THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Robert Spaemann, the last great Catholic philosopher

Decembr 13, 2018

He was the philosopher closest to Benedict XVI, his friend and peer. He died at the age of 91 on December 10, in the light of the season of Advent.

Further below, a profile of him is sketched by one of his most faithful disciples, Sergio Belardinelli, a professor of the sociology of cultural processes at the University of Bologna, who ws the academic coordinator of the “Cultural Project” of the Italian episcopal conference during the years of Cardinal Camillo Ruini’s presidency.

But it must be noted that Spaemann was both a philosopher and a churchman, a Catholic through and through, very severe with the tendencies of the current pontificate, especially after the publication of “Amoris Laetitia.”

His last public statements stand out for these judgments of his on the present state of the Church:

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“Pope Francis does not love unambiguous clarity. His response is so ambiguous that everyone can interpret it, and does interpret it, in favor of his own opinion. He wants only to ‘make proposals.’ But to contradict the proposals is not forbidden. And, in my view, they should be vigorously contradicted.”

“Pope Francis likes to compare those who are critical of his politics with those who ‘sit on Moses’ seat.’ But in this way the shot comes back at the one who fired it. It was the scribes who were defending divorce and handing down the rules about it. The disciples of Jesus were, instead, disconcerted over the strict ban on divorce on the part of the Master.”

“Uncertainty, insecurity, and confusion are growing in the Church: from the episcopal conferences to the last parish in the jungle. “

“The chaos was first set up with a stroke of the pen. The pope should have known that such a step would split the Church and lead it toward a schism. This schism would not reside on the periphery, but in the very heart of the Church.”

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Settimo Cielo posted two interviews with Spaemann:
> Spaemann: "Anche nella Chiesa c’è un limite di sopportabilità"
(Even in the Churh, there's a limit to what can be supported)
> Spaemann: "È il caos eretto a principio con un tratto di penna"
(It is chaos established in principle by the storke of a pen)

This is the profile of Spaemann that his disciple Belardinelli published on December 12 in the newspaper “Il Foglio.”

A true teacher who forced one to think

by Sergio Belardinelli
December 12, 2018

With Robert Spaemann there departs a true teacher, one of the few still out there. For this reason the mourning is even greater.

A Catholic thinker, a pupil of Joachim Ritter, Spaemann considered philosophy a genuine exercise of “institutionalized ingenuity.” In a complex world, he often repeated, what must a philosopher do if not say out loud what is before the eyes of all and no one is talking about? For this reason he compared the philosopher to the little girl in the famous fairy tale by Andersen. It was natural, therefore, that some of the powerful should be resentful about this.

His reflection essentially revolved around two kinds of problems.
- The first concerns the modern conscience, its greatness, but also its limitations and its crisis;
- The second, the restatement of theology and natural law, and therefore of the concept of the person, as criteria in the light of which the most burning issues of contemporary ethics and politics should be addressed: problems of the environment, of bioethics, of education, and of the safeguarding of the rule of law in an ever more functionalized society, just to cite a few of them, certainly central in many of his works.

His assessment of the classics of modern and contemporary thought, from Descartes to Kant, from Rousseau to Marx, from Hobbes to the Scottish Enlightenment, to Nietzsche, Habermas. or Luhmann, always followed, more or less, the same procedure:
- first a critical assessment, aimed at penetrating their thought and the problem that might be at the center of their attention, demonstrating their importance but also their difficulties and limitations;
- subsequently the assessment became, so to speak, constructive, and thanks above all to the most ancient classics, in particular of Plato and Aristotle, but also of Augustine and Thomas, it was indicated how certain difficulties could be overcome and at the same time profited from.

I would say that this was the unmistakable style of Robert Spaemann.

Whether it was a matter of rationality of action, of rationality of power, of God, of justice, of the meaning of education or of the necessary safeguarding of nature and of human nature, Spaemann was always striking for the clarity and profundity of his argumentation, for his capacity to allow himself to be guided by the thing itself with a freedom and a radicality of thought that was truly striking, surprising, even unsettling.

His was a style that inspired trust, forced one to think, remaining throughout the years, at least for me, an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

Mr Spaemann deserves a far greater tribute post than from just one source, but as it has been almost a week since he died, I have to post a placeholder to which I shall add other notable obituaries following his death.

How Joseph Ratzinger saw past
the Church’s established structures
For the future Pope, the Holy Spirit was 'speaking up'
through the new movements which bypassed old bureaucracies
by Fr Raymond de Souza, SJ

13 December, 2018


This year a likely Catholic Christmas gift will be the new biography of the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI: His Life and Thought. Elio Guerriero’s book first appeared in Italian in 2016, and now is available in English from Ignatius Press.

In a lengthy book, one thing that caught my attention was the long relationship of Ratzinger/Benedict to new movements. This most conservative of figures was inclined to see the future of the Church not in the established structures of German Catholicism, but in the new movements that often challenged those structures.

Indeed, the establishment of German Catholicism battled with Ratzinger/Benedict in Rome, not knowing that its moment would come under his successor. There is nothing that the German establishment wants – liberalisation regarding divorce and remarriage, local authority over liturgical translations, Holy Communion for Protestants – that does not seem to be tacitly encouraged under Pope Francis. The abdication of the German pope surprisingly gave way to the German pontificate.

The biographer faces an impossible challenge. Joseph Ratzinger’s long service to the Church – brilliant professor, gifted writer, theological expert, editorial founder, diocesan bishop, chief lieutenant of St John Paul II, pope himself – is simply too much to fit neatly into some 600 pages.

Nevertheless, it’s an admirable book, and a friendly one. Guerriero treats the question of the abdication by simply presenting Benedict’s own explanation, namely that the trip to Rio for World Youth Day 2013 was impossible for him owing to “jet lag” and so resignation necessarily followed. The biographer refrains from noting the utter insufficiency of such an explanation in the face of the destabilising impact of something never done before in the history of the Church: a papal abdication absent a crisis of legitimacy.
[But why not a papal renunciation for reasons of advanced age, which is, in itself, a disease??? Which was the formal reason given by Benedict XVI, and all he needed. And a most courageous and considered decision he made because the obvious reaction would have been - and was - "But John Paul II continued to the very end despite his advanced state of Parkinson's!", beside which example he would look weak and cowardly and all other sorts of negative adjectives compared to the saintly perseverance of his predecessor to the very last tortured second of his life. But Benedict XVI's honesty won through - aided no doubt by the prayers he must have devoted to making his final decision - which means he decided to risk mockery and worse by becoming, in the eyes of many, the feeble polar opposite to John Paul II.

Moreover, I had always found it strange that even intelligent persons like Fr De Souza - and in this case, biographer Elio Guerriero - should have seized on Benedict XVI's statement about how on physician's advice, he would be unable to travel to Rio for WYD, which he obviously used as an example of the physical constraints brought on him by his advancing age and never-very-robust state of health! Yet how many otherwise intelligent persons I read at the time mocked Benedict XVI mercilessly for citing that as an example and considering it 'the excuse' he was making for renouncing the papacy. He hadn't yet actually stepped down as pope and already, he was being pilloried and derided for even citing the Rio trip, as if he were a dotard who was no longer making any sense! Did De Souza and all those other mockers really think so?

As for the 'destabilizing impact' De Souza mentions, can we not turn that around and say that Benedict XVI's decision to step down was also an expression of his faith in the soundness of the procedures in place for choosing another pope worthy of the office? That the last thing he - or anyone else, for that matter, expected - was for the Conclave to choose a man who has turned out to be what Jorge Bergoglio is????

The book must necessarily treat two pontificates. “No important decision was made in the pontificate without first consulting Ratzinger,” Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz told the author regarding St John Paul II’s service. And it was as the chief lieutenant for John Paul that Ratzinger’s appreciation of the new movements gained prominence.

“As a bishop and a cardinal, Ratzinger had watched the ecclesial movements with interest,” writes Guerriero. “He saw in them the possibility of new blood flowing into the somewhat sclerotic arteries of the old ecclesiastical institutions. He had looked at them with joy and hope during the toughest moments of the student protests, when it seemed that the young people were going to abandon the Church en masse.”

“Here was something nobody had planned on,” Cardinal Ratzinger said in 1998. “The Holy Spirit had, so to say, spoken up for himself again.”

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“Within [the Church] there are merely human institutions relating to administration, the organisation of events, and the like,” writes Guerriero on the novelty of Ratzinger’s approach. “Precisely because they are not essential, these organisations must be reduced to a minimum and, above all, must not extinguish listening to the Spirit, attention to his outpourings that bring renewal.

This was the great newness, which for many bishops, especially those from countries with an ancient Christian tradition, seemed almost a provocation. It was not primarily up to the movements to fit themselves into the organisational structures of the dioceses and of the associations. The bishops, on the contrary, were called to reduce their organisational structures drastically and to welcome the new phenomena mandated by the Spirit.”

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The new movements were central to Ratzinger’s life. When in the 1970s he and others launched Communio, the important theological journal, the Italian edition was not entrusted to the academic guild, but to bright theologians from Communion and Liberation, a young Angelo Scola first among them.

The professor with traditional liturgical leanings would [did] not entrust his papal household to an order of Tridentine nuns, but rather members of Memores Domini, consecrated lay women from Communion and Liberation. The Holy Father would join their weekly “school of community” meetings, where a future Doctor of the Church would listen attentively to the reflections of the women of his household.

The figure that emerges from Guerriero’s book is not so much the guardian of orthodoxy – though that was his mission for the long years at John Paul’s side – but rather a disciple who is convinced that the disenchanted modern world needs a fresh encounter with the friendship offered by Christ. As a pastor, he is convinced that bishops and their administrations can no longer offer this, and so have to make way for those who can in the new movements of the Spirit. We thus see a continuity from the young Ratzinger, frustrated with the old theological schemes and identified as a liberal at Vatican II, to the mature Ratzinger, frustrated with the ossified thinking of institution-minded bishops, and looking for new pastoral methods.

The subtitle then is incomplete; Benedict is more than a man of thought. He is a pastor searching for new methods. The future of the Church for him lay not in correcting the errors of the theological guild, but in bypassing them altogether to new methods, new movements, a new evangelisation which comes from a “new outpouring of the Spirit”.

Not that Joseph Ratzinger's faith in the new movements was always upheld. In the earlier days, Peter Seewald recounts in one of his books how a German new movement had captivated the cardinal at first until the movement sought to make him their 'captive' by seeking to hijack Seewald's first interview book project with the cardinal and make it 'their project'. Which was, in fact, delayed for more than a year until Seewald was sure they would have no say on the book at all (even if they lent one of their places in Frascati as the site for the interview). The other big disappointment was the Neo-Cathechumenal Way with its insistence on its own 'liturgy' to the point that Benedict XVI had to admonish them in public to desist from their 'liturgical autonomy' (a problem that nonetheless continues). And who knows what he has to say about Comunione e Liberazione today. Or even the Opus Dei, for that matter.

Every day in every way, the reigning pope revels in imposing his personal opinions on the Church and on the world as his 'teaching', regardless of whether they violate Church Tradition, Magisterium, and even Scripture. I found a memorable line rereading Fulton Sheen's Life of Christ, during his reflection on the Agony in the Garden.

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"What is sin for the soul but a systematic principle of having its own wisdom and source of happiness working out its own ends as if there were no God? Anti-Christ is nothing else but the full unhindered growth of self-will".

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I had never before remarked this passage particularly, but how can it not leap to the eye with the example of Bergoglio? Is he not defined by that?


Pope Francis’s new comments
on the death penalty are
incoherent and dangerous
He claims that his innovative 'teaching' “does not imply any contradiction”
of the Church’s tradition but, one has to say reluctantly, it indeed does.
by Fr George Rutler

December 18, 2018


Debate has always been an invigorating and constructive way of defining and refining views, assuming that the debaters have minds of probity and reason. This is increasingly absent in our culture, where subjectivism rules, and where there is only one debater, and his opponent is a straw man of his own construction.

Yet when one reads the “spontaneous remarks” of Pope Francis on various subjects of the day, the quality of reasoning and information of facts is so fugitive, that frustration yields to sheer embarrassment.

There is, for example, the Holy Father’s remarks to youth in Turin on a hot June day in 2015: Even a Reuters press release said that his smorgasbord of concerns, from bankers to the weapons industry to Nazi concentration camps, was “rambling.” While constrained by respect for the Petrine office, and aware of the strains that imposes, it is distressing to look for a train of thought and find only a train wreck.

That has to be the impression after reading the Pope’s remarks to a Delegation of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty. Pope Francis reiterated his absolutist opposition to the death penalty which, by a singular gesture, he has also ordered be inscribed in the Catechism.

Perhaps aware that public response might be problematic, he did not mention his opposition even to life sentences, having called them a form of “hidden death penalty”. This went far beyond the second edition of the 1992 Catechism, which affirmed the integrity of capital punishment in Scripture and Tradition but added that the cases in which the execution of the offender as an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.” [Much needs to be said against Bergoglio's diktat that he considers life imprisonment a 'hidden death penalty'. In which he imposes his personal opinion that has been upheld by all known jurisprudences in history and at present. Who is he to set himself up now as the supreme arbiter of how men are to be judged by the law for their crimes?]

By adding to a catechetical text a prudential opinion, John Paul II did something unprecedented, and the whirlwind now being reaped in a pontificate less theologically acute, could justify concluding that the insertion of a prudential apostrophe was imprudent.

