THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

See previous page for earlier entries on January 13, 2019.

This commentary was written in early December 2018 but I did not come across it till now. Nonetheless, Fr Scanlon brings up a question that continues to be most relevant about Mons. Carlo Vigano's 'testimonies'. Fr. Regis Scanlon, O.F.M.Cap., is spiritual director and chaplain for Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s Missionaries of Charity in Denver.

Should Mons. Vigano not
have written his open letter?

December 3, 2018

John Allen reports in Crux that Cardinal Gerhard Muller, the former head of the Congregation for Doctrine for the Faith, criticized Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò for “accusing Francis of ignoring warnings about the sexual misconduct of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and asking him (the Pope) to resign”. [I did not even bother to report this at the time, as I have not bothered to report many of Cardinal Mueller's publicity-baiting interviews and statements since he was dismissed from the Roman Curia. With apologies to the cardinal, I find it increasingly difficult to get on his wavelength. Besides, what has he done that could be compared to Mons. Viganò's disclosure of unpleasant and morally turpid acts on the part of the Vatican hierarchy up to the pope?]

While Vigano, the former papal envoy to the United States, did make some mistakes and went too far by publicly calling for the resignation of the Pope in his open letter, still Muller left out an important question which needs to be asked by all.

The question is: Would faithful Catholics prefer that Vigano had said nothing publicly until the Pope was ready to deal with the issue?
- If Viganò did not write his open letter, the meeting of the Bishops’ Conferences with the Pope may not be taking place on Feb. 21, 2018 and we may still be waiting for the civil authorities to intervene and investigate many of these crimes

While it is immoral to reveal the past evil deeds of someone when people, especially the young and defenseless, are safe from any harm from that person, it is not immoral (and may even be required) to reveal the evil deeds of a person who has not shown repentance and is still a danger to the young and innocent — even if this person is a priest, bishop, cardinal, or pope. The exception would be confessional matter which can never be revealed.

Since the clergy sexual abuse and hierarchical coverup revealed by Viganò has been independently verified, the truthfulness of Viganò is no longer the issue.
- Few, if any, challenge the charge that there has been a systematic attempt to coverup clergy sexual abuse by numerous bishops and priests throughout the world.
- Even the Pope was involved in these coverups and even he does not attempt to challenge these facts.

According to Mueller “no one has the right to indict the pope or ask him to resign …. Clearly, it is possible to have different opinions on the existing problems and on the ways to resolve them, but we must discuss them according to the roles of each.” Continuing he said that these conversations “must take place in private, in the proper places, and without ever making a public controversy,” and he added that such “attacks” ultimately “end up questioning the credibility of the Church and her mission.”

Most faithful Catholics would agree with Mueller. But a point that must be added is the fact that Vigano tried to do this privately at least since the year 2006 with no results.
- So, what do you do when your attempts to privately correct the situation fails and the systematic sexual abuse continues?
- McCarrick and a number of gay bishops and priests would have continued to have their way with minors and quite a few seminarians until the civil governments found out from victims, conducted their own investigation, just to finally reveal to everyone that the Church knew about this and was hiding it all along.
- Would this really be better than having someone in the Church bring the Church’s attention to these matters publicly even if it pointed to some failures of the Pope himself?

When we consider that we live in a time of sophisticated communications, when surveillance equipment and hacking capabilities are widely used and civil authorities can demand the confidential files of any diocese, is it even possible today to keep secrets, or “cover up” anything for long?
- Besides, when anything that was covered up comes to light, secular society often considers the “coverup” more heinous that the crime itself (remember Nixon and Watergate).
- Except for the Sacrament of Penance, secrecy is pretty much a thing of the past. Therefore, morally good clergy and transparency is the best policy.

To put this in the context of Cardinal econcern about the “credibility of the Church”: Which is more likely to cause “questioning the credibility of the Church and her mission”?
(1) Archbishop Viganò’s open letter or
(2) the exposing of a massive Church coverup —- involving even the Pope — by civil authorities, while the Church stood by silently not interfering with the sexual abuse of minors and seminarians by bishops, priests, deacons and seminarians for a number of years?

Here is what it comes down to: Would you rather that Archbishop Viganò did not write his open letter and things were just like they were when Cardinal McCarrick and his associates were running the Church in the United States?

January 14, 2019
Mons Viganò urges McCarrick
to make a public act of repentance

So Mons Viganò took pen to paper once more and published his fourth open letter on the McCarrick case in particular, and this time it is addressed to McCarrick himself.

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Dear Archbishop McCarrick,

As has been reported in the news by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the accusations against you for crimes against minors and abuses against seminarians are going to be examined and judged very soon with an administrative procedure.

No matter what decision the supreme authority of the Church takes in your case, what really matters and what has saddened those who love you and pray for you is the fact that throughout these months you haven’t given any sign of repentance. I am among those who are praying for your conversion, that you may repent and ask pardon of your victims and the Church.

Time is running out, but you can confess and repent of your sins, crimes and sacrileges, and do so publicly, since they have themselves become public. Your eternal salvation is at stake.

But something else of great importance is also at stake. You, paradoxically, have at your disposal an immense offer of great hope for you from the Lord Jesus; you are in a position to do great good for the Church. In fact, you are now in a position to do something that has become more important for the Church than all of the good things you did for her throughout your entire life.

A public repentance on your part would bring a significant measure of healing to a gravely wounded and suffering Church. Are you willing to offer her that gift? Christ died for us all when we were still sinners (Rom 5:8). He only asks that we respond by repenting and doing the good that we are given to do. The good that you are in a position to do now is to offer the Church your sincere and public repentance. Will you give the Church that gift?

I implore you, repent publicly of your sins, so as to make the Church rejoice, and present yourself before the tribunal of Our Lord cleansed by His blood. Please, do not make His sacrifice on the cross void for you. Christ, Our Good Lord, continues to love you. Put your entire trust in His Sacred Heart. And pray to Mary, as I and many others are doing, asking her to intercede for the salvation of your soul.

“Maria Mater Gratiae, Mater Misericordiae, Tu nos ab hoste protege et mortis hora suscipeʺ. Mary Mother of Grace, Mother of Mercy, protect us from the enemy and welcome us in the hour of death.

Your brother in Christ,
+ Carlo Maria Viganò

Sunday, January 13, 2019
The Baptism of the Lord
Feast of Saint Hilary of Poitiers

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Does Viganò think somehow that with this open letter, he might shame McCarrick into doing something he ought to have done on his own last year? That is, after his armor of Bergoglian 'laissez faire du mal' started crumbling into nothing when the New York Archdiocese concluded it had found 'credible and substantiated' a decades-old complaint that McCarrick had sexually abused a teenager when he was a priest in the archdiocese. To which McCarrick quickly claimed innocence. Until the stories came out that former dioceses he had led had to pay financial settlements to his victims, and the pope stripped him of his cardinalate. With nary a whimper from Uncle Ted, but with no expression of remorse or repentance either.

Some have already taken the Cardinal Mueller attitude that, given the nature of the problem, Viganò ought to have kept the letter private. For all we know, he already tried that but without a response from the disgraced archbishop... Yet doesn't the Gospel tell us a lesson from Jesus about how to deal with an erring brother? We read in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18:

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“15 If your brother sins, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.
16 If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’
17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector."

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I would imagine Viganò carried out the first step when he first spoke to McCarrick about the sanctions imposed by Benedict XVI (after his predecessor nuncio had already done so). The second step may have been a discussion involving Cardinal Wuerl, as well. And the third step was when Viganò pointed out the McCarrick anomaly to the pope - whose non-response (and indeed conferment of further favors and privileges on McCarrick) eventually forced Viganò to publish his 'testimonies' last year.

Last year, in his second 'Testimony', I believe, Mons. Viganò wrote four words whose truth the world has now confirmed: "Cardinal Wuerl lies shamelessly". Which, in fairness to Wuerl, could be said as well of his admirer, Pope Francis, and in many more and worse ways than Wuerl. But he's the pope and there is still a great reluctance, even among intelligent Catholics, to somehow turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the reigning pope's habitual lying - just because! (You know, how could anyone ACCUSE THE POPE OF LYING, for heaven's sake! But why not, if he has made a habit of it and setting a bad example for the great mass of Catholics who are poorly catechized or even totally uncatechised?]

The unraveling of Wuerl’s lies
Long before he concealed McCarrick’s misconduct,
he had done the same for his mentor Cardinal Wright
by George Neumayr

January 13, 2019

In the latest revelation about Donald Wuerl — that, contrary to his claims of ignorance, he knew about McCarrick’s sexual misconduct for at least 14 years — he emerges as the amoral but self-protective bureaucrat, undone by his own pass-the-buck-style record-keeping, which gives a grimly ironic dimension to his downfall.

Wuerl’s policy wasn’t one of zero tolerance but of zero legal exposure, and toward that end he needed to keep records of complaints he had received and transmitted to the papal nuncio.

One of McCarrick’s victims, Robert Ciolek, had the presence of mind to ask the Diocese of Pittsburgh to show him a personnel file related to his settlement, which established his memory of events: that he had told the Pittsburgh diocesan review board about McCarrick’s predation, and that Wuerl, at Ciolek’s request, had spoken with the papal nuncio about the complaint.

Ciolek wasn’t permitted to make a copy of the documents in the file but he caught a glimpse of its most relevant section, which apparently left the Diocese of Pittsburgh with no choice but to admit Wuerl’s knowledge, as much as that must have pained Wuerl’s hand-picked successor in Pittsburgh, Bishop David Zubik. No doubt Wuerl is furious at Zubik for letting Ciolek gaze at those pesky paragraphs. Reported the Washington Post: [qote]Ciolek traveled to Pittsburgh in early December, where he was allowed to see a portion of a file about his case. It was the personnel file of the Pittsburgh priest Ciolek says abused him in seminary. Diocesan officials would not allow Ciolek to make copies of or photograph the documents.

However, he said he saw a very brief — perhaps one or two short paragraphs — memo in the file. From his memory, Ciolek said the document was dated right around the time of his Pittsburgh testimony. The words were typed, he said.

“It memorialized Wuerl’s meeting with the papal nuncio earlier that week, and indicated he had shared with the papal nuncio, Archbishop Montalvo, the details involving allegations I had made about McCarrick.” The memo was in the first person, Ciolek said, and included Wuerl’s handwritten initials after his printed name. It said nothing about any response by Montalvo or anything else, Ciolek said.

Caught out in a huge lie, Wuerl is now telling new lies of such pathetic Clintonian straining that they are not even worth engaging. Lying for months, Wuerl knew that he had to head off Ciolek and made sure to have his phalanx of lawyers stonewall him for as long as possible. Ciolek requested a meeting with Wuerl in the hopes of getting him to come clean, but Wuerl wouldn’t grant it without extensive conditions, according to the Post. Until just days ago, Wuerl’s lawyers were still hoping to pacify Ciolek, but Ciolek had grown tired of Wuerl’s duplicity:

Ciolek, who comes from a devout, churchgoing family, said he wanted Wuerl to apologize and own up to what happened, actions he feels could be an important part of Catholic healing.

“My hope was real reform, permanent change, serious steps,” he said. “Wuerl’s honesty and apology would have gone a long way to giving the Catholic community better hope that the church is serious about change.”

Beyond busting Wuerl as a liar, Ciolek’s revelation also confirms Wuerl’s indifference to the threat of McCarrick as a predator. For at least 14 years, Wuerl knew of McCarrick’s predatory habits and didn’t take any steps to protect his priests and seminarians from him.

Wuerl related to McCarrick not as a shepherd of souls or a protector of his flock but as a corrupt peer willing to overlook his predation. Just a year or so after hearing Ciolek’s story of harassment at McCarrick’s hands, Wuerl was feting McCarrick and praising his predecessor’s tenure.

Wuerl’s diocesan newspaper would consistently give McCarrick glowing coverage and the two would often concelebrate masses together. Just go back and look at all the pictures of the two schmoozing together at this or that gala. All the while Wuerl knew McCarrick had introduced grave corruption into the Church.

Undoubtedly, McCarrick had played a role in choosing Wuerl as his successor, sizing him up as a trustworthy ally. But why? What gave McCarrick that confidence? Did he have dirt on Wuerl? Did McCarrick know the details of Wuerl’s apprenticeship under Cardinal John Wright? Perhaps.

Long before Wuerl concealed McCarrick’s misconduct, he had served as the long-time secretary to Wright, who was also an accused homosexual predator. In The Rite of Sodomy, journalist Randy Engel reports that Wright’s “pederastic predilections were an ‘open secret’” and details a specific accusation of abuse leveled against Wright. Through Wright, Wuerl must have received his first education in cover-ups and the keeping of secrets. If he could cover for Wright, why not McCarrick?

Wuerl’s training under Wright cries out for greater scrutiny, as even members of the Catholic left, such as former Newsweek religion editor Kenneth Woodward, now note. Woodward’s beat used to include reporting on Wright and had heard about his role in turning the Pittsburgh seminary into a “haven” for gay priests. No one was closer to Wright than Wuerl, wrote Woodward in Commonweal:

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In 1969, at the age of sixty, Pope Paul VI chose Wright to head the Congregation for Priests in Rome and elevated him to cardinal. It was there, in the frenzied initial years of the post-council era, that I first heard stories of his leading a double life rather openly with a younger lover.

What interests me now is not the private details of this double life, but whether it influenced how he ran the congregation overseeing the selection, training, and formation of the clergy.

Donald Wuerl, who recently resigned as archbishop of Washington D.C., would surely know the truth about Wright. Wuerl’s first assignment after ordination at the age of thirty-one was as secretary to then Bishop Wright of Pittsburgh in 1966. The younger priest was said to be closer to the cardinal than the hair on his head. He became Wright’s omnipresent full-time personal assistant when the latter moved to Rome, even sitting in for him during the papal conclave that elected John Paul II.

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Were the Vatican serious about uprooting the culture that made the McCarrick scandal possible, it would press Wuerl to come clean about Wright and the role that Wright played in forming a Gay Mafia in the Church. But of course that won’t happen under this pope, whose own knowledge of McCarrick’s misdeeds has come to light and whose papal election was a byproduct of that homosexual network’s pervasive influence.

Far from punishing Wuerl, Pope Francis has been at pains to protect him and thank him for his “nobility.” Wuerl remains the head of the archdiocese of Washington, D.C, as an “apostolic administrator,” but may soon depart from that position. Yet it appears that Pope Francis will add insult to injury by letting him in effect choose his successor.

The image of the Church this leaves is one of a hopelessly corrupt bureaucracy in which bishops hide behind the most minimalist pro forma actions while keeping known predators in circulation and then lying about it.

Even if one were to take Wuerl’s latest statement seriously, he is conceding at the very least that he knew McCarrick had been accused of corrupting a priest. In a church where holiness is the first, not the last, consideration, a responsible bishop would have followed up on the matter and been greatly troubled by it. For Wuerl, Ciolek’s complaint was simply a matter of box-checking.

Wuerl continues to insist, in spite of his obvious lying about his level of knowledge concerning McCarrick for over a half a year, that he “acted appropriately,” which is the language not of a pastor but of a nabbed corporate CEO. Wuerl’s career ends as it began under Cardinal Wright — as a reptilian climber and cold operator for whom duping the faithful became second nature.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/01/2019 10:47]

And persecution of underground Catholics continues...
by Lin Yijiang

January 12, 2019

Never mind a nearly four-month-old provisional agreement with the Vatican – one that was supposed to ease decades-long tensions regarding the appointing of bishops – the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, is upping its suppression and persecution of underground Catholic churches and believers.

Under the Vatican-China deal of 2018, Pope Francis recognized the legitimacy of seven Chinese-government-appointed bishops, who, not having been selected by the Vatican, had been excommunicated. In turn, Beijing finally, and formally, recognized the pope’s authority. [Really? On what?]

“China and the Vatican will continue to maintain communications and push forward the process of improving relations between the two sides,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement at the time.

And yet, the CCP is doing the opposite of improving relations with churches on the home front.

In early December, officers from a police station in Taining county of the prefecture-level city of Sanming in China’s southeastern Fujian Province stormed into a local underground Catholic church meeting place in order to arrest the church’s priest and nuns. When the mission failed, the officers threatened an elderly believer, saying: “If we can’t find the priest, then we will take all of you away.” The police used a ladder to illegally enter the building to track down and arrest the priest.

The following day, the police once again descended on the meeting venue, conducting illegal searches of the dormitory and harassing the believers there.

In October, an underground Catholic church in Gucheng county of the prefecture-level city of Hengshui in northeast Hebei Province was sealed off by the local government on the grounds that “the gathering venue was unlicensed and thus illegal.”

According to one believer, seals were placed over the door of every room inside the church. The statue of the Holy Virgin in the center of the courtyard was removed and the church’s cross dismantled.

“The government says that we were holding illegal gatherings. They told us to join the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and that we have to raise the national flag and sing the national anthem in the future,” one believer said. “They are making us leave God and believe in them [the government].”

And another underground Catholic church, this time in northwestern Shaanxi Province’s Weinan prefecture-level city, was repeatedly pressured by the local government to join the state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, or CPCA.

The believers, there, too, were threatened by officials.

“If you want to read scripture, you must go to CPCA churches. Otherwise, you will be fined 20,000 RMB [almost $3,000]. If you don’t have money, you will be arrested,” they said.

The person in charge of the church, going by the name Guo, said he wouldn’t join any state-controlled church. The church members echoed that sentiment. And so, government officials detained the 75-year-old Guo and took him to the police station to be interrogated.

Some in China believe that the tentative deal between the Vatican and Beijing has given the CCP more license to go after the underground Catholic churches and force them to join the state-sanctioned ones, and thus, give credibility to the state churches.

“The CCP now requires all underground Catholic priests to comply with its policies. If the priest doesn’t obey, they will not recognize him and will expel him from the church on the grounds of not being a legal priest,” one underground priest in the Archdiocese of Fuzhou, who wished to remain anonymous, said. “The CCP has already started to use methods of intense indoctrination to transform and control priests. Priests who are strong-willed and disobey will continue to be locked up.”

As Bitter Winter reported earlier, after the deal with the Vatican was signed, numerous underground Catholic churches have been closed down, were harassed, or had religious symbols removed from their premises across China; some Catholic priests have been arrested as well.

Of course, the Vatican has not said a word about these persecutions! Not now, and not while it was still trying to winkle its no-deal deal with Beijing.



Catholics wait to take communion during the Palm Sunday Mass last year at a ‘house church’ near Shijiazhuang.

In China, they’re closing Christian churches,
jailing pastors – and even rewriting scripture
by Lily Kuo

January 13, 2019

CHENGDU - In late October, the pastor of one of China’s best-known underground Christian churches asked this of his congregation: Had they successfully spread the gospel throughout their city?

“If tomorrow morning the Early Rain Covenant Church suddenly disappeared from the city of Chengdu, if each of us vanished into thin air, would this city be any different? Would anyone miss us?” said Wang Yi, leaning over his pulpit and pausing to let the question weigh on his audience. “I don’t know.”

Almost three months later, Wang’s hypothetical scenario is being put to the test.
- The church in south-west China has been shuttered.
- Wang and his wife, Jiang Rong, remain in detention after police arrested more than 100 Early Rain church members in December.
- Many of those who haven’t been detained are in hiding.
- Others have been sent away from Chengdu and barred from returning. - Some, including Wang’s mother and his young son, are under close surveillance.
- Wang and his wife are being charged for “inciting subversion”, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

Now the hall Wang preached from sits empty, the pulpit and cross that once hung behind him both gone. Prayer cushions have been replaced by a ping-pong table and a film of dust. New tenants, a construction company and a business association, occupy the three floors the church once rented. Plainclothes police stand outside, turning away those looking for the church.

One of the officers told the Observer: “I have to tell you to leave and watch until you get in a car and go.”

Early Rain is the latest victim of what Chinese Christians and rights activists say is the worst crackdown on religion since the country’s Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong’s government vowed to eradicate religion.

Researchers say the current drive, fuelled by government unease over the growing number of Christians and their potential links to the west, is aimed not so much at destroying Christianity but bringing it to heel.

“The government has orchestrated a campaign to ‘sinicise’ Christianity, to turn Christianity into a fully domesticated religion that would do the bidding of the party,” said Lian Xi, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina, who focuses on Christianity in modern China.

Over the past year, local governments have shut hundreds of unofficial congregations or “house churches” that operate outside the government-approved church network, including Early Rain.
- A statement signed by 500 house church leaders in November says authorities have removed crosses from buildings, forced churches to hang the Chinese flag and sing patriotic songs, and barred minors from attending.

Churchgoers say the situation will get worse as the campaign reaches more of the country.
- Another church in Chengdu was placed under investigation last week.
- Less than a week after the mass arrest of Early Rain members, police raided a children’s Sunday school at a church in Guangzhou. Officials have also banned the 1,500-member Zion church in Beijing after its pastor refused to install CCTV.
- In November the Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church was shut for the second time in three months.

“The Chinese Communist party (CCP) wants to be the God of China and the Chinese people. But according to the Bible only God is God. The government is scared of the churches,” said Huang Xiaoning, the church’s pastor.
- Local governments have also shut the state-approved “sanzi” churches.
- Sunday schools and youth ministries have been banned.
- One of the first signs of a crackdown was when authorities forcibly removed more than 1,000 crosses from sanzi churches in Zhejiang province between 2014 and 2016.

“The goal of the crackdown is not to eradicate religions,” said Ying Fuk Tsang, director of the Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “President Xi Jinping is trying to establish a new order on religion, suppressing its blistering development. [The government] aims to regulate the ‘religious market’ as a whole.”

While the CCP is officially atheist, Protestantism and Catholicism are two of five faiths sanctioned by the government and religious freedom has been enshrined in the constitution since the 1980s.
- For decades, authorities tolerated the house churches, which refused to register with government bodies that required church leaders to adapt teachings to follow party doctrine.

As China experienced an explosion in the number of religious believers, the government has grown wary of Christianity and Islam in particular, with their overseas links. In Xinjiang, a surveillance and internment system has been built for Muslim minorities, notably the Uighurs.

Xi has called for the country to guard against “infiltration” through religion and extremist ideology.

“What happens in Xinjiang and what happens to house churches is connected,” said Eva Pils, a professor of law at King’s College London, focusing on human rights. “Those kinds of new attitudes have translated into different types of measures against Christians, which amount to intensified persecution of religious groups.”

There are at least 60 million Christians in China, spanning rural and urban areas. Congregation-based churches can organise large groups across the country and some have links with Christian groups abroad.

Pastors such as Wang of Early Rain are especially alarming for authorities. Under Wang, a legal scholar and public intellectual, the church has advocated for parents of children killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake – deaths many critics say were caused by poor government-run construction – or for families of those affected by faulty vaccines. Every year the church commemorates victims of the 4 June protests in 1989, which were forcibly put down by the Chinese military.

“Early Rain church is one of the few who dare to face what is wrong in society,” said one member. “Most churches don’t dare talk about this, but we obey strictly obey the Bible, and we don’t avoid anything.”

Wang and Early Rain belong to what some see as a new generation of Christians that has emerged alongside a growing civil rights movement. Increasingly, activist church leaders have taken inspiration from the democratising role the church played in eastern European countries in the Soviet bloc or South Korea under martial law, according to Lian.

Several of China’s most active human rights lawyers are Christians.
“They have come to see the political potential of Christianity as a force for change,” said Lian. “What really makes the government nervous is Christianity’s claim to universal rights and values.”

As of 2018, the government has implemented sweeping rules on religious practices, adding more requirements for religious groups and barring unapproved organisations from engaging in any religious activity. But the campaign is not just about managing behaviour.
- One of the goals of a government work plan for “promoting Chinese Christianity” between 2018 and 2022 is “thought reform”.
- The plan calls for “retranslating and annotating” the Bible, to find commonalities with socialism and establish a “correct understanding” of the text.

“Ten years ago, we used to be able to say the party was not really interested in what people believed internally,” said Pils. “Xi Jinping’s response is much more invasive and it is in some ways returning to Mao-era attempts to control hearts and minds.”
- Bibles, sales of which have always been controlled in China, are no longer available for purchase online, a loophole that had existed for years.
- In December, Christmas celebrations were banned in several schools and cities across China.

“Last year’s crackdown is the worst in three decades,” said Bob Fu, the founder of ChinaAid, a Christian advocacy group based in the US.

In Chengdu, Early Rain has not vanished. Before the raid, a plan was in place to preserve the church, with those who were not arrested expected to keep it running, holding meetings wherever they could. Slowly, more Early Rain members are being released. As of 9 January, 25 were still in detention.

They maintain contact through encrypted platforms. On New Year’s Eve, 300 people joined an online service, some from their homes, others from cars or workplaces, to pray for 2019. Others gather in small groups in restaurants and parks. One member, a student who was sent back to Guangzhou, said he preaches the gospel to the police who monitor him.

The church continues to send out daily scripture and posts videos of sermons. In one, pastor Wang alludes to the coming crackdown: “In this war, in Xinjiang, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Chengdu, the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned – the soul of man. Therefore they are doomed to lose this war.”

P.S. 1/17/19
New dispatches from China


Dear readers, Maestro Aurelio Porfiri has sent us his weekly ‘Dispatches from China’… Enjoy the read:

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January 14, 2019

Apostolic administrator of HongKong
There has been controversy over the appointment by the pope of Cardinal John Tong, who had been Archbishop of HongKong after the retirement of Cardinal Joseph Zen, and who was succeeded by Mons. Yeung who passed away unexpectedly last month. One question was why Auxiliary Bishop Ha was not named [when by the definition of an auxiliary bishop, he was in effect bishop-in-waiting until the death or reappointment elsewhere of his predecessor, in this case, Mons Yeung].

There has been speculation that Mons Ha could not have been favored by the Vatican to succeed Yeung because of his rather firm positions protesting violations of religious freedom by Beijing in Hong Kong. I had met Mons. Ha before he became a bishop and I had interviewed him as bishop – and he always struck me as a very prudent man.

Cardinal Zen has defended the appointment of Cardinal Tong, saying it was not a negative sign from the pope - that the fact Mons Ha was not named apostolic administrator means he is still in the running to be the next Archbishop of HongKong. But informed insiders have told us that Vicar-General Peter Choi had already been chosen as the next Archbishop as early as a year ago.

