Naaahhh, the papacy is the only office in the world made to order for absolute narcissists who want the fastest way to be Lord of the World... May not be a Catholic notion, but hey!, can you think of a better steppingstone?


If Francis should resign,then what?
By William Kilpatrick

February 16, 2019

Editor's Note: The pope’s appointment of controversial Cardinal Kevin Farrell as the new camerlengo – the man responsible for administering the Vatican in the event of the pope’s death or resignation – raises questions about the future of the Church once Francis is no longer pope. The following article discusses some of the possibilities.

After providing evidence for the existence of widespread corruption in the hierarchy – corruption that, he claims, Pope Francis knew about and enabled – Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò called on Pope Francis to resign: “He must acknowledge his mistake and. . .must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them.”

Without getting into the thorny question of whether or not popes should resign, it’s worth considering some of the scenarios if Francis did choose to resign. At this point, it seems unlikely that he will, but if more revelations accumulate he might change his mind.

If Pope Francis did resign, much would depend on the manner of his resignation. The reasons he gives for resigning will help determine the direction that the Church takes after he steps down. If the pontiff fails to “acknowledge his mistake,” and simply claims age and failing health as an excuse, then there will be no resolution and no indication that the next pope should take the Church in a different direction.

Francis could also choose to continue to present himself as a victim of the “Great Accuser.” Like Christ before Pilate, he will make no answer to his accusers. But in order to lift the cloud of doubt raised by “reckless” accusations, he will consent to step aside for the good of the Church. In short, Francis might decide to present himself as a martyr for the Church, thus likely ensuring that the man elected to succeed him will be someone who will carry on the “martyr’s” mission.

Or suppose, on the other hand, that the pope does admit his errors, and has a complete conversion of heart of the type that Viganò is calling for. He then steps down on the grounds that he is unworthy to lead the Church.

Problem solved? Not quite. This is an improvement over the other two scenarios, but it still leaves unresolved the question of what kind of person would succeed Francis as pope.

This is why Viganò calls not only for the pope’s resignation, but also for the resignation of “all of them” – that is, all the “cardinals and bishops who covered up Mc Carrick’s abuses.” It’s not clear whether he is referring only to American bishops and cardinals or whether he also includes “a network of bishops promoting homosexuality who, exploiting their favor with Pope Francis, manipulated episcopal appointments so as to protect themselves from justice and to strengthen the homosexual network in the hierarchy.” [Viganò’s third testimony]. That “network of bishops” would include a number of Latin American and European bishops and cardinals several of whom are named in his first testimony.
*
The reason that the resignation of the pope alone is not sufficient to bring about reform is that, as things stand now, the election of the next pope will be largely in the hands of cardinals created by Francis. Of the cardinal electors, 59 have been appointed by Francis, 47 by Pope Benedict XVI and 19 by Pope John Paul II. And those appointed by Benedict and John Paul are quite probably near the cut-off age for voting.

Moreover, if Fr. James Martin is to be believed, Pope Francis has purposely “appointed gay-friendly bishops and archbishops and cardinals.” Like Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Pope Francis seems to choose his “team” with an eye toward ideological conformity.

The presence of so many Francis appointees in the College of Cardinals puts a crimp in another scenario.
- Some Catholics who have given up on the hope that Francis will seriously tackle the abuse crisis, think that all that is necessary is to wait him out.
- They reason that he is getting along in years, and is unlikely to reign much longer.
But this too ignores the fact that Francis has already stacked the College of Cardinals with prelates who are made in his own image, and who are therefore likely to elect someone like him.

Of course, that’s not inevitable. Pope Francis is not the most liberal Catholic prelate in the world, but he leans further to the left than most. Many, if not most, of the cardinals Francis has appointed are in all probability more moderate than he is. And while they might be reluctant to speak their minds in public about whatever dissatisfactions they may have, they will be less afraid to express themselves in a secret ballot.

Still, one shouldn’t bet too heavily that enough cardinals will do the right thing at the next conclave without a good deal of prompting.

One particularly powerful prompt is the threat of removal from office. Although resignations are not in the power of the laity to demand, the laity should make it clear that, in some cases, resignations are what they expect.

Forced resignations are not the only solution to the abuse crisis, but they are a key part of the solution.
- Justice must be seen to be done.
- And removal from office provides a visible sign that something is being done.
- Justice demands that scandalous behavior should be met with serious public consequences.
- Requiring offenders to step down would clearly show that the Church understands the gravity of the crimes and is taking concrete action.

Two dozen key resignations accompanied by penance would do more to clear the air than 200 hours of conferences or 2,000 pages of documents.

Without removal from office or even – as some have suggested – excommunication, talk of reform and adoption of new protocols will strike many as nothing but window dressing.
- If badly compromised cardinals and bishops remain on the scene, it will be taken as a signal that no real reform is intended.

Forced resignations are the most efficient and permanent way of removing some very bad actors from powerful positions. An added and obvious benefit is that it also removes their ability to vote in the next conclave.

In Kilpatrick's second essay this weekend, the topic is his strong suit...

More sugarcoating of Islam
from Pope Francis
by William Kilpatrick

February 15,2019

It’s often been said of Pope Francis’s bridge-building initiatives with Islam that the traffic over the bridge goes only in one direction — away from Rome and toward Mecca.

This also seems to be the case with the pope’s “historic” trip to the United Arab Emirates last week. Although the resulting document requires concessions on the part of both sides, it’s unlikely that the Muslim parties will stick to their end of the bargain.

On the other hand, it’s quite likely that Catholics will be strongly encouraged to yield a point or two of doctrine. In keeping with what is now standard practice, the new “teachings” contained in the document will be rushed into Catholic schools and seminaries before the ink is dry.

Don’t misunderstand. The “Document on human fraternity for world peace and living together” does make some demands on Muslims. For example, after establishing that freedom of belief is of divine origin, the document goes on to say: “therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion, or culture must be rejected…”

This is an indirect attack on the Islamic apostasy law — a law that says, in Muhammad’s words, “whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.8.4.57). If this law were indeed dropped from the Islamic law books, it would go far to change the face of Islam.

If people felt free to leave Islam without dangerous consequences, Islam might quickly change from the “fastest-growing religion” to the incredible shrinking religion. As the renowned cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi once said, “If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment, Islam wouldn’t exist today.” [If death were not decreed for apostasy, Who would want to stay in a religion with a legal stranglehold on every aspect of your life?]

But it’s highly doubtful that Islamic leaders will take any steps in the direction of abolishing the apostasy law. As recently as 2016, Amhad Al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, and the co-signer of the document, said:

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Those learned in Islamic law and the imams of the four schools of jurisprudence consider apostasy a crime and agree that the apostate must either renounce his apostasy or else be killed.

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As Al-Tayyeb pointed out, this is the position of the four main schools of Islamic jurisprudence—the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii, and Hanbali. It’s also the position of Kuwaiti cleric Othman Al-Khamis who, on his weekly video only three weeks before the Abu Dhabi meeting, said:

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Apostates are committing a crime, just like adulterers… Such a person is punished because apostasy is tantamount to scorning Islam, and he is therefore punished as if he cursed the prophet Muhammad or Allah. This is why an apostate is killed.

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If Al-Tayyeb is serious about rejecting the apostasy law, he could start by denouncing Othman Al-Khamis and the thousands of other Islamic clerics who uphold the right and duty to kill apostates. But don’t bet on it.

Al-Tayyeb, who is a staunch defender of sharia law, most likely looks on the “International Interfaith Meeting on Human Fraternity” as an opportunity for good PR, not as an occasion for changing Islamic law.

Al-Tayyeb realizes that such meetings help to legitimize Islam, making it look as though it is a moderate religion — a religion whose representatives are happy to sign on to sentiments such as “God … has created all human beings equal in rights, duties and dignity, and … has called them to live together, as brothers and sisters…”

This is not what it says in the sharia law books. In fact they say quite the opposite. But words such as “equal” and “dignity” will sit well with the world press and with the many Catholic clerics and academics who will porE over the document as though it were a newly discovered fifth Gospel.

And, in a sense, it is. This is because there are some pronouncements about God’s will in it that are nowhere to be found in the original four. But Francis and friends are rather good at convincing people that recent innovations are, in fact, longstanding Church teaching. Thus, in a great many schools, colleges, and seminaries it is already taught as gospel truth that - Islam is an “Abrahamic religion,”
- Catholics and Muslims worship the same God,
- Muslims revere Jesus, and
- Catholics and Muslims share the same moral values.
Although all these assertions are highly problematic, the “problematics” are rarely addressed. So the novel parts of the Abu Dhabi document may soon become the new orthodoxy.

Although Fr. Raymond de Souza calls it a “minor controversy” there is a line in the joint document that several theologians are worried about. It states: "The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in his wisdom…"

“Colour, sex, race, and language”? Well, yes. But did God will a “diversity of religions”? According to several theologians, this contradicts many passages in the gospels. One Dominican theologian said that the statement “in its obvious sense is false, and in fact heretical.”
- Would an all-wise God give different marching orders to different people?
- Would he reveal to one group that he is a Trinity, and then reveal to another group that he is not? Would he reveal to one set of believers that Jesus in the Son of God and then, 600 years later, reveal to another set that anyone who says Jesus is the Son of God is accursed?
- Would he, in short, deliberately create two religions that were destined to come into conflict?
- To paraphrase Blake, “Did He who made the lamb religion, make the lamb-slayer religion?”

And then there’s the minor matter of the First Commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other God’s before me” (Ex. 20: 2-3). Not much diversity of religion there. Nor in the New Testament.

Indeed, Christ and the apostles seem to put the emphasis on exclusivity rather than diversity.

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“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4: 12).

“I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” (John 14: 6)

“I am the door of the sheep… If anyone enters by me he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” (John 10: 7-9)

“And I have other sheep who are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd.” (John 10: 16)

“And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” (John 17: 3)

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You will notice that there’s not much said about Muhammad in these passages! In fact, nothing at all. Of course, the Koran has very little to say about Jesus, except that he’s not divine, wasn’t crucified, and didn’t rise again. But he will be present at the Day of Judgment to condemn to hell all those Christians who fail to convert to Islam (4:159).

It doesn’t seem like much of a foundation on which to build bridges between Christianity and Islam. Nevertheless, Pope Francis seems determined to try. And in the process, he seems quite willing to employ novel theological formulations (e.g., “the diversity of religions … are willed by God) and questionable assertions of facts. The pope mentioned several of these dubious “facts” upon his return to Rome from the UAE:

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The Christian and Islamic worlds appreciate and protect common values: life, family, religious sense, honor for the elderly, the education of the young, and others as well.

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Well, yes, broadly speaking. But when you drill down to the details, it turns out that
- Islam values Muslim lives much more than the lives of Christians and Jews,
- does not share the Christian view that marriage should be monogamous,
- makes provision for honor killings (see Reliance of the Traveller o1.2) and,
- in general, values many things that Christians consider to be sinful and even criminal.

As Islam expands further into the Western world, it makes sense for Christians and other Western citizens to acquire a more accurate understanding of Islam. Sadly, most of the Church’s efforts in this area have been geared to obfuscating the dangerous differences while emphasizing the surface similarities between Christianity and Islam.

And the pope has become the obfuscator-in-chief. One of his consistent claims is that terrorism has nothing to do with any religion. He seems to believe that religion by definition excludes violence and intolerance. (Has he never heard of the Aztecs? The worshippers of Moloch? The religion of Baal?) And he assures us that whenever religious people do bad things, they are violating their own religious tenets.

He returns to this theme in the “Document on Human Fraternity,” which, judging from the language and the contents, seems to have been written almost entirely in Rome.
- The document asserts that war, hate, hostility, extremism, and violence do not stem from religion, but rather are “the consequences of a deviation from religious teachings.”
- Eight paragraphs later we read that “Terrorism is deplorable … but this is not due to religion. It is due, rather, to an accumulation of incorrect interpretations of religious texts…”

Really? What then would be the correct interpretations of the following texts?

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Then, when the sacred months are over, kill the idolaters wherever you find them… (Koran 9: 5)

This is the recompense of those who fight against Allah and His messenger … they shall be killed, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall be struck off on opposite sides. (Koran 5: 33)

I shall cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers; so strike the necks, and strike every finger of them. (Koran 8: 12)

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Would Pope Francis or any of his advisors care to explain what are the correct, peaceful interpretations of these, and dozens upon dozens of similar texts in the Koran? Should “cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers” be interpreted to mean “love your neighbor as yourself”?

Until they can offer some evidence that they know what they’re talking about, they should stop issuing high-sounding statements about the compatibility of Islamic beliefs and Christian beliefs.

Thanks to decades of sugarcoated, gesture-of-friendship pronouncements, Catholics are already badly informed about Islam. As the world becomes an increasingly dangerous place for Christians, they need to see beyond this gauzy presentation of the world’s most aggressive religion.

Yet Francis seems bent on layering on even more coatings of sugar. Or would mortar be a better word?
- For all his talk of tearing down walls, he is, in effect, building a protective wall around Islam.
- The wall is designed to prevent Christians from looking too closely at the actual teachings of Islam.
- One brick in the wall tells us that God wills a diversity of religions;
- another suggests that Christianity and Islam share the same basic values;
- still another teaches that no religion advocates violence or intolerance.

But this syncretism is either wishful thinking or deliberate deception. As any student of history can attest, many religions have endorsed violence and intolerance, and Islam is no exception. But Francis and his advisors seem uninterested in providing Christians with an objective knowledge of Islam.
- In the service of what they hope will be a future reconciliation of the two faiths, they prefer that Christians be exposed only to pleasant and upbeat narratives about Islam.

Unfortunately, there is nothing in Islamic doctrine that calls for mutual reconciliation.
- What Islam seek from other religions is not reconciliation, but submission.
- Catholics who have been nursed on fantasy narratives about Islam are in for a rude awakening.


Back to SODOMA and its author Frederic Martel who apparently besmirches liberally by innuendo without substantiatiom, alleging among other things that the two Dubia Cardinals who passed away (Caffarra and Meisner) were “homosexually inclined,” that Cardinal Burke is “unstraight” and likens him to a 'drag queen', that Pope Benedict XVI “liked to flirt”, and that “the majority of the popes of the last century were at least homosexually inclined.”

Note that none of his innuendoes are unequivocal or definite but out-and-out conjectural. If you were writing a genuine expose, you would discard the conjectural and come up only with something you can substantiate.

Christopher White of The Tablet writes: "Although he doesn’t offer evidential support, besides certain rumors and his affinity for liturgical dress, Martel claims that Pope Benedict 'liked to flirt'.” Excuse me - who did this most 'unflirtful' person flirt with? And might those rumors include the great myth in the Italian gay world of a relationship between Benedict and 'Gorgeous Georg', not surprisingly an object of passion for many gays?

And this is the book that Bergoglio's closest associates in the Vatican did their best to enable and facilitate... BTW, if one might have thought that Mons Ricca had left his homosexual past far behind him and turned a new leaf, why on earth would he have had anything to do with Martel's project? Yet Martel says it was he who opened doors in the Vatican for him and enabled him to lodge right within the Vatican during the years it took him to research and write his book. A more prudent man, especially if he was also spiritual prelate of the IOR and a known papal pet, would have said, "Uh-uh, I'm not getting myself into this at all, wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, am I crazy?" Or maybe he was ordered to give Martel his fullest cooperation...

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/02/2019 00:57]

It seemed just like another one of the increasingly annoying 'hate-tagged'
headlines that canon212.com has found to be indispensable and have now become
routine on that news portal's site - so I decided to find out exactly what
those 'miserable' 'death lights' are supposed to be.

Imagine my pleasant surprise to find this instead:



Here's the brief story that goes with it:

St. Peter’s Basilica is now
lit by over 100,000 LED lights
Before and after photos reveal St. Peter's in a whole new light
by J.P.Mauro

February 15, 2/19

Visitors and pilgrims to St. Peter’s Basilica, in Rome, have always been treated to the sight of the finest art adorning its high ceilings, but between the distance and the poor lighting, it has been easier for students to study the ceiling in pictures, rather than strain one’s neck for hours trying to distinguish minute details on the dimly lit domes.

Now, the treat is getting sweeter, as the Germany-based OSRAM light company has completed the much-needed lighting upgrade in St. Peter’s Basilica, trading the old halogen lights for around 780 LED luminaries, which house about 100,000 LED lights. The project came after OSRAM successfully completed similar installments in the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Square.

LEDs Magazine reports lights were installed at heights ranging from 12–110m (39–361 ft), brightening the domes by a factor of 10. The new light has illuminated frescoes, mosaics, paintings, statues, and other features that have waited in partial shadow for centuries — especially Michelangelo’s 137m-high (450-ft) main dome.

“This project provides a significant service, both to art lovers and to those who come on pilgrimage to this symbol of Catholicism,” said Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the governorate of Vatican City State. “We are pleased that a special light has been cast on this important location — thanks to the new illumination.”

Dr. Thorsten Müller, Head of Innovation at OSRAM, explains in the above video that the project relied on digitization of the Renaissance-era architecture, in order to determine light placement without disrupting the site. The result of such precise lighting is an advanced, digitally-controlled system that can be set bright enough to support 4K and even 8K ultrahigh-definition television transmission.

Osram CEO Olaf Berlien noted that the effort has been a distinct melding of the past with the present, one that will reduce energy emission from the Basilica’s lights by 90 percent:

“The project demonstrates just how history and high-tech can be combined in the best possible way by using the right expertise,” Berlien said. “More than 500 years of history are now being bathed in digitally controlled LED light.

“We are honored to return to the Vatican and to bring our expertise to St. Peter’s Basilica,” He added. “Our digital technologies are able to draw the eye toward the artistic masterpieces on the sides of the church. Previously, these beautiful mosaics and statues were literally in the dark. We also brought new light into the cupolas and we installed new glare-free lighting in the altar area. The history and the masterful works of art inside St. Peter’s have reached a new era.”


Now you might object to the fact that the video is really a propaganda clip for OSRAM, a Munich-based multinational lighting manufacturer company, which designed the new lighting system for the interior of St. Peter's Basilica.

But who with any experience of visiting huge shrines and basilicas will fail to appreciate the night-and-day difference between what seems so marvelously lighted now and the usual experience of trying to appreciate art and architecture that is poorly lit?

Even worse are those places where one must drop a coin in order for a section of the church (generally dim even in broadest daylight) to light up long enough for you just to see what it is supposed to be - for example, the main altar or Pala d'Oro at St Mark's in Venice (which is the first example that comes to my mind because it was such a frustrating experience) - but not long enough to observe details as one might like unless you want to spend the rest of your visit feeding coins to keep the light on.

I wonder if the new interior lighting at St Peter's is on in the entire basilica during tourist visiting hours - or will they come on automatically only if one wanders into a particular sector, and if so, how many tourists will it take to populate a sector before the lights go on automatically. If they do,I hope they stay on long enough until the tourists wander off to another sector.

And why would canon212.com be so contemptuous of the initiative as to misrepresent it as 'miserable death lights'?

I think the users of a news portal - and I, for one, am grateful to any news aggregator who can save me hours of hunting out news stories of interest - deserve to be treated with more respect than for Frank Walker and his assistants to pre-digest every item they choose and regurgitate it onto their website in poisonous bits. "Just the facts, Ma'am," as Joe Friday would say, and let us judge for ourselves what the facts amount to. Mr Walker maintains a personal site called Stumbling Block which usually just presents the main 'headlines' he highlights in canon212.com. I wish he would keep the main portal 'hate tag'-free, and let him indulge all his biases as much as he can on his personal site.

Not infrequently, on this forum, I editorialize on some headlines but I take care to identify them as my comments, not those of the original writer, by posting them in my trademark 'fisking blue'. But this now long-mislabelled forum has hardly ever been a forum for lack of participation, so for the simple reason that it is available (for which I cannot thank Gloria enough who set it up), it has turned into a record of what I consider interesting and significant about the Church (and occasionally, the world) and my reactions to the reports and commentaries I choose to post, as it must be clear to those who are interested enough to visit the thread.

In other words, for all intents and purposes, it serves as a blog, even if it is not (it's far more flexible, I think), and as such, it necessarily reflects my personal preferences in terms of the items I choose to post or not post). And if I had to run a news portal at all, it would be far easier to retain the original headlines of the items than have to think up 'creative' headlines about topics or persons I feel strongly about.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2019 03:52]

One of the joys of the traditional liturgy is to follow a liturgical cycle that does not contain any such strange 'season' as the Novus Ordo's 'ordinary time'. Which is simply and properly called 'Time after Pentecost'.

In the traditional liturgical cycle, we are now in the short pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima, which began yesterday, Septuagesima Sunday.

Septuagesima and Lent are both times of penance - Septuagesima being a time of voluntary fasting in preparation for the obligatory Great Fast of Lent.

The theme is the Babylonian exile, the “mortal coil” we must endure as we await the Heavenly Jerusalem. Sobriety and somberness reign liturgically; the Alleluia and Gloria are banished.