Pope Francis uses the term ”inadmissible” to describe the death penalty, although it has no theological substance, and by avoiding words such as “immoral” or “wrong”, inflicts on discourse an ambiguity similar to parts of Amoris Laetitia.

The obvious meaning is that capital punishment is intrinsically evil, but to say so outright would be too blatant. He also calls all life “inviolable,” a term which applies only to innocent life and has no moral warrant otherwise.

Then there is the ancillary and unmentioned consideration of the role of punishment and hell in all this, conjuring a suspicion of universalism, which is the denial of eternal alienation from God.

In 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger explained: “There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia” and should a Catholic support the death penalty “he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.”

Pope Francis has discarded that, just as he has set aside the entire magisterial tradition of the Church on the kinds of penalties — medicinal and retributive — and their functions. This is no surprise, since an attaché of the Holy See Press Office, Father Thomas Rosica, has said in a statement ultramontane to the point of heresy: “Our Church has indeed entered a new phase: with the advent of this first Jesuit pope, it is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture.”

Exceptional delineations of authentic teaching on penalties were explained by Pius XII in his discourse to the First National Conference of Italian Lawyers in 1949 and the Sixth Internal Congress of Penal Law in 1953. A definitive new study is the book By Man Shall His Blood be Shed by Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette.

Professor Feser has logically asked why we should have reverence for a father who has no reverence for the fathers, and warns that by divorcing his teaching from the constant tradition, Pope Francis is cutting off the very branch on which he sits.

Pope Francis justifies himself by invoking a ”progress” in society, but this is a humanistic — even Pelagian — confidence that has no warrant in reality. It also lets loose a cataract of contradictions. For instance, one of the Pope’s men, Archbishop Marcelo Sorondo, praised Communist China for coming “closer to Catholic social teaching” than the United States, although there were 23 executions in the United States last year compared with 1,551 in China, more than all other nations combined.

Pope Francis says that his innovative teaching “does not imply any contradiction” of the Church’s tradition but, one has to say reluctantly, it indeed does. The shift cannot be called a legitimate development of doctrine because it neglects all the classical criteria for authentic development, most especially what John Henry Newman named “preservation of type.”

And as capital punishment pertains to natural law, once it is rejected as intrinsically wrong, the same could happen to any aspect of natural law, not least the anthropology of Humanae Vitae or the moral doctrine of Veritatis Splendor.

Abidingly conscious of the claims and burdens of the Church’s highest office, that holy seat and high duty is diminished by neglect of its obligations to the perennial teachings of the fathers; and the faithful are at risk when they are offered confusion and superficiality in place of systematic thought.

In short, the Vatican has become a theological Chernobyl. We are in dangerous territory.

No time to do the necessary 'posting style' changes now but this is the article with Prof. Feser's reaction to the new Bergoglian self-indulgence on the death penalty and life imprisonment.


Sawing off the branch on which he sits:
Experts question Francis attack
on previous popes over death penalty
by Diane Montagna

ROME, December 17, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has incited further controversy in a recent address expounding on his reasons for changing the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty.

As LifeSite reported earlier, Pope Francis told a delegation from the International Commission against the Death Penalty in a Dec. 17 address that popes “in past centuries” ignored “the primacy of mercy over justice” in using the death penalty, which he called an “inhuman form of punishment” that is now “always inadmissible.”

Insisting that the change to n. 2267 of the Catechism is not a “contradiction with the teaching of the past,” but a “harmonious development” of doctrine, Pope Francis reiterated that the Church now teaches, “in the light of the Gospel, that the death penalty is always inadmissible because it counters the inviolability and the dignity of the person.”

“In the same way,” he said, “the Magisterium of the Church understands that life imprisonment, which removes the possibility of moral and existential redemption, for the benefit of the condemned and for the community, is a form of the death penalty in disguise.”

The Pope has already faced criticism for seeking to change infallible Catholic teaching on the permissibility of execution in principle. This latest papal intervention will make it even more difficult for those who argue that there is no contradiction between Pope Francis’s teaching and the doctrine of his 266 predecessors.

Already, one prominent philosopher and writer on capital punishment is challenging the basis of the Pope’s new teaching, while a Dominican theologian and a Catholic historian have both expressed concerns at the coherence and defensibility of the pontiff’s novel claims.

Renowned Catholic philosopher Edward Feser, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California, is one of the foremost contemporary writers in the Thomistic tradition. He is the author of such works as The Last Superstition, Scholastic Metaphysics, Five Proofs of the Existence of God, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed (with Joseph Bessette) and the forthcoming (and much anticipated) Aristotle’s Revenge.

By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed, is a study and defense of the perennial Catholic teaching on the death penalty as legitimate in principle and often advisable in practice even in contemporary social conditions.

In comments to LifeSite regarding Pope Francis’s Dec. 17 address to the International Commission against the Death Penalty, Feser said:

Once again the Pope both appears to condemn capital punishment as intrinsically wrong and claims that his remarks are consistent with past teaching. He tries to justify the claim that there is no inconsistency by saying that the Church has always affirmed the dignity of life. But this is analogous to denying the doctrine that there are three divine Persons and then claiming that this is consistent with past teaching, on the grounds that the Church has always affirmed that there is only one God. In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity requires us to say both that there is only one God and that there are three Persons in God. Similarly, consistency with scripture and previous papal teaching requires us to say both that life has dignity but also that an offender can in principle lose the right to his life. To fail to affirm both of these things is precisely to contradict past teaching, not “develop” it.

Feser continued:

The Pope implicitly criticizes previous popes for upholding and applying capital punishment, such as in the Papal States, and he implies that these popes were deficient in their doctrinal understanding insofar as they lacked awareness of our “present level of development of human rights” and ignored “the primacy of mercy over justice” — this despite the fact that previous popes rested their teaching on scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and all their predecessors in the papal office. Perhaps the pope does not realize that he is inadvertently laying the groundwork for a future pope to criticize him the way he is criticizing his predecessors. If 2000 years of popes can be wrong about capital punishment — as Pope Francis implies — why should we not conclude instead that it is Pope Francis himself, rather than they, who has gotten things wrong?

The co-author of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed added:

As he has done several times in the past, the Pope appears to be condemning life imprisonment as well as capital punishment. Curiously, Catholics who praise the Pope’s views on capital punishment never seem to comment on his views about life imprisonment. Why not?
- Are Catholics now required to call for releasing serial killers and the like from prison at some point, however heinous their crimes and however dangerous they remain?
- If not, why not, given the Pope’s repeating sweeping condemnations of life imprisonment as no less wrong than capital punishment?
- How are we supposed to deal with the worst offenders if both capital punishment and life imprisonment are ruled out?
- Exactly how long should prison sentences be if life sentences are ruled out?
- Why do the Pope’s admirers not address these questions or call on the Pope to address them?

A Dominican theologian who wished to remain anonymous offered a more detailed critique of Pope Francis’s Dec. 17 address on the death penalty.

In comments to LifeSite, the Dominican theologian noted that Pope Francis’s claim that his teaching “does not imply any contradiction” with the Church’s teaching in the past “renders the entire speech incoherent, since the Church clearly taught in the past the legitimacy of capital punishment.”

In initial remarks, he notes that the death penalty cannot be a “cruel punishment,” as Pope Francis claims, arguing that “since capital punishment is sometimes just, it cannot always be cruel.”

The Dominican pointed out that Pope Francis confuses his own theological views with the teachings of the Church; for example, when he refers to “the Church’s commitment” to abolition. This is really “his personal commitment” and “Catholics as such are not obliged to share it,” the theologian said.

The circumstances, as laid down by the First Vatican Council, in which the teaching of the Pope is also necessarily the teaching the Church, are actually quite restricted.

The Dominican theologian pointed out that Pope Francis’s appeal to St. John Paul II rests on “a confusion between the doctrine of John Paul II and his personal judgement of the prudence of capital punishment in modern times.”

Taking umbrage at the Pope’s statement that the death penalty is “contrary to the Gospel,” he also points out that: “Christ says the law of Moses was given by God, instancing the command that those who curse their parents be put to death (Mk. 7:9-10), and that Scripture, including therefore the imposition of capital punishment for many offences, cannot be broken (Jn. 10:35).”

“Hence, it is the claim that the death penalty is opposed to the gospel which is opposed to the Gospel,” he argues.

While agreeing with Pope Francis that “extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions” are to be condemned, the Dominican theologian takes issue with the Pope’s appeal to the authority of St. Thomas regarding the death penalty as a (now obsolete) form of self-defense, observing that it rests on a misunderstanding. In comments to LifeSite, he said:

St Thomas is talking here about self-defense by private individuals, notabout the rights of the State. In article 3 of the same question in the Summa, he says: “it is lawful to kill an evildoer in so far as it is directed to the welfare of the whole community, and hence this belongs to him alone who has charge of the community’s welfare. Thus it belongs to a physician to cut off a decayed limb, when he has been entrusted with the care of the health of the whole body. Now the care of the common good is entrusted to persons of rank having public authority: wherefore they alone, and not private individuals, can lawfully put evildoers to death.” In article 2 he says: “if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good, since a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump.”

Like Feser and Bessette in their book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed, the Dominican argues that capital punishment can work powerfully to elicit repentance in serious criminals.

“Capital punishment offers the possibility for a repentant criminal to expiate at least part of his sin upon earth, more briefly and less painfully than in purgatory; hence it can itself be an offer of mercy,” he said.

The theologian added: “Cardinal Newman wrote movingly in Difficulties of Anglicans, about the compassion felt for condemned criminals in the papal states, and how special confraternities existed to pray that they would accept their penalty in this spirit, and how in this way the conversions of great sinners were sometimes accomplished.”

Pope Francis in contrast says that this “inhuman form of punishment” ignores “the primacy of mercy over justice.”

Like Feser, the Dominican is also concerned about the Pope’s attack on life imprisonment.

“He who can do the greater can do the less. Since the civil power can inflict death, it can also inflict perpetual punishment,” he said. “This claim [by Pope Francis] also gives new grounds for doubt about whether Pope Francis believes in the dogma of hell, in the way in which the Church teaches it, namely as a state, precisely, of ‘perpetual punishment.’”

In his Dec. 17 address to the International Commission against the Death Penalty, the Pope says that his predecessors, have unduly “sacralized the value of laws.” On the contrary, the Dominican theologian sees the Pope’s perspective as secularized.

“Temporal power, as a shadow of divine power, has an intrinsically sacred element. St. Paul states that the ruler, even if a pagan, is ‘the minister of God’, and that he ‘does not bear the sword in vain’, i.e. that he can legitimately execute the worst criminals. Pope Francis’s words put him at odds the apostle to the Gentiles,” he says.

A British Catholic historian based in the U.S also questioned the defensibility of Pope Francis’s novel teaching on the death penalty.

Dr. Alan Fimister is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Church History at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, and Director of the Dialogos Institute, which encourages debate on legitimately disputed theological questions among Catholics.

Dr. Fimister has expressed concern in the past about the possibility of reconciling opposition to capital punishment in principle with the traditional teaching of the Church throughout the first and second millennium (up to and including John Paul II and Benedict XVI) and also about the compatibility of episcopal demands for its abolition in practice with the rightful autonomy of the laity in questions of temporal government.

As he explains “It is for the hierarchy to define, in accordance with scripture and tradition, the conditions under which capital punishment is legitimate but it is for the laity to decide when and where those conditions are met. Obviously, clerics will have views on these matters like anyone else but they ought not to be expressed in an official capacity.”

“Although the new paragraph in the Catechism is not unproblematic” Dr. Fimister told LifeSite, “it is still possible to read the text itself as making the inadmissibility of the death penalty dependent on the alleged fact that ‘more effective systems of detention have been developed.’”

“Read this way, while appearing to take up a temporal prudential judgment reserved to the lay faithful, it would not directly contradict the teaching of the ordinary and universal magisterium concerning the legitimacy of the death penalty in principle,” he said.

“On the other hand, it has always been clear that Pope Francis’s personal view expressed in less formal contexts (including sadly the statement cited in the new section of the Catechismand now this address) is much harder to reconcile with the immemorial teaching of the Church.”

Fimister continued: "There is an ambiguity in John Paul II’s 1997 version of 2267 as to what is meant by ‘the unjust aggressor.’ If ‘the unjust aggressor’ means ‘the murderer’ or ‘the rapist’ as a category then the 1997 version is giving us the same doctrine the 1566 Roman Catechism which implies that the legitimate use of the death penalty would both avenge crime and give security to life. Unfortunately, there is another way of interpreting n. 2267 (1997) and that is as saying that the actual individual murderer etc. has to be uncontainable by the prison system in order for the death penalty to be justified. This would not be consistent with prior teaching and would also imply a much too broad understanding of double effect. The use of the death penalty cannot be justified in such a way as would imply that one may do evil that good may come of it. One may never do evil that good may come of it. Pope Francis is coming down on the problematic side of this ambiguity and developing it into further and even more problematic conclusions (including the implicit condemnation of the universal and ordinary magisterium as “more legalistic than Christian” and “lacking in humanity and mercy”)."

Dr. Fimister also pointed to some remarks of the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe in her essay ‘The Dignity of the Human Being.’

“To regard someone as deserving of death is very definitely regarding him, not just as a human being but as endued with a dignity belonging to human beings, as having free will and as answerable for his actions ... Capital punishment, though you may have reason against it, does not, just as such, sin against the human dignity of one who suffers it. He is at least supposed to be answering for crime of which he has been found guilty by due process.”