Happy birthday, Your Eminence!
Speaking of Cardinal Zen, he turned 86 on January 13, In the last few yearsz, he has exposed himself tremendously for the Church in China always with great courage and direct talk. On his Facebook page, he wrote: “Oray for me and for the Church in China which is suffering profoundly”. May the Lord help the cardinal and the Church in China!

Demographics, the next great Chinese crisis
An article by Wang Zhicheng in AsiaNews offers an interesting look at China’s growth: “China is preparing for an economic crisis. It will not be produced by increased US tariffs on Chinese products but by demographics. A self-inflicted blow thanks to the one-child policy that had been enforced in China. Even if, in 2016, the government finally allowed couples to have two children, not one, hundreds of millions of Chinese have suffered under the one-child retstriction for decades."

From 2000-2016, China’s annual growth rate averaged about 1.18 – the lowest in the world. This resulted in two problems: a decrease in population also decreases the work force, while it increases the percentage of older people. Last year, China registered only 2.5 million brths [in a country whose total population is 1.2 billion], bringing a net decrease of 1.27 million to its total population. Moreover, there is a great disparity in sexes, with many more males than females in the population.

Lesson from Napoleonic times
on what to expect from ‘pacts’
with totalitarian governments
Interesting article by Massimo Respinti in Bitter Winter on the parallels between what happened in the aftermath of the French Revolution with the Church’s totally ineffectual accords with the Napoleonic state, and the Vatican’s recent secret agreement with Communist China. In hindsight, all the errors of the recent sellout appear very plain, but it is, of course, very easy to see things in hindsight. And as for the agreement with China, there is too much to say and too little space for now.

But one fact and one question remain. Namely, that when the church finds itself in a decided minority, and a persecuted minority at that, her responsibility to safeguard the faithful comes before anything else, especially if the alternative means having to swallow toads. Individuals can accept martyrdom on their own, as individuals, but no one can advise his neighbor to be a martyr.

And the question is that made by Li Ruohan about the secret Vatican-Beijing pacy” “Is the Holy See sure it is not repeating the errors and historical tragedies of the past?” For its part, Beijing is answering this almost on a daily basis by increasing its repressive measures against organized religion in China [those that refuse to come under government control]. What other conclusion can there be?

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P.S. Another notable recent birthday celebrant: MONS. CARLO MARIA VIGANÒ, who turned 78 yesterday. Prayers and best wishes - wherever you are, even living in a yurt in outer Mongolia!

I have not come across this report elsewhere. The only approved Marian apparition in the USA I read about was that of Our Lady of Good Help in Champion, Wisconsin back in 2010, referring to apparitions in 1859...


Church-approved Marian apparitions
in 1980 in Nicaragua echo Fatima
by Joseph Pronechen
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER
January 2, 2019

The year is 1980. The town is Cuapa, near the middle of Nicaragua — 59 straight miles northeast of the capital of Managua and 96 miles via highways and roads.

The date is April 15. While carrying out his work as a simple church sacristan in what was called the “old chapel,” Bernardo Martinez sees a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary producing a supernatural light — heaven’s way to announce he would soon see the Blessed Mother.

He would later recount for his bishop this beginning and everything to follow. There was no natural explanation because “the light came from her,” he would write. “That was a great mystery for me, with the light that came from her one could walk without tripping. And it was nighttime.”

In May — the same month as Our Lady first appeared at Fatima — she appeared to Bernardo. Like at Fatima, she would appear other times, the last visit being in October.

Bernardo described how after a lightening flash, there appeared a pure white cloud on which stood Our Lady. “The dress was long and white. She had a celestial cord around the waist. Long sleeves. Covering her was a veil of a pale cream color with gold embroidery along the edge. Her hands were held together over her breast. It looked like the statue of the Virgin of Fatima. I was immobile. I had no inclination to run to yell. I felt no fear. I was surprised.”

He described how “she extended her arms — like the Miraculous Medal which I never had seen, but which later was shown to me. She extended her arms and from her hands emanated rays of light stronger than the sun.”

Similarly, in Our Lady’s first apparition in May at Fatima, Lucia described how Our Lady opened her hands and the children “were bathed in a heavenly light that appeared to come directly from her hands. The light’s reality cut into our hearts and our souls, and we knew somehow that this light was God, and we could see ourselves embraced in it.”

At Cuapa, it seemed Our Lady was echoing Fatima in the same way. Bernardo asked her name. “She answered me with the sweetest voice I have ever heard in any woman, not even in persons who speak softly. She answered me and said that her name is Mary…She told me with the same sweetness: "I come from heaven. I am the Mother of Jesus."

He asked what she wanted and, as she did at Fatima, she told him: "I want the Rosary to be prayed every day…I want it to be prayed permanently, within the family…including the children old enough to understand…to be prayed at a set hour when there are no problems with the work in the home."

Bernardo later explained: “She told me that the Lord does not like prayers we make in a rush or mechanically. Because of that she recommended praying of the Rosary with the reading of biblical citations and that we put into practice the Word of God.”

Our Lady continued: "Love each other. Comply with your obligations. Make peace. Don't ask Our Lord for peace because if you do not make it there will be no peace."

Remember, during her first visit at Fatima on May 13 she told the children, "Say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and an end to the war."
- In July, Our Lady told the Fatima children, "Continue to say the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, to obtain the peace of the world and the end of the war, because only she can obtain it."
- She also said in July, "If you do what I tell you, many souls will be saved, and there will be peace."

In Cuapa there then came another Fatima connection. Our Blessed Mother told Bernardo: "Renew the five first Saturdays. You received many graces when all of you did this."

Bernardo admitted people had previously gone to Confession and Communion every first Saturday but no longer did so.

Our Lady then said: "Nicaragua has suffered much since the earthquake. She is threatened with even more suffering. She will continue to suffer if you don't change.

"Pray, pray, my son, the Rosary for all the world. Tell believers and non-believers that the world is threatened by grave dangers. I ask the Lord to appease His justice, but, it you don't change, you will hasten the arrival of the Third World War."

Remember at Fatima during her July apparition Our Lady warned, "This war [World War I] will end, but if men do not refrain from offending God, another and more terrible war will begin during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night that is lit by a strange and unknown light, you will know it is the sign God gives you that He is about to punish the world with war [World War II] and with hunger, and by the persecution of the Church and the Holy Father."

On June 8, the Blessed Mother gave Bernardo “the same message as she had done the first time,” he wrote, then he gave her many requests from the people. “She answered me by saying: Some will be fulfilled, others will not. "The petitions and answer echoed those of Lucia and Our Lady at Fatima.

As the Fatima seers saw in the sky the October vision of Our Lady and the Holy Family, here Our Lady directed Bernardo, Look at the sky. He did, and Our Lady “presented something like a movie” during which he felt “transported” and saw different groups of people including those from the early Christian communities now in celestial joy, to the first to receive the Rosary from her, to a present day countless multitude carrying rosaries.

She said: "I have shown you the Glory of Our Lord, and your people will acquire this if you are obedient to Our Lord, to the Lord's Word; if you persevere in praying the Holy Rosary and put into practice the Lord's Word."

On July 8 Our Lady appeared in a dream. Bernardo wrote she told him to “pray for Nicaragua and for the whole world because serious dangers threaten it.” Again, echoes of Fatima because of the lack of peace when her directives are ignored.

On Sept. 8, at the place of the apparitions, Our Lady directed Bernardo, "Restore the sacred temple of the Lord [meaning ourselves]. In you is the gratification for the Lord. She added: Love each other. Love one another. Forgive each other. Make peace. Don't first ask for it. Make peace!"

Before leaving, Our Lady told Bernardo she was going to return. On Oct. 13. Again, the Fatima connection. Oct. 13 would be the date of her last appearance in Cuapa as it was at Fatima.

As Bernardo joined by others was praying at the site of the apparitions, Our Lady appeared and “extended her hands and rays of light reached all of us.”

He continued, “She raised her hands to her breast in a similar position to the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows…her face turned pale, her mantle changed to a gray color, her face became sad, and she cried. I cried too. I trembled to see her like that.”

Recall on Oct. 13 at Fatima, Our Lady appeared as Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and also Our Lady of Sorrows.

When Bernardo asked why she was crying, she answered, "It saddens me to see the hardness of those persons' hearts. But you will have to pray for them so that they will change."

At Fatima on Oct. 13, Our Lady told the children, "People must amend their lives and ask pardon for their sins. They must not offend our Lord any more, for He is already too much offended!"

Earlier at Fatima, on July 13, Our Lady similarly directed, "Make sacrifices for sinners, and say often, especially while making a sacrifice: O Jesus, this is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for offences committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary." In August she told the children, "Pray, pray very much. Make sacrifices for sinners. Many souls go to hell, because no one is willing to help them with sacrifice."

Returning to Cuapa, in that Oct. 13 visit Our Lady continued, repeating in a different way what she had said before and also echoed Fatima:

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Pray the Rosary, meditate on the mysteries.
Listen to the Word of God spoken in them.
Love one another. Love each other.
Forgive each other. Make peace.
Don't ask for peace without making peace; because if you don't make it, it does no good to ask for it.
Fulfill your obligations. (Fatima’s Lucia revealed this meant doing your daily duties as the sacrifice required.)
Put into practice the Word of God.
Seek ways to please God.
Serve your neighbor as that way you will please Him."

---

After Our Lady said this, to answer Bernardo’s petitions for people’s requests, she said, in part,

---

Ask for faith in order to have the strength so that each can carry his own cross. The sufferings of this world cannot be removed. Sufferings are the cross which you must carry. That is the way life is. There are problems with the husband, with the wife, with the children, with the brothers. Talk, converse so that problems will be resolved in peace. Do not turn to violence. Never turn to violence. Pray for faith in order that you will have patience.

---

Before leaving she repeated, again in ways echoing her message at Fatima:

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Do not be grieved. I am with all of you even though you do not see me.
I am the Mother of all of you, sinners. Love one another. Forgive each other.
Make peace, because if you don't make it there will be no peace.
Do not turn to violence. Never turn to violence.
Nicaragua has suffered a great deal since the earthquake and will continue to suffer if all of you don't change.
If you don't change you will hasten the coming of the Third World War. Pray, pray, my son, for all the world.
A mother never forgets her children. And I have not forgotten what you suffer. I am the Mother of all of you, sinners.

---

Related to that, Our Lady requested that she be beseeched this way: "Holy Virgin, you are my Mother, the Mother to all of us sinners..."

Our Lady also gave Bernardo this prayer: "St. Mary of Victory, Favorite Daughter of God the Father, give me your faith; Mother of God the Son, give me your hope; Sacred Spouse of God the Holy Spirit, give me your charity and cover us with your mantle."

That title, Our Lady of Victory, was originally the name of the feast St. Pius V declared after the victory at Lepanto and which was soon changed to the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary — the title with which Mary identified herself at Fatima.

In 1982, Auxiliary Bishop Bosco M. Vivas Robelo of the Archdiocese of Managua, authorized the publication of the narration of the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Cuapa. Bishop Pablo Antonio Vega Mantilla, of Juigalpa, (the diocese of the apparitions) was studying the authenticity of the events “in order to be able to assist in discerning the true value of the alluded to message."

In 1994 Bishop Robelo who then led the Diocese of Leon stated, “I hereby authorize the publication of the story of the Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Cuapa and the messages given to Bernardo Martinez…May this publication help those who read it to have an encounter with Jesus Christ in the Church through the mediation of the Mother of Our Lord.”

Bernardo Martinez was ordained a priest. Fatima resounded.

George Weigel continues to hammer away, thankfully, at the most questionable aspects of this Pontificate, but without ever seeming to attribute any of what's happening to the reigning pope. As if, somehow, everything wrong or questionable that's taking place in the Church just arises out of nothing, like spontaneous combustion and had nothing to do with the pope...


'Nothing about us without us'
Recent synodal history suggests that more will be afoot
at the Amazonian Synod than what its announced theme suggests.
by George Weigel

January 16, 2019

The slogan “Nothing about us without us” was used by Solidarity in the 1980s in Poland, borrowing a royal motto from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the mid-second millennium. Then, it was expressed in Latin: Nihil de nobis sine nobis.

Later, it appeared in Polish on the banners of 19th-century Poles fighting their country’s partition by Russia, Prussia, and Austria: Nic o Nas bez Nas. Today, it’s often used by disability activists asserting their claim to be fully participant in society.

“Nothing about us without us” also applies to the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region, which will meet in Rome in October.

That Synod will involve seven bishops’ conferences from nine Latin American countries who will consider their pastoral situation under the theme, “Amazonia: new paths for the Church and for an integral ecology.” As is usually the case in these meetings, the bishops at the Synod will work with materials drafted in Rome.

Early indicators from the Synod’s preparatory document suggest that the Amazonian Synod will be longer on environmentalism than on theology. International media attention will doubtless focus on the Synod’s discussion of climate change and its relationship to Amazonian deforestation.

Recent synodal history suggests, however, that more will be afoot at the Amazonian Synod than what its announced theme suggests.
- The 2014 and 2015 Synods were called to consider the crisis of marriage and the family throughout the world.

Yet they became the occasion for powerful churchmen to try to deconstruct Catholic moral theology and sacramental discipline, according to the tried-and-failed theologies and pastoral practices of the 1970s.

- The 2018 Synod, summoned to discuss youth ministry and vocational discernment, began with an effort by the Synod general secretariat to enshrine the world’s language of sexual plasticity (and the lame understandings of happiness that underwrite that language) into an official Church document.

When that failed, Synod-2018 became the occasion for the Synod general secretariat to promote an ill-defined notion of “synodality” that struck more than a few bishops present as a prescription for local-option, choose-your-own-doctrine Catholicism on the model of the (imploding) Anglican Communion.

This pattern seems likely to continue at the Amazonian Synod. There, the deeper agenda will be the ordination of mature married men — viri probati — to the priesthood. Proponents will argue that this dramatic change in the Church’s longstanding tradition of a celibate priesthood (which, contrary to much misinformation, antedates the early Middle Ages by hundreds of years) is necessary because Amazonia is a Catholic area deprived of the Eucharist by a lack of priests.

One hopes that the counterclaims — that Amazonia is mission territory requiring wholesale evangelization, and that Amazonia’s lack of priests reflects racial and class divisions in Latin American Catholicism that discourage priests of European pedigree from working with indigenous peoples — get a serious hearing.

Proponents of ordaining viri probati in Amazonia, including retired Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, OFM, [the pope's good friend] have insisted that any such concession there would have no implications for the universal Church. That cannot be, however.

Should the Amazonian Synod request the Pope to grant a dispensation from the discipline of celibacy for that region, and should he grant it, it will be just a matter of time before bishops conferences elsewhere — Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria come immediately to mind — make similar requests, citing pressing pastoral needs. On what ground would those requests be denied?

In a year-end interview with Vatican News, the Synod’s general secretary, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, insisted that the Amazonian Synod would not discuss environmental issues only, but would also confront “ecclesial themes” — and would do so in a way that Amazonia could be “a model for the whole world.”

We can be grateful to the cardinal for his candor in, however unintentionally, letting the celibacy cat out of the synodal bag.
- Any decision to ordain viri probati in Amazonia would inevitably have major consequences for the entire Church.
- A decision of this magnitude cannot be taken by an unrepresentative segment of the Church and then turned into a “model” for everyone else.

That is why the principle of “Nothing about us without us” must apply here.
- Whatever else “synodality” may mean, it surely must mean that decisions bearing on everyone should involve as broad a consultation and as global a reflection as possible.
- Bishops who agree should make their concerns known now, not after the Amazonian synod meets.


Has it ever occurred to the commentators who have been most critical of the reigning pope for his anti-Catholic words and deeds, to explicitly say that in all the past seven decades or more (at least since Vatican Radio first started broadcasting to let the world know what the pope says and does daily), no pope before Bergoglio has ever been the subject of almost daily criticism and negative commentary on almost everything he says and does??? And the overall implication of this for the kind of pope he is, i.e., anti-Catholic for the most part? Yes, that much is implied - but never directly expressed - in much of the negative commentary. But it has to be openly expressed, as he daily manifests it.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2019 17:04]

I am pleasantly surprised that the priest author of the letter reproduced by Aldo Maria Valli today, admits openly to adding the Emeritus Pope’s name after that of the pope when he says the Te igitur prayer while celebrating Mass. It is a practice, as I have remarked on these pages elsewhere, that I have followed privately, but I did not know whether a priest saying Mass is allowed to change its formulation as he pleases, even if in this case, he is not really ‘changing’ it, as much as simply adding one name. Fr. Z would probably say the priest could more properly do it in the second prayer of the canon, when the priest – and we with him – pray for other persons we especially wish to pray for (in my case, I also always add Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI).

Letter from a priest religious about
all his 'dubia' concerning the pope
Translated from

January 16, 2019

Dear friends and readers: The letter you find below was sent to me by a priest who belongs to a major order found in many countries. It is a significant testimonial which brings to light a reality that is far more widespread than one can imagine.

The writer expresses simply and clearly the reasons for having started to note his increasing perplexity [a nice euphemism in both Italian and English to softly say 'doubts and questions' about this pontificate, and why he maintains that ‘the Church’ [what passes for it institutionally under Jorge Bergoglio] today finds herself in a situation that demands full awareness and realization by each Catholic.

As it often happens to those who dare to express their doubts and ask questions about the teachings of this pope, the writer has been sanctioned and is personally paying for his audacity. But he does not profess any victimism. Only his implicit observation of how little true freedom there is in ‘the Church’ today, despite the pope’s repeated calls for parrhesia, i.e., the right and duty of someone to speak out what he thinks frankly.

I thank my correspondent priest for one thing above all: for having signed his name to the letter. We are otherwise surrounded by too many don Abbondios. [Abbondio is the village curate in Manzoni’s famed novel ‘I Promessi ‘sposi’ who is cowardly, vile and thus fails to fulfill his responsibilities even as he escapes his own difficulties.]

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“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (Ps 118,26)

Who am I: I am a 62-year-old religious who has been a priest for 30 years in the Order of the Sons of Merciful Love. Since December, I have been suspended a divinis by my superior-general. Which means I can no longer say Mass in public, nor preach, nor receive confessions. I can only say Mass in private. (And also write to Mr. Valli – at least for now).

At the moment, the sanctions are for six months, but only the Lord knows how long it will really last. These were the reasons for my suspension:
1. Because in the Canon of the Mass, after saying the name of the reigning pope, I also insert the name of Emeritus Pope.
2) Because in my preaching, when the subject so requires, I manifest my perplexities on some doctrinal and moral positions taken by this pope.

I did all that in the context of my ordinary ministry – first, in two small village churches, as well as in two minor chapels in my city. I never sought ‘amplification’ of my voice in the media, nor have I raised futile uproars. In raising my questions, I believe I was transmitting not a taste for gratuitous criticism, but a sense of genuine internal preoccupation; and to have sought not to convince my listeners by force, but to help them reason over the facts, so as to know “what is boiling in the pot’ of ‘the Church’.

Notwithstanding, I was suspended. I have accepted this with calm, I did not raise any polemic… and I am thankful for it.

How it came to this
In 2013, I welcomed the election of Papa Bergoglio as if it were a strong gust of wind that came from the faraway pampas of Argentina that would be able, in a short time, to clear out all the smoke and fog which hung heavily on the Vatican and the Church.

But everything changed with the publication of Amoris Laetitia in 2016. I remember having read and re-read Chapter 8 of that exhortation, turning it every which way in a desperate attempt to find in it any inspiration – until I was forced to give up to the evidence: that chapter is ambiguous and contradictory, and this could not have been random or casual.

That is why I fully shared the initiative of the Four Cardinals who presented their DUBIA a few months after AL was released. And I have remained profoundly disillusioned by the fact that Papa Bergoglio did not wish to respond at all and make the requested clarifications.

At that point, my trust in the pope started to vacillate, as a terrible suspicion gradually grew within me: Could it be that some prophecies which have been hovering over the Church for some time are now being realized – such as those made by Our Lady at La Sallette or at Fatima, and other private revelations which evoked the possibility of ‘a great apostasy’ starting at the very summit of the Church itself? From this prospect, I started to evaluate the pope’s writings, words and gestures.

The questions I asked myself
Such a critican evaluation led me to pose many questions about this pope - some more complex and detailed, others simpler and more ‘popular’. Such as:
- Why, in 2016, did he not respond to the clarificatory questions by the Dubia Cardinals, but instead fomented the most reckless interpretations of his document, thus increasing the theoretical and practical confusions about it?
- Why, in 2017, did he brusquely dismiss Cardinal Mueller as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the very day his five-year term expired, and then failed to give him any other responsibility?
- Why, in 2017, did he welcome a statue of Martin Luther in the Vatican, having himself photographed with it, even as he led in commemorating the 500th anniversary of Luther’s schism from the Church, thus strengthening the hand of all those who have been saying that a most serious process of [further’ protestantization of the Catholic Church is underway?
- Why has been availing, officially and repeatedly, of te services of a questionable figure like the American Jesuit, James Martin, who is the self-proclaimed paladin of the gender ideology and of homosexualism?
- Why has he failed, from the start of his pontificate to now, to make a truly clear and unequivocal statement about communion for remarried divorcees and the Protestant spouses of some Catholics?
- Why, from the beginning of his pontificate to now, when every year he kneels in front of persons whose feet he washes on Maundy Thursday [most of them not even Catholic], but cannot bring himself to kneel or genuflect before Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament, nor at Consecration, nor at Benediction – though he has a cushioned kneeler always placed before him even when others around him – celebrants and ministrants – prostrate themselves?

I confess that this last example always sends me ‘in tilt’: Why? Why does he do it? What message is he trying to send? And to whom? I wish one of the ‘custodians’ of the pope’s ‘revolution’ would answer me.

The basic question
Things being what they are, someone will ask me? “Do you still consider Bergoglio pope?” My reply: Until it is demonstrated officially that Benedict XVI’s resignation and/or the Conclave of 2013 took place with serious irregularities (neither of which appear to be within anyone’s capacity to carry off), Bergoglio is the pope for all intents and purposes, and all his acts within his jurisdiction as pope remain valid. In this essential matter, simple suspicions, no matter how widespread and credible, will not be enough – only absolute and inconfutable arguments.

But this does not take away the right and duty of every Catholic to express his criticisms of papal teachings and behavior which are inappropriate or deficient, the same way the apostle Paul criticized Peter face to face (cf Gal 2,11), as did Jesus who called Peter ‘Satan’ (‘Get thee behind me, Satan!”) (Mt 8,33).

And in case the situation is precipitated by papal initiatives that are even more reckless and improvident (for example, in ecumenical relations or in the liturgy), we ought to be able to follow the indications of some cardinal who is enlightened and courageous (when in fact, for ‘a significant number of cardinals to take a clear and formal position appears increasingly improbable). Is it possible there will be not even one who is ready to honor to the very end the red garments of martyrdom that he wears?

But let us not project too far into the future. Let us trust everything to the Lord, asking him to wake up from his profound sleep and calm the wind and the sea, to place his hand on the tiller of his Church.

Why I am writing this
I decided to write this testimonial for two reasons:
1. To address so many other priests and religious who, since 2016, have been experiencing the same difficulties I have described, and who are also undergoing moral vexation of every kind from their superiors – reproofs, treats, transfers, marginalization and suspension… I wish to encourage them fraternally, reminding them that we have the right and the duty to ‘defend the Truth’ (whenever we believe it is being threatened), but we do not have the possibility to defend our own person” (even after the gravest decisions made against it).

I also wish to invite them to offer their tribulations in behalf of Benedict XVI – that the Lord may support him physically and spiritually so he may achieve his sorrowful prayer mission in behalf of the Church. In fact, let no one forget that Benedict XVI renounced the powers and authority of the papacy, but not the essence of ‘being a pope’. That is why he remains a sure point of reference for all those who truly love the Church, in particular, his example of a silent and prayerful self-immolation.

2. To address the ever increasing number of lay faithful who are crying out, in the desire to do something concrete and useful in support of the house of God that is collapsing like the Basilica of Norcia - faithful lay people who are more aware and fierce than one might imagine.

I want to tell them to fight this good cause with all the means at their disposal but never to leave the Catholic Church, for whatever reason, even when the institutional Church [i.e., the human church] should end up being false from head to foot.

The true Church, even when reduced to ‘the remnant’, has no need for expressed schisms, because the true Church will survive in the hearts of those who remain faithful to the true Magisterium of the Church in the midst of a hostile majority.

In the tragic situation into which we have been precipitated, it is enough to practice ‘internal subterranean resistance’ in the way the first Christians resisted the pagan and intolerant Roman Empire, while waiting for our Lord and the Blessed Mary to realize their plans for the purification of the Church and the world.

I thank you all for your attention, and I send my cordial greetings.

Fr. Gabriele Rossi, FAM
Fermo, January 16, 2019

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The rise and fall of 'the humble pope'
by Chris Ferrara

January 15, 2019

The current pontificate began with a fanfare of praise from the mass media, which were happy to promote the Vatican Press office’s narrative of the “humble Pope”: Look! He paid his own hotel bill! Look! He took the bus with all the other cardinals! Look! He refuses to live in a “palace” or wear red shoes like those other Popes! Look! He rides around in a Ford Focus, not a fancy car!
- After all, this was the same Pope who said “Who am I to judge?” respecting the flagrant homosexual he had made head of his very household, whose familiarity with the new Pontiff was discomfiting, to say the least.
- And this was the same Pope who was determined to shatter the Church’s taboos against sexual activity outside of marriage by admitting 'remarried' divorcees to Holy Communion, declaring that outrage to be “authentic Magisterium,” while opining that people who merely cohabit have valid “marriages” whereas most Church weddings are invalid.
- Tthe same Pope who, in all his “humility,” incessantly denounces orthodox Catholics as hypocritical neo-Pharisees, guilty of “Promethean neo-Pelagianism.”
- And the same Pope who declares capital punishment immoral in every case, flatly contradicting 2,000 years of Church teaching.

But the humble Pope narrative is collapsing as it becomes apparent to more and more Catholics that it is not humility but hubris that motivates Francis’s “dream” of “transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.”

Nor is it humility that explains his undisguised contempt for practicing Catholics he caricatures as villains who “trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past” and whose “supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism…”

At this stage in Francis’s pontificate there are few, if any, soundly orthodox Catholics who are willing to defend the “humble Pope” narrative, which has been buried by his indefensible departures from prior Church teaching and practice, and a mountain of scandals, both financial and sexual, among his closest collaborators.