The Sundays of Septuagesima are named for their distance away from Easter:
• The first Sunday of Septuagesima gives its name to the entire season. Septuagesima means 'seventieth', and Septuagesima Sunday comes roughly seventy days before Easter. This seventy represents the seventy years of the Babylonian Captivity. It is on this Sunday that the alleluia is “put away,” not to be said again until the Vigil of Easter.
• The second Sunday of Septuagesima is known as Sexagesima, which means 'sixtieth' - we are roughly sixty days from Easter.
• The third Sunday of Septuagesima is known as Quinquagesima, which means 'fiftieth'.

Quadragesima means 'fortieth' which is the name of the first Sunday of Lent and the Latin name for the entire season of Lent.

Throughout this short Season and that of Lent (next Season), Mass and the daily Divine Office show a deepening sense of penance and somberness, culminating in Passiontide (the last two weeks of Lent), that will suddenly and joyously end at the Vigil of Easter on Holy Saturday when the alleluia returns and Christ's Body is restored and glorified.”

Dom Gueranger describes the Sexagesima Season in his classic book, The Liturgical Year:

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The season of Septuagesima comprises the three weeks immediately preceding Lent. It forms one of the principal divisions of the liturgical year, and is itself divided into three parts, each part corresponding to a week: the first is called Septuagesima; the second, Sexagesima; the third, Quinquagesima.

All three are named from their numerical reference to Lent, which, in the language of the Church, is called Quadragesima, that is, Forty, because the great Feast of Easter is prepared for by the holy exercises of forty days.

The words Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, and Septuagesima, tell us of the same great solemnity as looming in the distance, and as being the great object towards which the Church would have us now begin to turn all our thoughts, desires, and devotion.

Now, the Feast of Easter must be prepared for by forty days of recollection and penance. Those forty days are one of the principal seasons of the liturgical year, and one of the most powerful means employed by the Church for exciting in the hearts of her children the spirit of their Christian vocation.

It is of the utmost importance that such a season of grace should produce its work in our souls – the renovation of the whole spiritual life. The Church, therefore, has instituted a preparation for the holy time of Lent.

She gives us the three weeks of Septuagesima, during which she withdraws us, as much as may be, from the noisy distractions of the world, in order that our hearts may be more readily impressed by the solemn warning she is to give us at the commencement of Lent by marking our foreheads with ashes.

This prelude to the holy season of Lent was not known in the early ages of Christianity: its institution would seem to have originated in the Greek Church. Besides the six Sundays of Lent, on which by universal custom the faithful have never fasted, the practice of this Church prohibited fasting on the Saturdays likewise; consequently their Lent was short by twelve days of the forty spent by our Savior doing penance in the desert. To make up the deficiency, they were obliged to begin their Lent many days earlier.

The Church of Rome had no such motive for anticipating the season of those privations which belong to Lent; for, from the earliest antiquity, She kept the Saturdays of Lent as fasting days. The Gallican liturgy, it is true, had retained the Greek custom; but it was abolished by the zeal of King Pepin and St. Karl the Great.

At the close of the 6th century, St. Gregory the Great alludes, in one of his homilies, to the fast of Lent being less than forty days, owing to the Sundays which come during that holy season. It was therefore, after the pontificate of St. Gregory, that the last four days of Quinquagesima were added to Lent, in order that the number of fasting days might be exactly forty.

As early as the 9th century, the custom of beginning Lent on Ash Wednesday was of obligation in the whole Latin Church. All the manuscript copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary, which bear that date, entitle this Wednesday In capite jejunii, that is to say, the beginning of the fast.

But, out of respect for the form of divine service drawn up by St. Gregory, the Church does not make any important change in the Office of these four days. Up to the Vespers of Saturday, when alone She begins the Lenten Rite, She observes the rubrics prescribed for Quinquagesima week.

Peter of Blois, who lived in the 12th century, tells us what was the practice in his days: “All religious begin the fast of Lent at Septuagesima; the Greeks, at Sexagesima; the secular clergy, at Quinquagesima; and the rest of Christians, who form the Church militant on earth, begin their Lent on the Wednesday following Quinquagesima.”

The secular clergy, therefore, were bound to begin the fast two days before the laity – that is, on Monday, as we gather from the Life of St. Ulrich, Bishop of Augsburg, written in the 10th century. Quinquagesima was then called Dominica carnis privium sacerdotum, that is, priests' carnival Sunday, when the announcement we made that the abstinence from meat was to begin on the following day.

This usage, however, soon became obsolete; and in the 15th century, the secular clergy, and even the monks themselves, began the Lenten fast, like the rest of the faithful, on Ash Wednesday.

There can be no doubt that the original motive for this anticipation was to remove from the Greeks the pretext of taking scandal at the Latins, if they did not fast fully forty days. Whilst faithful to Her ancient practice of fasting on Saturdays, the Roman Church gladly borrowed from the Greek Church the custom of preparing for Lent, by giving to the liturgy of the three preceding weeks a tone of holy mournfulness.

Even as early as the beginning of the 9th century, the Alleluia and Gloria were suspended in the Septuagesima Offices. In the second half of the 11th century, Pope Alexander II enacted that this custom be everywhere observed, beginning with the 1st Vespers of Septuagesima.

Thus was the present important period of the liturgical year, after various changes, established in the cycle of the Church. It has been there for more than a thousand years. Its name, Septuagesima (seventy), expresses, as we have already remarked, a numerical relation to Quadragesima (the forty days); although in reality, there are not 70 but only 63 days from Septuagesima to Easter. This is partly to represent a profound mystery connected with the number 70.

St. Augustine speaks of two times: the time before Easter, representing our sojourn on earth, and the time after Easter, representing eternity. The Church often speaks of two places corresponding to these two times, Babylon and Jerusalem. Now the Babylonian captivity lasted 70 years; and it is to express this mystery that the Church, according to all the great liturgists, uses the name Septuagesima for this season.

Again, the duration of the world itself, according to the ancient Christian tradition, is divided into seven ages. The human race must pass through seven ages before the dawning of the day of eternal life.
- The first age included the time from the creation of Adam to Noah;
- the second begins with Noah and the renovation of the earth by the deluge, and ends with the vocation of Abraham;
- the third opens with this first formation of God's chosen people, and continues as far as Moses, through whom God gave the Law;
- the fourth consists of the period between Moses and David, in whom the house of Juda received the kingly power;
- the fifth is formed of the years which passed between David's reign and the captivity of Babylon, inclusively; the sixth dates from the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, and takes us as far as the birth of our Savior.
- Then, finally, comes the seventh age; it starts with the rising of this merciful Redeemer, the Sun of Justice, and is to continue until the dread coming of the Judge of the living and the dead. These are the seven great divisions of time; after which, eternity.

Holy Mother Church reminds us during this season that we are sojourners upon this earth; we are exiles and captives in Babylon, that city which plots our ruin.

The Church wishes us to reflect on the dangers that beset us; dangers which arise from ourselves and from creatures. During the rest of the year She loves to hear us chant the song of Heaven, the sweet Alleluia; but now, She bids us close our lips to this word of joy, because we are in Babylon.

The leading feature, then, of Septuagesima, is the total suspension of the Alleluia, which is not to be heard again upon the earth until the arrival of that happy day, when, having suffered death with our Jesus, and having been buried together with Him, we shall rise with Him to a new life.

Perhaps we could not better show the sentiments, wherewith the Church would have her children to be filled at this period of Her year, than by quoting a few words from the eloquent exhortation, given to his people at the beginning of Septuagesima, by the celebrated St. Yvo of Chartres in the 11th century:

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‘We know,' says the Apostle, ‘that every creature groaneth, and travaileth in pain even till now: and not only it, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body' (Rom. 8: 22, 23).

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The creature here spoken of is the soul, that has been regenerated from the corruption of sin unto the likeness of God: she groaneth within herself, at seeing herself made subject to vanity; she, like one that travaileth, is filled with pain, and is devoured by an anxious longing to be in that country, which is still so far off…

During these days, therefore, we must do what we do at all seasons of the year, only we must do it more earnestly and fervently:
- we must sigh and weep after our ome, from which we were exiled in consequence of having indulged in sinful pleasures;
- we must redouble our efforts in order to regain it by compunction and weeping of heart…

Let us not become like those senseless invalids, who feel not their ailments and seek no remedy. We despair of a sick man who will not be persuaded that he is in danger.
- No, let us run to Our Lord, the Physician of eternal salvation. - Let us show Him our wounds, and cry out to Him with all our earnestness: ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak' (Ps. 6: 3). Then will He forgive us our iniquities, heal us of our infirmities and satisfy our desire with good things.”

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A FIRST THINGS article in 2010 places Septuagesima in the context of the Christmas season that preceded it:

What's a 'gesima'?
The Church prepares for Lent
By Terry Maher

There’s been some joyous events these last few weeks — the birth of Jesus, his naming and circumcision, the first Gentiles to find him, and his baptism. On various dates and combinations from place to place through the ages, the Christian Church has offered its members celebrations of these things in its church year.

But a change is coming, one already present amid the joy.
- We know as we celebrate his birth that he was born for us so he could die for us.
- We know as his blood was spilled in circumcision, putting him under the Law, his blood would be spilled on the Cross, to redeem us from under the Law.
- We saw that the Gentiles who found him had to return by a different way, as the way of all who find him is different afterward.
- And after his baptism, Jesus will spend forty days in the desert before beginning his public ministry, wherein he will be tempted to make himself into the various false Messiahs into which Man makes him anyway so often.
- We will soon imitate those forty days for our own devotion with the season of Lent, on the way to the Cross, without which Easter is but another metaphor or myth. A change is coming.

So the church provides a transitional time between the first and second of its three great seasons, as the joyous events from preparing for his birth to his baptism, Advent-Christmas-Circumcision-Naming-Manifestation-Baptism, now turn to the literally deadly serious reason why they happened, sin and our redemption from sin.

Just like with the Christmas-related season, this has taken various forms in various places and times but within the same general pattern, and the universal practice of the Christian Church since ancient times (well, until 1960s Rome messed with it, but we’ll get to that) has been to provide a transition from the beginnings of Jesus’s earthly life to the end of it.

The Western and the Eastern Churches also calculate Easter, and thus the forty days before it, differently, but the overall pattern is the same, as is a transitional period between what leads to Easter and the Christmas season just past. In the Eastern Church this transitional period is framed by five Sundays, after the last of which Great Lent begins on Clean Monday; in the Western Church it is a little over three weeks with Lent starting on Ash Wednesday. Either way, it is there.

Candlemas ended Christmas. The 40 days of purpose, from Jesus’s birth to his mother’s purification in the mikveh and his presentation in the Temple, is over. These 40 days are fixed, reckoned forward from Christmas, from 25 December through 2 February. The next 40 days of purpose are not fixed, reckoned backward from that to which they lead, Easter, which is not a fixed date and reckoned differently in the West and in the East. In the West, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, will never be earlier than 4 February, so that always works out even if by just two days.

But, the transitional period, Gesimatide, can overlap with the concluding Epiphany part of the Christmas season. For the West, adding three weeks to forty days is approximately seventy days, and even with the earliest possible Easter will fall no earlier than 18 January, so Gesimatide will still always fit between the end of the Christmas cycle itself on 14 January, after the octave of the Epiphany and the Gospel portion relating the baptism of Jesus is read, and whenever Easter falls, early or late, in any given year...

On Septuagesima Sunday, the Seventieth Day before Easter, the change is apparent on various levels.
- The white vestments of Christmastime joy give way to purple or violet of repentance;
- the joyful exclamation Alleluia and other joyful expressions like the Te Deum and the Gloria are not used, and
- the readings, especially if one follows the hours of prayer, the Divine Office, begin their way through the sorry history of Man from his creation and fall on, which the Holy Saturday liturgy will recapitulate.

On Septuagesima itself, the Gospel reading is Matthew 20:1-16, the story of the workers in the vineyard, wherein we see Man the same as from the start in Eden, trying to impose his ideas of what is right on to God’s, this time arguing over whether the same wage is fair for those who worked all day, those hired at the last, and everyone in between, as if we deserved anything from God and it were not his to give and not ours to presume or demand anyway. So we argue with God and each other over the denarius rather than taking in in gratitude from him who owed us nothing! Kind of the whole problem in a nutshell.

The Eastern Church uses the following on its five Sundays in the Pre Lenten Season: 1) the story of Zacchaeus, 2) the Publican and the Pharisee, 3) the Prodigal Son, 4) the Last Judgement, and 5) the Sunday of Forgiveness.

The world, which has ever had its early Spring celebrations, has in many lands timed them on Lent, so pre-Lent attains a nature as opposite from its Christian meaning as Advent has become the gift buying and partying season before Christmas.

At the beginning of Lent, fasting in some form is observed, usually involving abstaining from meat, and the most likely origin of the the name for the worldly face of all this, carnival, is a farewell to meat (flesh), from the Latin root carne- for meat or flesh (as in carnivore) and vale, good-bye (as in valedictory).

In most but not all places, Septuagesima is the start of carnival season, to end just before Lent starts on Ash Wednesday. As the church prepares for the penitential season of Lent the world enjoys the flesh, in all senses of the word.

In the [Novus Ordo of the] Western Church, if one follows the lead of the Great Whore, Rome, as unfortunately many have, the transitional pre-Lenten period has been abolished altogether! And not only is this important transition dropped, the period of time it formerly took is simply counted as Ordinary Time.

That would be bad enough if ordinary here meant what ordinary ordinarily means. Ordinary here means the literal meaning of ordinary, which is, something that has no particular name or identity but is simply numbered. So in the Novus Ordo and the various adaptations of it, this significant time of transition from the Christmas cycle to the Easter cycle simply ceases to exist, in numbered anonymity, in the face of nearly two millennia of Christian observance in varying forms, and the continuing observance of those who do not follow suit. Well, when you’re the Whore of Babylon, you do stuff like that, maybe even have to do stuff like that. Not a lead for the Church of Christ to follow.

Actually, at first in English, Lent itself followed the Gesima pattern and was called Quadragesima, meaning referring to 40 days, the duration of Lent in the West, which was also the name of the first Sunday in Lent, a word that then just meant Spring. This still survives in other languages. For example in Spanish the word is Cuaresma for Lent. No word yet on whether Rome can get languages like Spanish to quit calling Lent after a pattern it has abolished.

The world, though, seems securely attached to its traditions; Carnival season will endure though Pre-Lent is done in. Who knows? Maybe the next council can get Ash Wednesday moved to the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, for “pastoral reasons” of course, like they jacked around the date of Epiphany, or move it to the Monday after and call it reclaiming our ancient Greek roots.

The Eastern Church still has its Pre-Lenten Season.

Join the Christian Church, East or West, in this transition, whatever your church body may have chosen to do, as we turn to the preparation for Lent, the observance of that for which he whose birth we recently celebrated came to die and then rise again, and the Easter and Pentecost joy to follow in anticipation of the eternal joy of heaven!

We start with learning from the workers in the vineyard not to haggle over the denarius but understand whose it is and that it is a gift, or, from the call of Jesus to Zacchaeus, who collected taxes for the foreign oppressors, that he doesn’t have to climb a tree to see him, that he is coming to his very house — which btw produced more grumbling about what is right and just — after which Zacchaeus repented and made restitution to his brethren.

The Son of Man has indeed come to seek and save the lost — don’t worry about being seeker-sensitive, HE is the seeker — whether that be those who cast aside their own people for power or those who are idle because they are not hired, as we all seek our own gain first by nature and are all “unemployable” before the justice of God, who shows us mercy instead in Christ Whom He has sent.

Here are the readings for the three Sundays of Gesimatide. It has been noted that the three correspond with the three “solas” of the Lutheran Reformation.

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Septuagesima Sunday
Introit: Psalm 18:5,6,7. Verse Psalm 18:2,3.
Collect.
O Lord, we beseech Thee favourably to hear the prayers of Thy people that we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by The goodness, for the glory of Thy name, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Saviour, who liveth etc.
Epistle: 1 Cor 9:24 - 10:5.
Gospel.: Matthew 20:1-16. The Workers in the Vineyard.
Sola gratia, by grace alone.

Sexagesima Sunday
Introit.: Psalm 44:23-26. Verse Psalm 44:2.
Collect.
O God, who seest that we put not our trust in anything that we do, mercifully grant that by Thy power we may be defended against all adversity, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, who liveth etc.
Epistle: 2 Cor 11:19 - 12.9
Gospel: Luke 8:4-15. The Sower and the Seed.
Sola scriptura, by scripture alone.

Quinquagesima Sunday
Introit: Psalm 31:3,4. Verse Psalm 31:1.
Collect.
O Lord, we beseech Thee, mercifully hear our prayers and, having set us free from the bonds of sin, defend us from all evil, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, who liveth etc.
Epistle: 1 Cor 13:1-13.
Gospel: Luke 18:31-43. Healing the Blind Man.
Sola fide, by faith alone.

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In 2007, Fr Hunwicke wrote this:
Where have the Gesimas gone?

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The liturgical year is to be revised so that the traditional customs and discipline of the sacred seasons can be preserved or restored to meet the conditions of modern times; their specific character is to be retained so that they may duly nourish the piety of the faithful.
- Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium
Constitution on the Liturgy, Paragraph 107

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Well, the pre-Lent Season of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima somehow seems to have missed out on that.

The pre-Lent Season certainly had a specific character. It entered the Liturgy at a time when Rome had been sacked ... have I got this right ... some seven times; catastrophic floods had, as they still do in some parts of the world today, led to typhoid; the Lombards were relocating the population of Latium to the slave-markets of the North.

So the Bishop and people of Rome resorted to penitential supplication in the three basilicas of the three patrons of Rome, Ss Lawrence, Paul, and Peter, which stood like fortresses at the approaches to the city. They prayed in penitence, seeing their calamities as the punishment fo their offences, begging deliverance. As Dr Cranmer translated the ancient Septuagesima collect:

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O Lord, we beseech thee favourably to hear the prayers of thy people: that we, who are justly punished for our offences; may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness for the glory of thy Name.

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- Has the world changed much?
- Has the theme of the Gesimas lost any of its topicality?
- Is there any reason for the Roman Rite to continue to deny its worshippers these instructive and relevant Sundays, which it would be so easy to restore "so that they may duly nourish the piety of the faithful"?

We come to Fr. Hunwicke's reflection yesterday on Septuagesima...

SEPTUAGESIMA

February 17, 2019

The ancient usage of the Western Church suggests you should ... now ... be reading the book of Genesis in your Divine Office. And that you should have started reading Genesis today, Septuagesima. Thus, the Roman Breviary; thus, the Anglican 1961 Lectionary for the Divine Office, authorised in the American and Australian Ordinariates (but, strangely, not in the English Ordinariate).

During Lent, of which Septuagesima is the preamble, we repent of the Fall and the mark which it has left on each successive age of human history and on each one of us.
- Lent leads up to Easter Night, with the great, the outrageous impudence of the Deacon's shout: O felix Culpa: O blessed iniquity (that's Knox's Patrimonial translation ... now, gloriously, restored for use in the Ordinariates!!!); the marvel of Adam's Trangression which deserved such and so great a Redeemer.
- And then Eastertide invites us to live the Risen Life with and in our New Adam.

The St Pius V/Book of Common Prayer/Ordinariate Eucharistic psalmody for Septuagesima and its season express this spirituality.

Yes, I know that the Gesimas were probably introduced by S Gregory the Great at a time of great distress, strife, and chaos in Italy - which does lie behind the sense of agony and helplessness in this and other texts. My point is that it was the Pontiff who discerned a connection between a world ravaged and disordered by the Fall ... and the realities of late sixth century Italy. How can anyone who reads the newspapers doubt that a similar connection is just as possible now?

I incline to believe that St Gregory has left us his own explanation of his liturgical creation, Septuagesima, in the passage from his writings of which the old Breviary gives us a portion in the Third Nocturn (Hom 19 in Evang.; the full text of which is handily available in PL 76 coll 1153sqq.).

- The Introit of Septuagesima Sunday is about "The sorrows of Death", recalling the Genesis theme that the pains, labours, and mortality of Man (and not least of Woman) result from the Fall.
- Speaking, according to the manuscripts, in the basilica of St Lawrence one Septuagesima morning, St Gregory explained explains the different times of the day referred to in the Sunday's EF Gospel (the parable of the Husbandman hiring labourers for his vineyard): "The morning of the world was from Adam to Noah; the third hour, Noah to Abraham; Sixth, Abraham to Moses; Ninth, Moses to the Lord's Advent; eleventh, from the Lord's Advent to the end of the world".
- The EF Epistle reading ends with the disobedience of many in Jewry in the time of Moses ("in many of them God was not well-pleased"); the Gospel concludes "Many were called but few were chosen".

While there is no doubt that the Tradition has seen this applying to those Jews who rejected the Messiah's call, Bible and Fathers leave no room whatsoever for complacency on the part of Gentile Christians.

The whole point of I Corinthians 10, from which the Septuagesima EF Epistle is taken, is that the fall from grace which happened to some who were "baptized into Moses" is just as much a fall awaiting some of those who have been baptised into Christ.

And the passage from St Gregory selected for Matins ends sharply: "At the Eleventh hour the Gentiles are called; to whom it is said 'Why are you standing here lazy all day?'" St Gregory goes on to ask "Look what a lot of people we are gathered here, we're packing the walls of the church, but, y'know (tamen), who can know how few there are who're numbered in the flock of God's chosen?"

