BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Thanks to Beatrice who led me to this story by the translation on her site. Although the Times of London protects itself online from non-subscribers with a paywall, it was easy enough to google Mr Willan's article and find out that it has been reprinted all over the English-speaking world without a paywall! This I lifted from THE AUSTRALIAN.

If the Times of London now deigns to come out with an article like this that is not at all adulatory or even flattering to the reigning pope, does it mean that Bergoglio's honeymoon with the media is coming to an end? One swallow does not a summer make. Let's see the New York Times, Le Monde, El Pais, Frankfuerter Allgemeine Zeitung and Corriere della Sera come out with something similar - then we might think that! Der Spiegel - which with AP and the New York Times, partnered and pooled their considerable resources in 2010 to try and force Benedict XVI to resign by hook or by crook - has already been running a few articles that are corrosively critical of Bergoglio. I don't want to sound smug but truth will out, and perhaps more rational heads in the mainstream media, are starting to shake off their self-imposed blinders about Bergoglio.

However, my first reaction to the fact that the Times of London ran such a story at all was that their adulation for Bergoglio is really secondary to their hatred of the Catholic Church - 'I love this pope but I hate the Church' has been their obvious mantra. And their Bergogliophilia is in fact a consequence of their perception that this singularly anti-Catholic pope (give them credit for perceiving that soon enough) was going to accomplish for them what the secular world has been trying to do for three centuries now against the Church, since the mislabelled Age of Enlightenment! And boy, does the Capozzi story have all the necessary ingredients - sex, drugs and pope-on-a-rope - to milk for headlines...

Just one caveat/cavil: The story clearly says the orgy took place in someone's apartment, not a cardinal's apartment, but that didn't stop the Times from saying otherwise in its headline... More titillating to the unwitting reader...

Police raid gay orgy
at cardinal’s [sic] Vatican apartment
by PHILIP WILLAN
The Times of London
July 5, 2017

Vatican police broke up a homosexual orgy last month in an apartment belonging to the Con­gregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — the department charged with, among other things, tackling clerical sexual abuse.

The occupant of the apartment is alleged to be the secretary of cardinal Francesco Coccopa­l­merio, head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative texts and a key adviser to the Pope.

Cardinal Coccopalmerio is said to have recommended his aide for promotion to bishop, but those plans are likely to be disrupted by news of the orgy and by a period spent recovering from a drug overdose in a Rome hospital and subsequently, in an Italian monastery.

The allegations about the orgy were published by the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.

The incident is symptomatic of a difficult period for the Pope. Four years into his papacy his reforms should be at full throttle; instead, the Catholic Church appears racked by conflict and scandal. [Now, this reported orgy is a genuine scandal, compared to whatever you might think was the worst thing ever alleged in the mishmash of rumor and speculation fed by the so-called Vatileaks-I.]

Critics blame the Pope’s choice of personnel: Cardinal George Pell, appointed to clean up the Vatican’s murky finances, has taken a leave of absence to defend himself against sex abuse charges in Australia, and cardinal Gerhard Mueller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has not had his tenure renewed.

Both men are seen as doctrinal conservatives who could have been an obstacle to the Pope’s ­efforts to introduce a more merciful approach on questions of marriage, divorce and communion. [The writer seems to take it for granted that 'the more merciful approach' is necessarily the right one! And for a fleeting instant, I thought that by ‘choice of people’, the writer meant the sycophants who surround Bergoglio! No, it turns out it’s the ‘doctrinal conservatives’ who must be blamed for the Bergoglio-generated chaos in the Church!]

Both had signed a letter, together with 11 other cardinals, complaining that progressive forces were attempting to manipulate the outcome of a controversial synod on the family.

The manner of their departure risks inflaming a minority of traditionalists deeply unhappy with the Pope’s reforms. Cardinal Mueller’s successor, Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer [who has been criticized by some traditionalist bloggers as heterodox] has been accused of covering up the sexual crimes committed by an Italian priest. [The reporter deliberately misrepresents the story: It is claimed that as part of his job at the CDF, Ladaria years ago had recommended the defrocking of a priest investigated by the CDF, and he is now accused of not having reported the priest’s crimes to the Italian authorities. The story appears muddled at this point. You would think the liberals would welcome a priest being punished for his crimes – but now it is Ladaria who is made to appear the criminal!]

Conservatives have also been uncomfortable with the Pope’s reluctance to intervene in the Charlie Gard case, seeing him as aligned with English courts and bishops wanting to spare a sick child from suffering, [And that's a rationale for trying to play God with the boy's life?] rather than determined to defend life at all costs.

The terminally ill 10-month-old boy has a form of mitochondrial disease — a genetic condition that causes progressive muscle weakness and brain damage — and has been at the centre of a legal battle between his parents, who wanted him treated in the US, and specialists at the London hospital who said the treatment was experimental and would not help.

“Resistance to the Pope is growing,” said a Vatican source. “We have seen five troubling ­stories emerge in a matter of a few days. They have created turbulence. There’s not going to be a schism, but the Pope has lost credibility in the eyes of many.”

The source said many of Francis’s appointments were controversial; from the prelate chosen to liaise with the Vatican Bank who was found to have been involved in sex scandals, to Francesca Chaouqui, a laywoman chosen for a fin­ancial reform commission who leaked Vatican files to the press.

[Let us be more precise here: The prelate, Mons. Ricca, whom this pope chose to be the ‘spiritual’ director of the IOR, has been involved in sexual scandals that made the police files in Asuncion, Paraguay, his last diplomatic posting. And Chaoqui, named by the reform commission on the recommendation of the Spanish priest Bergoglio appointed as its secretary, leaked confidential Vatican dossiers to an Italian journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi, who then went on to write his second ‘Vatileaks’ book.

Chaoqui and the monsignor colluded in the leak. They were tried along with Nuzzi and another journalist who also made use of those dossiers to write an alleged expose of Vatican 'financial shenanigans, as the media love to describe it. The monsignor was sentenced to 18 months in the Vatican jail, Chaoqui had a suspended sentence only because she became pregnant at the time of the trial, and the two journalists got off because, as Italian citizens, the Vatican court has no jurisdiction over them.]

“The Pope has been appointing people who are good parish priests to run dioceses in Italy, but it takes something else to be a bishop and they don’t have the stature for it,” the source said. “Paradoxically, these setbacks are pushing the Pope to accelerate his reforms, while resistance increases. Many Catholics pretend he’s not there and (will) just wait until he’s gone.” [No, not pretend he's not there - because his presence is massively ominous as it is - but simply not to consider him pope because, given what he has been doing to the Church and her doctrine and discipline, he is not at all what a pope should be!]

Prominent journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi [the other Vatileaks-2 journalist] is unconvinced by the Pope’s reform record. “There’s much more shade than light,” he said. “The propaganda about Francis bothers me. The world has been told about a revolution before it happened. He became an idol immediately.”

[Was Mr. Willan not aware that Fittipaldi wrote a book after the 2015 book he called (my translation of the Italian title) "Avarice: Documents that disclose the wealth, scandals and secrets of the church of Francis", he recently came out with a parallel book entitled "Lust: Sins, scandals and betrayals in a Church made of men"? He could have asked him if his book has any information at all on Mons. Luigi Capozzo, Cardinal Coccopalmerio's orgiast protege.]

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke declined to comment. [Poor guy! What can he say that won't make him a liar? Everyday before he starts work, he must be praying desperately to all his patron saints to watch over him so that he may not perjure himself!]

Joaquin Navarro-Valls with Benedict XVI in Les Combes in July 2006, before he resigned as Vatican Press Director.

Following the unexpected passing away of Cardinal Meisner, another figure, this time a layman, very closely associated with the life of the Church in our time, has gone. Joanquin Navarro Valls served both John Paul II and Benedict XVI, for whom he continued to serve as Vatican press director till July 2006. Let us say a prayer for him. On his blog today, Aldo Maria Valli has a remarkable and endearing memoir of a man who was a consummate professional and who also became his friend.

Joaquin Navarro-Valls,80, RIP
By Catholic News Service
7.5.2017 4:05 PM ET

VATICAN CITY, July 5, 2017 (CNS) -- Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who spent 22 years as director of the Vatican press office, died today at age 80.

No details were available immediately, but his death was announced in a tweet by the current director of the Vatican press office, Greg Burke.

In a statement to Catholic News Service, Burke said he did not always agree with Navarro-Valls, but his predecessor "always behaved like a Christian gentleman -- and those can be hard to find these days."

"Joaquin Navarro embodied what Ernest Hemingway defined as courage: grace under pressure. I got to know Navarro when I was working for Time, and the magazine named John Paul II Man of the Year. I expected to find a man of faith, but I found a man of faith who was also a first-class professional."

Burke said he remembered watching Navarro-Valls closely during the 1994 U.N. Population Conference in Cairo, which Burke described as "one of the best examples of what Pope Francis calls ideological colonization. It was fascinating to see someone who was defending the faith, but he wasn't on the defensive. He was leading the fight."

Navarro-Valls, a medical doctor by training, was the first lay journalist to hold the position when he was appointed by St. John Paul II in 1984. The Spaniard was also a member of the influential organization Opus Dei.

An author of books on the family and fluent in several languages, Navarro-Valls often provided colorful, picturesque details concerning Pope John Paul's activities and daily life. He also acted many times as an adviser to the pope on the media impact of papal decisions.

He traveled with St. John Paul on almost all his apostolic journeys and became a well-recognized figure, especially after the pope fell ill in 2004. He regularly held press conferences to relay news to the world of the pope's deteriorating condition.

In 1992, Navarro-Valls overhauled the press office with a $2 million technological face-lift along with much-needed, modernized facilities. He also revolutionized the distribution of material by making archives, documents and statistics concerning the pope's activity available online.

Navarro-Valls was born in Cartagena, Spain, Nov. 16, 1936.

Here is John Allen's tribute:

Joaquin Navarro-Valls:
'Take him for all in all,
I will not look upon his like again'
John L. Allen Jr.
Editor
CRUX
July 5, 2017

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke on the phone to Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who served as the Vatican spokesman from 1984 to 2006, though that hardly does justice to the role he played under Pope John Paul II. In reality, Navarro was a member of John Paul’s inner circle and something akin to a Chief of Staff, much more than a mere press mouthpiece.

I had heard Navarro was seriously ill with a type of cancer, and since I was in Rome I wanted to have the chance to say goodbye. His voice was barely recognizable, scratchy and breathless, but he still managed to tell me I do “stupendous” work and to ask me to say hello to my wife for him.

I hung up in tears, conscious I had just spoken to a dying man.

On July 5, the end came. Navarro-Valls is dead at the age of 80, with the news breaking through a tweet by his successor as Director of the Holy See Press Office, American Greg Burke, who added a phrase that could well be the whole of Navarro’s epitaph: “Grace under pressure.”

Born in Cartagena, Spain, in 1936, the young Navarro attended a German school in his hometown, then studied medicine at the Universities of Granada and Barcelona, eventually becoming a professional psychiatrist and teaching medicine. (Later, Navarro would be known in the Vatican press corps for occasionally offering unsolicited medical advice to journalists, chiding them for putting on weight, not getting enough exercise, and so on.)

Navarro also studied journalism, earning a degree from the University of Navarra in 1968 and another in 1980. He would eventually make journalism his profession, becoming a foreign correspondent for the Spanish newspaper ABC. While covering Italy and the Vatican, he was elected a member of the Board of Directors and later President of the Foreign Press Association in Rome for two terms.

Also as a young man, Navarro joined the Catholic organization Opus Dei, eventually becoming a “numerary,” meaning a celibate member who lives in an Opus Dei center. Over the years the organization served as a lightning rod for controversy, in part for its reputation for conservative politics, in part over charges of cult-like control over members’ lives.

Navarro often bristled at questions about his Opus Dei ties, insisting it was a private matter that had nothing to do with his job.

“I was a foreign correspondent in Egypt, in Israel, and in Greece,” Navarro said in an interview for a 2005 book. “Inevitably I had to write on Islam, on Judaism and on Orthodoxy. Nobody, neither public officials nor religious leaders, was the least concerned, or even curious, about my personal beliefs. They were concerned only with the accuracy and fairness of my reporting.

“Very much the same happened when I worked as a medical doctor in a hospital for fourteen years,” he said. “They were interested in good medical attention, and that was what I tried to give them.”

Navarro was a highly personal choice by John Paul, who called him to a lunch to offer him the job. Looking back, Navarro once said he believed the primary reason John Paul turned to him was because he had been twice elected president of the Foreign Press Association in Rome, a sign of respect by his colleagues, though he acknowledged that being in Opus Dei was perhaps a “guarantee” for the pope that he had a solid formation in Catholic teaching.

As spokesman, Navarro sought to shape the narrative of John Paul’s papacy. He once made a trip to the American White House during the Reagan years to spend time with their communications team, and sought to emulate the best of advanced Western “spin.”

Marco Politi, a veteran Vatican writer for La Repubblica and other Italian outlets, described Navarro as “orientational,” in the sense that he tried to steer journalists in a particular direction in terms of how the story of John Paul II was reported, as opposed to other spokespersons content simply to repeat what the pope said or did and leave it at that.

Beyond simply dealing with the press on John Paul’s behalf, Navarro also was a key policy adviser and emissary of the pontiff, for instance leading the Holy See’s delegation at an International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, where there was a strong push to enshrine access to abortion as a human right under international law.

Navarro helped put together an improbable coalition, quickly dubbed the “Holy Alliance,” of Catholic and Muslim nations to beat back that attempt.

Navarro was smart, articulate, hard-working, multi-lingual, and utterly devoted to the popes he served (he would stick around for a while under Benedict XVI before giving way to Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi.)

None of that is to say Navarro was without his flaws.

For one thing, it was often not entirely clear, when he talked about John Paul, whether he was telling us what actually happened or what he felt should have happened. It predates my time, but oral tradition in the Vatican press corps has it that once Navarro gave a full in-air briefing about a meeting John Paul had with Guatemalan human right activist Rigoberta Menchú, down to the colorful native costume she wore.

The only problem was that the meeting was cancelled at the last minute because Menchú was too ill, so Navarro was forced to retract everything. He’d obviously had his talking points ready to go, and didn’t bother checking whether the encounter had actually happened.

During John Paul’s final illness in 2005, the pope underwent a tracheotomy on Feb. 24 to relieve respiratory problems. The next morning Navarro told the press that John Paul had eaten ten cookies for breakfast - which, beyond just being an awful lot of cookies, strained credibility because it wasn’t clear how a patient with a tracheal tube could even do it.

Still, on the important stuff we all took Navarro seriously, because we knew John Paul had his back.

Navarro was also the bane of many reporters’ existence, because he nakedly and openly played favorites. There were some journalists, either because of the size of their audience or because he trusted them, with whom he would share insider information, and others whose phone calls and emails he would never return.

I got a spot on his “A” list fairly early, so I never had any complaints, but I understood why many of my colleagues did. Remarkably often, I’d end up calling him with a question for one of them, simply because I could get through and they couldn’t.

However, no one’s perfect, and on the whole, the Navarro Valls I knew was a giant of a man. He also took a deep personal interest in the people around him - in fact, the very last question he ever asked me in that brief talk we had a couple weeks ago was about my health.
[Allen goes on to quote what Greg Burke said about Navarro-Valls, quoted in the CNS story.]

When I spoke to Navarro for the last time, I tried to tell him what he had meant to me, and how much he had helped me when I was just starting out. I’m not sure he took it all in, because by that stage in the conversation he was obviously fatigued and drifting in and out.

If he didn’t quite get it, let me say it now: I’m probably not here, writing this appreciation or doing anything else in journalism, had it not been for Joaquin Navarro-Valls. To quote Shakespeare, “Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”

July 6, 2017 headlines
Found a way to 'reproduce' the aggregators' headlines...

Canon212.com

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Deacon Kandra on Bishop Barron: From ‘meh’ to ‘yeah’!?
155 Bishops hold "Mass of Sending" to close out Orlando FrancisConvocation
Bishops’ repulsive Orlando FrancisConvocation circulated flyers of potential ‘disruptors’ to be excluded
Atlanta FrancisBishop Wilton on his auxiliary's move to Raleigh: They'll talk to me over there again!
Trump to Poles: The Polish experience reminds us - the defense of the West ultimately rests not only
on means but also on the will of its people to prevail
Retired Philadelphia Auxiliary and WWII vet Bp. DeSimone: I made my final decision to be a priest
when PIus XII said he'd pray for me.
UK to FrancisVatican: You can have Charlie Gard only if you promise to remove his life support!
Beleaguered FrancisSpox Greg Burke: Bambino Gesu Hospital Offers An Exceptional Level of Care, OK?!
Derailed FrancisCardinal Turkson at Vatican UN joint conference. We're not going off course, see?
Redemption is not only for the human person, but also for the Earth,
for creation, for the world and everything that affects human life!"
Corsi/Neumayr on FrancisVatican: If you think Cd. Coccopalmerio is bad, Mgr. Ricca still runs the Bank!
Creepy Cologne Cd. Woelki: Cd. Meisner was found with his breviary, eyes open, sitting up like a tree with deep roots
Dear Professor George: Is Abp. Ladaria a treasure, or was Card. Muller a treasure, or are they both treasures?

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PewSitter

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Trump: 'If We Do Not Have Strong Families and Strong Values...We Will Not Survive'
The French Jesuits challenge Humanae Vitae
The Liberal Jesuit Captivity of the Papacy
Bishop McGrath's lacking letter on sacramental service
Pope's Favorite Newspaper Opens the Hunt Against New CDF
Pope Francis: SSPX Must Accept Vatican Council II and the New Mass
Scholas Occurrentes: Pope's message for a 'culture of encounter' without Christ
Cardinal Cupich and Thomas Rosica Host Pro-Gay Journalist at Chicago Theology on Tap
Tribute to Writer Tito Casini, the Man Who Exposed Liturgical Anarchist Arch Bugnini's 'Strange Connections'
Mgr Luc Ravel, archbishop of Strasbourg, denounces 'great replacement' as Muslims reproduce, Europeans abort themselves out of existence
Abp. Chaput on Fr. Martin’s book:
Jesus didn’t come to affirm us in our sins
And destructive behaviors …. but to redeem us

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Canonist Ed Peters calls down another US bishop - a doctorate in canon law from the Lateran University, no less - for what seems to be a willful disregard for what canon law actually says, in favor of blind subservience to whatever this pope says, in this case, his ideas on sacramental participation... Mons. Patrick McGrath of San Jose joins Mons. McElroy of San Diego, another already notorious California bishop utterly servile to the word and person of Jorge Bergoglio...

Bp. McGrath’s letter
on sacramental service
by Edward Peters, JD, JCD, Ref. Ap. Sig.
IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW

In 1977, during the darkest period of canonical confusion that ran from the end of the Second Vatican Council until the promulgation of the 1983 Code, then-Fr Patrick McGrath earned a doctoral degree in canon law from the Lateran University in Rome.

Now-Bp Patrick McGrath of San Jose is surely aware, then, that multiple canonical requirements for sacramental participation exist and he would, I imagine, be distressed to learn that his recent letter, implying that “good faith” is the only criterion for admission to the sacraments, could be pastorally misleading.

A key — not the only, but a key — norm controlling the administration of sacraments to the faithful is Canon 843 § 1 which states:

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“Sacred ministers cannot deny the sacraments to those who seek them at appropriate times, are properly disposed, and are not prohibited by law from receiving them.”

---

Phrased negatively (because, given the fundamental right of the faithful to receive the sacraments established elsewhere in the Code, the burden is on ministers to demonstrate why they should refuse someone requesting a sacrament), this canon sets forth three factors that can require a minister to withhold sacramental services from a member of the faithful, namely, a petitioner’s: (1) bad timing; (2) inadequate disposition; and/or (3) canonical ineligibility.

Bp. McGrath’s letter, expressing only one criterion (“good faith”), is already confusing, therefore, for those who do not know that at least three factors, and not just one, impact sacramental administration.

Now, about those three requirements.
1. That requests for sacraments be made at “appropriate times” is not an issue here and so I pass over it.
2. That “proper disposition” for sacraments must be shown by a member of the faithful is contested by some and unappreciated by many in the Church these days. Thus, failing even to mention this requirement does not advance the cause of pastoral clarity. [In the church of Bergoglio, 'proper disposition' seems to be entirely at the 'discernment' of the person concerned, i.e., if he feels 'at peace with himself' about receiving a sacrament, as one of the 'discerning' AL advocates describes it.]

A closer look at the pastoral tradition on “proper disposition” for sacraments (or “worthiness” for them, per most older commentators) suggests that two questions are involved here, specifically, what we might call ‘external disposition’ (e.g., completion of catechesis, public comportment with the Faith, even dress and decorum) and ‘internal disposition’ (e.g., the state of one’s soul, level of belief, advertence to the act).

While, as will be seen shortly, some aspects of the third requirement (canonical eligibility, below) can impact one’s disposition for sacramental service, in brief, the failure to show a suitable external disposition (including, therefore, public comportment with the Faith) leaves a minister little choice but to withhold sacramental service; in contrast, one’s internal disposition can, in most cases of public administration, be presumed.

None of these important nuances would be apparent, of course, if one is told that “good faith” alone (even if that phrase is understood as something akin to proper internal disposition) suffices for sacramental administration.

3. Finally, that one must be canonically eligible for a sacramental service would, in earlier days perhaps, be so obvious as to not need restating. But these are not those days and, again, failing to mention this requirement does not advance the cause of pastoral clarity.

But that we might be clear, for example,
- Catholics who do not repent of extra-marital sexual acts (whether heterosexual or homosexual) cannot be absolved in Confession; - Catholics who undergo a “sex-change” operation cannot receive a new Baptism;
- two Catholics of the same-sex cannot marry each other (nor can a Catholic cleric officiate at such a ceremony); and
- Catholics who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin” as that phrase is understood by the tradition and those who take the time to study it, must not be given holy Communion or granted Christian funeral rites.

Bp. Paprocki’s decree, unlike Bp. McGrath’s letter, underscores the exclusion of certain persons (more precisely, of persons who have taken certain public actions) from sacramental services based on the express or implied canonical requirements established by the Legislator.

And Paprocki (a canonist, too, Gregorian Univ. 1989) goes on to indicate the canonically recognized conditions under which some or all sacramental services might be restored to such persons — information omitted from McGrath’s letter as being, one supposes, unnecessary if “good faith” is really all that is needed for sacramental service.

I do not know whether McGrath’s letter was really a ‘response’ to Paprocki’s decree, but I do know that the latter’s document is a much more complete and accurate presentation of Church discipline on sacramental administration than is the former’s.

Much.

I wish every story could be illustrated with an embeddable video!

Tim Capps had this 'breaking news' yesterday. It says everything that it is news when this anti-Catholic pope actually makes a Catholic video, that is, a video with Catholic content (especially since some of the earlier videos do not even mention Christ)... However, the Bear's 'happy surprise' about this July papal video - who really watches these things? - made him overlook one significant point, which I will remark upon...

BREAKING:
Pope releases Catholic news video
by Tim Capps
ST. CORBINIAN'S BEAR
July 5, 2017

Granted, it calls upon normal, real, "happy Catholics" to invite "un-Christian sad Catholics" back to the Church so they can be happy, but hey, it's better than we've see so far. If Protestants can have their "Prosperity Gospel," Bear will give Francis a "Happiness Gospel." It's a start, if a superficial one.

[Bergoglio forgets that charity begins at home. How about inviting himself - being pathetically anti-Catholic and habitually scowling despite all that jovial public persona - to return to the Church?

But for the record, sometimes people are sad, and sometimes people are even depressed. These are not abnormal or "un-Christian." The Bible is full of people who were not always overflowing with joy, and more than one prophet begged God to put him out of his misery. Being Catholic is not an exemption from normal human emotional states, or even abnormal ones, and there are many people who do not need to hear such nonsense.

But compared to this, it's like he's morphed into Pope St. Pius X overnight. [Except, of course, he is still nothing more than pathetic Jorge hubristically seeking to replace the one true Church of Christ with his own church as the better, far more merciful, more flexible (i.e., unrigid) church?]

The Bear did a commendable service on July 4 when he decided to reprint 'a post from over a year ago that has re-surfaced in the readership stats...especially since it meshes well with the previous post on Realism which has proved very popular'. A post I missed but which I will append after this.

The mad virtues of Pope Francis
by Tim Capps
ST. CORBINIAN'S BEAR
July 4, 2017

Pope Francis: Finally, a Smiling Face to the Horror
For decades we have had to sit and watch helplessly as the Church was consumed by preventable scandal and ceaseless innovation. The enemy was hard to get a fix on. He seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, and his name was Legion. But it was clear that somehow the schwerpunkt of the Church Militant had without question drifted far from the original plan.

In Pope Francis, we have seen, for the first time, the incarnation of the Church's errors and abuses. God has driven into plain view the secret corruption, the pride posing as humility, the indifferentism posing as tolerance, the disregard for the Deposit of the Faith, and the "rebranding" of Catholicism and the papacy that Fr. Rosica is so proud of.

In Pope Francis we finally have someone to speak out against, and thereby indict the whole sorry lot of meddlers, swindlers, and sappers: in short, all those who loathe the Church they are supposed to lead.

In other words, we are reacting not only to what Pope Francis personally says and does, but to Pope Francis the Avatar of a different spirit -- the "spirit" of Vatican II, the spirit of the "media council," and, fundamentally, the spirit of the Prince of this world.

One might say we are seeing the beginning of the end of a plot. To simplify, it began with throwing open to the world the windows of the Church. It is ending by tearing down the walls of the Church.

Boundary Issues
But the Church needs walls. It needs to be separate from the world. Distinct from other religions. The Church should be a fortress from which Catholics sally forth into the world, but not as part of the world, not as worldlings fighting trendy secular battles.

Every Catholic should be able to say with confidence, "here is the Church," and "there begins the world." There are Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, but here is Catholicism. Here is the truth, and there is something else, and we do no favors by pretending otherwise.

That sounds so harsh! Intolerant! Real! We would rather live in our fantasy world where if we're just nice enough, everyone will love us. (To be fair, this does seem to be working out for Pope Francis.) [So far, but how much longer?]

It would be easy to twist the the Bear's meaning. He is not advocating hiding behind the walls of the Church while the world goes to Hell. We should engage the world, but with evangelism, not indifferentism; charity, not socialism; truth, not accommodation of error.

We should all be Catholic as if it mattered. Especially the Pope. [But he ain't - and there's the problem!]

Of course, the church of Pope Francis [With apologies to Capps, who uses the term 'Franciscan Church' all throughout, and 'Church' with a capital C, but I choose to replace it with 'the church of Pope Francis', or better still, 'the church of Bergoglio' as I have been doing] has a horror of walls or division of any kind.

The supernatural must be tolerated for the sake of the masses, but for the initiates, purple, red and white, "There'll Be Pie In the Sky When You Die" remains the favorite hymn. A sarcastic number right out of the Little Red Songbook. The religion of his church, much like Freemasonry, is The Brotherhood of Man. It is remarkable, but true: you could strip it of every specifically Christian element, and the world would not be able to tell any difference.

This is no accident. Religious differences must be downplayed in pursuit of the 8th Sacrament of the church of Bergoglio: the Holy Photo-Op. And, of course, the aforementioned Brotherhood of Man.

The funny thing is, no one in this church would deny that they are tearing down walls and erasing boundaries. [On the contrary, they take pride in it!] They might deny celebrating error, but only because they don't recognize error. The Pope coulf travel to Sweden to commemorate "the blessings" of Martin Luther's reformation because we're all Lutherans now. In other words, what the Bear laments, the church of Bergoglio is most proud of. "Rebranding" indeed. A crass and ignorant word to cover a multitude of sins. [But Bergoglio is not simply 're-branding' - he means to demolish the Church as it had been from the time Jesus instituted it up to the evening of March 13, 2013, and replace it with his new and oh-so-improved early third millennium model!]]