Now even once resolutely hyper-papalist sources are adding to a deluge of criticism never seen from the “mainstream” respecting any other Pope, not even during the most turbulent years of the pontificates of Paul VI and John Paul II.

Thus, for example, even Church Militant, whose previous position was that no one may criticize Francis publicly, now openly decries “the Pope’s history of surrounding himself with homosexual and homosexualist clerics,” while the organization’s head declares: “He [Francis] should resign” because “In the arena of prudential exercise of his judicial authority, he is helping to erode faith in the church as a divine institution.”

And at First Things, the Editor R.R. Reno is unsparing in his assessment of what Francis has wrought:

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“I have the impression that the majority of the cardinals and other churchmen in positions of responsibility are increasingly aware the Francis pontificate is a failure. This judgment need not indicate theological disagreement. Indeed, part of the concern stems from the growing realization that Francis has no theology. (‘Reality is superior to the idea,’ as he puts it.) Authority without principle and rule without law run on intuition and discernment, which means either tyranny (the authority of one man’s intuitions) or anarchy (the authority of everyone’s discernments). Either way, the Church loses her specific gravity, and the world and its principles invade and advance to take territory.”

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Francis may cling to the papacy for another ten years, attempting to impose his novelties upon the Church by the naked exercise of raw power. But in one sense, barring a miraculous change of course in the direction of Tradition, this pontificate is already over.
- The acts of Pope Francis are increasingly a collection of errors a successor will have to undo — probably at the same time Russia is, at long last, consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The following may not seem to be like the first two items above, but it will be quite clear why I think it is...

The 'dhimmi' in the secular
world and in the Church
Translated from

January 15, 2019

Dear friends, Agostino Nobile offers us today a brief but most interesting essay on dhimmitude, that is, the form of discrimination and submission that Islam imposes on non-Muslims, including those who profess two other so-called ‘religions of the book’ – Judaism and Christianity [which both consider Abraham their patriarch as the Muslims do].

It is an article that would do good for progressivist immigrationists such as those we have in Italy to read, but perhaps, especially our priests of very order and grade, from the country pastor (if there are any left) to the reigning pope. And good reading!

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On the Muslim site Wiki-Islam we find a sugarcoated description of the term dhimmitude, which is a state of submission. ‘Dhimma’ means a ‘pact of protection contracted between non-Muslims and an authority of a Muslim government…

The status of dhimmi is applied to millions of persons who have lived between the Atlantic Ocean and India from the seventh century [birth of Islam] to the modern era. In that time, many had converted to Islam. Many were voluntary and motivated by a number of reasons, but forced conversion played a growing role especially since the 12th century…

The consensual opinion of the ulama supports the imposition of a head tax on non-Muslims who come under Muslim rule, on the basis of Sura 9:29 of the Koran, which says: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day, and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful ,and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture, even if they are People of the Book (i.e, Christians and Jews] - [fight] until they give the jizyah [monetary tribute] willingly when they have submitted”.

Wiki-Islam points out that failing to pay this tribute “would mean doing away with the pact of protection for the property and lives of the dhimmi, who would instead face the alternatives of conversion, slavery or death”.

Thus, discrimination against non-Muslims is a precept of the Koran, that has allowed Islam to conquer immense territories from Portugal to Indonesia.

How has the law of dhimmitude manifested itself in history? Besides the mandatory tribute, a concept inherited by the Mafiosi who call it ‘protection money’,
- the law also prohibits non-Muslims from marrying Muslim women. Male Muslims may wed women from other faiths but their children are obliged to be Muslims.
- In Saudi Arabia, churches are rigorously banned, while in other Muslim countries, the construction or maintenance of existing churches is too often prohibited.
- And such churches must not have bells, nor can they be taller than mosques. And Christians are prohibited from wearing any garments or symbols that manifest their faith.
- Christians accused of proselytism risk being jailed, and in some countries, cthey an incur the death penalty.
In secular Turkey pre-Erdogan, the Armenian Christians who were Turkish citizens were chosen to man the front lines in any conflict, and it is difficult to imagine that with the modern wannabe Caliphate, things will be any different.

Dhimmis throughout Islamic history have lived through periods of tolerance alternating with humiliation, such as the obligation to give their daughters in marriage to Muslims, to always give precedence to Muslims and lower their eyes in the presence of Muslims, never to ride horses, and to wear clothes and symbols that identify them as submissive. Without even counting the calumnies suffered by an unquantifiable number of Asia Bibis throughout the 1400 years of dhimmitude.

What are the principal characteristics of the post-modern Western dhimmi?
- We cannot call those who have established or who advocate indiscriminate immigration dhimmis- they are just evil villains who wish to abolish Christianity.
- Among the dhimmis we find the ignorant and the ill-equipped, who are just as dangerous as the outright villains and the so-called progressivists who, having been orphaned by the collapse of Communism in Russia and Europe, jumped happily into the Trojan horse of Islam. But their limited vision does not allow them to see that with Islam, they would simply be retrograde recruits.

Too many politicians, professor, intellectuals and journalists in the West have been made dhimmis thanks to the enormous sums of petrodollars going into their accounts. To whom we must add the one institution that ought to be raising barricades against the immigration of millions of Muslims into Europe – the Vatican.

It has become an obsession.
- There is hardly an occasion Bergoglio misses to speak of his open-door policy.
- Besides those villainous priests whose bank accounts have prospered because of the migrants, others recompensed by simply satisfying their resentment of Jesus.
Look at the churches they have turned into dormitories for Muslim migrants, or into mess halls, or into runways for young women sporting the latest pret-a-porter. Priests who sing San Remo pop songs at Mass or who allow terpsichoreans who dance before the altar to the delight of adult Catholic males.

We know that the post-Vatican II seminaries have produced an extraordinary number of ‘unformed’ priests. Allow me to recount two anecdotes which can give an idea of the pitiable state of those who wean priests.

In the Theological Faculty of Central Italy, a professor priest one fine day mentioned a saying of Mohammed as a positive example of human behavior. I, veteran of ten years residence in Muslim countries, where I saw injustices in abundance and had read enough of sacred Muslim texts, fought hard not to react. I clenched my teeth, but like Roger Rabbit, ended up being unable to contain myself.

Trying hard to repress my anger, I asked the professor priest why – with all the Gospel passages and a treasure trove of sayings by the great saints, he would cite Mohammed as a teacher of life. Surprised, and perhaps intimidated, he muttered something which none of us could hear. We were in the presence of a willing dhimmi. Like another professor priest who, looking at a page printed in Arabic script, remarked, “Islamic writing is truly fascinating”.

Arabic script was invented by Arab Christians way before the birth of Mohammed. Of course, that’s not something most people ought to know, but for a priest who teaches in a Catholic university, at a time when Islam has taken hold with virulence all over Europe, such ignorance is akin to dhimmitude.

When, on the flight back from Poland in 2016, Bergoglio was quoted to have said that “it is not right nor is it correct to identify Islam with terrorism and violence," I was speechless.

Not content with that, he went on to clobber Catholics, as he loves to do, with an analogy dear to Muslims, by saying, “I see violence in Italy that is the work of Catholics”. But as I have always pointed out, Catholics who kill others, except in legitimate self-defense, are not doing so because they are following Catholic teaching – they are following their own baser instincts. Which we cannot say for the pious Muslim who claims that, with divine mandate, he can dhimmitize, violate and kill whoever is guilty of not being a Muslim.

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In many respects – from his refusal to see the violence inherent in Islam to his indiscriminate immigrationism, seemingly not caring a whit about the real and growing Islamization of Europe, Jorge Bergoglio is the ultimate dhimmi nonpareil – the volunteer dhimmi who is a most willing and joyful one. No Muslim had to coerce him to become the #1 advocate of global Islamization for all that, as pope, he is supposed to be Catholic. Because he truly is anti-Catholic and apostate, whatever he says or does by rote that can be called ‘Catholic’ or ‘Christian’ to dissimulate his apostasy.

The new 'excuse' from Cardina-liar Donald Wuerl about his knowledge of at least one specific sexual misconduct accusation against his mentor and predecessor as Archbishop of Washington is so patently UNBELIEVABLE one cannot believe he even used it - but he did in a January 15 letter to the priests of his archdiocese. After having said again and again that he had not heard anything - not even rumors- about McCarrick's misconduct, and then making the distinction later he meant he had not heard that he had been abusing minors, not seminarians - as if somehow that made McCarrick's sins pardonable. No, he wasn't abusing minors, only seminarians! CNA which broke the story yesterday about Wuerl's latest lie has an update.

Who believes Wuerl's latest lie???
[And why is he still heading the Archdiocese of Washington?]
by Ed Condon

January 17, 2019

The man who made a 2004 accusation of misconduct against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick said Wednesday he is in disbelief after Cardinal Donald Wuerl told him he forgot about the allegation sometime after becoming Washington’s archbishop in 2006.

In a January 15 letter, Wuerl wrote to Washington, DC priests, saying that “when I was asked if I had any previous knowledge of allegations against Archbishop McCarrick, I said I did not. Only afterwards was I reminded of the 14-year-old accusation of inappropriate conduct which, by that time, I had forgotten.” [If you were an archbishop who was given documentation that your former diocese had paid out a settlement to a McCarrick victim, would you be likely to forget that at all? Especially if, as Wuerl claimed, he also turned over the information to the Nuncio at the time! In 2004 Wuerl was only 64 - too early for Alzheimer's.]

In a previous letter to priests, sent on January 12, Wuerl did not mention forgetting the allegation - instead he said he was bound by confidentiality not to mention it, and that when he denied hearing rumors about McCarrick’s misconduct, he meant only that he had not heard rumors that McCarrick had sexually abused minors. [Oh, so he had an earlier version of his current 'explanation! Maybe Wuerl is senile already - no one in his right mind would be giving out all the different lies he has been peddling, each one increasingly more preposterous. And this is the man Pope Francis praised for his overall handling of sexual abuse cases after Wuerl was forced to submit his resignation as Archbishop of Washington following the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report. Just as shamelessly brazen as Wuerl's lies, of course, was the fact that Bergoglio nonetheless chose to keep him on as Apostolic Administrator of DC and obviously has not moved a finger to name a proper replacement. What better microcosm of the messed-up morals of the man who is now pope and of his pontificate than the Wuerl saga - in many ways analogous to Bergoglio's 'non-handling' of the McCarrick case and just as emblematic. What next? Another Bergoglio effusion in praise of Wuerl despite all this???

The 2004 complaint was made by laicized priest Robert Ciolek.

In 2004, Ciolek went to Wuerl, who was then Bishop of Pittsburgh, to relay an accusation of sexual abuse at the hands of a Pittsburgh priest. At the same time, he reported to Wuerl that McCarrick had, as Bishop of Metuchen, shared a bed with seminarians at a New Jersey beach house, pressuring Ciolek to do the same. Wuerl presented those accusations to the apostolic nuncio in Washington.

Ciolek told CNA he spoke with Wuerl by telephone on Jan. 15, and that the cardinal told him personally what he later said in his letter: that he had had “a lapse of memory” regarding the 2004 allegation.

When Wuerl told him that, Ciolek said, he asked the cardinal if he had already forgotten the accusations by the time he arrived in Washington as McCarrick’s successor in 2006, only two years after he reported the allegation. He told CNA that he also asked Wuerl if he had taken any steps to see whether the same behavior was being repeated in Washington.

He said that Wuerl told him: “I did think about that when I arrived in Washington, but because I had never heard any other allegation or rumor, or heard back from the nuncio, I didn’t feel it was something I needed to concern myself with in Washington at that time.”

Ciolek said he found it difficult to understand how Wuerl could have forgotten the substance of his accusations in the ensuing years, especially after recalling them as he arrived in Washington to replace McCarrick.

“It’s unfathomable to me that he has forgotten, I don’t believe it for one second.”

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Washington declined to comment on Ciolek’s account of the conversation between him and Cardinal Wuerl, telling CNA that “the cardinal considers this a private conversation and will be respecting that.”

Ciolek told CNA that during their Jan. 15 telephone call, Wuerl also offered personal apologies for the abuse he had suffered, along with an apology for a “lapse of memory” regarding his 2004 allegation.

“I did not believe him when he said he did not remember,” Ciolek said, adding that the apology “wasn’t making sense to me in the light of his statement last week.”

In his Jan. 12 letter to Washington, DC priests, Wuerl wrote that when he offered multiple denials about hearing rumors regarding McCarrick, he meant them more narrowly than they were perceived, saying he spoke “in the context of the charges of sexual abuse of minors, which at the time was the focus of discussion and media attention.”

“While one may interpret my statement in a different context, the discussion around and adjudication of Archbishop McCarrick’s behavior concern his abuse of minors,” Wuerl added last week.

Ciolek also told CNA he felt that Wuerl’s recent statements have sought to “minimize” the allegations by referring to them as “inappropriate conduct.

He also told CNA that he disliked having to discuss his abuse and experiences publicly, but considered it a necessary contribution towards reform.

“I saw this conversation as an opportunity for Wuerl to say ‘enough is enough,’ and finally own his own actions. Sadly that hasn’t happened yet.”

He said he told the cardinal Tuesday “while it was nice to hear all you’ve expressed, your last comments about your own forgetfulness about these things is actually causing me more pain than I’ve already endured.”

“I don’t want any seminarian to endure what I did at the hands of a bishop again. I think the only way anyone can have hope that will happen is not just needed process changes, but ripping the band-aid off and exposing the wounds. People will be more willing to trust and believe [in reforms] if real honestly is part of the process,” Ciolek said.

“I’m sorry, if Cardinal Wuerl says he can’t remember…, there is only one conclusion [I can draw] and that is he is not being honest. He knew, he knew.”

JUST UN-BE-LIEV-ABLE! Imagine the lies the other McCarrick protege so favored by Bergoglio, Archbishop 'Nighty-night' Tobin of Newark, could be concocting or would have already concocted about his knowledge of McCarrick's misconduct... Yet if one looks at each and every cardinal in Bergoglio's privileged coterie of personal pets each one seems to be completely unsuitable for their red hats and high offices in view of their moral turpitude.

Why don't Catholic leaders
who fall short
simply say they're sorry?
[I think because they really are not and
think they've done or said nothing wrong]
by Mike Goggin

January 15, 2019

Recent days have seen calls for greater accountability from top-ranked U.S. Catholic clerics. First, a former priest revealed that Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocse fo Warshingon has been untruthful about what he knew of sexual misconduct allegations against his predecessor as archbishop, Theodore McCarrick.

Then on Monday, there were new calls for McCarrick himself to publicly repent for alleged abuse of youths and adults.

These past few days have prompted a basic question: Why can't these clerics just say they're sorry?

It's a particular conundrum for those of us who are Catholic. The sacrament of reconciliation provides us with the opportunity to confess our sins to a priest, apologize for them, make amends and resolve to do better.

When many of us prepared to practice the sacrament for the first time as children just reaching the age of reason, we were taught that lying was a sin. As we moved into adolescence, we learned that any sexual activity outside of marriage was likewise a sin. So why are our confessors finding it so hard to apologize for these very same basic sins?

Having worked for the Catholic Church for the past 25 years, I think it may have something to do with the dramatic change in the status of religious leaders in my lifetime.

Growing up in the Boston of the 1970s and early 1980s, where neighborhoods were still divided along the parish boundary lines despite a growing presence of non-Catholic immigrants from around the world, great respect and even reverence were directed toward the parish priest and his assistant clergymen.
- These men could do no wrong.
- They were arbiters of grace, and their Sunday evening visits for family dinners demanded the use of the best china.
- The church itself taught that the members of the clergy are in their very being different because of their ordination (in the church we use the term "ontological").
- While they look like any layperson, there is a fundamental difference in their being.
The church still teaches this today.

I remember the shock I felt when, as a teenager, I first encountered a priest who swore, or told an off-color joke, or smoked cigarettes or drank alcohol.
- In the end, it really was not that hard to find all of these peccadilloes in the priests I encountered in my parish or my Jesuit high school, but the result was a certain diminishment of the clergy in my eyes.
- The image of a superman was tarnished. As we now know, there were many much more serious sins and crimes being committed by Catholic clergy in that same place and time, but I had no personal experience of that.

Fast-forward to 2019, and one would be hard-pressed to find a lay Catholic who puts his or her priest on such a pedestal.
- We have been jaded by the scandals of the church in Boston, and now we are experiencing a crisis of leadership locally.
- Keep in mind that McCarrick was ordained to the priesthood in 1958 and Wuerl in 1966, and so their respective climbs to become princes of the church took place in the "Father Knows Best" milieu of an earlier time in this country.

Sure, institutional fear of costly litigation enters in, and perhaps that is really what is preventing Wuerl from being as candid as he might like.
- But it is also true that we might be asking both Wuerl and McCarrick to do something that priests and bishops of their time were never expected to do.
- If Father was always right, an apology was never needed - especially not if you wielded the additional power and authority of a bishop.

Bishops will tell you that their power and authority come to them through the Scriptures and the tradition of the church. None of us will ever be in a position to know or judge the private prayer lives of these men, the sins they themselves confess as they do penance nor the things they discuss with their spiritual directors and companions.

We are left to hope that Wuerl, in receiving the sacrament of reconciliation himself from a brother priest, did not leave his knowledge of McCarrick's actions completely unvoiced. Should his confessor have suggested public disclosure of the same? Well, Scripture does tell us that the truth will set you free.

Time and again, we have seen examples of Americans being willing to forgive people who have let them down.

This week, a spokesman for the Catholic community Opus Dei made an unusually frank - for a faith group - admission of guilt and shame, after it was forced to publicly confirm it paid nearly $1 million in a sex misconduct suit for celeb-priest John McCloskey and covered it up - leaving him in the same District of Columbia assignment for a year after the victim came forward before removing him quietly.

"The reality is he was around for a year after we were informed," spokesman Brian Finnerty said. "That's the reality. It's not good. But we may as well own it. . . . It's an argument that is no longer tenable - this 'let's quiet things over so priests can continue to do good'".

Within the past few years, some local Catholic institutions, most affiliated with the Jesuit religious order but not exclusively so, have looked at their own sad involvement in the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries and have apologized publicly for their complicity.

My alma mater, Georgetown University, in 2017 stripped the names of two Jesuit leaders who traded in slaves in 1838 off some of the newest buildings on campus and renamed them for the first slave named on the university's bill of sale (Isaac Hawkins) and a black educator who founded a girls' school in the Georgetown neighborhood in that era (Anne Marie Becraft). The university also invited more than 100 of the slaves' descendants to the renaming ceremony and offered them scholarship opportunities to study at the school.

At the ceremony, the Rev. Timothy Kesicki spoke directly to these men and women as resident of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States: "Today the Society of Jesus, who helped to establish Georgetown University and whose leaders enslaved and mercilessly sold your ancestors, stands before you to say that we have greatly sinned. We pray with you today because we are profoundly sorry."

Simple words spoken with great conviction - not a burdensome expectation, really.

Goggin was assistant director for the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington for nine years and is now the regional director of the Ignatian Volunteer Corps.


An earlier CNA story is a spine-chiller of a different sort...

Pope Francis: What to expect in 2019
By the end of 2019, the Roman Curia and College of Cardinals
might have been completely remade made in Bergoglio's image.



Vatican City, Jan 15, 2019 (CNA) - The finalization of a Curial reform process, a reshuffle in some Vatican positions, and an eventual consistory to “refill” the College of Cardinals might be among Pope Francis’s key moves in 2019.

As all eyes are set on the Vatican anti-abuse meeting, to be held Feb. 21-24, Pope Francis is in fact engaged in ongoing to reshape the Roman Curia and the College of Cardinals.

The first of the pope’s likely key moves has to do with the College of Cardinals.

After the death of Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, there is no cardinal camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. The camerlengo is chosen by the pope only, and holds is a very delicate position, especially during a sede vacante in the papacy.

When the pope dies, or renounces his seat, “the Camerlengo of Holy Roman Church has the duty of safeguarding and administering the goods and temporal rights of the Holy See, with the help of the three cardinal assistants, having sought the views of the College of Cardinals, once only for less important matters, and on each occasion when more serious matters arise,” according to the apostolic constitution Pastor bonus.

In general, the camerlengo oversees an office of the papal household that administers the property and revenues of the Holy See.

If the pope doesl not appoint a camerlengo, the cardinals will elect one at the beginning of the sede vacante.


However, Pope Francis might refrain from appointing a new camerlengo before he promulgates a long-awaited apostolic constitution on Vatican governance, Predicate evangelium, which is expected to reshape the offices of the Roman Curia.

There are rumors, in fact, that Pope Francis is going to abolish the pontifical household, including its office within the first section of the Secretariat of State.

According to a CNA source familiar with the subject, the idea has been suggested, though the shutdown of the pontifical household does not appear to be imminent.

The abolition of the pontifical household will bring some issues to be solved, since all the competencies of the pontifical household might be divided into other offices: the Sistine Chapel choir would go under the administration of the office for liturgical celebrations, the management of state visits would be placed under the protocol of the Secretariat of State, and so on. It is yet to clarified.

However, the decision would mark a major break with the past. The pontifical household is the direct legacy of the pontifical court, and its presence recalls the religious meaning behind any papal activity.

The rumors about the pontifical household also involve Archbishop Georg Ganswein, the prefect. Ganswein was appointed to the position in 2012 by Benedict XVI. He is now in his second 5-year term at the helm of the prefecture, while maintaining his position as particular secretary to the Pope Emeritus Benedict.

However, discontinuing the prefecture would prompt Pope Francis to find Ganswein a new position. One of the more widespread rumors is that Ganswein will be appointed secretary of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, to replace Archbishop Marcello Bartolucci. Bartolucci will turn the retirement age, 75, in April.


Ganswein could also be eligible to take a position within the Congregation for Divine Worship. It is noteworthy that Cardinal Robert Sarah, the prefect, will end his five-year mandate in November, and it is possible the composition of the congregation’s top ranks will be reshuffled at that time.

Another key move in the Roman Curia might be the shutdown of the pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei. Established in 1988 by St. John Paul II in order to carry on a dialogue with traditionalist parties, the commission was reformed by Benedict XVI with a 2009 instruction Universae Ecclesiae, linking the commission to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Pope Francis may shut down the commission, making it an office within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

If the shutdown takes place, the pope will have to find a new post for Archbishop Guido Pozzo, the commission’s president.

The shutdown of both the pontifical household and Ecclesia Dei would be part of the wider project for Curia reform.

At the moment, Praedicate evangelium, that is, the new constitution that will regulate tasks and competencies of Curia offices, is being finalized. Pope Francis will likely want to make an overall revision of the text.

However, most of the structural reforms are already in place: Pope Francis has established the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, merging there the Pontifical Councils for Laity and Family and a part of the competency of the Pontifical Academy for Life; he established the dicatery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, that absorbed the Pontifical Councils for Justice and Peace, Migrants, Cor Unum, and for Health Care Workers.

Under Pope Francis, the Secretariat for the Economy and the Council for the Economy have been set up, while the reform of the communication department led to the establishment of the Secretariat for Communication, now a dicastery.

It seems that, at the moment, the other curial offices will not be touched. Cardinal Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, is 76 now, so he has surpassed the usual retirement age. Pope Francis, however, confirmed him at the helm of the dicastery until his 80th birthday. No changes are to be expected there, then.

The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue is without a leader since Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, the president, died in July 2018. It is still uncertain whether the pope will appoint a new president or will merge the pontifical council with another Curia office.

While undergoing these major structural changes, it likely Pope Francis will hold another consistory for the creation of new cardinals during this year.

Cardinals are eligible to vote in a conclave when they are under 80. At the moment, there are 124 cardinals who are eligible to vote in a conclave. Out of these, 59 have been created by Pope Francis in five consistories, an average of one consistory per year.

During this year, there will be 10 cardinals that will turn 80, and will not be eligible to vote in a papal conclave anymore. Out of these 10, three were made cardinals by Pope Francis.

The cardinals aging-out are: Alberto Suarez Inda, Orlando Beltran Quevedo, Edwin O’Brien, Stanislaw Dzwisiz, John Tong Hon, Sean Baptist Brady, Laurent Mosengwo Pasinya, Zenon Grocholewski, Edoardo Menichelli, and Telesphore Placidus Toppo.

By October there will be only 114 cardinals eligible to vote in a conclave, six less than the maximum permitted number of voting cardinals, which was set at 120 by St. Pope Paul VI – Pope Francis made an exception to this number at the last consistory.

All odds say that Pope Francis will hold another consistory, naming new cardinals during 2019. Who will receive new red hats is not foreseen.

It is noteworthy that Archbishop Filippo Iannone, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, and Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, are the only heads of dicasteries without red birettas.

And it is noteworthy that Ireland’s only living representative in the College of Cardinals will age out of voting eligibility. So, the pope might consider another Irish cardinal.

However, it is also possible the pope will reward some of the periphery Churches, sticking to the point that all the Church must be represented in the College of Cardinals.

So by the end of 2019, the Roman Curia and College of Cardinals might be completely made in Pope Francis image. And it would be the first time since the beginning of his pontificate.


This pope may choose to ignore all the online petitions and open letters sent to him in the past six years, not to mention the daily commentaries (by professional journalists and commentators, as well as by the ranks of amateur bloggers, and their numberless indefatigable combox commentators) exposing and analyzing his many and varied 'failings and faults' - and blatant lies. But the fact remains that - in the Internet age - all of this is on record, and barring some cosmic cyberspace catastrophe, will forever be in cyberspace as part of recorded history.

It is safe to say that he is the first pope in the media age to have been the subject of so much protest and controversy as to merit all that tsunami of verbiage. Even all the post-DEPUTY black propaganda and 'backlash' against Pius XII, or perhaps in second place, the post-Humanae Vitae 'backlash' against Paul VI, pale in comparison.

Here then is the latest major petition sure to be completely ignored by Bergoglio and his Vatican - who have never even acknowledged all previous petitions, much less acted on them at all. It's the 'Bergoglio dubia reflex': If you ignore it, it did not happen at all. Except, there is all of that record in cyberspace to belie him..






Among the first signatories and promoters of te initiative are: John Smeaton, The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (UK); Markus Büning (Germany);
Riccardo Cascioli, editor of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana (Italy); Christian Spaemann (Germany); Pedro L. Llera (Spain); Anna Silvas (Australia);
Donna F. Bethell (USA); and Peter A. Kwasniewski (Stati USA).