Divine election ... Human disobedience ... its just punishment in the tribulations of the present age... followed by a call to Christians to recollect their own sinfulness before Lent begins: it all looks to my eye like a very coherent Proper.

Perhaps it is a trifle politically incorrect: the Journalist In The Street tends indignantly to demand of fashionable bishops whether Disasters are a Divine Punishment and why it is that a good God ... all that ... but Stay: my assumption is that this blog has a superior class of theologically literate readers who can do the theodicy stuff for themselves.

I urge those who can, to read St Gregory's entire homily; it ends with a lurid and lengthy account of an unrepentant sinner at the point of death; it is a real mission-sermon rant such as Fr Faber might have preached to his recalcitrant Irishmen before he moved on to (what Newman called) the 'second rate gentry' of Brompton.

St Gregory wasn't half the Latin stylist that S Leo was; but, to be regretfully honest, I sometimes doubt whether the plebs sancta Dei understood much of S Leo's lapidary preachings ... but I bet you could have heard a pin drop when S Gregory launched into one of his purple passages and the pontifical spittle was really flying.

The last thing I wish to do is to publicize this book which will undoubtedly become an international bestseller on its own, whether one writes
about it or not, given its subject and the massive propaganda blitz preceding its publication (eight language editions to be launched
simultaneously in 20 countries).

Many Catholics would dismiss it out of hand - not because of its subject, which must be confronted and somehow dealt with, not just in the
Vatican but Church-wide - but because, from all accounts, it is basically dishonest in its presentation, if not in much of what it alleges
to be 'fact'. More importantly, one must object to its vicious double agenda: to further discredit the Church on an issue where she is
right now most vulnerable in the public opinion, while at the same time, using the book to 'pressure' the Bergoglio Vatican to 'change' Church
teaching about homosexuality.

But since the Bergoglio Vatican appears to have cooperated fully in the author's four-year work on the book, one could easily suspect that
the cooperation was given for precisely that reason (primarily, for there are other corollary reasons we could think of) - to lay down
the justification for such a proposed change in the foreseeable future. Not far-fetched at all when one considers how overnight
this pope unilaterally amended the Catechism to impose his personal objection to the death penalty as the 'new teaching' of the Church.
'Normalizing' homosexuality would appear minor next to that!

The following book review is significant because it is written by CNN's religion editor - therefore, not one who can be thought of automatically
as having any sympathy towards the Catholic Church - yet he is not taken in by the author's 576 pages of verbiage, describes it as 'salacious'
and flatly says "The book is light on verifiable accounts and heavy on innuendo."


Salacious new book says
homosexuality is rampant at the Vatican
but provides little hard proof
by Daniel Burke

February 14, 2019

Early in his salacious new book about homosexuality in the Vatican, the French journalist Frederic Martel asks a source to estimate the number of Vatican clergy who are "part of this community, all tendencies included."

"I think the percentage is very high," says the source, identified as an Italian journalist who left the Vatican and the priesthood after he was discovered viewing gay sex websites on his Vatican computer. "I'd put it around 80%."

That estimate from Martel's book, which is scheduled to be published on February 21 in eight languages and 20 countries, has already made international headlines.

CNN received an early copy of the book, whose English title is "In the Closet of the Vatican," through a source. Neither CNN nor the source agreed to sign a nondisclosure agreement with Bloomsbury, the book's publisher in English, nor any other publisher.

While there has been no shortage of sexual scandals in the Catholic Church, mostly concerning the abuse of children, there are no reliable studies on the number of gay Catholics in the priesthood, mostly because church leaders won't allow them.

In that sense, Martel's book could have provided valuable insights. He says he talked to 1,500 sources, including 41 cardinals, 52 bishops and 45 current and former Vatican ambassadors, or nuncios, during his four years of reporting the book.

But is that 80% figure really true? And what, exactly, does "all tendencies included" mean? Remarkably, in a 576-page book, Martel, who has written widely on LGBT culture, never returns to that estimate, nor does he try to ascertain its veracity.

Instead Martel dedicates more ink to ruminating on the presence of a rainbow colored umbrella in Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican apartments where Pope Francis and other high-level Catholic officials live, than trying to determine whether his source's estimate is true.

"I imagine the scene: its lucky owner, perhaps a cardinal or a monsignore, takes his stroll in the gardens of the Vatican with his rainbow flag in his hand! Who is he? How dare he?"

Like that passage, the book is light on verifiable accounts and heavy on innuendo. At times, it reads like French social theory translated by Page Six gossip mongers. One prominent cardinal is described as looking like a "Viking bride." Another is accused of having a "flowery conversation" over the phone in a "perfumed voice."

Martel calls the Vatican "one of the biggest gay communities in the world" where "50 shades of gay" lurk beneath the pious surface. This secret underworld communicates in coded messages: In Vatican parlance, he writes, to be gay is "to be part of the parish," an entendre that blends the sexual and sacred.

But it is unclear how Martel, who says he is sympathetic to gay clergy, supports many of his more sweeping and damning assessments. At times, he relies less on traditional journalistic methods like on-the-record conversations and documents than on his self-described "gaydar" and coy insinuations made by secret sources. Many of those sources, he says, "came on to me decorously - it's an occupational hazard!" [Well, well,what have we here - a preening peahen!]

That's not to say Martel hasn't touched on an important topic at a crucial time for the church. In fact, either he or his publishers seem to have planned the book's release for maximum impact.

February 21 is not only the book's publication date, but it's also the opening day for a summit the Pope has convened of top bishops from around the world to deal with the church's massive and morally damaging sexual abuse crisis.

While the Pope has tried to downplay expectations for the meeting, many Catholics around the world are expecting some sort of action or plan before it concludes on February 24.

But already Catholics have expressed concern that Martel's book, which contains some shocking but unverified allegations, will not only overshadow the church's attempts to protect children, but also essentially link gay scandals with the clergy abuse crisis. [But that is the whole point, which the coming Vatican summit apparently intends to ignore completely. Or maybe not. They are simply calling it 'clericalism', a euphemism first employed by Pope Francis that betrays the extreme state of denial he feigns about homosexuality - and the double game he seems to be playing on the question of homosexuality. "Some of my closest friends and associates are homosexual", he could rightly say with pride.]

"The timing of the book is tremendously problematic," said the Rev. James Martin, an American Jesuit priest who has written about LGBT Catholics and the church. [It is surprising Martel apparently didn't use Martin as a resource person.]

"It will distract from the summit and raise in people's minds the idea that all gay priests are breaking their vows and are linked to abuse," said Martin, who said he has read excerpts of the book.

In fact, Martel does link homosexuality to the Catholic Church's clergy abuse crisis. "The 'culture of secrecy,' which was necessary to maintain silence about the huge presence of homosexuality in the church, has made it possible to hide sexual abuse, and for predators to benefit from this system of protection within the institution," he writes.

Ironically, Martel's argument finds common cause with American conservatives, who have argued for years that the real roots of the clergy abuse crisis lie not in pedophilia but in homosexuality.

That charge was made most famously by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican's former US ambassador, who accused the Pope in a letter last year of turning a blind eye to the "homosexual networks" responsible for destroying the church from the inside. Confusingly, Martel calls Vigano's letter both "irrefutable" and a blend of "probable facts with pure slander."

But ultimately the book provides little for either conservative or liberal Catholics to cheer about. Prominent figures in the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI are portrayed as hypocrites, liars or sexual deviants. Some stories appear to be well-sourced, like the tale of a late Colombian cardinal who allegedly beat male prostitutes. Others are mere rumors.

And while the author has some genuinely sharp insights about the distance between the Catholic Church's public and private stances on homosexuality, they are too often buried beneath catty quotes and unverifiable anecdotes.

"From what I've read," Martin said, "it's hard to determine what is fact and what is fiction."

At one point in the book, Martel asks himself why one cardinal agreed to talk to him, despite his reputation as a journalist interested in gay culture.

"Is it the attraction of the forbidden, a kind of paradoxical dandyism, that led him to see me? Or was it the sense that he was untouchable (the source of so many lapses)?"

As Martel's book hits the market next week, those are questions many of his sources may be asking themselves.


To sample Martel's swishily catty, gossipy and insupportable lavender/purple prose, see an excerpt published by National Catholic Reporter from what appears to be the Introduction or an early chapter of Martel's book:
www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/excerpt-closet-vatican

While he was president of the Vatican's IOR, banker-economist Ettore Gotti Tedeschi regularly contributed essays on economics and finance
to L'Osservatore Romano, displaying practical and technical insight, vast erudition and an unfailingly Catholic perspective. There was enough
to constitute a book published in 2011 (the year before he was unceremoniously - and unjustly, by most accounts - dismissed from the IOR)
entitled Reasons of Economy. (He was, of course, Benedict XVI's major technical consultant for the social encyclical, Caritas in veritate
(2010). Before that, he had written two books about Denaro e Paradiso (Money and Paradise), about the global economy and the Catholic
world, in 2004 and again in 2010. Since 2012, he has published five more books, all reflecting his Catholic and professional perspective on
global issues. In the following blogpost, Aldo Maria Valli tells us about a new book from EGT...

A polemical 'counter-history'
from Ettore Gotti Tedeschi
Translated from

February 14, 2019

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi’s new book is entitled Colloqui minimi (Small conversations) (published by Fede e Cultura). It is a series of brief chats between the author and various personages from the Bible and from history such as, to cite just a few, St. Michael the Archangel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, King David, the prophet Isaiah, Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Pontius Pilate, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Boniface VIII, Thomas More, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Shakespeare, Galileo, Rousseau, Kant…

I’ll stop because the list is truly long and goes through the entire history of ideas and of religions. I will only add, to name people closer to us in time, that EGT also ‘chats’ with Hitler, Mao, Khrushchev, Paul VI, Marcel Lefebvre and the Dalai Lama. [One would think, with the author’s erudition and his familiarity with the thought of the persons he ‘chats with’, that he framed their answers in a way consistent with what is known of what they thought, which is the only way he could have done it plausibly.]

Presented this way, the reader may well think this is a daunting head-spinning book to read. But the author is quite capable and pithy. The chats are quick and never boring, and touch all the themes dear to the author’s heart. Indeed, he does not mask his own views but on the contrary, does his best to bring them to light (there’s a reason the book’s subtitle is ‘The maieutic art of polemics’ [‘maieutic’ meaning the Socratic way of inquiry that aims to bring a person’s ideas into clear consciousness], and therefore, he revisits the entire history of western civilization which he describes as “falling endlessly into a pneumatic void through relativism, the collapse of authority, the triumph of the ugly, insignificance and heresy in and of the Church, the triumph of gnosis, an amoral economy that aims to make money on money (this coming from a banker!), the attempt to give ideological solutions to the problems of poverty and of the economic crisis which both derive from a moral collapse consequent to the rejection of Christianity”.

But why write such a book? The author explains that he had originally meant his text “for the exclusive use of my children and grandchildren, in order to help them have a rapid synthesized view – mine naturally – of what truth is, and how the concept has been modified in the course of history thanks to the thoughts and actions of specific persons. So they can better understand what is happening today”. But with pressure from his publisher, it has turned into a manual for a far wider public. For which we are thankful.

Out of the dozens of chats in the book, I have chosen that with St. Ignatius of Loyola.

---

Q: I am sure you know that it was thanks to your Spiritual Exercises that I was converted at age 25. The Exercises made me confront the supernatural, and made me decide it was time to seek to make sense out of my life. Another Spanish saint, this one from the 20th century, San Josemaria Escriva later taught me to see the supernatural in daily life. I would like to ask you now: If you lived today and became pope, what would you do to strengthen the Catholic faith?
R. I do not like your tendentious question, and so I will reply only indirectly, for the good of the church of Christ, by enunciating eternal principles that had always inspired me. To serve the Church as her leader, one must first of all study, seeking to become, as I did, a doctor in philosophy (and master of arts) and then to consecrate oneself to an apostolate.
- The Society of Jesus which I founded had two hinges: in the spiritual life, union with the Crucified Christ; and in apostolic life, service to Jesus.
- My spirituality was ‘trinitarian’, ‘Christ-centered’ and eucharistic.
- My ‘strategic program’ was simple: evangelize the nations that did not know Christ (Brazil and India, for example), and defend the true Catholic faith in Europe, where it had been attacked by the Lutheran and Calvinist reformations. And to do this by teaching the truth to everyone even to children and ignorant adults – without false human or cultural respect.

Thank you. You have been very clear. My next question. Why was the Society of Jesus formally suppressed in 1773?
A: I believe it was because the Jesuits represented the enemy to be beaten back in order to make room for the anti-Catholic, Masonic and Jansenist spirit of the Enlightenment. What’s really amazing is that Pope Clement XIV went along with this, under the pressure of the Bourbons and other royal families who are supposedly Catholic.

As you know, after the order was suppressed, many Jesuits found refuge – and were welcomed - in Protestant and orthodox countries,the enemies we had been fighting till then. And so the ruling classes in Europe, without the spiritual and cultural assistance of the Jesuits, underwent that process of corruption that the French Revolution facilitated - the affirmation of secularism in large parts of Europe, and the persecution of Catholics everywhere.

As you know, in 1814, after the fall of Napoleon, Pope Pius VII who had been held prisoner in France by the Emperor, reconstituted the society shortly after he was liberated, and the Jesuits could continue their fundamental work of defending the theological, philosophical, historical and cultural truth against Masonic liberalism and its secular nationalist ideals.

But what torments me now is that, I am told, much later a new generation of Jesuit theologians calling themselves progressivists (like Teilhard de Chardin and Karl Rahner) have introduced principles of theological modernism – precisely those anathematized by St. Pius X – and have progressively disseminated within the Church a doctrine that has been increasingly modernist, in some cases even close to so-called liberation theology).

I am concerned because if such deviation is a fact, it contradicts my expressed desire that Jesuits be obedient to the universal and immutable Magisterium of the Church. I had to reckon with Martin Luther – and I combatted his separation of faith and reason and of faith and works that would result in secularism and sectarianism.

Who are my disciples combatting in the 21st century? They certainly cannot be called orthodox Ignatians if they allow themselves to be influenced by Jesuit theologians like De Lubac (who was one of the major influences in Vatican-II, the father of nouvelle theologie) or De Chardin who called Jesus an ‘evolutor’ (the Word Incarnate who unites in himself the God of tradition and the god of evolution) who promotes the humanization of the earth itself towards the end of producing a more socialized supermankind; or Karl Rahner (the true theologian of church ‘renewal’ who has been called by some the ‘heresiarch’ of the 20th century)… I have been shown a photograph of a Jesuit superior-general in your time where he is shown praying with Buddhists – was that real or photofaked?

---

End of sample. What do you say?
- That the answers seem to be very tendentious? Just as well – otherwise, how boring it would be!
- That Gotti Tedeschi is most ‘politically incorrect’? Of course. That is why his book ought to be read.

Antonio Socci - who has been focusing lately more on defending and upholding Italian identity and sovereignty rather than in Church affairs - calls attention to a book that should perhaps be better known and read than it now is...



Here’s what positive things have taken place
in the world in the past twenty years and
what has gone wrong in Europe at the same time
Translated from

February 10, 2019

It’s getting worse for mankind, one always hears from the ‘one-thought’ Left. That the poor are getting poorer, the rich richer, on top of which we have violence, pollution, climate catastrophe, exhaustion of natural resources, hunger and disease, under-development, and inevitable mass migration.

“This is the picture that all Westerners see depicted in the media and that consequently, they have imprinted in their minds. I call it a hyper-tragic view of the world, one that is deceptive and stressful,” Hans Rosling wrote in the book Factfulness (Italian edition published by Rizzoli).

[Rosling (1948-2017) was a Swedish physician, academician, statistician and public speaker who co-founded the Gapminder Foundation which developed the Trendalyzer software system that converts statistics from the UN and the World Bank into interactive graphics that help explain development issues.] He was a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences and founder of the Swedish division of Doctors without Frontiers. Published posthumously in 2018, Factfulness says the vast majority of human beings are wrong about the state of the world. He shows that his test subjects think the world is poorer, less healthy, and more dangerous than it is. Bill Gates recommended the book with these words in 2018:

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I’ve been recommending this book since the day it came out. Hans, the brilliant global-health lecturer who died last year, gives you a breakthrough way of understanding basic truths about the world—how life is getting better, and where the world still needs to improve. It’s a fitting final word from a brilliant man, and one of the best books I’ve ever read.

---

His book lists an impressive list of data which demonstrate the exact opposite. Namely, that the world is getting better in many ways, mankind has made some spectacular progress in many areas, including a state of wellbeing that is achievable for everyone but unimaginable before.

So, have the media been giving us a completely upside down representation of reality? The answer is YES. But there is another upside down representation of reality – on the subject of Europe and Italy – in which it is more difficult to find out genuine data which will make us see the truth.

When they write or speak about the European Union, the media go into ecstasy. Since it was launched 25 years ago, they predicted that this political experiment (which included a single monetary system) would lead all Europeans into the Promised Land of milk and honey, would make us all rich and protect us from all financial and political storms.

The exact opposite has happened, and things are getting worse, but the media continue to perpetrate the fable from the initial propaganda for the EU.

Is there a connection between the two phenomena – the positive global picture and the negative European-Italian one? Of course, there is. But first, let us look at the numbers taken from the major international institutions. Here are some examples:

In 1800, 85% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Twenty years ago, that percentage was down to 29%, and today it stands at 9%. A remarkable success (with an exceptional leap in the past 20 years alone), but no one has taken note.

Rosling wrote: “In 1800, when Swedes were dying of hunger and British children worked in the coal mines, life expectancy around the world was 30. Almost half of babies born died in infancy. Those who survived lived to between 50 and 70. That is why the average life expectancy was 30.” Today, life expectancy around the world is 72 (in Italy, it is above 80).

Let us consider next “all the victims of floods, earthquakes, storms, droughts, fires and temperature extremes, as well as those who died during the evacuations and pandemics consequent to such episodes”. Rosling says that today, such deaths are only 25% of what they were a century ago, but inasmuch as the world population has grown by 5 billion since them, the adjusted death rate is even more remarkable: just 6% of what it was a century ago. Thanks to enormous progress which allows us to defend ourselves better from such vicissitudes.

One fact that exemplifies the improvement of quality of life everywhere: today, 80% of the world’s population has access to electricity.

One other insistent theme n the media: that Africa is a time bomb which with its demographic boom, with widespread hunger, disease and underdevelopment, will bring millions of migrants to Europe.

Which ignores the fact that the European countries have found it difficult to achieve a 1% growth in GDP (gross domestic product) annually, whereas GDP in African countries is increasing much better than that, and countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia (even Bangladesh in Asia) have annual GDP growth above 5%. And that there are African countries today – Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Egypt (i.e., North Africa) where life expectancy is better than the average world life expectancy of 72.

Rosling also lists many horrendous things that have disappeared or are disappearing from the world, from legal slavery to the incidence of smallpox, and even deaths from airplane accidents.

Great reduction has also been seen in the percentage of undernourished persons (from 28% in 1970 to 11% in 2015), the number of nuclear arms (from 64,000 in 1986 to 9,000 in 2017), the presence of ozone-destructive agents (from 1,663,000 tons in 1970 down to 22,000 tons in 2016), child labor, and lead pollution from gasoline, as well as incidents of massive oil spillage.

Meanwhile, cereal yield is growing around the world (from 1400 kilos per hectare in 1961 to 4,000 kilos in 2014), as is the acreage of protected parklands, literacy (from 10% in 1800 to 86% in 2016), not to mention the growth in scientific research, in the practice of democracy and women suffrage.

One can go on litsing other indicators of progress reported by Rosling – predominantly economic indexes of wellbeing which nonetheless do not exclude other human problems and very negative facts about human existence today.

But what about Europe and Italy? Why have things gone backward unlike in the rest of the world?

Just two pieces of data suffice to tell the story:
- In 1999, the Eurozone represented 22% of the world’s GDP. In 2016, it was down to 16%.
- In 2000, the US economy (in terms of GDP) was better than the Eurozone by 13%, but in 2016, the US advantage had doubled to 26%.

So even if the media continue with their fable of a happy EU, the people of Europe are now aware of the deception and are paying with their own skins the worsening quality of life on the continent – now they are starting to protest at the ballot boxes (Italy and the UK) or in the public square (France).

And what is the link between the two opposing phenomena (worldwide and in Europe)? It is called globalization. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, global progress had been orderly and regulated, under the leadership of the United States and Western Europe. But since the 1990s, a ‘wild’ globalization has been imposed via an unregulated international market and the entry into the world economic scene of a giant like China which has provided unfair competition to everyone else.

The folly of the European Union was to tie its own hands with the Treaty of Maastricht (focused on the market and inflation, rather than on work and economic growth) and with a single monetary system which, beyond preventing national monetary policies, has gifted Germany with a highly undervalued mark and Italy with a hypervalued lira. In this way, Germany has sucked the blood out of other European economies, especially that of Italy.

In 18 years of the euro, Italian manufacture has been reduced by 16% while Germany’s has grown by 30%. In 1999, when the euro was instituted, the Italian per capita income was 96% of the German, while in 2015, after 16 years of the euro, Italy’s per capita income had fallen to only 76% of the German. In the 1980s, Italians saved about one-fourth of their income – today it’s virtually zero.