The Mad Virtues of Pope Francis
We would do well to remember what Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy. It is almost as if he foresaw Pope Francis. In his day, it was Christianity in general that had been shattered. In ours it is particularly the Catholic Church, but the same warnings apply. No mad virtue is as mad as a Catholic virtue, as we have seen in history.

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage.

But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

Pope Francis is, as far as the Bear can see, more virtuous than the Bear. He is also more mad, if the Bear knows anything about madmen. No virtue may remain merely good with Francis. It must become a mania, a delusion, another shiny object to be incorporated into the narcissistic personality of Francis the Humble, Francis the Tolerant, Francis the Compassionate. Of course, what the Bear calls "madness" becomes "rebranding," or "transcending his own religion."

A Spontaneous Resistance
We who have retained a Catholic identity have universally resisted Jorge Bergoglio. We didn't ask for this. We didn't organize it. It just happened. We found ourselves being appalled by the same things, connecting the same dots, reaching the same conclusions. We speak with one voice from the same vision, without collaboration. The very people who would normally be the Pope's most fervent supporters have become his harshest critics.

Bergoglianism and Catholicism cannot both be right. (The Bear thinks the collection of pathologies motivating Pope Francis deserves the honor of its own name.) The Bear is not going to repeat the indictment here. It is contained in the archives of this ephemeris, and of many others. It is literally becoming difficult to keep up with Francis the Talking Pope. Perhaps the plan is to beat us through attrition, the way he buried the message of Amoris Laetitia in 247 pages that defy all but the most clever and mind-numbing analysis.

If Pope Francis is indeed all we fear he is, there's not much we can do. By and large, people travel with the herd, and try to think the thoughts the world tells them are right. That worked great when a confident Church put the stamp of the Christ on the culture. It was not so long ago that the joke ran: "Hollywood -- a place where Jews make movies selling Catholic theology to Protestants." Not anymore.

The Most Popular Man in the World
Why not just back a winner? The latest poll [this was in mid-2016) shows Pope Francis with a popularity rating of 54%, 85% among Catholics, and -- tellingly -- over 50% among agnostics and atheists.

"Francis is a leader who transcends his own religion," said Jean Marc Leger, president of WIN/Gallup International. He's the most popular public figure in the world, and has replaced the Dalai Lama as Generic Spiritual Leader. Only Turkey, Tunisia and Algeria don't like him.

Perhaps, any day now, Pope Francis is going to cash in all that full-spectrum popularity to tell the world about Jesus. More likely not. After all, what does "transcend his own religion" mean? What does "rebranding Catholicism and the papacy" mean? Are these words not chilling to any normal Catholic? Do not the pages of old prophecies begin to rustle out of the dust? Whether you want to go there or not, it makes no difference. Prophecies warn about dangers to come. We didn't listen, and now Nebuchadnezzar is in the sanctuary.

From comments out of Catholic officialdom, we know we are heard at the highest levels. Our message is getting through. We speak out, and others take comfort. We try to preserve the truth and condemn error not because we are holy, but because nobody else will do it. Looking over the last three years, we have done a surprisingly good job, in the Bear's opinion. That's how we operate. Independent francs-tireurs [literally, 'free shooters', a good French term for guerrilla fighters]. Partisans. The resistance.

This is not to glamorize anyone. Partisans don't always have pure motives, and sometimes go beyond what is reasonably necessary. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we're amateurs. Perhaps our sins will be applied to those who have made the resistance necessary in the first place. We take real risks. One blogger got himself sued by a priest -- papal PR flack Fr. Rosica. But more seriously, we also take spiritual risks.

Ephemerists need your prayers. For prudence, temperance, fortitude, and charity.

Francs-Tireurs
Pope Francis uses the entire spectrum of media to spread his errors. If there's a single problem with the man, it's that he lacks a supernatural dimension. Perhaps he suffers from a cultural resentment and envy coming from his background. He cannot think in proper categories.

For example, he recently made the bizarre comment that he sees the evangelization of Europe as "colonialism," Worse, from the same interview, he cannot differentiate between Jesus sending forth his disciples to the nations and the blood conquests of ISIS. Mad virtues indeed.

Can madness from a pope really go unanswered? There is hardly a peep from the bishops. [Other than the DUBIA, which only a relative handful in the entire 5,000+ hierarchy of the Catholic Church have dared to support] Surely all of them are not deaf or in agreement. It would take a lot of courage for a bishop to criticize a sitting pope. The Bear may not be qualified, but at least he's willing to put on his hat, take up his shovel, and start trying to put out some of the brush fires Pope Francis sets.

There is a place for dry and sober analysis. But the internet has its own idiom. The legitimate weapons we place at the service of the Church include agitprop, and sometimes a dash of snark and a dollop of satire, so people will enjoy reading what the Bear writes. (Besides, Bears have a hard time being serious for longer than ten minutes.)

Is it sinful to criticize the Pope? That is not a question the Bear is going to answer for anyone else. It is an important one to him, because, after all, he still has to go to confession like everyone else. We should not perform an evil act so that we may obtain a good result. But the laity has a legitimate say in the Church. The Bear is performing a lawful act by informing, educating, and commenting about this man who has effortlessly twisted the Church according to his own personal hobbyhorses.

In a nutshell, together, we are staying with the "old brand" of Catholicism, before Pope Francis "rebranded" Catholicism and the papacy, and "transcended his own religion." So what if most people say they like Pope Francis? Since when was the truth found in poll numbers?

The Bear has noticed that most of the people who like Pope Francis seem to be unfamiliar with his actions, unable to articulate what he has done to earn their approval, or progressive Church dissidents.

If the Pope and his public business are portrayed in an unflattering light, that is an unavoidable consequence, even as it is not the real objective. Few are criticizing the Pope for the sake of criticizing the Pope. Even the Bear, who may take an unholy glee in what he does isn't playing.

The Sin of Silence
But there is also the sin of "adulation." Nobody ever talks about it, so here it is, right from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

---

Every word or attitude is forbidden which by flattery, adulation, or complaisance encourages and confirms another in malicious acts and perverse conduct. Adulation is a grave fault if it makes one an accomplice in another's vices or grave sins. Neither the desire to be of service nor friendship justifies duplicitous speech. Adulation is a venial sin when it only seeks to be agreeable, to avoid evil, to meet a need, or to obtain legitimate advantages. (CCC 2480)

---

[[Betcha all the sycophants elbowing each other out to have a privileged seat at the papal dining table in Casa Santa Marta never heard of this at all!]

Funny, the Bear has never heard Fr. Rosica say, "Patheos bloggers are a bunch of sycophantic losers with a pathological need for approval and an aversion to sound doctrine. We must pray for these disturbed, broken and angry people."

Of course, Fr. Rosica's job might be to commit the sin of adulation continuously, but the Bear does not know the man's heart, or how much culpability might be reduced by mental issues, or secret struggles. One must wonder about someone who brags about "rebranding" Catholicism, though.

Rugiemus Quasi Ursi Omnes
(Let us all growl like bears)
When they gave us a Protestantized Mass, we were silent. When they smashed the altar rails, we were silent. When the nuns started dressing in mufti, we were silent. When the bishops cared more about gun control than souls, we were silent. When the mania for interfaith and ecumenism started, we were silent. And when we were told to sing hymns by Martin Luther, we sang. [Meant as a general indictment for the great mass of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, that sounds just about right. Except the one about singing hymns to Luther! - that's something that applies only to the CINOs of the de-Christianized West.]

One thing is for certain. We will never be silent again. We are guardians of something. The Bear does not want to label it, because it does not belong to this faction or that. But he thinks his readers know what he's talking about. We encourage one another -- and it is just as much readers encouraging ephemerists as the other way around. Pope Francis and his minions are learning that whatever they do in public will be challenged by some very smart and talented people. (And also, the Bear.) It obviously bothers them.

And the Bear says ultramontanism is solemn nonsense.

Now, a secular excursion. Or not really, in the context of what was said,and where it was said. Although many people might well bridle at who said it. I find Donald Trump's narcissism and the Twitter loquacity that he uses - counterproductively - to feed that narcissism (I don't follow anyone on Twitter at all, but every tweet he makes becomes instant news, so one cannot be unaware of it) as objectionable and unbearable as I do Bergoglio's narcissism and loquacity in every imaginable way. But at least, I do support Trump's objectives and vision for the United States and the world, where I totally disagree with the Bergoglian agenda, secular and ecclesial.

Oakes Spalding shares the video, the full transcript of the President's speech and his commentary on his blogsite today.

President Trump addresses
a million cheering Poles
'Together, let us all fight like the Poles -
for family, for freedom, for country, and for God'
by Oakes Spalding
MAHOUND'S PARADISE
July 6, 2017

(I'm using the full video of the speech from RT news, which includes the moving opening wreath ceremony at the Monument to the Warsaw Uprising, featuring the American and Polish presidents and their wives, and soldiers from Poland, the United States, Romania and Great Britain.

We can see sharpshooters on the roofs of surrounding buildings, country music jarringly comes in from somewhere, and at less solemn moments, various chants erupt from the crowd, including "USA! USA!" Melania Trump walks to the podium to give a short introduction at 13:00, and President Trump begins at approximately 15:15.)

The speech given by President Trump to over a million Poles in Krasiński Square, Warsaw, bears comparison to the famous speeches of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in Berlin. It was Trump's greatest speech of his presidency, and perhaps the best speech by an American president on foreign soil since Reagan.

There were many references to freedom. But there were even more references to God.

It's utterly stunning to me how in the space of only a year, this braggadocious businessman (as Michael Matt once accurately described him) and often rude and coarse candidate has transformed himself into the eloquent leader of what's left of the forces of Christian civilization.

I know what you're thinking. But, please, just watch or read the speech.

Trump was continually interrupted by the crowd of perhaps a million Poles, chanting "USA! USA!" and "Donald Trump!" although, in truth, as the video makes clear, the latter chant was usually louder.

CNN ran a companion article to the event, titled, "Conservative Polish politicians bus people in for Trump speech."

Trump's reference to the strengths of the Western community of nations including the countries of Western Europe - "We celebrate our ancient heroes ... cherish inspiring works that honor God ... We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression" - perhaps should be seen as a testimony to what we once were or could be again, not a strictly accurate statement of present reality. Unless smirks in Hollywood and Jihad marches through central London count.

But if there is to be a turnaround, this kind of leadership is what is required. And what better place to start it than in the same city where another talk sparked a turnaround almost forty years ago. It was a homily given by John Paul II upon his return to Poland, also to a crowd estimated at one million. And as the President noted today, that talk, too, was interrupted - "We want God!" the people cried.

Perhaps they were bused in by conservative politicians.

The full transcript may be read here:
http://mahoundsparadise.blogspot.com/2017/07/speech-of-his-presidency-together-let.html

Here is George Weigel's testimonial to a friend and fellow Catholic fighter. He has rewritten it from an earlier version in the National Review in which he sought to lay the lion's share of the blame for Cardinal Pell's current woes with the Australian justice system and the Australian media at the foot of unnamed Vatican prelates he assumes to actively resent the financial housecleaning efforts of Pell. A hypothesis that seems to me as unrealistic as it is implausible for obvious commonsense reasons that I pointed out in a previous post...

Fifty years of friendship
with Cardinal Pell
Had Pell not become archbishop of Melbourne, and later cardinal-archbishop of Sydney,
Australian Catholicism today would probably resemble the Irish Church, from which
the Church Down Under largely descends: scandal-ridden, demoralized, intellectually shoddy,
and somewhere out on the far periphery of the New Evangelization.
by George Weigel
CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT
July 5, 2017

Mons. Thomas A. Whelan, my pastor when I was growing up in Baltimore, was a striking character: Princeton friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald; former Wall Street broker; high-ranking Army chaplain in World War II; world traveler; founding rector of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.

The latter two roles led to some creative thinking about arranging “coverage” at the cathedral during the summer, when he could be found abroad: one by one and year by year, Msgr. Whelan brought to Baltimore newly-ordained Australian priests who had studied in Rome, wanted to visit the U.S., and could use some money.

And so, precisely fifty years ago this month, a tall, gangly Aussie named George Pell entered my life. By the end of August 1967 he had become a fast friend of my family. Little did he nor I know that the next half-century would lead us into the same foxholes in various ecclesiastical battles; or to a shared friendship with a Polish priest, pope, and saint; or into synods, consistories, papal elections, and other adventures.

We’re both a little slower and a little heavier than we were in the summer of ’67, when, if memory serves, I helped introduce the future cardinal to Frisbee at the beach. But the friendship is even closer and it is one of the great blessings of my life.

That summer, Father Pell was heading for doctoral studies in history at Oxford after ordination in Rome from the Pontifical Urban University (horsemeat was a staple on the menu in his day). His intellectual gifts might have marked him out for a scholarly career. But Providence (and John Paul II) had other plans, and rather than teaching history full-time, George Pell made history, becoming the defining figure of 21st-century Catholicism in Australia.

Had Pell not become archbishop of Melbourne, and later cardinal-archbishop of Sydney, it’s a reasonable bet that Australian Catholicism today would resemble the Irish Church from which the Church Down Under largely descends: scandal-ridden, demoralized, intellectually shoddy, and somewhere out on the far periphery of the New Evangelization. Thanks to Pell’s courage in facing-down the Australian forces of Catholic Lite, the Church in Oz today has a fighting chance.

Cardinal Pell’s accomplishment has not been cost-free. Australia is a contact-sport country, and that national tendency to hit hard extends to both the Aussie media and to intra-ecclesiastical life. George Pell’s enemies, and their media lapdogs, have not caviled to lie about him for decades.

Perhaps the most absurd charge was that this man, whose sartorial style rings up “Salvation Army Thrift Shop,” kept a house full of Church finery to satisfy his vanity. As it happens (and as I wrote at the time), I had just stayed in the cardinal’s house when this nonsense appeared; I hadn’t seen a vestment anywhere, but had noted thousands of books and the current issues of every major opinion journal in the English-speaking world.

More recently, the calumnies have become much darker, as the man who designed and implemented the Australian Church’s first vigorous response to the sexual abuse of the young has been charged with being an abuser.

[Weigel appears to forget that these accusations against Pell date back to four decades and were always in circulation while he was Archbishop of Sydney; that in fact, one accusation in 2002, by someone who already was a career criminal at the time he made the charges, was dismissed by a judge after an inquiry; and that the accusations were recycled in early 2010 at the time Benedict XVI was considering Pell to be Prefect of Bishops. The calumnies against Pell have not just recently 'darkened' - they were always very dark, indeed, but now, the Australian police want to bring him to court. Unless, of course, another judicial inquiry - as fair, one hopes, as that which cleared him in 2002 - can prove them wrong.]

His friends are confident that the charges, like other fanciful allegations the cardinal has consistently denied and of which he has been exonerated, will be shown to be gross falsehoods – not least because we believe Pell is telling the truth when he flatly and forcefully denies the current accusations.

There is a new twist to this dirty business, however. Since 2014, Cardinal Pell has been responsible for draining the Vatican financial swamp of corruptions that had become epidemic, ingrained, and virtually institutionalized.

Given the stakes and the sleaziness involved, it would not be surprising to learn that some who would be most adversely effected by Pell’s success in Vatican financial reform may have been generating false accusations now in play in the Australian judicial system. [Except that these accusations were made before Pell came to the Vatican in 2013.] Australia, it seems, is not the only place where hardball is played, and in very unsavory forms.

Cardinal George Pell is a big man in every sense of the word and his stamina under assault is entirely admirable. Its deepest root, however, is not his native combativeness but Pell’s faith. Its solidity, and the courage to which that rock-solid faith gives rise, may be what aggravates his foes the most.

It’s also what inspires his legion of friends, among whom I am honored to number myself – for fifty years and counting.

I've been missing a great resource by not consulting the site of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia more often, in which Archbishop Charles Chaput, who deserves to be a cardinal in every way more than all of his colleagues combined who have been made cardinal by Pope Francis, writes a weekly column. From everything I had read about him and by him, I had thought since the Benedict years that he has all the qualities and potential to become the first pope from the USA, although some early declarations by him during this pontificate turned me off. But he has since 'reverted' and is apparently back off the Bergoglian track...

Romans 1:21-27 speaks to
the ungodly sexual permissiveness today
[A reply to James Martin's crusading LGBT advocacy]
By Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
catholicphilly.com
July 6, 2017

Christians are always, in a sense, outsiders. We have the joy and privilege to be a leaven for good in society. That’s an exhilarating vocation. It means working for as much justice and virtue in human affairs as we can. We have a special obligation to serve the weak and the poor, and to treat even those who hate us with love.

But while we’re in the world and for the world, we’re never finally of the world. And we need to understand what that means.

Writing in the mid-first century to “all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints” — and despite the dangers and frustrations he himself faced — St. Paul said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed …” (Rom 1:7, 16-17).

Paul’s Letter to the Romans became a key text of the New Testament. The Church has always revered it as part of the inspired Word of God and incorporated it into her thought and practice. The books of Scripture, even when they’re morally demanding, are not shackles. They’re part of God’s story of love for humanity. They’re guide rails that lead us to real dignity and salvation.

That’s a good thing. Much of human history – far too much — is a record of our species’ capacity for self-harm. The Word of God is an expression of his mercy. It helps us to become the people of integrity God created us to be. As Paul reminds us, we’re “called to be saints.”

Sometimes Scripture’s lessons toward that end can be hard. But God cannot lie. His Word always speaks the truth. And the truth, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel, makes us free. This is why Christians must never be ashamed of God’s Word – even when it’s inconvenient.

Which brings us to the heart of my comments this week.

In Romans 1:21-27, speaking of the men and women of his time “who by their wickedness suppress the truth,” Paul wrote:

---

“… for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools….

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

“For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”

---

[Not surprisingly, these unstintingly direct Pauline observations are getting cited a lot these days in answer to the unstopped and seemingly accelerating 'gay creep' in the church of Bergoglio.]

If reading that passage makes us uneasy, it should. Many of Paul’s Roman listeners had the same response. Jesus didn’t come to affirm us in our sins and destructive behaviors – whatever they might be — but to redeem us. Paul’s message was as resented in some quarters then as it is now. In an age of sexual confusion and disorder, calls to chastity are not just unwelcome. They’re despised. But that doesn’t diminish the truth of the words Paul wrote, or their urgency for our own time.

What we do with our bodies matters. Sex is linked intimately to human identity and purpose. If our lives have no higher meaning than what we invent for ourselves, then sex is just another kind of modeling clay. We can shape it any way we please. But if our lives do have a higher purpose – and as Christians, we find that purpose in the Word of God — then so does our sexuality.

Acting in ways that violate that purpose becomes a form of self-abuse; and not just self-abuse, but a source of confusion and suffering for the wider culture. The fact that an individual’s body might incline him or her to one sort of damaging sexual behavior, or to another very different sort, doesn’t change this.

This can be a difficult teaching. It’s easy to see why so many people try to finesse or soften or ignore Paul’s words. In a culture of conflict, accommodation is always the least painful path. But it leads nowhere. It inspires no one. “Fitting in” to a society of deeply dysfunctional sexuality results in the ruin that we see in so many other dying Christian communities.

In his recent book “Building a Bridge” (HarperOne), Father James Martin, S.J., calls the Church to a spirit of respect, compassion and sensitivity in dealing with persons with same-sex attraction. This is good advice. It makes obvious sense. He asks the same spirit from persons in the LGBT community when dealing with the Church. Father Martin is a man whose work I often admire. “Building a Bridge,” though brief, is written with skill and good will.

But what the text regrettably lacks is an engagement with the substance of what divides faithful Christians from those who see no sin in active same-sex relationships. The Church is not simply about unity – as valuable as that is – but about unity in God’s love rooted in truth. ['In truth' - is precisely what we are not getting from the 'teaching' and preaching of the reigning pope! As I have often had occasion to remark, truth - unless it is his own notion of what is 'truth' - has never seemed to be any concern for Jorge Bergoglio, or his fellow Jesuits to whom relativism has become second nature. Otherwise we would never have been afflicted with Amoris laetitia Chapter 8.]

If the Letter to the Romans is true, then persons in unchaste relationships (whether homosexual or heterosexual) need conversion, not merely affirmation. If the Letter to the Romans is false, then Christian teaching is not only wrong but a wicked lie. Dealing with this frankly is the only way an honest discussion can be had.

And that honesty is what makes another recent book – “Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay” by Daniel Mattson (Ignatius) – so extraordinarily moving and powerful. As Cardinal Robert Sarah writes in the Foreword, Mattson’s candor about his own homosexuality, his struggles and failures, and his gradual transformation in Jesus Christ “bears witness to the mercy and goodness of God, to the efficacy of his grace, and to the veracity of the teachings of his Church.”

In the words of Daniel Mattson himself:

---

“We cannot remain reluctant to speak about the beauty of the Church’s teaching on sexuality and sexual identity for fear that it will appear ‘unloving,’ ‘irrational,’ or ‘unreal.’

We need to love the world enough to speak about the Christian vision of sexual reality, confident that God’s creation of man as male and female is truly part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ we are called to proclaim to a lost and confused world.

“We need to be a light for the world and speak passionately about the richness of the Church’s understanding of human sexuality. We can’t place the Good News of the Church’s teaching on human sexuality under a bushel any longer, for the world desperately needs the truth we have (p. 123).”

---

Spoken from experience. Spoken from the heart. No one could name the truth more clearly.

Very apropos to Mons. Chaput's thoughts above:

Gay orgy scandal at the Vatican
and what it says of this Pontificate
Bergoglio embraces far-left ideology and the LGBT agenda
by Jerome Corsi
Infowars.com
JULY 5, 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Evidence emerging from the Vatican in recent days strongly suggests Pope Francis is transforming the Catholic Church into a socialist political organization that embraces the LGBT agenda, in complete rejection of the traditional pro-family religious orientation of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.

Last week, Pope Francis fired the Vatican’s top theologian, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who had a reputation as a staunch defender of the traditional family.

Pope Francis replaced Cardinal Mueller with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s second-in-command, the more liberal, Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer. [It remains to be seen what stuff Ladaria is really made of, but as someone rightly remarked, the CDF shuffle is not about ideology. No matter who heads the CDF, this pope considers it a useless accessory which he will continue to blithely ignore unless he can use it for his purposes. Perhaps more alarming than Ladaria's supposed ideology is that he is a Jesuit, and as such, predisposed to be quietly servile to the wishes of his fellow Jesuit who also happens to be his pope.]

Then, on Thursday, July 5, the Daily Mail in London reported Vatican police had broken up a gay orgy occurring in a Vatican-owned apartment belonging to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Ironically, this was also the Vatican department Pope Francis had assigned to investigate the Catholic Church’s pedophile sex scandal involving priests in the United States as well as various other countries around the world. [Nothing ironic about it at all, but irrelevant. A landlord cannot necessarily guarantee the bona fides of a tenant who nonetheless pays his rent and was vouched for by the cardinal president of a pontifical council.]

The apartment was apparently the residence of the male secretary to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, one of Pope Francis’s key advisors, and the president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, another key part of the Roman Curia responsible for administering the activities of the Catholic Church worldwide.

Neither development surprised reporter George Neumayr, whose recent book, The Political Pope: How Pope Francis is Delighting the Liberal Left and Abandoning Conservatives, predicted Pope Francis will accelerate the transformation of the Catholic Church into a leftist political organization after former Pope Benedict XVI dies.

“Pope Francis inherited Cardinal Muller from his predecessor and was itching to sack him,” Neumayr explained to Infowars.com in an email.
“Pope Francis was annoyed by Muller’s opposition to the relativism of this pontificate, particularly Muller’s resistance to the pope’s plan to relax the Church’s teaching on adultery,” Neumayr continued.

“Muller also opposed the pope’s policy of distributing Communion to divorced-and-remarried Catholics,” Neumayr added.

Neumayr interpreted the move as Pope Francis distancing himself from the more conservative, traditional papacy of Pope Benedict XVI.

“By dropping Muller, Pope Francis is trying to free himself for once and all from the conservative restraints of Pope Benedict XVI, whose opposition to the ‘dictatorship of relativism’ Pope Francis always disliked,” Neumayr explained.

“Appropriately, Pope Francis has replaced Muller with a fellow Jesuit, the Spanish archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, who appears willing to serve as a rubber stamp for the pope’s liberalism,” Neumayr concluded.

Neumayr also commented on the developing Vatican gay sex orgy scandal. "This is proof the gay mafia has reached the highest echelons of the Catholic Church,” Neumayr told Infowars.com in an exclusive telephone interview. “Instead of disbanding the gay mafia, Pope Francis evidently has allowed the gay mafia to burrow deeper into the Vatican.”

Neumayr referenced the decision Pope Francis made in July 2013 to appoint Monsignor Battista Ricca, a veteran Vatican diplomat, to serve as his representative, or “prelate” at the Vatican Bank despite allegations of various gay sexual scandals that plagued Ricca since 1999, when he was sent by the Vatican to Montevideo, Uruguay.

“The ecclesiastical head of the Vatican Bank is still Monsignor Ricca,” Neumayr commented, “and he was entangled in a similar gay sexual scandal before his elevation to his current position.” [Worse, actually, because in his last diplomatic posting, once he became charge d'affaires between nuncios, he gave his live-in Swiss lover a salaried position in the Nunciature. Not to mention at least two documented encounters with the police of Montevideo, Uruguay. See Sandro Magister's July 18, 2013, dossier on Ricca days after the pope named him his prelate (and therefore, also, his eyes and ears) at the IOR: chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350561bdc4.htm...

Neumayr noted that Pope Francis was aware of the sexual scandal allegations made against Ricca, but Pope Francis decided to disregard the charges when he decided to go ahead and make Ricca 'spiritual director' of the Vatican Bank anyway.

“No one should be surprised by these episodes — either the firing of Cardinal Mueller or the emerging gay orgy sex scandal,” Neumayr suggested. “Both are consistent with the direction in which Pope Francis is taking the Catholic Church,” he concluded. [Except I would phrase that last sentence differently - and forgive my singleminded insistence on this: "Both are consistent with the Bergoglianism that this pope is seeking to impose on the Church" or, "...with the church of Bergoglio he seems determined to establish in place of the one true Church of Christ".]

Another Vatican ‘reform’ cast in doubt
By Phil Lawler
CATHOLICCULTURE.ORG
July 5, 2017

The timing isn’t perfect, unfortunately, for the Vatican’s offer of free treatment for Charlie Gard at Bambino Gesu Hospital — just after an AP investigative report uncovered serious problems with medical care at the Vatican-run institution. But there is solace in the news that the Vatican now recognizes that the hospital needed administrative reforms.

The first response to the AP story — an insistence that the complaints uncovered in a 2014 investigation were entirely unjustified, coupled with a threat to sue AP for publicizing them — was not terribly reassuring. Haven’t we seen this pattern from Church leaders in the past, in response to other sorts of complaints?
- Your complaints are entirely false. It never happened.
- If you make those charges public, we’ll sue.
- Anyway we’ve taken steps to make sure it never happens again.
[At least, so far the Vatican hasn't done the Obama shirk - 'George Bush did it' - about whatever was wrong in the US government. But if this controversy continues, I can already see whose head will be the first pinata - Cardinal Bertone who made Bambino Gesu one of his pet projects as Secretary of State.]