Add your name to the petition at
https://proecclesia.ch/petition/

Meanwhile, OnePeterFive has taken belated note of Aldo Maria Valli's post last week about the effusive gratitude of Freemasons to the reigning pope for his Christmas message on universal fraternity, echoing the well-known Masonic slogan about 'the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man' (the Masons believe in a Supreme Creator they call God for convenience).

---

Freemasons thank the pope
for his Christmas message


In 2017, OnePeterFive published a three-part series examining all the support that Pope Francis has received from Freemasons around the world since his election. At the time, we presented a compilation of 62 examples of public support from various Freemasonic figures or lodges for the 266th pope — an almost impossible thing to imagine happening less than a century ago.

From the Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli, we present a new example from the Masons of the Grand Orient Lodge of Spain, who have praised Francis for his Christmas message, in which he expressed “a wish for fraternity” among “individuals of every nation and culture,” among “people with different ideas, yet capable of respecting and listening to one another,” and “among persons of different religions.”

This message has been interpreted by the Freemasons of Spain as compatible with their own values, despite a long enmity between the Church’s ideals and those of the Freemasons...

---

And so, the daily litany and chronicle of Bergoglio 'apostasies' and wrongdoings by his pet cardinals grind on... Here's the latest:


This was first brought up last year when an Italian daily came up with this headline and story in Sept 2018:

at which time, 1P5 posted this report:

A 'new bomb' at the Vatican?
Italian daily runs teaser on a possible Farrell dossier
by Steve Skojec


The Italian traditionalist blog Messa in Latino has reported that its own “internal sources” at the Vatican have confirmed a report by the Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano on September 4, indicating that there is a possibly soon to be revealed dossier on the American cardinal Kevin Farrell.

Farrell, picked by Pope Francis as the prefect for the new Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life, is the highest ranking prelate from the United States.
- He is also a former Legionary of Christ – under the tenure of their founder, the monstrous abuser Fr. Marcial Maciel – and
- one of those closest to the disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
- Farrell served as McCarrick’s vicar general and auxiliary in Washington, D.C., living in the same residence with McCarrick until his retirement in 2006.

Farrell claimed, at the time revelations of McCarrick’s abuse began to be made public earlier this year, that he had no knowledge of McCarrick’s abusive activities.
- “Never once did I even suspect” McCarrick, said Farrell to the Associated Press (AP) in July 2018.
- In another, earlier interview, he told Cindy Wooden of Catholic News Service (CNS), “I was a priest of Washington, D.C. I worked in the chancery, in Washington. And never. No indication. None whatsoever.”
The video of that CNS interview came immediately under scrutiny because Farrell’s facial expressions betrayed none of the emotions – such as shock – that he claimed to be feeling over the revelations.

Claims of new information from Francesca Fagnani of Il Fatto Quotidiano may bring light to Farrell’s involvement in what has rapidly become the most high-profile abuse case in the Catholic Church.
- The Italian report, translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino for OnePeterFive, says there is a “violent and unprecedented civil war” in the Church that now involves even the pope. F
- ollowing Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s bombshell testimony about cover-ups of the abuse of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick that included Pope Francis, Fagnani says that “soon another bomb could break out.”

“According to reliable sources close to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” says Fagnani, “there may be a similar dossier on Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell.”

“Farrell was specifically nominated as Auxiliary Bishop of Washington,” writes Fagnani, “because Cardinal Theodore McCarrick wanted him as his assistant, and these two men became part of Pope Francis’ ‘magic circle.’ Farrell and McCarrick also lived together for years, sharing the same apartment. How could Farrell possibly not know all about McCarrick’s sexual behaviors?”

Fagnani then asks the obvious question without providing a specific answer:
- What is contained in this new dossier on Farrell? The Pope and the Secretariat of State know about every single new thread of every investigation that is opened by the Tribunal of the CDF, so how could they possibly now know about this?
- Did Farrell’s nomination to such a high post precede or follow the opening of this investigation?
- The historian Roberto de Mattei, among the most knowledgeable of Vatican experts, known for his traditionalist positions, adds this little comment: “The link between the two prelates [McCarrick and Farrell] was known but never clarified. There may be something else behind the silence of Pope Francis and Cardinal Parolin.”

And what exactly might that “something” be?

---

“I know Vigano personally. He is an honest and prudent man. I am certain that everything he says is true. He probably knows more. We know that the famous ‘report of the three cardinals’ [from Herranz, Tomko, DiGiorgi in 2012] exists on the moral and other corruption within the Roman Curia, which was given to Ratzinger prior to his resignation. This report has been seen by Francis and select number of others. What would happen if it was published?”

---

This report of the three cardinals, said to comprise 300 pages, was delivered to Pope Benedict XVI in December 2012 and kept under pontifical secret. It was this document that some believe influenced the former pope to abdicate his position.

According to a report published at Rorate Caeli in February 2013:

---

For the largest Italian daily La Repubblica, the key part of the “300-page” cardinalatial report (“relatio“) on the Vatican leaks (“in two red hardbound tomes”) … was the identification of a hugely powerful and highly influential “homosexual underground” in the Curia and in the universal Church.

---

This same report was mentioned by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in a follow-up interview last week after the release of his his testimony:

---

I spoke because now more than ever, corruption has spread to the highest levels of the hierarchy of the Church. I ask the journalists: why are they not asking what happened to the cache of documents that, as we all saw, were delivered at Castel Gandolfo to Pope Francis from Pope Benedict? Was that all useless? It would have been enough to read my report and the transcript that was made of my deposition before the three cardinals charged with the investigation of the Vatileaks case (Julian Herranz, Jozef Tomko, and Salvatore De Giorgi) in order to begin some cleaning up in the Curia.

---

If indeed a dossier similar to that of McCarrick exists on Cardinal Farrell, another of the pope’s handpicked men, it will truly be explosive. Even more stunning would be the revelation of this long buried report uncovering the working of the so-called “Lavender Mafia” within the Church.

That was in September 2018 - and no Farrell bomb has yet been detonated. As prefect of the dicastery in charge of coordinating and supervising World Youth Day, Farrell ought to be in the thick of things now for the next WYD in Panama later this month - which promises to be the least attended of all WYDs. Could it be that those who have his dossier, if there really is one which is damaging, have decided to detonate their bomb - assuming it is genuine - just on the eve of the Panama WYD?... BTW, without McCarrick's recommendation and endorsement, how could Bergoglio have plucked the till-then fairly unknown Farrell to head one his new super-dicasteries???

And BTW, the whole world saw the box containing the report and supporting documents from the three cardinals Benedict XVI commissioned to study the 'gay' problem on the Roman Curia, when he handed those to his successor the day Bergoglio visited him in Castel Gandolfo on March 21, 2013.
- If the report contained significant information that required action, did Bergoglio do anything at all? Because if he did, why has the Vatican not said so?
- The same report was said to have been provided to each of the cardinal electors before the 2013 Conclave. Is it not remarkable that not one of them has ever commented on it at all, if only to say, "The report really found nothing significant", which is news by itself?
- Could we say that everyone has been silent on it because the report did contain disturbing information about which this pope and those around him choose to be in a state of denial, when they could well have used such information to their advantage at the time the McCarrick exposes ignited the Present Crisis into the uncontrollable forest fire it has become?
- i.e., more unconscionable and futile covering up???

BENEDICT XVI WILL BE 92 IN APRIL.

Georg Ratzinger turns 95 - says
his brother is 'generally in good health'

January 15, 2018

Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, the brother of Benedict XVI, told the press office of Regensburg diocese that his brother’s health is “about the same” as his own.

“He obviously experiences some limitations, but generally he is in good health, above all, he is mentally present and vital.”

Ratzinger turned 95 on January 15. He is almost blind and needs full-time care. Every evening he speaks with his brother on the phone.

Last February, Ratzinger said, that Benedict XVI suffers from a dangerous neuropathy.

Which is not what he said this yearThat report was promptly denied by the Vatican in a rare statement having to do with the personal and private life of the Emeritus Pope:

---

Vatican denies report that Benedict XVI
has a degenerative disease
by Junno Arocho Esteves

February 15, 2018

ROME - The Vatican denied that Pope emeritus Benedict XVI has a degenerative neurological disease or paralyzing condition ,after his brother, 94-year-old Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, told a magazine that Benedict has a debilitating disease.

In an interview published Feb. 13 in the German weekly entertainment magazine, Neue Post, the elder Ratzinger said Benedict suffered from a nerve disease that was slowly paralyzing him.

“The greatest concern is that the paralysis could eventually reach his heart and then everything could end quickly,” Ratzinger was quoted as saying.

“I pray every day to ask God for the grace of a good death, at a good moment, for my brother and me. We both have this great wish,” he added.

Although news about the interview also was published on the German edition of the Vatican News website, the Holy See press office said in a statement Feb. 15 that “the alleged news reports of a paralyzing or degenerative illness are false.”

“In two months, Benedict XVI will turn 91 years old and, as he himself recently said, he feels the weight of years, which is normal at this age,” the statement said.

In a letter to an Italian newspaper dated Feb. 5, Pope Benedict said that “with the slow diminishing of my physical strength, inwardly I am on a pilgrimage toward Home.”

“It is a great grace in this last, sometimes tiring stage of my journey, to be surrounded by a love and kindness that I never could have imagined,” Benedict wrote.

He had announced his retirement from the papacy Feb. 11, 2013, and stepped down Feb. 28, 2013.

---

The Ratzinger brothers photographed in the garden of Joseph's Pentling house outside Regensburg during Benedict XVI's visit to Bavaria in Sept. 2006.

P.S. I found the interview with Mons. Georg Ratzinger by kath.net, the Austrian Catholic news agency, on which gloria.tv based its tiny snippet posted above. His answers show
he is anything but a dotard at 95...


Georg Ratzinger at 95: The picture that accompanies the interview.

Georg Ratzinger at 95:
Simply a day for reflection
An interview by
Harald Beitler, Claudia Bresky and Jakob Schötz
Translated from


Regensburg, January 16, 2019 (kath.net/Bistum Regensburg) – On January 15, 2019, Apostolic Pro-Notary Mons. Georg Ratzinger, former Domkapelllmister of the Regensburg Boys’ Choir and brother of Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, celebrated his 95th birthday.

Regensburg Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer will celebrate Pontifical Vespers in honor of Mons. Ratzinger on Sunday, January 20, at St. Peter’s Cathedral.

We spoke with the birthday celebrant earlier who looked back on his musical career and told us how important his 95th birthday is.

So how will you be celebrating the big day?
I really would want to spend the day completely by myself. I do not usually think about these things. But there will be a Holy Mass in my house, with Bishop Rudolf Voderhlzer concelebrating, which makes me especially happy. I do not know what else will happen on that day – I hope as little as possible.

What is your personal wish for this day?
I wish for as much rest and calm as possible. A day to think, to reflect. I'm not interested in material matters. I have food, drink, clothing. I need persons to read to me, and thank God I have those who come regularly to do that. Otherwise, I have no other wishes.

Can you look back over the life you have had and your musical career?
My whole life is of one piece, with each element in its right place. Of course, I spent the longest period of my career with the Domspatzen. I have to admit that my memory is beginning to suffer a lot, and I can no longer remember details exactly.

We gave many beautiful concerts. Especially the Christmas concerts. The great tours with the Boys' Choir – all that is in the past, and I have obviously turned over the task and the privileges to the colleagues who succeeded me. Of course, the trips I made with the choir enriched me a lot – doubtless a bit tiring, but very enriching. Working with young people means that every day brings something different. And every person has his own special aspects, which can also bring about problems.

My ordination and my first Mass were special events that I always gladly recall. Earlier there was school, labor service, military service, captivity in southern Italy at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius. And as a priest, theological studies and various work places. Each of these work stations has pleasant associations, even if, of course, there were always difficulties, too, none of which I would wish to highlight.

The important thing for me was a good home that pointed me in the right way. It made it possible for me to have a good start, a clear one – the way of the Catholic faith. That is the direction that was indicated.

What role does music play in your life now?
After I could no longer read for myself, I have been listening to a lot of music. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to operate even a CD player, so I listen mostly to classical music on Bayern 4, the cultural channel. Not fully satisfactory, but it is a still a great resource – there’s a lot you can hear on it. I love most the music of the Renaissance masters Palestrina and Lasso, and from later eras, the Viennese masters Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. I especially love Franz Schubert’s music, and Anton Bruckner’s.

You visited your brother in Rome last Christmas. How did it go?
Very much as usual. Sister Christine, who is Austrian, takes care of me when I am there, because by myself, I am helpless. On Christmas Day, we celebrated Mass in the morning, then breakfast. Sister then read various texts to me. Then lunch, and a siesta. Daily, we walk through the Vatican Gardens to pray the rosary. After dinner, we all listen to a German newscast together. And there the day ends.

People are leaving the Catholic Church. What are the causes, and how can this be controlled?
Countering the trend is probably difficult at this point. Man is increasingly in the grip of the things of everyday life, especially now that there is a lot that man, out of his own ‘power, is able to do. So, the world of the hereafter is very much left out – man is no longer concerned with the afterlife.

You experienced the Second World War as a soldier. Even today there are wars. What would you advise politicians, and what can the Church do about wars?
The problems of the world are so many and various. I do not want to give politicians advice. Yet so many things are being set into motion that one can well say, "There have to be better solutions". So politicians must strive on their own to find decent solutions.

As for the Church, her first task is to proclaim the message of Christ. The task of the church is to make His message clearer and more intensively heard.

Domkapellmeister Roland Büchner [who succeeded Mons Ratzinger with the Domspaetzen in 1994] retires in 2019. What must the leader of the Regensburger Domspatzen bring to his office?
First of all, he has to be a devout Catholic. For whom faith is the basis of his life, and who also must have a special relationship with liturgy.

Of course, he needs good educational and musical qualifications. He has to be able to deal with children in different age groups – between 9 and 20, approximately. He needs a musical education that must include playing the organ himself, and the ability to interpret scores that were created centuries ago.

My personal opinion, maybe old-fashioned, is that it is better for a man to lead the boys’ choir. Although that’s not necessarily true for girls’ choirs. Male choirmasters have proven themselves excellent for women’s choirs.

What is your daily life like these days?
Thank God I have a small private chapel at home. In the morning I say Mass, which is attended by Sister Laurente, who looks after me. Then friends come to read aloud to me, starting with the newspaper. I listen to the radio until lunch, then siesta. And then, very important for Sister Laurente, we go for a walk, for the fresh air which is incredibly healthy, as the sister tells me again and again. At 4 o’clock, another reader comes in. At 6 o’clock, dinner. I pray the last two offices (Vespers and Compline) with my nurse. Then a man or a woman from Caritas comes in to put me to bed.

I put in a telephone call to my brother every night. When I was 6, he was only 3 – which was a big difference at the time.

But today that I am 95 and he is almost 92, there is no longer a significant gap. For now, he and I are generally in the same state of health.
Of course, he too experiences some physical limitations, but he is healthy overall, and especially present and vital mentally.


In 2008, during a Sistine chapel concert in honor if his brother’s birthday, Benedict XVI said the following words:

---

“Since I was born, my brother has been for me not just a companion but a trustworthy guide. He has always represented for me a point of orientation, a reference point, because of the clarity and resolve of his decisions. He has shown me the path to take, even in difficult situations. Now, we are at the last stage of our life, in advanced old age. The days left for us to live grow progressively less. But even at this time, he helps me to accept the weight and difficulties of each day with serenity, humility and courage.”

---

No, seriously: This is the coat of arms of the city of St. Gallen, Switzerland, described in heraldic terms as "Argent a Bear rampant Sable langued and in his virility Gules and armed and gorged Or" (in simple English, "Silver a bear rampant black, his tongue
and virility red, armed and collared in gold"). Isn't that weird about the bear's red member???

I've really been quite remiss not following Fr. Geoffrey Kirk's blog, IGNATIUS HIS CONCLAVE, more closely. This one, in particular, on New Year's Day, was
even referred to by Fr. Hunwicke. Anyway, the topic is timeless - and the narrative is delectable - so enjoy.

Poirot: The Italian case

January 1, 2019

With a last flourish of the razor, the famous waxed mustachios were removed. The pince-nez were set aside in favour of horn-rimmed spectacles, and the famous Belgian detective emerged as a very modern sleuth. For this was to be Poirot’s last and most celebrated case: the murder of Pope Francis. And it was to appear as a trend-setting mini-series on the BBC.

The suspects, it had to be admitted, were many.

Already as Hercule crossed St Peter’s Square, bound for the office of Cardinal Parolin, a group of frenzied nuns from Apulia was chanting ‘Vi-gan-o! Vi-gan-o! Vi-gan-o!’. But Poirot knew what they did not. That the Archbishop had an unassailable alibi. The Swiss Guard had finally located him in hiding in a yurt in Outer Mongolia. He at least could be ruled out.

Accompanied by the Cardinal Secretary of State, the first task was to view the body. The room – it was little more a cell – was sparsely furnished. A camp bed, a threadbare easy chair, a small bedside table and a lithograph of Juan Peron was the sum total of the furnishings. The body, still in its well-worn sleeping bag, was laid out on the bed. There could be no doubt: the pontiff had been strangled with the ecclesiastical girdle which was lying on the floor beside him.

‘Who has done this terrible thing?’ asked Cardinal Parolin in a hoarse whisper.

‘We shall see,‘ replied Poirot, in firm tones. ‘We shall see.’

The Vatican, Hercule perceived, was swirling with rumour. The Lavender Mafia accused the traditionalists; the traditionalists accused the Lavender Mafia; the CDF accused the Vatican Bank; the Vatican Bank accused the Auditor General; and everybody accused the Dubia Cardinals.

But the little grey cells were already at work.

Instinctively he knew that an assassination of an absolute monarch was a circumstance that no sleuth had encountered since 1789. But the principles of investigation, he reassured himself, remained the same: establish the means, establish the motive, eliminate the superfluous. He was confident he would succeed. Was he not, after all, almost as infallible as the unfortunate victim?

Things did not go well. The Pontiff’s cell, it turned out, was unlocked at all times. Countless people had ready access, from the nuns who did the catering to the highest curial officials. And a stock of girdles identical to the murder weapon was to be found in the sacristy two doors away. Everyone, it seemed, had the means and the motive: the victim was universally disliked.

Poirot was getting nowhere, when, walking pensively up the Scala Regia, a figure emerged from behind the statue of Constantine. It was of less than average height, dressed in a cloak and hood which obscured the face. On the cloak was emblazoned an heraldic badge – a bear with a collar of steel.

‘I am well aware’, said the mysterious stranger, ‘of your habit of show-casing your deductive skills before a captive audience at the end of every investigation. Now you yourself are to be that audience. You must rein in your self-importance and listen. There will be no baroque conclusion, full of surprises, to this enterprise. Instead, I will tell you, quite simply, who committed this crime and how it came about.’

‘First, I need to take you back in time. Some years ago, when it became clear that the great advances of the Second Vatican Council were being threatened by a surge of reaction, a few of us, zealous for a reformed church, began meeting in Switzerland. It was at first an informal gathering, but as the years passed and the mission became more urgent, we formed ourselves into a regular sodality: our stated aim was to place one of our own in the shoes of the Fisherman. Bergoglio was that man. But time has shown how mistaken we were. He was not man enough for the job. Half radical, half traditionalist, he has merely sowed confusion. The time has come to end it all.’

‘This time resignation was not an option. It had to finish cleanly. No single hand was on the cord. No single assassin crept away into the darkness. But make no mistake: the Sankt Gallen Mafia was responsible. What we made, we can destroy.’

The figure had vanished. Poirot peered into the deepening gloom at the turn of the stairs. But there was nothing behind the statue except the dust of ages. Hercule might easily have missed the remaining clue. Written by a mysterious finger in the dust was the haunting inscription: CORMAC MURPHY O’CONNOR.

The dead speak. So the rumours had been true all along.

In an earlier post, Fr. Kirk wrote about James Martin. LGBTQetc paladin:
Ignatian retreat

DECEMBER 12, 2018

The long-awaited review by Fr James Martin LGBTSJ of the book-length interview with Pope Francis, published on December 3 in ten languages under the title ‘The Strength of Vocation’, is finally due to appear in America.

The interview contains explicit statements by the pontiff condemning homosexuality in the clergy:

---

“The issue of homosexuality is a very serious issue that must be adequately discerned from the beginning with the candidates, if that is the case. We have to be exacting. In our societies it even seems that homosexuality is fashionable and that mentality, in someway, also influences the life of the Church.

This is something I am concerned about, because perhaps at one time it did not receive much attention. The issue of homosexuality is a very serious issue that must be adequately discerned from the beginning with the candidates, if that is the case.”

---

From a not-really-recent interview with a Spanish priest, revived all of a sudden by the Vatican last month in an instant book entitled ON VOCATION by the reigning pope, to provide him with retroactive 'credentials' denouncing homosexuality in the clergy, to begin with, in seminaries. Not that the rest of the quoted passages from the interview denounced homosexual practice in general, much less homosexuality and it active practice in the clergy and episcopacy, not to mention, lay Catholics - no, his references were only to seminarians and would-be seminarians.

Fr James has argued that the book is a glaring and egregious example of Fake News. He does so by subjecting the text to rigorous literary analysis.
- Explicit statements (particularly in support of traditional doctrine) are claimed to be uncharacteristic of Francis.
- His style is allusive and oblique, tending to deconstruct existing teaching rather than reinforcing it.
- Martin cites the now-famous dictum ‘Who am I to judge?’

Francis, moreover, has a known preference for being interviewed by nonagenarians who do not take notes.
- He is clearly eager not to be pinned down.
- This accords with his settled practice of making statements off-the-cuff on aeroplanes or the like.
- In written statements Francis likes to include the most contentious elements in footnotes.

Fr Martin concludes: ‘All this and other evidence leads me to assert that this book cannot be relied on as a reflection of the views of Pope Francis. His pro-gay sympathies are well-known from recent appointments, not least in the United States. The supposed interviews are a fabrication by traditionalist homophobes and should be treated as such.’

Did Martin really write such a review and say the paragraph wuoted above? I have not bothered to check it out. Even if Fr Kirk only wrote this as pure satire, then it is very much on the mark.

Then, there's Fr. Kirk's latest istallment of his imagined constant exchange of letters between the pope, Frank, and his friend, the Archbishop of Cat]nterbury, Justin.

How to de-construct the Sacraments

December 13, 2018

---

Dear Frank,

I don’t suppose you get a lot of gender dysphoria in Italy – still less in Argentina. But there’s a lot of it in these parts. 1 in 11000 men and 1 in 30000 women. Quite a market!

We in the CofE [Church of England] have decided to harvest this growth area.

Since regular churchgoers now average less than two percent of the population, this could be big. And since I know that your own figures are also falling, I thought you might like to learn something of our programme.

For some time now our evangelisation strategy has been one of ‘deconstructing the sacraments’. (How very modern!)
- We started with matrimony, and discovered that once you stripped out the forbidding notions of fidelity and procreation you had a much more saleable commodity.
- People have always been keener on the sentimental and the picturesque.
- Take away the outmoded theological bits and it allows you to move seamlessly into same sex marriage – which, after all, is the coming thing.

Our mission to the transgendered has led us to a similar deconstruction of Baptism.
- Strip out the regeneration stuff and what have you left? A joyful service of naming and affirmation!
- You can even (as our guidelines suggest) introduce redundant symbols like Water and Oil.
- ‘Natural Symbols’ are all the rage with secular ‘celebrants’ these days.

Of course, to pacify the traddies, we have been careful to say that these naming ceremonies are NOT baptism. But none of our potential clientele is likely to notice the difference!

The exciting thing is that there are still five whole sacraments to deconstruct. If you are keen to keep the numbers favourable, I will keep you posted of our progress.

Your ever-optimistic colleague,

Justin

---

Preceding the above was Justin reacting to Frank's version of synodality...

point out that no double entendre was intended.

On synodality

November 18 2018

---

Dear Frank,

Just a word about Synods. Don’t be taken in by all the guff we Anglicans talk about them.

‘Episcopally led, Synodically governed’ is the official line. But I can tell you as the Archbishop at the receiving end of this ecclesiological nightmare, it is no joke.

Synods rapidly become Parliaments, with established parties and partisan cabals – all of them vulnerable to outside pressure groups and soi-disant think-tanks. The women were the first; now it’s the LGBT+ lobby. To be honest I can see no way of resisting: they have effectively hijacked the agenda before it has even been formulated.

I know you think (on recent experience) that you are now an expert at manipulating Synods and getting what you want. But, frankly, you have seen nothing yet. The more synods you have (and we, God help us, sometimes have three a year), the better organised the malcontents will get – like the St Gallen bunch who got you the job. Every Synod a little Conclave – that’s what you re in for. And the only rule of the game will be that you cannot win.

I never thought I would be saying this, but what possible sense can there be in allowing Europe’s last surviving autocracy to be gnawed away, piece by piece, by shoals of marauding piranha fish?

My advice is to cut your loses and let them know who is boss – you know it makes sense.

Your younger but wiser friend,

Justin

---

And this one, inspired by a recent Dutch cause celebre...

On officially changing one's age

November 1, 2018

It was revealed yesterday that, on behalf of Pope Francis (and following the example of Dutch entrepreneur Emile Ratelband, 69), Cardinal Parolin has approached the Argentine Government to reduce the Holy Father’s age on official documents to 45.

The Pontiff, who has been 116 ever since his election five years ago, is clearly worried that the precedent of Benedict XVI may lead to further calls for his resignation.

‘We have work to do,‘ explained the Vatican Secretary of State, ‘there are doctrines to be binned and Catechisms to be rewritten: so many projects, so little time.‘ Francis, it seems, who has broken new ground in many ways since his elevation to the See of Peter, is destined to be the first Pope actually to get younger in office.

Said Papal spokesperson Fr Thomas Rosica: ‘Vatican-I aside, let no one doubt the absolute infallibility of this Pope. He has changed the moral law, and now – as you will see – he is going to change the laws of nature themselves. This is a Pope who brings hope to young and old alike.’

LORD, GIVE US MORE SATIRISTS LIKE FR KIRK!!!