Italy which, between 1960-1979, had an annual GDP growth of 4.8% (and was still at 2% annual growth between 1980-1999), stalled between 2000-2018, so that now the annual growth is 0.2%.

This translates into more unemployment and poverty, less investment in infrastructure, education and health. It means a blockage of upward social mobility. It means having young people without a future, without even the possibility of planning for a future, as well as serious denatalization. This is irreversible decline.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2019 21:56]

What is going on with the pope's men?
I use 'men' here as part of the idiomatic phrase 'the pope's men', each of whom may self-identify
with the 'gender' they think fits them best. The saying "whom the gods would destroy they
first make mad" came to me when I read Marco Tosatti's late blogpost yesterday about
Bergoglio hagiographer Austin Ivereigh's blasphemous response to a Venezuelan man's tweet.

Apparently, Carlos Sanz who tweets as arimatea73 reacted to a comment from Ivereigh
about the NY Times article quoting a gay priest as saying homosexual clerics feel
'caged' in the Church:


To which Sanz made this comment:

A perfectly straightforward opinion from a Catholic who obviously still holds orthodox beliefs.

But why on earth would Ivereigh have responded like this?

What was he thinking (!), what did he think he was doing, and why did he even have to react to a
statement that by its very nature cannot - and should not - be refuted!

Maybe he thought he would one-up Frederic Martel and his 560-page sodomite indulgence with a one-
liner questioning the sexuality of Jesus himself? What Christian in his right mind would even think,
much less articulate, the challenge Ivereigh so gratuitously made?

An earnest reader answered Ivereigh's challenge this way:


Marco Tosatti's comment:

---

Austen Ivereigh is certainly Papa Bergoglio's most active and ubiquitous hagiographer in the English-speaking world. Let us say he is an English-speaking Andrea Tornielli, even if he may not have the trust the latter enjoys at Casa Santa Marta. So a tweet like this from him is certainly significant. Especially if we out it together with other elements.
- A summit meeting is about to open at the Vatican on clerical sex abuses, 80% of which were committed against men and boys.
- Meawnhile, the word 'homosexual' and its various lexical forms have been carefully avoided by the Vatican.
- The reigning pontiff has managed never to say the word in all of 2018, despite the explosion last year of scandals traceable to homosexual priests in Chile, Honduras, the USA (McCarrick and other stories), Belgium, Germany and elsewhere.
- Clericalism. Power. Human nature. All used to keep from having to say the taboo word.
- To which we may add the starring presence of Jesuit Fr. James Mretin at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin [at the special invitation, one should add, of Cardinal Kevin Farrell, now also the Papal Chamberlain, who ran the Dublin show and had Martin address a session for homosexual couples at a Catholic World Meeting of Families! The same Martin for whose book in advocacy of LGBTQ Catholics Farrell, already in his current position as Prefect of the SuperDicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, wrote the Preface. How indicative is that! All with the beaming approval of the laissez-faire Pope.]
- The lightning career rise of Farrell himself and the similar ascent of Cardinal Cupich in papal favor and ecclesiastical privilege. The same Cupich who drove one of his parish priests to escape and hide for his life after being rebuked for having burned an LGBT banner found in a closet of his predecessor who had died attached to a sex machine. [You can't invent these bizarreries!]

With all this, we could easily suspect that an operation is under way to legitimize sexual behaviors that the Church has always condemned. But if now one of the pope's men insinuates that even Jesus had homosexual tendencies, then everything would become that much easier for the slaves of Sodom, wouldn't you say?

---

Sorry I was unable to finish this post earlier. I was going on, as I do now, to the next Bergogliac who is more than touched by hubristic
madness - Fr.Thomas Rosica, who infamously proclaimed that his lord and master could say and do as he pleases because he is above
Scripture
and Tradition, and was recently demonstrated by LifeSite News and Matthew Schmitz to be a habitual and seriously pathologic plagiarist.
If a man could be as brazen in his obviously unhinged papolatry - whom the gods would destroy they first make mad - then habitual plagiarism
demonstrates a serious pathology of inherent dishonesty. Here are LifeSite's articles on Rosica's shamelessly shameful plagiarisms.



In heavily-plagiarized speech,
Vatican spokesman accuses
Archbishop Viganò of ‘lies’
by Dorothy Cummings McLean


CAMBRIDGE, England, February 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – A Vatican consultant and frequent English-language spokesman for the Vatican accused Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò of “lies” in a lecture in which he passed off other writers’ words as his own.

At a February 8 lecture at Cambridge University, Fr. Thomas Rosica, executive director of Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation, suggested Archbishop Viganò was a liar. Rosica described the Vatican whistle-blowers' witness as a “diabolical masterpiece.”

Authors whom Fr. Rosica plagiarized in that speech - often word-for-word and at significant length - include Cardinal Edwin O’Brien, Gregory K. Hillis, Fr. Thomas Reese, Cardinal Walter Kasper, and Fr. James Martin.

View a comparison of Fr. Rosica's original speech with the plagiarized passages
https://www.lifesitenews.com/images/local/Rosica_plagiarism_3_small.pdf
[The side-by-side comparisons are stunning in the almost verbatim lifting that Rosica practises! The comparisons run to four PDF pages.]

Fr. Rosica's biography on the Salt and Light website says he holds "advanced degrees in Theology and Sacred Scripture from Regis College in the Toronto School of Theology [1985], the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome [1991] and the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem [1994]." From 2011-2015, he served as President of Assumption University in Windsor, Ontario.

He holds honorary doctorates from Gannon University, Niagara University, St. Mark’s College at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and Toronto's Regis College.

In his 2018 testimony, Archbishop Viganò revealed that disgraced Archbishop Theodore McCarrick had been protected by high-ranking Church authorities, including Pope Francis himself.

Describing the current events in the Church as a “perfect storm”, Rosica said:

---

Some of you in the room may be too young to remember a book and related movie entitled The Perfect Storm –an expression … which describes when several weather patterns meet at the same time, clash and produce violent and horrible damage. The Catholic Church that we love and strive to serve is in the midst ... of a perfect, diabolical storm. Not just the Church in Great Britain, the USA, but also around the globe: Chile, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada and God alone knows how many more countries to come!

The appalling, shameful life of a Cardinal of the Church, the shocking 900-page plus report of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury that related unspeakable depravities of priests against young and vulnerable persons; a former Vatican Nuncio’s vicious accusations against the Church’s highest authorities that is nothing but a full-frontal attack of half-truths and lies against the Vicar of Christ and Successor of Peter.

---

“A series that has been rightfully called a ‘diabolical masterpiece’ of Archbishop Viganò,” he added to the prepared speech in his recorded presentation.

Bishop Robert Barron had originally used the phrase “diabolical masterpiece” last summer to describe the clerical sexual abuse scandal, not Archbishop Viganò’s testimony. The phrase was subsequently picked up by Cardinal Edwin O’Brien. In his speech, Rosica reproduced - with some adjustments - a section of the Cardinal’s September 8, 2018 letter to the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher about “the perfect storm” without attribution.

Cardinal O’Brien’s original passage read:

---

Many of you recall the book and movie The Perfect Storm – when several weather patterns meet at once – they clash and create terrible damage.

Our Catholic Church is in the midst of a perfect storm – a perfect demonic storm: Chile, Ireland, the Netherlands, Australia, the United States – and how many more to come?! The revolting, profoundly shameful double life of a Cardinal of the Church. The almost pornographic 900-page report of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury –unspeakable depravities of priests against the young and vulnerable. A former Vatican Nuncio’s accusations against the Church’s highest authorities.

It has been called ‘A DIABOLICAL MASTERPIECE’!

---

Cardinal O’Brien was mentioned in Archbishop Viganó’s testimony as a member of a “homosexual current” in the Roman Catholic Church. The harsh language in Rosica's speech about he “former Vatican Nuncio,” however, seems to be Rosica’s own addition.

Near the beginning of his lecture, Father Rosica reproduced a passage - word for word - from an essay by Gregory K. Hillis, a professor of Theology at Bellarmine University, without attribution. The passage, originally published by Hillis on 16 March 2016, read: [uote]While the Church can offer a broad theological vision that focuses on the interconnectedness of all things, it cannot pretend to have all the answers to specific concrete questions. In these circumstances, ‘honest debate’ must be encouraged that respects divergent views. This means that the church itself should be included in the dialogue, but it also means that voices currently not in the debate need to be included.

The interview may be watched on www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/chinese-cardinal-vatican-has-kept-secret-text-deal-atheis...


Vatican is keeping secret the text
of its deal with Beijing on naming bishops
And no one in the Vatican will answer questions about it
By Terence P. Jeffrey

February 18, 2019

Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, said in a video interview on January 28, 2019 with CNSNews.com that the Vatican has kept secret the text of the agreement it made in September with the government of the People’s Republic of China on the appointment of Catholic bishops.

According to the U.S. State Department, the government of China is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, whose members are required to be atheists.

“The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the paramount authority,” says the State Department’s latest report on human rights in China, which was published on April 20, 2018.

“CCP members and members of the armed forces are required to be atheists and are forbidden from engaging in religious practice,” says the State Department’s latest report on religious freedom in China, which was published on May 29, 2018.

That report described the “Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA) as “the state-sanctioned organization for all officially recognized Catholic churches” in the PRC.

“The CPA does not recognize the authority of the Holy See to appoint Catholic bishops,” said that report, which was published four months before the Vatican made its agreement with China. “The Regulation on the Election and Consecration of Bishops,” it said, “requires candidate bishops to pledge publicly support for the CCP.”

CNSNews.com asked Zen about the September deal that the Vatican made with the Chinese government on the appointment of Catholic bishops: “What do you know that it actually entails? What does that deal mean?”

“We know nothing precise because it is a secret,” Zen responded. “And I have no more communication with the Vatican. I am marginalized. So, I don’t know the content of the agreement.”

Zen says what is allegedly known about the deal are “conjectures” based on leaks.

“Now, we make our conjectures, we try to guess, because some details leaked out,” he said.

The Press Office of the Holy See did not answer three specific questions CNSNews.com put to it after interviewing Zen.These questions were:

“1) Has the Vatican publicly released the text of the ‘Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China on the Appointment of Bishops in China’ that was signed by the Holy See in September so that faithful Catholics in China and around the world can see what the Holy See and the People’s Republic have agreed to do about appointing Catholic bishops?

“2) If the Holy See is not going to publicly release the text of the ‘Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China on the Appointment of Bishops in China’ why will it not do so?

“3) Can you describe in detail how the appointment of Catholic bishops in the People’s Republic of China will work under the terms agreed to in the “Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China on the Appointment of Bishops in China?”

CNSNews.com originally sent these three questions to the Papal Nunciature in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 31. The Papal Nunciature responded by email on Feb. 4, stating: “Please direct your inquiry to the Press Office of the Holy See.” It provided a phone number, fax number and email address by which to do so.

CNSNews.com then emailed and faxed its inquiry with the three questions to the Press Office of the Holy See and tried to place phone calls to the press office that were cut off after being automatically put on hold.

On February 7, the Press Office of the Holy See responded with an email. It said: “Good morning, yes, we received you[r] request by fax and only today by mail. Just below we send the link of the interview of Cardinal Filoni published in the newspaper--L’Osservatore Romano.”

Cardinal Fernando Filoni is the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. In his interview with L’Osservatore Romano that was published Feb. 2, 2019, Cardinal Filoni defended and discussed the Vatican’s agreement with the Chinese government on the appointment of bishops, but he did not release the text of the agreement. He also did not explain in detail how Catholic bishops will be appointed in China under the terms of the deal that the Vatican made with the Chinese government.

After reviewing Cardinal Filoni’s interview with L’Osservatore Romano, CNSNews.com sent a follow-up inquiry to the Press Office of the Holy See noting that Cardinal Filoni’s interview did not answer the three specific questions CNSnews.com had asked — and asking, once again, if the press office could answer those questions. The press office did not respond.

CNSNews.com also sent a similar inquiry to the email address for the spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. The embassy did not respond.

Notably, America [the organ of the Jesuits in the USA] - published an article about the agreement between the Holy See and the government of China on Sept. 18, 2018. That was four days before the deal was actually signed.

This report was headlined: “Source: China and the Vatican to sign historic agreement by end of September.”

In a sentence that cited no source, America said: “America has learned that the text of the agreement will not be made public, even after the signing.”

Attributing its understanding of this deal to unnamed “informed sources,” America published a detailed description of how bishops in China would allegedly be appointed under it. America reported:

---

“According to informed sources, the Holy See and Beijing have agreed on a process for the nomination of bishops. Candidates will be chosen at the diocesan level through the ‘democratic election’ system that the Chinese authorities introduced in 1957, whereby the priests of the diocese, together with representatives of women religious and laypeople, vote from among the candidates presented by the authorities that supervise church affairs.

The results of these elections will be sent to the Beijing authorities that oversee the church in China, including the bishops’ conference, which will examine them and then submit a name to the Holy See through diplomatic channels.

The Holy See will have some months to carry out its own investigation of the candidate and, based on this work, the pope will either approve or exercise his veto. The Holy See will then communicate his decision to Beijing.

“If the pope approves of the candidate, the process will continue. But if he exercises his veto, both sides will engage in a dialogue, and Beijing would eventually be expected to submit the name of another candidate.”

---

The article in America did attribute the following to the Holy See:

---

“The Holy See, in response to the demands of Beijing, confirmed that Pope Francis would recognize the seven ‘illegitimate’ Chinese bishops — that is, those who were ordained without the pope’s approval over the past decade or more, three of whom had been excommunicated. All seven had previously asked for reconciliation with the pope. This means that for the first time since 1957 (when Beijing began ordaining bishops without papal approval), all the Catholic bishops in mainland China will be in communion with the pope.”

---

On Sept. 22, 2018, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, announced that the Holy See had signed the deal with the People’s Republic of China on the appointment of bishops. But he did not release the text of that deal or describe in detail how Catholic bishops in China would be appointed under the terms of the deal.

After Cardinal Parolin announced that the deal has signed a number of news organizations reported that the text of the agreement had not been released.

“Neither the Vatican nor Beijing released the full text of the agreement,” USA Today reported on Sept. 22.

“The Vatican did not release the text of the agreement nor provide details about what it entailed,” the Catholic News Service reported on Sept. 22.

“Neither side has made public the full text of the agreement,” the South China Morning Post reported on Sept. 23.

“Speaking to reporters Tuesday, [Pope] Francis acknowledged that both sides lost something in the talks, and said members of the underground Chinese church ‘will suffer’ as a result of the deal[/COLORE, the text of which has not been released,” the Associated Press reported on Sept. 26.

Cardinal Zen has just published a book titled, For Love of My People I Will Not Remain Silent--On the Situation of the Church in China.”It is a series of eight lectures on Pope Benedict’s 2007 Letter to the Church in the People’s Republic of China. In this letter, Pope Benedict said that “indeed almost always” Catholics seeking recognition by the civil authorities in China would be obliged to do things “that are contrary to the dictates of their conscience as Catholics.”

“There would not be any particular difficulties with acceptance of the recognition granted by civil authorities on condition that this does not entail the denial of unrenounceable principles of faith and of ecclesiastical communion,” Pope Benedict wrote.

“In not a few particular instances, however, indeed almost always, in the process of recognition the intervention of certain bodies obliges the people involved to adopt attitudes, make gestures and undertake commitments that are contrary to the dictates of their conscience as Catholics.”

The final lecture by Cardinal Zen published in “For Love of My People I Will Not Remain Silent” was delivered on June 28, 2017. The cardinal worried that a “sellout of our Church” was then unfolding.

“Now I ask, what does the near future have in store for the church in China?” Zen wrote. “Once in a while, a chorus of elated voices tells us that a positive outcome can be expected from the long and arduous dialogue between China and the Vatican.

“They admit that it won’t be perfect, but it will give the church some ‘essential’ freedom,” Zen wrote. “They say the cage will still be there, but we shall be able to have more room in it. They even say that a bad deal is better than no deal. This is absolutely incomprehensible!

“To us,” Cardinal Zen wrote, “a terrifying scenario is unfolding, the selling out of our Church! There is no essential freedom but a semblance of freedom. Not reconstituted unity, but a forced cohabitation in the cage. From the point of view of the faith, we cannot see any gain.”

In his interview with CNSNews.com, Cardinal Zen said that from what can be conjectured about the deal the Vatican made with the PRC, the atheist Chinese government would have ultimate control over who becomes a Catholic bishop in China.

Question: “So, is your understanding, under the deal, this Catholic conference, the bishops’ conference, which is controlled by the government, names the bishops, not the pope?”
Cardinal Zen: “Nope, they say the pope has the last word. He can approve. He can veto.”

Question: “But he can’t take someone who isn’t put up by this group controlled by the China government and put his own bishop up without their---.”
Cardinal Zen: “No. No. No.”

Question: “He has to take who they offer?”

Cardinal Zen: “He is passive. He waits [for] them to make names. He has last word to say yea or no. That is all he can do.”

Question: “So, ultimately, control over who gets to become a bishop is now in the hands of the Chinese government?”

Cardinal Zen: “Exactly. According to our conjecture. We cannot 100 percent conclude. We haven’t seen the text.”

Question: “Because the Vatican won’t release the actual deal. So, but the understanding of it is that’s the way it works?”
Cardinal Zen: “Sorry.
Question: The understanding of it is that’s the way it works--
Cardinal Zen: “Yeah.”

Thomas Farr, who served as the first director of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom and is now president of the Religious Freedom Institute, also believes the Vatican’s unreleased agreement with the People’s Republic of China, if it is as reported, is “a very bad deal for the Church in China.”

“If I rightly understand what Cardinal Zen is saying, i.e., that we do not have the official text of the agreement, but are operating from press reports that carry some credibility because the Vatican has neither denied nor corrected them, then I agree with him,” Farr told CNSNews.com. “Those reports suggest a procedure that permits the Pope to veto bishop nominees provided by the Communist government, but not to provide candidates of his own.

“My own fear,” Farr said, “is that if the Vatican has indeed agreed to such a procedure, the passive role of the Holy Father in choosing new bishops is dangerous for the Church in China. The Communist government has no incentive whatever to provide nominees that do not protect its interests, which are manifestly not those of the Catholic Church. If the Pope vetoes government nominees, even if he vetoes them over and over again, the see will simply remain vacant. The Chinese government can certainly live with this. Chinese Catholics cannot.

“I earnestly hope that these reports are incorrect,” said Farr. “If they are correct, this is a very bad deal for the Church in China.”

As the world demands answers on sex abuse,
Vatican demurs, deflects, ducks, and dodges
by Doug Mainwaring


ROME, February 18, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — A Vatican press conference this morning displayed the pent up frustration of journalists — and millions of Catholics worldwide — over the Holy See’s insistence on addressing only the sexual abuse of minors while ignoring the elephant in the room: the preponderance of homosexual clergy in the Church.

A two-hour-long press conference consisting of a panel of Church luminaries took an abrupt turn once journalists were free to ask questions, revealing a stark divergence between the preferred narrative of the hierarchy and the universal concern of multitudes of Catholics in the pews.

Stunningly, the panelists ducked, dodged and deflected every question raised about homosexuality in the priesthood.

As it turns out, the questions asked were more significant and more informative than the answers proffered.

The National Catholic Register’s Edward Pentin noted that during the Synod on Youth, it was said that the abuse of seminarians and vulnerable adults would be addressed at the Vatican Summit.

“When this meeting was initially announced, it was to be about the protection of minors and vulnerable adults but now it seems to be only about the protection of minors,” said Pentin. “Will this meeting include the abuse of vulnerable adults and seminarians in particular?”

In responding, Cardinal Cupich, nervously fiddling with a pen, couldn’t bring himself to utter the word “seminarians,” and suggested only that bishops around the world could take what is learned during the summit and apply it to ‘other situations.’

Diane Montagna of LifeSiteNews addressed the panel: “Recently, Cardinal Muller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — which gives him a unique perspective on these problems — said, as others have … that more than 80% of the victims of these sexual offenders are teenagers of the male sex.”

“Will the problem of homosexuality among the clergy be addressed as part of this problem? It’s obvious from the data that many of these acts committed against minors are homosexual acts. In fact, the majority [are]. So will this be part of the Church’s ‘transparency’ over the course of the coming days?”

Cupich acknowledged the high percentage of “male on male” sex abuse but then quickly deflected, saying that “homosexuality itself is not a cause.” Instead, “It is a matter of opportunity, and also a matter of poor training on the part of people.”

The Cardinal made reference to two famous studies about clergy sexual abuse, but the scope of both were limited to pedophilia, and didn’t take into consideration sexual misconduct with seminarians, other young men subject to exploitative sex abuse by clergy, and consensual romantic and sexualized relationships between clergy and other adult males.

Montagna’s question opened the floodgates. Other journalists picked up where she left off after the panel ducked her question.

“In some circles, for some time now, there’s been the hypothesis that, not with regards to the abuse itself, but with regards to cover up, part of the problem is that priests, bishops, and cardinals are themselves engaged in illicit sexual behavior and therefore are unwilling to denounce each other,” noted CNN’s Delia Gallagher.

“That is a hypothesis both in conservative circles and now being raised in a book coming out by a French gay author who claims that there are these gay relationships in the hierarchy which enable coverup,” continued Gallagher. “In your investigation … is that true?” she asked.