There’s another irony in the news that when the first Vatican investigation in 2014 reported grave problems with medical care, a follow-up investigation led by Sister Carol Keehan [nuns-on-the-bus sparkplug] determined that actually everything was fine and Bambino Gesu was an exemplary institution. [Maybe Keehan did not realize Bertone had anything to do with Bambino Gesu, but if she had known...?]


This was not the first time that Sister Keehan gave rave reviews to a medical program that other analysts had deemed disastrous. As you may recall, she was the leading Catholic cheerleader for Obamacare.

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

********************************************************************************************************************************************

I wish this statement had come right after the European Court of Human Rights handed down its controversial verdict last week. It still is much better, however, than the terse generic statements that have come out of the Vatican so far - because Metropolitan Hilarion does not hesitate to express what Catholics would have expected the pope to say and which he has not.

For that matter, I am not aware that any other important religious leader has said anything about the case in public. Certainly not the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople under Patriarch Bartholomew which is supposed to represent all the Orthodox Churches in general. In fact, come to think of it, Bartholomew has only spoken out about ethical issues in the news when it has to do with the environment (but I think he has also expressed support for Bergoglio's open immigration advocacy). Has he too become too secularized?

Russian Orthodox Church protests the Strasbourg decision
to withdraw life support from baby Charlie Gard
INTERFAX

Moscow, July 3, 2017 - The Russian Orthodox Church protests the decision taken by the European courts to withdraw the life support systems from a 10-months old British boy Charlie Guard, who suffer from a rare genetic disease.

“Monstrous decision of the European Human Rights court demonstrates the deepest crisis of the notion of human rights protection. Today the right to life gives way to the right to death,” head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate Metropolitan Hilarion said in his statement.

According to the hierarch, the situation is especially dramatic as the parents cannot take a decision independently. The metropolitan wonders “why in the 21st century in a free democratic state a family is locked in one clinic because of the court decision and cannot turn to another clinic.”

The Russian church official calls this situation “a violation against parents’ conscience, mockery OC them, sadism painted in humanistic tones.”

He stressed that in Charlie’s case there were doctors in the USA who were ready to treat him and finances for it. Despite it, the court took the decision that IT IS “in best interests” of the child to withdraw him from life support systems, provide palliative care to him and 'let him die with dignity'. [And seeking experimental treatment in the hope that it may work subjects him to indignity? Surely his parents recognize the indignity of not being able to decide about their own child and would be the first to refuse any treatment that would constitute indignity to the baby in any way!]

Metropolitan Hilarion is perplexed why it is always proclaimed that a human life is an absolute value in the West, but murder of seriously ill people including children become “legalized reality.”

He hopes that Charlie’s parents will have a chance to give their child a treatment, which they consider necessary. “I pray that they could go through the terrible trials they have to face. I hope that merciful God will not deprive little Charlie of His love and turn his sufferings to the promise of eternal life,” the Russian church official said in his statement.

George Neumayr's title for this article is "The Liberal Jesuit Captivity of the Papacy", which is at best awkward phrasing, and at worst, seems to have things the other way around. It could sound as if liberal Jesuits hold the pope captive, though it is obvious he means it in the sense that a liberal Jesuit has captured the papacy - even if Jesuits are not supposed to accept any hierarchical position. (But the late Cardinal Martini happily broke that rule and set the precedent for someone he did not think at the 2005 Conclave was quite up to par for the papacy,but who has turned out to be far more audacious and with an ultra-liberal agenda than the farthest Martini allowed himself to go). Neumayr underscores that this ultra-liberal anti-Catholic Jesuit turned pope has brought with him a raft of like-minded Jesuits into the highest circle of power in the Church... I think Neumayr's subtitle is a more appropriate and clearer title, so I am using it as such...

Pope Francis teams up with fellow
liberal Jesuits to wreck the Church
by George Neumayr
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR
July 5, 2017

Jorge Bergoglio is the first Jesuit to become pope and may end up the last Jesuit to be pope, in light of the havoc that he is wreaking upon the Church. But who knows? After all, he is stacking the college of cardinals with liberal appointees in the hope that they will elect a modernist clone in the next conclave.

In any case, it was exceedingly reckless that the cardinals chose a Jesuit to lead the Church at the very moment that that religious order was at its most corrupt and theologically flaky. This fact alone will give Gibbonian historians in the future fodder for works on the decline and fall of the modern Catholic Church.

Bergoglio had entered the Jesuit order around the time of the revolutionary ferment of the “spirit” of Vatican II precisely because he wanted to push liberal revolution in the Church.

A left-wing political activist who had been mentored by a Paraguayan Communist, Bergoglio naturally gravitated to the Jesuits as they abandoned orthodoxy for “social justice” (which just meant the promotion of socialism) and trendy psychobabble. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the signature phrases of this pontificate — “Who am I to judge?” and “Inequality is the root of all evil” — come from a Latin American Jesuit immersed in the liberalism of the 1960s.

Pope Francis has described himself as “undisciplined,” implying that that made him an odd fit for an order founded by the militaristic St. Ignatius of Loyola. But in the 1960s it was that lack of discipline that made him a perfect fit.

The Jesuits were busy turning their back on St. Ignatius and all of his “reactionary hang-ups.” Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises had been replaced by the works of Sigmund Freud. Vatican II-era Jesuits were infamous for inviting destructive psychologists like Carl Rogers to hold seminars for them on “non-directive therapy”(repentant Carl Rogers assistant William Coulson once said to me that the purpose of those sessions was to make the priests “feel good about being bad”).

Pedro Arrupe, the disastrously permissive leader of the Jesuits as it plunged into socialism and modern morality in the 1960s and 1970s, saw Bergoglio as a rising liberal star within the order and elevated him to the top Jesuit position in Argentina at the mere age of 36. Arrupe used Bergoglio as one of his liberal enforcers against restless conservative Jesuits.

At a worldwide gathering of Jesuits in the early 1970s, at which Arrupe blessed the liberal trajectory of the order, he asked Bergoglio to run off some Spanish Jesuits who had petitioned the Vatican for relief from Arrupe’s modernist dictates. Bergoglio complied.

If the future casts its shadow backwards, as Malcolm Muggeridge used to say, one catches a glimpse of it in these biographical details. Bergoglio was in on the ground floor of the revolution in the Church and bided his time until he reached the papacy. Safely ensconced within it, he then began throwing plums to his fellow liberal Jesuit revolutionaries.

“I was never a right-winger,” he said in an interview with Jesuit editors — the same interview in which he declared the Church too “obsessed” with abortion and gay marriage.

The Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, one of Pope Francis’s closest advisers, led that interview. Spadaro is openly heterodox, saying perhaps most famously that under the caring-and-sharing pontificate of Francis two plus two no longer equals four. In other words, the new orthodoxy is heterodoxy.

Not a month passes without some dismal announcement about this or that heretical Jesuit receiving a promotion under Pope Francis. I have already written about the Venezuelan communist and relativist he installed as the head of the Jesuit order.

In April, Pope Francis turned the Jesuit James Martin — who has just published a book trashing the Church’s teaching on homosexual behavior — into a “consultor to the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications.” Martin brings some weighty credentials to the position; he once served as chaplain to the “Colbert Report.”

Last week Pope Francis sacked the head of the Church’s doctrinal office — Cardinal Gerhard Muller, who had annoyed Francis by not supporting Communion for adulterers — and replaced Muller with a Spanish Jesuit, the pliable Archbishop Luis Ladaria. [Everyone is assuming that - because if Bergoglio did not think he was, he would never have named him to the position. In the context of Bergoglio's undisguised contempt for the CDF and his apparent belief (and that of his protege Mons. Fernandez) that a pope can very well do without a CDF, then Ladaria seems destined to be nothing but the rubber stamp for an accessory agency that Bergoglio will keep until he decides he can formally do without it!]

An excited New York Times turned to the aforementioned James Martin for insight into the meaning of it all. “This gives the pope the chance to finally place his own man in a very important spot,” said Martin. “For many admirers of Benedict, Cardinal Müller was the last link to Benedict’s way of doing things.” [Oh, so Martin is still feigning that the CDF is in any way important to Bergoglio! Such naivete!]

Translation: the modernist Jesuit captivity of the papacy continues apace.

Perhaps not at all unexpected... but now more than ever,
let us storm heaven with prayers against this pope's horrific intentions ...

Does this pope plan to
abolish'Summorum Pontificum'?
But 'not until after Benedict XVI dies'
GLORIA.TV
July 7, 2017

The modernist lay liturgist Andrea Grillo who is close to Pope Francis, told the French newspaper La Croix that Francis is considering abolishing Benedict XVI's Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum that allows all priests to celebrate the Roman Rite.

[This Grillo person has become more odious and obnoxious even than James Martin, Austin Ivereigh or Antonio Spadaro! What exactly is meant by 'abolishing' Summorum Pontificum'? It is a papal legislation motu proprio, which, as legislation, can technically be amended, abrogated or superseded. With all his powers, Bergoglio cannot legitimately decree that the usus antiquior of the Roman rite is henceforth 'abolished', never ever again to be used, but he can abrogate the key facultative provision of SP, which is to allow every priest to say the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, which means he will have to prohibit celebration of the EF at all except, if Grillo is right, only by the FSSPX when and if they do get a Personal Prelature. Any way I look at it, I can only describe this all as diabolical. Much has been written by Catholic commentators eminently qualified to say so about how the devil truly abominates the traditional Mass for the obvious reasons. Ergo, by extension...]

According to Grillo, once the Vatican erects the Society of Saint Pius X as a Personal Prelature, the Roman Rite will be preserved only within this structure. "But [Francis] will not do this as long as Benedict XVI is alive". [What difference will it make? If he already makes known his intention now, that's just as horrible a slap in the face of his predecessor! At times like this, I am sorely tempted to say EVIL is now spelled BERGOGLIO!]

Grillo also knows, that Francis plans to start a cycle on the liturgy during his Wednesday Audiences, in order to promote his liturgical views. [OMG! Betcha, however, he will be as calculatedly ambiguous as in AL so as not to be caught in any 'heretical' trap. But why does he have to worry about heresy since by many of his actions and words, he is already a self-declared apostate?]

The real importance of 'Summorum Pontificum'
by Fr. John Hunwicke
FR. HUNWICKE'S MUTUAL ENRICHMENT
July 7, 2017

A glorious day: the tenth anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, when Pope Benedict XVI made clear that, juridically, the Missal of St Pius V was never lawfully abolished.

I do not dissent from that judgement ... far from it. But I think that, as well as giving the Latin Church that canonical clarification, Pope Benedict gave the Church Universal an even more important theological teaching. I tried to explain this in 2011, in a piece examining and rejecting the views of a canonist called Chad Gendinning. He, like some other canonists, had written critically about the assertion, in Summorum pontificum, that the Vetus Ordo had never been lawfully abolished.

My assertion is that Pope Benedict was arguing, as I would argue, that a pope ... any pope ... cannot abolish the classical Roman Rite. An attempt to do so, in other words, would be ultra vires['beyond the powers' of any authority] just as it is beyond the competence of any pope to change the Canon of Scripture.

Here, slightly adjusted, is what I wrote.

---

RATZINGER AND LITURGICAL LAW (2011)

Chad Glendinning quotes A S Sanchez-Gil as feeling that the Roman Missal, along with other liturgical books, cannot be reduced to a collection of liturgical laws. This is along the right lines, but does not, I feel, go nearly far enough.

The great Anglican liturgist Prebendary Michael Moreton saw the Canon Romanus - if I understood him aright in the six years during which we conversed - as being in a position not unlike that of the Canon of Scripture; a given in the Tradition which it is not for us to treat as disposable.

He spoke of the Canon as having auctoritas given to it by tradition, which far surpasses the merely canonical, legalistic, authorisation, which fly-by-night 'Eucharistic Prayers' composed by the Top Experts of one single decade might have.

I think it may be a coincidence that his term auctoritas occurs also in John Paul II's instruction Ecclesia Dei. It is a profound term with roots deep in the sense of the Orthodox as well as of Traditionalist Catholics that there are weightier imperatives than Canon Law. I remind you of the startling fact that the then Patriarch of Moskow welcomed Summorum pontificum as an ecumenically positive action.

Glendinning had informed us that Summorum pontificum, if it is not an "imprecise use of canonical terminology" was "a rather overt denunciation of the pope's predecessors and of the praxis curiae".

In a funny sort of way, I think this last bit is right. Benedict XVI was superseding the assumptions underlying the enactments of his predecessor Paul VI, and, unobserved by Glendinning, he was doing so on grounds which he had previously, before his election to the See of Peter, explained thoroughly lucidly.

Papa Ratzinger even restated those views of Cardinal Ratzinger, in the Letter to Bishops which accompanied Summorum pontificum: "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden forbidden". Note 'cannot'! We are talking about non potests [not able to] rather than non licets[not permitted]. We are talking about what it is not within the competence of a pope to do.

As for curial enactments, well, I think it has to be pointed out that the pope is not only, as Glendinning concedes, the Supreme Legislator, but, as Vatican I defined, also the Supreme Judge of the Church.

If his statements in Summorum pontificum went contrary to what Roman dicasteries had prescribed or implied, this was surely analogous to a court of appeal overriding an earlier judgement by a legislator of inferior jurisdiction. J Baldovini, quoted by Glendinning, wrote that "even someone with supreme legislative authority cannot undo historic facts".

ButBenedict XVI was not misdescribing (or even describing) historical facts, I suggest, but defining what the deepest law of the Church is. He based himself upon a view of history, Theology, and law which was broader than the juridical bases of those previous enactments. That is in fact what makes his declaration so significant; so much more in line with a Catholic - and Orthodox - and Anglo-Catholic - concept of Liturgy.

Benedict XVI identified (not created) a Principle deeper than mere legislation; a Law even deeper than the law; to the effect that "what earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too".

This is not so much a canonical principle as a statement of a theological truth ineradicably inscribed in the very nature itself of the Church Militant. It is what Moreton and I have called auctoritas. Papa Ratzinger concluded that "it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful".

It is worth remembering this in a post-Benedictine era. Subsequent legislators cannot legislate to abolish this datum because, established as it is in immutable historical facts, it is not accessible to the pen of a legislator.

Summorum Pontificum, qua legislation, is itself no more immutable than other piece of legislation. But the Principle underlying it is one of those principles which are integral to the life of the Church; unchangeably part of it for ever.

---

July 8, 2017
Fr. H has a P.S.
Here is what Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 1998.

---

" ... It is good here to recall what Cardinal Newman observed, that the Church, throughout her history, has never abolished nor forbidden orthodox liturgical forms, which would be quite alien to the Spirit of the Church.

An orthodox liturgy, that is to say, one which expresses the true faith, is never a compilation made according to the pragmatic criteria of different ceremonies, handled in a positivist and arbitrary way, one way today and another way tomorrow.

The orthodox forms of a rite are living realities, born out of the dialect of love between the Church and her Lord. They are expressions of the life of the Church, in which are distilled the faith, the prayer, and the very life of past generations, and which make incarnate in specific forms both the action of God and the response of man.

Such rites can die, if those who have used them in a particular era should disappear, or if the life-situation of those same people should change. The authority of the church had the power to define and limit the use of such rites in different historical situations, but she never just purely and simply forbids them!"

---

Benedict XVI vs. the Barbarians:
'Summorum Pontificum' ten years later
by Thomas Woods
RORATE CAELI
July 7, 2017

The day the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum was released was an exceptionally unusual one for me: at last one of the seemingly lost causes I had championed for years had actually triumphed.

Knowing of the document's imminent release, I awoke early that morning and eagerly devoured the text itself along with its accompanying letter to the bishops.

What a delight to discover that basic Catholic truth so many of us had been called schismatics for defending:

---

"What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place."

---

It called to mind one of my favorite quotations from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:

---

I am of the opinion, to be sure, that the old rite should be granted much more generously to all those who desire it. It's impossible to see what could be dangerous or unacceptable about that. A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent.

---

Contrary to what Roger Cardinal Mahony and other leftists had told their flocks, moreover, allowance for the traditional liturgy -- henceforth to be referred to as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite -- was not simply for older folks who couldn't adapt.

According to Benedict XVI, it "has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them."

The old liturgy, Benedict further added, was "never juridically abrogated." Ah, the knots that so-called conservative Catholics tied themselves into to insist that the old Mass had indeed been abrogated. Well, they were wrong, which means they were likewise wrong to have demonized us for telling the truth.

I wound up writing a small book, Sacred Then and Sacred Now: The Return of the Old Latin Mass, for the purposes of (1) explaining and defending Pope Benedict's decision; (2) walking newcomers through the Extraordinary Form; (3) replying to common objections; and (4) explaining why features common to the Ordinary Form -- "Eucharistic ministers" and Communion in the hand, to name two -- were not to be introduced into the Extraordinary.


Despite my profound gratitude to Benedict, who expended enormous political capital on behalf of a small, despised group of the faithful, I still feel compelled to note a most unfortunate omission. We needed Benedict XVI to offer the Extraordinary Form publicly. My sources kept telling me such an act was imminent. It never occurred. [I echo that as I have said quite often on this Forum. I have been unable to imagine any conceivable reason why he did not.]

That more than anything else would have sent a message throughout the Catholic world. We know Benedict offered his private Masses in the Extraordinary Form. But the public celebration during his papacy never happened.

Had that event occurred, we would surely have seen more rapid growth in the number of Extraordinary Form Masses and communities. But even still, we should give thanks for what progress we have seen, especially in an age when truly sinister forces seemed to have triumphed virtually everywhere.

(Even now, I wish Benedict would offer the Extraordinary Form publicly. There would be no mistaking the meaning of that act.) [Perhaps at the next concluding Mass for the annual reunion-seminar of the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis.]

The continued cultivation of and devotion to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite is urgently necessary, and not simply because it is the ultimate rebuke to the ignorant barbarians who despise Western civilization. It is, in the Father Faber formulation of which Michael Davies was so fond, "the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven."

To Enlightenment man in his most degraded form - who believes that nothing is immune to change, that the family itself is subject to redefinition according to human whim - the piety and reverence of the Extraordinary Form, in its beauty and stately reserve, and in its reservation of sacred tasks to the priest alone, reminds us that some things really are not to be touched by man.

As the late Alfons Cardinal Stickler pointed out more than once, there was once a time when a priest could have said Mass anywhere in the world. There was also a time when Catholics could have attended Mass around the world and found it the same Mass with which they were familiar -- a testimony to their membership in a universal, supernatural organization. That world is gone. Roman Rite Catholics have been rendered spiritual orphans, rootless and rudderless in a hostile world.

The Extraordinary Form was and is the center of unity in the Roman Rite. And it stands for the very opposite of the casual familiarity in the presence of the sacred that characterizes the vast majority of parish Masses today.

If the Church is to be restored in our lifetimes, it will begin with the liturgy, and will flourish thanks in no small part to Pope Benedict XVI and Summorum Pontificum.

On the 10th Anniversary of Summorum Pontificum:
We thank in particular...
RORATE CAELI
July 7, 2017

IN PRIMIS... Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Bishop Castro Mayer: long may their memories live!

The beautiful words of that great French hero of the Traditional Mass, Jean Madiran (1920-2013: Rest in peace!), who lived to see the miracle, remembering the names of some who died in the battlefield:

---

"For thirty seven years, a whole generation of militant Catholics, religious or lay members of the Militant Church (a generation reaching from 7 to 97 years of age) suffered, without giving in, openly defying the arbitrary interdict on the Traditional Mass. We think of our dead: Cardinal Ottaviani, Father Calmel, Father Raymond Dulac, Monsignor Renato Pozzi, Monsignor Lefebvre, Father Guérard. And, among the laymen: Cristina Campo, Luce Quenette, Louis Salleron, Eric de Saventhem. The pontifical goodwill is for them as a light breeze, which sweetly brings peace to their tombs. Wherever they are now, they do not need it anymore. But it is their memory amongst us which is appeased and elevated."

---

And also: Father Gamber, Michael Davies, Tito Casini, and so many, many others (priests, laymen and laywomen- God knows their names!), each of whom placed his own brick, large or small, in the great dam built for decades against the tumultuous tides of the late twentieth century.

Thank you, thank you, thank you dearly! The heat of the battle has caused so much personal attrition, exaggerations, and misunderstandings... Yet, justice cannot be denied: gratitude is owed to those who did not live to see, on this earth, the glorious date of July 7, 2007.

On the 10th anniversary of 'Summorum Pontificum',
we can safely say the doomsayers are wrong
Despite predictions of chaos and division,
Pope Benedict's Motu Proprio has enriched the church
by Dom Alcuin Reid
CATHOLIC HERALD
Friday, 7 Jul 2017

At noon Rome-time on 7th July 2007 it was my privilege to be present at the first solemn Mass of a recently ordained young priest. As a member of the Fraternity of Saint Peter he (licitly) sang the Mass according to the usus antiquior—the more ancient form of the Roman rite, as used prior to the reforms following the Second Vatican Council. It was a beautiful occasion, but one which harboured a lingering distraction.

For up until that time the faithful, lay men and women, religious and even clergy, did not have free access to the older liturgical rites. It was commonly (but erroneously) held that permission was required to celebrate them.

Certainly, the Holy See had encouraged bishops to be generous in granting such permissions, but as many recall only too well and with no small amount of suffering, in many dioceses around the world this was not the case: the parsimony of a good number of prelates was immovable.

One English liturgist even called for “a period of compulsory transition…for all priests ordained after 1970, with perhaps five years for them to prepare for the celebration of the Novus Ordo exclusively.”

The distraction on that July 7th was the fact that at that very hour Pope Benedict’s long-awaited Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, on the use of the older rites had been published. It was, perhaps, an appropriate sacrifice to have to wait an hour or so before reading its long-awaited provisions.

The first months of 2007 had seen a battle royale waged over what it would contain. Pope Benedict himself wrote in his letter to the Bishops of the same date: “News reports and judgments made without sufficient information have created no little confusion. There have been very divergent reactions ranging from joyful acceptance to harsh opposition, about a plan whose contents were in reality unknown.”

Indeed, it is known that he personally telephoned several bishops before July to insist that they end their public opposition to a document they had not even read.

The issue was “the fear that the document detracts from the authority of the Second Vatican Council, one of whose essential decisions — the liturgical reform — is being called into question.” The Pope’s response was clear: “This fear is unfounded.”

And he was right: the modern rites as reformed following the Council remain what one ordinarily encounters in parishes to this day. There have been no widespread public burnings of the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy or of the liturgical books produced in its wake.

Another issue was the fear that a wider use of the older rites “would lead to disarray or even divisions within parish communities.” Pope Benedict replied: “This fear also strikes me as quite unfounded.”

Notwithstanding some instances of pastoral imprudence by clergy imposing older (or even newer) rites on congregations without adequate preparation and formation, the Church today is not riven with parishes divided over the inclusion of the older rites in their schedule. Indeed, many people find their life of faith and worship to be enriched by this legitimate ritual diversity.

For Pope Benedict, Summorum Pontificum was “a matter of coming to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church” — of taking away obstacles to that communion and unity which Our Lord so desires amongst all the baptised.

It is a fact that the liturgical reform following the Council was abrupt and controversial, and disenfranchised many Catholics, some of whom simply stopped coming to Mass. Those small pockets of priests and laity who continued with the older rites were ostracised. When, rather than dying out, they attracted young people, they were proscribed. The divisions were real and became entrenched.

In line with efforts made by St John Paul II, in 2007 the Holy Father Benedict XVI sought to do what he could to heal these divisions, insisting that: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” [I have yet to read a single Novus Ordo fanatic who has rebutted this statement, or even sought to.]

So too he noted a seemingly curious phenomenon:

---

“Immediately after the Second Vatican Council, it was presumed that requests for the use of the 1962 Missal would be limited to the older generation which had grown up with it, but in the meantime it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them.”

---

This is an oft-missed element of Summorum Pontificum. Pope Benedict’s authoritative establishment in Church law that all of the faithful have the legal right to the older liturgical ceremonies, including the sacraments, and that parish priests and not bishops had both the duty to provide these and the authority otherwise to decide when their celebration is appropriate, is not motivated by nostalgia.

Rather, it is also a response to the new and somewhat unexpected reality of the Church at the beginning of the twenty-first century where young people who never knew the older liturgy (or even the battles fought over it) find that at celebrations of it — often much more so than in some other liturgical celebrations they have experienced — they are able fully, consciously and actively participate in the Sacred Liturgy, the “the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit,” precisely as the Second Vatican Council desired. Accordingly, Pope Benedict wrote: “It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.”

When finally we read Summorum Pontificum on July 7th, and the letter accompanying it, it was clear that Pope Benedict had acted as a “scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven…like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Mt 13:52).

But not all reactions were as calm.
- One Italian bishop lamented that “Today, a reform for which so many laboured, at the cost of great sacrifices, animated solely by the wish to renew the Church, has been cancelled…today an important reform of the Council was undermined…” [Classic closed-mind thinking by 'spirit of Vatican II' progressivists!]
- Fr Mark Francis would lament that: “the Pope, who is not a trained liturgist, has shown interest and sensitivity in liturgical matters,” but that with Summorum Pontificum he demonstrated “a real misunderstanding of the liturgy’s role in the life of the Church,” and adopted a liturgical “relativism,” ignoring “the hallowed patristic axiom lex orandi, lex credendi.” [Unbelievable chutzpah and ignorance!]
- There were many other ‘prophets of doom,’ including some bishops who summarily rejected any suggestion of their seminarians being given time to learn how to celebrate the older rites.

Yet no liturgical doomsday has arrived and many seminarians seem nevertheless to have found the means to familiarise themselves with the older rites. For Summorum Pontificum established an entirely new situation in the liturgical life of the Church, one which augurs very well indeed for the Church of today and of tomorrow.

As has been noted, the Motu Proprio established that the older liturgical rites are to be freely available when the faithful request them. Today, the majority of the faithful, including myself, grew up following the Second Vatican Council.

We did not know ‘the old days’ — when, certainly, the usus antiquior was sometimes, indeed too often, celebrated poorly, and when sung Mass was an exception rather than the norm that it should be. When we discovered the older liturgy and continued to come back to it, it was with the expectation that we would indeed participate in its rites and prayers fully, consciously and actually and in optimal, not minimalistic, celebrations.

And we discovered an immense treasury of faith and culture in which to participate — a treasury which stretches back to the early Church which had not been pushed through an ideological sieve in the 1960s.

This encounter of our post-conciliar generations with the pre-conciliar liturgy is in fact realising, at least in part, the stated aim of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy: to impart an ever-increasing vigour to the Christian life through a profound and engaged participation in the liturgy — though the irony of the means of this being the unreformed liturgy is significant. (This raises questions about the necessity and utility of the specific liturgical reforms effected, and gives the lie to those ‘Vatican II fundamentalists’ who would idolise them —but discussion of that is for another place.)

The demands of the traditional Mass bring forth a response in us. We find that the restraint and beauty of the ritual, the silence in which we find space to pray interiorly, the music which does not attempt to imitate the world or soothe the emotions but which challenges us and facilitates worship of the divine - indeed, the overall ritual experience of the numinous and of the sacred - we find uplifting and nourishing.

This dynamic has also changed how we approach and celebrate the reformed liturgical rites. They are, in comparison, quite ritually streamlined — too much so for some. And certainly, the theology of their texts is at times quite different or diminished. But their celebration is now being enriched by those immersed in the unreformed liturgical tradition.

Pope Benedict spoke of this “mutual enrichment” in 2007 as a possible outcome of his Motu Proprio. It has been an increasing factor in the liturgical life of the Church ever since.