And if you think Bergoglio's sacramental 'mercy and leniency' has little fallout or none at all, check out Father Z's account of a literally scandalous parish practically in his own backyard (next-doot state, anyway). Of course, priests who claim they are simply 'following the example of the pope' usually carry out their imitation of Satan to far greater extremes, as this example shows.

Scandalous parish in @ArchdioceseSPM publicly celebrates
homosexual 'marriage', artifial reproduction and surrogate wombs

January 17, 2019


Several priests and laypeople have written to me about this. It is troubling enough to merit wider attention. It pains me in the extreme that this concerns my native place.

In the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis there is an infamous parish, St. Joan of Arc, which perpetrates weird and sacrilegious offences, especially liturgical, against the Faith.

I understand that, as advertised in the parish bulletin and enshrined in a video, there was the public baptism of a child – conceived through in vitro fertilization and with surrogacy – of a homosexual couple.

Rumors are one thing. VIDEO is a “proof”. Someone should grab the video before it is removed.


“Jesus also had two dads, and he turned out okay.” (cue applause)

Sentimentality aside, this is scandalous.
- Baptizing a child living in this situation is a tough pastoral call.
- However, exalting the circumstances as they do in this video, publicly, is scandalous.
- Apart from the baptism, this is a complete public embrace of homosexual “marriage”, in vitro fertilization and surrogacy.

The parish of St. Joan of Arc – my heavens, how insulting to this great saint! – has been a disaster for decades. As a seminarian I went there a couple times to see what was going on – thirty years ago.
- Lots of parishes have coffee and donuts, but not usually in church, during “Mass”.
- I was fairly sure that the “Mass” was not valid, because of the substantial bread they had.
- It is unfathomable to me that something hasn’t been done to deal with the abuses at this place.

I’ve written about this disaster parish for years in 2006, 2008, 2009.

One of the people who contacted me about this was from a different part of the country, not near Minneapolis at all. Hence, I think this merits greater attention because of the scandal that it causes and the harm to the souls of those involved.

Concerned members of that Archdiocese might make their thoughts about this known to the chancery.

If anyone reading this decides to do so, be sure to be brief and be respectful. Follow the tips I give for how to write to priests and bishops, etc.


UPDATE:
Check out the pastor’s profanity-laced raving in the current parish bulletin here -
https://www.saintjoanofarc.org/sites/default/files/bulletins/190113ad.pdf

Just because he used Yiddish words, that doesn’t mean that those words are not off-color. Was his intention to mock Jews, or was he just trying to be cute?

Frankly, I don’t know what an Archbishop could do to … what?… clean up that place.
- The appointment of any reasonably faithful priest as pastor would trigger immediate revolution. What to do?
- Suppress the place and sow the ground with salt?
- Let it remain so that all the crazies concentrate there rather than trouble other parishes?
I have great sympathy for the Archbishop.

A remarkable history of Christian self-understanding
A French historian's penetrating exploration of the struggle to keep or restore
Christian unity and his own intimations of how that effort might bear more fruit.
by Gil Bailie

January 15, 2019


Last year, the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation was celebrated by some and noted with remorse by others.
- Though the reformers sought to rebuild Christianity on the principle of sola scriptura, without either papal or magisterial authorit,y the movement immediately began fracturing over the proper interpretation of the Scriptures.
- Today, the number of Protestant denominations is estimated to be somewhere between 35,000 and 47,000, a sobering reminder that sola scriptura was incapable of performing the task assigned to it.

Though ecumenical efforts to repair the damage done by such divisions have been most welcome, not a few Catholics were puzzled by the Vatican decision to commemorate the anniversary of the Reformation by issuing a stamp depicting Martin Luther and his collaborator Philip Melanchthon kneeling at the foot of the cross.

In 2018, that concern quickly paled by comparison when the scandal of criminal and immoral behavior on the part of ordained priests and bishops abruptly brought to light divisions within the Church of which many of the faithful had been unaware. [I disagree strongly that the apotheosis and virtual canonization of Luther by Bergoglio is a scandal that 'pales in comparison' to the sex abuse scandal. The first has to do with an apostasy from Catholic faith, the second from Catholic morals. Both are inestimably scandalous for the Church.]

At year’s end, the Anglican Communion’s self-declared middle-way between Catholic and Protestant alternatives suffered another setback when the Church of England abandoned any pretense of adherence to Judeo-Christian theological anthropology by promulgating guidelines for a baptism-like ceremony for those who claim to have changed their gender.

While some saw this as more evidence of how quickly churches and ecclesial traditions are succumbing to the increasingly burlesque spirit of the age, others declared it to be indicative of Christianity’s growing moral acuities.

On January 5th of this year, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, formally granted autocephalous status (canonical independence) to the newly created Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Russian Patriarchate went so far as to warn that this step could lead to the most significant break within Christianity since the Great Schism between the Greek Church of the East and the Latin Church of the West in 1054.

Alas, Christianity is deeply paradoxical – dying in order that one might live, the least being the first, and so on. The faithful have not always managed to keep the mystery at the heart of these paradoxes – and that holds the antinomies in creative tension – in focus. Nor should it surprise us that we Christians have found taking stock of our fallen nature less congenial than taking sides in contentious theological disputes.

In his book, What Is Orthodoxy? A Genealogy of Christian Understanding, the French historian Antoine Arjakovsky has given us a remarkable overview of the question that lies at the heart of all the neuralgic issues just mentioned. The author’s historical erudition is extraordinary, as is his deft analysis.

As Arjakovsky sees it, the effort to restore orthodoxy can be handicapped by unquestioned presuppositions about the very nature of orthodoxy.

As Joseph Ratzinger often noted, in the ancient church orthodoxy did not mean “right doctrine.” Rather it meant the authentic glorification of God, which was to be done on several registers: liturgically, morally, intellectually, socially, and aesthetically. Being in a right relationship with God would ennoble every aspect of one’s life and give it a coherence not otherwise achievable.

On this, the German pontiff and the French historian concur. Writes Arjakovsky in one of his most lapidary summaries:

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Orthodoxy is not, as was commonly believed for a long time, simply the opposite of heresy, understood as a partial knowledge of the truth. Orthodoxy is a mode of relationship to the truth
- that prevents worship from emptying itself of the glory it seeks to proclaim, that prevents memory from ossifying itself by clinging to a remembrance as if it were an object,
- that refuses a moral testimony not lived out in practice, and
- that leads science, in danger of remaining merely at a purely theoretical level, back to its obligations of justice.
- It assures a relationship to the truth that is complex and embraces the fundamental metaphysical positions of worship, memory, ethics and justice.

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Arjakovsky quotes the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann’s critique of what he saw as the Byzantine Church’s defective understanding of orthodoxy:

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A crystallization of tradition began within the Byzantine Church, a tendency to define the Tradition and consider it as closed and immutable. In this sense the Byzantine mentality considered the “triumph of orthodoxy” as a decisive and total victory of orthodoxy, the end point of its historic development.

Henceforth the Orthodox Church is defined as “the Church of the Seven Councils and the Fathers” and the Byzantines would regard any heresy as a repetition of former heresies and condemn it almost automatically by referring it to decisions taken in the past. This fundamentalist and conservative attitude, which is still one of the characteristic traits of the orthodox mentality and which bestows an absolute importance on the most accidental details of the life and cult of Church, can be traced to this deeply anti-historic attitude of Byzantium.

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Arjakovsky points to what he sees as the risks that each of the major forms of Christianity runs in striving for orthodoxy.

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- The “Orthodox” risk of imagining that stagnation is the best way to avoid being dogmatizing and thus risking heresy,
- the “Protestant” risk of believing that doctrinal authority only deserves obedience when it is faithful to Scripture (which presupposes another body capable of judging this conformity … but which?) and
- the “Catholic” risk of being led to believe that a magisterial teaching is itself sufficient because it comes from a legitimate authority.

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Arjakovsky proposes several answers to the question the book asks, namely: orthodoxy as right truth, as worthy glorification, as faithful memory, and as true and just knowledge. In fact, he sees in Christian history the ascendance in turn of each of these approaches to orthodoxy: “orthodoxy as worthy glorification (33-313), orthodoxy as right truth (313-1453), orthodoxy as faithful memory (1453-1948), orthodoxy as true and fair knowledge (1948 to present).” He explores each at some length in the second section of his book.

The reader senses the passion that moved the French historian to tackle so daunting a task in his treatment of the Great Schism of 1054 and its aftermath.

He appears to be particularly haunted by the failure of the Council of Florence in 1439. Under the growing threat from the Ottoman Turks, the Eastern representatives at the Council conceded to a number of doctrines of the Western Church, not least concerning the filioque issue – that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son – and the primacy of the pope. But this extraordinary achievement was resisted by the faithful and civil leaders in the East.

After Constantinople fell in 1453, one of the most consequential and lamentable events in history, the 1484 Synod of Constantinople rejected the earlier agreement. A reader can feel the author’s heavy heart in Arjakovsky’s summary: “The historiography of the ensuing confessional period of orthodoxy will rewrite, over the ashes of wounded memories, a polemic and proselyte history of the council.”

The author’s hopes for the ecclesial traditions he obviously loves and his reason for writing this extraordinary book are perhaps best captured by a quotation he shares from another Orthodox historian:

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… The schism is an ongoing event and not a historical fact.
- It is not a question of relating an unfinished history; it is a question of bringing this history to a close and recognizing the starting points of departure for such a venture.
- First, we need to go back to the basics, to rediscover the same vision …
- It is the lack of dialogue and the lack of charity which hardened the opposing differences.

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Arjakovsky has given us, not only a vast historical panorama, but a penetrating exploration of the struggle to keep or restore Christian unity and his own intimations of how that effort might bear more fruit. This reviewer’s genuine gratitude notwithstanding, there are a few, perhaps minor, matters which cause concern.

For instance, when Arjakovsky writes: “Truth is dependent on the degree of conciliarity among those who attest to it.” This arresting statement holds true as long as the word conciliarity is not allowed to become a synonym for political consensus.

Pope Benedict XVI, for whom Arjakovsky has high regard, has warned that conciliarity must not be taken to mean, or serve as a forerunner for, a horizontal, “pluralist” or “federative” ecclesiology, as some fear the principle of synodality might presage.
- Benedict has boldly argued that a properly conciliar ecclesiology is one that finds its center, not in theological compromises, but in the Mother of the Lord.

Happily, it appears that Arjakovsky concurs on this point. For at one point in his exposition he cites the schema of Hans Urs von Balthasar, according to whom the ecclesial architecture of the Church is configured around Peter, James, John and Paul, while all of these inflections of Christian truth are held in creative tension by the fiat of the Virgin at the center.

As the attenuation of both Christian faith and Christian cultural influence continues, the temptation to nostalgia is understandable. Arjakovsky dismisses that option as inadequate. Of its opposite danger, he seems less wary. He writes:

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On the other hand, if orthodox thought were understood as being, at the same time, a mystical theology, a participative philosophy, a political science of justice and moral understanding, then contemporary thought would be able to find new resources to face the new global age of its history and propose a more fair and peaceful civilization, one more respectful of creation.

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One can sympathize with this assessment while feeling some unease with both its mildly enlightenment tone and the globalist, post-national vocabulary with which it is invoked.
- It may be parodied as a typically American concern, but nonetheless it should be said that frustration with how national and ethno-national loyalties have often exacerbated Christian divisions is insufficient reason for assuming that the attenuation of otherwise benign or healthy forms of patriotism will favor greater unity among culturally deracinated Christians.

Doubtless Christians have often enough doctored their moral and theological principles in deference to national, ethnic, or tribal loyalties, something Arjakovsky traces back to Eusebius and Augustine.
- Today, however, they are more likely to set aside Christian principles in favor of the sentimental humanitarianism which is too often assumed to be Christianity’s chief concern.
- However indebted to Christianity secular anthropocentrism is, and whatever the merits of its economistic, political and ecological aspirations, Christ did not die on the cross and rise from the dead primarily to arouse these aspirations.
- They are a far cry from the spiritual, moral and sacramental transformations for which Christ commissioned his Church.

In the West, especially in the post-conciliar years, and with increased urgency since the ascendance of Jorge Bergoglio to the Chair of Peter, the temptation to embrace the political, economic, environmental, and sexual dogmata of the post-Christian secular ideologues has most often been resisted by Christians who honor the classical virtue of pietas, defined by the British historian Christopher Dawson as “the cult of parents and kinsfolk and native place as the principles of our being … a moral principle which lies at the root of every culture and every religion.”

He warned that a society that loses this fundamental sense of belonging “has lost its primary moral basis and its hope of survival.”

This brings us to another concern: that Arjakovsky gives more weight than warranted to the fact that “orthodoxy understood as doctrinal fidelity no longer appeals to the present generation of American Christians.”
- Doubtless such indifference to doctrinal fidelity deserves attention.
- But one doubts whether the theological perspicacity of “the present generation of American Christians” is a sufficiently weighty datum to render doctrinal fidelity otiose.

Arjakovsky does not propose this, of course, but his citation of this lamentable fact suggests perhaps something of the problem now infecting the Catholic Church, namely, a subtle capitulation to a progressive understanding of history, according to which more weight is given to the worldviews of later generations than to their predecessors simply on the basis of their chronological posteriority.

These may not be entirely minor quibbles, but they pale in light of what a rich and learned exploration of Christian orthodoxy this wise and gifted historian has given us.
- The book is a serious and scholarly approach to a very old and very complex problem, a masterwork in fact. We will not likely see anything comparable to it for a very long time.
- It makes demands on the reader, but the effort is richly rewarded.

Arjakovsky urges his readers to shake off the lethargic tendency to accommodate to divisions festering in the Body of Christ that ought to trouble every serious Christian. He whets his readers’ appetite for a magisterial proposal for resolving the confusions and divisions in contemporary Christianity.

Alas, such a tidy solution is not forthcoming, for it would betray the seriousness of this book. Of this slight disappointment, the grateful reader might want to recall the lines from Robert Frost’s poem, 'Mowing':

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Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows…

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Wuerl misread the crisis -
Pope Francis need not
by Stephen P. White

January 17, 2019

Pope Francis clearly understands that there is a crisis of credibility in the American episcopate. It is less clear that he understands why. I don’t mean to suggest that the Holy Father’s not paying attention, still less that he doesn’t care about clerical sexual abuse. Not at all. What I mean is that there are signs that he still doesn’t quite grasp the way in which the dynamic of the abuse crisis has fundamentally changed in the United States over the last seven months.

Judging by his letter to the American bishops on retreat earlier this month, the pope is still operating on the premise that the crisis of credibility in the U.S. is the result of new revelations of (mostly) decades-old abuse, which have re-opened old wounds and made freshly painful the betrayals of the past.

Adding to this pain, and hampering the Church’s pastoral response to it, is (in Francis’s view) the disjointed and fractious response of the American bishops – a problem aggravated by the inflammatory missives of Archbishop Viganò.

There’s truth in all this, of course, but it’s also profoundly inadequate.
- The reopening of old wounds and the discovery of hidden crimes is painful, to be sure.
- But the outrage in the United States today cannot be understood apart from this elementary fact: Many of the faithful in the United States believe, with good reason, that they have been lied to by their shepherds.
- And many of the American faithful believe, with good reason, that they are still being lied to right now.

Next to Theodore McCarrick, perhaps no cleric has done more to convince the American Church of this than Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

Part of me is sympathetic to Wuerl. Of all the prelates who deserve to be cashiered for mishandling abuse allegations in the 1980s and 1990s, Wuerl is nowhere near the top of the list. By all accounts, he was a by-the-book manager. His record of handling abuse in Pittsburgh, while not exemplary, was ahead of the curve. And while there are some cases he clearly handled badly, the overall pattern of his time in Pittsburgh was one of making the right call even in tough cases. Who can blame him for not wanting to be the scapegoat?

But what Cardinal Wuerl still doesn’t seem to understand is that, far more than his spotty record in Pittsburgh, it has been his inexcusable lack of candor about what he knew about McCarrick – and when – that have cost him the confidence of his priests and his flock. It’s hard to heal old wounds when you’re still inflicting new ones.

And this brings us back to how Pope Francis understands the crisis in the American Church.
- The Holy Father seems to share Wuerl’s (mistaken) view of just what went wrong.
- Accordingly, he also sees Wuerl as a sort of martyr, nobly laying down his life – or at least his career– for his flock. When the Holy Father finally (begrudgingly) accepted Wuerl’s resignat

ion last fall, he took the unusual step of writing a letter in praise of Wuerl. In that letter, Francis wrote:

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I recognize in your request [to resign] the heart of the shepherd who, by widening his vision to recognize a greater good that can benefit the whole body, prioritizes actions that support, stimulate and make the unity and mission of the Church grow above every kind of sterile division sown by the father of lies who, trying to hurt the shepherd, wants nothing more than that the sheep be dispersed.

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

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- If Wuerl were resigning his post in Washington because of his failures in Pittsburgh, these words would make more sense.
- If the McCarrick allegations had never come to light, Wuerl’s response to the Pennsylvania grand jury report – the now infamous, short-lived website defending his record in Pittsburgh – would have made more sense, too.
- But what good are reassurances about how abuse was handled twenty years ago if there is a desperate lack of honesty about what’s going on right now? It’s as though Wuerl keeps trying to offer the right response to the wrong crisis.

Unfortunately, that’s a misstep Pope Francis has been leaning toward as well. He risks underestimating the degree to which the McCarrick affair has fundamentally altered the nature of the crisis here in the States.

The questions raised by the McCarrick affair mean that the college of bishops and Rome itself are implicated in an unprecedented way:
- Who knew what about McCarrick and when?
- Who pushed for his promotion?
- Who in Rome protected him?
- Who turned a blind eye?
- Who gained by his promotion and influence?

Answering these questions will require digging back into the pontificates of Benedict XVI and St. John Paul II. They are also questions that are inextricably linked to this pontificate and the Viganò testimony (though they were being asked long before that.)

Be that as it may, and for as much acrimony as the Viganò testimony has caused, the deeper problem is not fractious bishops, as Francis repeatedly suggested in his letter to the bishops’ retreat. Greater comity among the bishops won’t help much of anything if they continue to misunderstand the nature and causes for the gulf that stands between them and the ones they are bound to serve.

And in this there is an opportunity for Pope Francis: he can learn from Cardinal Wuerl’s terrible misreading of the crisis before he repeats it. The pope has promised a full investigation into McCarrick: “We will follow the path of truth wherever it may lead.” Let’s pray this happens and that the Holy Father does what our bishops were too scared to ask him to do: release the findings in full.[From your pen to God's ear! But I have every reason to be skeptical, and Bergoglio will persist in missing the point - because he believes he knows better about everything than anyone else, the Lord included. The serpent gave him to eat of the apple, and now his hubris is greater even than Lucifer's.]


Poll analyst says pope's sagging popularity
signals fading trust in globalism
by Thomas D. Williams

Januayr 16, 2019

The approval rating of Pope Francis declined all over Europe during the course of 2018, a new analysis observed Wednesday, in large part because of his ever-less popular pro-immigration stance and other globalist positions.

Among German Catholics, the pope’s popularity plummeted by a staggering 20 percentage points in one year, notes analyst Francesco Galietti, who runs the political risk consultancy Policy Sonar.
- He also says that with Francis at its helm, the Catholic Church as a whole suffered a drop of 9 percent in its approval rating among the same constituency.

In Italy, as well, support for the Argentine pontiff waned in 2018, Galietti observes, with surveys indicating that the pope’s approval rating fell by five percentage points over the course of the year, from 77 to 72 percent.

Francis’s decreasing popularity in Italy has been offset by growing popularity for the reigning populist, Euro-sceptic government, and in particular its most charismatic member, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.

While prelates and Church bodies have taken to demonizing Mr. Salvini for his determination to put a stop to Italy’s mass illegal immigration problem, more and more of the Catholic faithful have found themselves more closely aligned with Salvini than with their own shepherds.

One recent poll showed that fewer than one in five Italians (19 percent) would like the government to reopen the country’s closed ports to migrants, while only 12 percent of those surveyed said that it is the responsibility of individual states in whose territorial waters the migrant ships have arrived to resolve the situation.

The pope’s marked political rather than spiritual proclivities has heightened the willingness of Catholics to disagree with their pastors, Galietti notes, since the pontiff’s approximation to United Nations positions on global warming and international immigration can easily be brushed aside as simple leftist slogans with little if anything to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Both in Italy and in Germany, Francis has paid the price of his “unqualified open-door policy toward migrants,” Galietti writes, which has created a “double problem” even among practicing Catholics.
- On the one hand, it is subject to “excessive vagueness” that seems to ignore the real problems faced by real people, Galietti notes. And thus it is “no coincidence” that Salvini’s closure of Italian ports is the most convincing option among Italian Catholics, even who regularly attend mass, as recent surveys have shown.
- On the other hand, “the politics of Pope Bergoglio is seen as an attempt to void national identities,” Galietti states, since Francis continually insists on the priority of multinational bodies while pooh-poohing the populist, nationalist, and pro-sovereignty sentiments of many Catholics.

Curiously, this last fear spans the divide between Europhile countries (Germany) and Eurosceptics (Italy), Galietti writes, and even moderately conservative parties throughout Europe are now examining possible alliances with right-wing groups that would have been anathema just a few years ago.

It is evident that the multilateral system as a whole is “going through difficult times, with the re-emergence of nationalistic tendencies,” the pope warned a group of diplomats a week ago, as he put forward his conviction that globalist organizations are key to the maintenance of peace and international stability.

These nationalist tendencies “undermine the vocation of international organizations to be a space for dialogue and meeting for all countries,” he said.

All in all, Galietti suggests, the pope’s declining popularity is a side-effect of having hitched his horse to globalist political platforms and supranational formations, which to many Europeans is looking more like the past than the future.

Advice to the Vatican:
The first law of good PR
is to do the right thing
So the February must focus on doing the right thing, to include
a realistic look at homosexuality as a causal factor for the scandals
By Russell Shaw

January 17, 2019

One day back when I was doing media relations for the American bishops’ conference, a journalist asked me what my definition of good public relations was. Without giving it much thought, I said, “Do the right thing, and tell people about it.”

I thought of that when the story broke on New Year’s Eve that the director and assistant director of the Vatican press office, Greg Burke and Paloma Garcia Ovejero, had resigned. Burke is an old friend, formerly with Time and Fox News, whom I know to be an honest, honorable media professional. Garcia Ovejero I do not know, but from all reports the same is true of her.

Their departure raises unavoidable questions – soon enough to be answered by events – centering on how the Vatican is going to handle the all-important public information side of the so-called summit on clergy sex abuse that Pope Francis has summoned to take place in Rome next month.

Attending this meeting will be the presidents of bishops’ conferences from around the world – in the U.S., Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston – together with the heads of Eastern Catholic churches, representatives of superior generals of religious congregations, officials of the Vatican Secretariat of State, and the heads of several Vatican agencies.

The event, let us face it, is probably destined to suffer from having already been oversold by both its organizers and the media. And in a way, that’s understandable.
- The Pope, the bishops, and the Vatican all stand in need of a good meeting after months of buffeting for mishandling the abuse crisis. - The journalists for their part need drama and excitement to justify the expenditure of ink and air time already devoted to this gathering.

But there are built-in, preexisting limits on what the meeting can reasonably be expected to accomplish.
- Time is one – the sessions will run from February 21 to February 24, hardly long enough for such a diverse group to do very much; and - While cultural differences and differences in civilian law from place to place further restrict the action options.

Thus it’s reasonable to think the meeting will have few immediate results beyond bringing participants up to speed on the nature and extent of the problem while perhaps moving those who need motivating to take another look at what is being done to deal with the situation within their particular areas of competence. If so, exaggerated expectations that dramatic new on-the-spot initiatives will be forthcoming from this gathering will be disappointed.

That in turn suggests the disturbing possibility that those responsible for shaping public perceptions of the event may be tempted to do something that, I think, Greg Burke would not have been tempted to do – namely, try to create the impression that what took place was more consequential than in fact it was.

In this, I might add, they would likely have the ready collaboration of those members of the Vatican press corps whom one might call Bergoglio cheerleaders.

A serious, sober discussion by top-level Church officials from around the world could in fact be a useful exercise, especially if it takes a realistic, non-hysterical look at the sensitive issue of homosexuality as a causal factor in clerical sex abuse.

Such a gathering might not be high drama – and it might be criticized if it’s not – but it could be something a great deal more important: a modest but useful step in the right direction.

Remember that first law of good public relations, mentioned above: “Do the right thing.”

Not that any pre-synod warnings ever had any effect on whatever Jorge wanted, which he usually got. And what is the 'right thing' - is that not subjective? Often what Bergoglio sees as the right thing is anti-Catholic and even anti-Christian. But wait- since his summit takes place just about three weeks away from the sixth anniversary of his election, maybe he's planning something totally unexpected that will see him mark the anniversary with a big bang. Just can't imagine what that could be.

Laicize McCarrick is a distinct possibility that has been raised - but if he did, then he would have no reason whatsoever to answer Mons. Viganò's challenge: Did he or did he not know McCarrick's 'open-secret' sexual misconduct before Viganò told him in June 2013, and afterwards, why did he go on anyway to make McCarrick a top-level adviser and entrust him with missions having to do with Bergoglio's most important diplomatic priorities?

But laicizing McCarrick is cutting off only one hydra head from the monster: What about the proteges and kindred souls he managed to get named to key positions - Wuerl, Cupich, Tobin, Farrell, McElroy, etc - who are already embroiled, individually and collectively, in miscellaneous ecclesial hocuspocus?

Or maybe he will come clean with what did he know and when about McCarrick. Naaahhh... Tried to do something similar about Barros, except he never went into detail, and simply claimed he had been given wrong information all along. By one of his C9 cardinals, no less, who had been accused - correctly as it turned out, and by his own admission - of turning a blind eye on Karadima long before Bergoglio became pope, but whom he named to the C9 anyway. See the pre-McCarrick McCarrick pattern in Bergoglio's behavior?

He could make public the report on homosexuality in the Roman Curia that Benedict XVI ordered in 2011 - if there was any chance he could use it to besmirch Benedict XVI and come out smelling like roses himself. How likely is that, though? If that were a possibility at all, Benedict-bashers would have long used any such material - even mere 'alleged rumors' of it - to bludgeon the Emeritus Pope worse than they're already doing.

Well, I can't come up with other scenarios - can't suddenly think Macchiavellian when I have always been repelled by intrigue of any kind.