Professor Anscombe, sometime head of the Cambridge philosophy faculty and celebrated pupil of Wittgenstein, was no slouch in her zeal for human dignity, facing arrest for barricading abortion clinics with her own body.

“We always have to be careful to avoid claiming that the teachings of Christ and the Apostles somehow contain hidden meanings contrary to how the Church has understood them and apparent to us only now,” Fimister said. “As Vatican I reminds us, ‘If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.’”

As one informed source observed wryly: “It is hard to understand how Pope Francis can hold that the death penalty is per se contrary to the Gospel and yet was taught and practiced legitimately (if regrettably) in the past but is now ‘inadmissible.’ But one needs to remember that the Pope is widely held to teach that sometimes some people simply cannot help but commit adultery and are therefore blameless. We can only hope that one day the ‘change in the conscience of the Christian people’ will make adultery inadmissible as well.”



How - and how speedily - does
the Teaching of the Church "develop"?

December 18, 2018

PF is reported to have declared a day or so ago that his abandonment of the Church's previous teaching on the death penalty "doesn't imply any contradiction with the teaching of the past." He combines this with an insouciant statement that previous popes "ignored the primacy of Mercy over Justice". Dear dear dear. Pretty nasty, that. What silly fellows they must all have been to make such an elementary error. But Don't Worry. All, apparently, can be explained by 'development'.

We've had this cheap trick before. I don't know if you can still find it on the Vatican TV player ... the News Conference at which the Graf von Schoenborn 'introduced' Amoris laetitia. Right at the end, Diane Montagna, with an air of puzzlement, asked whether the new papal teaching contradicted that of Familiaris consortio.

With a sweet smile which has undoubtedly served him well in the Graf's rise within the hierarchy, he answered that No it did not; but it developed it. And he advised his questioner to go away ... and read Newman.

TIMELINE
(1) Familiaris consortio was published in 1981; it repeated the Biblical precepts which for centuries had underpinned the Church's conviction that the Holy Euchatist ought not to be administered to "remarried" divorcees.
(2) Sacramentum caritatis, 2005, repeated this teaching.
(3) Amoris laetitia is dated 19 March 2016, and was released 8 April 2016.
(4) On 5 September 2016 'Guidelines' published by a group of Argentine bishops reached PF. These guidelines are commonly interpreted as allowing some 'remarried' divorcees to approach the Sacraments.
(5) On the same day, PF replied to this group of bishops praising their 'Guidelines' and saying "There is no other interpretation".
(6) On 5 June 2017, PF formally instructed Cardinal Parolin in audientia to have these texts published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis as being "Authentic Magisterium".
(7) They duly appeared in AAS together with the Rescriptum ex audientia Sanctissimi.
(8) Cardinal Kasper, a Great Theologian, subsequently explained that the question was now authoritatively closed. Roma locuta est ...

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN ...
... gave a rather different, and more painstaking, historical perspective. I expect he was a Silly Fellow, too.

---

" ... the Church of Rome has originated nothing ...

" ... all through Church history from the first, how slow is authority in intervening! Perhaps a local teacher, or a doctor in some local school, hazards a proposition, and a controversy ensues. It smoulders or burns in one place, no one interposing; Rome simply lets it alone. Then it comes before a bishop; or some priest, or some professor in some other seat of learning takes it up; and there is a second stage of it. Then it comes before a university, and it may be condemned by the theological faculty. So the controversy proceeds year after year, and Rome is still silent. An appeal perhaps is next made to a seat of authority inferior to Rome; and then at last after a long while it comes before the supreme power.

"Meanwhile, the question has been ventilated and turned over and over again, and viewed on every side of it, and authority is called upon to pronounce a decision, which has already been arrived at by reason. But even then, perhaps the supreme authotrity hesitates to do so, and nothing is determined on the point for years; or so generally and vaguely, that the whole controversy has to be gone through again, before it is ultimately determined."

---

Secrecy and suppression reign Down Under
There are many reasons for wanting a verdict in the Cardinal Pell case.
Difficult to fathom why this or any other procedural matter must remain secret.
by Christopher Altieri

December 16, 2018

- Imagine receiving your news dispatch one day, and finding in it the report of a person committed to trial for serious crimes.
- Imagine the report did not specify the number or the specific kind of charges, beyond saying that they were related to actions alleged to have taken place many decades ago, and that they were of a sexual nature.
- Imagine the report did not even specify the identity of the accused.
- Imagine now, that the paucity of detail in the report owed itself to a court order barring news outlets from reporting any other details of the trial, including anything regarding its progress, or even acknowledging the trial or the gag order.

One would be forgiven for thinking oneself trapped in a Kafka novel, but closer inspection would show such a surmise to be contrary to fact, and comparison to the Bohemian’s dystopia is real circumstance.
- For one thing, it is not the accused, who is kept in the dark regarding his proceedings, but the public, in whose name the courts are seeking justice in his regard.
- For another, the accused is not a workaday fellow or an everyman, but a powerful figure of towering reputation, with worldwide prominence.
- For yet another, it is owing to the prominence of the accused, hence to the media attention his legal troubles garnered, that the court in the jurisdiction where said prominent individual is being tried has imposed the suppression of reportage.

Suppressed for the sake of integrity?

The accused, in this case, is Cardinal George Pell, who has been on leave from his office and other responsibilities at the Vatican since June of 2017, when it became clear he would have to stand trial on separate criminal molestation counts stemming from alleged incidents decades ago. Pell vigorously maintains his innocence of all charges.

There have been reports of significant legal setbacks for him in recent days, though a court-imposed gag order in Australia means official confirmation of reports a guilty verdict has been reached is not likely to be forthcoming any time soon.

Asked for comment on the situation during a briefing on Wednesday, Holy See Press Office Director Greg Burke said, “The Holy See has the utmost respect for the Australian judicial authorities. We are aware there is a suppression order in place and we respect that order.”

Reports are that Cardinal Pell has been found guilty on multiple criminal sexual molestation counts allegedly committed in the late 1990s, while he was Archbishop of Melbourne. The first jury to hear the case — dubbed the “Cathedral trial” because it involves allegations Pell abused altar servers there — reportedly could not reach a verdict. Some reports — again, unconfirmed by official sources — say the first jury was 10-2 in favor of acquittal. So, the judge declared a mistrial and empaneled a new jury, which returned the guilty verdict on Tuesday.

Pell will be tried again early next year on other charges — the “swimmers trial” — stemming from his time as a priest in Ballarat. There, he appears to be accused of exposing himself in public showers at a swimming facility he used to frequent in the 1970s. In the post-Jerry Sandusky era, it is difficult to gauge how sensible the public might be of how thin that is. If there’s more to it, there’s no saying for the moment.

The court in Australia says it has ordered the suppression of news in order to guarantee the integrity of the process, i.e. to ensure that Cardinal Pell gets a fair trial, especially in the second one. But before he was formally indicted, Pell was subject to a vicious — and quite possibly prejudicial — campaign in the press, which intensified in the months leading to his indictment.

Concern over whether he could get a fair trial in such a climate is legitimate. The question is whether, in this or any case, such a cure as the court in Australia has prescribed is not worse than the disease. The principle of open justice can be traced at least as far back in British legal history as Magna Charta. At bottom, it is the idea that justice must be seen to be done.

That is, among others, one reason why the Vatican is certainly not in a position to complain of the treatment Pell is receiving, were it so inclined. Vatican trials of clerics similarly accused are secret as a matter of course. That is a problem.

One thinks of the case of the disgraced former archbishop of Agna (Guam), Anthony Apuron, who was tried in secret on unspecified charges — some of which were connected to abuse allegations — by an ad hoc commission of judges headed by Cardinal Raymond Burke.

After the trial was concluded and the verdict reached, it was several months before any announcement from the Holy See. When word finally came, we were told only that Archbishop Apuron had been found guilty of some charges.

“The Apostolic Tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, composed of five judges, has issued its sentence of first instance,” the statement from the Press Office of the Holy See read, “finding the accused guilty of certain of the accusations and imposing upon the accused the penalties of privation of office and prohibition of residence in the Archdiocese of Guam.”

Apuron has appealed the verdict. Pope Francis has reserved to himself the adjudication of the appeal. “I decided — because it’s a very difficult case — to take the privilege that I have of taking on the appeal myself and not sending it to the council of appeal that does its work with all the priests,” Pope Francis told journalists travelling with him to Rome from Ireland on August 26, in an exchange that was part of the usual in-flight press conference.

“I took it upon myself, and made a commission of canonists, who are helping me and they told me that when I get back, after a maximum of a month, a recommendation will be made so I can make a judgment.” It has been significantly more than a month, and yet we have no news.

“It is a complicated case, on one hand,” Pope Francis continued, “but not difficult because the evidence is clear. I cannot pre-judge. I await the report and then I will judge. I say that the evidence is clear because there is this evidence, which led the first tribunal to the condemnation.”
- What evidence, precisely, is that?
- To which charges does the clear evidence speak?
- What about the other evidence?
- What about exculpatory evidence?
- More to the point: even if an appeal is to be granted automatically, what is the legal basis of it?
- Does Apuron dispute the conviction? The process? Both?
- While we’re at it: where is Archbishop Apuron?

The Pacific Daily News quoted Apuron’s coadjutor, Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes, as telling the US bishops gathered in Baltimore this past November, “There’s been no meaningful constraints upon the archbishop to whom I’m still a coadjutor, pending appeal.” Byrnes is further quoted as saying, “I keep getting asked, where is Archbishop [Apuron]? I have to say I have no idea. There is no contact. He’s not been assigned to a certain place. In fact, he’s been, pending appeal, restricted from returning to Guam.”

One place Apuron was sighted shortly after the announcement of his conviction was on a dais, with dozens of other prelates — and Pope Francis — at a major international gathering of the Neocatechumenal Way, of which Apuron has been a staunch supporter.

At least some of Apuron’s legal woes — both civil and ecclesiastical — stem from his handling of the Redemptoris Mater seminary on Guam, the running of which he entrusted to the Neocatechumenate.

- In both cases — Cardinal Pell’s and Archbishop Apuron’s — the rationale for secrecy is the same: protection of the reputation of the accused and the integrity of the judicial process.
- In both cases, the cat was out of the bag long before either man was indicted, let alone brought to the bar.
- In both cases, secrecy has actually raised questions about the integrity of the proceedings, even as it has done little to protect the reputations of the men accused.

In Pell’s case, the concern is that Australia wants to railroad him. In Apuron’s case, the concerns are manifold, but include the possibility that he is either being set up for a fall, or let off easy, or both. In both cases, secrecy is serving to undermine confidence in the systems in which the men are being tried.

Nor is history bereft of examples of what happens when even ostensibly well-intentioned measures are taken to render judicial proceedings opaque.

In the late 15th century, England established a special tribunal for the trial — in secret — of individuals believed to be so powerful or so prominent that justice could not be guaranteed them in the ordinary public courts. The tribunal eventually became a by-word for the arbitrary and oppressive use of the judicial power, especially against political rivals. While it sat, however, the tribunal habitually held its sessions in a room in Westminster palace, from which it took its name: The Court of the Star Chamber.


The Cardinal Pell case:
New details emerge
by Ed Condon


WASHINGTON, December 18, 2018 (CNA) — Following the conviction of Cardinal George Pell in the Australian state of Victoria last week, new details have emerged about the nature of the crimes for which he has been found guilty.

Cardinal Pell was found guilty Dec. 11 on five charges of sexual abuse of minors, following accusations that he sexually assaulted two former members of the Melbourne cathedral choir.

A sweeping court injunction prevents the nature of the accusations, the progress of the case, or the even the result of the trial from being discussed by the media in Australia.

Despite the gag order, CNA has spoken to several individuals who attended Pell’s trial in person, as well as others present for pre-trial hearings in early 2018.

During the March preliminary hearings, the defense petitioned for the allegations against Pell to be heard in two separate trials, the first concerning the accusations of the Melbourne choristers, and the second related to allegations from Pell’s time as a priest in Ballarat. Other charges Pell faced were dropped during the pre-trial committal hearings.

Sources say that five counts of sexual abuse were allegedly committed by Pell against the two choristers immediately following a 10:30am Sunday Mass in Melbourne’s cathedral. Pell is accused of abusing both choir members in the same incident.

Only one of the alleged victims was present in court to give evidence against Pell. The other alleged victim, according a 2017 report from The Australian newspaper The Age, died of a drug overdose in 2014.

Before his death, the deceased man reportedly told his mother at least twice that he had not been a victim of sexual abuse. The other former choir member reportedly told the deceased man’s mother only after the man died that both had been abused by Cardinal Pell, The Age reported, citing a 2017 book on Pell by journalist Louise Milligan.

According to the prosecution, Cardinal Pell and the choir members “went missing” from a recessional procession at the end of a Mass celebrated by the archbishop. Cardinal Pell is alleged to have abused the choristers somewhere within the cathedral sacristy immediately following that Mass.

Milligan has reported that the abuse might have taken place in the early months of 1997, but sources told CNA that the prosecution identified a period between August and December 1996, shortly after Cardinal Pell was installed as Melbourne’s archbishop.

In June 2017, a priest who says he was with the archbishop every time Cardinal Pell celebrated Mass at Melbourne’s cathedral was questioned by police about a timeframe that seems to match the one identified by prosecutors.