Cupich offered a wry response, dismissing the question. “You are right in saying that it’s a hypothesis,” said Cupich. “Hypotheses have to be proven, and this is something that has to remain at the level of hypothesis.”

When it was the turn of the Catholic Herald’s Christopher Altieri, his questions — and body language — displayed the embarrassment and awkwardness that Catholics experience when challenging high-ranking prelates — men thought to be holy — with simple, honest, obvious questions shared by millions of faithful Catholics:

---

I don’t know how to do this without just saying it so let me not even try to put a fine point on it.

On the systemic, the structural, and the cultural level of this issue, how do men who don’t understand how bad the abuse of minors is, ever make it past a preliminary screening in a vocational discernment program, let alone rise through the ranks to become bishops?

---

When Cardinal Cupich responded by speaking only about the screening process for seminary candidates, avoiding the heart of the reporter’s question, Altieri respectfully tried again.

---

Your Eminence, I’m not sure you’ve answered the question. … I’m not talking about how to screen out abusers …
- How does someone who doesn’t understand, when he gets to the point of becoming a bishop, that this is bad?
- Going back to the beginning of that process, how does someone who doesn’t understand how bad this is ever get into orders at all in the first place?

---

Archbishop Scicluna [bails out Cupich] offered an unsatisfying, bureaucratic response, while agreeing that pedophilia is a terrible thing. [Even Scicluna, who should know better having investigated Maciel and his abuse of seminarians, along with having mistresses and children, appears to think the sex abuse problem is limited to pedophilia. One ought to curse the journalist who first applied that word to the sex abuse crisis, because it has since been misused by the Church hierarchy and the media as the blanket term to describe clerical sex abuses.]

As journalists in Rome challenge the Holy See’s spokespersons, faithful Catholics in the United States are asking the same questions, rightfully concerned after months of
- revelations about clergy homosexual abuse of seminarians, young men and boys and the associated cover ups by bishops;
- the promotion of the normalization of homosexuality by high profile priests such as Fr. James Martin, SJ; and
- the increasing numbers of priests who have felt compelled to ‘come out of the closet.’

Catholics fear that after this week’s two very grand [very grandstanding, you mean], very public gestures by the Vatican — the defrocking of disgraced former Cardinal McCarrick and the much publicized global Summit on the Sexual Abuse of Minors — that the Holy See will claim the matter is closed and no further investigation or action is necessary.

At a weekend rally in front of the Papal Ambassador’s residence in Washington DC, folks were afraid that after this week, folks at the Vatican will “wash their hands” of the homosexual issue.

“We can’t allow them to just stop there,” Louis Carvallo told LifeSiteNews.

“McCarrick is the tip of the iceberg,” added Bob Foss. “There are so many problems with homosexuality in the Church and the lack of leadership on the part of our bishops.”

Jeffrey Bedia, also at the rally, said that he sees the laicization of McCarrick only as a first step: “I hope this will not be just an example. There’s a lot of people both in the hierarchy and the laity that sheltered this man.”

[Is anyone betting that the Vatican will ever do anything about McCarrick's enablers?
- Why don't they at least release documents, if any such exist, that will refute Mons. Vigano's document citations regarding the McCarrick affair?
- Because if they can't produce documents saying otherwise, why not just release the documents Vigano has cited? Obviously, because they do not have contrary documents, and the existing documents would prove Vigano's claims.

No, the GREAT COVER-UP continues, and transparency is just a fancy word that Vatican spinmeisters bandy about without meaning any of it at all.

In their first and only statements so far about the McCarrick files last October, the Vatican promised disclosure ASAP. It's been four months and counting since then, and noe appears forthcoming. That statement implied that disclosure could lead to implicating the two pontificates before this one. Who believes that there is any interest at all in the Bergoglio Vatican of shielding John Paul II and Benedict XVI from the McCarrick fallout?

Let's say documentation will show that John Paul II named McCarrick Archbishop of Washington and then cardinal despite protests sent to the Vatican citing his sexual misconduct.
- So John Paul II made a terrible' if not horrid, mistake. Surely not his first and only mistake in naming bishops. Every pope has his share of such mistakes (a 100 percent error record, perhaps, for Bergoglio's appointments).

Let's say there is documentation to show that McCarrick's appointment was facilitated by those around the pope for financial considerations. Recent reports have mentioned that McCarrick made or facilitated substantial contributions to the Solidarity movement in Poland and could have funnelled these through now Cardinal Dsiwisz, then the pope's personal secretary.
- So let Cardinal Dsiwisz or whoever else answer the charge.

And why did Benedict XVI not move earlier against McCarrick, assuming he was aware of McCarrick's record?
- Benedict became pope in April 2005.
- McCarrick retired as Archbishop of Washington in July 2006 at the statutory age of 75 - which was not extended by Benedict as is customary for high-profile bishops against whom there appear to be no serious accusations. Might this prompt acceptance of McCarrick's retirement not have reflected Benedict's awareness of the problem and his way of dealing with it? Not the best way, obviously, because in effect, he was letting him off lightly.
- It is claimed that accusatory letters about McCarrick were sent to Benedict through various channels in 2006-2008.
- Benedict apparently reacted eventually - perhaps he should have done so earlier- by ordering McCarrick, some time in 2008, to restrict his public appearances and live a life of prayer and penance some time in 2008, as confirmed by Cardinal Marc Ouellet in his capacity as Prefect of Bishops, and as relayed by two nuncios to McCarrick himself and to his successor as Archbishop of Washington.
- Again, Benedict can be faulted for doing all this in private, off the public and media radar. Probably for the same reason he spared Maciel, who was 86 at the time, a canonical trial but simply ordered the sanctions he did. But does'charitable' treatment of older people trump the bigger issue of flagrant sexual misconduct by ranking prelates held in high esteem by previous pontificates?

So, Benedict has a number of shortcomings to explain and atone for in how he dealt with the McCarrick affair. But they are minor compared to his successor's apparent total disregard of McCarrick's record - about which he must have known something even before Vigano spelled it out for him in their one-on-one conversation in June 2013.

A total disregard for and dismissal of McCarrick's misconduct that not only made Bergoglio lift whatever restrictions Benedict XVI had ordered but led him to restore McCarrick to his previous 'prestige' by making him his chief adviser on affairs involving the US Church and his personal envoy to the Obama White House, to China, Cuba, Iran and Armenia on matters in which Bergoglio placed urgent priority.

Obviously, it is not John Paul II or Benedict XVI that Bergoglio wishes to 'protect' in all this, but himself as the biggest McCarrick enabler of all. Being pope, and having heaped favors and privileges on McCarrick for five years despite knowledge of his double life, is he not guiltier than everybody else who had anything to do with enabling, protecting and covering up for McCarrick? - because, in effect, Bergoglio did all that and more.

Yet McCarrick is only one (though certainly the most egregious by virtue of who he was until a year ago, the man who by virtue of the poep's trust in him was the most influential man about the direction of the Church in the USA) of not a few cases of enabling, protecting, covering up and rewarding pervert priests an bishops in Bergoglio's church career.

Bergoglio's sordid record of dealing with clerical sex abuse and sins against chastity - which are quite well-documented but deliberately downplayed if not ignored in the media - is the second monstrous elephant rampaging through this coming 'summit' - which everyone will feign not to see, as those most concerned have managed not to see so far - the first elephant being the pink elephant of homosexuality in the clergy and episcopacy, the word that no one dares to say and the reality that no one dares to acknowledge in this Pontificate.

Would it be an act of disrespect for one of the 'summit' participants to rise and ask this pope directly if he should be exempted from the reckoning everyone is demanding of complicit bishops when he had his own McCarricks in Argentina and even now, one in a 'spiritual son' whom he rescued from local disgrace over financial and sexual misdeeds to install in a specially created and sensitive post at the Vatican?

Not that this summit is expected to move against any bishop at all, but it simply is not fair and most definitely wrong for everyone to make a big deal out of crying for the resignation and punishment of 'all those in the Curia and the US episcopate who chose to do nothing about McCarrick since 2001', while ignoring the man who chose to lionize McCarrick for five years and use him for his purposes because he didn't think his dalliances with non-minors was important at all! If other guilty parties are to be punished, what about the guiltiest of them all?

In short, if anyone naively expects the Vatican to take further action on cleaning up the McCarrick mess, forget it! Can't be done without necessarily highlighting the fact that the biggest mess in that shithouse was made by no less than the pooper pope. Which was, I think, the main point of Mons. Viganò's testimonies.


In case you have not seen them before,do not fail to bookmark two priceless McCarrick videos that Steve Skojec re-presents (presents again) to his readers in 1Peter5:
https://onepeterfive.com/two-critical-lessons-from-mister-mccarrick/


For months I have noticed the ad for 'The Mike Church Show' at the top of the canon212.com homepage without taking the initiative to check out what the show is all about. I figured the host must be an orthodox Catholic, for which I am thankful. But that was it.

Today, however, a canon212.com headline - which for once is not far out - did lead me to check out Mr. Church on the following:

---

MIKE CHURCH ON MARTEL’S VATICAN-BACKED ‘EXPOSE’: THE SHOCKINGLY CLEAR MESSAGE IS THIS:
FRANCIS IS GOING TO NORMALIZE HOMOSEXUALITY AND GAY CULTURE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
AND IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, FIND ANOTHER “RELIGION”

---

And this is what it led me to:

Francis via Martel:
Hey Catholic Faithful, Go Homo Or Go Home!

February 19, 2019

The much anticipated book on the homosexual invasion and occupation of The Vatican by Frederic Martel is out and the National Catholic Register has a lengthy preview that consists of excerpts from the book. and boy howdy! is this thing a rainbow firecracker but NOT like most think.

Martel’s preview basically tells the story of the heroic Pope Francis, trying to call out the morally “rigid” conservatives that he personally knows to be homosexuals! That’s right, when the Holy Father rails against “rigidity”, he, according to Martel, is not railing against home-schooling Latin Mass attendees, oh no sir, he is railing against the “conservatives” who outwardly appear to be defenders of dogmatic Catholic Church teaching on morals, but are closeted homosexuals and therefore hypocrites.

In this brief excerpt Martel uses the terms “homophobia, homophobic” 6 times yet he clearly doesn’t know what a homophobe is. The shockingly clear message in reading this excerpt is this: Pope Francis is going to normalize homosexuality and gay culture in The Catholic Church and if you don’t like it, find another “religion”. Don’t believe me? Sample this:

---

Have the pope and his liberal theologians realized that priestly celibacy was a failure?
Did they guess that the battle launched against gays by the Vatican of John Paul II and Benedict XVI was a war that was lost in advance?

One that would be turned against the Church as soon as everyone became aware of its real motivations: a war waged between closeted homosexuals and gays who had come out! War between gays, in short….

They even suggest, when questioned, that by forbidding priests to marry, the Church has become sociologically homosexual; and that by imposing a continence that is against nature, and a secretive culture, it is partly responsible for the tens of thousands of instances of sexual abuse that are undermining it from within.

They also know that sexual desire, and homosexual desire first and foremost, is one of the main engines and wellsprings of Vatican life. Francis knows that he has to move on the Church’s stance, and that he will only be able to do this at the cost of a ruthless battle against all those who use sexual morality and homophobia to conceal their own hypocrisies and double lives.

But there we have it: these secret homosexuals are in the majority, powerful and influential and, in terms of the most ‘rigid’ among them, very noisy in their homophobic utterances. Here is the pope: threatened and attacked on all sides and generally criticized, Francis is said to be ‘among the wolves’. It’s not quite true: he’s among the queens.

---

Got that? Cardinal’s Burke, and the other 3 that signed the Dubia are basically being called out as sodomites who have duped the brain-dead masses of “rigid-traditionalists” into thinking that, going forward, Catholicism can remain Catholic and stand against the world of sexual, moral sins.

Put another way, now that Cardinals are getting the rainbow hits in secret, its ok for the laity to practice them in public - i.e. go homo or go home.

[Well, it's still quite a way to connect the dots leading to eventual 'normalization' of homosexuality (and all its many variants of sexual deviancy) by the church of Bergoglio. But remember that overnight, he unilaterally changed the Catechism to declare the death penalty unacceptable under any circumstances. How much easier it would be to change what the Catechism says about homosexuality and its practice!]


So, Uncle Ted has been defrocked:
Will the Big Tent abuse summit turn out
to be yet another Bergoglio circus?
by Fr. Richard G. Cipolla

February 19, 2019

So Uncle Ted has been defrocked. One wonders how many times he wore the clerical frock as a symbol of his priesthood. Pray for him.
The questions we must ask now:
- Is McCarrick to be the sacrificial lamb of the upcoming meeting in Rome called by the Pope to discuss the crisis in sexual abuse by clergy, including bishops, which meeting will be led by mostly bishops?
- Will burning McCarrick at an imaginary stake be enough to slake the thirst of the liberal press?
- Will it be enough to placate the minority of bishops who take the sexual abuse seriously?
- Will it be enough to stifle discussion about the factual data that the majority of this abuse was with young boys and young men?
- Will it be enough for those who have suffered at the hands of these men for so many years, not in that terrible physical way, but in being suppressed and kept down because of refusing to deny that one of the greatest problems in the Catholic Church since the end of the Second Vatican Council has been not only the terrible predatory behavior of priests and bishops with respect to boys and seminarians and prostitutes, but also the silent complicity of those in the hierarchy who have deliberately turned a blind eye to the egregious destruction of Catholic faith, worship and morality of the past fifty years.

That these people have no shame and are tone-deaf to reality is recently proven by the naming of Cardinal Kevin Farrell as the Camerlengo of the Papal Household, a most important position indeed. - That this man, who lived with McCarrick while the latter was Archbishop of Washington, D.C. and Farrell was an Auxiliary Bishop, and who claims that he did not know anything about the then Cardinal’s history on the Jersey Shore and beyond, would be named by the Pope to this sensitive and central office shows either the total insensitivity of this Pontiff to reality, or a terrible blindness, possibly deliberate, to the cause of the deep corruption in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, beginning with its center in Rome.

The sexual corruption of the Curial clergy is a major cause of the parlous situation of the Church today. But this does not get at the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is the deliberate attack on the doctrinal and liturgical Tradition (the two go hand in hand) of the Catholic Church.
- There is no end to the silly statements of the German bishops who want to out-Zwingli Zwingli but without his moral fiber.
- The fact is that without the church tax in Germany these poseurs would be figuring out how to pay for their next meal.
- One wishes that the Lutherans in Germany would chastise the Catholic bishops for their deep misunderstanding of the Christian faith and their deep silliness in their statements about the faith.
- But classical Protestantism is moribund, and how could it not be, for it is the source of the grey secularism that has destroyed the Christian heart of Europe.

The irony of ironies is that Pope Francis just approved the canonization of John Henry Newman. [Did he have a choice? If the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood declare to him that all the steps and conditions required for canonization have been met, what excuse would he have not to approve it? Make no mistake: He sees the 'protective' camouflage it could give him in repelling the criticisms of orthodox Catholics to whom Newman is a great hero as well as a saint, and no doubt, he is already planning how to make the most - i.e., misrepresent for his purposes - everything Newman wrote about the 'development of doctrine', forone ].

We should take care that Pope Francis does not read any of Newman’s important writings, especially those on the Development of Doctrine. [There you go! I bet his brain trust has already pre-digested for him what he should take from Newman's writings that he could exploit in any way for his purposes.] Newman would not be a support for the footnotes in Amoris Laetitia nor of the Pope’s attempt to change the Church’s clear teaching on the authority of the State to inflict capital punishment.

But one must keep the Pope above all from reading Newman’s Biglietto Speech that he gave upon the receiving of his Cardinal’s biretta in Rome. [But why should he not read the Biglietto Speech???] For it is there, in clear terms, that Newman predicts the terrible debacle of the post-Vatican II Church. I have quoted this before and will continue to do so, because its prescience is clear and relates directly to what has happened in the Catholic Church this past half century. [So Fr Cipolla does not want Bergoglio to know about Newman's prescient words? Why not? Does he fear it will make Bergoglio withdraw his approval for Newman's canonization? On what ground???]

---

And, I rejoice to say, to one great mischief I have from the first opposed myself. For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion.

Never did Holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now, when, alas! it is an error overspreading, as a snare, the whole earth; and on this great occasion, when it is natural for one who is in my place to look out upon the world, and upon Holy Church as in it, and upon her future, it will not, I hope, be considered out of place, if I renew the protest against it which I have made so often….

Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily.
- It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion as true.
- It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion.
- Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy...

---

The deep worm that eats away at the Tradition of the Church and that has brought us to this situation is the destruction of the Liturgy, the way one worships God.
- The quagmire in which we find ourselves is the product of the imposition on the Church of a liturgy that is deeply anti-Traditional and therefore Faith dissolving.
- This has nothing to do with being conservative, nothing to do with where one stands on secular issues.
- It has everything to do with understanding what it means to be in the realm, the being, the essence of Catholic Tradition, a Tradition that has little to do with traditionalism and everything to do with what has been handed down for two thousand years from the Apostles.

Most bishops, who are positivists, cannot admit this, for if they did they would dissolve like the Wicked Witch of the West. They are mostly a combination of positivism and super-Ultra-Montanism. They live in the absurd world of Alice in Wonderland and in the world of the Church as the Big Tent, which from the outside can look like a circus.

For at least half a century, astronomers have been sending out into outer space the number pi, for the assumption is that any civilization would recognize this deeply fundamental number/relation, the mutual recognition of shared objective reality.
- Much of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church today does not care about deep objectivity in any sense, and instead wallows in an odoriferous swamp of subjectivity, anti-Traditional worship of God, and morality that has its basis in their adulation of a secularism that allows them to do their own thing while still using the cover of their priesthood, and that allows them to deny the very essence of the Christian faith in the person of Jesus Christ — all the while claiming that they are organs of Catholic orthodoxy.

Enough already! Basta!
[BUT] There seems to be not enough Traditional (which has nothing to do with being conservative in a political sense) Catholics right now who will challenge the ridiculous, illogical and un[anti]-Traditional state of those entrusted by God with leading the Church.

Is it an exaggeration to compare our situation to that of Athanasius in his battle against the lie of Arianism? Perhaps. But who will rise to be the champion, or more likely, the champions, against the shallow and secular distortion of Christianity that is the plague that afflicts us all today?

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/02/2019 06:42]

Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller:
‘End the Conspiracy of Silence’

February 19, 2019

Cardinal Raymond Burke and Cardinal Walter Brandmüller have written an open letter to the presidents of bishops’ conferences attending this week’s Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse, calling on them to end their silence and return to upholding the divine and natural law.

In the letter released Feb. 19, they argue that the abuse crisis is only part of a wider and much deeper problem that owes itself to a society that openly calls into question an absolute moral law, and Church leaders who have “gone away from the truth of the Gospel.”

“A decisive act now is urgent and necessary,” the cardinals say, and call for an end to the “plague of the homosexual agenda” in the Church, organized networks of protection, and a “climate of complicity and a conspiracy of silence.”

In comments to the media on the open letter, Cardinal Burke said: “Given the incontrovertible state of confusion and error in the Church regarding the most fundamental moral questions, pastors of souls must raise their voices to defend the teaching of Christ and His Church. “Silence is cooperation with the ever-spreading confusion and division which is bringing serious harm to many souls,” he added.

[The rest of the blog quotes from the Open Letter so I am omitting it as we have the full text.]

Two Cardinals raise their ‘dubia’
on the coming abuse summit
Translated from


As late as a month ago, the double objective of the summit which the pope has called on February 21-24 with the heads of the Catholic hierarchy worldwide was ‘the protection of minors and vulnerable adults’, as the pope himself wrote in his ‘Letter to the People of God’ [I cringe at that tile given by the pope to a perfunctory document of unutterably pompous emptiness!] dated August 20, 2018.

A Page One editorial in L’Ossevratore Romano on January 11, 2019 by Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of all Vatican media and spokesman of the pope, also said so in it very title: “An encounter among pastors aimed at concreteness: Towards the meeting on the subject of the protection of minors and vulnerable adults”.

But since then, ‘vulnerable adults’ have disappeared from the official agenda of the summit. And with them, the question
of homosexual abuses on non-minors, even if statistically these make up the majority of clerical sex abuses.

In the well-attended news conference on February 18 to present toe summit, Cardinal Blasé Cupich, who heads its organizing committee, explicitly denied that homosexuality if a cause of clerical sex abuses, even after he boasted that the reduction of these abuses in the USA in recent years was also the result of better screening of candidates applying for seminaries, by excluding all those who appeared to be ‘risks’. [At least Cupich was forced to say the H word, which is supposed to be taboo at the Vatican and certainly at this summit.]

It is a fact that not only the question of homosexuality in the clergy but the very word homosexuality itself is ‘banned’ from use, even in the abundant mass of information that the Vatican has made available to the world media.