The polar bear population has been at record high levels in the past several years contrary to the global-warming catastrophists' claims.

Latest global warming
scarefest in the media fails-
refuted by facts
by James Taylor
Heartland Institute


January 16, 2019 (American Thinker) – Global warming alarmists and their media allies launched a new scare last week, claiming that global warming is causing crop failures and food shortages around the globe.

In one of their biggest whoppers ever, the media are claiming that global warming has displaced "millions" of farmers in India and is causing – or will soon cause – similar devastation to farmers and crops in Bangladesh, Syria, and Honduras.

Objective evidence, however, decimates the assertion and shows that crop yields continue to set annual records as growing seasons lengthen, frost events become less frequent, soil moisture improves, and more atmospheric carbon dioxide fertilizes crops and plant life.

A January 10 Google News search for "global warming" listed near the top of its search results an article titled "How soon will climate change force you to move?" by an outlet called Fast Company. Among other sensationalist climate claims, the article makes the claims listed above about global warming, crop failures, and resulting forced migration. Fast Company, as it turns out, is trying to pull a fast one on you.

It is true that waxing and waning food production has been one of the most powerful components in the rise and fall of civilizations. At Katowice, Poland, during the United Nations COP24 climate meetings in November 2018, Heartland Institute senior fellow Dennis Avery powerfully showed that throughout history, periods of increased crop yields have led to rising civilizations and expanding human populations. Conversely, periods of declining crop yields triggered the fall of civilizations and led to famine, death, and contracting human populations.

Importantly, Avery showed that periods of global warmth stimulated the increased crop yields that led to expanding human populations. Periods of global cooling repressed crop yields and led to misery, death, and contracting human populations. The question is, has anything changed such that our modest present warming is causing declining crop production and resulting catastrophes?

Let's first examine the claims regarding India. Fast Company claims that "drought in some areas has forced millions of farmers to move." For support, the article cites a Reuters article from July 2018 that interviews a failed farmer from India's Madhya Pradesh state, claiming that global warming and poor rainfall caused his failure as a farmer and his relocation to metropolitan New Delhi. Poor rainfall "has caused repeated and widespread crop failures," Reuters claims. In summary, Fast Company cites another news organization's profile of a failed farmer to support its alarmist climate assertions.

However, crop data from India eviscerate the claim that global warming, through drought or any other mechanism, is causing rampant crop failure in India.
- The Indian government reports that Indian farmers produced a record amount of food grains in 2017-2018, topping the previous record that was set in 2016-2017.
- "The year 2017-18 had, in fact, witnessed record production of all major crops like Rice (112.91 MT), wheat (99.70 MT), coarse cereals (46.99 MT) and pulses (25.23 MT)," the Times of India reported, citing official government data.

Notably, favorable climate conditions – and most importantly, abundant rainfall – spurred the record crop production. "Backed by good monsoon rainfall last year, India had produced record 284.83 million tonnes of foodgrains in 2017-18 crop year," the Times of India observed.

The 2017-18 Indian crop year merely continued a longstanding trend of record crop production as our planet modestly warms. The international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that Indian farmers have successively set new records almost every year this decade.

The Fast Company and Reuters articles are not outliers. Global warming activists in the establishment media are always looking to find and interview somebody who blames his own personal shortcomings and misfortune on global warming. But if you are a farmer in India, and you are a failure at your craft, you are the exception rather than the rule. The objective data show, without any room for debate, that crop production continues to improve and set records nearly every year as our modest global warming continues.

Perhaps Fast Company's discredited claims about global warming, drought, and crop failures in India are an isolated error, and the article is correct about its claims regarding other countries and regions. Actually, no.

According to agricultural economists at the World Bank, as reported by CEIC Data, Bangladesh enjoyed record crop production in 2016, the last year for which data are available. The 2016 record beat out the previous record year, 2014, and was preceded by the third highest production year, 2015.

Do you see a pattern here? Crop production in Bangladesh is 33 percent higher than it was merely a decade ago. According to a World Bank report accompanying the 2016 data, "Bangladesh's rural economy, and specifically agriculture, have been powerful drivers of poverty reduction in Bangladesh since 2000."

How about Honduras? The International Food Policy Research Institute, citing official government data, documents that in 2016 – the most recent year for which there are data – Honduras achieved record production for each of its three staple food crops.
- Honduran farmers produce record amounts of rice, wheat, and maize. - The 2016 record beat the previous record, set in 2015.
- The next most productive crop year was 2014, followed by 2013. Moreover, Coffee Bureau Intelligence reports that coffee-drinkers and coffee farmers also have reason to rejoice – as Honduran coffee production is believed to have set new records in 2018. \- "Since 2014-2015, Honduras coffee production has increased by more than 12% per year," Coffee Bureau Intelligence reports.

Syrian crop production also defies alarmist claims. United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization data show an approximately 50-percent increase in Syrian crop production since 1995. Moreover, the Arab Spring democracy uprisings in Syria and elsewhere, which climate alarmists blame on global warming, occurred in 2011, a year in which Syria produced its eighth highest crop yields in history.

Fast Company cites four specific nations in support of its narrative that global warming is causing rampant crop failures, which in turn is causing mass migration. Objective data show, beyond dispute, that Fast Company's claims are flat-out wrong. But in today's agenda-driven media climate, don't expect Fast Company, other media outlets, or Google News to post any corrections to the false reporting.

James Taylor is senior fellow for environment and climate policy at The Heartland Institute.

I am posting the following in this box because Pope Franci's new articulation about what the Pontifical Academy for Life ought to be is consistent with his all-out support of the 'humanistic' ultra-liberal agenda of the United Nations and its agencies.

The pope’s new bioethics -
Less about abortion, more about ecology and social justice
Editorial
by Tomasso Scandroglio
Translated from

January 16, 2019

On January 6, the Holy Father wrote a letter to Mons. Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life on the occasion of its 25t anniversary.

The letter published by the Vatican yesterday, has many interesting points that many would agree with, but some that must be met with reservations. Given the length of the letter, we shall dwell here only on those which we believe to be at the heart of this message – namely, the new mission of the Academy.

Abortion, euthanasia, artificial reproduction, surrogate motherhood, embryonic experimentation, cloning, contraception and the like should no longer represent its main interests, but it should seek other horizons. A change of direction already anticipated last June at the Academy’s 24th general assembly.

The new identity of the Academy, which was created by John Paul II to respond to moral questions on bioethics, has now been amply confirmed by Pope Francis, Indeed, the themes discussed in the letter touch on family relations, social coexistence, recicprocal mistrust, undue competition, violence, the human family, war, material satisfaction, the monetary system and the ideology of consumerism, 'the division, indifference and hostility’ among peoples, worldly compromise, the poor and the desperate, ‘the aged and the young. (“It is urgent that the elderly have greater confidence in their best “dreams” and that the young have “visions” able to sustain them to act boldly in history“.).

But the themes at the center of the letter – and which therefore ought to be at the center of the Academy’s efforts - are the environment, the concept of a new humanism, and universal brotherhood. [All secular, if not frankly masonic themes!]

---

“We should keep in mind that fraternity remains the unkept promise of modernity. .. The strengthening of fraternity, generated in the human family by the worship of God in spirit and truth, is the new frontier of Christianity”.

---

Let us set aside any comments for now about the fact that modernity, - assuming it has ever made good promises - has not made good on promises far more relevant than that which have to do with brotherhood. And to say that the new frontier of Christianity ought to be the strengthening of brotherhood appears to forget that the frontier of Christianity is, as Cahtolic doctrine teaches, of another and far more elevated nature, and has always been the same: the salvation of souls.

Leaving aside the above reflection, what comes to the fore is the use of the expressions ‘humanism’ and ‘universal brotherhood’ which are terms alien to Catholic culture because their content, in the historical context of how they have come to be used, is not Catholic. It is true they may be used with other meanings but such meanings should be specified.

That said, it would nonetheless have been preferable to use the infinitely rich terminology of Catholic theology and morals, in which centuries of study have chiseled precise and unequivocal terms for the use and consumption of the faithful. And so instead of "humanism" one could use "Catholic anthropology", because in humanism, man is at the center not God. And instead of the [Masonic term] universal brotherhood, out of the Englightenment, he could have used the expression ‘children of God’.

But what of the themes properly belonging to bioethics, which has been the Academy’s field of study for two decades before the Bergoglian era? There is just one passage in the letter which refers to abortion and euthanasia, in which the pope expresses appreciation for the Academy’s ‘constant effort to promote and protect human life at every stage of its development, its condemnation of abortion and euthanasia as extremely grave evils that contradict the Spirit of life and plunge us into the anti-culture of death.”

---

“These efforts must certainly continue, with an eye to emerging issues and challenges that can serve as an opportunity for us to grow in the faith, to understand it more deeply and to communicate it more effectively to the people of our time…”
And further on:
"The prospect of a global bioethics, with a broad vision and a concern for the impact of the environment on life and health, offers a significant opportunity for strengthening the new covenant between the Gospel and creation.”

---

In which he reiterates his concept of a global bioethics which relegates abortion, euthanasia, articial reproduction, etc, to the background in favor of social and environmental concerns.

The priority for ecologistic concerns is evident in those passages in which he makes it appear that ecologism ought to be the spring for moral duties:

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At the level of culture, our goal must be a new and universal ethical perspective attentive to the themes of creation and human life.

---

It is curious to note that human life comes after creation in his formulation. Perhaps because a person has value only insofar as he too is a creature like plant and animals? It would seem borne out by a subsequent statement, that is problematic for many reasons:

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The distinctiveness of human life is an absolute good, worthy of being ethically defended, precious for the care of creation as a whole”.

---

[Is the pope using Jefrrey Sachs's speechwriters???]

Another indication that the doctrinal register for the Academy has changed is this: “Saint John Paul II pointed to the many efforts to welcome and defend human life, the growing opposition to war and to the death penalty, and a greater concern for the quality of life and ecology.”

Again, leaving aside the fact that to cite John Paul II in such a partial (truncated) but even partisan way, betrays his thinking – as though defense of human life is to be pursued only in opposition to war (even ‘just war’?) or to the death penalty (even when it is rightful), and if one fights for 'quality of life' (which is yes, a human good, but certainly not an absolute good – otherwise, one opens the doors wide to euthanasia, abortion and extra-corporeal fertilization) and for ecologism.

In short, the pope’s letter highlights two novelties in the field of bioethics. First of all, it seems that the Academy ought to change its name into the Pontifical Academy fot Existence. Because it would appear that the living human being endowed with dignity no longer represents the moral paradigm of reference for distinguishing good from evil – he has been replaced by ‘existence’, i.e., a mixture of facts and conditions (immigration, war, universal brotherhood, the poor, the elderly, the young, etc.) as the source from which to draw moral judgments.

An anti-metaphysical approach because it represents a theoretical declension of so-called ethical phenomenology, in which practice generates ethical principles, not the other way around. Crushed horizontally on the same plane as other living creatures, man by himself is no longer the criterion for ethical practice - ecologism is. [‘…human life is worthy of being defended, precious for the care of creation as a whole”]

And in the second place, the classic issues of bioethics are eclipsed in favor of other things that have little or nothing to do with bioethics. The reasons that underlie this eclipse would be, in summary, that poverty, social unease, the environment, etc are now considered more important issues than abortion and euthanasia because social justice carries greater weight than natural law, and because the classic issues of bioethics are strongly divisive and lead to confrontations which cannot be reconciled with a church primarily concerned with building bridges and bringing down walls.

I would never have bothered to read the pope's letter
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20190106_lettera-accademia-vita.html
were it not for the Bussola editorial. It's one of those committee outputs like the Novus Ordo Mass, and like most Bergoglian texts - or texts published in his name anyway, whoever wrote them - it is so tedious to plod through. If you just scanned it rapidly, you may think, "Oh, he's spouting his usual platitudes, mostly innocuous". But Bergoglio's platitudes are never innocuous - and his speech writers (or Jeffrey Sachs's) know that full well, so the platitudes are always encumbered with a lot of ideological baggage.

The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS
By Robert Spencer
[New York: Bombardier Books 2018
Hardcover, 448 pages]

So, our dear Fr. Schall is back in the saddle, thank God - and may he keep him with us at a time when we need great Catholic minds that will brook no compromise with the world, the flesh and the devil, not to mention that we need genuinely good Jesuits...

Does the West face 'an almost certain doom'?
Reading Robert Spencer’s new book, we see an on-going clash that rises and falls in intensity
according to the tides of war and Islam's energy to fight them, and of their neighbors to resist them.
by James V. Schall, SJ

January 17, 2019

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“Islam, as the jihads in Spain, France, Italy, and Asia Minor show, was hostile to the West from its inception. There was no peaceful co-existence; there were only brief periods in between jihad invasions. Christian overtures to establish a lasting peace accord were invariably answered by a repetition of the triple choice: conversion, submission, or war. To ascribe a thousand years of hostility between Islam and the West to the Crusades is to fall prey to the peculiar Western malady of civilizational self-loathing and blaming the West for all the ills of the world.”
— Robert Spencer, The History of Jihad, 2018 (1)

“In the twenty-first century, the leaders of Europe, as well as many in North America, have brought an almost certain doom on their countries no less unmistakable than that which befell Constantinople on May 29, 1453. … As the 1400-year Islamic jihad against the free world continues to advance, the best allies the warriors of jihad have are the very people they have in their sights.”
— Robert Spencer, The History of Jihad, 2018 (2)

---

I.
The great wars of world history were as much products of the mind as they were of the battlefield, perhaps more so. Thucydides did as much to change the world in writing about the Peloponnesian War as did the Athenians and Spartans in fighting it.

Since the arrival of the Prophet Mohammed in Mecca and Medina in the seventh century, a constant warfare has surrounded Islam as it pursues its self-proclaimed mission in this world. Raymond Ibrahim, in his recent book Sword and Scimitar, gives a graphic description of the more famous of those world-shaking battles fought between Islamic forces and those of Byzantium, Persia, and Europe. (3)

Had not Europeans won at least some of these battles, notably at Tours and Vienna, what we know as Europe could not have existed today. Robert Reilly’s The Closing of the Muslim Mind and Samir Kalil Samir’s 111 Questions on Islam consider in detail the “idea side” of Islam. (4)

What Robert Spencer does in The History of Jihad is to carefully work his way, century by century, through the record of the greater and lesser wars of Islamic jihad, right up to the present. Yet, in a sense, the world has not seen many “jihadist wars” over the centuries.

What we see is only one on-going clash that rises and falls in intensity according to the tides of war and the energy of the Islamic nations to fight them, and of their neighbors to resist them. The same issue is always at stake: namely does Islam rule the conquered or not?

One can perhaps speak of jihad as merely a spiritual warfare. But jihad is also and primarily a military action against some definite enemy. Jihad itself is ruled by the Islamic concept of conquest and Islamic law. We always see that prisoners are taken as slaves. Booty is divided among the victors. Local idols are destroyed. Much blood flows. (5)

Islam is serious about itself. Spencer cites the following comment of Ruhollah Khomeini:

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“Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamist regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam.” (6)

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Such a passage makes it clear why Islam is often called a “Puritan” faith. Even the harem, which seems like a place of delight, is ruled by custom and law.

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“The Qur’an dictates that a Muslim man may have sexual relations with ‘captives of the right-hand’, that is, captured non-Muslim women. The Qur’an also says that women should veil themselves so that they may not be molested, with the implication being that if they are not veiled, they may indeed be molested.” (7)

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II.
Islam, as we see it today, makes up about a fifth of the world’s total population spread around the world in some forty countries. Since most Muslim states show a much higher birth-rate than their adversaries, we can expect its proportion of the world’s population to increase significantly in the near future.

Historically, Islam expanded by conquest.
- It went north from Arabia to the Byzantine and Persian Empires.
- It next went west across North Africa and south to Central Africa; - it turned north again to Spain and France.
- Islamic forces attacked the islands in the Mediterranean, Italy, Greece, and the Balkans.
- Other Islamic armies went east to the South of Russia, to the very frontier of China, and into India where some of the bloodiest battles were fought.
- Indonesia and its Islands are among the only major Islamic nations that were not initially conquered by force of arms.

Islam is a religion, and this fact is the first truth about it. For many non-Muslims, who cannot comprehend why religion can be such a force, this is a most difficult concept to understand. After reading the Qur’an, Islam can probably be best imagined as a Judeo-Christian heresy.

The Qur’an is filled with passages mindful in some way or another of Judeo-Christian sources, however much they are transformed into Islam’s own peculiar tenets. The Qur’an takes pains, for example, to deny the possibility of an Incarnation or a Trinity; Jesus Christ is but a pious prophet, not God Incarnate.

Islam has an inner dynamism of its own.
- It sees its purpose as the conquest of the world for Allah so that all may be subject to him.
- Above all, Allah is to be praised.
- Men must submit to Allah’s will, whatever it is.
- It cannot ever be wrong.
- Islam sees the world as divided between the peace of Islam, which by definition means rule according to Islamic law, and the world of war, that is, those places not yet under Islamic law.

Everyone in the world, Islam holds, is born a Muslim and only loses his initial faith by bad teachings of family or other religions or philosophies.
- Once a Muslim, it is never permitted to leave its fold.
- Its laws severely punish any blasphemy against Mohammed, Allah, or the Qur’an.
- What characterizes Allah, and hence Islam, is not logos, or reason, but will.
- The will of Allah can change to its opposite without any objection or warning.
- The world is founded in this arbitrary will.
- If by the will of Allah anything existing thing can become something else, we cannot investigate it for its order or causes as it need not be what it appears to be. This restriction includes us. - If Allah wills it, what is once wrong can become right. [Allah sounds very much like Jorge Bergoglio here.]

The foundation of Islam is its Holy Book, the Qur’an. Spencer is careful to cite the Qur’an at every turn. T
- his book, the Qur’an, is said to be the direct revelation through Mohammed who is not strictly its author; Allah is.
- Though Islam has many clerics and imams that issue edicts, it has no central interpretative authority.
- However, definite customs and interpretations of the text of the Qur’an do exist with some four different legal schools.
- The office of the caliphate, when occupied, did serve as a central ruling source.

The world mission of Islam is seen to last over time, gradually seeking to expand when it could.
- What is of interest to Islamic culture is not science or politics in the normal sense.
- It sees the ills of the world in terms of its own beliefs, of adherence or non-adherence to Islamic laws.
- Muslim armies, in imposing Islamic law on newly conquered peoples, are understood to be doing the work of Allah.
- If they die in this cause, they receive the promised reward.
- A believing Muslim cannot be really content so long as some sphere of humanity lies outside the Sharia.
- If Islam is not growing and expanding, the Muslim will think that Allah has abandoned him.

There are many factions within Islam itself.
- Not only is their warfare against the infidels, there is conflict over their own law.
- The historic and on-going struggles between Shiite and Sunni Muslims are only the most well-known.
- But these divisions usually do not mean any over-all disagreement over the end of subjecting the world to Allah.

It is difficult for modern non-Muslims to take seriously the idea that a religious mission can abide over time, over centuries, and itself be the central motivating spirit of its believers.
- Part of this difficulty concerns the use of force and war as a positive mandate of religion. But there is no doubt that in various ways, the Qur’an justifies the use of force in expanding Islam.

III.
The structure of Spencer’s book reflects this difficulty of understanding Islam. Some ninety percent of the book is a careful, minute description of the war record of Islam.
- To understand Islam, one has to know the book, the Qur’an, the various sayings of Mohammed, and the record of what Muslim believers have done to achieve the purpose of Islam in the world.
- Since it is only rarely taught or even understood, the record of Islamic armies needs this detailed presentation.
- In one sense, it is the same story repeated over and over again from the seventh century to the twenty-first. Spenser brings this history to life.

Islam is still pretty much in possession of the territories that it conquered in its early years of expansion. Spain, the Balkans, and the Islands in the Mediterranean are the exceptions.
- Islamic law holds that once a country is conquered, even if expelled later, it still remains by rights Muslim.
- What is new in the twenty-first century is a resurgence of Islam, something anticipated in modern decades by very few, with Hilaire Belloc being a notable exception.

The Crusades were last ditch defensive efforts of Europe to save itself in earlier centuries. Spencer, however, does not see this self-defensive effort happening again.
- Islam has long sought to make inroads into Europe.
- What seems possible now to the many Muslim thinkers that Spencer records is the extension of Islam into Europe and America.
- This extension or invasion as symbolized by the influx of large numbers of refugees has made Islam a presence in almost every European country but especially in Sweden, Britain, Spain, France, and Germany.

A second object of Spencer’s book is to ask the pressing question of why modern non-Muslims choose not understand this record as normative for Islam.
- Hence, we have the confused efforts to speak of “terrorists” versus “peaceful” Muslims.
- The terrorists are said to have nothing to do with Islam, while the peaceful Muslims are just going about their quiet business.
- Peace, however, in Islam is the condition and state when everyone is Muslim.

In this sense, as Spencer points out in several places, there can be no permanent peace with Islam and really no “dialogue” that is not aimed at furthering the purpose of Islam.
- In short, Islam does not assimilate.
- It establishes its own organization within any larger political unit where it finds itself.
- Spencer recounts the billions of dollars the Saudi regime has spent in building mosque-complexes all over Europe and America.
- A mosque now exists in almost any large city in Europe or America.

The pattern of Islamic conquest holds fairly steady over time. Whether it be in Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Turkey, or India, whether we deal with Zoroastrians.
- Jews, or Christians, when once any are conquered by Islamic forces, they will be offered a choice of how they choose to live: either convert, pay a tax, or die.
- Almost invariably conquered places of worship are either destroyed completely or converted into mosques.
- One of the striking things about Spencer’s overview is the place of slavery in Islam.
- When not killed outright, conquered men, women, and children are sold as slaves.
- The vagaries of the various slave markets are noted by Spencer.

IV.
Spencer presents a narrative of the Islamic world and mind.
- He almost always presents Islamic history in terms of contemporary Muslim writers;
- he knows what Islamic thinkers use and present to justify their views.
- The reader also is made aware that within Islam is found a dynamism that does not let it forget its own vocation of world conquest.

Most Western thinkers will look for motives that are non-religious to explain the energy found in Islam. Yet, the evidence seems conclusive.
- Islam cannot rest if some non-Muslim part of the world continues to exist.
- We cannot pretend that war and bloodshed are not part of the historic record and of the teachings within Islam.
- So long as the Qur’an is kept in its integrity, these ideas will keep recurring within Islam.

Spencer does not think that the West will ultimately recognize the nature of this movement to conquer the world and to impose the Sharia on all nations as a sign of submission to Allah.
- He uses the word “doom”.
- He maintains that the people who would suffer most under Sharia are precisely those who cannot or will not take the teachings and historic record of Islam seriously.

Spencer does not pretend to be a prophet, but he does offer a judgment based on a careful attention to facts.
- To diligently seek to oppose jihad and all that goes with it would be a turn of events that Spencer certainly hopes will come about.
- But if it is not to come about, it will be because it is prevented from doing so.
- And that requires a respectful and attentive look at what Islam has invariably done in the past and what its Holy Book outlines for it.
To read this book is to be caught up in many historic battles.
- It is to endure the sight of much bloodshed.
- It is to realize that historic Muslim victories have proved unchangeable.
- Islam is rapidly developing ways to practice jihad when it is not a major military power.
- It is learning how to rule and invade simply by immigration and settling in lands that tolerate it.
- It has learned to live in the West and to use its freedom to advance its own religious and cultural agenda.
In the meantime, most of the non-Muslims in Muslim lands have been killed or have left the Near East. The persecution of Christians in the near-East goes on. (8)

Why — to answer the second part of Spencer’s thesis — are people so reluctant to see this historic record and the causes behind it? Several possibilities exist. 1
) Liberalism does not take religion or permanent principles to be unchangeable. Therefore, when Muslims settle under democratic laws, they will gradually themselves become relativists.
2) The second is what I call the “sleeping dog thesis.” The adage “let sleeping dogs lie” means, in this case, that there is no sense in stirring up Muslim masses. The historical record is true and simply tells us to have nothing to do with Islam.
3) A third view would be that Islam is less dangerous than Christianity. Thus, given a choice, we should favor Islam.
4) The fourth reason is a legitimate fear of confronting such a fanatical foe. More bloodshed would arise from confronting it than leaving alone at all costs.
In short, we do not confront Islam because we know, from reading Spencer’s book, what to expect.

Endnotes:
1 Robert Spencer, The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS (New York: Bombardier Books 2018), 151.
2 Ibid, 371.
3 Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (New York: De Capo Press 2018)–Review: Schall, “On the Purpose of Islam,” Catholic World Report, October 24, 2018). See also David Pinault, The Crucifix on Mecca’s Front Porch: A Christian Companion to the Study of Islam (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2018)–Review: Schall, “To Rome through Mecca,” Catholic World Report, September 7, 2018).
4 Robert Reilly, The Closing of the Muslim Mind (Wilmington: ISI Books 2011); Samir Kalil Samir, 111 Questions on Islam (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2008). See also Joshua Mitchell, Tocqueville in Arabia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2013).
5 See also Laurent Murawiec, The Mind of Jihad (Washington: The Hudson Institute, 2003).
6 Spenser, ibid, 320.
7 Ibid, 356.
8 See George Marlin, Christian Persecution in the Near-East: A Modern Tragedy (South Bend, In.: St. Augustine’s Press, 2015); Robert Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century (New York: Crossroads 2000).

I don't suppose Fr. Spadaro reads Fr. Schall at all, so I can't think of anyone in the magic circle at Casa Santa Marta who could possibly slip a copy of Spencer's book to the pope and exhort him to read it as a step towards discarding all his ignorant prejudices about Islam.

"Word of the year: the challenge of fraternity".
Illustration: Detail from 'I and my village', Marc Chagall, 1911.

BTW, if you had any qualms at all about all the commentary I have reproduced in these pages on the pope's new obsession with 'fraternity' or 'brotherhood', it really is confirmed by the above vignette from the Osservatore Romano under its new management that Sandro Magister has thoughtfully provided with his new blogpost below:

Who’s is charge now at the OR -
and what has changed

January 18, 2019

We said L’Osservatore Romano would be getting a facelift soon, after the abrupt replacement of its editor-in-chief a few days before Christmas. And in fact, quite a bit is new in the first issues for 2019.