The priest told police that there was no occasion when Cardinal Pell would have been alone with choir members. “At no time before, during or after Mass was the archbishop in direct contact with anyone except that I was present,’’ the priest said, according to The Australian newspaper. “I was always standing next to him and usually at an arm’s length away.’’

Cardinal Pell was known to habitually celebrate the 10:30am Sunday Mass, at which the choir regularly sang, while he served as archbishop of Melbourne.

However, Melbourne’s cathedral was undergoing restoration work at the time of his installation in August 1996, which prevented Cardinal Pell from being installed in the cathedral building itself or from regularly celebrating Mass there for several weeks.

In fact, during the pre-trial committal hearing in March 2018, records were produced showing that during the period between August and December 1996, Pell only celebrated the cathedral’s 10:30 Sunday Mass twice.

According to a source present for the pre-trial hearing, on both of the occasions on which Cardinal Pell celebrated the cathedral’s 10:30 Mass during the designated period, the choir held practices for the taping of a Christmas performance immediately following the 10:30 Mass, when the absence of two choristers would have been immediately noticed.

Cathedral and choir leaders and former members testified at the pre-trial hearing that choir leaders kept a close eye on the children and would have noticed if any slipped away. Former choir director Peter Finigan testified at the committal hearing that while it would have been possible for two choir members to break from their group, he did not remember that it had ever happened.

“Two altos going missing would have stood out right away, as would their late arrival for the practice straight after Mass,” a source present at the committal hearing told CNA. “That much was crystal clear.”

During the same committal hearing in March, a pastoral associate at the cathedral, Rodney Dearing, told the court that Cardinal Pell required help to remove his vestments after every Mass, and it would have been nearly impossible for the archbishop to expose his genitals while fully vested, or to commit other sexual acts in the vestments.

Dearing also told Victoria police that the layout of the cathedral did not align with the accusations.

“I can’t understand, knowing the layout [of the cathedral] and how things worked, how it could have occurred,” Dearing told police, according to Australian media reports filed before a gag order on the trial was instituted.

CNA has previously reported that concerns were raised about the layout of the cathedral sacristy, where the abuse is alleged to have taken place, which is open-planned and usually full of people following Mass.

Further evidence was reportedly heard during the November trial confirming that Cardinal Pell only celebrated 10:30am Mass in the cathedral twice during the alleged timeframe of the events, and the court heard witness testimony that Cardinal Pell had been with guests immediately following Mass on one of the two Sundays.

Sources close to the trial underscored to CNA that cases of sexual abuse often rely on the persuasive testimony of the victims, and that due to the nature of sexual abuse crimes, corroborating evidence is difficult to present. In such cases, the relative reliability of the victims can be a crucial factor.

During Cardinal Pell’s trial, the judge reportedly excluded both the prosecution and the defense from disclosing to the jury or discussing in court anything which could bear upon the credibility of the accuser.

When asked how the jury could have delivered a unanimous conviction despite the seeming weight of evidence in his favor, several trial attendees noted that Pell refused to give evidence in his own defense.

“Pell didn’t take the stand, and that definitely made a negative impression; it doesn’t look good if you won’t deny it with your own lips,” one source told CNA.

Others close to the cardinal defended the decision not to have Cardinal Pell take the stand.

“If you hire Robert Richter [Cardinal Pell’s lead lawyer], you bloody well take his advice,” one source close to Cardinal Pell noted. Some sources believe that the cardinal’s attorneys were concerned that the cardinal would try to give expansive answers from the witness box, rather than confine himself to narrow responses on points of fact.

Instead of Cardinal Pell’s testimony, recordings were played for the jury of the cardinal’s interviews with police and state authorities, in which he had previously answered questions about the charges and denied ever sexually abusing a minor.

The Melbourne trial began in June, ending first in a hung jury and a mistrial, with jurors reportedly siding 10-2 in favor of Cardinal Pell’s innocence. A second hearing with a new jury began in November, delivering a unanimous conviction Dec. 11. The gag order remains in place pending Cardinal Pell’s sentencing and expected appeal, and ahead of the trial on the Ballarat allegations expected to begin early next year.

Before the institution of the gag order, questions were raised by Australian media and legal figures about the possibility that jury pools could be tainted by years of negative coverage of Cardinal Pell.

In other Australian states, high-profile cases like Cardinal Pell’s have the option of being tried by a judge only, without a jury, called a bench trial. Victoria, where Cardinal Pell is on trial, is one of the only jurisdictions in Australia not to have this option.

On Dec. 13, two days after the Cardinal Pell conviction, Victoria state Attorney-General Jill Hennessy told The Age that she had asked her department to examine the option of judge-only trials in high profile cases, where an impartial jury might be difficult to find. This followed the exoneration of former Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson, whose conviction for failing to report child sexual abuse was overturned by a judge on appeal.

In the archbishop’s case, appellate Judge Roy Ellis noted that media portrayals of the Church’s sexual abuse crisis might have been a factor in the guilty verdict.

Such portrayals “may amount to perceived pressure for a court to reach a conclusion which seems to be consistent with the direction of public opinion, rather than being consistent with the rule of law that requires a court to hand down individual justice in its decision-making processes,” he said.

The state of Victoria has faced sustained criticism for the use of suppression orders by the state’s courts. Despite an Open Courts Act passed in 2013 aimed at improving judicial transparency, Victorian courts issued more than 1,500 suppression orders between 2014-2016.

It has been reported that local media petitioned Victoria County Court to lift the suppression order on the Pell case, but that no decision had been issued on that request.

Neither Catholic News Agency nor the Register has published, broadcast or distributed this news story in Australia.


Cardinal Pell convicted of abuse claims -
but are they even credible?
There are sound reasons to question the verdict

December 14, 2018

Cardinal George Pell, formerly the Pope's right-hand man for Vatican finances and the face of the Catholic Church in Australia, has been convicted of abusing two choir boys when he was Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s.

Pell has categorically denied the allegations.

Although this is the biggest news story in Australia, it is not on the front page of a single newspaper here. The state of Victoria, where Pell was tried, has imposed a suppression order that bans all reporting and comment. So Australians are resorting to overseas websites and Twitter for news.

The full-page headline in The Daily Telegraph, of Sydney, one of Australia's biggest newspapers, was "It's the Nation's Biggest Story" — "yet we can't publish it." So there are no facts to discuss — other than the brutal fact that a cardinal has been convicted in a court of law for abusing boys. Who, when, where, how, why are all matters of surmise.

This is a terrible blow to the prestige of the Catholic Church around the world. It strikes at the authority of Pope Francis, for whom Pell was a close adviser and prefect of the Holy See's Secretariat for the Economy. It is bound to erode the confidence of ordinary Catholics in the holiness of their faith and the integrity of their pastors.

But, speaking personally and with only the sketchiest knowledge of the facts because of the media gag, I think that there are sound reasons to doubt the verdict. True, the forms of due process were observed. But this time they did not deliver justice.

Here are two questions to be asked when the curtain of suppression is lifted.

First, are the allegations credible?
It is alleged that the archbishop of Melbourne molested two boys inside the cathedral precincts. Pell has been accused of many things, but never stupidity.
- He was actively involved in creating a response to the sexual abuse crisis in 1996 despite criticism from some Australian bishops that he should wait — precisely because he thought the issue was so important.
- He was also being targeted by gay protesters around this time. - It defies belief that a man as self-controlled as Pell would be so impetuous as to do his dirty work where he could be so easily discovered.

Nor is abuse this vile consistent with what I know of Pell's character. It is easier to believe that this tall, burly, blunt man clobbered a recalcitrant priest than that he was so sly and sacrilegious as to molest boys inside a church.

Bear in mind that this was the second time that Pell has been tried for the same crime. The first trial ended with a hung jury, which was reportedly split 10 to 2 in favor of acquitting him. Anything is possible, including Pell's alleged crime, but the previous jury wasn't persuaded of his guilt.

Second, was Pell's trial fair?
Pell's profile in Australia is probably unmatched by any cleric, of any faith, other than the Pope himself. Apart from serving in the Vatican and as archbishop of Melbourne and archbishop of Sydney, the two largest cities in Australia, he was a prolific newspaper columnist, a frequent guest on radio and TV, a delegate to the Australian Constitutional Convention, at which he was an ardent republican (i.e., not a monarchist); a climate change sceptic, and a staunch defender of traditional Christian values.

Within the Church he unswervingly backed the Pope and orthodoxy. This made him many enemies amongst progressive Catholics. At the same time, he was an impressively effective and far-sighted manager who stepped on many toes.

In short, he is one of the most controversial Australians of his generation. Everyone, but everyone, has an opinion on George Pell. Putting him on trial in Melbourne, Pell-phobia Central, is like putting Hillary Clinton on trial in Texas, where three-quarters of the population would be baying to lock her up.

For reasons which cannot be fathomed, the Victorian Police have pursued Pell with extraordinary — and disgraceful — vigor.
- In 2013 they set up a task force to search for complaints against Pell — before they had received any. No one came forward for a whole year.
- In 2016 a sexual abuse taskforce interviewed Pell in Rome. The police force leaked like a sieve.

The Victorian Police have been plagued with corruption scandals. In the latest, it was revealed that they had persuaded a criminal barrister to inform on her clients and as a result, the convictions of hundreds of criminals could be overturned.

The High Court of Australia said this month that "Victoria Police were guilty of reprehensible conduct ... in sanctioning atrocious breaches of the sworn duty of every police officer to discharge all duties imposed on them faithfully and according to law without favor or affection, malice or ill-will."

This is not to say that all of them are corrupt. But more faith is required to believe in the incorruptibility of Victorian police than in the miracle of Fatima.

On top of all this, early last year an implacable enemy of Pell, journalist Louise Milligan, published Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell. Widely read and publicized, it was the source of some of the lurid allegations in his trial.

So for two years, at least, the air of Melbourne has been full of mischievous sniggering and venomous commentary about Pell and the Catholic Church. Empanelling an impartial jury must have been like finding 12 good men and true who had not breathed for the past two years.

The legal system must be respected. If His Eminence George Cardinal Pell has committed crimes, especially sexual abuse, he deserves no less than any other criminal. But there is more than enough reason to believe that he has not received a fair trial and that he has a blameless conscience before his God.
- The Vatican should not get spooked by the verdict. [It already is - and has done as much as it can to distance the pope from Pell for more than a year now, ending with his recent dismissal from the C9.]
- There will be calls for him to be stripped of his honors, even to be laicized.
- It should bat them aside, ignore the jeers and mockery, and wait for the outcome of appeals made by Pell's legal team.
Until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt, Cdl. Pell must be considered an innocent man.

A Letter to Archbishop Viganò:
'Tempus adest - the time has come'

December 18, 2018

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Dear Archbishop Viganò:

I, as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. write this letter to you during the season of Advent, this time of waiting, of expectation, this time of violet that asks us to ponder the meaning of the coming of Jesus Christ into this world of sin and death, to ponder these things in the darkest part of the year when the darkness seems to overwhelm the light.

This is the liturgical season in which John the Baptist assumes so powerfully his role as the forerunner of Christ. It is John the Baptist who prepares himself for this role by going into the silence and wilderness of the desert to prepare himself in that silence in which God dwells, and then comes blazing out of the desert with his words demanding repentance and a return to the Lord, and finally an identification of who this Lord is in the person of Jesus Christ.

I write this letter to you to ask you to end your self-imposed exile and to come out of the desert of silence and speak directly to those who willfully ignore the reality of corruption in the Church and to expose their profane use of silence that cynically mimics Christ’s silence before Pontius Pilate.

The reaction of Rome has been to ignore your letters or to attack you personally and finally to adopt a response of silence. Their silence has been deafening, and their bluff of silence has succeeded in blocking all discussion of not only your three letters but also any discussion of the terrible malaise within the Church herself.

The emasculating order of silence imposed on the bishops of the United States at their recent meeting in Baltimore had the desired effect. The bishops could not even agree on sending an innocuous request to the Pope to make available the material Rome has regarding the McCarrick scandal. Debolezza triste, mancanza di coraggio. (A sad weakness, a lack of courage.)

What can we hope for as the outcome of the February meeting in Rome called to discuss sexual abuse of children by priests and the cover-ups that ensued? Perhaps they will offer McCarrick as the sacrificial lamb and hope that that will satisfy those who shout that something must be done about the perceived moral corruption in the Church.

But as you have stated several times, the horrendous crimes of pedophilia by clergy are deeply linked to the homosexual subculture that not only enabled these crimes but also did its best to cover them up.
- The secular press has led the charge against McCarrick and all that he stands for.
- They have also led the charge against the pedophile priests and those who protected them.
- And at least in the United States, it is the secular government that is initiating investigation of many diocese as to whether crimes were committed not only against children-- the overwhelming majority were boys - but also by those who protected these priests, which is also a crime.

God used the enemies of Israel to chastise his Chosen People many times in the Old Testament. Perhaps he is using the secular powers of this world that despise the Church in so many ways to chastise and purify the Bride of Christ whose very heart and soul is founded in the Blood of the Lamb.

But the secular press is not interested in homosexual orgies in Vatican apartments, or even bishops who sleep with seminarians. Because they believe that there is nothing wrong with two consenting males having sex with each other. So the secular world will never be an instrument in the exposure of and the elimination of the sexual corruption within the Church at all levels including Rome.

This is why you, Archbishop Viganò, must come out of your desert and confront those you accuse of covering up the poison that keeps the Church from fulfilling her sacred mission to the world of evangelizing all nations and people and letting them know about the love of God in Jesus Christ for all men and women and that he is the only hope for salvation and eternal life in God.