Many young priests speak eloquently of how celebrating the usus antiquior has enabled them to celebrate the usus recentior with greater reverence and meaning. This new approach to and manner of celebrating the modern rites so that they are in greater continuity with preceding liturgical tradition is certainly more in line with the intentions of the Council than some applications and interpretations of it heretofore.

This doesn’t address the greater question of a ‘reform of the liturgical reform’ — a question which will not go away simply because people don’t like it — but it does do a good deal to correct the erroneous and sometimes even abusive celebrations of the modern rites we have experienced all too often.

Some commentators are just as enraged by Summorum Pontificum as they were in 2007 and claim that it promotes a “traditionalism” which is having “a negative effect on the acceptance of other documents from Vatican II, such as those on ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue and missionary activity of the Church.” (As with many “-isms,” traditionalism is an erroneous exaggeration and is to be avoided.)

But if the new and life-giving encounter with unreformed liturgical tradition made possible by Pope Benedict XVI ten years ago leads to a critical reappraisal of the liturgical reform and of the implementation of other Conciliar documents, who are we to judge it adversely?

For if this arises from faithful Catholic clergy and laity for whom the label “traditionalist” is simply outdated, might not this new situation in the life of the Church in fact be one of the “signs of the times” in our day — a sign in which Church authorities may well hear something of what the Holy Spirit is saying in our midst?

Thanks to Pope Benedict XVI, laity and clergy (should) have had access to the unreformed liturgical tradition without having to be anything other than Catholic for ten years now. The fruits of this measure are real, and they are growing — for the good of the whole Church.

Following Mass on July 7th 2007, we celebrated the young priest’s ordination with greater joy as we read Pope Benedict’s Motu Proprio and accompanying letter.

This priest now gives thanks to Almighty God for ten years of fruitful ministry just as the Church can give thanks to Almighty God for the genuine fruits of Pope Benedict’s paternal wisdom and profound insight in promulgating Summorum Pontificum.

Dom Alcuin Reid, a monk of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France, and a liturgical scholar of international renown, is the author of “The Usus Antiquior—Its History and Importance in the Church after the Second Vatican Council,” (A. Reid, ed., T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy, Bloomsbury 2016).

The legal achievement of Summorum Pontificum
by Gregory Di Pippo
NEW LITURGICAL MOVEMENT
July 5, 2017

I propose here to consider what Pope Benedict XVI meant, and what he achieved, by categorizing the traditional Roman Mass and the post-conciliar reform of it as two Forms of the same Rite, the one Extraordinary and the other Ordinary. Before doing that, I believe it is necessary to establish a distinction between the terms which have historically been used to describe variations with a liturgy or liturgical family, namely, Rite and Use.

To the best of my knowledge, the distinction between Rite and Use has not been officially laid out anywhere in law by the Church; this is therefore purely my take on the matter.

For clarity’s sake, the variants of the same Rite should properly be called Uses, like the Sarum Use or Carmelite Use; this is what they were most commonly called before the Tridentine reform. For example, the frontispiece of the Sarum Missal says “Missale ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarisburiensis – the Missal according to the Use of the famous church of Salisbury.”

It is true that even before Trent, there was some confusion between these terms, and Rite was occasionally said instead of Use; after Trent, the term Use became rare. The terminology was certainly never uniform, and many liturgical books do not use either term, and have just an adjective modifying the words Missale, Breviarium etc. The Dominicans said either “according to the Sacred Order of Preachers,” or “according to the Rite of the Sacred Order of Preachers.”

However, if we wish to establish a distinction between different liturgies on the one hand, and variants within a given liturgy on the other, while still keeping to some kind of historical terminology, it seems obvious that Rite is the more appropriate for the former, and Use for the latter.

It would be absurd to describe the liturgies of the Eastern churches as “the Byzantine Use, the Coptic Use etc.,” when comparing them to “the Roman Use”; they are clearly and entirely different Rites. “Use”, on the other hand, was the predominant term for variants of the Roman Rite when there were many such variants celebrated throughout Western Europe.

All of the essential characteristics of the Roman Rite, such as the Ordo Missae and the structure of the Office, are the same from one Use to the other. They are not the same in other Rites. This applies not just to the Canon, but the whole structure of the Mass: Introit, Kyrie, Gloria, Collect(s), Epistle, Gradual, Alleluia etc. With minor variations, which are more variations of order than of wording, the bulk of the liturgical texts is the same as well.

Searching through every missal or antiphonary of every Use of the Roman Rite, one will find the Introit Ad te levavi on the First Sunday of Advent, Populus Sion on the Second, etc. It is true that some of the later features of the Rite, mostly notably the Offertory prayers and the Sequences, differ considerably from one Use to another. These variations are nevertheless confined within certain clearly recognizable limits, have much in common with one another, and can therefore be grouped into families.

Furthermore, any proper Mass or Office written for one Use can be transposed into any of the others with no difficulty at all. (The same is true for any set of Offertory prayers or any Sequence.) For example, St Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican, and wrote the Office and Mass of Corpus Christi according to the medieval French Use followed by his order. (The Office had nine responsories at Matins, rather than eight as in the Roman Use, a versicle between Matins and Lauds, etc.) Almost nothing needed to be done to adjust these texts for the Missal and Breviary according to the “Use of the Roman Curia”, which in the Tridentine reform became the Missal and Breviary of St Pius V.

However, when the Mass of Corpus Christi was added to the Ambrosian Rite, all kinds of adjustments had to be made: the addition of a first reading, the antiphon after the Gospel, the Oratio super sindonem, and the Transitorium, none of which exist in the Roman Rite, and the removal of the Sequence, which has never existed in the Ambrosian Rite.

Vice versa, if one wanted to take the Ambrosian Mass of St Ambrose, for example, and transpose it into the Roman Rite, one would need to change it very considerably, adding a psalm verse and Gloria to the Ingressa to make an Introit, and removing the first reading, the antiphon after the Gospel, the Oratio super sindonem, and the Transitorium.

If we accept these definitions of Rite and Use, it seems to me very clear that neither of them is appropriate to describe the relationship between what we now call the two Forms of the Roman Rite.

On the very basic level of what we usually see and hear in a Mass of the Ordinary Form and a Mass of the Extraordinary Form, they immediately appear to be two different Rites.

The liturgist Fr Joseph Gelineau SJ famously declared à propos of the reformed Mass, “This needs to be said without ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed.” A statement of this sort cannot be glossed over as just the opinion of a single man; Fr Gelineau was a prominent figure in the liturgical reform, and highly esteemed by its most famous architect, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini.

Similar statements, pro and con, have been made by many others. I cannot imagine any serious liturgical scholar applying similar language to any previous change within the Roman Rite.

On the basis of my transposition argument given above, (texts can easily be moved from one Use to another, but can be moved from one Rite to another much less easily, or not at all), it can be said that the EF and OF do share a certain identity.

Most of any given block of Mass texts can be moved from one to the other fairly easily, or at least, much more easily than they could be moved between the Byzantine and Ambrosian Rites.

However, considering that the post-conciliar reform was a far greater displacement of liturgical texts than had ever taken place before in the Roman Rite, and the significant ritual differences, it is much harder to argue that the EF and OF share an identity. Historically, this is an absolutely anomalous situation; there has never been a case of two Rites or Uses which shared so much and yet were so radically different.

Because of this, the identity of the two Forms of a single Rite as established by Summorum Pontificum has sometimes been described as a “legal fiction.” I submit that this is a wholly appropriate way of describing the situation, that the identity of the two Forms as a single Rite IS a legal fiction, and that this is a good thing. A legal fiction is not the same thing as a lie.

Adoption, for example, is a legal fiction, which states that in terms of law, this person is the child of that person. This is most emphatically not a false statement, even though the adopted child is not the natural offspring of the parents. The law’s recognition of the bond between parents and children is perhaps the least significant thing about it, precisely because it does not create such a bond and cannot dissolve it. In this sense, adoption simply declares that the absence of a genetic relationship between two specific people is legally irrelevant, and a parent-child relationship exists.

In a similar way, Pope Benedict’s action in creating two “Forms” was not intended to speak to the relationship between the EF and OF as a matter of liturgical or historical scholarship, but solely as a description of the relationship between them in law. It simply declares that the tenuous relationship between the two Forms is legally irrelevant.

As a matter of law, a priest of one Rite legally needs special faculties to celebrate Mass in another. This is a useful and perfectly sensible legal provision for a variety of reasons, and a long-standing one, but hardly a moral necessity per se; where deemed pastorally useful, the Church has been fairly flexible in granting such faculties.

However, the whole point of Summorum Pontificum was to establish that a priest of the Roman Rite does not need any special faculty or permission to say the Mass according to the traditional Missal, as was the case under the indult Ecclesia Dei.

I believe that Pope Benedict acted very wisely and conscientiously in adopting a completely different category from any other previously used, Form instead of Use or Rite, to get around an important legal problem, namely, that by any other solution, he would have made the vast majority of Catholic priests “bi-ritual.” That would have been a legal abomination without precedent.

[Joseph Ratzinger obviously had decades after the Novus Ordo came into force to think about what he would eventually decree in SP, not in terms of what he himself would do if he were Pope (since that was never a possibility considered by anyone until just before the 2005 Conclave), but in terms of what could realistically be done to restore full liturgical citizenship to the traditional Mass co-equal to that of the Novus Ordo. Therefore, his decision to use the term 'FORM' to distinguish the two modalities of saying Mass in the Roman rite - now both legitimate - was surely well-studied and prepared for.]

I had occasion to note recently that usually overlooked in any overview of Benedict XVI's historic documents are his pastoral letters to the bishops of the world. There were 4 of them - each made necessary by historical circumstances. The first was his Letter to the Catholics of China in May 2007, in which a Pope formlly addressed for the first time the dilemma of Roman Catholics living in the most powerful Communist regime on earth which does not recognize the authority of the Pope over their Catholic citizens.

The second was the letter of July 7, 2007, that he sent to all the Catholic bishops of the world when he sent them the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, which I reproduce below. The third was his letter in March 2009 explaining his reasons for lifting the excommunication of the four FSSPX bishops who had been illegally consecrated in 1988. The fourth was written one year later to the Catholics of Ireland, in which for the first time, too, a pope addressed the multiple problems raised by the disclosure of the sexual abuses committed by the Irish clergy, which had reached a relatively wide extent in Ireland.

The adjective that insistently comes to mind about these Apostolic Letters is Pauline, recalling in their tone and intent the Apostle's powerful letters to the early Christian communities dealing with their specific problems.

I tried googling if other popes in the modern era have used the pastoral letter that is not an encyclical as Benedict XVI did in these instances, and perhaps my search words ought to be refined, but my initial search has not turned up anything. I will try again later...

LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS OF THE WORLD
ON THE OCCASION OF THE PUBLICATION
OF THE APOSTOLIC LETTER SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM

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My dear Brother Bishops,

With great trust and hope, I am consigning to you as Pastors the text of a new Apostolic Letter “Motu Proprio data” on the use of the Roman liturgy prior to the reform of 1970. The document is the fruit of much reflection, numerous consultations and prayer.

News reports and judgments made without sufficient information have created no little confusion. There have been very divergent reactions ranging from joyful acceptance to harsh opposition, about a plan whose contents were in reality unknown.

This document was most directly opposed on account of two fears, which I would like to address somewhat more closely in this letter.

In the first place, there is the fear that the document detracts from the authority of the Second Vatican Council, one of whose essential decisions – the liturgical reform – is being called into question.
This fear is unfounded.

In this regard, it must first be said that the Missal published by Paul VI and then republished in two subsequent editions by John Paul II, obviously is and continues to be the normal Form – the Forma ordinaria – of the Eucharistic Liturgy.

The last version of the Missale Romanum prior to the Council, which was published with the authority of Pope John XXIII in 1962 and used during the Council, will now be able to be used as a Forma extraordinaria of the liturgical celebration. It is not appropriate to speak of these two versions of the Roman Missal as if they were “two Rites”. Rather, it is a matter of a twofold use of one and the same rite.

As for the use of the 1962 Missal as a Forma extraordinaria of the liturgy of the Mass, I would like to draw attention to the fact that this Missal was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted.

At the time of the introduction of the new Missal, it did not seem necessary to issue specific norms for the possible use of the earlier Missal. Probably it was thought that it would be a matter of a few individual cases which would be resolved, case by case, on the local level.

Afterwards, however, it soon became apparent that a good number of people remained strongly attached to this usage of the Roman Rite, which had been familiar to them from childhood. This was especially the case in countries where the liturgical movement had provided many people with a notable liturgical formation and a deep, personal familiarity with the earlier Form of the liturgical celebration.

We all know that, in the movement led by Archbishop Lefebvre, fidelity to the old Missal became an external mark of identity; the reasons for the break which arose over this, however, were at a deeper level.

Many people who clearly accepted the binding character of the Second Vatican Council, and were faithful to the Pope and the Bishops, nonetheless also desired to recover the form of the sacred liturgy that was dear to them.

This occurred above all because in many places celebrations were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new Missal, but the latter actually was understood as authorizing or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear.

I am speaking from experience, since I too lived through that period with all its hopes and its confusion. And I have seen how arbitrary deformations of the liturgy caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church.

Pope John Paul II thus felt obliged to provide, in his Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei (2 July 1988), guidelines for the use of the 1962 Missal. that document, however, did not contain detailed prescriptions but appealed in a general way to the generous response of Bishops towards the “legitimate aspirations” of those members of the faithful who requested this usage of the Roman Rite.

At the time, the Pope primarily wanted to assist the Society of Saint Pius X to recover full unity with the Successor of Peter, and sought to heal a wound experienced ever more painfully. Unfortunately this reconciliation has not yet come about. Nonetheless, a number of communities have gratefully made use of the possibilities provided by the Motu Proprio.

On the other hand, difficulties remain concerning the use of the 1962 Missal outside of these groups, because of the lack of precise juridical norms, particularly because Bishops, in such cases, frequently feared that the authority of the Council would be called into question.

Immediately after the Second Vatican Council it was presumed that requests for the use of the 1962 Missal would be limited to the older generation which had grown up with it, but in the meantime it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them.

Thus the need has arisen for a clearer juridical regulation which had not been foreseen at the time of the 1988 Motu Proprio. The present Norms are also meant to free Bishops from constantly having to evaluate anew how they are to respond to various situations.

In the second place, the fear was expressed in discussions about the awaited Motu Proprio, that the possibility of a wider use of the 1962 Missal would lead to disarray or even divisions within parish communities. This fear also strikes me as quite unfounded.

The use of the old Missal presupposes a certain degree of liturgical formation and some knowledge of the Latin language; neither of these is found very often. Already from these concrete presuppositions, it is clearly seen that the new Missal will certainly remain the ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, not only on account of the juridical norms, but also because of the actual situation of the communities of the faithful.

It is true that there have been exaggerations and at times social aspects unduly linked to the attitude of the faithful attached to the ancient Latin liturgical tradition. Your charity and pastoral prudence will be an incentive and guide for improving these.

For that matter, the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching: new Saints and some of the new Prefaces can and should be inserted in the old Missal. The “Ecclesia Dei” Commission, in contact with various bodies devoted to the usus antiquior, will study the practical possibilities in this regard.

The celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage. The most sure guarantee that the Missal of Paul VI can unite parish communities and be loved by them consists in its being celebrated with great reverence in harmony with the liturgical directives. This will bring out the spiritual richness and the theological depth of this Missal.

I now come to the positive reason which motivated my decision to issue this Motu Proprio updating that of 1988. It is a matter of coming to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church.

Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church’s leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity.

One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden.

This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to enable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew.

I think of a sentence in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, where Paul writes: “Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return … widen your hearts also!” (2 Cor 6:11-13). Paul was certainly speaking in another context, but his exhortation can and must touch us too, precisely on this subject. Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows. [Lack of generosity, i.e., sheer mean-spiritedness and absolute intolerance, has been the dominant trait of those who oppose the traditional for no rational and acceptable reason, especially when one considers that it ought not to even 'touch' them personally at all if they do not like it since no one is compelled to choose one form over the other, and one can certainly attend both forms if he chooses.]

There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.

Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness.

In conclusion, dear Brothers, I very much wish to stress that these new norms do not in any way lessen your own authority and responsibility, either for the liturgy or for the pastoral care of your faithful.

Each Bishop, in fact, is the moderator of the liturgy in his own Diocese (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 22): “Sacrae Liturgiae moderatio ab Ecclesiae auctoritate unice pendet quae quidem est apud Apostolicam Sedem et, ad normam iuris, apud Episcopum”).

Nothing is taken away, then, from the authority of the Bishop, whose role remains that of being watchful that all is done in peace and serenity. Should some problem arise which the parish priest cannot resolve, the local Ordinary will always be able to intervene, in full harmony, however, with all that has been laid down by the new norms of the Motu Proprio.

Furthermore, I invite you, dear Brothers, to send to the Holy See an account of your experiences, three years after this Motu Proprio has taken effect. If truly serious difficulties come to light, ways to remedy them can be sought. [I do not recall that any such difficulties were ever raised, three years later or since.]

Dear Brothers, with gratitude and trust, I entrust to your hearts as Pastors these pages and the norms of the Motu Proprio.

Let us always be mindful of the words of the Apostle Paul addressed to the presbyters of Ephesus: “Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the Church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son” (Acts 20:28).

I entrust these norms to the powerful intercession of Mary, Mother of the Church, and I cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing to you, dear Brothers, to the parish priests of your dioceses, and to all the priests, your co-workers, as well as to all your faithful.

Given at Saint Peter’s, 7 July 2007

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

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And the text of the Motu Proprio itself...

POPE BENEDICT XVI
APOSTOLIC LETTER
GIVEN MOTU PROPRIO
SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM
ON THE USE OF THE ROMAN LITURGY
PRIOR TO THE REFORM OF 1970

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The Supreme Pontiffs have to this day shown constant concern that the Church of Christ should offer worthy worship to the Divine Majesty, “for the praise and glory of his name” and “the good of all his holy Church.”

As from time immemorial, so too in the future, it is necessary to maintain the principle that “each particular Church must be in accord with the universal Church not only regarding the doctrine of the faith and sacramental signs, but also as to the usages universally received from apostolic and unbroken tradition.

These are to be observed not only so that errors may be avoided, but also that the faith may be handed on in its integrity, since the Church’s rule of prayer (lex orandi) corresponds to her rule of faith (lex credendi).” [1]

Eminent among the Popes who showed such proper concern was Saint Gregory the Great, who sought to hand on to the new peoples of Europe both the Catholic faith and the treasures of worship and culture amassed by the Romans in preceding centuries.

He ordered that the form of the sacred liturgy, both of the sacrifice of the Mass and the Divine Office, as celebrated in Rome, should be defined and preserved. He greatly encouraged those monks and nuns who, following the Rule of Saint Benedict, everywhere proclaimed the Gospel and illustrated by their lives the salutary provision of the Rule that “nothing is to be preferred to the work of God.”

In this way the sacred liturgy, celebrated according to the Roman usage, enriched the faith and piety, as well as the culture, of numerous peoples. It is well known that in every century of the Christian era, the Church’s Latin liturgy in its various forms has inspired countless saints in their spiritual life, confirmed many peoples in the virtue of religion and enriched their devotion.

In the course of the centuries, many other Roman Pontiffs took particular care that the sacred liturgy should accomplish this task more effectively. Outstanding among them was Saint Pius V, who in response to the desire expressed by the Council of Trent, renewed with great pastoral zeal the Church’s entire worship, saw to the publication of liturgical books corrected and “restored in accordance with the norm of the Fathers,” and provided them for the use of the Latin Church.

Among the liturgical books of the Roman rite, a particular place belongs to the Roman Missal, which developed in the city of Rome and over the centuries gradually took on forms very similar to the form which it had in more recent generations.

“It was towards this same goal that succeeding Roman Pontiffs directed their energies during the subsequent centuries in order to ensure that the rites and liturgical books were brought up to date and, when necessary, clarified. From the beginning of this century they undertook a more general reform.” [2] Such was the case with our predecessors Clement VIII, Urban VIII, Saint Pius X [3], Benedict XV, Pius XII and Blessed John XXIII.

In more recent times, the Second Vatican Council expressed the desire that the respect and reverence due to divine worship should be renewed and adapted to the needs of our time. In response to this desire, our predecessor Pope Paul VI in 1970 approved for the Latin Church revised and in part renewed liturgical books; translated into various languages throughout the world, these were willingly received by the bishops as well as by priests and the lay faithful. Pope John Paul II approved the third typical edition of the Roman Missal. In this way the Popes sought to ensure that “this liturgical edifice, so to speak ... reappears in new splendour in its dignity and harmony.” [4]

In some regions, however, not a few of the faithful continued to be attached with such love and affection to the earlier liturgical forms which had deeply shaped their culture and spirit, that in 1984 Pope John Paul II, concerned for their pastoral care, through the special Indult Quattuor Abhinc Annos issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship, granted the faculty of using the Roman Missal published in 1962 by Blessed John XXIII.

Again in 1988, John Paul II, with the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei, exhorted bishops to make broad and generous use of this faculty on behalf of all the faithful who sought it.

Given the continued requests of these members of the faithful, long deliberated upon by our predecessor John Paul II, and having listened to the views expressed by the Cardinals present at the Consistory of 23 March 2006, upon mature consideration, having invoked the Holy Spirit and with trust in God’s help, by this Apostolic Letter we decree the following:

Art 1. The Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI is the ordinary expression of the lex orandi (rule of prayer) of the Catholic Church of the Latin rite. The Roman Missal promulgated by Saint Pius V and revised by Blessed John XXIII is nonetheless to be considered an extraordinary expression of the same lex orandi of the Church and duly honoured for its venerable and ancient usage. These two expressions of the Church’s lex orandi will in no way lead to a division in the Church’s lex credendi (rule of faith); for they are two usages of the one Roman rite.

It is therefore permitted to celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass following the typical edition of the Roman Missal, which was promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962 and never abrogated, as an extraordinary form of the Church’s Liturgy. The conditions for the use of this Missal laid down by the previous documents Quattuor Abhinc Annos and Ecclesia Dei are now replaced as follows:

Art. 2. In Masses celebrated without a congregation, any Catholic priest of the Latin rite, whether secular or regular, may use either the Roman Missal published in 1962 by Blessed Pope John XXIII or the Roman Missal promulgated in 1970 by Pope Paul VI, and may do so on any day, with the exception of the Easter Triduum. For such a celebration with either Missal, the priest needs no permission from the Apostolic See or from his own Ordinary.

Art. 3. If communities of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, whether of pontifical or diocesan right, wish to celebrate the conventual or community Mass in their own oratories according to the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal, they are permitted to do so. If an individual community or an entire Institute or Society wishes to have such celebrations frequently, habitually or permanently, the matter is to be decided by the Major Superiors according to the norm of law and their particular laws and statutes.

Art. 4. The celebrations of Holy Mass mentioned above in Art. 2 may be attended also by members of the lay faithful who spontaneously request to do so, with respect for the requirements of law.

Art. 5, §1 In parishes where a group of the faithful attached to the previous liturgical tradition stably exists, the parish priest should willingly accede to their requests to celebrate Holy Mass according to the rite of the 1962 Roman Missal.

He should ensure that the good of these members of the faithful is harmonized with the ordinary pastoral care of the parish, under the governance of the bishop in accordance with Canon 392, avoiding discord and favouring the unity of the whole Church.

§2 Celebration according to the Missal of Blessed John XXIII can take place on weekdays; on Sundays and feast days, however, such a celebration may also take place.

§3 For those faithful or priests who request it, the pastor should allow celebrations in this extraordinary form also in special circumstances such as marriages, funerals or occasional celebrations, e.g. pilgrimages.

§4 Priests using the Missal of Blessed John XXIII must be qualified (idonei) and not prevented by law.

§5 In churches other than parish or conventual churches, it is for the rector of the church to grant the above permission.

Art. 6. In Masses with a congregation celebrated according to the Missal of Blessed John XXIII, the readings may be proclaimed also in the vernacular, using editions approved by the Apostolic See.

Art. 7. If a group of the lay faithful, as mentioned in Art. 5, §1, has not been granted its requests by the parish priest, it should inform the diocesan bishop. The bishop is earnestly requested to satisfy their desire. If he does not wish to provide for such celebration, the matter should be referred to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.

Art. 8. A bishop who wishes to provide for such requests of the lay faithful, but is prevented by various reasons from doing so, can refer the matter to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, which will offer him counsel and assistance.

Art. 9, §1 The parish priest, after careful consideration, can also grant permission to use the older ritual in the administration of the sacraments of Baptism, Marriage, Penance and Anointing of the Sick, if advantageous for the good of souls.

§2 Ordinaries are granted the faculty of celebrating the sacrament of Confirmation using the old Roman Pontifical, if advantageous for the good of souls.

§3 Ordained clerics may also use the Roman Breviary promulgated in 1962 by Blessed John XXIII.

Art. 10. The local Ordinary, should he judge it opportune, may erect a personal parish in accordance with the norm of Canon 518 for celebrations according to the older form of the Roman rite, or appoint a rector or chaplain, with respect for the requirements of law.

Art. 11. The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, established in 1988 by Pope John Paul II [5], continues to exercise its function. The Commission is to have the form, duties and regulations that the Roman Pontiff will choose to assign to it.

Art. 12. The same Commission, in addition to the faculties which it presently enjoys, will exercise the authority of the Holy See in ensuring the observance and application of these norms.

We order that all that we have decreed in this Apostolic Letter given Motu Proprio take effect and be observed from the fourteenth day of September, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in the present year, all things to the contrary notwithstanding.

Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on the seventh day of July in the year of the Lord 2007, the third of our Pontificate.

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

[1] General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 3rd ed., 2002, 397.
[2] JOHN PAUL II, Apostolic Letter Vicesimus Quintus Annus (4 December 1988), 3: AAS 81 (1989), 899.
[3] Ibid.
[4] SAINT PIUS X, Apostolic Letter given Motu Propio Abhinc Duos Annos (23 October 1913): AAS 5 (1913), 449-450; cf. JOHN PAUL II, Apostolic Letter Vicesimus Quintus Annus (4 December 1988), 3: AAS 81 (1989), 899.
[5] Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Apostolic Letter given Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei (2 July 1988), 6: AAS 80 (1988), 1498.

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Pope Benedict's great restoration
A decade ago today, he revivified the Mass of the Ages.
by Michael Brendan Dougherty
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
July 7, 2017

Ten years and a few months ago, I met Bill Buckley when he invited me to his home. It was just a few weeks after his wife, Patricia, had died, in May 2007. We talked about Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard, because I couldn’t help my contrary nature even then. We talked about a film, The Lives of Others, which Buckley told me was the greatest film he had ever seen.

By the end of the conversation, he discovered that, like him, I was a devotee of a certain religious rite. He invited me to the Traditional Latin Mass at St. Mary’s in Stamford [Connecticut] that afternoon. We were members of this lonely fraternity of souls, a group that we didn’t know was about to grow much larger.

Ten years ago today, Pope Benedict XVI issued a document that vindicated the arguments that Catholics like Buckley and me had repeated in safe company for years: that the Latin Mass that was common to almost all of Western Catholicism for centuries was never abrogated.

It is so difficult to explain to young Catholics the fugitive feeling of attending a Traditional Latin Mass before the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year in this millennium. I had been doing so for just five years.
- Latin Mass communities were detested by bishops and cardinals, most of whom believed it was their life’s mission to modernize a defective Church.
- It also marked one out for scorn from most who considered themselves conservative Catholics. They called us disobedient schismatics.

We often deplored them in return for the personality cult they built around the papacy of John Paul II. (In truth, our side of this dispute did and still does have cranks in its ranks.) These years shaped in me a deep distrust of ecclesiastical persons in the Church.