The reduction of the summit’s objective to simply ‘the protection of minors’ is evident in the home page (left), of the late-appearing website for the summit, strangely labelled
pbc2019.com, for which I have not been able to figure out what pbc stands for, not even by googling; as well as the official program (right). One might add to the evidence that the
Vatican meant this summit to be nothing but a sanctimonious exercise proclaiming the Bergoglio pontificate's concern over protecting minors - and letting evil priests
and bishops be - is the following headline in the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica in December 2018 for an article by Fr. feerico Lombardi, SJ: "Towards the bishops' meeting
on the protection of minors"

[By the way, Lombardi, who is not even a bishop, was inexplicably named by Bergoglio to be the moderator of the bishops'
summit; he has not even been particularly involved in the fight against clerical sex abuse. Maybe the fact that he is
president of the Fondazione Vaticana Joseph Ratzinger/Benedetto XVI? In order to somehow associate this summit with
the Emeritus Pope? Who knows?]

Taking out the question of homosexuality from the summit agenda was clearly the decision of Pope Francis, who has never hidden the fact that he is more than convinced that the entire clerical sex abuse problem is not about sex abuse but about the abuse of power, and that it does not have to do with individuals but with caste, the priestly caste. [And there we have the pope's own declaration of the state of denial that he and his followers blithely live in, and if you are looking for shameless hypocrisy, there it is - articulated by the supposed Vicar of Christ, no less.]

Everything, he says, boils down to ‘clericalism’ – which few Catholics buy.

Yet it is not the first time that this pope gives rise to ‘dubia’ over the doctrine, morality and pastoral praxis that he teaches. Who can forget the DUBIA raised by Four Cardinals after the publication of Amoris Laetitia, to which the pope never responded? [He never responds to questions which, if he answered honestly, would amount to self-incrimination. And obviously, he does not wish to lie more than he already is doing.]

Now, the two surviving cardinals of the original four, Walter Brandmueller of Germany and Raymond Leo Burke of the USA, have decided to send an open letter to all the bishops who will be taking part in the pope’s summit.

It is a heartfelt call asking their fellow bishops not to remain silent on 'the plague of the homosexual agenda' that pervades the Church, which they consider an abandonment of the truth of the Gospel and therefore also at the root of the present crisis of faith.

We shall see if their appeal will be heard at all in the summit.

As Father Z and other Catholic commentators noted when the pope announced the dates for his sex abuse (er, protection of minors) summit last October, it will end on the reast of St. Peter Damian. Were Bergoglio and his advisers even aware of that? Is it not providential???

During the Rome 'summit', we shall celebrate
the Feast of St Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church
[and scourge of clergy committing sex offenses]

February 19, 2019
Speaking of homosexuality, during the Rome “summit”, on 23 February, we will celebrate the feast of St Peter Damian (d 1072), Doctor of the Church.

St. Peter was a spectacular theologian and reformer. One of his hardest hitting works is the Liber Gomorrhianus (The Book of Gomorrah), which blasts, among other sins, pederasty and homosexuality in the clergy.

Let’s just say that St Peter addresses the problem through language that is atypical these days. He conveys his, and God’s, thoughts on the matter without the cowering equivocations in which we are lately so mired.

That is the real topic that the “summit” in Rome ought to be tackling head on. And everyone knows it.

Washington Post sued by family
of Covington Catholic teenager
By Paul Farhi

February 1, 2019

The family of the Kentucky teen who was involved in an encounter with a Native American advocate at the Lincoln Memorial last month filed a defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post on Tuesday, seeking $250 million in damages for its coverage of the incident.

The suit alleges that The Post “targeted and bullied” 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann in order to embarrass President Trump. Sandmann was one of a number of students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky who were wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats during a trip to the Mall when they encountered Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist.

News accounts, including in The Post, and videos of their encounter sparked a heated national debate over the behavior of the participants.

“In a span of three days in January of this year commencing on January 19, the Post engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism by competing with CNN and NBC, among others, to claim leadership of a mainstream and social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified, and threatened Nicholas Sandmann, an innocent secondary school child,” reads the complaint.

It added, “The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President.”

The suit was filed by Sandmann’s parents, Ted and Julie, on Nicholas’s behalf in U.S. District Court in Covington. It seeks $250 million because Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos paid that amount for the newspaper when he bought it in 2013.

The lengthy complaint, which carried the names of five attorneys from two law firms, alleged seven “false and defamatory” articles published online or in print by The Post. It also cited tweets sent by The Post to promote its stories.
[There had to be an agenda and 'malice aforethought' if the Post persisted in its wrong reporting in seven articles over three dates in addition to promotional tweets. Because anyone with an objective eye realized within hours, upon seeing full video coverage of the incident, that the first reports constituted fake news based on a calculatedly edited video clip meant to inflame public opinion against Catholic pro-life Trump-supporting white boys - every single one of those adjectives representing politically incorrect anathema to 'liberal' minds.

So for the Post to persist in its biased reporting and commentary for 3 days was nothing but sheer exploitation of an 'ideological story' in which their readers could wallow indulgently. I bet there never was an apology or an appropriate correction to their mis-reporting. So we should all want this lawsuit to prosper - even if it is hard to imagine a Washington DC jury finding the Post guilty, and if it did, granting anything more than a rap on the knuckcle and no damages at all - because in this land of free expression, or the First Amendment, or whatever, it is time the media became answerable for their overweening and arrogant irresponsibility. Freedom of expression is not a license to tell defamatory lies, especially with evidencethat objectively refutes those lies.]

The Sandmanns’ lead attorney is L. Lin Wood, who represented Richard Jewell, the security guard falsely accused in the bombing of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta in 1996. He also represented John and Patsy Ramsey in pursuing defamation claims against media outlets in connection with reports on the death of their young daughter, JonBenet.

A Post spokeswoman, Kristine Coratti Kelly, said in response to the suit, “We are reviewing a copy of the lawsuit, and we plan to mount a vigorous defense.”

According to the allegations made in the complaint, Nicholas Sandmann and his classmates were waiting for a bus at the Lincoln Memorial after attending the March for Life rally on the Mall when a group of African American men who call themselves Hebrew Israelites began yelling racial epithets at them. The high school group began a series of school sports chants in response, the complaint said.

Phillips, a self-described Native American activist who was on the Mall that day for the Indigenous Peoples March, has said he was walking toward the Lincoln Memorial when he encountered the Covington group. He was chanting and beating a small drum when he came face to face with Sandmann.

The Sandmanns’ suit asserts that the newspaper “bullied” Sandmann in its reporting “because he was the white, Catholic student wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ souvenir cap.”

It calls Phillips “a phony war hero [who] was too intimidated by the unruly Hebrew Israelites to approach them, the true troublemakers, and instead chose to focus on a group of innocent children.”

It added that The Post “did not conduct a proper investigation before publishing its false and defamatory statements of and concerning Nicholas.”

It also accused The Post of ignoring online videos that showed a fuller picture of the incident and of using “unreliable and biased sources,” thus acting with “knowledge of falsity or a reckless disregard for the truth.”

A plaintiff must show that a defendant acted with “reckless disregard” to sustain a defamation action. [Does three days of accusatory articles and commentary despite evidence to the contrary not constitute 'reckless disregard'?]

When Frederic Martel’s opus crassa SODOMA was first announced earlier this month, James Martin, SJ – who obviously was not among
the 1500 prelates Martel claims to have interviewed for the book - sent out a 12-part tweet to comment on it before he had read it,
of which I am only reproducing the last 8.


I looked that up not because I am particularly interested in what Martin has to say on anything,
but because at least two commentaries I read referred to his gushing tweet on the recent New York
Times article that exults about the gay subculture thriving among many Catholic priests and
bishops and which will do as much harm to the Church, if not more, than Martin fears the Martel
book will.


Now for the commentaries on the NYT fairy-fingers job:

Priests trapped in closets:
Updated talking points from Hell's Bible
for the 'Catholic' left and other Catholic haters
By Terry Mattingly

February 18, 2019

At this point, there is no reason to expect a New York Times story about sexuality and the Catholic Church to be anything other than a set of talking points released by the press office at Fordham University or some other official camp of experts on the Catholic doctrinal left.

This is, of course, especially true when the topic is linked to LGBTQ issues.

New York City is a very complex place, when it comes to Catholic insiders and experts. However, it appears that there are no pro-Catechism voices anywhere to be found in the city that St. Pope John Paul II once called the “capital of the world.”

We had a perfect example this weekend of the Gray Lady’s role in defining the journalistic norms for covering Catholic debates (as journalists prepare for the Vatican’s global assembly to discuss sexual abuse by clergy). Here’s the epic double-decker headline:

- Looking for a news story that offers viewpoints from both sides of this issue? Forget about it.
- Looking for complex, candid thoughts from gay Catholics who actually support the teachings of their church? Forget about it (even though they exist and are easy to find online.)
- Looking for any point of view other than the Times gospel stated in that headline? Forget about it.

So what is the purpose of this story?
Simply stated, the goal here is to define this debate for legions of other journalists. Here is how Rod “Benedict Option” Dreher describes this role in the journalism environment of the Theodore McCarrick era:

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When it comes to covering LGBT issues, The New York Times is a propaganda sheet worth reading only for the same reason that, during the Cold War, one read Pravda: to get the ruling class’s party line. …

I wonder if this intrinsic journalistic disorder at the Times has anything to do with the fact that a freelance writer on assignment for the New York Times Magazine had the McCarrick story nailed (the preying-on-seminarians part) back in 2012, but the story never appeared.

I know this because I was interviewed for the piece by the reporter, who had court documents, and at least one on-the-record interview with a McCarrick victim. The reporter told me a couple of months later that he couldn’t understand why his story was being spiked. The new male editor on the piece — the woman who had commissioned it had since moved on — kept putting roadblocks in front of him, and none of it made sense.

“Is your new editor a gay man?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the journalist. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Maybe nothing, I said.

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Before we go on, let me stress my own stance on the current Catholic crisis. I know that I have run this information before, but I want readers to know that I am not stating that “gay priests” are the most powerful factor in Catholicism’s three-decade sexual-abuse crisis.
I: The key to the scandal is secrecy, violated celibacy vows and potential blackmail. Lots of Catholic leaders – left and right, gay and straight – have sexual skeletons in their closets, often involving sex with consenting adults. These weaknesses, past and/or present, create a climate of secrecy in which it is hard to crack down on crimes linked to child abuse.
II. Classic pedophiles tend to strike children of both genders. However, in terms of raw statistics, most child-abuse cases linked to Catholic clergy are not true cases of pedophilia, but are examples of ephebophilia – intense sexual interest in post-pubescent teens or those on the doorstep of the teen years. The overwhelming majority of these clergy cases are adult males with young males.
III. One of the biggest secrets hiding in the bitter fog from all of these facts is the existence of powerful networks of sexually active gay priests, with many powerful predators – McCarrick is a classic example – based at seminaries and ecclesiastical offices. Thus, these men have extraordinary power in shaping the lives of future priests.

With that in mind — especially that second point — read this crucial “fact” passage that appears in the Times story, without attributions of any kind.

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Studies repeatedly find there to be no connection between being gay and abusing children. And yet prominent bishops have singled out gay priests as the root of the problem, and right-wing media organizations attack what they have called the church’s “homosexual subculture,” “lavender mafia,” or “gay cabal.”

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Now, what is the meaning of the world “children”? Does that term adequately describe the fact that the overwhelming majority of victims in this crisis are teen-aged males?

Anyone who has studied the clergy-abuse crisis among PROTESTANTS knows that adult males who prey on teen-aged girls are not the same as the criminals who prey on children younger than 12 years of age (approximately). It’s true that there is no connection between male homosexuality and pedophilia. However, is that the key issue in this case? Is that what informed conservative Catholics are claiming?

Let’s see, what else do we need to see in this set of Times talking points? How about another out-of-context statement of those famous words from Pope Francis? Here’s the Times update:

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Just a few years ago, this shift was almost unimaginable. When Pope Francis uttered his revolutionary question, “Who am I to judge?” in 2013, he tempted the closet door to swing open. A cautious few priests stepped through.

But if the closet door cracked, the sex abuse crisis now threatens to slam it shut. Widespread scapegoating has driven many priests deeper into the closet.

“The vast majority of gay priests are not safe,” said Father Bob Bussen, a priest in Park City, Utah, who was outed about 12 years ago after he held Mass for the L.G.B.T.Q. community. “Life in the closet is worse than scapegoating,” he said. “It is not a closet. It is a cage.”

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Let’s see, it would also help to include a shot at the church’s teaching that sex outside of marriage is sin. Let’s click that off the list, since healthy sexuality has to include, well, you know:

Today, training for the priesthood in the United States usually starts in or after college. But until about 1980, the church often recruited boys to start in ninth grade — teenagers still in the throes of puberty. For many of today’s priests and bishops over 50, this environment limited healthy sexual development. Priests cannot marry, so sexuality from the start was about abstinence, and obedience.

But not all Catholics are bad! There are Catholics who agree with the Times editorial (and news) pages. Here is a paragraph informing readers (and journalists elsewhere) how to know that you are dealing with Catholics who are not stupid, ancient, uninformed fundamentalists:

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So they find ways to encourage one another. They share books like Father James Martin’s groundbreaking “Building a Bridge,” on the relationship between the Catholic and L.G.B.T. communities. Some have signed petitions against church-sponsored conversion therapy programs, or have met on private retreats, after figuring out how to conceal them on their church calendars. Occasionally, a priest may even take off his collar and offer to unofficially bless a gay couple’s marriage.

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The key to this story, once again, is that
- it contains zero information from Catholics — gay Catholics even — on the other side of this crucial debate.
- There is zero attempt to actually engage the contents of centuries of Catholic doctrine on human sexuality.

There is no need for any of that.
- Because no one involved in editing this story was interested in journalism.
- No one was interested in readers being exposed to accurate, informed quotes from people on both sides.
- No one was interested in showing respect for Catholics — gay and straight — who are stupid enough to believe the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
What would be the point of that?
 
Here is Rod Dreher's commentary in full:

NYT advocates the 'gay Catholic' party line
By Rod Dreher

February 17, 2019

When it comes to covering LGBT issues, The New York Times is a propaganda sheet worth reading only for the same reason that, during the Cold War, one read Pravda: to get the ruling class’s party line.
Today’s big piece on the agony of closeted gay priests is a classic of the genre. Note these passages:

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Studies repeatedly find there to be no connection between being gay and abusing children. And yet prominent bishops have singled out gay priests as the root of the problem, and right-wing media organizations attack what they have called the church’s “homosexual subculture,” “lavender mafia,” or “gay cabal.”

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Nope, nothing to see there. How did McCarrick rise and rise, even though the Church knew about him? Magic, I guess. The real problem, you see, is the horrible right-wing people who take the trouble to notice what’s right in front of everybody’s nose.
And:0

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Study after study shows that homosexuality is not a predictor of child molestation. This is also true for priests, according to a famous study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the wake of revelations in 2002 about child sex abuse in the church. The John Jay research, which church leaders commissioned, found that same-sex experience did not make priests more likely to abuse minors, and that four out of five people who said they were victims were male. Researchers found no single cause for this abuse, but identified that abusive priests’ extensive access to boys had been critical to their choice of victims.

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Eighty percent of the victims of male priests were boys — most of them post-pubescent minors. And yet, we really can’t say that the homosexuality of the victimizing priests has anything to do with it. Only right-wing bigots would make that point.

The New York Times really does believe this. If they didn’t, their worldview would crumble. It is possible to believe that chaste gay priests really do have a heavy cross to bear within the Church, and that their story should be told — I happen to believe that myself — while also reporting the truth about the way unchaste gay priests carry on secret lives, and cover up for each other.

I wonder if this intrinsic journalistic disorder at the Times has anything to do with the fact that a freelance writer on assignment for the New York Times Magazine had the McCarrick story nailed (the preying-on-seminarians part) back in 2012, but the story never appeared.

I know this because I was interviewed for the piece by the reporter, who had court documents, and at least one on-the-record interview with a McCarrick victim. The reporter told me a couple of months later that he couldn’t understand why his story was being spiked. The new male editor on the piece — the woman who had commissioned it had since moved on — kept putting roadblocks in front of him, and none of it made sense.

“Is your new editor a gay man?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the journalist. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Maybe nothing, I said.

But then I told him about the prominent closeted gay conservative engaged by then-Cardinal McCarrick in 2002 to pressure my boss to spike a story I was working on about McCarrick’s abuse of seminarians. The pressure did not work with my boss, but in the end, I couldn’t publish a story, because none of my sources would talk about it on the record, or provide documentation.

The point, I told the reporter, is that some powerful gay men don’t want this story known, presumably because it confirms a negative stereotype about predatory gay men. Besides, squeamish editors, gay or straight, convince themselves that this story is too dangerous to tell because hey, everybody involved is an adult, and how are we to know whether or not these seminarians consented to sex with the archbishop?

It took #MeToo to awaken journalistic sensibilities to the plain fact that a priest or seminarian who faces pressure to submit to sex with a bishop or archbishop cannot meaningfully consent. To its great credit, the Times finally exposed McCarrick’s scam last year, thanks to reporters Laurie Goodstein and Sharon Otterman, who published some of the same information that the freelancer working for the Times Magazine (which has a different editorial hierarchy from the newspaper, note well) told me back in 2012 that he had.

The Washington Post later published an account of an anonymous seminarian who vomited in McCarrick’s apartment after an unwanted sexual encounter with the then-Archbishop of Newark. I knew about that encounter in 2012 because the freelancer whose story was spiked by the Times Magazine editor had it on the record, and told me that.

This morning’s Times story decries the injustices right-wing bullies and an uncomprehending institution visit upon gay priests, but it does not talk about seminarians and adult priests being preyed on by powerful gay prelates, as well as other priests who may not outrank them, but who have de facto power within a diocese.

Take, for example, the current case in the Diocese of Gaylord (MI), involving a young priest named Father Matthew Cowan. Cowan complained to his bishop that he had been repeatedly sexually harassed by Father Dennis Stilwell, the vicar general (No. 2) of the diocese. When it appeared to Cowan that the diocese was dragging its feet on his complaint, and maybe even preparing to sweep it under the rug, he put evidence and a list of his concerns into this e-mail. Please read it.
https://gaylordfaithfulnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CowenEmail.pdf

Bishop Steven Raica suspended Father Cowan for sending that e-mail to some people within the diocese, but outside the clerical circle, saying that the letter violated the “unity” of the priesthood. Meanwhile, a group of laity in the diocese who are sick of lies and the cover-ups have started a group called Gaylord Diocese Watch, in part to defend Father Cowan.

Last week, GDW alleged that Father Jim Holtz, a priest who had been removed from ministry by the previous bishop after credible accusations of sexual abuse of a minor, had quietly been allowed to serve under Father Stilwell in his parish. Excerpts from their allegation post:

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Holtz’s name was on a list of 10 priests made public on Nov. 14, 2018 “who are known to have had credible and substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor made against them in the Diocese of Gaylord.”

“Until that list became public in November, virtually nobody at St Francis was aware Fr. Dennis Stilwell allowed a known child molester to work at the altar, with altar servers and in religious education for many years,” said Dr. Richard Brenz, spokesman for Gaylord Diocesan Watch, an activist group formed last month.

“Holtz never could have passed the Gaylord Diocese basic background check that every employee in a parish and school is required to undergo,” Brenz said. “It is bad enough that Holtz was selected by Fr. Stillwell to work with and be around children on parish grounds, but the secrecy surrounding his involvement is even more outrageous.
As faithful Catholics who have once again been betrayed by our local bishops who shroud everything they do in secrecy yet preach about transparency, we once again call on the media to investigate this scandal,” Brenz added.

“Bishop Steven Raica wrote in response to the Pennsyvania scandal, ‘…we must not let down our guard. We must remain vigilant.’ Yet his own vicar general ignores the basic rules in place to protect children. We are sorry to say that we have little confidence in Church officials to protect our children. At the very least, parents of children attending the St. Francis Elementary School and who are altar servers should have been notified of Holtz’s background.

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Gaylord Diocese Watch offers further information about Father Holtz:

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Holtz’s Facebook page, which is easily accessed by the public, shows he has given favorable ratings to books in the last two and three years with explicitly homo-erotic themes.

In the section of his Facebook profile titled “Reviews” several of the books have covers with an image of handsome young men in provocative poses. One book, “Leap of Faith,” which Holtz gave a 5-star rating (on a scale of 1-5) shows two men kissing.

The description on the Amazon web site to purchase “Leap of Faith” indicates: “This is a full length romance novella which has multiple gay sex scenes. Mature readers only. Set in the onset to WWII.”

Another book which received a 5-star rating from Holtz is “My Dream Boy.” Clicking the image of book takes the reader to a web site titled “Romance Week,” which carries this summary of the book:
“Jake and a couple of his college friends learn about a cruising spot near campus and decide to try it out. They soon find that they can get a blowjob there and in no time they’re doing it to each other… and more. Then the school year ends and Jake moves home. He misses his pals and the hot sex they had and is looking forward to a boring summer. But things look up when new people move in next door. Their son is a gorgeous young guy and Jake makes it his mission to get to know him. What he doesn’t know is that Evan also likes guys.”

Another book that received a 5-star rating from Holtz is “Wizards Moon,” which is summarized on the Romance Week web site thusly: “I wish to buy a boy. A warrior from the Northlands purchases a young man for purposes both secret and perhaps sinister.”