Be not afraid of your own imperfections. They will not stand in the way of truth. The stonewalling under the faccia tosta and impious silence of the Roman hierarchy must be broken. Whatever the truth may be, only you can further the process that you have begun in your letters by which the truth will come to light about the scandals and corruption in the Church that deny her God-given mission to the world. Leave your self-imposed desert, and like St. John the Baptist come out to witness to the truth, that truth that is not an idea nor a concept, that Truth that is a person, whose name is Jesus Christ.

Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

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Realistically, what more can Mons Vigano do? He has said all he has to say. Coming out in the open now will not make those he has accused of specific misdeeds suddenly own up - all of them, except Bergoglio pawn Cardinal Ouellet, have chosen not to say anything. And as long as the Vatican - or other authority, perhaps secular - does not release the documents Vigano specifically mentioned in support of his allegations, this game is seriously stalled and is going nowhere. It would be foolhardy for Vigano to expose himself physically at this point, and what would it serve?

More news from Rome concerning communications

December 18, 2018

...Today I received an article from Avvenire (daily organ of the Italian Bishops Conference) saying that there is a new guy, Andrea Monda, running L’Osservatore Romano and that Andrea Tornielli is nominated to the editorial section of the Dicastery for Communication. [As I understand it, he is to be 'editorial director', which means he has vetting and veto powers over anything that the various Vatican news media may publish or disseminate. It also means he has become far more powerful now than when he was 'merely' the unofficial spokesman of the reigning pope via Vatican Insider.] One of the presenters of Monda’s recent book was the Jesuit, Antonio “2=2=5” Spadaro. Monda also worked for Avvenire.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with these entities, here are some parallels. Just as Izvestia was the paper of record of the Supreme Soviet, L’Osservatore Romano is the paper of the Holy See. That would make Avvenire like Pravda, the official paper of the Party. The Dicastery for Communication might be something like the General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press, with various departments under it, such as Goskomizdat (censored printed matter: fiction, poetry, etc.), Goskino (films) and Gosteleradio (radio and TV). These parallels limp a bit, and I don’t necessarily intend to give Izvestia and Pravda a bad name.

Now we have the likes of Tornielli in Rome and Jesuit Martin appointed as a consultor to the Dicastery.

What happened to Giovanni Maria Vian as OR editor? Traded in for a new model after 11 years? I don't know enough about Monda, except that he has written books about Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and its symbolisms, and alaso that in 2014, he wrote a small book entitled Benedetta umilta: Le semplice virtu di Joseph Ratzinger dall'elezione a Papa alla rinuncia (Blessed humility: The simple virtues of Joseph Ratzinger from his election as pope to his renunciation). Maybe the headhunters at Vatican Inc did not know that?

This is a very belated post - I had meant to do it as soon as Marco Tosatti cited the Parolin interview on his blog, but it got pushed off somehow. I apologize. It dramatizes so concretely the hypocrisy of Bergoglian 'mercy' which has nothing to do with justice or truth - not a word in favor of a persecuted Christian amid a daily torrent of politically correct, UN-supportive rhetoric supporting the unrestricted mass migration of Muslims into Europe.


Vatican insists on hands-off policy
regarding Asia Bibi, will not offer asylum
Cardinal Parolin says 'It's an issue inside Pakistan'
by David Nussman

December 17, 2018

VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - The Vatican is not offering asylum to a persecuted Catholic woman in Pakistan.

After years of struggle in the courts, Aasiya Noreen "Asia" Bibi — a Catholic mother of five — was acquited of charges of blasphemy in the Pakistan Supreme Court on Oct. 31. Islamic fundamentalists all over Pakistan immediately began protesting the acquittal. Many of the protesters demanded Bibi's death for her alleged blasphemy against the prophet Mohammad.

Since her acquittal, Bibi and her family have lived in fear for their lives. Many countries, such as Italy and Canada, have considered offering asylum to Bibi and her family members. Efforts to help the persecuted Catholic family have also been proposed in the United States and the United Kingdom.

But Cdl. Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state, has said that the Vatican is not working to offer asylum to the family. He reportedly explained in November that the Vatican is not engaging in diplomatic activity to try to save Bibi, adding, "It's an issue inside Pakistan, I hope it can be resolved in the best way."

Some are criticizing Cdl. Parolin's statements on Bibi from November in light of his apparent support for migrants to Europe. Cardinal Parolin spoke at length about the issues of migration at a Dec. 10 conference in Morocco, arguing in part that "it is essential to adopt an inclusive approach in addressing migrants' needs."

In 2009, Bibi was getting water from a well when a Muslim woman declared that both the water and the vessels used to obtain it were now "haram," an Islamic term meaning "forbidden" or "unclean."

The woman shouted to other Muslim women working in the fields. The women gathered around and engaged in fierce arguments with Bibi. They kept pressuring her to convert to Islam. The Christian woman sealed her fate when she shot back, "What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind?"

The Muslim women became furious. Bibi ran away amid shouting and spitting. A Muslim mob violently harassed her a few days later, and the woman was covered in blood by the time local police arrested her.

Bibi was sentenced to death for the crime of blasphemy against Islam in 2010. Her attorneys kept appealing the conviction, battling it out in the courts for years. The case drew the attention of human rights organizations around the world.

In 2011, the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, was murdered by his bodyguard after he tried to seek clemency for Bibi, who lived in the province of Punjab. The governor's bodyguard, in turn, was found guilty of murder and executed in 2016.

A new political party formed in support of the governor's killer, championing him as a loyal adherent to Sharia law. This pro-Sharia party, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), was connected to the Islamic protests this year opposing the Supreme Court's acquittal of Bibi.

At a news conference in Lahore, Pakistan on Nov. 8, leaders of TLP called for the public execution of Asia Bibi. A banner behind them during the conference stated, "Blasphemy is terrorism. Serve justice. Hang Aasia Bibi."

Some protesters have held signs calling for the hanging of Bibi. She and her loved ones have been in hiding, fearing for their lives.

There were reports in November that Asia Bibi had fled the country. But a spokesperson for the Pakistani government debunked these claims as "fake news," clarifying that Bibi was in a government safe house with her husband, Ashiq Masih.

In Pakistan, people accused of blaspheming Islam often fall prey to extrajudicial killings by Islamic fundamentalists.

Pakistani authorities initiated an apparent crackdown on the Islamist protesters in late November. Hundreds of protesters and TLP leaders were arrested owing to concerns that the protests were disrupting public life in Pakistan.

Before that, there were numerous arrests throughout the month of November in response to violence and vandalism during the protests — including clashes with police.

Two images of Jesuit outreach: Top, left: Fr. Corridan talking to dockworkers in the 1940s; right, Karl Malden as Fr Barry talking to Terry Molloy (Marlon Brando) in the 1954 film, On the Waterfront. Bottom: Fr. VerEecke in a dance number from a Boston College musical.

St. Francis Xavier’s of Manhattan:
From the 'Waterfront priest' to the dancing priest

December 19, 2018

There exists no sharper illustration of present-day enfeeblement of the Jesuit temper than the difference between the ministries of John Corridan, S.J., the “waterfront priest” of the 1940’s, and today’s Robert VerEecke, S.J., the “dancing priest.”

Fr. Corridan earned a significant place in labor history. Fr. VerEecke earned removal from the Church of St. Francis Xavier for making sexual overtures to a male parishioner.

The diminution is tragic. And telling. In the slide from Corridan, a morally serious man, to VerEecke, a flâneur on ideological boulevards, we witness the unsteadiness of a Church listing toward the conceits of the age.

Fr. Corridan’s waterfront apostolate developed out of a 1930s mandate from the Society’s Father General in Rome to create means to thwart an existing threat — now largely forgotten — of Communist encroachments on American labor (e.g. the Transit Workers Union and waterfront industries). Jesuit intent was to provide American workers a concrete, non-Marxist program for better working conditions.

Assigned to Xavier Labor School at 30 West 16th Street, next door to the parish church, Corridan galvanized Irish Catholic longshoremen to dare challenge racketeering labor leaders — Irish themselves — who controlled New York’s docks. Membership in the International Longshoremen’s Association was then over 90% Catholic.

The Xavier Labor School, founded in 1936 and critically located between the West Side docks and Union Square, was central to that Jesuit initiative. Subsequent anti-anti-Communist attitudes in recent decades have obscured the character of those years and the part played by both locales.

Bouts of intense labor unrest erupted intermittently on the scandal-plagued docks. At the same time, Union Square became a nerve center of communist and socialist agitation against both capitalism and the Church, portrayed at the time as an enemy of economic fairness and social justice.

Corridan cast a national spotlight on the gangster-ridden Port of New York. His historic role was considerably broader than that popularized by Karl Malden’s powerful portrayal of him as Fr. Barry in On The Waterfront. His drive, courage, and political agility contributed substantially to the legacy of Irish Catholicism and its imprint on urban America.

Taking his bearings from Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931), Corridan applied the encyclicals to the bare-knuckle hiring practices on the nation’s largest waterfront. An eloquent opponent of a corrupt shape-up system, he worked to advance Jesuit aspiration for a responsible “Christian reconstruction of industrial society.”

By contrast, Fr. VerEecke presided over a parish anchored in the riskless harbor of leftist social justice activism and identity politics.
- Congregants understand themselves as a prophetic community, enlightened citizens of the world.
- They stand as neighbor to all peoples except their own citizens—working people ill-served by open borders.
- Special warmth extends to Hondurans with a Honduras Companion Communities Project.
- The parish’s Immigration Initiative lends weekly support to “undocumented friends.”
- Contemptuous of lawful immigration procedures (“a dehumanizing system”) it promises sanctuary to “our undocumented sisters and brothers.”

Catering to downtown demography, the parish offers “a safe space” in which to affirm the status of LBGTQ on the ever-enlarging spectrum of sexual identities.
- A rainbow flag draped on its altar steps in celebration of the Obergefell decision mistook — as it continues to mistake — affirmation for ministry.

Such affirmation is a function of morality presented evermore strictly in terms of an administrative, social service model.
- Ratification of LBGTQ identities and the endless range of human needs are priorities of what Daniel J. Mahoney terms “advanced humanitarianism.”

Daniel J. Mahoney encapsulates that model in The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity. Traditional religious morality smothers in the warm bath of our kindly modern beneficence:

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There is not much sense left in the concept of sexual purity; but, on the other hand, a large-scale building of spacious apartments for everybody will cause sexual impurity to disappear automatically and universally. . . . The less content attaches to the idea of moral perfection, and the less moral substance appears to be left over [from concepts of material or “psychic” welfare], the more pretentious and cocksure becomes the pursuit of the claim to a formally “perfect” world.

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Mahoney calls such a world “morally waterproof,” a dependable reality for those — Pope Francis among them — who identify 'Catholic' moral reasoning with a bow to the humanitarian priorities of left-liberal elites.

With the parish ear attuned to strains of politicized virtue, Christianity dwindles to an artifact of ideology. And sentimentality. Bolstered by the judicial mysticism of Anthony Kennedy (“the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning . . . “), it makes a kind of sense for Fr. Bob to serve the faithful with liturgical dance and his original lyrics for a hymn to the rosewater environmentalism of Laudato Sí.

Adjoined to the site of the old labor school — now Xavier High School for boys — the Church of St. Francis Xavier is a portent in stone of what awaits a Church that dresses secular creeds in a Christian idiom. Sentimentality is the enemy of the way of the saints.

At the urging of friends, I attended a crowded Novus Ordo at St. Xavier’s one Sunday before Fr. VerEeck’s tenure. Perhaps protocols have changed in the interim, though I have no reason to think so. More likely, the self-assurance informing the formalities has increased. At the time, by way of an entrance rite, the presider asked the faithful to offer a hand to someone next to them and introduce themselves. “Hi, I’m Jeff,” chirped my pew mate.

The sound of a wrecking ball was stunning. All the restraint of a God-centered liturgy, evolved over centuries, was smashed in a phrase. Self-affirmation, an idol of the cultural moment, swept the sanctuary clean of any hint of human diffidence. Even then, before a rainbow flag ever appeared on the altar steps, reticence no longer ranked among desired norms. Here was a liturgy devised for moderns and cleansed of antique solemnities.

'Hi, I’m Jeff'. That single, reckless colloquialism cut the chords of sacral time, seeming more appropriate to a dating service than a Mass. Looking back at that moment, my reaction proved more accurate than I knew then.

NOTE: For a full grasp of the era and Corridan’s influence on it, James T. Fisher’s On the Irish Waterfront: the Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York (2009) is very fine. A valuable look at the Jesuit labor schools is Peter McDonough, Men Astutely Trained (1992). Available online through JSTOR is Joseph McShane, S.J., “The Working Class Spirituality of the Jesuit Labor Priests”, U.S. Catholic Historian (Summer, 1990).

Thanks to Ms Mullarkey for providing this brilliant cameo of what 'the Church' has come to. As always, her background research is admirable. Not too many commentators take the time and effort she does.
👼

Prof. Fr. Ratzinger in 1969.