I made a study of periods of apostasy in the Church [and now we are in a major historical one by the reigning pope himself, one that is still unrecognized, obfuscated by the misplaced and unnecessary zeal to declare an apostate heretical!] and kept reminding myself of the words of St. John Chrysostom that “the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.”

The child-abuse scandal didn’t surprise traditionalists. In some ways, we thought it proved our point about the depth of corruption in the Church. It was obvious to Traditionalists that, in many dioceses, it was better for a priest to rape children or carry on an active sex life with other adults than to say the Latin Mass for people like us, “the crazies.”

I learned, in my heart, a notion Thomas Aquinas expressed in Scholastic doctrine: that the blessed in heaven must enjoy the torment of the wicked in hell.

Loyalty to the liturgical books of 1962 was slightly more common among political conservatives than among others. It was a trait shared by Buckley and Patrick Buchanan, and also by libertarian Thomas Woods and Gladden Pappin, who writes for American Affairs.

Nor was it just political scribblers who found themselves attracted to “the TLM.” The new rite of the Mass was almost instinctively detested by real literary giants, who saw it as a banal substitute for a ritual whose words and forms had been shaped by the great ages of faith.

Simon Tolkien recalled his grandfather’s displeasure with modern “worship” in the Catholic Church: “I vividly remember going to church with him [J.R.R.] in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and it was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My grandfather obviously didn’t agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but my grandfather was oblivious.”

Evelyn Waugh intuitively sensed the bizarre intellectual alliance that informed the making of the new rite of the Mass; it was slipshod scholarship paired with a facile desire for revolution: “There is a deep-lying connection in the human heart between worship and age. But the new fashion is for something bright and loud and practical. It has been set by a strange alliance between archaeologists absorbed in their speculations on the rites of the second century, and modernists who wish to give the Church the character of our own deplorable epoch. In combination they call themselves ‘liturgists.’”

Waugh’s son Auberon stopped going to Mass and likely lost his faith, feeling that the modern Church had almost no connection to the faith of his father. Modern Masses appeared to him to be “kindergarten assemblies.”

It wasn’t just Catholics who were distressed by the replacement of their rites. Agatha Christie was among those who petitioned Pope Paul to keep the old rite alive in England: “The rite in question, in its magnificent Latin text, has . . . inspired a host of priceless achievements in the arts — not only mystical works, but works by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters, and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus, it belongs to universal culture as well as to churchmen and formal Christians.”

The opponents of the old Mass are still well-represented in the Church, especially in the universities that retain the name “Catholic” yet never reflect on how their schools turn out so many disillusioned men and women. They still rage at the old Mass, and at Pope Benedict for what he did to re-legitimize it.

These so-called theologians remind one of the French intellectual Alain Badiou, in that they insist that all legitimate intellectual exercise must be carried out in fidelity to some great “Event.” For Badiou, the event was Communist revolution, and Mao was the only true intellectual.

For these so-called theologians, the “Event” was the Second Vatican Council — the Council itself, not the texts it produced, which are, to them, of secondary importance. This Event created a new church, in need of a new intellectual party of adepts. But their methods are sloppier and shallower than Badiou’s.

These theologians greet every novel utterance of a pope or a Church document as a new revelation that “develops” previous Church teaching. In their parlance, development means the opposite of what it did to John Henry Newman. He meant further articulation; they mean “obviate or overturn.” Their words, like the liturgy they prefer, are a self-referential clamor.

The opponents of the old Mass are still well-represented in the Church. I am not a particularly devout man. I am inconstant and have numerous vices, which are easy to name. I attend the old Mass, in part, because it respects me as a sinner.

And ten years on, I can only thank Pope Benedict for giving legal sanction to this august rite that unites me again with my co-religionists, from scribblers like Buckley and inconstant men like Waugh to all the saints and angels; this Mass where before the awful moment at which the bell is rung and the the sacrifice of Calvary breaks through into the present, all clamor disappears into silence.

I've added this introduction to this post since I am now able to post a graphic that needs to be seen.
The subhead reads: A decline in the faithful, scandals, issues on ethics, gays, immigration and anti-Islam.
So many errors. Now the purges. Francis's popularity is collapsing.
The introductory teaser:

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THE SOLITUDE OF POPE FRANCIS
Once the media campaign ends that has transformed the Argentine pope into an ‘idol’, one realizes that fundamentally, the work of Joseph Ratzinger has been completely under-estimated.

In a Vatican divided by factions seeking to settle accounts with each other, the German Pope brought the Vatican and its bank IOR into the international White List of banks fully compliant with regulations to fight money laundering and the financing of terrorism. He imposed ‘zero tolerance’ towards sexual misbehavior by priests especially towards minors, and was constantly vigilant in analyzing the critical situation of the Church today and the challenges she faces in the foreseeable future.

Francis, on the other hand, became pope thanks to unprecedented maneuvering of which even he perhaps was not fully aware. [Not so! Austin Ivereigh, one of his instant biographers and now the pope’s primary paladin in the English speaking world, candidly discusses the maneuvering that took place among Bergoglio’s Grand Electors, who did call him in Argentina to alert him what they intended to do and to ask if he was prepared to go along. He is said to have answered with the Italian word, “Capisco”. (I understand)]

He is surrounded by a small ‘magic circle’ which robs him of his sight and fails to warn him of dangers that threaten to take increasingly greater importance, which also emphasize how distant and different he is from his predecessors.

From Argentina to the United States, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s popularity is falling, amid the scandals, errors, purges and vendettas which are dividing the Roman Curia.

---

Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica may be far from throwing in the towel on their considerable investment in manufacturing and seeking to perpetrate the myth that Jorge Bergoglio is the best pope that ever was or ever could be, but one Italian newspaper did launch its case against Bergoglio in a front-page article and apread on Sunday, July 2 – thanks as usual to the ‘search engine’-like efficiency of Beatrice and her friends in these matters.

Il Tempo, a small newspaper based in Rome with five regional editions throughout Italy, front-paged a picture of a glum Bergoglio seated in one of the papal chairs, with the glaring headline IL PAPOCCHIO. Considered conservative from its beginnings as an anti-Communist newspaper in 1944, it is the paper for which Prof .Roberto Di Mattei runs his weekly column that is found online in Corrispondenza Romana.

I admit I had to look up the term which I had not heard before, and its more common synonym in Italian is pasticcio, which translates best as imbroglio in English – which I find serendipitous, because the imbroglio referred to is what I would call the ‘Bergoglio imbroglio’. Who would have thought his family name and the noun would end up in a ‘felicitous’ coupling! The best dictionary meaning I can find for imbroglio is “an extremely confused, complicated, or embarrassing situation”, although I would probably replace the ‘or’ with ‘and/or’. One would think the word was invented to describe the state of the Church today under this travesty of a pope.

Unfortunately, the rest of the IL PAPOCCHIO spread is infelicitous. And after starting to translate each of the three articles that make up the spread. I decided not to use the material at all. Suffice it to say the main article was written by one Luigi Bisignani, who turns out to be a notorious professional power broker and known Freemason, who also spent two years and six months in prison after the highest court in Italy confirmed his 1994 sentence for violation of the law on contributions to political parties that was part of a major scandal involving a company called Enimont, at the height of the widespread Italian political crisis over bribery of government officials. Later in 2011 and in 2014, he was twice placed under precautionary house arrest during the investigation of the so-called P4, successor to the infamous Masonic lodge P2 which had infiltrated high government and Church circles since the 1950s, and which through people like Bisignani colluded with high Italian officials to obtain contracts, financing, appointments and secret information that could be used to blackmail other people. An account in English of Mr. Bisignani's activities may be seen on
italychronicles.com/italys-latest-corrupt-clique-p4/

Although identified as an ex-journalist - and also the author of four spy novels since his prison sentence - I do not understand why Il Tempo would have entrusted Bisignani (unless there is another Italian journalist with the same name who is not involved in Bisgnani's bizarre affairs) with the lead article for their spread. He is not at all up to tackling his subject - I found his analyses erratic, unsystematic and prone to facile generalizations where specific arguments should be adduced, and distinctions that are more than simply nuances should be addressed. It certainly barely skims the imbroglio into which Bergoglio has brought the Church.

The other two articles consist of 1) a rehash of old reports about the declining attendance at Bergoglio's public appearances in St. Peter's Square without adding anything new - not even providing the attendance figures for 2016; and 2) a random, most unsystematic, necessarily scant and skimming-the-surface recital of 'shocking' statements that Bergoglio has made about secular and religious matters.

So, we still await a serious major analysis of this pope's litany of un-papal and anti-Catholic offenses. Meanwhile...

********************************************************************************************************************************************

Andrea Tornielli has not joined in yet – and perhaps, never will – but two of the most ardent Bergoglians in the Italian media - Marco Politi and Massimo Franco -
have now acknowledged that things are not going well in the Bergoglio Vatican, and go as far as to use previously unthinkable words for them to use about Bergoglio
like - gasp! - ‘crisis’ and ‘scandals’ to describe what has been happening.

Scandals in the Vatican:
What the crisis in Pope Francis’s
governance teaches us
by Marco Politi
Translated from his blog on
IL FATTO QUOTIDIANO
July 5, 2017

The hundred days between March to July 2017 represent the first crisis [The first???] in the governance of Pope Francis. Too many things have piled up in rapid succession:
- The resignation of Marie Collins from the Commission for the Protection of Minors
- The unexpected departure of a first-class professional like Libero Milone from his position as [the first ever] auditor-general of the Holy See
- The question of Bishop Jean Zerbo of Mali, recently made cardinal by this pope, even as he has been unable to explain the 12-million euros deposited in his name in Swiss banks
- The brusque send-off (which nobody thinks is provisional) for Cardinal George Pell – a member of the pope’s advisory Council of Cardinals and head of the Secretariat for the Economy, which was supposed to embody this pope’s drive for financial transparency – who has been forced to return to Australia to defend himself from potential criminal charges for alleged cases of sexual abuse.
- The unexpected [C’mon, Politi, do not feign naivete!] dismissal of Cardinal Gerehard Ludwig Mueller as Prefect of the CDF, and
- His replacement with the Jesuit Luis Ladaria Ferrer, now said to have signed a letter to the Bishop of Lucera (Italy) asking him not to scandalize the faithful by revealing the laicization of ‘pedophile’ priest Gianni Trotta (who, availing of that omerta, became the coach of a juvenile football team where he reportedly committed new crimes. [Oh, so it seems worse than originally reported: namely, that Ladaria had been instrumental in defrocking the priest but failed to notify Italian authorities about his offenses. About which, BTW, Lella who is a lawyer or works in a law office says, on her blog that in Italy, only government officials are obliged to report crimes to the police, and bishops and priests are obviously not government officials.]

It is an accumulation of events each of which is so sensitive that they cannot be treated as single episodes requiring only routine ‘maintenance’. It is striking that from this muddle two crucial issues emerge, precisely those that had caught the attention of public opinion, Catholic or otherwise, at the start of this pontificate, when Pope Francis appeared to emphasize that there ought to be zero tolerance on questions of sexual abuse and total transparency on financial questions.

The events involving Collins, Pell and Ladaria call into question the existence [and efficacy] of a rigorous strategy to combat sexual abuses by priests and episcopal connivances to cover them up, as well as the defeciencies that have been manifested in this area.

The events involving Milone and Zerbo revive the necessity of a policy for total transparency in the financial affairs not just of the Vatican but also of the local Churches.

The Miller dismissal touches another important question: the need for team play in the Roman Curia to support the aggiornamento that the Argentine pope preaches.

The point is that all these cases have revealed dysfunctions in management that can change the direction intended by papal decisions.

There is no doubt that the Pell episode was badly conducted. For quite some time, there have been warnings [by whom? from whom?] that any personage seen to be a close associate of the pope should not be vulnerable to any possible accusations regarding sexual abuses committed or covered up.

[Please, Politi! Did anyone in the media raise any objections when Pell was first named to be in the papal advisory council early in the pontificate, nor several months later, when he was named Secretary of the Economy and hailed by anyone as the #2 man in the Vatican? No one did, not even recalling that Benedict XVI had decided against naming him Prefect of Bishops back in 2010 precisely because the accusations that had hounded Pell for decades would definitely be destructive to the Church and to both of them.

No, the narrative was that nothing Bergoglio did could be wrong because he only has the best intentions. Of course, it was not wrong to name Pell - because he was pre-eminently qualified for both positions given him by Bergoglio – but no one at the Vatican, nor among the Bergoglio fanatics in the media cheering squad, imagined that the animus in Australia against Pell would come back, sooner or later, to sting the pope like the proverbial scorpion’s tail…

How emblematic that in the Pell case, the media has been responsible for publicizing and inflaming anti-Pell accusations indiscriminately in Australia; and in Italy and the rest of the Western world, for having been so blinded by Bergoglio adulation that they failed to see that sooner or later, Pell would fall victim in some way to his accusers in Australia.]

By mid-June, Pell’s situation was already considered dangerous by many in the highest circles of the Vatican. “Pell has skeletons in his closet which are by no means minor,” a Vatican functionary confided to me. [Well, that’s a new one! As clear a declaration of war as there ever was! Would Politi’s confidant ever have expressed himself in that way if he did not believe that it expressed what the pope himself thought about the case?]

To announce to the media at 4 o’clock in the morning that Pell was going to have a press conference first thing in the day showed a ‘dilettantish’ way of dealing with the issue, wrote Isabelle de Gaulmyn in the French newspapee La Croix. [Hey, the news from the Australian police arrived in Europe in the late evening – Australia being 18 hours ahead of Rome time. How much sooner could Pell arrange with the Vatican Press Office to hold the news conference – especially if, unofficially, he was already considered persona non grata at the Vatican?]

“The Church made a move because government justice [in Australia] had moved,” she said, when it ought to have been the other way around, pointing out that this was not a question of presumption of innocence till proven guilty but about ignoring the principle that it is important to take precautions. [First, whenever anyone is accused of anything, it is always a question of presuming innocence until otherwise proven. Second, what ‘precautions’ could the Vatican have taken - given Pell had been the #2 man to Bergoglio since February 2014 - other than asking him to go on leave when the accusations first resurfaced, and not when filing of charges against him was said to be imminent?

Most importantly, does De Gaulmyn forget that in February 2016, Pell had already sat through four evenings of questioning in Rome by an Australian Royal Commission about these accusations? He did his part. Is it his fault that it took the Australian police all of 16 months to put their ducks in a row and announce they were ready to file charges – on accusations they had been investigating for decades???

In checking back on the date of that inquiry, I came across a Guardian article quoting the infamous Robert Mickens saying that “Pell was purposely playing the kind of almost sorry old man who was beaten up a little bit”. (Mickens being mean and nasty as ever - this is the guy who wrote on Facebook that he could not wait for Benedict XVI to be buried.) Anyway, I had not read the article at the time, and it turns out that Pell was asked in Rome in four sessions attended by the international media about most of the icky details recounted in the Milligan book, although the article chose their takehome message to be that

---

Pell admitted under oath for the first time that he had heard that an Australian Catholic schoolteacher may have engaged in “paedophilia activity”, but never followed up on the “one or two fleeting references” he heard about the “misbehaviour”.

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But the main question, even in the light of Mueller’s dismissal, now concerns the immediate future.
- Will that long-announced special tribunal come into being which will take up the case of abuse victims whose local bishops are negligent and fail to go after predator priests?
- And will the Commission for the Protection of Minors be given an effective role instead of remaining a confraternity for reflections, whereas its only true objective ought to be to elaborate obligatory guidelines for Episcopal conferences who continue to deal with clerical sex abuse with an apparent calm that approaches indifference?
[Politi should directly challenge Cardinal O'Malley about this, because the latter has been so sanctimonious about this Commission which he heads, even as it has done nothing but exist so far!]

The second point; money. It would seem that Pell, in his role as supervisor of the finances of the different Vatican agencies, was considered ‘a bad man’. He was clear about clearing out the jungle of arbitrary and at times illegal ways of financial management practiced by various sectors of the Vatican. Now that even his handpicked Auditor-General has resigned, how does the Secretariat of the Economy intend to follow a line of rigor and transparency?

[That’s a silly question. The Secretariat has its statutes as well as various implementing instructions – it simply has to stick to them, making improvements where necessary. And what stops the Vatican from immediately hiring a replacement for Milone - while also taking measures that his replacement will not be hobbled in doing his job as Milone was because he went after one of the papal pets, Mons. Vigano of the new Secretariat for Communications, for proposing too big a budget?]

Let us not forget that two years ago, it was discovered that the APSA (Administration for the Patrimony of the Holy See] had encrypted accounts available for carrying out ‘irregular’ operations. [But the APSA, which is officially the central bank of the Holy See, not the IOR, has since regained many of the powers it had earlier apparently lost to the Secretariat for the Economy, and that surely could not have happened without the knowledge – and tacit approval – of the pope.]

Nor must we forget that it is useless for the Authority for Financial Information (AIF) to [religiously] report ‘serious irregularities’ it has uncovered when almost not a single one of those responsible has been brought to face a Vatican court.

These are knots that the pope must undo quickly. They require clear and effective solutions if he wants to provide a fresh impulse for carrying out reforms on extremely sensitive matters.

There is a last question. The dismissal of Mueller, who systematically played against the pope’s pastoral line [What planet do you live on, Politi? Mueller systematically spoke out of both sides of his mouth, which was an eerie version of Bergoglio’s calculated ambiguities; and even after he was dismissed, his first line was to say, “I really have no differences with Pope Francis”. You, Politi, are just as much in a state of denial as Mueller], brings to the foreground the exigency that the pope creates a homogeneous team of reformers at all levels of the Curia.

Up to now, in the name of inclusion and respect for Curial appointments made by Benedict XVI [Again, Politi is reporting from Mars. What respect was given to Cardinals Burke and Piacenza, and to Mueller long before he was dismissed, nor to Amato whose appointment the pope deliberately did not renew donec aliter promoveatur?], this pope has essentially left the Curial leadership as it was from the era of Wojtyla and Ratzinger. [If he truly found serious fault with any of those who are still in place, enough to dismiss them for cause, he would have done so, but he has not!]

But a Church on the move, as Bergoglio wishes, needs a lead patrol inspired by the same objectives. Even these choices rest with Bergoglio now. Otherwise the machinery will stall. And we have seen with what results…

Between poisons and the snares of power:
Pope Francis’s obstacle course
In recent dismissals and new appointments, one can see the problems behind Bergoglio’s reforms.
But criticisms are growing in the Curia for a method and an agenda that are considered unbalanced.
By Massimo Franco
Translated from
CORRIERE DELLA SERA
July 5, 2017

The rosary of the heads that have fallen in recent weeks tell of a Vatican that has yet to stabilize, more than four years into the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

It conveys the image of a pope who is formidable on the level of popularity and influence on geopolitics [We have yet to see that! Even if he is already seen by some as the new post-Obama 'leader of the global left', what did Obama really manage to do in that capacity?] but who continues to work uphill in deciding how to govern ‘his’ Rome and in Italy, whether it concerns Vatican finances, his closest collaborators or the ‘ministers’ of the Holy See.

Merely to say that one or the other promotion was rash or mistaken does not suffice. What emerges is a method of government which shows obvious limitations and which transforms the best intentions of reform into potential boomerangs. [Who ever judgedsanybody on intentions, anyway, when the road to hell is proverbially paved with good intentions? Only the demented Nobel Prize committee which gave the Peace Prize to Barack Obama when he had done nothing yet in office.]

But everything is taking place in a veil of mystery, sometimes of deliberate opacity, that only Francis’s great charisma has allowed to be received with indulgence. [Franco omits to mention the corollary: Whereas the media’s great hostility to Benedict XVI, in whom they could see not a single virtue, never allowed them to be indulgent about him in any way!]

The Vatican Auditor-General Libero Milone was dismissed only two years into his five-year appointment. And his mentor, Cardinal George Pell, was forced to leave the Secretariat for the Economy in order to go to Australia and defend himself from accusations of sexual abuse some of which date to forty years ago. While the ‘guardian of orthodoxy’ Cardinal Gerhard Mueller did not get re-appointed after his five-year tenure begun under Benedict XVI ended. All three gone in the space of two weeks.

Singularly interesting is that the pope named Spanish Jesuit Luis Ladaria Ferrer to replace Mueller, one considered a ‘fedelissimo’ [‘most faithful’ to the faith is fine, but not ‘most faithful’ to this pope]. But we quickly learned that the man who now leads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith labors under the shadow of failing to denounce to the authorities a priest found guilty of sex abuses and laicized by the CDF. Apparently this information was either never brought up or considered of secondary significance when the pope decided to appoint him to succeed the conservative Mueller, who had been a tenacious critic of Bergoglio on the theological level [Like Politi, Franco and other Bergoglio paladins choose to evoke Mueller as one-sidedly hostile to Bergoglio, when his ‘conservative’ critics found him inconsistent at best, and a practitioner of doublespeak at worst.

In fact, his most unambiguous statements were pro-Bergoglio, from “Amoris laetitia presents no dangers to the faith” despite the DUBIA presented by four cardinals with whom he co-authored a preemptive defense of marriage book before the first Bergoglian family synod, and the fact that he submitted ‘hundreds of corrections’ to the draft given to him to review, all of which were ignored; to his “I have absolutely no differences with Pope Francis” on the day his dismissal was announced.

Any ‘unambiguous’ statements he made in relation to faith and the doctrine targeted by AL were generic statements 1) that the document must be interpreted according to preceding Magisterium, Church Tradition and doctrine; 2) that it changes nothing about the sacramental discipline that the Church has always taught; and that, yest, it presents no danger to the faith! - none of them directed at Bergoglio, 'understandably'. How could he have said all that with a straight face?]

The German cardinal, who denied he dissented from Pope Francis [There he goes again!], says he will not accept any appointments [as if any would be offered!] and will stay in Rome.

“But now Mueller can be the standard bearer for the pope’s opponents” [How can he be if he denies that he dissents from the pope at all???], says a cardinal at the Vatican [Coccopalmerio or Maradiaga. Take your pick!] “He already is the reference point for bishops of Eastern Europe, of Africa and part of North America who are prevalently conservative”. [That’s news to most of us! News reports over the past four years would make that ‘reference point’ Cardinal Burke, or lately, Cardinal Sarah, not Mueller.]

These are snapshots of a papacy immersed in a convulsive phase, in which merely changing the head of a dicastery after five years is not seen as physiologic (i.e., normal) but traumatic. [Since Mueller’s dismissal was widely predicted and expected, there was nothing traumatic about it, not even to Mueller himself.]

The enemies of Bergoglio, who remain many, claim that they actually see a progressivist consistency in all this. Indeed, they accuse him of following an unbalanced social agenda in favor of ‘the poor’, of indiscriminate immigration and of dialog with modernity.

[Please, Mr. Franco, name me one world leader or politician who does not say he is for ‘the poor’, exactly as a beauty contestant would! By now, expressions of concern for ‘the poor’ by anyone should be considered ‘white noise’ to be ignored.

Let the Vatican do things that will help the poor to help themselves from being poor, instead of concentrating on token cosmetic stunts like providing showers for the homeless at the Vatican, or inviting them to breakfast with the pope, or bring them to the beach for a swim and buying them pizza! Then we can talk about ‘the poor’!

Nor are 'the poor' helped one iota by subscribing as this pope does to the UN’s never-going-to-happen goal of eliminating poverty and hunger from the world by 2030! It is hubristic unreality – as if any human agencies could do what Jesus did not do when he was on earth and did not intend to do, because ‘the poor you will always have with you’. Poverty, like death and disease, is simply one of the great ills unleashed on mankind by Original Sin, and no one will ever eliminate it completely because to do so would violate the very sense of divine justice.]

Their accusation would sound like a badge of honor, if it was not also accompanied by criticisms that he names to positions of authority those who express a ‘non-antagonistic’ culture like him and that therefore, he has a circle of collaborators who are not always able to advice him adequately and appropriately.

Among other things, for months it has been insinuated that there are anonymous dossiers against persons close to him. On some ‘conservative’ sites, one reads fictional accounts of persons linked to the aid given by the Italian bishops’ conference to some dioceses in the Third World, who were reportedly in contact with Bergoglio when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. [So? Were the contacts questionable, were these persons questionable, and are the CEI projects overseas questionable? The CEI finances this aid from the annual payment to them by the Italian government of a sum equivalent to 0.008% of all the taxes paid by Italian Catholics, and amounts to tens of millions of euros annually. This is in reparation for all the Church properties occupied and confiscated by the Italian state at the time of the unification of Italy in the mid-19th century and the dissolution of the Papal states all over Italy except the Vatican.]

These are poisons which illustrate well a situation of constant tension and of internecine power struggles which may seem to recall too much those that have taken place in the Vatican in recent years and in recent pontificates. [Get off it, Franco! Internal power struggles are a permanent feature of all bureaucracies, and you cannot get away with claiming that they only took place ‘in recent years and recent pontificates’.]

There is a muffled tam-tam reflecting a repressed but widespread discontent in the Vatican, and the frustration of those who know they cannot directly attack a very popular pope who is respected internationally [as if the popes before him had not been respected internationally, or had not been popular in their own better ways!]And yet, it is a commonplace that the economic reforms undertaken have produced results that are controversial, to say the least.

Pell’s ‘leavetaking’ and before that, Milone’s resignation, cannot be dismissed merely as the outcome of a struggle within the Curia. “About Milone, just ask the Vatican police,” some say in a sybilline [i.e., ominous] way at the Vatican. [Are they implying Milone committed acts deemed worthy of inquiry or investigation by the Vatican police? This is the first such negative insinuation I have read about him.] The idea that he resigned only because he was asked to take a salary cut was never plausible.

In fact, there is a crisis in the model of governance and impulse for reforms that this pope had strongly wanted. And one guesses there is some sort of settling accounts by the ‘Old Guard’ in the Curia. [Please! What ‘Old Guard’? Go through all the names of the dicastery heads and their secretaries in the Bergoglio Curia, and identify who would be the ‘Old Guard’! Bergoglio has co-opted all of the Curial heads he did not appoint, placed his favorites in key positions, made sure the secretaries in every dicastery are persons loyal to him and who can serve as his ‘eyes and ears’, demoted Piacenza and Burke to sinecures, and is giving Cardinal Sarah the same treatment he gave Mueller for years (“You really are of no importance to me, so watch out as I can throw you out any time”).]

And not because they have any autonomous power – in the Bergoglio era, they [WHO ARE THESE ‘THEY????] have been marginalized or placed on the defensive. [I don’t think ‘they’ include any Curial head or secretary. By process of elimination, we are left with the middle-level management who continue in the Curia regardless of who is pope, the permanent officeholders who are the bane of every bureaucracy.]

But some levers remain in the hands of persons who have not been minimally touched by the ‘new course’. And now, almost by inertia, they are re-emerging with the disappearance from the scene of ‘new people’. [So far, Franco has only mentioned one of the ‘new people’ – Milone – or two, if one includes Cardinal Pell. The Pope has said, however, that in the interim, the two secretaries of the Secretariat for the Economy will be running the dicastery, namely, Mons. Alfred Xuereb, whom he named Secretary-General at the time the dicastery was created in February 2014 (and who served for ten months as Bergoglio’s private secretary at the recommendation of Benedict XVI, to whom Xuereb was the second private secretary besides Mons. Gaenswein) and Monsignor Brian Ferme, an Australian-born jurist as Prelate Secretary. Xuereb cannot by any means be considered ‘Old Guard’ unless anyone who served Benedict XVI is considered ‘Old Guard’ – and that would include many current Curial prefects and presidents, who can no longer be Old Guard because they have been so evidently been co-opted by Bergoglio.]

