THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

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

October 10, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[IMG]http://u.cubeupload.com/MARITER_7/TWEET181008CATHSATON.png
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But for me, the idea that Vatican officials protect prelates accused of abuse, but take the offensive against an archbishop who, by questioning policies, puts himself outside the protection of the episcopal club is the clearest example of 'clericalism' in action I can envisage. [Hear that, 'Your Holiness'???]


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

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

Oct 11, 2018

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

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

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

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

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


Cardinal Wuerl finally had
his resignation accepted...

October 13, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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