In a 1969 Christmas broadcast, Joseph Ratzinger
already saw and understood what was to come
by Gianfranco Morra
Translated from

December 22, 2018

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“We are in a profound crisis for the Church. Which will become ever more smaller and would have to start all over. Many of the edificices erected by the faith in the past will no longer serve her and the number of her faithful will diminish… Men will live in a totally programmed world of unspeakable solitude.”
- JOSEPH RATZINGER
Nativity of Christ, 1969

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Christmas 1969. Joseph Ratzinger, then a 32-year-old university professor in Regensburg, made five broadcasts for Bavarian Radio on the Church and Christmas. These were later printed in various languages, including Italian (Fede e Futuro [Faith and the Furure], Queriniana, 1971), a book long out of print. [How surprising, in any case, that a book was apparently made almost immediately of those broadcasts, if the Italian edition was published in 1971. More surprising because at the time, the book that would first give him international recognition, Introduction to Christianity, had only been published in mid-1968, and the broadcasts were made in December 1969.]

The post-1968 contestations had erupted in Germany, and he synthesized his reflections on the events and foretold consequences which can only be described as devastating. Coming out of Vatican II, of which he was an enthusiast, he had been part of the theologians who set up Concilium, a post-Vatican II theological journal dominated by the progressivist theologians of the Council.

But he soon realized that ‘the Church’ being advocated by Kueng, Schillebeeckz et al, presented grave dangers for the faith, and with other moderate theologians (Von Balthazar, De Lubac, etc), founded the rival journal Communio. [I must mention here a name often bypassed among the founders of Communio – Chilean theologian Jorge Medina Estevez (born 1926), who had been, like Ratzinger, a peritus at Vatican-II, and whom the world would later remember as the Cardinal ProtoDeacon who made the ‘Habemus Papam’ announcement to the world of Benedict XVI’s election. What a journey together the two Vatican-II periti had gone through and how fortuitous that it fell to Cardinal Medina to make that fateful announcement!]

And in the five broadcasts for Bavarian Radio, he made a prophetic judgment on the new situation in the world and the difficulties for the Church.

He understood that the 1968 turning-point was different and far more radical than all other previous historical turning-points that the Church had survived and from which she had come out better: the Renaissance, the Englightenment, the French Revolution. But the cultural revolution that overwhelmed all the Western and Christian countries of the world was different because it effectively demolished, perhaps even unknowingly [??? Very knowingly so!], the Christian values of the West.
- Liberalism, which was based on Christian tradition (especially about human dignity and natural law), had become relativism and nihilism.
- Matrimony and the family were relativized. “Sexuality and procreation were separated from matrimony. Every form of sexuality was considered equivalent and sexuality itself was banalized. Homosexuality was not only licit, but came to be seen as an aspect of human liberation”.
- The true definition of contemporary culture emerging from the revolution, was nihilism. As Jacques Prevert would express it in one of his songs: “Our Father who art in heaven, stay there!”

Unfortunately, Catholic culture did not know how to react adequately and appropriately – perhaps thinking that these were provisional transitory episodes that would soon be best forgotten. But Joseph Ratzinger predicted reaistially what would happen:

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“The future of the Church will not be in those who do nothing but adapt themselves to the present moment, choosing the simplest way – taking the passion out of faith, declaring this to be false and obsolete, tyrannical and legalitic”.

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[He might have been describing JMB 50 years ahead of time!]

The fifth and last broadcast on Christmas Day 1969 united a strongly pessimistic forecast with supernatural hope:

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“We are within a profound crisis for the Church. Which will become ever smaller and must start from the beginning. Many iof the edifices eretced by the faith in the past will no longer serve her, and the number of her faithful will diminish. She will become a collection of small groups. Unfortunately, men will live in unspeakable solitude within a totally programmed world.

Having lost the sense of God, they will feel the horror of their poverty. Very difficult times are in store for the Church – its true crisis has just begun. It will lose its social privileges, which is not bac, but at the same time, it will no longer appear to many as a home where man can find hope for life and after death. Nonetheless, the Church will have a future which, as always, will be fashioned by saints”.[/dim

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But few remembered – and if so, only superficially – the revolution of 1968 on its 50th anniversary this year. [How true! I had expected a year-long explosion of celebratory recollections and endless hosannahs, but instead, virtually nothing. Would psychologists say the very egregious lack of any of that amounts to a desperate wish to deny it ever happened? But why would its architects and mass followers do that – considering that they did succeed overnight in overthrowing traditional values and replacing them with the ‘sex, drugs and rock-and-roll’ obsessions of the new ‘I-myself-me’ generations??? A culture of nihilism that still dominates, if it has not worsened. Is the lack of celebration then an indication of dissatisfaction, to say the least, with whatever they have ‘gained’ from their success? The taste of ashes in the mouth, rather than the continuing headiness of champagne?

Joseph Ratzinger’s evaluation of the closing years of the 20th century, after 1968, can be found in the Foreword he wrote for the 30th anniversary re-publication in 2000 of INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY, in which he rightly places the year 1989 – which marked the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe - as an important counterpoint to 1968, because it showed the world the inherent fallacies and untenability of Marxism and all its derivative systems.

Yet it was Marxist thought that dominated the 1968 revolution, whose icons were led by Mao Zedong (notwithstanding his disastrous homegrown Cultural Revolution of 1966-1968 which took the lives of millions) and more importantly, the Argentine Che Guevara, who took Fidel Castro’s Marxist revolution to Africa and all over Latin America and was executed by government forces in Bolivia in 1967. 1968, of course, facilitated the spread of the Jesus-social reformist-and-guerilla-leader brand of liberation theology throughout Latin America, a theology virtually bereft of God and certainly of Christ. After the Church eventually quelled the further spread of the anti-Catholic, anti-Christian brands of LT in the 1980s, Marxism failed to re-ignite the intelligentsia anywhere, but has been widely instrumentalized to this day by the so-called popular movements so favored by Jorge Bergoglio and other anti-intellectuals of his ilk, but which have yet to really gain any successful foothold. Look what happened to Venezuela! However, the writer of this article interprets the lack of celebration otherwise, as follows:]

Those who saw 1968 as a leap forward for man and his rights consider it a progressive beneficial event which does not need to be commemorated since its ethos has since permeated everything: family, school,culture, the media, popular consciousness. They know that a great part of society today is a child of the 1968 revolution and that the novelties in our era were born out of its destruction of the humanistic-Christian tradition.

Nonetheless, it is still amazing that Catholic culture in Italy [and elsewhere, for that matter]– or better still, ‘the remnant’ of Catholic culture which still remains intact – has observed almost total silence on the golden jubilee of the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in our country. Of course, that silence has been favored by the bleeding-heart liberalism and unconditional openness introduced and imposed by the reigning pope.

Only a few Catholic anti-conformists (like Socci, De Mattei, Valli and Veneziani) have underscored the disastrous consequences of that revolution and the years since then. Which, on his Christmas Day broadcast in 1969, Joseph Ratzinger, still 36 years away from becoming pope, had perfectly intuited: that 1968 was a historical caesura which produced “the current crisis of Western civilization and of the Church”.

P.S. In searching for a 1969 photograph of Joseph Ratzinger, I found the following English translation of a substantial part of that 1969 Christmas Day broadcast, posted on June 23, 2016, on the site ROMAN CATHOLIC MAN, by Fr. Richard Heilman.

Fr Ratzinger predicts
the future of the Church

In a 1969 German radio broadcast, Father Joseph Ratzinger offered this prediction of the future of the Church:

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“The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith.
- It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods;
- nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves.

To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality.
- Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial.
- By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened.
- He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered.

If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us. If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are!

How does all this affect the problem we are examining? It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself.

What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death.
- The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the [sidelines], watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of man, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.

Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much.
- She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.
- She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity.
- As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges.
- In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision.
- As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members.
- Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion.
- Alongside this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly.

But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.
- The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right.
- It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy.
- It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek.
- The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time.

The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century.

But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.
- Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely.
- If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty.
- Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new.
- They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith.

It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.”

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These have been particularly barren days for 'Church' news that is not the folderol and balderdash we get from the Vatican media and their saprophytes in the general media. Fr. Hunwicke's terse commentary on the pope's Christmas message to the Roman Curia last Friday is most indicative.

Bibliophiles' delight?

December 22, 2018

I doubt whether the Opera Omnia of PF will be a sell-out for generations to come, but his Christmas addresses to the Curia do deserve immortality. They don't all come up quite to the classical perfection of the address in which he explained to the Curia the 19 sins of which they were collectively guilty ... but this year's masterpiece in which his critics are likened to the late Judas Iscariot comes pretty close.

Deserves to be savoured in full. Don't miss it. A collector's item.

Father H does not provide the link, but here's one:
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/pope-francis-2018-christmas-address-to-the-roman-curia
I will admit, however, that I have not had the inclination to read any of it so far. Must be pretty awful to deserve such words from Fr H. I wish to at least go through the Christmas season with less reason for ill will.


And despite all the predictable jibes from the Benedict-mockers at this now-annual event for the reigning pope and the emeritus, I am happy and thankful for the occasion. It is civilized, and although probably a gesture of noblesse oblige on the part of PF, I do not think these visits have been purely perfunctory.



Pope Francis and Benedict XVI
exchange Christmas greetings

December 21, 2018

Pope Francis visited Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI this evening to give him his Christmas greetings and exchange gifts.

Francis was received at the Pope Emeritus’s Mater Ecclesiae residence in the Vatican Gardens at 6.15pm, the Vatican said.

Since his election, Pope Francis has traditionally paid these visits to Benedict to exchange Christmas wishes.

Finally, someone other than Marco Tosatti in the Catholic media has taken note of Antonio Socci's new book, and I am rather surprised that Socci's third book in six years about
why he thinks Benedict XVI may still be the Pope, appears to be oriented not along his previous conspiracy-theorist manner but towards what he apparently considers Benedict
XVI's 'secret' - a mysterious mission from God in behalf of the Church, as much as that very notion would be laughed out of sight especially by those who blame Benedict XVI, and
him alone, for the disastrous Bergoglio pontificate which cancels out for them any good or service he may have rendered - and is still rendering - to the Church. Tosatti's review
failed to convey the 'secret' aspect of Socci's book.

Antonio Socci speculates on
'the secret of Benedict XVI'

December 19, 2018

Editor’s Introduction:
It is a work already being discussed in Catholic circles around the world despite the fact that it is currently available only in Italian. The latest book from Italian journalist Antonio Socci – an early critic of Pope Francis and an expert on the Fatima messages – has an undeniably provocative title: The Secret of Benedict XVI: Why He Is Still Pope.

1P5’s Italian translator, Giuseppe Pellegrino, has already read the controversial new Socci book twice. In his review below – the first to be published in English – he presents the arguments Socci advances about the totally “unprecedented and mysterious” situation of a pope emeritus living within the Vatican while his successor rules from the throne of St. Peter.

Socci opines, “It is evident that, although he made a relative resignation of the papacy (but of what sort?), he has intended to remain as pope, although purely in an enigmatic way and unofficial form, which has not been explained.” It is in this sense that Socci appears to believe that Benedict is “still pope” – in that he still “signs his name Benedict XVI, he calls himself ‘Pope Emeritus,’ he still uses the papal heraldic insignia and he continues to dress as pope.” [As I have remarked before, all that is BULLSHIT, and an anti-commonsense argument from Socci who is more intelligent than to use it at all! Benedict XVI knew his resignation was unprecedented and not to be compared with any previous papal renunciation, abdication or deposition. It was very well within his right as pope to determine the external circumstances of being the first such emeritus pope in history - and none of these circumstances ought to bother anyone because none of it encroaches or infringes on anybody else's prerogatives.]

A pope, but not a pope. A seeming contradiction.

Wherever one stands in the debate over the current status of the papacy – and the two living men who have occupied it – these questions are troubling and inescapable. We appear to be living through a totally unique moment in Church history, one that undeniably provokes a search for answers. [Only if you question a fairly straightforward situation: An 86-year-old pope, one who was never in the best of health, decides he can no longer continue to be pope in the best way possible, in the way he has always served the Church, given the actual and encroaching infirmities of old age. Regardless of what he would have expected to be an immediate negative comparison with the example of his predecessor, he stepped down as pope and decided - "This is how I wish to live as an ex-pope, preserving the dignity of the office intact while not claiming any powers nor misappropriating any of its symbols".

Socci's demurrals are ridiculous, and it angers me that he brings them up again and again:
1. Joseph Ratzinger remains Benedict XVI, alive or dead, and it is as such that history books will record him. But he is no longer "Benedictus XVI, PP" nor does he claim to be.
2. He is called 'Your Holiness' because that is not an exclusive title for the Pope of Rome. There are dozens of 'Your Holiness', current and ex, in the Eastern Churches and the Coptic Church.
3. He has not worn papal regalia since he stepped down. He wears a white cassock, but so do thousands of priests who live and serve in tropical countries. He has never worn a papal capelet or sash with it - as the reigning pope does and must - and obviously, never again, the red shoes of the fisherman.]

Socci’s book may not provide those answers, but it will undoubtedly play a role in the discussion. It is necessary to point out, therefore, that some of his operating assumptions merit critique. Socci sees, for example, a dichotomy between the two papacies that traditionally minded Catholics will question.
- He promotes an image of Joseph Ratzinger as a man who fought Modernism in the Church, rather than an openly progressive theologian who served as a proponent of its spread – albeit at a slower pace than others and with, perhaps, a few more regrets. [This is another preposterous claim that only surfaced after Benedict XVI stepped down as pope - like a prominent Italian theologian's book claiming, 50 years since it was published, that INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY was actually a 'progressivist' primer. In 50 years, this book had been hailed for what it is - as a refreshingly contemporary presentation of the basic tenets of Catholicism. All of a sudden, Ratzinger is being made out to be a Hans Kueng in disguise. Did that theologian ever bring up his preposterous notion at the time Benedict XVI delivered his landmark 'hermeneutic of continuity' address to the Roman Curia in 2005? Nobody did, and I bet if I researched it enough, I would find that theologian singing Benedict XVI's praises for that address. I have no respect at all for any person who takes a 180-degree turn in his opinions half a century later just because of a historical twist he dislikes or disapproves of.]