Moreover, Francis himself admitted in an interview with Corriere della Sera last February that the situation in the Church, compared to that considered by the Conclave of 2013, has changed. [DUH!] “At the General Congregations,” he said, “they spoke about the problems at the Vatican, of reforms, which everybody wanted. There is corruption in the Vatican. [‘C’e corruzione in Vaticano’ – literally, “There is corruption in the Vatican”, using the present tense. Bergoglio’s language is so imprecise I do not know if he meant that literally, or if he meant ‘There was corruption in the Vatican’ then, in which case, he ought to have said ‘C’era corruzione in Vaticano, using the past tense.] But I am at peace. If there’s a problem, I write a note to St. Joseph and place it under his statue that I have at my bedside. It’s the statue of a sleeping St. Joseph. By now, he has been sleeping on a mattress of notes!”

Well, that symbolic ‘mattress’ must have thickened considerably in the last few weeks.

And in the restaurant of the Hotel Santa Marta, where the pope lives in the Vatican, a small but significant novelty has been noted. The pope’s dining table is no longer the one at the center as it used to be. Now, it is located in a corner, Bergoglio eats with only a few selected people, and has his back to the rest of the room. [Why does he not stop with the rigmarole and simply have room service?]

P.S. I thought I would re-post here a Vatican Radio interview with Marco Politi shortly after Benedict XVI announced his resignation. Politi had been such an unrelenting critic of Benedict XVI that he even published a book in 2012 entitled Joseph Ratzinger: Crisis of a Papacy. Which is ironical now that Bergogliophile Politi writes about 'the first crisis' in Bergoglio's Pontificate.

A Vaticanista looks back to
the Papacy of Benedict XVI
VATICAN RADIO
March 5, 2013

Explaining how the Papacy of Benedict XVI has written new chapters in the history of the Catholic Church, veteran journalist, author of a number of books dedicated to the Popes, and Vatican observer Marco Politi looks back to an intense eight-year period which has further defined the role of the Roman Pontiff in a contemporary world.

Speaking to Vatican Radio’s Linda Bordoni, Politi expresses his opinion that Benedict’s Pontificate has been in perennial tension, moving “from the past to the present, from the past to the future”. By being the first Pope to resign in modern times - he says - he has set the stage for a new scenario…

Politi says that by stepping down, Pope Benedict “has moved the human aspect of the Pontiff to the forefront, underlining that the Church is led by Christ – not by a person – and that the Popes are servants”. So, he says “when it is the time for a servant that has much vigour spiritually and physically, then it is good that the former servant gives way to a successor”.

This – he says – is very human, and at the same time it is theologically very deep, because it puts Christ and God at the center of the community. [P.S. 2017 It took someone like Politi to note this, while too many so-called 'conservative' or 'traditionalist' commentators have impugned Benedict XVI - and continue to impugn - for having resigned, deriding the reason he gave for it!]

Politi agrees that Benedict’s unprecedented step in modern times to step down in a way modernizes the Papacy. He says that “he is completing the reforms of Paul VI who wanted to refresh the top hierarchy of the Church. In fact he decided that bishops over 75 had to retire, and then he decided that Cardinals over 80 could not be electors in the Conclave”. Now Benedict is giving his successors the possibility to step down at a certain moment of their life.

Since Benedict is a rational man, Politi points out, “he knows very well that in the modern world changes are very quick so you need somebody who can follow all those changes”. And also in the modern world, where the media and public opinion are so focused on the Pope, it is not possible like in past centuries to have an old and ill Pontiff who delegates administration to someone behind the scenes.[Even worse, every sign and symptom of papal infirmity would be blown up as a symbol of everything wrong in the Church - a most obvious consequence completely ignored by those who insist Benedict XVI should have carried on till he died. What they overlooked about Papa Wojtyla's final years, they would never have done with Benedict XVI!]

Politi adds that this gesture, which was revolutionary, and at the same time humble and noble, also was a way to recognize his personal limits. Many people – he says - have appreciated this gesture, “even those who maybe were not in agreement with him got a new wave of sympathy for him”.

Because of his very high intellectual and theological stature, Politi continues, Benedict has always been beyond stereotypes. [But Politi was in the forefront of those who stereotyped Joseph Ratzinger first as the Panzerkardinal and then as 'the isolated Pope who lives in an ivory tower'.] And because it is not in his temperament to “rule” the machinery of the Curia, he showed a certain lack of leadership. But thanks to his “intellectual dimension he was often moving “from past to present, from past to future.

For instance, in the last years he often underlined the fact that Christians must be an active minority in modern society - recognizing that society has changed. He reiterated this concept during his journey to Britain, and also when he returned from Prague when he said ‘it is time to open a dialogue with non-believers who are in search of the truth’. And he decided to invite non-believers for the first time to the great religious meeting in Assisi”.

This, Politi says, is also very modern because it means “to understand that modern society is a society of crossroads where many philosophies, religions and ways of thinking meet with Christianity. And Christianity must be able to be in dialogue with these dimensions”.

Politi speaks of his recently published book, “Joseph Ratzinger: Crisis of a Papacy”, written because he realized that there had been too many crises in the Papacy. He says that although they were all unwanted crises, they showed there was a problem. [Are there any 'wanted crises'???]

Politi mentions the crises with Islam and with Jews because of the Lefevrian groups, and he says there were other flashpoints culminating of course with the “Vatileaks” crisis and the questions regarding the Vatican Bank.

As regards his handling of the sexual abuse crisis, Politi points out that "it must be said Pope Benedict turned a new page in the history of the Catholic Church” with his zero tolerance line, by putting the victims at the center of the attention, and by recognizing the failures of some bishops who failed to apply the rules. And he has put new, more rigorous rules in place and asked bishops all over the world to elaborate guidelines to confront this phenomenon.

Politi says that he thinks when Benedict spoke of the burden of the Papacy, saying that sometimes it was very heavy to bear this burden, the Pope was also referring to these situations.

As regards the problems he ran into with Jews, Politi says in reality Pope Benedict had a “super great esteem for the Jewish traditions. He found a better a better word to describe the Church’s relationship with the Jews than did Blessed John Paul II, because John Paul II, coming from the Romantic Polish tradition said that they were ‘our elder brethren’, but the Jews don’t like this example because the elder brethren always fail, and the younger brethren win – like Jacob or Joseph – and Pope Benedict found a better word when he said ‘our fathers in faith’, showing he is a very subtle theologian”.

Finally, thinking back to his own reaction when the news broke that Pope Benedict had stepped down, Politi says he actually wasn’t surprised. After having ascertained the veracity of the news, he recalled that for a number of years he had been saying that because of his mentality, Benedict could become the first Pope to step down in modern times. He had always predicted a 50 percent possibility that he would do so.

Why? Because - Politi says – “I always took Ratzinger’s speeches very seriously. Also when I interviewed him in the past, I noticed he has a way of choosing his words: ‘when he speaks it is as if he is writing what he thinks’. So when two years ago he told his biographer, Peter Seewald, that in certain circumstances of physical, psychological and mental stress a Pope, not only has the right but also the duty to step down, this for me was like an alarm signal because he was speaking about “duty”, and for Germans, the word duty is very strong. And already when Pope John Paul II was very ill, there were only two Cardinals who were speaking about the possibility of him stepping down: one was Cardinal Ratzinger and the other was Cardinal Maradiaga. So this idea regarding the possibility and the necessity to step down was in his mind a rational option. So when it happened I said: voilà – he did it”.

Politi speaks of the great esteem he has for Benedict’s spiritual and intellectual qualities. He says he always liked the way he preached the Gospel in some little parishes he visited as the Bishop of Rome. “He has a way of explaining the Gospel in such a clear way that it comes straight to the heart and the minds of both very intellectual people and of very simple people. I always felt in his words a Living Faith”. [Hmmm, I must check back to read what Politi has written about Bergoglio's preaching!]

"If at times" ['At times'! It was all the time with Politi], Politi says, “I have been critical towards some aspects of his lack of leadership, it is because it is the duty of a journalist to observe what happens (...). Even if you see a personality and recognize that he is an exceptional or extraordinary personality, whether he is a politician, a leader or a religious leader, you must observe what really happens in his mandate and you must be a witness of things, even if they don’t all go well”.
[But nothing at all here about Politi's most frequent criticism of Benedict XVI as "an ivory-tower Pope, isolated from reality"... In short, as I noted at the time, Politi seems to have summed up his criticism of Benedict XVI into 'his crisis with Islam', 'his crisis with the Jews', Vatileaks, and the IOR. And that's what he wrote a book about?]

July 7, 2017 headlines

PewSitter

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BREAKING: Charlie Gard will get another chance in court, remains on life support
Who's next to lose Vatican job?
Does Francis Plan to Abolish Summorum Pontificum?
Deadline nears for pope's ultimatum for Nigeria diocese
Father Antonio Spadaro: 'The canvas is a fabric of society'
Parish Publicizes Same-sex Marriage of Its Council Member
Prayers: Yet Another Priest Murdered in Mexico, 18 in Last Six Years
Abp. Delpini: 'I'm inadequate, I need help, I will listen to everyone'
Cardinal Farrell: Time to implement Vatican II's teaching on the laity
Mental health and sinfulness - the Church urgently needs clear teaching
Permission for Divorce and the Catholic Lawyer's Dilemma

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Canon212.com

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Pope Benedict’s Great Restoration
Fr Z on priests not permitted to say the Ancient Mass: Decide whether or not this is a hill you would like to die on. A bishop can crucify a priest in a thousand creative ways.
Unfit to be president of the United States! - NCR Rages about Trump in Poland.
The Vatican Discovers New Paintings by Raphael Hidden in Plain Sight—Right on Its Walls
Report: Woman aborts her baby at Planned Parenthood and herself later same day
After waves of corrupt, depraved, pro-death reports, FrancisVatican proposes experimental treatment for Charlie Gard!
Francis Offers Vatican Passport To Little Charlie
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DUBIA? - CD. CAFFARRA PLEADS FOR CHARLIE GARD "IN THE NAME OF GOD!"
Charlie Gard's life back in court as hospital considers new evidence provided worldwide
SuperDicastery FrancisCardinal Farrell: Time to implement Vatican II’s teaching on the laity
New FrancisBishop Delpini of Milan: "The gift I would like to ask for this diocese and our society is joy"
Abp. Chaput to Vatican Gay Spox Fr. Martin: "Jesus didn’t come to affirm us in our sins and destructive behaviors"
....Corrispondenza Romano: Man Francis called 'exemplary servant of the Gospel', late Fr. L. Milani, notorious "faggot and a heretic"
....Francis: When we sin, tell Jesus, "Love me for who I am"?
AUTOCRATIC FRANCIS GROWING
INCREASINGLY ISOLATED IN VATICAN,
SITTING IN THE CORNER OF THE CAFETERIA

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The big bold headline comes from a GTV newslet based on Massimo Franco's article which I translated in the previous post...

Here's the item on Charlie Gard:
London hospital seeks another
court hearing in Charlie Gard case
CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY



London, England, Jul 7, 2017(CNA/EWTN News).- Great Ormond Street Hospital in London is applying for a new hearing with the high court after new evidence suggests the critically ill baby could benefit from an experimental treatment.

The decision comes after a team of seven international medical experts alerted the hospital that fresh, unpublished data suggested that an experimental drug could improve Charlie’s brain condition.

One of the signatories of the letter is a researcher and neurologist with the Vatican-owned Bambino Gesu Hospital in Rome, which offered to transfer Charlie to their facilities earlier this week. Great Ormond Hospital said they denied the transfer for legal reasons.

“Two international hospitals and their researchers have communicated to us as late as the last 24 hours that they have fresh evidence about their proposed experimental treatment,” a hospital spokesman said, according to the BBC.

“We believe, in common with Charlie’s parents, it is right to explore this evidence,” they said.

“Great Ormond Street Hospital is giving the High Court the opportunity to objectively assess the claims of fresh evidence…It will be for the High Court to make its judgment on the facts,” they said.

Charlie has been diagnosed with mitochondrial depletion syndrome, a rare genetic disease thought to affect just 16 children in the world. The disease causes progressive muscle weakness and can cause death in the first year of life.

Charlie’s case has caught international attention for the various legal battles that his parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, have fought in an attempt to save their son’s life.

The current decision of the hospital to apply for the appeal comes as a surprise after Charlie’s parents were denied their request by the High Court to take Charlie to a hospital in the United States to seek experimental treatment, even after they had raised over $1 million to take him there. Charlie’s parents were also denied their request to take their son home to die.

Charlie’s case will be heard by Justice Francis on Monday at 2 p.m. local time (9 a.m. Eastern) according to a High Court listing.

Antonio Socci, relaying the news, commented on Facebook: "So everyone who stood with Charlie's parents from the start was right!"

And here's the item on the 'new' Raphaels:
Vatican discovers new paintings by Raphael
previously attributed to his pupils
by Henri Neuendorff
ART WORLD
July 6, 2017

It’s not every day that you find a new Raphael lying around, but such is life in the Vatican. Experts have discovered that Italian Renaissance master paragon Raphael had a key role in painting the Room of Constantine in the papal apartments ['the papal apartments' include all the rooms in the Apostolic Palace used for papal functions, while the papal apartment itself, where the popes used to reside before this pope, is a simple suite of unadorned rooms adapted periodically to each occupant] after a restoration yielded clear evidence of the master’s hand.


Room of Constantine, Vatican Apostolic Palace.

It was previously thought that the magnificent reception room was painted by the artist’s workshop after the Raphael sketched in general outlines, as the artist was thought to have died before its completion. Not so, Vatican conservators now believe.

Citing a YouTube video posted by the Vatican’s press office, the Italian newspaper La Stampa reported that the allegorical female figures of the virtues of friendship and justice are indeed the work of Raphael.


Allegory of Justice, by Raphael

“By analyzing the painting, we realized that it is certainly by the great master Raphael,” restorer Fabio Piacentini said. “He painted in oil on the wall, which is a really special technique. The cleaning and removal of centuries of previous restorations revealed the typical pictorial features of the master.”

Arnold Nesselrath, art historian and head of technical and scientific research at the Vatican Museums, added, “We know from 16th-century sources that Raphael painted two figures in this room as tests in the oil technique before he died. According to the sources, these two oil painted figures are of a much higher quality than the ones around them.”

“Raphael was a great adventurer in painting and was always trying something different,” he explained. “When he understood how something worked, he sought a fresh challenge. And so, when he arrived in the largest room, he decided to paint it in oil, but he managed to paint only two figures, and his students continued in the traditional method, leaving only these two figures as autographs of the master.”

In 1509, Raphael was commissioned to paint four rooms in the Apostolic Palace, now known as the Raphael Rooms. The Room of Constantine — the largest — depicts four episodes of the life of the first Roman emperor to recognize the Christian faith and grant freedom of worship. The paintings depict the defeat of paganism and the triumph of the Christian religion.

Two chalk drawings by the Italian Renaissance master have sold for $48 million (at Christie’s London in 2009) and $47.8 million (at Sotheby’s London in 2012), according to the artnet Price Database.

Now, tell me if I have been objectively wrong about criticizing Cardinal Mueller for speaking with a forked tongue!

Cardinal Mueller criticizes the way he was dismissed:
‘The Church’s social doctrine should apply even to the Vatican’
By Marco Tosatti
Translated from
STILUM CURIAE
July 8, 2017

The story of Charlie Gard has kept me from commenting on the Mueller dismissal and the death of that silent giant of the Church who was Cadinal Joachim Meisner. I will do that now by belatedly sharing an interesting article in Passauer Neue Presse which treats both stories (from my own translation).

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Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller has harshly criticized the way in which he was dismissed. In an interview with this newspaper, he said that Pope Francis "informed me of his decision [not to renew his appointment as CDF Prefect] in less than one minute” on his last working day at the CDF. [Friday, June 30 – His 5-year term was to expire Sunday, July 2. He said no reason was given to him.

“I cannot accept such a way of doing things,” Miller underscored, distancing himself clearly from the Pope’s manner. “The social doctrine of the Church should apply even to the Vatican” with respect to how the pope’s co-workers are treated, he said. [OK, so now we are clear. He does not have any dissents with the pope – by which he obviously means doctrinal dissents, but he does object to the pope’s manners! But he sounded all sweetness and light about the pope in the interview he gave to another German newspaper the day he was dismissed.]

The occasion for the interview was the death of Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who died July 3 in Bad Fuessing at the age of 83. Mueller said he had spoken to Meisner the day before that, and Meisner had referred to Mueller’s dismissal from the Curia, saying he was ‘profoundly struck’ by it. “The fact personally wounded him and he considered it a danger for the Church”, Mueller said of Meisner’s rection.

But notwithstanding his criticism of how the pope dismissed him, Mueller gave assurances that Pope Francis has his loyalty. The former Bishop of Regensburg said that he would not react in any way to the choice of the man who succeeds him.

He adds: “There are those who think I would lead a bandwagon of criticism against the pope… but [as a cardinal], I will continue to have the responsibility to concern myself about the unity of the Church and to avoid polarization if possible… [I have been] always loyal to the Pope and intend to remain loyal as a Catholic, bishop, and cardinal, because it is my duty”.

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It must be noted that Mueller was dismissed – in a way unprecedented in the Church since the second half of the 20th century – almost exactly like three of his priests at the CDF were fired by the pope months ago – without any explanation or due cause given. It is the sign of a governing style that one can hardly call ‘collegial’ or ‘dialoguing’.

Mueller’s observation about the Church’s social doctrine is true [Yeah, but rather self-serving of him to cite it for his own case!] To which I might add that even good manners – evangelically or secularly – should always apply…

Europe is dying — but
the politically correct
say 'Don’t be alarmed'
Many in the West remain complacent about Islam’s rising tide - because
they rely on the assurances of people who have been consistently wrong
about Islam and immigration. But they are being denied access to the opinions
of those who have been reliably right — the so-called 'alarmists'.
by William Kilpatrick
CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT
July 7, 2017

I recently read an article, which referred to the “end game” in Europe. Was it one of those stories about how the Swedish police are pleading for help because they have lost control of the immigrant crime situation? Or was it a story about the Italian government’s plea for help to the EU because the African immigrant situation has spun out of control?

No matter. There are, to paraphrase the old TV series, “eight million stories in the naked Continent” to choose from. And they all tell a disturbing story.

If you’ve been following the situation in Europe, you realize that the “end game” could refer to any number of European countries faced with the prospect of Islamization. But for those who haven’t been paying attention, the term “end game” must seem strange. Many people in Europe and a great many people in North America don’t even know that the game has begun — the game of Islamization, that is. [Not that one should call it a game at all, not even a war game. Islam only 'plays' for real - it always has - to advance its objective since Mohammed to Islamize the whole world.]

A number of observers of the European scene have been predicting that large parts of Europe will be Islamic in about two decades. Although they supply acres of demographic evidence to make the point, they were until recently largely ignored. It wasn’t until the immigration invasion which commenced in 2015 that people began to wake up to something that should have been obvious a decade before. Europe is being transformed into something that is European in name only.

How did a change of such immense proportions fly under the radar for so long?

One of the striking things about Douglas Murray’s new book, The Strange Death of Europe, is how often he uses the term “no one had predicted” or words to that effect. In particular, he observes, no one had predicted the scale of Third-World immigration into Europe, and thus no one was prepared for it.

A few Cassandras, he admits, did predict what would happen, but few paid attention to them. In a 1968 speech, which came to be known as the “Rivers of Blood” speech, Enoch Powell, the Conservative shadow cabinet minister, warned of dire consequences should immigration to Britain continue at its then current rate. The speech spelled the end of Powell’s political career.

Yet, as Murray points out, Powell’s predictions fell far short of the eventual reality. Nothing in the speech suggests that Powell had foreseen anything of the magnitude of the 1,400 rapes that occurred in the English city of Rotherham at the hands of Pakistani rape gangs over a number of years, much less the 1,200 assaults by North African men that took place outside the Cologne train station in a single night in 2015.

Powell hadn’t actually used the phrase “rivers of blood,” but by 2017 one could speak in a figurative manner of the Mediterranean as a sea of blood. Starting in 2014, an average of 3,000 migrants were drowning each year in the crossing attempt.

Another “prophet of doom” was the French author Jean Raspail, whose 1973 novel Camp of the Saints described a mass migration from India to the Mediterranean shores of France. [One wonders why Raspail chose to make his migrants Indian! One must note that in all the news reports about violence and hooliganism in Britain's minority communities, Indians are hardly ever involved - rather Pakistanis and Bangladeshi, who are usually Muslim, since their countries were formed from the geographic separation of Muslims from India at the time India gained its independence from the UK - first into Pakistan which had two parts, East and West, on each side of the Indian subcontinent. In 1972, after a bloody two-year civil war in which the East Pakistanis sought their independence, Bangladesh came into being.] Raspail not only predicted the mass Third World migration to Europe, he correctly foresaw that a culture steeped in the doctrine of diversity would be unable to resist the invasion.

What he got wrong was the magnitude of the migration. He pictured a flotilla of 100 ships carrying a million people slowly across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and through the Straits of Gibraltar. But by 2016, almost twice that number of migrants were entering Europe every year.

Still, Powell and Raspail were far closer to the mark than the multitude of commentators who criticized them. In other words, the best predictors of Europe’s future were individuals who were dismissed by their contemporaries as crackpots and alarmists. If you were a betting man, the best bet circa 1970 would have been to place all your money on Europe’s biggest alarmists, and then double the bet.

Unfortunately, almost 50 years later, there’s still time to place your bets. There’s a new wave of “alarmists” who, for the last decade or so, have been consistently right about what the spread of Islam spells for Europe. Yet they have been consistently dismissed as extremists.

The new “alarmists” would include Oriana Fallaci, Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Thilo Sarrazin, Robert Spencer, Mark Steyn, and Douglas Murray himself. Despite the dead-on accuracy of their assessments and predictions, all of them have been harshly attacked by the establishment media and establishment leaders — in short, by the people who have been dead wrong about almost every aspect of the Islamic problem.

Fallaci, Wilders, and Steyn had to endure a series of “heresy” trials, Sarrazin lost his job, Hirsi Ali was forced to leave Holland, Spencer was denied entry to the UK, and Murray, who writes for the Sunday Times and The Wall Street Journal, has been branded as a right-wing extremist.

The attempts to silence our contemporary Cassandras helps to explain why so many fail to realize that the “game” has begun, let alone that it may be approaching “game-over” for some parts of Europe.

The case of Robert Spencer is typical. He is one of the world’s leading experts on jihad and other aspects of Islam. Yet the powers-that-be have gone to extreme lengths to shut him up. Catholic bishops have rescinded speaking invitations, the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled him a “hater,” the UK has denied him entry, Facebook has suspended his account, and, most recently, Google has made it very difficult to find his popular site online. [I've used material from Jihad Watch quite a few times on this Forum, and I didn't realize it has become virtually inaccessible!]

If you google “jihad,” you’ll have to wade through numerous Islamic apologist sites before you finally come to Spencer’s JihadWatch. If a lot of people in the West don’t realize how serious the Islamization problem has become, it’s because the establishment elites don’t want them to know.

Many in the West remain complacent about Islam’s rising tide because they rely on the assurances of people who have been consistently wrong about Islam and immigration. Meanwhile, they are being denied access to the opinions of the people who have been reliably right—the so-called “alarmists.”

It’s a dangerous state of affairs because when alarming things are happening, you need someone to sound the alarm. And then you need to pay attention to what they say.

The trouble with the original Cassandra was not that her predictions were wrong. On the contrary, all of what she said came to pass. The tragedy was that no one listened to her.

It's ironic that the situation is reversed between opposing camps on two of the pet secular issues of the day - climate change and the Islamist threat. On climate change, the p.c. dominant mentality camp are the alarmists, but on the Islamist threat, they are the contra-alarmists. In either case, they have neither objective fact nor reason on their side but insist nonetheless that they alone are right and could be right.

Is Cardinal Pell “the quintessential scape-goat”?
“The Australian leftist establishment hates him,the gay lobby hate him,
the atheists, liberal Catholics and feminist ideologues hold him in contempt
and he has taken on the Italian mafia in trying to reform the Vatican’s finances.”
Editorial
by Carl Olson
CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT
July 6, 2017

I’m not an expert — not even close — on Australian politics or Catholicism Down Under, but over the past few years I’ve carried on correspondence with a number of Catholics in Australia. And these folks, all of them serious and learned Catholics, have consistently painted a picture that is often troubling, even disturbing. One of them recently lamented that while, until recently, “there was an identifiable thing in Australia known as Catholicism”, that “thing no longer exists.”

To Americans, this source noted, this will sound “pessimistic,” but to Australians “it could well not seem pessimistic enough.” Hyberbolic to some degree, but also indicative of the frustration of many Catholics Down Under.

Anti-Catholicism runs deep, and while the U.S. certainly had its share of anti-Catholic nastiness in the day — notably in the Nativism of the early 1800s and the animosity against Catholic immigrants in the decades that followed — much of Australia seems to have held on rather tightly to its suspicion, dislike, and even hatred of the Catholic Church. (This is not to disregard how much the secular media and elites still go after the Church in the U.S., but to note the difference in degree between the two countries.)

Church leadership in Australia has, by and large, not helped matters in the least. Not because the bishops there have been overly orthodox or “conservative”, but because they have been mostly soft, squishy, or worse. Or, in the words of another correspondent, “worse than useless”.

This same correspondent notes that Cardinal George Pell has been one of the few exceptions, being personally responsible for almost anything and everything good that has taken place in the Church in Australia since “the mid-1990s.” This has earned him many enemies, as Mercatornet.com’s Michael Cook — who writes from Australia, where the site is based — summed up in a recent piece:

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George Pell’s problem is his strength of character. He was born two generations before Mark Zuckerberg, but the motto of Facebook, “move fast and break things”, expresses something of his style.

Even physically, at 6-foot-3-inches, he is an imposing figure. He is a blunt speaker, a tough and practical manager, a theological conservative, a supporter of the Pope, and an outspoken critic of contemporary social mores. He was the plumber of the Australian Catholic Church, the man who fearlessly waded into the sewer of its sex abuse scandal and cleared the blocked drains.

So Pell has no shortage of enemies.
- When Australia had a referendum on changing the head of state from the Queen of England, he was a leading supporter of Australia becoming a Republic. That was divisive.
- He opposes homosexual activism, which is divisive.
- He strongly opposes same-sex marriage, which is bitterly divisive.
- He supported John Paul II to the hilt and amongst his clergy that was divisive.
- He set up his own sex-abuse protocol and amongst the Australian bishops that was divisive.
- He shook up the Melbourne seminary and that was divisive.
- In his role in the Vatican, he has worked hard to set finances right and root out corruption and that was divisive.

George Pell’s career is a kind of mise en scène for an Agatha Christie novel in which Hercule Poirot finds that the dead man in a pool of blood was living in a hotel and every resident had a motive for murder.

---

Or, as one of my correspondents put it:

---

‘The Australian leftist establishment hates him, the gay lobby hate him, the atheists, liberal Catholics and feminist ideologues hold him in contempt and he has taken on the Italian mafia in trying to reform the Vatican’s finances. There is also the issue of freemasonic influence in the Victorian police force’.

---

Freemasonry? Many Americans will either scoff or be puzzled by such claims, but the role of freemasonry in Australia (and some countries in Europe) is not something of past centuries or moldy conspiracy theories. But even setting that aside, Pell has plenty of enemies from:
• Secular liberals, as Cook explains:

---

“The attacks on Pell ultimately stem from a loathing of the Church and its moral teachings amongst the left-leaning Victorian political establishment. At the moment it is in government, noisily campaigning for euthanasia and transgender rights and quietly gloating over the possibility of destroying Australia’s best-known Catholic.”