To begin with, the pope's newspaper launched what is supposed to be the Church’s “word of the year' in 2019 - “fraternity,” which in the pope's Christmas Day “urbi et orbi” message, was mentioned at least 12 times - three more times than the words 'God' and 'Jesus' together.

The launch was previewed by new editor Andrea Monda, with an editorial in the first issue of 2019, announcing that Francis has finally 'roused from sleep'that fraternité which the French Revolution had exalted but, he claims, then immediately shut out in favor of liberté and égalité alone, which have degenerated into license and uniformity.

And to show that the new OR is quite serious about the 'fraternty' campaign, a full-fledged launch came in its January 16 edition, with identical extra-large headlines on the front page and inside for te letter the pope sent to the Pontifical Academy for Life [see Bussola editorial I translated and posted in an earlier post on this thread], with a long-winded article justifying the choice of 'fraternity' as ecclesial word of the year, as if it were the awarding of a Nobel prize.

The article was written by Antonio Maria Baggio, a member of the Focolare movement from way back, who studied Marxism in his youth with Toni Negri and Luciano Ferrari Bravo among his teachers, then received a doctorate in philosophy from the Angelicum before becoming editor of the magazine Nuova Umanità and then professor at the Gregorian and at the Focolare university Sophia, and finally a specialist precisely in “fraternity as a foundational category of political thought", complete with a Red universitaria para el estudio de la fraternidad (university network for the study of fraternity')founded in Argentina and extending over all of Latin America. [Does this all tie in with universal Freemasonry???]

So those who were expecting the new OR to return to setting the course, or indicating what road to take, in conformity with the pontificate, are now vindicated. Now they know from the pope’s newspaper that fraternity has become one of these milestones, to be used as a landmark even by the Pontifical Academy for Life created twenty-five years ago by John Paul II for a completely different purpose - the continued stalwart defense of human life from conception to natural death.

But the first OR issues in the new year have also brought other changes:
- Gone is the byline of Lucetta Scaraffia, who continues to edit the monthly supplement “Donne Chiesa Mondo”, but is no longer the newspaper’s main editorialist, as she was for 12 years under dismissed editor Giovanni Maria Vian.

Instead, next to and above that of new editor Andrea Monda, is the byline of Andrea Tornielli, in his capacity as new editorial director of all the Vatican communications media and therefore also of the OR.

In an analysis of the new OR for the online magazine Formiche, Domenico Delle Foglie,the former editor of the Italian bishops' conference's news agency SIR, said Monda's editorial role was for “sapient spiritual reflection” [What, he has a parallel 'magisterium' to the pope's???] whereas Tornielli was responsible for the newspaper's “political-ecclesial stance.”

No need to say that the influence of the two is very unequal:
Monda, with his fine pen, ranges in his editorials from Shakespeare to Martin Buber, from Chesterton to Péguy. And on January 14 he inaugurated a new feature entitled “Letters from the editor", with his first post a brief autobiographical memoir inspired by the pope's citation a few days earlier of one of Monda's favorite history professors at the Gregorian University, the Jesuit Giacomo Martina. [My, this all sounds very 'incestuous' - all in the family!]

But it is Tornielli who mans the helm. After entering into service on January 1 as editorial director, he signed on January 3 in Vatican News the 'authorized exegesis' of the letter that Francis sent to the bishops of the United States on the question of sexual abuse. Reprinted in the OR the next day, with an introductory note that the “inner core” of the pope’s letter is precisely what Tornielli indicates.

The same thing on January 7, regarding the pope’s address to the diplomatic corps, in which Tornielli's commentary aimed to justify and exalt the most criticizable passage of the address - about the accord between the Holy See and China on the appointment of bishops.

And on January 11, in a bigger way, with a front-page editorial by Tornielli aimed at defusing the “excessive media buildup” to the summit convened in February by Pope Francis on sexual abuse, as if it were “halfway between a council and a conclave” and should deal only with “norms, laws, codes, and procedures,” when instead “these will never be enough without a change in the mentality and heart of those who are called to apply them.” [What, no instant exegesis for the pope's letter to the Pontifical Academy for Life... er, Humanism, Fraternity and Existence?]

On the whole, the editorial layout of the OR has remained unchanged so far, with international news on the first three pages and culture on the next two pages. But there is a more frequent use of a feature called FOCUS, with signed articles, on specific areas of crisis.

On January 11, the Focus took up a whole page on the situation n Venezuela, with further updates over the following days, including a statement from the new interim director of the Vatican press office, Alessandro Gisotti, who justified the presence of the chargé d'affaires of the apostolic nunciature in Caracas at the inauguration of Maduro’s new term as president, seen as illegitimate by almost all governments (and harshly criticized by twenty former heads of state in Latin America, most of them Catholic, in an open letter to the pope).

A second full-page Focus was dedicated, on January 17, to the deterioration of the “Brexit chaos” between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

In any case it must be acknowledged that during the first days of 2019, the OR also featured articles of unquestioned prominence. For example, these three:
- Oon January 10 , a front-page article by Fabrizio Contessa on the “historic” statement signed by 500 Muslim imams of Pakistan in support of religious freedom and minority rights [Oh, do the OR did take note of it - KUDOS! - but who else in Catholic media has done so? And has anyone followed up exactly what the concrete consequences of the so-called Islamabad Declaration would be?]
- on January 11, a commentary of rare depth on Humanae Vitae, by the German philosopher Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz [a good friend of Benedict XVI], which was exemplary in bringing to light the unconventional, “uncomfortable,” explosive” elements of that encyclical of Pope Paul VI, but at the same time holding firm its teaching;
- also on January 11 the news, ignored by almost all the media, of a terrorist attack on a Coptic church in Cairo that was thwarted by a Muslim imam, who by sounding the alarm from a nearby minaret made it possible to defuse the devices and save the lives of the Christians crowded into that church. [i DIDN'T KNOW. That is certainly as significant in its own way as the Islamabad Declaration.]

Among the curiosities in recent OR issues:
- on January 14 an exclusive interview with the mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, who announced that Caritas would be given the proceeds - more than a million euro a year - from the coins that tourists throw into all the fountains of Rome;
- and on January 16, an extract from the rich correspondence between Saint Teresa of Calcutta and Giulio Andreotti, published at the centenary of the birth of the statesman, who during his lifetime was the target of the most slanderous accusations - from murder to complicity with the mafia - and yet was a fervent man of faith as well as being editor and publisher of the international Catholic magazine 30 Giorni from 1993-2012.

The new course of the popes newspaper seems to confirm the analysis on January 9 in Formiche by another specialist on Vatican matters, Luigi Accattoli [retired chief Vaticanista of Corriere della Sera]:

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“The direction in which the pope wants to move things is to have a single manager of the Vatican media, dicastery head Paolo Ruffini, and a coordinating journalistic voice, Andrea Tornielli, which must be followed by all.

Therefore the organizational and institutional decisions are made by the dicastery head, while the journalistic decisions are made by Tornielli. The others must put into practice these political and journalistic directives.

I believe that this could be done without any snags, because there is no longer the resistance of from the previous editorial staff of the OR and of the press office. Now there are persons willing to follow the guidelines of the officials of the new organism [the Vatican super-dicastery for communications].

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Why most Catholics ought to have taken
the 'red pill' of truth before 2018
by Shane Ball

January 17, 2019

“Red-pilling” is a metaphor that has caught fire in the traditional Catholic world in the last year. It is drawn from the movie, now almost 20 years old, The Matrix.

The main character, Neo, is given the choice to see the world as it really is – a reality he intuits but cannot yet perceive. Neo is offered a blue pill, which will allow him to remain in the bliss of ignorance, or he can choose the red pill and see the fullness of reality beneath the veneer. As he reaches for the red pill, Neo is told, “Remember, all I am offering is the truth – nothing more.”

2018 is the year that many Catholics, myself included, took the red pill and came face to face with the truth – the cold, hard reality of the situation in the Church. For many of us, fidelity to the Church meant allegiance to the hierarchy and a blind trust in the goodwill of their motives, no matter how difficult they may have been to explain. But the Summer of Shame and its accompanying intrigues have torn off the blinders and opened our eyes to a real and present danger in the Mystical Body of Christ.

Awakening to reality has been liberating inasmuch as it has galvanized our desire to be a force for change and to bring others to enlightenment. It also bears some bitter chagrin. Namely, why was I oblivious to the warning signs that have been in plain sight for the last few decades? It is worth sharing some of the prophetic sources, whose clarion calls went unrecognized by a large number of Catholics, with those who are still choking on their blue pills.

The first is from an unlikely source in the mainstream media: PBS Frontline and its February 25, 2014 report, “Secrets of the Vatican.” This episode is as relevant today as it was almost five years ago and anticipates all of the hotly debated issues from the 2018 crisis. It delves deeply into the homosexual culture in the clergy and the Vatican, including undercover footage of sex parties involving priests, and the active cover-up of sexual abuse.

Regarding instances of sexual abuse, an interviewed psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Kafka, hits the nail on the head: “People who abuse adolescents, post pubertal children if you will, they’re more likely to reflect their own adult sexual orientation in whom they victimize.” Considering that roughly 80% of abuse cases involve post-pubescent males, Kakfa might as well have said the Church is facing a crisis of homosexuality, not pedophilia. And no, this is not an issue of clericalism.

While most Catholics had not heard the name Viganò before 2018, Archbishop Carlo Viganò was featured prominently in the Frontline piece as a serious reformer of Vatican finances and the governance of the city-state. Viganò is claimed to have uncovered corruption in every department of the Vatican and implicated Cardinal Bertone in a conspiracy to undermine his reforms.

An investigative journalist said about Viganò atthe time: “The mistake that Viganò made was the fact that he asked the Pope to make a choice, ‘me or Bertone’; no one in the Vatican can speak to the Holy Father in that way. Viganò lost.” [One of these days, I must revisit those early days of 2012 and the start of Vatileaks, which no one has done since Viganò crossed the current pope. I had been meaning to do this since the ex-nuncio's first 'Testimony', but it was a rather convoluted matter that I haven't figured out how to recount it briefly. Anyway, the journalist quoted above more or less spoke correctly - that Benedict XVI had a choice to make between Bertone and Viganò at the time, and right or wrong, he went with the Bertone compromise of transferring Viganò out of the Vatican - not really punishing him (Nuncio to Washington is both far more prestigious and a high-profile job compared to being Secretary of the Vatican Governatorate which Viganò was at the time) while getting him out of Bertone's way.]

If Viganò is portrayed as a great crusader against corruption, who is willing to speak truth to power, even to Pope Benedict himself, then why all of a sudden in 2018 is Viganò an arch-conservative who is trying to take down Francis’s papacy for political reasons? The Frontline story lends serious credibility to Viganò’s charges against Francis and the hierarchy in the McCarrick case and solidifies his bona fides as a reformer of goodwill.

For part of the explanation of how we got to this place in the Church, we need to go back another decade to Michael Rose’s book, Goodbye! Good Men. The saying goes that one reaps what one sows – a fitting metaphor for 'seminary'. From the Latin semen, or seed, the seminary is literary the seedbed for the growth and formation of spiritual shepherds.

Rose’s book documents how for the better part of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s seminaries uprooted and tossed in the compost bin all those seedlings that showed true promise for upholding the traditions and teachings of the Church while mutant and malformed plants were nurtured to bring “progressive” change to the Church.

I myself was in the seminary for an extended stint within the last ten years, so I am surprised that this book was not on my radar. Luckily, my seminary experience was an education in orthodoxy, so I would likely have been inclined to dismiss it as inconsistent with the current reality of seminary in the Church.

But the revelation of scandal at St. John’s Seminary in Boston in the last year has shown that these problems still exist. Rose’s work documents a systematic effort in a broad swath of seminaries to tolerate and excuse homosexual and aberrant behavior while weeding out seminarians who objected to the licentiousness of their brothers for being “rigid” or dogmatic. Seminarians who sought to nurture their spiritual lives through traditional piety such as praying the rosary or promoting Eucharistic adoration were viewed with suspicion or even forced to endure psychological evaluation for their antiquated devotions.

If, for three-plus decades after Vatican II, seminaries pumped out priests who ascribed or submitted to the heterodoxy that was in vogue in seminary classes or were allowed to persist in morally questionable behavior, is it any wonder that the character of our clergy is in question or that so many dioceses are led by abysmal shepherds? One of the roots of the crisis in the American Church stretches back many decades to the malformation that the current leadership of the Church received in their seminary training.

Finally, even before the turn of the millennium, Malachi Martin seemed to be on the blood trail of the carnage in the Church, which Goodbye! Good Men and the Frontline documentary would later expose. In his novel, Windswept House, a “Slavic pope” sends the two main characters on an undercover mission to the United States to investigate the primary problems plaguing the Church: a homosexual network and satanic infiltration. The existence of a homosexual network is beyond dispute, but Satanism within the Church? Are we now in the realm of tinfoil hats?

I have not seen any documentary evidence of active Satanism in the Church, but I think all would agree that there is something deeply diabolical about the sexual abuse of minors and seminarians and that the Church is under attack by the forces of evil.

In Martin’s novel, all of the evils in the Church stem from a Satanic ritual at the opening of the book in which the Church is essentially consecrated to the devil. This may seem beyond the realm of possibility but James Grein, one the victims of McCarrick’s predation, said in his most recent interview with Dr. Taylor Marshall, without getting into many details, that diabolic activity in the Church, "was prevalent.” In this era of the red pill, it is unwarranted to rule out any plausible hypotheses that might explain the present condition of the Church.

Martin’s novel is historical fiction, and the astute reader will quickly identify and locate his characters in the late twentieth-century Church. The benefit of reading Martin’s work almost 25 years later is that the puzzle pieces fall into place as one looks at the portrait of the current Church in crisis.

Windswept House presents a Curia and a body of bishops in revolt against the Slavic pope, actively working to undermine his agenda. In response, the reader finds a pope who is willfully impotent in halting a progressive program being advanced under his nose. If what Martin describes is an accurate depiction of the Church during pontificate of John Paul II, then one can begin to understand how the rot within the Church was able to fester even under the direction of popes widely perceived as staunchly orthodox.

This is a short sampling of works that have clarified in my mind how we arrived where we are at today, and that I wish I had been attuned to sooner. But better late than never. My hope is that they may be shared with those who are still swallowing their daily blue pills.

As Morpheus tells Neo, “No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.” Our hope lies in an ever growing number of Catholics who want to see reality for themselves, and then do something about it.


'Trahison des clercs'

January 17, 2019

What does Pope Francis mean by ‘clericalism’? And why does he see in it as the root cause of the abuse crisis?

In the Final Document of the recent Synod on Youth, the Holy Father comes close to a definition.

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‘Clericalism, in particular, arises from an elitist and excluding vision of vocation, which interprets the ministry received as a power to be exercised rather than as a free and generous service to offer; and this leads us to believe that we belong to a group that has all the answers and no longer needs to listen and learn anything’.

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At the heart of the malaise, it seems, is a reluctance on the part of some – a refusal even – to ‘listen’. This is an unsurprising analysis. ‘Listening’ has become totemic of modern revisionism: The way to critique the perennial doctrine is to interrogate contemporary experience. And underlying that is the presupposition that ‘now’ is always to be preferred to ‘then’.

Even if this were not contrary to the Church’s traditional manner of proceeding, it is not at all easy to see how it is directly relevant to the abuse crisis. True, clergy have been behaving as predators rather than pastors. And that is reprehensible. But there may (and probably are) other more specific reasons why that might be the case.

A developed homosexual culture among groups of clergy, for example, might significantly diminish levels of mutual admonition and restraint. The tolerance of an homosexualist sub-culture in seminaries and by bishops almost certainly would.

Nowhere does Francis directly address the frequent allegations that this is the case. He seems always to prefer the general to the particular, the big picture to the nitty gritty.

One suspects that this approach is part and parcel of his deeper prejudices, which have a distinctly 70s flavour. ‘Clericalism’ – as we can deduce from other places – is tied up with cultural and liturgical preferences which run very deep.

‘Clericalism’ means lace from the tits down rather than chasubles in knitted industrial waste; Latin rather than the vernacular; translation rather than paraphrase; and instruction rather than ‘accompaniment’.
- In short it is an entire ecclesiastical style for which the Holy Father has a profound distaste.
- It began to regain ground in the last pontificate.
- It will be finally be overthrown only if the Church’s greatest crisis in living memory can now be laid to its charge.

There are, in consequence, no prizes for guessing what will emerge from next month’s meeting of the Chairmen of Episcopal Conferences as the root case of abuse.

How this neo-conservative found the Catholic Church
Reading Sohrab Ahmari's fascinating journey
out of Islam, through leftism, and into Catholicism.
By CASEY CHALK

January 16, 2019

There is a famous Persian proverb which translates to something close to “a rolling stone gathers no moss.” As a conservative and traditionalist Catholic, I find that sentiment quite appealing and true to life. Yet there are exceptions, among them the Iranian-American Sohrab Ahmari.

The popular writer at Commentary and former editorialist at The Wall Street Journal has rolled quite a bit in his relatively short life, from Shia Islam to Nietzschean nihilism, from Marxism to neoconservativism.

Now, in his spiritual biography, From Fire by Water, Ahmari charts his intellectual travels into Catholicism, to which he converted in 2016. For the reading list alone, Ahmari’s apologia is a valuable resource for understanding the intellectual evolution of the West and how traditional religious belief still offers the best answers to man’s quest for truth.

Ahmari was born into a middle-class family in Tehran several years after the 1979 revolution. Many members of his family, including his father and mother, were more aesthetes than pious Muslims. All the same, much of his upbringing — especially that which occurred in the country’s public school system — was set in the larger context of the aggressive Shiism of post-revolution Iran.

Yet Ahmari developed a cynicism towards Islam reminiscent of his bohemian father, who drank alcohol and watched Western movies behind closed doors. Of Iran, Ahmari writes, “When it wasn’t burning with ideological rage, it mainly offered mournful nostalgia. Those were its default modes, rage and nostalgia. I desired something more.”

As he grew older, Ahmari’s concerns with Islam increasingly focused on its antagonism towards free will and reason. He explains: “My turn away from God had something to do as well with the nature of the Islam of Khomeini and his followers, a religion that never proposes but only imposes, and that by the sword or the suicide bomber…. In broad swaths of the Islamic world, the religion of Muhammad is synonymous with law and political dominion without love or mercy…. There is little room for the individual conscience and free will, for the human heart, for reason and intellect.”

Indeed, as I’ve noted in two recent articles on Islam, the dominant streams of the religion have always had difficulty reconciling their beliefs - and certainly the nature and development of the Quran —with public rational discourse or academic scholarship. If one considers a map of the world where apostasy laws are in effect, it largely matches where Islam is the dominant religion. Radical Islamism as a distortion of a peaceable, rational Islam, Ahmari writes, is “little more than a polite myth.”

After Ahmari’s parents divorced, he and his mother immigrated to Utah when he was 13 years old. It was quite the culture shock — in part because he found many Americans far less intellectually curious and far more conformist than he had imagined, but also because it involved shifting from the Persian bourgeoisie to living in a trailer park.

As an Iranian in a part of the country that was predominantly white, it was always going to be an uphill battle to be socially accepted. But Ahmari’s fervent intellectualism added to this isolation. Though this was also perhaps a blessing in disguise, as he began devouring the kinds of books most Americans know they should read but never do. “Reading the great books in one’s late teens is intoxicating,” he observes.

First on his list was Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which he consumed in a few days, barely stopping to eat or groom himself. Ahmari identified with the ubermensch, or “superman,” who exemplifies the evolutionary peak of the human person, defined by self-mastery, radical creativity, and an intense cynicism towards absolute morality.

Though it would take a few years, Ahmari eventually came to see the errors of the German philosopher. “Today I consider most of Nietzsche’s ideas to be not merely wrong but positively sinister,” he says. All the same, as I’ve argued elsewhere at TAC, Nietzsche’s philosophy is at play across American culture, education, and politics. References to “empowerment,” to redefining morality according to man’s own needs (or whims), and to accomplishing our goals through force of will are all to varying degrees tinged with Nietzsche’s influence. It’s important that we be exposed to him and his ideas, even if he is deadly wrong.

The next major influence on the young thinker were existentialist writers (and communist sympathizers) Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. For Ahmari, this was a logical progression from Nietzsche, who “considered man to be his own moral measure, and…licensed an elite to designate new values and overthrow the old.” This was exactly what Marxism offered.

“By the age of eighteen, I was quite literally a card-carrying Communist,” he writes. Ahmari fervently embraced the ideas of dialectical materialism, class struggle, and anti-capitalism. But, he acknowledges, “Marxism’s greatest attraction was its religious spirit,” its emphasis on a secular salvation, revolutionary justice that “would wipe away every tear.”

Again, like Nietzsche, Americans need not embrace Sartre or Marx to see the need to read and understand them — especially when Marxism is still such a dominant force at most U.S. universities. One must understand the best attacks on conservatism and religious belief in order to defend them.

Anyone familiar with the philosophical traditions influencing the American academy can probably guess what came after Marx for the young Ahmari: Jean-Francois Lyotard and Michel Foucault, the deconstructionists who tackle topics like “sex and gender, language and the unconscious, colonialism and postcolonialism, media and pop culture.”

At this point, Ahmari defines his worldview as the following: “Man’s place in the world is unsettled; he is homeless. Capitalism’s pitiless destruction of older social forms, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Freud’s discovery of the unconscious —all these things had made it impossible to cling to any eternal or permanent truth about humanity…. Everything about people turned on historical conditions and social power dynamics.” According to these thinkers, man is repressed by society, which can be reduced to performative “language games.”

Yet Ahmari recognizes now that postmodernism’s analysis means there is “no standard left on which to base these various claims for justice.” It would take a number of life experiences, including two years doing Teach for America (TFA), to help Ahmari see the errors of his ways.

While he halfheartedly sought to impress his Marxism and relativism on his students, another teacher imposed strict rules and procedures to guide learning. The latter had far more success. As Ahmari writes, “good teaching [is] at heart about order — order, in the teacher’s mind, about the lesson he was going to impart on a given day; order in the minds of students, who need routine, regularity, and predictability from adults; and order in the sense that peace reigned in the classroom and those who disturbed it knew what to expect.” [Which is why Jorge Bergoglio could never be a good teacher - his thinking is too disordered, undicsciplined, often incoherent.]

The TFA experience also convinced Ahmari of a fatal flaw in leftist ideology — people aren’t reducible to “language, race, class, and collective identities.” Anyone, and everyone, regardless of circumstances, can choose to be virtuous, to cultivate the good in themselves and society.

It was around this time that Ahmari began reading anti-communist literature that helped persuade him that rather than being an oppressor, the kinds of absolute moral laws propagated by the Judeo-Christian tradition were actually “a bulwark against totalitarianism.”

He adds: “The God who revealed himself in the moral law, and who condescended to be scourged and crucified by his creation — this God was a liberator.” In time, he came to recognize that the most praiseworthy elements of Western civilization cannot be understood apart from the religious traditions that brought them into being. These traditions view man as having inherent dignity and possessing certain inalienable rights. Thus did Ahmari begin to “make peace with American society,” and develop into a popular neoconservative writer.

Soon he was reading the likes of political theorist Leo Strauss, biblical scholar Robert Altar, popular Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, the Church Father Augustine, great Catholic convert John Henry Newman, and 'the great scholar/theologian/pope' Joseph Ratzinger.

Ahmari is not the only one whose reading of Augustine led him into the Church — Washington Post columnist Elizabeth Bruenig trod a similar path. But perhaps what’s most consistent amid Ahmari’s intellectual journey from Islam through various forms of post-Enlightenment ideology and ultimately into Catholicism is his search not only for truth but freedom.

It was the deeper, more authentic vision of freedom in Christianity that spurred Ahmari towards a greater conception of the world and the human person. “True freedom, Benedict [XVI] taught, was something else. It was ‘freedom in the service of the good,’ freedom that allowed ‘itself to be led by the Spirit of God.’”

It is this same search for freedom that underpins the conservative project to which Ahmari now contributes — albeit, to my chagrin, of a more neoconservative variety. Yet any conservatism that perceives man’s flourishing as intimately linked to his creator is one worth lauding.


I can only imagine Mr. Ahmari's reactions to Pope Francis's willful naivete and/or woeful ignorance about Islam, and the syncretism he seems to think possible with a religion that considers Jesus only a prophet and someone far less than Mohammed at that! In his blogpost today, Aldo Maria Valli exposes the absurdity of Bergoglio's religious indifferentism with regard to Islam. It really is worse than indifferentism - it is Bergoglio in his extremely narcissistic smugness (he knows better about everything than anyone) daring to think that Islam would welcome his bid for an impossible syncretism.

So, are we going to be 'Chrislamists'?
[That seems to be the pope's thinking!]
Translated from

January 18, 2019

Pope Francis’s upcoming trips to two Muslim countries – the United Arab Emirates on Feb. 3-5, and Morocco on March 30-31 – implacably brings up the rhetoric of DIALOG [As it is meant and practiced by its greatest advocates today, ‘dialog’ is really the end in itself – dialog for the sake of dialog – a process that is self-programmed to go on infinitely, for as long as the dialog partners want to keep it up, without ever having to resolve anything].

In this case, the rhetoric of dialog will instrumentalize as far as it can the visit made by Francis of Assisi 800 years ago, in 1219, to the Egyptian Sultan as-Malik al-Kamil in Damietta. Obviously , the Vatican and Bergoglio's fandom will try to draw a parallel between the Saint and the pope who took his name, and hold them both up as ‘paladins of dialog’. Which is to falsify history. Because Francis of Assisi did not visit the sultan to dialog with him but to convert him.

At this point, I wish to insert, for quick reference, part of what one of Marco Tosatti’s writer-contributors published last January 10 on Tosatti’s blogsite and which I translated about 2 or 3 pages back on this thread. It is the account written by St. Bonaventure, no less, about that singular episode in Damietta 800 years ago. The writer begins by denouncing precisely what Valli calls instrumentalization through falsification of that episode, in the service of meaningless ‘dialog for the sake of dialog’:

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…The broken record of a rhetoric of dialogue and mutual respect consisting of trite cliches made meaningless by repetition also makes use of ‘myths’
that have nothing to do with genuine dialog.


St. Francis challenges the sultan to an ordeal by fire to underscore his faith in Christ.