For Socci, the idea of Ratzinger as an anti-Modernist creates a tension between Ratzingerian traditionalism and Bergoglian revolution. [I defy 1P5 and all the post-2013 Benedict XVI revilers to cite chapter and verse of 'Modernism' in any of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's writings.]

The motif of Benedict-as-hero and Francis-as-villain undergirds Socci’s theme, and he also posits the theory that rather than Benedict’s silence being a sign of contentment and complicity with the Church under Francis, he is engaging in a form of quiet détente, with all parties knowing that with a word of criticism, he could bring the agenda of “reform” crashing down. [Isn't Francis-as-villain the motif of 1P5 and other anti-Benedict XVI 'traditionalist' sites, except in their case it is 'both Benedict and Francis are villains', and the only heroes are they, blameless defenders of the faith!]

In this hypothesis, a certain power is bestowed upon Benedict’s role of prayer and penitence, insofar as his continued presence in Rome might be understood as one of the only impediments to a progressive agenda run amok. [Really? Tell me how that works! Are you not actually, despite your Benedict-phobia, giving him credit for something, after all?]

Socci also returns to themes already well debated in these pages, such as the idea that Benedict did not fully resign the papacy – even though he acknowledges that Benedict is not still truly the pope. [Really? Well, that's some progress, for Socci!]

It is for these reasons, among others, that 1P5 cannot endorse or agree with all of Socci’s speculation, theories, and conclusions – nor every judgment of the reviewer. At the same time, we know that there is much interest in this book, and we hope that by making a basic summary of its themes accessible to the English-language world, we might facilitate further consideration and respectful discussion around these challenging issues and, most of all, reflective prayer.

We also share Socci’s conviction that the message of Fatima is of the utmost importance for the life of the Church during the present crisis. Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us!

The Secret of Benedict XVI: Why He Is Still Pope
Book review
by Giuseppe Pellegrino

For those who may feel discouraged by the present state of affairs in the Church, Antonio Socci has provided an Advent gift with his newly released Il segreto di Benedetto XVI. Perché è ancora papa (The Secret of Benedict XVI: Why He Is Still Pope) (Milano, 2018).

Socci, a veteran Italian journalist who has already delved into the mystery behind the story of the secrets of Fatima with The Fourth Secret of Fatima and the subterfuge surrounding the 2013 conclave with Non è Francesco, again delivers a highly detailed investigation of a topic of extreme interest for the Church in the midst of the present unprecedented crisis, inviting his readers to a more deeply spiritual reflection on “the signs of the times.”

The most obvious “sign,” and the central focus of the book’s investigation, is the fact of the enduring presence of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at the heart of the Vatican and the Church. [Should that be surprising at all, given that until the moment he announced his renunciation, even his most adamantine critics today shared the near-unanimous thought that Joseph Ratzinger would eventually be named a Doctor of the Church! Nothing can change that eventuality, even if he had gone into a coma after his renunciation, but thank God who has chosen to keep him alive and relatively well till now.]

Since his resignation on February 28, 2013, “Joseph Ratzinger has remained in the ‘enclosure of Peter’ [the Vatican], he still signs his name Benedict XVI, he calls himself ‘Pope Emeritus,’ he still uses the papal heraldic insignia and he continues to dress as pope” (p. 83). In contrast to past popes who resigned, Benedict has not chosen to leave the Vatican or to return to the state of a cardinal or bishop. [The popes who resigned or were deposed before him had no choice but to leave the Vatican as they were either in disgrace or persona non grata to the Church. As to what they called themselves afterwards has been of no interest to anyone, with the exception of Celestine V, a reluctant pope to begin with, and who wished nothing more than to be monk Pietro di Morrone again after five months of being a pawn in the papal court.]

Rather, he has done something unexpected (above and beyond the extraordinarily unexpected act of resignation), resigning without fully resigning, what Socci calls a “relative” resignation: “It is evident that, although he made a relative resignation of the papacy (but of what sort?), he has intended to remain as pope, although purely in an enigmatic way and unofficial form, which has not been explained (at least not until a certain [future] date)” (p. 82). [How can Socci or anyone know what Benedict XVI 'has intended' or intends????]

From the outset, it will be important to head off all the outcries of “Preposterous!” and “Absurd!” that seem to be greeting Socci’s work from many corners of the Church by clearly specifying what Socci is not saying.
- He is not saying “Benedict did not really resign”;
- He is not saying “Benedict was coerced into resigning, therefore it doesn’t count”;
- He is not saying “Francis is not really the pope.”
[Which is really most surprising, because that is what he has been writing all along these past almost six years! One must be grateful to the Lord that in this at least, Socci has 'woke' up. Still, his subtitle reads "Why he is still pope", which is rather perverse.]

Rather, he is saying that there is something unprecedented and mysterious going on in the Church in which the Holy Spirit is at work, something nobody yet fully understands, and which calls for silent reflection and prayer as a more effective response to the battle going on in the Church and the world than raised voices and critical judgment. [One truly appreciates the transition from 'conspiracy' to 'mystery', but it is going from an absurdity that no one has adduced any plausible and tenable evidence for, to the mysterious realm of mysticism that does not require reason, simply blind acceptance.]

The first one giving the example of such a prayerful response is Benedict XVI himself, who has freely chosen (perhaps directed to do so, Socci wonders, by God himself?) to respond to the crisis by offering himself in prayer and intercession for the Church and for the world. [Which he did from the moment he announced his renunciation, and which any Catholic would have expected of this most orthodox of Catholics.]

In Part One of Il Segreto, “The Mystical, Economic, and Political Origin of the Drama,” Socci meticulously documents the facts of the present situation in the Church, in which he observes that, since 2005, there have, de facto, been two parties struggling for control: those favoring Ratzinger and those favoring Bergoglio. These two parties may be broadly defined as those favoring a revolution in the Church (the party of Bergoglio) and those who oppose such a revolution by calling for fidelity to the Tradition of the Church (the party of Ratzinger).

Far from being limited to an intra-Church struggle, Socci observes that there is a movement of “neo-capitalist globalization that is ideologically anti-Catholic” seeking to dominate the entire world and that it is this anti-Catholic ideological movement that has actively worked to undermine the Church from within by seeking and obtaining the ascendance of Jorge Bergoglio to the papal throne. [Now we're on familiar ground regarding Socci's previous writings about this.]

This “politically correct” ideology, says Socci, was imposed on the world at a new level under “the presidency of Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton,” seeking “the planetary dominance of the United States and of financial globalization,” and one of the greatest obstacles to this worldwide agenda was the pontificate of Benedict XVI (p. 20).

Benedict, who had worked for decades as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith resisting the advance of Modernism within the Catholic Church, became as pope “a great sign of contradiction with respect to the mainstream, the media, and the designs of worldly powers who were aiming at a true and proper ‘normalization’ of the Catholic Church, by means of what they called an ‘opening to modernity,’ that is, a Protestantization, which would sweep away the fundamental connotations [of Catholicism]” (p. 22-23).

Socci maintains that Benedict was aware of the enormity of this global and ecclesial struggle from the moment of his election, and he sought to help the Christian people become aware of it by placing these extraordinary and surprising words in the midst of his homily at his solemn enthronement as pope on April 24, 2005: “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves” (p. 25). [A line with heavy Biblical connotations that one might have expected any new pope to say, and which no one thought remarkable at all until in hindsight, after FEbruary 12, 2013.]

Socci advances the thesis that these wolves were and are far more than hostile elements within the Church, but also include geopolitical elements seeking the political ascendance of Islam and also the marginalization of Russia. Benedict got in the way of both of these agendas because of his willingness to challenge Islam to embrace a dialogue based on reason that would cause it to renounce violence (recall his 2006 Regensburg speech) and also his ecumenical overtures to the Russian Orthodox Church.

The “wolves” of globalization sought to stir up a revolution within the Church analogous to that of the “Arab spring” in the Muslim world. Just as the United States government actively sought regime change in other nations to advance its political agenda, so the Obama-Clinton alliance worked in coordination with financier George Soros to seek to “change the priorities of the Catholic Church.”

Socci also documents other elements that sought the election of Bergoglio as pope, who upon his election, embraced an agenda fully in accord with the “politically correct” agenda of Obama-United Nations globalization:
- “catastrophic environmentalism (with pollution and global warming replacing the notions of sin and original sin),
- ideological immigrationism (replacing the new commandment),
- the embrace of Islam and pro-Protestant ecumenism,
- the obscurance of doctrine and attacking the sacraments,
- the abandonment of non-negotiable principles, and
- a ‘merciful’ opening to new sexual practices and new forms of ‘marital’ union” (p. 75).

It would be difficult to find a more succinct summary and explanation of the agenda of the Francis pontificate than this list given by Socci, complete with geopolitical context.

Part Two of Il Segreto is called “That Which Is Not Understood: Benedict Is Pope Forever.” Socci introduces the section with a quotation from the Italian author Gianni Baget Bozzo’s 2001 book L’Anticristo: “The history of the Church is full of states of exception,” along with a quote from St. Ignatius of Antioch’s letter to the Ephesians, which Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI used in his preface to Cardinal Robert Sarah’s 2017 book The Power of Silence: “It is better to remain in silence and be, than to speak and not be.” It is evident that Socci finds these words corresponding, respectively, to Benedict and Francis.

Socci analyzes Benedict’s statements in February 2013 prior to his resignation and notes that Benedict clearly “with full liberty” intended that there would be “a conclave to elect a new Supreme Pontiff,” and yet, at the same time, he declared, “I want to serve the Holy Church of God with all my heart, with a life dedicated to prayer” (p. 90-91).

He further specified on February 27, 2013, that his “yes” in accepting his election as pope was and is irrevocable: “The ‘always’ is also a ‘forever’ – there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this.” Benedict also declared: “I have taken this step with full awareness of its gravity and even its novelty” (p. 104). [Obviously! What he did was truly unprecedented in every way! It is those who quickly turned on him to blame him for the Bergoglio disaster who have refused to treat his renunciation as unique in Church history - and therefore are loath to accept the external circumstances defined by Benedict himself for what he would be after he was no longer pope.]

What is this novelty? According to the canonist Stefano Violi, whom Socci cites, it is “the limited resignation of the active exercise of the munus” of the Roman pontiff (p. 108). [That's Violi's opinion - it is not necessarily true!]

This entirely new action by Benedict – which makes his pontificate, in the controversial words of Archbishop Georg Gänswein, a “pontificate of exception” – was necessitated by the emergence of an entirely new situation in the life of the Church. [What would this 'entirely new situation' be? Not the Bergoglio Pontificate, because from all accounts, Benedict XVI did not at all expect the choice the cardinals made. Perhaps he was confident that they would choose someone like the scholarly and untainted Angelo Scola, who has basically followed the orthodox line since he first caught Ratzinger's attention as a theologian back in the early 1970s, not a progressivist loose cannon like Bergoglio.]

The present crisis – unprecedented in all of Church history – has called for an unprecedented response. [If by 'the present crisis', Socci means the Bergoglio Pontificate, then clearly, Benedict XVI did not know in February 2013 that a disaster was about to implode in the Church. If by 'present crisis', Socci means the crisis of faith that has gripped the Church since Vatican II and that Joseph Ratzinger himself clearly recognized as early as 1969, then it's hard to see how and why stepping down as pope would be an 'unprecedented response' to an 'unprecedented crisis' - other than by stretching it to mean Benedict XVI thought it was 'safe' to step down because his successor would continue his work but with relative youth and vigor on his side.] Benedict’s “choice to become ‘pope emeritus’ represents something enormous and contains a ‘secret’ of colossal importance for the Church” (p. 111).

There is clearly, in Socci’s analysis, something that Pope Benedict is holding back and not saying, “a true and personal call from God,” “a mystery which he guards” of which at the present time he can say no more (p. 131). Socci proposes that this “secret of Benedict XVI” is “exquisitely spiritual,” rooted in wisdom “according to God” which the present world – and also the present Church – cannot understand.

Socci observes the many ways that Benedict’s present life as pope emeritus is bearing great fruit for the Church during the “Bergoglian epoch.”
- First and foremost are the rich texts of his papal Magisterium, which remain a guiding light for the Church because they are in union with the unbroken Tradition of the perennial Magisterium.
- There is also his unceasing prayer for the Church, offered within the “enclosure of Peter.”
- But Socci further avers that the restrained silence of the pope emeritus has done far more to prevent the Bergoglian Revolution from doing all that it would like to than most people yet realize. [Really difficult for me to see how! Bergoglio is not a person who would have any scruples at all in doing what he clearly believes 'the Holy Spirit' has mandated him to do, even if it is the destruction of that very Church the Spirit baptized at the First Pentecost. To such a person, who habitually misuses and abuses the Word of God, Benedict XVI is of no account.]