---

• Liberal Catholics, as described by Peter Craven of The Sydney Morning Herald:

---

“The antagonism between Pell and those urbane worldlings of the Church is certainly true and many people don’t realise that Pell was loathed by a lot of Catholic liberals long before he became identified with the abuse issue in the public mind. In fact, the opposition to Pell (which was shared by his predecessor as Archbishop in Melbourne, Sir Frank Little, who seems to have been rather more of an appeaser of sexual offences) was quite marked at the very stage that Pell was making an impact as the most forceful and personable churchman since Daniel Mannix.”

---

• The media, as lambasted by former politician Amanda Vanstone:

---

“The media frenzy surrounding Cardinal George Pell is the lowest point in civil discourse in my lifetime. I’m 64. What we are seeing is no better than a lynch mob from the dark ages. Some in the media think they are above the law both overseas and at home. Deep pockets of your boss or lesser pockets on your victim, build bravado. If your assets aren’t on the line you can trash a reputation with gay abandon.”

---

It’s worth pointing that the media in Australia has long had very low approval ratings (something that Americans can identify with). With such a poisonous and poisoned situation, the question many are asking is: Can Cardinal Pell get a fair hearing?

“It has been Pell’s misfortune to be a good man, an effective manager and a loyal priest,” states Cook. “In today’s world that is a dangerous combination. Ensuring that he gets a fair trial will be the ultimate test of the fairness of Australia’s courts.”

Vanstone, a political liberal, wonders:

---

If there were a real prospect of Pell being charged one might have thought authorities would have sought an injunction to prevent the publication of a recently published book on him and certain allegations. Isn’t it normal to try to ensure a person can get a fair trial by keeping prejudicial, untested material out of the public arena?

---

The book in question is Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell (Melbourne, 2017), by Louise Milligan. “Each and every allegation of abuse and cover up against him is false,” said a spokesman for Pell in May about the book, adding it “is an exercise in character assassination.” The book, as of late June, has been pulled by the publisher. But the book has been reviewed in great detail by Julia Yost of First Things, and has been found wanting:

---

The formal charges against Pell may differ from those highlighted in Milligan’s book. It is in the nature of sex abuse hysteria that allegations, true or not, will multiply. So I would be surprised if the formal charges did not include novel accusations. But let us scrutinize the case we have before us, in the same way those formal charges must be scrutinized: in terms of their cogency, credibility, and underlying assumptions.

Milligan does not attempt to conceal her hostility to the Catholic Church. She recalls her Catholic girlhood with a shudder. When she can, she quotes her sources disclaiming any vendetta against the Church. But she is equally happy to quote a source, for instance, who recalls that his mother “took her shoe off and hit me in the face about six or seven times and said I was dirty” — in accordance, he says, with the “Catholic system.”

Whenever she can, Milligan associates Catholicism with the victimization of children. In her image of Pell, this association takes a monstrous form. Pell, she writes, exhibits a “sociopathic lack of empathy,” not least in his adherence to traditional Catholic moral teaching. This portrait soon descends into schoolyard caricature.

Taking up a popular epithet for him, Milligan calls Pell a “bully” over a dozen times. As a bishop, Pell used print, radio, and televisual media to bully his flock, by (for instance) voicing his concurrence in Veritatis Splendor. Pell is a bully because, when confronted by people who feel that Catholic moral teaching is unkind, he insists, nonetheless, that it is true.

One source recalls Pell’s televised argument with actress and remarried divorcée Colette Mann: “There was sheer pain in her voice and there was pain and hurt in her whole attitude and she was speaking from her heart. If George had just reached out to her and touched her on the forearm and said something like ‘I am so sorry’ … But no. He hasn’t an ounce of empathy.”

Pell is endlessly convicted by his critics of being insufficiently therapeutic, of failing to model emotiveness and bring about catharsis. The freighting of one churchman with such vast psychodynamic potency verges on the fetishistic.

---

There is much more, which is important reading — but not easy reading, as Yost does not turn away from questions about the alleged logistics of groping, and probing.

Her comparison to the daycare abuse hysteria of the 1980s is, I think, a legitimate and important one; the parallels are quite striking on many levels. If Yost is correct in her analysis and Pell is true in his denials, then one of my Australian correspondents is right on the mark in stating: “He is the quintessential scape-goat. This is an example of white martyrdom.”

Yes, Cardinal Pell may be guilty of some or all charges. But I’m inclined to think he is probably “guilty” of being blunt, occasionally insensitive, orthodox, and unwilling to bent to the whims of those who would prefer he go away. He has expressed readiness, even eagerness, to clear his name. “However that plays out —” writes George Weigel at National Review Online:

---

...and investigative reporters looking for a really good story should be digging into the possibility of an Italian–Australian connection or connections in this affair — George Pell will have his day in court. He will not be the only one on trial as he faces his accusers in a court of law, however.

The reputation for fairness and probity of the Australian police and judicial systems will be on trial with him, as will the Australian media and those in Australian politics who have directly or indirectly encouraged — or at the very least failed to stand up against — the relentless and brutal attack that has been underway against one of Australia’s most accomplished sons for years.

---

There's another newly-prominent scapegoat in current news about the Church - and this time, he is the scapegoat for many anti-Bergoglio 'conservative' bloggers. As Carl Olson writes above about not being an expert on Australia or the state of Catholicism Down Under, I know little of Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, the new CDF Prefect, other than what has been written through the years about him - not much but not damaging either - since Benedict XVI named him Secretary of the CDF when Cardinal Levada was Prefect. Despite what I thought was one of Benedict's rare lapses of judgment (naming Cardinal Bertone to be his Secretary of State - for all the friendship and trust he had in him, and for all of Bertone's qualifications which he failed to put to good use when he was Secretary of State), I would take his nomination of Ladaria as an earnest of the latter's bona fides.

As mentioned in previous posts, he is now accused of having allegedly written an Italian bishop not to publicize that one of his priests had been defrocked by the CDF for proven charges of sexual abuse. If he did that - and one would have to see the entire letter for context - then it was unwise of him to put it in writing. Yet earlier stories also said that he had been instrumental in having the priest defrocked, so what's wrong with that?

Yet it is emblematic of smear campaigns - because I fear this may be one - that somehow, I have not seen any news report that has sought to come out with the full story about this episode, in favor of isolated snippets meant to provoke.

Then there were the attacks from the anti-Ladaria bloggers against Prof. Robert George for writing that Ladaria is not a liberal because it contradicts their narrative that Ladaria, being a Jesuit, cannot be anything but heterodox in his doctrine much as Bergoglio is, because it is claimed he has written that he does not believe there is a hell, which would be genuinely alarming if it were true. (I will comment about this after this article.)

CWR has now published this examination of Ladaria's published statements about marriage and sexuality in the past three years (i.e., amid the doctrinal storm occasioned by the pope's two 'family synods' and the continuing cyclone over Amoris laetitia). I think the statements provide a good beginning to judge for ourselves. I can only hope that those who think they have a case against Ladaria, based on what he has said and done before, will come out with it as soon as they can fact-check themselves.

My own greatest reservation about Ladaria is that if Mueller, for all his conservative credentials and the books he has written about the faith, consented to be a patsy for Bergoglio, can we expect Ladaria, a Jesuit, to do better and get in the way of anything Bergoglio says and does that does violence or offense to the faith? Or is he there simply to be Bergoglio's willing rubber stamp?
 
Ladaria's consistent record of upholding
Church teaching on marriage, sexual morality
Reports of the supposed unorthodoxy of the new CDF Prefect have been greatly exaggerated.
by Michael J. Miller
CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT
July 7, 2017

The announcement on July 1, 2017, that Pope Francis has appointed Curial Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer as the new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith surprised even many Vatican watchers who had predicted a changing of the guard. Reports of his unorthodoxy, though, have been greatly exaggerated.

Ladaria, a 73-year-old Spanish Jesuit who wrote his doctoral thesis on the Holy Trinity and once taught theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, has described himself as a “moderate conservative”. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Secretary of the CDF in 2008, in other words, second-in-command to Cardinal Levada in a Congregation that the Holy Father himself had headed for almost a quarter century (1981-2005). This was not a decision that he made carelessly.

Readers of Catholic World Report may recall that four years later, when the Pope called then-Bishop Gerhard Müller from the Diocese of Regensburg to be the Prefect of the CDF, there were anguished cries in the Traditional Catholic blogosphere that the doctrinal sky was falling. It didn’t. [The main objection was Mueller's proud, open and continued association with Gustavo Gutierrez, father of Liberation Theology as it was applied to Latin America in the 1980s. Mueller claims that Gutierrez's LT is not Marxist or anti-Christian, and continues to write ind efense of Gutierrez.]

Now some of those same commentators are stirring up controversy because Cardinal Müller has not been reappointed for a second five-year term.

Professor Robert George, a legal scholar who teaches at Princeton University, knows Cardinal Müller and Archbishop Ladaria and has worked with both, most recently during the 2014 Humanum Conference on marriage.

In a July 1 FaceBook post responding to some of the rumors and fact-free commentaries, Prof. George wrote that the Pope “is not replacing a ‘conservative’ with a ‘liberal’…. Both are faithful Christians who are deeply committed to the Church’s doctrinal and moral teachings.” [A comment that unleashed jeremiads against George from the anti-Ladaria bloggers!]

During the Humanum Conference “the two men were completely of one mind in upholding the biblical and natural law understandings of marriage and sexual morality.”

In October 2014, only a few days after the end of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family (i.e. part one of the two-part Synod), Abp. Ladaria responded to a letter that a French priest, Father Claude Barthe, had sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, asking whether a priest in the confessional can given absolution to a civilly divorced-and-remarried Catholic while the person is still living with the new partner.

In his answer, Ladaria cited paragraph 84 from the Post-Synodal document Familiaris consortio by Pope John Paul II, which clearly states that divorced-and-remarried Catholics must repent and stop contradicting the indissolubility of marriage by their lives before they can receive the sacrament of Reconciliation or Holy Eucharist worthily.

In effect, Ladaria wrote that although one may investigate whether the sacramental marriage was valid, any impression of “Catholic divorce” must be avoided. The possibility of reconciliation with the sacramental spouse should be considered. If for serious reasons — for instance, the duty to raise the children of the civil marriage—separation from the new partner is not possible, the divorced-and-remarried Catholics should live “as brother and sister”. If only the proceedings at the 2015 Ordinary Synod on the Family had been as clear as Abp. Ladaria’s letter to Fr. Barthe!

Again in 2014, in the midst of the pre-Synod consultations, debates and media coverage, Abp. Ladaria highly recommended Un sola carne in un solo spirito [One Flesh in One Spirit], at that time the most recent book by Father José Granados, a professor at the Lateran University, a prolific writer and a member of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.

“It is a beautiful, deep and well documented volume, in which the discussion of the topics is always guided by a strict criterion,” His Excellency said at the presentation of the book in the Auditorium of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Rome.

Fr. Granados went on to publish in Spanish and English in 2015 another book entitled Eucharist and Divorce: A Change in Doctrine?, answering the question in the title with a decisive “No”.

Some see trouble brewing in the fact that Abp. Ladaria is president of a commission to study - again - the role of deaconesses in the early Church and the possibility of women deacons in the future. The Secretary of the CDF heads the commission ex officio and is neither responsible for setting it up nor amenable to the views of a notoriously radical feminist from the United States who was also appointed to it.

Abp. Ladaria participated in the doctrinal discussions between the CDF and the Society of Saint Pius X back in 2009-2010. He knows the dossier very well. In his new position as CDF Prefect he will also be President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission which continues to negotiate with the SSPX.

Perhaps Fr. Zuhlsdorf put it most succinctly when he wrote that, considering the views on record of some of the other potential candidates for the position of CDF Prefect, “the Church has dodged a bullet” with the appointment of Abp. Ladaria.

Now about whether Ladaria believes in hell or not. The day his appointment was made known, Oakes Spalding - many of whose views I agree with - posted on his blog an essay entitled 'Pope Francis Appoints a Universalist - All Men Will Be Saved - to Replace Müller as Head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith' implying that Ladaria, like Bergoglio, does not believe in hell. He cites snippets from a 2009 book by Ladaria entitled Jesus Christ, Salvation of All' - which clearly does not imply that 'all men will be saved', only that Jesus Christ represents salvation for all (meaning everyone who accepts his Word). However, Spalding does cite certain statements that are troubling, and I suppose one must read the book to place those statements in context and determine if they do say what they seem to say.

Here are the passages cited by Spalding, and I remark on those I feel need remarking upon. The rest of it I consider unexceptionable:

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The saving influence of Jesus and his Spirit know no bounds: Christ’s mediation is universal. Salvation in Christ is possible for all humanity, and on the horizon of theological reflection. The hope may arise that this salvation will indeed reach everyone. Salvation itself would become denaturalized if its absolute certainty would be affirmed and if we lost sight of the possibility of damnation [p. 12] [Does that sound like denying there is hell?]

This universality includes more than it excludes, among other reasons because the unique mediation of Jesus cannot be separated from God’s will of universal salvation (1Tim 2:3–5) [p. 96].

We are all called to place ourselves within the body of the [Catholic] Church, which will not reach its fullness until the whole human race and the entire universe has been completely renewed. Christian faith begins with the premise of the unity of humanity as a whole because of its origins in Adam, and above all, because of its destiny in Christ. It is inconceivable that salvation, as it is presented in the New Testament, is only for Christians and not for those who do not know Christ [p. 117]. [OK, that is a questionable statement, but we do not know what else Ladaria writes after that.]

We may also add the early Christian conviction that hell is something neither wanted nor created by God. Maintaining the possibility of eternal damnation is the only guarantee of the truth and reality of the salvation offered to us, which is nothing less than God’s love [pp. 130-131]. [Citing an early Christian conviction, which is historical fact, does not mean he buys it. His next sentence makes that clear. One may quibble, of course, that he uses the word 'possibility' about eternal damnation, especially considering the number of times Jesus himself refers to Hell in the Gospels.]

Jesus includes everyone and excludes no one, and all of us have received his fullness (cfr. John 1:16). The universality of salvation and unity of Christ’s mediation mutually affirm each other [p. 144].

Yet by dying, he gave us life, that is the life of his resurrection. Even those who do not know him are called to this divine vocation, that is, to the perfect sonship in and through Christ. Christians and non-Christians reach this goal by virtue of the gift of the Spirit that associates us with the unique paschal ministry of Christ even if it is through diverse paths known only to God [p. 148-149]. [This, to me, is the most troubling because despite his first sentence, he then acknowledges there may be 'diverse paths known only to God' whereby even non-Christians may avail of Christ's unique Paschal ministry. It is a contradiction to the central point of DOMINUS IESUS.]

---

I looked up the Amazon blurb on the Ladaria book JESUS CHRIST, SALVATION OF ALL:

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This book is a collection of essays that were published between 2003 and 2006. The author addresses why it is necessary to maintain that Christ is the universal saviour, even though this assertion may sound unintelligible, perhaps shocking, and even arrogant to some of our contemporaries.

Ladaria nevertheless holds to the uniqueness of the person of Christ as being essential for the ultimate salvation of humankind, because salvation means to participate in the glory that Christ possesses in His humanity, offering us salvation as a free gift and revealing himself as paradigm of what humanity can fully be and become.

---

So I suppose the jury is still out about Ladaria's orthodoxy or lack of it. Answering my own questions above of what we can expect of Ladaria as CDF Prefect, I think our expectations are irrelevant. Because in any case, Ladaria is not the problem. Bergoglio is. Ladaria has ceased to have any autonomy at all, and he can only be an accessory for Bergoglio to use or ignore as he pleases, as, for all intents and purposes, he simply chose to ignore Mueller.

'Corruption, sodomy, drugs, infidelity…
How can we trust anything from Rome?'
Wherein Fr. Z rants.
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
July 8, 2016
From a reader…

QUAERITUR from a reader:

---

Father, since converting through RCIA and beginning work within my parish, I read your blog twice a day for insights into the struggles within the Church today. You regularly give insight into the the conflicts surrounding curial politics, the shakeup at the CDF, AL, the St. Gallen group, and the Lavender Mafia.

But, like Sherlock Holmes’s dog that didn’t bark, this horrible incident in the CDF apartments is becoming a deafening silence. Please give us some perspective: what does it say about the CDF, the curia, and Vatican leadership that this sort of abomination was taking place within their headquarters? How can we trust what comes out of Rome?

---

Alas. It’s enough to make a grown man cry. Truly.

These days I get a lot of questions like this in my email and it is hard to know how to respond. Let’s get real about this.

The Enemy, Satan and the fallen angels of Hell, hate the Church in way that we mere humans cannot fathom. Their purpose is to diminish in any way they can the love that God will be shown in the End, when Christ will take all things to Himself and submit them to the Father so that God will be all in all. Each time a soul fails at death and is excluded from the Beatific Vision (and let’s not kid ourselves that that doesn’t happen), the Enemy exalts with the cry, “That’s one more that You won’t have!”

To accomplish their hellish purpose, the Enemy will attack everyone, of course. But the Enemy will attack in a particular way those whose influence extends over many souls. Take down an individual, okay. Take down a father of a family, better. Take down a parish priest or bishop, even better. Take down officials in the Church’s HQ so that massive scandal can be broadcast by the MSM… a damned ‘good’ day’s work.

The Enemy will attack the Church in every way through her weak link: people. The Enemy is like a roaring lion, roaming about seeking whom he might devour.

Tu autem, Domine, miserere nobis! But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us!

That’s my cry, too, for I too am a sinner in need of forgiveness, conversion and grace.

Let’s be clear about another thing. Just because the apartment in which the deviant sex orgy and drug stuff took place is in the same building as the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), that doesn’t mean that the CDF was in any way involved.

I worked in that same building for years, in a different office. There are a few residential apartments in that building that have nothing to do with the CDF. People with clout (or people who have people with clout behind them – so to speak) have enough pull to get an apartment there.

But, those are not “CDF apartments”, in the sense that the CDF controls them so closely that the CDF can be implicated in what goes on in them. In my time working in that building, there were in these apartments retired cardinals and long-time, Curia officials, none of whom worked for the CDF. Those are not “CDF apartments”.



That said, keep in mind that the building in which the CDF is located and the residence where the Pope lives (Santa Marta) are really close to each other. Enemy demons can attach themselves to places and objects and infest them due to sins that are committed in them and with them. They stick to those places like vile, hell-leeches and claim the right to be there because of those sins until their hold is broken through exorcism.

If I were Pope, I would weekly send exorcists around the curial offices to clean house. If I were a bishop, I would weekly send priests around blessing the work spaces of the chancery and sprinkling holy water and even blessed salt.

Pastors of souls should do that for their rectories. Fathers of families should ask the priest to bless their homes. Hell and demons are real, friends. And they really hate you. Fight back. Use sacramentals. Even more powerful than sacramentals are sacraments.

So, given the great opportunity to wreak havoc on a spiritual level, would horrible homosexual sins (demons can be “specialists”) inside the precincts of Vatican City, literally a stone’s throw from where the Vicar of Christ lives and works and eats and sleeps, not be just the thing for the Enemy? You bet it would be.

Demonic infestation of the same building where doctrine is overseen for the whole Church and abuse cases are dealt with - the same building in which you find the offices of the Commission which oversees the use of the Traditional Roman Rite. Coincidence?

About all the rest of the stuff you mentioned and more… I could give a list, but you know what they are… these also are manifestations of the ongoing mission of Hell to take souls away from God.

This is about Hell and souls, Heaven and souls… souls… souls.

We can get down in the dumps about what is going on or we can rise up and fight back.

I want to keep as many of you out of Hell as I can and enjoy the glory of Heaven with you when our time comes.

For now, however, we are in The Fight Of Our Lives.

So, you read about awful things in the Church and heresy and stupidity from her duly appointed pastors? Fine. If the Church is being attacked with such fury, and from the inside, that means that the Church is exactly what we need to belong to! Paradoxically, the corruption we see and the infidelity we read of are proofs of the Church’s divine origin. And since Christ founded the Church, that’s the Church I want to be in, flaws, wickedness and all.

Next, battle isn’t pretty. Just as a soldier in the state of grace who does his duty knows that even in battle he is in the “safest” place he can be, so too we know that we members of the Church in the state of grace are in the safest place we could be, even though corruption and infidelity and disgusting things are going on at every level.

Since the Church is of divine origin, there is no place else we should ever want to be. We can be sad sometimes at the results of the battle. We can be afraid sometimes in the midst of the battle. But let us not waiver in our trust in Christ’s promises. Heaven is our reward, not worldly security, even in the Church. The Lord is my strength and shield and my trusting heart exalts in Him and with song I’ll give Him thanks even for the terrible battle that it falls to me to fight as His priest.

Moreover, Rome is only Rome. The “Vatican” is only the Vatican. Curial structures are not of divine origin. Christ promised nothing to the Roman Curia. He made no guarantees that the Faith would be preserved in the Curia. “Put not your trust in princes: In the children of men, in whom there is no salvation.”

Stick to the true and the proven. Stick to traditional sources for the review of the content of your Catholic Faith. Remember too that the content of your Faith is not just stuff to be read and memorized, but is also a Person with whom you have a relationship. Stick to Christ. Use the sacraments well. Review your own state in life and, having determined your duties and obligations, carry them out faithfully and with singularity of purpose. Examine your conscience and…

GO TO CONFESSION!

About the orgy referred to above, LIFESITE NEWS posted this fact sheet for those who may not be aware of the story:

Vatican gay orgy:
12 facts you need to know

ROME, July 6, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) -- A high-ranking Vatican monsignor who is a secretary to one of Pope Francis’s closest collaborators was arrested by Vatican police after they caught him hosting a cocaine-fueled homosexual orgy in a building right next to St. Peter’s Basilica.

Here are 12 facts about the scandal.
1. Vatican police arrested Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, 49, some two months ago during a raid in which he was caught in the act of hosting a cocaine-fueled gay orgy in the former Palace of the Holy Office. [Not former. It still is called Palazzo del Sant'Uffizio, but Fr Z has explained above that the building is also occupied by other Vatican offices, and that it has some residential apartments assigned to Vatican personnel who have some pull.]

2. Capozzi managed to evade suspicion from Italian police by using a BMW luxury car with Vatican license plates which made him practically immune to stops and searches. This privilege, usually reserved for high-ranking prelates, allowed the monsignor to transport cocaine for his frequent homosexual orgies without being stopped by the Italian police.

3. Police became suspicious after other tenants in the building complained repeatedly about constant comings and goings of visitors to the building during all hours of the night.

4. At the time of the arrest, Capozzi was allegedly so high on cocaine that he was hospitalized for detoxification for a short period in the Pius XI clinic in Rome.

5. Despite Pope Francis’s promises of transparency and of cleaning up the Curia, not a single Vatican official has said a word about this. Italian media broke the story last week after receiving inside information. [And still no Vatican statement!]

6. Capozzi was shockingly in the running to become a bishop at his boss Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio’s recommendation.

7. Capozzi is bizarrely still listed as an active staff member on the website of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legal Texts.

8. Capozzi is currently in an undisclosed convent in Italy undergoing a spiritual retreat. There has been no mention of a process of laicization for his transgressions.

9. Capozzi’s boss is Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, the Vatican’s top canonical official. He is one of Pope Francis’s closest collaborators and ardent supporters.

10. Coccopalmerio has spoken publicly about what he has called “positive elements" in homosexual relationships. He said that while homosexual relationships are deemed “illicit” by the Church, Catholic leaders, such as himself, must “emphasize” the “positive realities” that he said are present in homosexual relationships.

11. There is speculation that Coccopalmerio knew about the gay orgies and did nothing about them.

12. Coccopalmerio has been in the vanguard of advancing Pope Francis’s makeover of the Catholic Church. This includes writing a book earlier this year that defended Francis’s 2016 Exhortation Amoris Laetitia and its propositions allowing civilly-divorced-and-remarried Catholics living in adultery as well as unmarried cohabiting Catholics living in fornication to receive Holy Communion. His book was praised by left-leaning Church leaders, such as Cardinal Blase Cupich, even though it completely contradicts clear Catholic teaching on marriage, the Eucharist, and confession.

One might have expected, at the very least, a barebones statement from Cardinal Cuckoopalmiero that:

---

"I deplore the scandalous incident in which Mons. Capozzi was involved. Although he is no longer my secretary, he still works at the Council for Legislative Texts which I head, and I apologize for his misconduct on behalf of the Council. He is no longer my secretary because...

It has also been reported that I have recommended him for an episcopal appointment. That is true, but... (or, That is absolutely not true.) I hope Capozzi will properly repent of his actions and amend his life, but given this scandal, I would not recommend him as a bishop. The Council will study what can be done about his employment with us, which has become an embarrassment not only for me and the Council but for the entire Church." [Obviously, he didn't write anything. Nor has he even commented publicly on it.]

---

And what about Greg Burke, Opus Dei numerary? Does the Vatican Press Officer not have anything to say about the scandal? Or does he have instructions to ignore it and maybe it will just go away? Think what media frenzy there would be to blame it all on the pope if Benedict, not Bergoglio, were still Pope! But so far, the media has not shown any indication it wants to go beyond Cuckoopalmiero. 

Now that I have some graphics capability again, let me just update the few most recent photos available of our beloved Benedict:

6/26/17

INSIDE THE VATICAN editor Robert Moynihan has a 15-minute reunion with the Emeritus Pope whom he interviewed multiple times when he was a cardinal. I still do not have the English original of Mr. Moynihan's letter describing the occasion, so I will re-translate from Beatrice's French translation of it.

6/28/17


Benedict XVI receives the Abbe Maroun Chidiac, Superior General of the Maronite Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary. No other information is available.

6/28/17

Pope Francis brings his five new cardinals to meet the Emeritus Pope.
It seems the pope thinks a visit with the Emeritus - if he declines to attend the consistory in St. Peter's Basilica, as he has during the last two cardinal-making consistories - will confer Benedict's 'seal of approval' on his choices. It's not the Emeritus Pope's place to do that, but he does give his blessing to them all, and parting words to remember him by.

P.S. I recently came across this unexpected news item about a small new book published last April on the occasion of Benedict XVI’s 90th birthday.



A book for the Emeritus Pope’s 90th birthday
recalls a lecture/public discussion in Oct 2004
Translated from
FARO DI ROMA
April 29, 2017

Fresh off the presses is a book by Joseph Ratzinger/His Holiness Benedict XVI, Emeritus Pope, entitled “Religioni, fede, verità e tolleranza” (Religion, faith, truth and tolerance) (publ Solfanelli, Chieti, 2017), edited by Michelangelo De Donà, a journalist who teaches at the Università degli Studi di Pavia.



Then Cardinal Ratzinger, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, came to give a lecture at the Centro Papa Luciani in San Giustina, Belluno (northern Italy) in October 2004, almost exactly six months from the day he would be elected Pope.

He spoke on the theme of inter-religious dialog, pointing out that “the question of the encounter between cultures and religions has become an urgent issue”.

Thus on Oct. 16, 2004, a packed audience welcomed the illustrious guest who impressed everyone with his simplicity, affability and accessibility, especially afterwards when he directly answered questions from the audience without any filters. The interesting discussion can be followed by the reader in these pages.

Besides the theme of his lecture, he spoke about Europe and Christianity, of education, ethics, the role of the laity in the Church, the challenge from evangelical denominations, tolerance, and religious symbols. And of course, he gave his own personal testimonial and recollection of John Paul I, Papa Luciani, for whom the center is named.