An outstanding example is the famous episode of the meeting between St Francis of Assisi and the Egyptian Sultan Malik Al Kamil which took place in Damietta in 1219, which is often and happily trotted out as an icon of the true attitude to take in the ‘dialog’ between the West and Islam. But it is an episode in which those who cite it forget – or pretend to forget – a couple of particulars that are necessary to avoid instrumentalization and misunderstanding of the episode.

First, as we read from the most authoritative sources, St. Francis did not speak to the sultan simply to converse and discuss their respective faiths, but to announce the Gospel to him in the hope of converting him to Christ (not just him but all the Saracens that he met during this trip), in faithfulness to the mission of every Christian. Here is what St. Bonaventure wrote about it in his Leggenda maggiore – it’s a bit long but it deserves to be read in full. [Bonaventure, 1221-1274, Doctor of the Church, was the sixth successor of Francis as head of the Franciscan order]:

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That prince (the sultan) started by asking Francis who had sent him, for what purpose, and by what title, and how he had reached Damietta. Francis, servant of God, replied with intrepid heart that he had been sent not by men but by the Highest God, in order to show him (the sultan) and his people the way of salvation and to announce to them the Gospel of truth.

He proceeded to preach about the one and triune God and of Jesus Christ, Saviour of all, with such courage, such power and such fervor, as to show luminously that the promise of the Gospel was being realized in him with full truth. As Jesus had told his disciples: “For I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute” (Lk 21,15). So even the sultan, seeing the admirable fervor of spirit and the virtue in this man of God, listened to him gladly and asked him to stay with him.

But the servant of Christ, enlightened by an oracle from heaven, told him: “If you and your people wish to convert to Christ, I will gladly stay with you. But if you hesitate to abandon the law of Mohammed for the faith of Christ, then order that the biggest possible bonfire be built: I, with all your priests, shall walk into the fire, and then at least, you may be able to recognize, with your own eyes, which faith is more certain and moer holy”.

The sultan replied: “I don’t think any of my priests wish to walk into the fire or face torture for defending their faith” (because he had, in fact, seen that one of his famous and oldest priests, disappeared from sight as soon as he heard Francis’s challenge).

Francis: “If you will promise me, in your name and that of your people, that you will all pass into the religion of Christ if I emerge unhurt from the flames, then I will walk into the fire by myself. If I am burned, that will be because of my sins. But instead, if divine power makes me emerge safe and sound, you will acknowledge Christ - the power and wisdom of God - as the true God and Lord, Savior of all”.

But the sultan replied that he did not dare accept the challenge for fear of a popular uprising. Nonetheless, he offered him many precious gifts. But the man of God, who was avid not for worldly things but for the salvation of souls, refused everything as if the gifts were nothing but mud. Seeing how perfectly the saint scorned the things of the world, the Sultan was filled with admiration and devotion. And although he did not wish to convert to Christianity, or perhaps dared not to, he nonetheless implored the Servant of Christ to accept his gifts in order to distribute them to poor Christians and their churches, for the salvation of his soul.

But the saint, since he wished to be free of the obligation of money, and since he did not see the root of true piety in the soul of the Sultan, refused him absolutely. And moreover, seeing that he was making no progress in converting those people and could not therefore realize his mission, he returned to Christian lands, warned by a divine revelation.

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I do not think further comment is needed.

Secondly: St. Francis came to the sultan while on crusade – yes, mark that well, on crusade – which he had joined along with so many other pilgrims of that time who wanted only to liberate the holy palces of Christianity, expecially the Holy Sepulchre, which had been occupied militarily by the Muslims (begging the pardon of the vulgate who continue to denigrate the Crusades as wars of religion and conquest, notwithstanding numerous studies which have given the lie to such a claim which has been for the most part legendary).

As we have seen, the attitude of St. Francis was light years away from his contemporary iconography as a pacifist (or depending on circumstances, as an environmentalist, an animalist, an ecumenist, etc), one held by a myopic cutlure of dialog which, even in Catholic circles, continues to look at the finger and not see the moon.

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In the face of the saccharine deluge with which the Bergoglio propagandists will be seeking to drown us during those two papal trips, we must armor ourselves with knowledge.
- We must not forget that Christians remain the most persecuted religious followers in the world today, and that their persecutors are for the most part, if not all, Muslim.
- We must remember above all the ambiguity of this pope’s statements in Evangelii Gaudium which supporters of religious indifferentism promptly used to bolster their claim that all who believe in God or in a god, really believe in the same god, and that according to this pope, “together with us Muslims adore the one, merciful God” (No. 252).
Now, it is not me but the Jesuit Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, one of the Church’s great scholars on Islam, who took issue with the pope’s statement as being ‘misleading’ to say the least. He observed, in a masterly intervention commenting on EG, that the pope’s concept should be taken ‘with caution’. Because even if it is correct to say that Muslims adore one merciful God, the way the pope wrote it implies that what Muslims by ‘God’ is identical to what Christians mean by ‘God’. When this is obviously not the case.

Fr. Samir writes, “In Christianity, God is Triune in essence, a plurality united in love” and is therefore "quite a bit more than just clemency and mercy”.

In truth, he continues, "Christians and Muslims have two very different concepts of divine uniqueness… If the Muslims characterize God as inaccessible, the Christian view of the Trinitarian unity underscores that God is love, a love that communicates – among Father-Son-Spirit, or Lover-Beloved-Love, as St. Augustine suggested.”

Even the Christian and Muslim views of mercy are profoundly different. The God of Islam “is merciful to those he chooses”, i.e., not to everyone. In the Koran (48:25), we read: "Allah admits to his mercy whom he wills”. Nothing coild be farther from the idea “God is love” (1 Jn 4, 16).

Fr Samir says that “Mercy in Islam is that of the rich man who bends down towards a poor man and gives him something. But the Christian God descends to man to raise him up to his level. He does not display wealth in order to be respected or feared by the poor man: he gives himself so that all men might live."

The pope’s programmatic EG has many more ambiguous points regarding the relationship between Christianity and Islam, and we can well expect that such ambiguities will be exploited during the two trips to impose a misleading idea of these trips.

For example, the pope wrote ,that in the Koran, Jesus and Mary are ‘objects of profound veneration”. But in truth, even if the statement might well hold up for Mary (who is actually venerated by not a few Muslim women), Jesus is not at all venerated in the Koran, which considers him a great prophet who was famous for his miracles but very much inferior to Mohammed.

Fr. Samir continues: “Everything written in the Koran about Jesus is the opposite of Christian teachings – he is, of course, not the Son of God. He was a prophet, that’s it. Nor is he even a ranking prophet, unlike Mohammed who was the ‘messenger of Allah and last of the prophets’(Koran 33:40)...“Christian revelation is considered as nothing but a stage towards the ultimate revelation proclaimed by Mohammed, that is, by Islam”.

Before we start to think – as we shall certainly be told by the Vatican – that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, let us not forget not just that ‘Islam opposes all the fundamental Christian dogmas’, we must also underscore our differences on morality.

When we are told that good Muslims, like good Christians, are charitable especially towards the poor, we must answer that, in fact, Muslim ethics is rarely universal unlike the Christian. Indeed, if the Christian is called on to do good to everyone, regardless of faith, the Muslim is required to help only those who belong to his community.

And when we are told that both good Christians and good Muslims fast, we must remember that the two kinds of fasting are profoundly different, because Muslim fasting is a legal duty that is externally manifested (“if you fast, then you are righteous”), while Christian fasting is meant to be a token of our suffering with Christ on the cross, which is something simply incomprehensible to Muslims.

And we will certainly be hearing the refrain that both Christians and Muslims have their fundamentalists (as EG tells us), but Fr. Samir rightly observes: “Personally, I would not put the two kinds of fundamentalism on the same level.”

Indeed, if fundamentalist Christians (who rarely use weapons) are who they are, at the cost of completely degrading the Gospel, Muslim fundamentalists can always say that Mohammed waged more than 60 wars, and therefore, since he “an excellent pattern for anyone whose hope is in Allah and [who] remembers Allah often” (Koran 33:21), then using violence is legitimate and even dutiful.

Let us stop here for now. But let us look at the logo of the pope’s visit to Morocco. The Vatican says the design “was chosen from some 50 proposals sent by artists who responded to a competition. It portrays a cross and a crescent, to underscore the inter-religious character between Christians and Muslims.".

But the logo is something other than that description. It does not portray a cross and a crescent, but is precisely a fusion of the two symbols. Which appears to confirm the underlying idea in EG that basically, there are no differences between the two religions, or at least, no substantial differences.

C.S. Lewis referred to a hybrid religion of this sort in his book The Last Battle (the final volume of The Chronicles of Narnia), but there actually exists a similar movement today that is called Chrislam, which was born in Nigeria in the 1980s, composed of faithful who recognize both the Bible and the Koran as their sacred texts. [They must be madmen! How can they possibly reconcile those texts in any way?]

So, would we like to be Chrislamists? As far as I am concerned, no, thank you!

Fr. Schall turns 91 tomorrow, and has published the second of two commentaries this week while convalescing from major surgery. The National Catholic Register gave the title 'Why won't Archbishop McCarrick publicly admit his guilt?' to this commentary, as if Fr. Schall were saying that McCarrick ought to but won't. He is saying, however, that in Western law, although the accused has the right not to incriminate himself, he does have a responsibility to speak the truth in public, that it is noble to do so, especially when one's sins have significant consequences, and not just for his victims. One has yet to see any sign of nobility from McCarrick in this respect.

McCarrick: Why not a public admission of guilt?
To universalize the demand for public confession as a moral duty
can infringe on the principle of innocence until proven guilty
by James V Schall, SJ

January 18, 2019

In recent weeks, we have heard many voices calling for former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to admit in public the truth of the deeds of which he is accused, to clarify the air from the inside, so to speak. This call brings up a number of considerations about our obligation to the truth and how it is properly manifested before the world.

Many truths of ourselves and others are not the business of the public to know, even if we tell them in public. Only God knows everything about everyone.

To begin, I should briefly like to touch on the difference between the case of Cardinal George Pell and that of Archbishop McCarrick. From the beginning, Cardinal Pell was anxious to clear his name. He had no idea that the charges against him could be valid. He said so and asked to be judged on objective grounds. Most of the jurors agreed with him, but two preferred to side with his long-ago accusers.

I see no reason to doubt that Cardinal Pell told the public the truth about himself as he saw it. But telling the truth does not always succeed.

Archbishop McCarrick has not been formally in any court. He has not yet been required to swear under oath. I recall even seeing that he denied at least some of the allegations against him. What is he obliged to do?

The first thing to keep in mind is that he remains under the essence of Western law. Even if guilty, he need not incriminate himself. He can remain silent in a way that the Pope remains silent. In which case, the burden of proof against him is in the hands of courts that can make judgments based on the testimony of others.

The question of his subjective guilt or innocence, how he sees himself, falls within this context.

Anyone in court must swear that he will tell the truth. Penalties follow if one is caught lying. The accused, even if found guilty, does not have to make a public confession, however useful that might be for the record.

In Church history, we do hear of public confessions that were required for absolution. It may be that Archbishop McCarrick has privately confessed the sins about which he is accused. I would conclude that it might be good if he made a public confession. But I also think that the tradition that allows an accused to be silent, to be judged by peers in lieu of any self-declaration of guilt, should remain in place as a greater good.

Universalizing the demand for public confession as a moral duty can infringe on the basic principle of innocence until proven guilty — a principle that really is being tested today.

Yet the issue of the victims had really not been taken seriously enough, if at all, into consideration. We must not forget that our sins — even our confessed sins — have consequences. How those consequences redound in the world remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the intrinsic evil of intrinsically evil acts remains in our personal and collective stories.

We must not only cope with sin but with what flows from it. At some point, the perpetrators of sin have to be punished and, if contrite, absolved — but the victims of sins have also to forgive.

One ironic thing to note about the Archbishop McCarrick case is the disconnection between classic morality and what now is public positive law. In this and other countries, the activities of homosexual persons are not considered wrong in any way unless they harm others. Consenting adults do as they please.

At least some of the things Archbishop McCarrick is accused of doing were allegedly with adults. Adults cannot, by moral and civil law, impose themselves sexually on minors, even though the vast majority of abuse cases involve young men, not children.

There is some irony in the wrath shown to him in this regard. Logically, Archbishop McCarrick could plead that he is being discriminated against according to present public law. In the meantime, he is also judged by classic natural-law standards that see homosexuality as an aberration with its own disruptive consequences.

Let me return to the issue of voluntarily speaking the truth in public. Christ said that the truth shall make us free (John 8:23). The Eighth Commandment admonishes us not to lie, that is, to tell the truth. History is filled with instances in which a conflict between truth and lying is posed: The tyrant demands a lie of us or else he will kill our family. We may have to use our wit in a way so that we answer charges without hurting anyone else.

Some well-thought-of philosophers hold that we can lie in certain cases for a greater good. The notion of mental reservation, meaning we say one thing and mean another, has its point. Telling the truth about oneself to a public eager to condemn us is no easy requirement. The last bit of dignity we have is at stake.

Yet there is something noble about the man who does acknowledge his guilt. He need not do so. He can keep his sorrow to himself. When he does this keeping to himself, he lets the world judge him.

St. Thomas Aquinas said that the civil law does not reach our interior acts. Unless we affirm otherwise, only God and we ourselves can know what they are or how they appear to us. And often we do not know ourselves well enough to see the consequences of our own aberrant thoughts and deeds.

When properly asked and formulated, we do have a responsibility to state the truth in public. But this responsibility is not without its nuances and cautions, lest some greater truths be undermined. It is but a short step from urging us to tell the truth about ourselves in public to forcing us to do so.

Still, acknowledging our responsibility when we are responsible is a noble thing. We do put things in the world that ought not to be there. Not to know this truth is not to know ourselves.

Trump and Pence tell March for Life:
‘Every life is worth protecting’


Washington D.C., Jan 18, 2019 (CNA) - The March for Life again gathered myriad pro-life advocates to mark the anniversary of legalized abortion in America, and in a surprise appearance Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence introduced a pre-recorded message from President Donald Trump.

“This is a movement founded on love and grounded in the nobility and dignity of every human life,” President Trump said in a pre-recorded message to the massive Jan. 18 rally, before the crowd began its march through the streets of Washington, D.C.

“When we look into the eyes of a newborn child we see the beauty of the human soul and the majesty of God’s creation, we know that every life has meaning and every life is worth protecting.”

“I will always protect the first right in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life,” he said.

Trump touted his administration’s new expansion of the Mexico City Policy, which restricts funds for international organizations that promote or perform abortions.
- He promoted his administration’s actions to protect religious freedom for medical professionals and religious charities, as well as support for adoption and foster care.
- Among new proposals are limits barring Title X funds for clinics that perform abortions; and making permanent the Hyde Amendment budget restrictions on abortion funding.

Trump is something of an unlikely ally for the pro-life movement. Before he launched his successful 2016 presidential campaign, Trump had a record of pro-abortion rights statements. That record, his personal character and other actions have drawn criticism and concern from some pro-life leaders. His presidency continues to be one of the most controversial in recent history, with his anti-immigrant crackdowns and rhetoric becoming major concerns for Catholic bishops.

For the 2018 March for Life, Trump had given a special live address to the March for Life rally from the White House Rose Garden.

This year, following the Republicans’ loss of control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections, Trump pledged to veto any legislation that would undermine “protection for human life.”

“Every child is a sacred gift from God,” he said. “Each person is unique from day one. That’s a very important phrase. Unique from day one. And so true… Together we will work to save the lives of unborn children.”

Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence appeared in person to introduce the president and to give their own remarks.

“We gather here because we stand for life,” the vice president said. “We gather here because we stand for compassion. We gather here because we believe as our founders did because we believe all of us, born and unborn, are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights and first among these rights is the right to life.”

Pence said that the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision “turned its back on that right,” but that decision gave birth to “a movement born by compassion and love a movement animated by faith and truth, a movement that’s been winning hearts and minds every day since.”

Because of those gathered here, he said, “we know in our hearts that life is winning once again.”

Pence praised and thanked pregnancy center volunteers, adoptive families, and “courageous men and women who step forward to serve in public office” in the U.S. capitol and state legislatures. He urged pro-life advocates to “stand strong” and give reasons for their hope “with gentleness and respect.”

“They will attack you, they will question your hearts to silence others but don’t listen to them. Listen to the truth,” he said. He told marchers that God will not forsake them and they do not stand alone.

“Know that you have an unwavering ally in this vice president and this family. And you have a champion in the President of the United States, President Donald Trump.”

Pence similarly touted Trump administrative actions, saying Trump “kept his promise” on judicial nominees and signed legislation allowing states to defund abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

Karen Pence thanked marchers for “standing in the cold for something that you believe in.”

“Thank you for your stories of courage. Thank you for your stories of regret and forgiveness and starting over,” she said. “Thank you for your stories of hope. Thank you for your stories of inspiration. Thank you for your stories of truth.”

Other elected officials spoke at the event, among them U.S. Rep. Chris Smith R-N.J., a co-chair of the Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus.

U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana, announced the launch of what he said was “the first-ever pro-life caucus in the U.S. Senate.” This caucus, he said, “will allow us to accelerate the momentum of the past few years in promoting and protecting life.”

U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., another co-chair of the House’s pro-life caucus, addressed the event. Lipinski is regarded as a leader among pro-life Democrats. In a tight 2018 primary election, he defeated a strong challenger who was pro-abortion rights.

“We don’t agree on everything We’ve got Republicans, Democrats, independents,” he said. “We all agree on one thing: every life is sacred. It needs to be protected. No one is expendable. Our highest priority has to defend life from the first moment. Everyone is unique from day one.”

“We will never ever give up,” said Lipinski. “Together we’ll march until one day life, especially the most vulnerable, are protected.”

Louisiana State Rep. Katrina Jackson, a Democrat, claimed Louisiana was the most pro-life state.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re Democrat, Republican, black or white, we fight for life,” she told the crowd. “When people ask me ‘Why are you a black female Democrat fighting for life?’ I say ‘Because I’m a Christian first’,” Jackson said.

Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire and host of a popular conservative podcast, faulted the Democratic Party’s strong pro-abortion rights stand, but also challenged Republican legislators’ failure to defund Planned Parenthood.

He depicted abortion as a betrayal of American efforts to secure “the promise of God-given rights, chief among them the rights to life and liberty.”

“We decided that we could safely blot out millions of souls who could not protect themselves,” he said. “We lied to ourselves, and then we built walls around that lie,” Shapiro continued, criticizing “anti-scientific arguments” about life’s origins and “euphemisms” like “termination of pregnancy, abortion, choice.”

“We stand between America and the darkness, and we will march until that darkness is banished forever and all our children can stand in the sunlight,” he told the marchers.

A video sponsored by the Knights of Columbus showed the pro-life work of the Catholic men’s organization, including its ultrasound machine donation program. Its head, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, spoke to the rally and cited a Knights-sponsored poll showing strong support for “substantial restrictions” on abortion and policies to “protect mother and child before birth.”

He also asked eligible men to join the Knights of Columbus, which has about 1.9 million members worldwide. The group’s many friends and allies spoke out after a controversial December Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which two Democratic senators had questioned a judicial nominee’s membership in the Knights due to their views on abortion rights and marriage.

Dr. Kathi Aultman, a former abortionist and fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, reflected on her journey away from performing abortions.

“If it was wanted, it was a baby. If it wasn’t wanted, it was a fetus,” she said.

While qualms about abortions arose during her neonatal rotation, when she tried to save babies the same gestational age as those she was abortion, only the birth of her daughter made her stop performing abortions.

After realizing that women who kept their babies did better compared to those who had sought abortions, and watching nearly aborted children in her church grow up instead, her views began to change further. Caring family and friends brought her fully to the pro-life cause.

The event emcee Jeanne Mancini said the country was “forever changed” by Roe v. Wade.

“Since that time, we have tragically lost over 60 million American children, little girls and little boys, to abortion. And many mothers and fathers regret having been involved in abortion,” she said.

“We’re marching to end the human rights abuse of our time, abortion,” Mancini told marchers. “That’s why we march. And that’s why you are so urgently needed.”

She encouraged marchers to share their story on social media, using the hashtag #WhyWeMarch.

Dr. Alveda King, a niece of slain civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the closing prayer.


And here's a story reported appropriately on the day American pro-lifers marched for life in DC:


NB:The markings 'leg' 'foot' 'knee' on the sonogram refer to the fetal image that is the background for the Crucifix image.

Crucifix emerges
on a fetal sonogram

January 18, 2019

Talk about miraculous!

While at the Fellowship of Catholic University Students’ (FOCUS) SEEK2019 conference, assistant editor Jacqueline Burkepile met up with the Sisters of Life, and they showed her a fascinating picture.

One of the sisters said, “An Indiana seminarian came up to me and gave me this. He did not provide his name, but said, ‘Pressured to have an abortion, this woman’s sonogram came out like this.'”

The sonogram depicts Jesus crucified.


We have no additional details regarding the sonogram photo, just that the woman was being pressured to abort her baby.

Let us pray for her, and for all women who are considering abortion or pressured into abortion, that they will have the strength, the courage and the grace to choose life.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, please pray for all expectant mothers and their unborn children!

It is absolutely remarkable that the interplay of light and dark which characterizes an ultrasound image produced an effect that so resembles an image of the Crucified Lord. What are the chances of such a phenomenon? Hard not to see this as a message...

Vatican confirms suppression
of Ecclesia Dei commission
by Christopher Altieri

January 19, 2019

Pope Francis folded the responsibilities and budget of the commission responsible for traditional Catholics into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Saturday. With the motu proprio Da oltre (trent’anni) [for more than 30 years], the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, historically also tasked with leading negotiations with the canonically irregular Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X (SSPX), is suppressed, and its duties transferred to the CDF.

Pope St John Paul II established the Ecclesia Dei Commission in 1988 to support traditional Catholics who did not follow Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre after he illicitly ordained four bishops to continue the work of the fraternity he founded for the preservation of traditional Catholic worship in the wake of the II Vatican Council and the post-Conciliar reform of the liturgy.

Pope John Paul II ruled that the illicit ordination was a schismatic act, and confirmed that the SSPX leadership had incurred excommunication latae sententiae resulting from their participation in the illicit episcopal consecration.

Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 lifted the excommunications on the four bishops illicitly ordained, though the canonically irregular situation of the SSPX persists to this day, despite significant strides toward reconciliation.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI restored the right of priests to use the pre-Conciliar liturgical books, promulgated by Pope St John XXIII in 1962, for public worship with his motu proprio Summorum pontificum. In 2009, he expanded Ecclesia Dei’s competences and made the Prefect of the CDF the ex officio head of the Commission, recognising at the time that the outstanding issues between Rome and the SSPX were prevalently doctrinal.

During the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis granted faculties to all SSPX priests to hear confessions. He later made that decision permanent in November 20616.

With this latest move, Pope Francis is giving the responsibilities of the now-suppressed Commission to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“The further step taken by Pope Francis with the suppression of the commission itself is part of this particular need to continue the dialogue on doctrinal issues, the competence of which is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” wrote Nicola Gori for L’Osservatore Romano in a piece accompanying the motu proprio.

The preamble to the motu proprio further suggests the move has been in the works for some time.

Though the move could startle traditionalist Catholics, it has a discernible and unalarming logic to it.

“We are not dealing, therefore, with suppression tout court,” wrote Gori, “but with a transfer of competences, since the main axis on which activity will be set has narrowed to the doctrinal sphere.” Gori also noted the significant advances in the ongoing dialogue thus far. “Progress has been made in communion,” he wrote, “and therefore the current motu proprio offers an implicit recognition to the Pontifical Commission which has carried out its tasks with its efforts and activity.”...

Marco Tosatti, reporting this on his blog today, comments:

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"Doubts and questions raised about safeguarding the rights of those who ask for the Vetus Ordo Mass may be answered only after the special section of the CDF [that takes over Ecclesia Dei's functions] is constituted and acts accordingly. Only then shall we see if it will have the will and the authority to oblige refractory bishops to grant what seems to one of the most basic rights of the faithful: to worship God in the [accepted] way they wish to".

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Summorum Pontificum makes it clear that a bishop's permission is no longer necessary as long as there is a priest in the diocese who can celebrate the Old Mass for any group requesting it. But what happens if Bergoglio's own 'Tucho' Fernandez decrees within his archdiocese (La Plata, in Argentina) that he prohibits celebration of the Old Mass altogether as he recently did? How would the Bergoglio CDF deal with that? 'Tucho' could well be the litmus test for the new dispensation!

Also most 'interesting' is the information Tosatti adds about Mons. Guido Pozzo, who was first named by Benedict XVI to head Ecclesia Dei in 2009: "Mons. Guido Pozzo will be tasked with helping restore order to the Cappella Musicale Pontificia [the Sistine Chapel Choir], directly under the Master of Liturgical Ceremonies, Mons. Guido Marini."

In September 2018, it had been disclosed that

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"The Sistine Chapel Choir is facing serious charges of financial misconduct, including allegations of embezzlement and fraud, with Pope Francis and New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan connected to the moneymaking scheme.

Italian watchdog group Messa in Latino reported it had received documents relating to a choir money-making program involving elite "tourist packages."

Though stressing that entry into St. Peter's Basilica is free and that "most" concert seating is available on a "first-come, first-served basis," the documents reveal a pay-to-play fundraising mechanism aimed at the wealthy.

For example, purchasers of the 2017 "Sistine Chapel Title Package" — available for a minimum donation of $75,000 — were awarded specific perks, including being "special guests" at a Mass offered by the Holy Father...

Other benefits include space at a Mass offered by Cardinal Dolan, [also with special perks]...

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This was one story I failed to post, much less to follow up - the rest of it can be read on Church Militant:
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/sistine-chapel-choir-beset-by-financial-irregularities

But today, January 19, 2019, four months later, the AP reports:

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"Pope Francis has put a close aide in charge of the Sistine Chapel Choir following a funding scandal. [It will now be] under the responsibility of Monsignor Guido Marini, who assists Francis during church ceremonies. Francis named another monsignor, Guido Pozzo, to handle the choir's finances. The Vatican last year began a probe of alleged diversion of funds by choir directors, but Saturday's announcement didn't mention that investigation.

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And this is the pontificate that brags about 'total transparency' on financial matters. I hope Tosatti or some other Vaticanista gives us the full story soon on the alleged moneymaking scheme by those who were in charge of the Sistine Chapel Choir.