Socci likens Benedict to the figure of Christ silent before Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, saying “the same precious silence has thus far averted the most serious doctrinal splits” from taking place within the Church, because as long as Benedict is alive, the Bergoglian revolutionaries know that one word of condemnation from the pope emeritus could delegitimize Francis in the eyes of much of the Church (p. 152). [Does Socci really think Bergoglio and his minions care what Benedict XVI says at this point? The world - and Benedict's detractors especially - has already decided that his 'silence' in the past six years is tantamount to approving of everything Bergoglio does and says, ignoring completely that he had publicly promised, unbidden and spontaneously, his reverence and obedience to whoever the cardinals would elect to succeed him. What do we know of Benedict's possible internal torments that the promise he made in public puts him in estoppel from explicit criticism, much less denunciation, of his successor's near-heresies and apostasy?]

Benedict has chosen not to abandon the flock to the wolves, but rather to resist the wolves with the logic of the Gospel, with “the weakness of God” that is “stronger than human strength” (1 Cor. 1:25), aware that this is a historical moment when, as he observed at Fatima in 2010, “the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from her external enemies, but is born from sin within the Church” (p. 166).

Socci concludes his work with Part Three, entitled “Fatima and the Last Pope.” He draws on his prior extensive study of the message of Fatima, seeing it as a key to understanding the present moment in the Church, and reminding his readers that the message of Fatima emphasized the strong link between the intercession of the Mother of God and the protection of the pope.

At the center of the vision of Fatima, there are two persons: “the ‘bishop dressed in white’ and an old pope,” and Socci ponders whether perhaps this vision could refer to the present situation, noting that on May 21, 2017, while visiting Fatima, Pope Francis called himself “the bishop dressed in white.”

Socci sees in Benedict a figure similar to the pope in the children’s vision: “half tremulous, with faltering steps, afflicted with pain and sorrow, crossing a large, half-ruined city” (p. 182). Socci undertakes a detailed examination of overlooked words of the children of Fatima, stating that the Blessed Virgin told them that if humanity did not do penance and convert, what would happen was “the end of the world” (p. 195). Sister Lucia declared in an interview in 1957 that “Russia will be the instrument chosen by God to punish the whole world, if we do not first obtain the conversion of that wretched nation” (p. 198). [Did Our Lady mean that Russia had to be converted to Catholicism? Or only that atheistic Communist Russia had to recover its Christianity - which it apparently has done, in the post-Soviet world. Prophecies made and visions seen during private apparitions have never been easy to interpret correctly or completely. To try to infer new meanings in these prophecies and visions on the basis of new and current developments is at best an iffy exercise. ]

Implicit in Socci’s analysis and reflection is the sense that the outcome of the present crisis is of the utmost importance for the fate not only of the entire Church, but also of the entire world.

Socci’s final observation is that the medieval “Prophecy of Malachy,” which proposed to give a mysterious title to each future pope, ends with the 265th Successor of Peter, who was Benedict XVI, described as 'Gloria Olivae' (glory of the Olives). After this pope, yhe prophecy mysteriously says that there follows “the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church” under “Petrus Romanus" (Peter the Roman).
[See catholic-pages.com/grabbag/malachy.asp for an English translation of the Malachy prophecy.]

When asked in 2016 whether this prophecy could mean he is “the last one to represent the figure of the pope as we have known him up until now,” Benedict mysteriously replied, “Tutto può essere [Everything is possible].” Further asked if this means he would be seen as the last pope of the old world or the first pope of the new world, Benedict replied, “I would say both. I do not belong anymore to the old world, but the new one in reality has not yet begun” (p. 213).

Socci understands these astonishing comments to mean that both the world and the Church are on the cusp of epochal upheavals, inviting his readers to further reflect on the various prophecies in Scripture of the destruction of the Temple and on paragraphs 675-677 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding the final trial of the Church.

Socci writes with an engaging and dramatic style, inviting the reader to understand that something far greater than has yet been understood is at work in the life of the Church and in human history.
- He offers a thoughtful proposal and an invitation to pray and reflect and ponder, not certainty or legal explanations.
- This book, with its meticulous journalistic analysis and spiritual reflection, offers hope to a discouraged Church and an invitation to prayerfully believe that perhaps more good is at work in a hidden way than the obvious evil that currently is so active within the Church and on the global stage.
- Socci offers his work as a gift of love for the Church, broken and battered, to reflect upon and ponder.

“It is not power which redeems,” said Pope Benedict in his inaugural address, “but love.” It is this same love that Socci says Benedict is daily offering to the Church by his unprecedented and heroic, albeit widely misunderstood witness: “He is the great sentinel of God of our time, and it is he who has raised a great wall of defense for all of us in the time of the mysterium iniquitatis” (p. 189).

May this book inspire many to pray ever more incessantly and fervently for and with our Holy Father emeritus, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

Mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of evil) - evil that appears to have afflicted the very vertices of the Church - is what we all have to deal with during this pontificate, alas! Much has been written about this subject, but in my simple-mindedness, I simply see evil as a defiance of God, which is surely not mysterious, and defiance of God is when we place our own will above his. That is why Fulton Sheen wrote, "Anti-Christ is nothing else but the full unhindered growth of self-will" - and why I think it applies to one JMB.

For the second year in a row, my thanks to Scenron of La Vigna del Signore for the use of his Christmas banners.

I had never read this meditation by St. Augustine before - my thanks to THE CATHOLIC THING for sharing it with us on Christmas Day.


God’s gratuitous gift
by St. Augustine of Hippo

That day is called the birthday of the Lord on which the Wisdom of God manifested Himself as a speechless Child and the Word of God wordlessly uttered the sound of a human voice. His divinity, although hidden, was revealed by heavenly witness to the Magi and was announced to the shepherds by angelic voices. With yearly ceremony, therefore, we celebrate this day which saw the fulfillment of the prophecy: “Truth is sprung out of the earth: and justice hath looked down from heaven” (Isa. 53,8).
- Truth, eternally existing in the bosom of the Father, has sprung from the earth so that He might exist also in the bosom of a mother. - Truth, holding the world in place, has sprung from the earth so that He might be carried in the hands of a woman.
- Truth, incorruptibly nourishing the happiness of the angels, has sprung from the earth in order to be fed by human milk.
- Truth, whom the heavens cannot contain, has sprung from the earth so that He might be placed in a manger.

For whose benefit did such unparalleled greatness come in such lowliness? Certainly for no personal advantage, but definitely for our great good, if only we believe.

Arouse yourself, O man; for you, God has become man. “Awake, sleeper, and arise from among the dead, and Christ will enlighten thee.” For you, I repeat, God has become man. If He had not thus been born in time, you would have been dead for all eternity. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, if He had not taken upon Himself the likeness of sinful flesh.

Everlasting misery would have engulfed you, if He had not taken this merciful form. You would not have been restored to life, had He not submitted to your death; you would have fallen, had He not succored you; you would have perished, had He not come.

Let us joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festal day on which the great and timeless One came from the great and timeless day to this brief span of our day. He has become for us. . .justice, and sanctification, and redemption; so that, just as it is written, “Let him who takes pride, take pride in the Lord.”

When the Psalmist had said: "Truth Is sprung out of the earth", he quickly added: “and justice hath looked down from heaven.” He did this lest mortal frailty, arrogating this justice to itself, should call these blessings its own, and lest man should reject the justice of God in his belief that he is justified, that is, made just through his own efforts.

Truth is sprung out of the earth because Christ who said: “I am the truth” was born of a virgin; and “justice hath looked down from heaven” because, by believing in Him who was so born, man has been justified not by his own efforts but by God.

Truth is sprung out of the earth because “the Word was made flesh” and “justice hath looked down from heaven” because “every good and perfect gift is from above.”

Truth is sprung out of the earth, that is, His flesh was taken from Mary; and “justice hath looked down from heaven “ because no one can receive anything unless it is “given to him from heaven.”

“Having been justified therefore by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access by faith unto that grace in which we stand and exult in the hope of the glory of God.”

With these few words, which you recognize as those of the Apostle, it gives me pleasure, my brethren, to mingle a few passages of the psalm [which we are considering] and to find that they agree in sentiment. Having been justified by faith, let us have peace with God because “justice and peace have kissed” through our Lord Jesus Christ because “truth is sprung out of the earth”; “through whom we also have access by faith unto that grace in which we stand, and exult in the hope of the glory of God.”

He does not say “of our glory,” but “of the glory of God” because justice has not proceeded from us but “hath looked down from heaven.”

Therefore, “let him who takes pride, take pride in the Lord” not in himself. Hence, when the Lord whose birthday we are celebrating today was born of the Virgin, the announcement of the angelic choir was made in the words: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of good will.”

How can peace exist on earth unless it be because “truth is sprung out of the earth,” that is, because Christ has been born in the flesh? Moreover, “He Himself is our peace, he it is who has made both one,” so that we might become men of good will, bound together by the pleasing fetters of unity.

Let us rejoice, then, in this grace so that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience wherein we glory not in ourselves but in the Lord. Hence the Psalmist [in speaking of the Lord] has said: “My glory and the lifter up of my head.” For what greater grace of God could have shone upon us than that, having an only-begotten Son, God should make Him the Son of Man, and thus, in turn, make the son of man the Son of God?

Examine it as a benefit, as an inducement, as a token of justice, and see whether you find anything but a gratuitous gift of God.



A joyous and blessed Christmas season to all!

For the second year in a row, my thanks to Scenron of La Vigna del Signore for the use of his Christmas banners.

I had never read this meditation by St. Augustine before - my thanks to THE CATHOLIC THING for sharing it with us on Christmas Day.


God’s gratuitous gift
by St. Augustine of Hippo

That day is called the birthday of the Lord on which the Wisdom of God manifested Himself as a speechless Child and the Word of God wordlessly uttered the sound of a human voice. His divinity, although hidden, was revealed by heavenly witness to the Magi and was announced to the shepherds by angelic voices. With yearly ceremony, therefore, we celebrate this day which saw the fulfillment of the prophecy: “Truth is sprung out of the earth: and justice hath looked down from heaven” (Isa. 53,8).
- Truth, eternally existing in the bosom of the Father, has sprung from the earth so that He might exist also in the bosom of a mother. - Truth, holding the world in place, has sprung from the earth so that He might be carried in the hands of a woman.
- Truth, incorruptibly nourishing the happiness of the angels, has sprung from the earth in order to be fed by human milk.
- Truth, whom the heavens cannot contain, has sprung from the earth so that He might be placed in a manger.

For whose benefit did such unparalleled greatness come in such lowliness? Certainly for no personal advantage, but definitely for our great good, if only we believe.

Arouse yourself, O man; for you, God has become man. “Awake, sleeper, and arise from among the dead, and Christ will enlighten thee.” For you, I repeat, God has become man. If He had not thus been born in time, you would have been dead for all eternity. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, if He had not taken upon Himself the likeness of sinful flesh.

Everlasting misery would have engulfed you, if He had not taken this merciful form. You would not have been restored to life, had He not submitted to your death; you would have fallen, had He not succored you; you would have perished, had He not come.

Let us joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festal day on which the great and timeless One came from the great and timeless day to this brief span of our day. He has become for us. . .justice, and sanctification, and redemption; so that, just as it is written, “Let him who takes pride, take pride in the Lord.”

When the Psalmist had said: "Truth Is sprung out of the earth", he quickly added: “and justice hath looked down from heaven.” He did this lest mortal frailty, arrogating this justice to itself, should call these blessings its own, and lest man should reject the justice of God in his belief that he is justified, that is, made just through his own efforts.

Truth is sprung out of the earth because Christ who said: “I am the truth” was born of a virgin; and “justice hath looked down from heaven” because, by believing in Him who was so born, man has been justified not by his own efforts but by God.

Truth is sprung out of the earth because “the Word was made flesh” and “justice hath looked down from heaven” because “every good and perfect gift is from above.”

Truth is sprung out of the earth, that is, His flesh was taken from Mary; and “justice hath looked down from heaven “ because no one can receive anything unless it is “given to him from heaven.”

“Having been justified therefore by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access by faith unto that grace in which we stand and exult in the hope of the glory of God.”

With these few words, which you recognize as those of the Apostle, it gives me pleasure, my brethren, to mingle a few passages of the psalm [which we are considering] and to find that they agree in sentiment. Having been justified by faith, let us have peace with God because “justice and peace have kissed” through our Lord Jesus Christ because “truth is sprung out of the earth”; “through whom we also have access by faith unto that grace in which we stand, and exult in the hope of the glory of God.”

He does not say “of our glory,” but “of the glory of God” because justice has not proceeded from us but “hath looked down from heaven.”

Therefore, “let him who takes pride, take pride in the Lord” not in himself. Hence, when the Lord whose birthday we are celebrating today was born of the Virgin, the announcement of the angelic choir was made in the words: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of good will.”

How can peace exist on earth unless it be because “truth is sprung out of the earth,” that is, because Christ has been born in the flesh? Moreover, “He Himself is our peace, he it is who has made both one,” so that we might become men of good will, bound together by the pleasing fetters of unity.

Let us rejoice, then, in this grace so that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience wherein we glory not in ourselves but in the Lord. Hence the Psalmist [in speaking of the Lord] has said: “My glory and the lifter up of my head.” For what greater grace of God could have shone upon us than that, having an only-begotten Son, God should make Him the Son of Man, and thus, in turn, make the son of man the Son of God?

Examine it as a benefit, as an inducement, as a token of justice, and see whether you find anything but a gratuitous gift of God.



A joyous and blessed Christmas season to all!