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- Did Father Stilwell violate the Dallas Charter by allowing Father Holtz to serve?
- Did Bishop Raica know this was happening?
- Why is Father Cowan, the whistleblower, the one being punished in this matter?
- Is it because Father Cowan could see that the network was going to protect one of its own?

Remember the lesson of McCarrick (a lesson that has been made clear over and over since 2002): if you want to see the Catholic Church clean up its act, then the laity has to speak up, speak often, and speak loudly. A priest who does it on his own may well be run over by the hierarchy, as Father Cowan apparently has been.

And on the question of the networks of gay priests protecting each other’s secrets — including the secrets of abusers — understand that the mainstream media is more often than not part of the conspiracy. It has a narrative to uphold.

You will hear about priests like Father Gregory Greiten, a gay priest who came out to his parish, and who is featured in the NYT story today.But priests like Father Matthew Cowan — whose friends have set up a Go Fund Me page to help him pay his legal bills in this matter — are harder for our mainstream media to see.

Now, In The Closet Of The Vatican, the scandalous Frederic Martel book that will be released on Thursday sounds like it will need to be read with a strongly critical eye, one capable of sorting out juicy gossip from fact.

Martel sounds like the kind of gay activist who believes as a matter of principle that the more opposed a cleric is to normalizing gay sex, the deeper inside the closet that cleric must be.

Nevertheless, early reports from those who have read the book - European title: Sodom — indicate that the book explodes the quaint New York Times myth that the gay clerical network is a malicious right-wing invention. Take this passage from a report on the Martel book appearing in Crux, a non-partisan Catholic outlet:

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Perhaps the most salient reason for the timing of the book’s release is the rule that “behind the majority of cases of sexual abuse, there are priests and bishops who have protected the aggressors because of their own homosexuality and out of fear that it might be revealed in the event of a scandal.”

“The culture of secrecy that was needed to maintain silence about the high prevalence of homosexuality in the Church has allowed sexual abuse to be hidden and prelates to act,” he continues.

While Martel steers clear of the argument that homosexuality within the priesthood is a driving force for sexual abuse, he argues that the culture of secrecy is what allows it to flourish, along with its cover-up, even within the highest ranks of power.

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Exactly. Propagandists ignore this fact. But a fact it is. The Martel book is going to make this impossible to ignore, though I expect the Times and others to do their best.

UPDATE:
A Catholic priest e-mails:

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It might be hard to determine how people will react to more gay priests speaking out, but I think it is ultimately a good thing for a couple of reasons.

First, as the author notes, there is a tremendous disconnect between what the Church teaches and who it allows to become its official teachers. Technically homosexual priests are not supposed to be able to become priests, and yet, there is a huge proliferation of them in the priesthood; a far higher percentage than the general public. Astronomically higher.

Second, the John Jay study did say there was no connection between homosexuality and abuse, however, it couldn’t say that officially because no psychologist is allowed to draw that connection. The discipline no longer allows any connection between homosexuality and illicit behavior. This is the consequence of removing homosexuality as a personality disorder from the DSM.

Third, any clear thinking individual will look at the astronomical numbers of homosexuals in the priesthood and compare that to the 80% of abuse victims being boys (78% being teenage) and will draw the obvious conclusion.

Remember in the general population the vast majority of men abuse girls. But in the priesthood it is flipped. The reported answer for this is access, but that’s ridiculous. Priests have had access to girls just as easily as boys for decades. Girls have been altar servers since the early 80’s and they have certainly been in schools.

Further, when we are talking about post-pubescent teens (78% of victims who were male) we are talking about sexual differentiation having taken place. A gay priest preying on a teenager is much different than a kindergartener. Psychologists will tell you it’s a completely different issue.

Fourth, this is really good for the Church to face what so many of us have been saying for so long; that the over-represented number of homosexual priests is a problem. When you have that many men with disordered sexuality there are going to be severe consequences.

Fifth, the reality is that many of the bishops are themselves gay or, as one of the priests in the article says, don’t know what they are. Thus, the question remains how will they react to the continuing public revelation of what they already know to be true.

The bishops have largely been silent on the issue of homosexuality in our culture. They haven’t pushed back against it at all. Likely because they couldn’t push back against their own disordered nature.

Conclusion? Hard to say, but I think in the end it’s better that all of this come out and be exposed.

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February 21, 2019
P.S. In his blogpost today, Aldo Maria Valli summarizes Dreher's article for his Italian readers an article entitled "The gay-friendly narrative an the next big step in this great hoax", in which he adds this conclusion:

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"But...with the publication of SODOMA by Frederic Martel, who claims that the Church has become 'structurally homosexual' and that the McCarrick saga had long been known at the Vatican [nothing new there, but I am surprised Valli does not refer to Martel's newsmaking claim his sources at the Vatican confirmed to him that Pope Francis had in fact been informed by Mons Viganò about McCarrick - as Viganò had claimed - but that he dismissed this as 'not important' and therefore lifted restrictions imposed by Benedict XVI and went on to make McCarrick oen of his most influential associates for the next five years].

Therefore? How will the mainstream media reorganize their narrative in the light of these statements made this time by a 'renowned' paladin of LGBTQ causes and not by an evil traditionalist motivated by obscurantist obsessions?

Quite simply. Martel's arguments (as someone who was received with open arms at the Vatican [and resided within the Vatican one week a month during the four years he worked on his book] and who said simply that his work was facilitated by the 'gay network' in the Vatican) will now be utilized to advocate - as Martel already does - that "celibacy and chastity have failed" and that 'someone sooner or later has to take action".

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That will be the next step in this great hoax.

What Valli does not say is what other commentators have plainly said - that this is all setting the stage for the Bergoglio Vatican to 'normalize' homosexuality and its infinite LGBTQ-XYZ variants. Easy as declaring the death penalty unacceptable under any circumstances and changing the Catechism accordingly.

Despite Pope Francis’s lecture on the subject at Synod-2015, and notwithstanding the passages on it in Synod-2018’s final report, there is little agreement in twenty-first-century Catholicism on what “synodality” means.

The theology of synodality can be left for another day. In practical terms, however, perhaps synodality ought to mean something roughly analogous to what our British cousins mean by “horses for courses.” There, the phrase is a homely caution against one-size-fits-all remedies to problems.

In the world Church today, and with an eye to the “abuse summit” that will meet in Rome from February 21–24, a “horses for courses” understanding of synodality would mean that different local Churches should be empowered to implement specific local remedies, tailored to their specific problems and capacities, in addressing clerical sexual misconduct.

The plague of sexually abusive clergy manifests itself in different ways in different ecclesiastical contexts. In the so-called developed world, the plague seems to have largely involved the sexual abuse or exploitation of young men; but there are many other ways in which a subset of Catholic clergy, both priests and bishops, lead duplicitous lives in violation of the promise of celibate chastity they made to God and the Church.
- Latin American Catholicism has a culturally-influenced and destructive habit of denial about clerical sexual misconduct, whether abusive or consensual, heterosexual or homosexual.
- The Church in Africa faces serious challenges with the sexual exploitation of women by clergy. Each of these situations has its own epidemiology, as infectious disease doctors would say.

While more than a few German theologians and bishops (and bishop-theologians) deny it, the Catholic Church has a settled ethic of human love, drawn from the Scriptures and developed over centuries by moral reason. The ethic is the same, but the challenges to living it are not uniform among 1.2 billion Catholics.

Because of considerable cultural and historical differences across the world Church, particular solutions to the plague of clerical sexual impropriety (and worse) are going to have to be developed to meet particular circumstances.

So while the bottom of the bottom line for the “abuse summit” must be an unambiguous, clarion call to the entire Church to live chastity as the integrity of love, there is no single reform template that will address different forms of clerical sexual misconduct in quite diverse circumstances.

Catholics in the U.S. must also recognize that the kinds of solutions that are feasible in our country and that have worked in addressing historical clerical sexual abuse and driving down its incidence — may not be applicable in other parts of the world Church, where the financial and personnel resources the U.S. Church can deploy are not available.

To take one example: Diocesan review boards that function quite well in America in handling allegations of clerical sexual abuse may be infeasible in other local churches. On the other hand, what the American Church has learned, often the hard way, about rigorous screening of seminary applicants and about effective priestly formation (both in seminary and after ordination) might well be “transferable” to other ecclesiastical situations.

Misimpressions and prejudices notwithstanding, the Catholic Church in the United States has been more forthright in addressing clerical sexual abuse and other forms of clerical sexual misconduct than any other local church. Others can learn from this experience.

In the abuse summit’s official meetings and in the “Off Broadway” venues where Catholic leaders will conduct more informal conversations, American churchmen in Rome this month should
- explain the reforms the U.S. Church has implemented, including
the extensive use of lay expertise to address clerical sexual abuse and other forms of clerical misconduct;
- describe the positive effects of those reforms, especially on seminaries;
- offer to share ideas (and personnel) with other local churches that wish to explore adopting and adapting certain U.S. reforms; and
- make clear why the U.S. bishops believe it imperative for them to apply to themselves — and to be seen to apply to themselves —the code of conduct they have applied to priests since 2002.

How episcopal accountability is managed may well be another case of “horses for courses,” given vastly different situations throughout the world Church. Lay involvement in that accountability is imperative in the U.S.; it may be impracticable elsewhere.

But those serious about Catholicism’s capacity to embody and preach the gospel will understand that credible episcopal accountability is essential in carrying out the Church’s mission.

But will the summit participants ever get to hear, for example, why the reigning pope's much-touted announcement three years ago to constitute a church tribunal to deal with bishops who mishandle or totally ignore clerical sex abuse problems in their dioceses was never implemented? Perhaps Cardinal Sean O'Malley who was supposed to be the point man for this project can explain it to the assembled bishops.

I missed this earlier commentary by George Weigel on the now Mr McCarrick - it accompanied the first Letter from the Vatican by the Catholic Herald's 'Xavier Rynne II' who covered the first three Bergoglio synods with a daily letter, complemented by a guest essay and is doing the same thing for this summit. His first essay came out yesterday, 2/19. Apparently,by some arrangement, Rynne's rubric is also publiished on FIST THINGS... Weigel's post on McCarrick is distinct in many ways, even if only because his is the first commentary I have read from someone who actually knew McCarrick and had dealings with him, though Weigel makes it clear it was a relationship of mutual antipathy...

McCarrick's laicization
does 'make a difference'
by George Weigel
February 19, 2019

On Saturday, February 16, the Holy See announced that the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore Edgar McCarrick, had been “dismissed from the clerical state” — laicized — for the grave ecclesiastical crimes of sexual solicitation in the confessional and the sexual abuse of minors, compounded by the abuse of authority.

Within a few hours, the Washington Post had a story up on its Web site, asking, in effect, so what? Or as a former Church employee put it to Post religion writer Michelle Boorstein, “The reality is that, leaving aside the issue of embarrassment, and I’d be cautious on that, what difference does it make to McCarrick?....Realistically, when we think of justice, what will he experience? And he will know in his heart of hearts that he’s still a priest.”

The last, of course, is true enough, in that neither the wickedness in which Theodore McCarrick engaged, nor the penal action of the Church, has destroyed the sacramental character he received on the day of his ordination. But what difference did his laicization make? Let me suggest an answer. The difference it made is that, two days ago, Theodore McCarrick did not celebrate Sunday Mass for what was likely the first time in sixty years, eight months, and two weeks.

I have no idea what Mr. McCarrick’s present mental condition is, although he is said to be suffering from dementia [he's 88 now and will be 89 in July] and is not fully aware of what has happened to him since last June, when his crimes were first publicly revealed. [People with dementia who have not yet completely flipped over do have lucid intervals, and just imagine McCarrick's torment over his merciless if rightful reversal of fortune during such intervals! But he could better use his lucid intervals for prayer and sincere repentance, if not to issue a mea culpa and apologies [there must be a stronger word] to all his victims and their families, to the Church and to the faithful, since there is nothing more he can do in reparation for his misdeeds at this time and under the circumstances.]

But if this man who exercised the ministry of priest for more than six decades has any awareness of his situation, no more damning sentence —no more crushing penalty — could be imagined than the prohibition of celebrating Mass. Anyone who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand the priesthood of the Catholic Church.

As my friend Robert Louis Wilken (who was a Missouri Synod Lutheran before entering into full communion with the Catholic Church in his seventh decade) has frequently observed, Lutheran pastors think of themselves primarily as teachers and Catholic priests don’t (which is one reason, Dr. Wilken ruefully suggests, why Lutheran pastors are generally much better preachers than Catholic priests).

Catholic priests think of themselves primarily as celebrants and ministers of the sacraments. That is why a priest’s “first Mass” is such a tremendous occasion in his life: for to be the celebrant of Holy Mass is the very center of his vocational identity.

The priesthood is many things, but the celebration of Mass is that for which virtually every seminarian longs during his years of preparation for Holy Orders. To be forbidden to celebrate Mass licitly, which is one facet of the sentence of laicization imposed by the Holy See on Theodore McCarrick and confirmed by the pope, is thus the ultimate penalty.

That’s one huge difference the penalty of laicization makes. And if there is anything of conscience left in Theodore McCarrick, he felt the sting of that sentence in an unimaginable way on Sunday, February 17.

McCarrick was not my friend; quite the opposite, in fact. But I can only hope that if, in whatever diminished way, he feels the pain of being forbidden to function as a priest at the altar, that pain is purifying and cleansing. For at some point in the not too distant future, Theodore McCarrick will answer at the ultimate tribunal and before the final Judge for the many ways in which he betrayed and defaced the priesthood that was bestowed on him on May 31, 1958.

If the question, “What difference does it make?” has an answer, what about a further question: How did “McCarrick” happen? And by “McCarrick,” I mean the phenomenon and the career as well as the human personality.

The latter is, of course, finally impenetrable, but some obvious characteristics of the man should be reckoned with.
- Many (although I exclude myself from their company) found him engaging: a gregarious, nickname-confecting knock-off of the Irish Catholic hail-fellow-well-met priest of Hollywood lore.
- He had talent, including a capacity for hard work and a gift for languages.
- He was a prodigious fundraiser.
- His politics were generally indistinguishable from the Democratic Party orthodoxies of the moment, but
- he cared about religious freedom, serving on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
- His approach to international conflict was too often reminiscent of Rodney (“Why can’t we all just get along?”) King.
But I choose to believe that, beyond the narcissism that led him to insert himself as an (often self-appointed) envoy of the Church in difficult situations, he really did care about peaceful conflict resolution, especially among religious groups.

But he was also a psychopath. And a Church more alert to red flags about pathological personalities would have caught at least some of the signals.
- He was a shameless self-promoter, sending letters of blatant sycophancy to popes and other superiors and spreading money (raised from others) around projects he thought would win him favor in Rome and elsewhere.
- He was also brazen, carefully redacting a letter sent by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the U.S. bishops’ conference in 2004 so that the sharp edges of Ratzinger’s comments on pro-choice Catholics and the reception of holy communion were blunted to the point of invisibility.

It now seems reasonable to conclude that he defied the orders of Pope Benedict XVI to retire to a private life after financial settlements were reached with some of his abuse victims in the Diocese of Metuchen and the Archdiocese of Newark.

Yet even after that, his brazenness extended to his attempts to influence both the work of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (where he tried to prevent the election of then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan as president in 2010) and the conclave of 2013 (although his cringe-inducing lecture on that conclave at Villanova University, still available on YouTube, was more self-promotion than accurate history).

I have no doubt that he tried to give Pope Francis a warped view of the American Church as a reactionary throwback to pre-Vatican II days, led by right-wing bishops in cahoots with the Republican Party.

No one who knew Pope St. John Paul II - nor anyone who has studied his life, thought, and ministry — can imagine for a nanosecond that he would knowingly appoint a serial sexual predator as archbishop of Washington and a cardinal of the Church.

That those appointments took place, however, points to deep flaws in the process of selecting bishops and cardinals that must be addressed by any serious Catholic reform in response to the current crisis: that process must be refined so that it becomes much less likely that pathological personalities can mislead men who reposed trust in them.

There must also be a reckoning with the question of why, after McCarrick had been quickly retired as archbishop of Washington and told to lay low, he continued to “operate,” as he was wont to put it, in the Church and the world; for that was not a failure of perception, but of discipline.

Psychopaths can fool even astute and experienced leaders; that is one lesson that the Church must learn from its tawdry experiences with Marcial Maciel and Theodore McCarrick. And there is another: Never underestimate the power of the Evil One in these matters.

I once had a conversation about Maciel with the late Father Benedict Groeschel, a true Church reformer and a professional psychologist. After telling Father Benedict how I usually disliked reaching for the explanation, “He was demonically possessed,” because it seemed something of a dodge, I then said that the extraordinary character of the Maciel case did seem to point in that direction. So, admittedly from a distance and with no firsthand knowledge of the man, did Groeschel think Maciel might have been demonically possessed? Father Benedict thought a moment and said, “I would say, ‘demonically oppressed.’”

It was a fine distinction, the specifics of which I am happy to leave to competent theologians and mental health professionals. But I cannot exclude, and no one else should exclude, the work of the Evil One in pondering the terrible story of Theodore McCarrick. Was he demonically oppressed? What McCarrick did over a period of years to the young son of a family he had befriended arguably bespeaks wickedness of a more-than-natural sort.

And so here is another lesson of the McCarrick case: Do not dismiss satanic interference in the world and the Church as cinematic fantasy. Be alert to it. The Evil One is real; he hates Christ and Christ’s Church, and his hateful works have real effects in and on the Church.

Having said that Theodore McCarrick and I were not friends (which is to put the matter mildly), I must also say that, however much I disliked him, he was and remains, by virtue of baptism, my brother in Christ. I cannot deny that without denying the faith.

And while I do not regret the penalty imposed on him, which was entirely warranted in itself and an essential act of purification for the Church, I can, and do, pray that his laicization brings him to whatever repentance of which he is now capable.

And I also pray that this awful episode is a reminder to everyone, but especially to those with real power in the Church, that catching red flags and confronting wickedness, however painful, is far better for the Church and its mission than ignoring signals —or worse, avoiding confrontation for the sake of putatively avoiding scandal.

Here 's Mr Rynne's first Letter on this 'summit':

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The whole course of Christianity from the first ... is but one series of troubles and disorders. Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it. The Church is ever ailing ... Religion seems ever expiring, schisms dominant, the light of truth dim, its adherents scattered. The cause of Christ is ever in its last agony.
-Blessed John Henry Newman, Via Media (1834)

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John Henry Newman’s tart view of the ongoing mess that is the history of the Church was written when he was still an Anglican, but it seems unlikely that his sense of things changed materially after he entered the Catholic Church - indeed, it probably intensified.

Nonetheless, Newman’s panoramic, if mordant, overview of Christian history can be consoling whenever Catholicism finds itself in crisis, as it surely does now. Things have undoubtedly been worse than they are today. And for all the muck, pain, and anger of today’s Catholic crisis of sexually abusive clergy and failed ecclesiastical leadership, the Church has not been abandoned by its Lord or by the Holy Spirit.

Many good and life-giving things happen throughout the world Church every day: the sacraments are celebrated and grace is bestowed; sins are forgiven and wounded souls healed; those with nowhere to go find a home. And in its social doctrine the Church continues to bear a message that an increasingly incoherent postmodern world badly needs to hear.

But let’s not have too much consolation, please, on the eve of the eve of the meeting of Church leaders called by Pope Francis to look at the abuse crisis in global perspective.
- Catholicism needs to confront the full reality of this crisis “with the bark off,” as Lyndon Baines Johnson used to say.
- And it has to confront the crisis in a distinctively biblical and Catholic context, not according to story lines already being hawked by various interest groups, on social media, and in the world press.

The Body of Christ in the world is sick. And in addressing an illness that is making the Church’s primary missions of evangelization and sanctification ever more difficult, the caution observed by all serious physicians, “First, do no harm,” is worth keeping in mind. For that adage reminds us that accurate diagnosis is the beginning of real cure.

What will four days of deliberations by the presidents of over one hundred national and regional bishops’ conferences, meeting with the leadership of an often-dysfunctional Roman Curia, produce by way of specific reforms? No one knows, and the safer bet would be “not much.”

Such a diverse group, examining a complex set of problems that presents itself in different ways in different ecclesial contexts, is not going to come up with a comprehensive menu of reforms that satisfactorily addresses the crisis in full. The prudent hope would be that the “Meeting for the Protection of Minors” will at least get the problem right.

The more hopeful expectation is that by February 25, it will be understood, here in Rome and throughout the world Church, that different local churches are going to have to deal with the abuse crisis in distinctive ways, given their different situations and the widely divergent capacities of local churches.

An even more hopeful expectation would be that those parts of the world Church that have barely begun to recognize the crisis of clerical sexual abuse (e.g., Latin America) will begin to understand that there are things to be learned from local churches that have gotten to grips with the crisis, however imperfectly (e.g., the United States).

With that range of possible outcomes in mind, what might reasonably be expected from this week’s four-day meeting, both in terms of getting the problem right and in identifying important pieces of the solution to it? If this papally-summoned meeting facilitates agreement on the following ten points, it ought to be reckoned a considerable success.

1) Sexual abuse, whether of minors or vulnerable adults, is a global plague. No society is immune from it: The plague takes a variety of forms, including the 21st-century slavery of sex-trafficking, and the plague’s metastases touch virtually every institution in the world, not just (or even primarily) the Catholic Church. The sexual free-fire zone created over the past sixty years by the sexual revolution, which has been empowered by a contraceptive culture that reduces sex to a mere contact sport, has wrought havoc in individual lives and has warped entire societies.

2) Institutionally speaking, the Church may once have thought that the discipline on which it long prided itself rendered the Catholic clergy relatively invulnerable to the sexual revolution; that fantasy can no longer be indulged. The corruptions and perversions of the sexual revolution have seeped into the Church, not unlike the “smoke of Satan” to which Pope St . Paul VI referred in a homily on the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul in 1972.

The Church must not, however, blame this vulnerability, and the evil that has come into Catholicism because of it, on “the world.” That is too easy. A truly Catholic understanding of what we now face will recognize that the fundamental issue in today’s crisis is fidelity —fidelity to the truths inscribed in the embodied human person by the Creator; fidelity to the gospel, which demands respect for the dignity of everyone; and fidelity to the Catholic ethic of human love, which is rooted in biblical revelation and has been refined by moral reason for almost two millennia.

Sexually abusive behavior by clergy preying on minors is one gut-wrenching expression of this crisis of fidelity. The Church’s crisis of fidelity is not limited to “minors,” however, and while the protection of vulnerable children and young people is essential in addressing the crisis, it is insufficient.
- The crisis of fidelity also involves consensual adult sexual relations, either heterosexual or homosexual, by clerics who have promised God and the Church to live lives of celibate chastity.
- The crisis involves the failures of all the people of the Church, in whatever station of life, married or single, to live chastity in what Pope St. John Paul II called “the integrity of love.”
- And the crisis involves the failure of the Church’s chief teachers, its bishops, to teach the Catholic ethic of human love effectively, to enforce discipline among the clergy, and to call the laity to be exemplars of chaste love in a world that has increasingly succumbed to a false promise of sexual liberation.

In this biblical and theological perspective, the “solution” to today’s crisis is not going to be found in “best practices” alone, as important as pastoral and structural reform and competent management are in the Church.

The “solution” is a deeper conversion to Christ by every Catholic. And that deeper conversion includes a more radical, thoroughgoing embrace of the Church’s ethic of human love. That, in turn, means that those who dissent from the Catholic sexual ethic, whether their dissent involves heterosexual or homosexual relations, are part of the problem, not part of the solution. For intellectual dissembling in the Church has indisputably facilitated behavioral dysfunction (to put it gently).

3) The causes of sexually dysfunctional, abusive, and predatory personalities are as various as the personalities involved in abuse. Clericalism - the wicked exploitation of the authority Catholics recognize in their ordained ministers and leaders as one effect of the sacrament of Holy Orders — is a facilitator of clerical sexual abuse, not its cause.
- Clericalism makes it easier for sexually dysfunctional clergy to become sexual predators;
- that is why clericalism has no place in a Church that teaches that the sacrament of Holy Orders is “ordered” to service, not power.
- To blame sexual abuse on “clericalism,” though, is to confuse facilitation with causality.

4) The celibacy to which Latin-rite Catholic priests and bishops pledge themselves is not the problem, and the ordination of viri probati (mature married men) to the priesthood is not the solution to the abuse crisis. Clerical sexual abuse is at least as much a problem in Protestant denominations with a married clergy as it is in the Catholic Church; it may be more of a problem, in that empirical studies suggest that the ultimate horror of the sexual abuse of the young is that most of it takes place within families. Moreover, [B]marriage, as the Catholic Church understands it, is not a crime-prevention program; a Church struggling to proclaim the beauty and dignity of marriage should not suggest that it is.

5) In Latin-rite Catholicism, living celibacy well is the solution — and it must be recognized that that challenging way of life is becoming ever more difficult throughout the world.
- The Western sexual free-fire zone places heavy demands on those living celibate chastity (as it does on those living marital chastity). - Celibate love is also a challenge in traditional societies where the exploitation of women by men is a deeply ingrained cultural habit.
- The LGBT revolution poses its own challenges, and not only in the West.
All of this underscores the imperative of the most careful scrutiny of potential candidates for the priesthood, the further and deeper reform of seminary formation for celibate love, and the necessity of ongoing personal and professional development programs for those who have been ordained.

6) Bishops must be held accountable to the standards of behavior to which they hold their priests and to which they call the laity entrusted to their care.
- This requires the recovery of the ancient practice of fraternal correction of bishops by brother-bishops, and the development of mechanisms by which incompete

nt, malfeasant, or corrupt bishops can be readily removed from office. The Catholic Church spent the better part of two hundred years wresting control of the appointment of bishops from various state authorities, so that the Church could choose its principal leaders by its own evangelical and pastoral criteria.
- Having claimed the right to choose its own leadership, the Church must now own the responsibility for disciplining that leadership—and changing it when the evangelical and pastoral good of the Church requires change.

7) Effective episcopal leadership of the priests of a diocese demands that the local bishop treat his brother-priests as sons and friends, not as chattels or employees. A bishop who knows his priests well, who thinks of his priests as a presbyteral college sharing responsibility for the evangelization and sanctification of the diocese, and who participates with his priests in programs of ongoing formation is far more likely to spot issues before they become problems
— and far more likely to have the cooperation of his priests in dealing with problems when they occur.

8) Episcopal credibility in the Church (at least throughout the West) is at a low watermark — in part because of political grandstanding and media hostility, which have skewed Catholics’ perceptions of their leaders - but also and more fundamentally because of too many episcopal failures in governance.
- When episcopal credibility wanes, so does episcopal authority.
- Lay collaboration in the governance of the Church — collaboration that respects the bishop’s ultimate authority in the local Church but brings lay expertise to bear on the exercise of that authority — enhances episcopal credibility and thus strengthens the bishop’s authority.
- This lay collaboration will necessarily take different forms in different local churches.
- But the current Roman habit of dismissing as “Protestantizing” any proposals for lay collaboration in the local bishop’s exercise of authority with priests, and in the bishops’ exercise of correction among themselves, must end.

9) Being a bishop in the Catholic Church today is a very tough job. Choosing the right men for that job is not easy. Those choices will be better made when the pool of those consulted about a priest’s fitness for the episcopate is broadened to include knowledgeable lay people—a rare occurrence today.

Lay people, and especially lay women, see both capacities and deficiencies in their pastors that priests and bishops often miss. There is no way out of the current Catholic crisis without credible and effective episcopal leadership; finding that leadership will be facilitated by involving knowledgeable, orthodox lay men and women in the process.

10) Resolving today’s Catholic crisis — which is a crisis of chastity and a crisis of leadership [both arising from a crisis of faith]— is thus everyone’s responsibility, because the renewal of holiness in the Church and the effective proclamation of the gospel are everyone’s responsibility.

Xavier Rynne II's February 21 letter from the Vatican has to do with St Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church and scourge of clerical sex offenses, whose feast we celebrate today, the day providentially - but perhaps unknowingly - chosen by Pope Francis to begin his summit on clerical sex abuse...

Remembering St. Peter Damian
by Xavier Rynne II
Letter from the Vatican #3
February 21,2019

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Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we may so follow the teaching and example of the Bishop Saint Peter Damian, that, putting nothing before Christ, and always ardent in the service of your Church, we may be led to the joys of eternal light. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Whether accidental or deliberate, the fact that a world meeting of Catholic leaders to address the scourge of clerical sexual abuse is opening on today’s liturgical memorial of St. Peter Damian is certainly appropriate. That coincidence could also prove providential, if those participating in the discussions of the next four days take the example of this Doctor of the Church seriously and apply his candor, tenacity, and courage to our own times.

Born in Ravenna in 1007, Peter Damian was well-educated in the humanities and pursued a career as a teacher before taking Holy Orders and then entering the monastery at Fonte Avellana in 1035. Elected prior in 1043, he led a reformed monastic community that lived from the insights of both St. Benedict and St. Romuald, combining traditional aspects of monasticism with the more rigorous disciplines of hermits.

After reforming the life of his own community, he devoted himself to reforming the clergy as a whole, working with several popes but especially Leo IX. Created cardinal against his will by Pope Stephen IX, he also undertook direct pastoral duties as archbishop of Ostia, one of the “suburbicarian” dioceses held by the senior members of the College of Cardinals.

In 1067, Pope Alexander II allowed him to return to his preferred life at Fonte Avellana, although he continued to undertake diplomatic missions for the Holy See. He died in 1072 and was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1828 by Pope Leo XII. As Pope Benedict XVI said of Damian, “He spent himself with lucid consistency and great severity for the reform of the Church of his time.”

And the Church of the eleventh century was in desperate need of reform. Much of it was an ungodly mess, not unlike Western Europe itself, which had suffered under decades of depredations by various invaders, including Vikings, Muslims, and Magyars.

Intellectual and cultural life had eroded, to the point where, as one author puts it, “the literary patrimony of Latin antiquity maintained a tenuous presence in the care of monasteries and diocesan libraries,” which had themselves been assaulted by invading marauders with no regard for learning. Commercial life was similarly broken and poverty was as widespread as ignorance.

The papacy had been in crisis for well over a hundred years, sometimes a pawn and sometimes a player in the power struggles that convulsed Italy. Corrupt laity deposed popes and installed their preferred candidates, some of whose parentage was, to put it discreetly, dubious. One pope of the early tenth century, John XII, was said to live in a “pigsty of lust” and died at age 26.

This turmoil had a deeply corrosive effect on clerical discipline. As Matthew Cullinan Hoffman [who published an English translation of Liber Gomorrhianus last year] writes, “The ranks of the monasteries and secular priesthood had been adulterated with lax and uneducated men, unworthy of their office. Corruption was rife, and the offices of the clergy, including bishoprics, were often sold. Many priests violated the Church’s strictures against sacerdotal marriage by entering into illicit unions with wives or concubines, with the consent and even approval of their flocks. Large numbers had succumbed to unnatural sexual practices, all of which fell under the dread name of ‘sodomy,’ in reference to the city of Sodom destroyed by God in the book of Genesis.”

Peter Damian, a true ascetic, was not just appalled by “sodomy,” which in those days was a term covering a range of sins against chastity; he decided to do something about it.
- His campaign for the reform of the clergy was carried on by a variety of means, including preaching, teaching, and confronting ecclesiastical authorities — including the highest.
- He also wrote The Book of Gomorrah, a series of brief essays which was based on his appeals to Pope Stephen IX to undertake a massive reform of the clergy. The Book of Gomorrah remains in print, and while it constitutes some very chilling reading, its brutal candor about clerical sexual corruption and its insistence on the imperative of clerical sexual discipline for the Church’s well-being have considerable resonance today, almost a millennium after Damian wrote.

And while twenty-first-century Church leaders may think (with some reason) that we have a more thorough understanding of the often-roiling dynamics of human sexuality than was available to the cardinal archbishop of Ostia in the mid-eleventh century, everyone participating in this week’s Vatican abuse summit can learn from St. Peter Damian’s unflinching honesty about the crisis of the Church in his time, and from his conviction that the truths embedded in the Sixth Commandment are not negotiable —in his time or any other time.

It is not easy to imagine, for example, that Damian would have been pleased with the “statement” released a few days ago, in anticipation of the abuse summit, by the Unions of Superiors General (of religious men and women in consecrated life). No one could quibble with what was obviously intended to be the money quote from this document: “The abuse of children is wrong anywhere and anytime: this point is not negotiable.” That is the ultimate no-brainer. The Unions’ statement also made unexceptionable pledges about outreach to victims, improvement of religious formation, and the importance of a deeper conversion of hearts, minds, and souls.
- But nowhere in the statement was there any acknowledgement of the violations of chastity that are still rife in various congregations of consecrated life, some of which have decimated those communities (not least through the scourge of AIDS).[/B
- Nor did the Unions reckon with the fact that more than a few consecrated religious men and women have been major contributors to the culture of theological dissent that has, at the very least, been one factor in religious superiors’ blindness to sexual dysfunction within their communities, and one facilitator of sexual abuse by those who once formally promised poverty, chastity, and obedience of God and the Church.
- Nor did the Unions’ statement get beyond the “protection of minors” issue to the larger crisis of chastity throughout the world Church. Peter Damian believed that the truths that Catholic moral reason had learned from the Sixth Commandment, however difficult to live, were true “anywhere and anytime”; there is no affirmation of that non-negotiability in the Unions’ statement.

St. Peter Damian’s is not the only voice to be heard as the Catholic Church wrestles with the challenge of chastity, especially for its ordained leaders, in the hyper-sexualized twenty-first century.

But it is precisely the cleansing harshness of his critique — the prophetic harshness of a John the Baptist — that makes his one voice to be reckoned with. And whatever the limits of his method of argument, his bracing if jarring example of clear-eyed honesty about the facts is one that must be followed, if this abuse summit is going to be a step toward authentic and deep Catholic reform.


February 21, Feast of St Peter Damian -
a prophet for today's Church

February 21, 2019

Incredible but true. This very day, February 21, the day on which Pope Francis is inaugurating the summit on sexual abuse with the leaders of the Catholic hierarchy worldwide, the Church celebrates the liturgical memory of Saint Peter Damian, a great reformer of the 11th century, later proclaimed a Ddoctor of the Church, the author of a book with an emblematic title:, Liber Gomorrhianus [Book of Gomorrah].

The coincidence, as unintentional as it may be, could not have been more appropriate. Because in that book, composed in the form of a letter, Saint Peter Damian launched a dramatic appeal to the pope and bishops of his time, that they free the Church from the “sodomitic filth that insinuates itself like a cancer in the ecclesiastical order, or rather like a bloodthirsty beast rampaging through the flock of Christ.” Sodom and Gomorrah, in the book of Genesis, are the two cities that God destroyed with fire on account of their sins of sex against nature.

But there’s more. Because the German Church historian Walter Brandmüller, who recently has done the most to bring to light the extraordinary similarities between the crisis of the Church in the 11th century and the contemporary crisis, is also the cardinal who in the run-up to this summit signed, along with fellow cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, a letter-appeal to the bishops of the whole world that they break the silence and finally face head-on the plague of homosexual activity among sacred ministers.

Last November 5, in conjunction with the release of the essay by Cardinal Brandmüller on the relevance of Saint Peter Damian’s life and times, Settimo Cielo published an ample summary of it, with references to the complete text in German and Italian.

What follows is that very post, which more than ever is worth rereading today, on the day of the liturgical feast of that great saint and reformer.


Gomorrah in the 21st Century:
The appeal of a cardinal and Church historian
Appeal of a Cardinal and Church Historian

“The situation is comparable to that of the Church in the 11th and 12th century.” As an authoritative Church historian and as president of the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences from 1998 to 2009, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, 89, has no doubt when he sees the present-day Church “shaken to its foundations” on account of the spread of sexual abuse and homosexuality “in an almost epidemic manner among the clergy and even in the hierarchy.”

“How could it have come to this point?” the cardinal wonders. And his answer is found in an extensive and detailed article published in recent days in the German monthly Vatikan Magazin edited by Guido Horst:
> Homosexualität und Missbrauch - Der Krise begegnen: Lehren aus der Geschichte
(Homosexuality and abuses: Confront the crisis - learn from history)

Brandmüller refers to the centuries in which the bishoprics and the papacy itself had become such a source of wealth that there was “fighting and haggling over them,” with temporal rulers claiming that they themselves could apportion these offices in the Church.

The effect was that the place of pastors was taken by morally dissolute persons who were attached to material endowment rather than to the care of souls, by no means inclined to lead a chaste and virtuous life.

Not only concubinage, but homosexuality too was increasingly widespread among the clergy, to such an extent that Saint Peter Damian in 1049 delivered to the newly elected pope Leo IX, known as a zealous reformer, his Liber Gomorrhianus, composed in the form of a letter, which in essence was an appeal to save the Church from the “sodomitic filth that insinuates itself like a cancer in the ecclesiastical order, or rather like a bloodthirsty beast rampaging through the flock of Christ.” Sodom and Gomorrah, in the book of Genesis, are the two cities that God destroyed with fire on account of their sins.

But the thing more worthy of note, Brandmüller writes, was that “almost simultaneously a lay movement arose that was aimed not only against the immorality of the clergy but also against the appropriation of ecclesiastical offices by secular powers.”

“What rose up was the vast popular movement called pataria, led by members of the Milanese nobility and by some members of the clergy, but supported by the people. In close collaboration with the reformers associated with Saint Peter Damian, and then with Gregory VII, with the bishop Anselm of Lucca, an important canonist who later became Pope Alexander II, and with others still, the patarini demanded, even resorting to violence, the implementation of the reform that after Gregory VII took the name ‘Gregorian’: for a celibacy of the clergy lived out faithfully and against the occupation of dioceses by secular powers.”

Subsequently, of course, it dispersed into pauperist and anti-hierarchical movements, on the verge of heresy, and was only partially reintegrated with the Church “thanks to the farseeing pastoral action of Innocence III.” But the “interesting aspect” on which Brandmüller insists is that “the reforming movement broke out almost simultaneously in the uppermost hierarchical circles in Rome and among the vast lay population of Lombardy, in response to a situation considered unbearable.”

So then, what is similar and different in the Church today, with respect to back then?

What is similar, Brandmüller notes, is that then as now the ones expressing the protest and demanding a purification of the Church are above all segments of the Catholic laity, especially in North America, in the footsteps of the “marvelous homage to the important role of the witness of the faithful in matters of doctrine” brought to light in the 19th century by Blessed John Henry Newman.

Then as now, these faithful find beside them a few zealous pastors. But it must be recognized - Brandmüller writes - that the impassioned appeal to the upper hierarchy of the Church and ultimately to the pope to join them in combating the scourge of homosexuality among the clergy and the bishops is not meeting with correspondingly adequate responses, unlike in the 11th and 12th centuries.

Also in the Christological battles of the 4th century - Brandmüller points out - “the episcopacy remained inactive for long stretches.” And if it remains so today, with respect to the spread of homosexuality among sacred ministers, “this could be based on the fact that personal initiative and the awareness of their responsibility as pastors on the part of the individual bishops are made more difficult by the structures and apparatus of the episcopal conferences, with the pretext of collegiality or synodality.”

As for the pope, Brandmüller attributes not only to the current one but also to his predecessors the weakness of not opposing the currents of moral theology according to which “what was forbidden yesterday can be allowed today,” homosexual acts included.

It is true - Brandmüller acknowledges - that the 1993 encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” of John Paul II - “in which the contribution of Joseph Ratzinger has not yet been duly recognized” - reconfirmed “with great clarity the foundations of the Church’s moral teaching.” But this “ran up against widespread rejection from theologians, perhaps because it had been published only when the theological-moral decay was already too far advanced.”

It is also true that “some books on sexual morality were condemned” and “two professors had their teaching licenses revoked, in 1972 and 1986.”

“But,” Brandmüller continues, “the truly important heretics, like the Jesuit Josef Fuchs, who from 1954 to 1982 was a professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and Bernhard Häring, who taught at the Redemptorist Institute in Rome, as well as the highly influential moral theologian from Bonn, Franz Böckle, or from Tübingen, Alfons Auer, were able to spread without interference, right in front of Rome and the bishops, the seed of error. The attitude of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in these cases is, in retrospect, simply incomprehensible. It saw the wolf come and stood looking on while it ravaged the fold.”

[This is a most disturbing accusation. Did the cardinal look into the records of the CDF to see what measures were taken about the theologians he mentions, whether investigations were made and what these were, and the possibility that the investigations showed their writings, however 'heterodox', did not merit formal sanctions? Or perhaps lesser sanctions were issued through the theologians' local bishops? I am more than surprised - and disappointed - that Sandro Magister did not take the initiative to look into this, considering the enormity of the accusation Brandmueller made against the CDF,about which he did not even comment.

Brandmueller, a friend and near contemporary of Benedict XVI, who made him a cardinal in 2010, owes us an explanation. At the time he wrote this article on Peter Damian, he had had six years during which to ask Benedict XVI directly why the theologians he mentions were not disciplined by the CDF, assuming he never asked him before (and if he did not, then why not?)

If he did not, then he is doing what he did when in 2017, he publicly criticised Benedict XVI for his renunciation and for the provisions he made as to how he would carry on as emeritus pope - when it would have been more proper for him to discuss this with his friend first and then also state his side of the issue in the denunciation he published. Obviously he did not, which is why the usually gentle and forbearing Benedict XVI wrote to reproach him privately.]

The risk is that on account of this lack of initiative on the accusation of the upper hierarchy even the most committed Catholic laity, left on its own, might “no longer recognize the nature of the Church founded on the sacred order and slip, in protesting against the ineptitude of the hierarchy, into an Evangelical-style communitarian Christianity.”

And instead, the more the hierarchy, from the pope down, feel supported by the effective resolve of the faithful to renew and revive the Church, the more a true housecleaning can be performed.

Brandmüller concludes: “It is in the collaboration of the bishops, priests, and faithful, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that the current crisis can and must become the point of departure for the spiritual renewal - and therefore also for the new evangelization - of a post-Christian society.”

Brandmüller is one of the four cardinals who in 2016 submitted to Pope Francis their “dubia” on the changes being made in the doctrine of the Church, without ever receiving a response.

This time will the pope listen and take him seriously into consideration, as Leo IX did with Saint Peter Damian?