A hot new topic at the time was Turkey’s application to join the European Union. The cardinal said that it was his personal opinion – but not that of the Holy See – that since Turkey represents a different cultural world, her ‘entry’ into the European Union would be anti-historical. But he said collaboration between the EU and Turkey should continue because Turkey represents an important link to the Muslim world.

De Dona said that for many years, it had been the intention to publish a transcript of the material from the 2004 event, but it was only recently possible to compile all the audio tape recordings, film clips, news stories and photographs. The material also includes the homily given by the cardinal at the cathedral of Belluno on October 17, 2004. Once they had the authorization of the Emeritus Pope for publishing the material, they proceeded to print the 58-page booklet in time for the Holy Father’s 90th birthday.

But De Dona also pointed out that there are other related anniversaries in 2017 - such as the 40th anniversary of Joseph Ratzinger’s appointment as Arcbishop of Munich-Freising and his elevation to cardinal, as well as the 30th anniversary of the Centro Papa Luciani. (2018 will be the 40th anniversary of Papa Luciani’s 33-day Pontificate.)

So it looks like for now, I've found an alternative for Photobucket. I just tried it out by downloading my temporary page-header photo and my temporary post-signature, and they have uploaded perfectly. I still have to explore all the features of the service called Cube Upload, but it downloads images almost instantly, and the URL code is immediately available. I hope it enables me to group my images into folders as Photobucket did... Trying to rebuild the image library I accumulated during nine years with Photobucket is something else. Unless I give in and pay the exorbitant fee they have suddenly foisted on their customers.

Meanwhile, here is a screen-cap of what happens to all the images I uploaded from the Forum photo service. Can someone explain to me what can be done to open these images?

July 8-9 headlines

PewSitter


Canon212.com

I posted this on July 8, but I am re-posting it with additional material from the Catholic Herald account on July 9 of the Mueller interview that Tosatti initially reported. The new material includes a bit more of what he and Cardinal Meisner discussed in a telephone talk the day before the latter's unexpected death, and some rather outrageous statements about the DUBIA, but the Herald did not report Mueller's remarks about his loyalty to the pope.
********************************************************************************************************************************************
Now, tell me if I have been objectively wrong about criticizing Cardinal Mueller all this time for speaking with a forked tongue!

Cardinal Mueller criticizes the way he was dismissed:
‘The Church’s social doctrine should apply even to the Vatican’
By Marco Tosatti
Translated from
STILUM CURIAE
July 8, 2017

The story of Charlie Gard has kept me from commenting on the Mueller dismissal and the death of that silent giant of the Church who was Cadinal Joachim Meisner. I will do that now by belatedly sharing an interesting article in Passauer Neue Presse which treats both stories (from my own translation).

---

Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller has harshly criticized the way in which he was dismissed. In an interview with this newspaper, he said that Pope Francis "informed me of his decision [not to renew his appointment as CDF Prefect] in less than one minute” on his last working day at the CDF. [Friday, June 30 – His 5-year term was to expire Sunday, July 2. He said no reason was given to him.

“I cannot accept such a way of doing things,” Miller underscored, distancing himself clearly from the Pope’s manner. “The social doctrine of the Church should apply even to the Vatican” with respect to how the pope’s co-workers are treated, he said. [OK, so now we are clear. He does not have any dissents with the pope – by which he obviously means doctrinal dissents, but he does object to the pope’s manners! But he sounded all sweetness and light about the pope in the interview he gave to another German newspaper the day he was dismissed.]

The occasion for the interview was the death of Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who died July 3 in Bad Fuessing at the age of 83. Mueller said he had spoken to Meisner the day before that, and Meisner had referred to Mueller’s dismissal from the Curia, saying he was ‘profoundly struck’ by it. “The fact personally wounded him and he considered it a danger for the Church”, Mueller said of Meisner’s rection.

But notwithstanding his criticism of how the pope dismissed him, Mueller gave assurances that Pope Francis has his loyalty. The former Bishop of Regensburg said that he would not react in any way to the choice of the man who succeeds him.

He adds: “There are those who think I would lead a bandwagon of criticism against the pope… but [as a cardinal], I will continue to have the responsibility to concern myself about the unity of the Church and to avoid polarization if possible… [I have been] always loyal to the Pope and intend to remain loyal as a Catholic, bishop, and cardinal, because it is my duty”.

---

It must be noted that Mueller was dismissed – in a way unprecedented in the Church since the second half of the 20th century – almost exactly like three of his priests at the CDF were fired by the pope months ago – without any explanation or due cause given. It is the sign of a governing style that one can hardly call ‘collegial’ or ‘dialoguing’.

Mueller’s observation about the Church’s social doctrine is true [Yeah, but rather self-serving of him to cite it for his own case!] To which I might add that even good manners – evangelically or secularly – should always apply…

P.S. From the CATHOLIC HERALD account, Mueller sounds as ambivalent and confused as ever about this relationship with this pope, especially as it has to do with defending the faith, and seems to have gone deeper down into his bunker of denial.

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…In their conversation, Cardinal Meisner also expressed concern over the current situation in the Church, especially “about the quarrelling, disputes and discussions which were standing in the way of church unity and the truth”.

Although doctrinally orthodox, Cardinal Müller refused to take sides in the issue over the dubia, suggesting instead that he mediate a meeting between Pope Francis and the three remaining cardinals.

[Is that not stunning chutzpah from someone who, if anything, is even more persona non grata to this pope than the DUBIA cardinals are??? He said the pope only took a minute to inform him he was not renewing his appointment, without giving any cause of explanation – from which, one concludes, that Mueller’s audience with Bergoglio, such as it was, ended then and there. What makes him think now that Bergoglio would even deign to talk to him again, much less about the DUBIA - which he expressly instructed Mueller to ignore from the beginning?][/

“I would suggest that the Pope entrust me with the dialogue as I have the competence and the necessary sense of responsibility required. I could moderate the discussion between the Pope and the cardinals.” [What does Mueller not understand about Bergoglio's ireversible, inapellable intransigence against even considering the very validity of the DUBIA and that they were even raised??? And what does he not understand about Bergoglio's intractable hostility towards him, Mueller???]

However, he added he was not impressed with the revisionist attitudes of certain cardinals towards the issue of communion for divorced and remarried couples. [How cowardly! The revisionism starts with their mastermind and ringleader, Jorge Bergoglio! Why revile ONLY the lieutenants who are simply lieutenants, and not the commander? Ah, but Mueller continues to be loyal to the pope, that's why. As if attacking his lieutenants and surrogates were not also attacking the pope!]

“I must stress with all due clarity that the attempts up to now by Cardinals Schönborn, Kasper and others to explain how we can achieve a balancing act between dogma, that is church teaching, and pastoral practice are simply not convincing.”[/DIM [Yeah, well, if you acknowledge that these Bergoglian surrogates are attempting an 'unconvincing' balancing act, then you acknowledge a 'balancing' is necessary. But faith is not about 'balancing' which is necessarily circumstantial - faith is about having firm and clear rational positions such as those contained in the Catholic deposit of faith that cannot be sullied or tampered with by Bergoglio and his followers.]

---

I know I have been deliberately harsh in my remarks about Cardinal Mueller for his namby-pamby conduct as CDF Prefect and for some of his own personal decisions and statements. But the record of his performance in his four years as CDF Prefect under this pope compel such harshness.

I don't believe Mueller consciously thinks so, because he would not be so presumptuous, but somehow, I get the impression that subconsciously, the cardinal thinks that he is on the same level and stature that Joseph Ratzinger was as CDF Prefect. Which is the reason he gave a lengthy interview for a book that was deliberately patterned after THE RATZINGER REPORT (called Rapporto sulla Fede – Report on the Faith - in the original Italian), and entitled THE MUELLER REPORT (Informe sobre la esperanza – Report on Hope – in the original Spanish), and subtitled ‘An exclusive interview on the state of the Church’, exactly as Vittorio Messori’s interview book with Cardinal Ratzinger in 1984. As a Democratic vice-presidential candidate told Dan Quayle (who compared himself to John Kennedy because of his youth) during a debate in 1988, ‘Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy!’

Yes, I will concede that the take-offs on THE RATZINGER REPORT were probably meant as a marketing ploy, rather than overt presumption on the part of Mueller. I will also concede what some of Mueller sympathizers have adduced in his favor – that his failure to speak up more clearly and without ifs and buts in defense of the faith against a pope who is clearly bent on having his own idiosyncratic way with the faith (as if it were in his power to do so) was a pragmatic decision so he could stay on as CDF Prefect instead of risking being replaced by ‘someone worse’.

Meaning, I suppose, by someone who would agree 100 percent with Bergoglio and simply act as his rubberstamp, giving him the ‘CDF seal of approval’ whatever he says or does. But isn’t that what Mueller ended up doing all these past four years, anyway? At least someone like Schoenborn or Forte or O’Malley would have been 100% honest out front that there is absolutely no daylight between them and this pope, not trying awkwardly – and most unsuccessfully - to straddle the doctrinal fence, as Mueller has done.

Still, leaving aside their personal qualifications, the differences between the situation of Ratzinger in 1984 and Mueller in 2017 were vast.
- Ratzinger was the undeniable right-hand man, indispensable theological support and valued friend of John Paul II, where Mueller was openly derided by Bergoglio and his lieutenants, and generally ignored in his role as CDF Prefect.
- Ratzinger agreed to do the interview with Messori – the first ever granted by a Prefect of the CDF – because he needed to denounce the state of the Church 19 years after Vatican-II, and how the faith had declined precipitously as a result of the progressivist interpretations of Vatican-II which led to virtual anarchy at all levels of the Church.
One would have expected Mueller to denounce an even worse situation now, with a progressivist Jesuit pope who has been able to turn into reality much of the radical agenda of the Vatican-II progressivists who were kept from freely rampaging through the Church and wrecking it the way Bergoglio is now doing, only because for a combined 35 years, John Paul II and Benedict XVI were able to rein them in.
- Ratzinger’s book created an unprecedented controversy as the defenders of Vatican-II (and conceivably, their hired guns in Italy) descended on him en masse to the point that both he and Messori required bodyguards, and Messori had to go into hiding for months.
- Unlike the virtual uprising against Ratzinger in 1984, we have not heard a single criticism from any of the pope’s defenders against Mueller’s book, which means they found nothing ‘negative’ in it.

I have not read Mueller’s interview book, but from its original title ‘Informe sobre la esperanza’ (Report on hope), how realistic could he have been about the situation on the Church if he sees any hope at all in what is happening today? Perhaps that is why none of the Bergoglio advocates has said anything negative about it.- QED!

P.P.S.
Wait, it seems I don't even have to read the book. The cover of the original edition says it all!

'IL PAPOCCHIO' or 'THE BERGOGLIO IMBROGLIO' - One of his new cardinals in a financial scandal

If Benedict XVI had gone ahead and conferred the red hat on a bishop who faces a financial embarrassment to the tune of 12 million euros
deposited in his name in Swiss bank accounts – something he first denied and then had to admit but feigning implausible explanations -
the media would have ended his papacy there and then. The story would have fed media headlines for days, if not weeks, on end, and
a cottage industry would have been born to hound Benedict out office worse than what the New York Times, AP and Der Spiegel had launched
in 2010 to do just that, over his alleged direct and indirect personal involvement in the sex abuse scandals.

The worst financial question raised by Vatileaks-1 had been that a contractor was overpaid a million euros more than the usual payment
to put up the Vatican crèche on St. Peter’s Square, even if it had been explained that the extra money paid for permanent steel modular
structures to be used annually instead of building temporary wooden frames and bases every year.

The media and his detractors reviled and undermined Benedict XVI enough for relatively minor questions like Mons. Wielgus’s past
as a Communist spy in Poland, Mons. Williamson’s stupid Holocaust denial (which has nothing to do with why he was excommunicated
and why Benedict lifted the excommunication after 20 years) and Mons. Linz’s reported statement that hurricane Katrina was a form of
punishment from God.

But the media and the world have two measures for Benedict XVI, who stood for everything they detest, and for Bergoglio, who has been
doing their work for them since he has destroyed more of the Catholic Church in four years than all that her opponents have tried to do
for three centuries…

Aldo Maria Valli tackled the question of the financial embarrassment involving the new cardinal from Mali the day before he got the red hat.
Otherwise, there has been minimal media mention of the Mali anomaly, much less any serious coverage of it. Valli wondered
whether the pope would go ahead and make him cardinal anyway. He did, without any reservations expressed by the Vatican, except not
to have Zerbo deliver the address of thanks in behalf of the new cardinals at the ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica on June 28.

Those millions weighing down on
Monsignor, now Cardinal, Zerbo
Translated from the blog of
ALDO MARIA VALLI
June 27, 2017

A few days ago, when I telephoned Bamako [capital of Mali] to request an interview with Mons. Jean Zerbo, the nun who answered all but covered me with insults.

“His Eminence is sick! He cannot answer. Leave him alone!,” she screamed, obviously agitated. [But poised enough to refer to the monsignor as ‘His Eminence’ even before he had been formally consecrated.] It did nothing to reassure her that I did not intend to discuss anything ‘in the news’ during the interview. Her answer was adamant: «Son éminence est très malade! Très malade!». [French is an official language in the former French colony.]

Now we must see whether His Excellency Jean Zerbo, Archbishop of Bamako in Mali, will really become ‘His Eminence’. [He did, right on schedule!] We are told that Pope Francis was very upset when he learned about the 12 million euros that Zerbo had hidden in some Swiss banks.

So will the Archbishop of Bamako show up at the cardinal-making consistory tomorrow? Initially, it looked like no, but now, it seems yes. We will see.

The investigation conducted by Le Monde is quite straightforward. In the HSBC Private Bank in Geneva, there are various current accounts totaling 12 million euros whose access codes are all in the hands of Mons. Zerbo.

The Mali bishops’ conference had reacted angrily, speaking of ‘tendentious news reports’ intended to damage the Church in Mali ‘at the very moment when it has been honored to have its first cardinal’, a news operation, they said, aimed at soiling the image of the Church in Mali and to destabilize her”.

“God, who sees and knows everything, will one day establish the truth,” said Mons. Zerbo’s confreres, who said that Zerbo had always acted ‘with total transparency’.

Fine, but no rebuttal was offered to the results of the journalistic investigation by David Dembélé and Aboubacar Dicko for Le Monde, who have since been subjected to anonymous violent threats by telephone and Internet, such that they have had to seek police protection in Mali.

When the Vatican learned of the Swiss bank accounts, pressure was immediately exerted advising Mons. Zerbo not to take part in the cardinal-making consistory. Especially since Zerbo, considered senior among the five cardinal candidates, was supposed to deliver the address of thanks in St. Peter’s Basilica, which would have piled embarrassment upon embarrassment. [Zerbo was present at the consistory, but the new cardinal from Barcelona, delivered the address of thanks instead of him.]

But questions remain. How are bishops and cardinals chosen? Is it possible that an embarrassment like that in which Zerbo is involved could have been totally unknown to the Vatican?

[Yes! And this time, perhaps, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of Bishops – unless he has been totally emasculated in his role and is no more than a figurehead now – would be guilty of the same negligence and failure to do due diligence as Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who was Prefect of Bishops at the time of the Wielgus nomination and the lifting of Mons. Williamson’s excommunication.

In the Wielgus case, the Secretariat of State under Cardinal Bertone was equally negligent because the Nuncio in Poland (nuncios recommend to the pope a short list of three candidates they consider qualified for an episcopal nomination) ought to have informed the Vatican what was public knowledge in Poland - that documents in the once-secret archives of Communist Poland showed Wielgus had informed on fellow priests to the Polish Secret Services. In the case of Mons. Williamson, whoever was in charge of Ecclesia Dei – the commission that liaises and coordinates with ‘traditional’ communities like FSSPX - ought to have known that Williamson had previously expressed skepticism that the Holocaust happened as reported in the history books, and informed Benedict XVI accordingly. Not that this would have stopped Benedict XVI from lifting his excommunication, but the Vatican would have been able to appropriately prepare the media and the public beforehand.

When new cardinals are named, does the Congregation for Bishops not perform the same due diligence to make sure they pass every smell test as they ought to do for everyone who is nominated to be a bishop??? Or do they simply take the word of the pope who decides he wants to name some bishops cardinals on the word of those around him who recommended the new cardinals?]

After having first denied he knew anything of the Swiss accounts, Zerbo then sought to defend himself by saying that those accounts were the result of long-ago operations carried out by missionaries – an answer representing a remedy worse than the disease! Especially if one thinks that Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world, with an annual per capita income of 930 US dollars, and that Catholics represent only 2.4 percent of Mali’s 17 million population.

At the time the accounts were opened, Monsignor Zerbo was in charge of finances for the Episcopal Conference of Mali (CEM). Also involved in the problem are Mons. Jean-Gabriel Diarra, Bishop of San, and Mons. Cyprien Dakouo, who was secretary-general of CEM in 2004, along with industrialist Gérard Achar and businessman Modibo Keita.

Before the funds reached HSBC in Switzerland, CEM accounts had been circulating through different banks, while there were numerous meetings between the three Cem officials and their bankers. A high-level prelate in Mali, who has remained anonymous, has admitted he was aware the funds were being moved around, but the origin of the 12 million euros remains a black hole. In any case, Mons. Dakouo thought it fit to leave Mali secretly in 2012. [And is he still at large and AWOL since then???]

In the Le Monde investigation, the person currently responsible for finances in the CEM, Fr. says he has not had time to review old account books, but admitted that “we have accounts in many places”. Obviously, these have not been declared to the government.

Last May 14 (Pope Francis would announce his choice of Zerbo to become a cardinal exactly one week later, on May 21), the two investigative journalists lay in wait for Mons. Zerbo at 7 a.m. to ask him questions after he celebrated Mass and to inform him of their findings.

“You mean I have a Swiss bank account?”, he replied. “Then I am rich and I do not know it!” Later however, confronted with proof, he said these were old accounts from “a system we inherited from the Order of African Missionaries, and which the Church managed”.

Granted things are as Zerbo said, 12 million euros, tax-exempt, is quite a sum. Mali, where 80% of the people are Sunni Muslims, has for years been in the grip of a crisis which ahs brought the country to its knees. The civil war which started in 2012 officially ended three years later, but assassinations and violent encounters continue to torment the country, in which at least 5 Al-Qaeda offshoots have been operating and have recently announced they wish to unite under the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen movement.

The Church in Mali, led by Mons. Zerbo, had been carrying on difficult mediations towards a reconciliation, and therefore he pope must have had thins in mind when he decided to make Zerbo a cardinal.

Christelle Pire, who works for Vatican Radio as well as Moroccan Radio Medi1, told Vatican Insider:

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“I know the two journalists who carried out the investigation, and I know them as professionals who do serious and careful work. They had been working on this investigation for months, and I believe their sources are reliable. They have definite proof of meetings that took place between the three Mali prelates named and bank officials.

But it still remains to find out where the money came from. Are they personal funds? Why were they transferred to Switzerland? In any case, I think the Church should clear this up as soon as possible, because up to now, very little has been said about the money, and it appears that none of the financial authorities in Mali knew of the fund transfer to Switzerland.”

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It’s an ugly story for the “poor Church and Church for the poor’ that Pope Francis vouches for so often.

July 9, 2017

Canon212.com


PewSitter

I have no idea what else the pope told Scalfari in their latest lovefest, but it seems even the media now find these periodic tete-a-tete’s so Ho-Hum they hardly bothered to report on the last one, other than the pope’s remarks dissing the possible alliance between Trump’s USA and Putin’s Russia. I dread to look up the full interview for fear of finding other atrocities…

Pope Francis and Pope Benedict
on Europe’s future

9 July 2017

Pope Francis gave an interview to the 93-year-old atheist [Catholic-born, Jesuit-educated] Eugenio Scalfari who, when he was young, was a Fascist, and then later a Socialist, and, in previous interviews with the Pope didn’t take notes or make recordings.

In La Repubblica:

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Last Thursday I received a phone call from Pope Francis. It was about noon and I was at the paper with my phone rang and a voice greeted me: it was His Holiness. I recognized him immediately. “Could you come over today? At 4?” I’ll be there for sure.

I dashed home and at 3:44 I was in the little sitting room at Santa Marta. The Pope came in a minute later. We embraced and then, seated facing each other, we started to swap ideas, feelings, analyses of what is going on in the Church and then in the world.

Pope Francis told me that he was very worried about the summit meeting of the G20. “I’m afraid that there will be very dangerous alliances between Powers that have distorted visions of the world: America and Russia, China and North Korea, Russia and Assad in the war in Syria.”

What is the danger of these alliances, Holiness?
“The danger regarding immigration. We, you know this well, have as the principal problem - unfortunately growing in the today’s world - that of poverty, of the weak, of the excluded, including immigrants. On the other hand, there are countries where the majority of the poor don’t come from migratory streams but from [their own] social calamities; others, instead, have little local poverty but they fear the invasion of migrants. That’s why the G20 worries me.” [Fr Z’s comment: So, America has a “distorted vision of the world”.]

Do you think, Holiness, that in global society as that in which we live the mobility of peoples is on the upswing, poor or not poor as they may be?
“Let’s not fool ourselves: poor peoples are attracted to the continents and countries of old wealth. Above all, to Europe. I, too, have often thought about this problem, and I have arrived at the conclusion that, not only for but also for this reason, Europe must assume as soon as possible a federal government and a federal parliament, not from individual confederated countries.

You yourself have raised this topic many times, and have even spoken of it in the European parliament.
“It’s true, I’ve raised this many times.

And you received great applause and even standing ovations. [Spoken like a true sycophant. I can imagine a simpering Scalfari rarin’ to lick the pope’s shoes!]
“Yes, that’s so, but unfortunately that doesn’t mean much. They will do that if they figure out the truth: either Europe becomes a federal community or it won’t count for anything in the world.”
[…]

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The rest … well.

Interesting. I think that the Pope wants a kind of “United States of Europe” to counterbalance both the constitutional federal republics which are the United States of America and also the Russian Federation. I wonder how that would work.

Pope Benedict, before his election, wrote quite a bit about the meaning, the soul of Europe. He was deeply preoccupied with the loss of its identity. First Things has a piece about Europe from Benedict XVI. After a deep historical analysis… here’s a taste. However, read the whole thing.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/01/europe-and-its-discontents


[It was an essay from WITHOUT ROOTS, a collection of complementary texts by Cardinal Ratzinger in the last few years before he was elected Pope,
and Marcello Pera, Italian philosopher-mathematician who was President of the Italian Senate from 2001-2006. The two struck up a friendship after Pera
invited the cardinal to address the Italian senators on the topic of Europe. The book was published in an English edition in February 2006.]

Benedict has his own description of America which differs somewhat from that of his successor. [Fr Z’s comments in red.]

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…At the hour of its greatest success, Europe seems hollow, as if it were internally paralyzed by a failure of its circulatory system that is endangering its life, subjecting it to transplants that erase its identity. At the same time as its sustaining spiritual forces have collapsed, a growing decline in its ethnicity is also taking place. [Concise. This was written in 2006, before the present problems of immigration really picked up, but not before Europe began to turn into “Eurabia”.]

Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present, as though they were taking something away from our lives. Children are seen — at least by some people — as a liability rather than as a source of hope.

Here it is obligatory to compare today’s situation with the decline of the Roman Empire. In its final days, Rome still functioned as a great historical framework, but in practice its vital energy had been depleted. [Interesting. Pope Francis, it is said, has a kind of “manifest destiny” view of Latin America. I had posted, back in 2014, about a long conversation I had with South American journalist Alejandro Bermudez of CNA. The concept of “peripheries”, is important to Francis. Thus,…

Bermudez spoke of the influence on Francis of thinkers such as the Uruguayan writer-theologian Alberto Methol Ferré, the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, and the pivotal Spanish-language poet Rubén Darío. To condense wildly, it seems that Francis may breathe in a school of thought that sees a kind of “manifest destiny” for Latin America. When cultures develop a interior decay, which they always do, revitalization of the cultures comes from “peripheries”. For the larger Church, experiencing an interior decay, a periphery is Latin America. Latin America, unlike any other continent, is unified in language (by far dominated by Spanish with related Portughese) and is/was unified in religion, Catholicism (though there is bad erosion). With these unifying factors, Latin America has a critical role to play. Also, if you are paying attention, Francis seems to use the word “periphery” a lot. This not quite the same thing as “margin”…]

…Amid the major upheavals of our day, is there a European identity that has a future and to which we can commit whole-heartedly?

A first element is the unconditionality with which human rights and human dignity should be presented as values that take precedence over any state jurisdiction. […] [Interesting in light of the controversy over the baby in England.]

…A second element that characterizes European identity is marriage and the family. [Interesting in light of the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, who said that the final battle with Satan is over the family and marriage.]

Monogamous marriage — both as a fundamental structure for the relation between men and women and as the nucleus for the formation of the state community — was forged in the biblical faith. It gave its special physiognomy and its special humanity to Europe, both in the West and in the East, precisely because the form of fidelity and the sacrifice that it entails must always be regained through great efforts and suffering. [Therefore the Devil will attack marriage, especially by trying to separate the sexual act from procreation. That is why the homosexualists are so valuable to the Enemy.]

Europe would no longer be Europe if this fundamental nucleus of its social edifice were to vanish or be changed in an essential way. We all know how much marriage and the family are in jeopardy. Their integrity has been undermined by the easier forms of divorce at the same time as there has been a spread in the practice of cohabitation between men and women without the legal form of marriage.

Paradoxically, homosexuals are now demanding that their unions be granted a legal form that is more or less equivalent to marriage. Such a development would fall outside the whole moral history of humanity that, whatever the diverse legal forms, has never lost sight of the fact that marriage is essentially the special communion of man and woman, which opens itself to children and thus to family.

The question this raises is not of discrimination but of what constitutes the human person as a man or as a woman, and which union should receive a legal form. If the union between man and woman has strayed further and further from legal forms, and if homosexual unions are perceived more and more as enjoying the same standing as marriage, then we are truly facing a dissolution of the image of humankind bearing consequences that can only be extremely grave. [Since 2006 the Enemy has made great strides.]

The last element of the European identity is religion. I do not wish to enter into the complex discussion of recent years, but to highlight one issue that is fundamental to all cultures: respect for that which another group holds sacred, especially respect for the sacred in the highest sense, for God, which one can reasonably expect to find even among those who are not willing to believe in God. When this respect is violated in a society, something essential is lost.

In European society today, thank goodness, anyone who dishonors the faith of Israel, its image of God, or its great figures must pay a fine. The same holds true for anyone who dishonors the Koran and the convictions of Islam. But when it comes to Jesus Christ and that which is sacred to Christians, freedom of speech becomes the supreme good. [The last acceptable prejudice.]

This case illustrates a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological. It is commendable that the West is trying to be more open, to be more understanding of the values of outsiders, but it has lost all capacity for self-love. All that it sees in its own history is the despicable and the destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure. What Europe needs is a new self-acceptance, a self-acceptance that is critical and humble, if it truly wishes to survive. [Thus, Benedict in 2006. He didn’t call for a “federation” of Europe. He wanted Europe to recover its Christian soul.]

Multiculturalism, which is so passionately promoted, can sometimes amount to an abandonment and denial, a flight from one’s own things. Multiculturalism teaches us to approach the sacred things of others with respect, but we can do this only if we ourselves are not estranged from the sacred, from God.

With regard to others, it is our duty to cultivate within ourselves respect for the sacred and to show the face of the revealed God — the God who has compassion for the poor and the weak, for widows and orphans, for the foreigner; the God who is so human that he himself became man, a man who suffered, and who by his suffering with us gave dignity and hope to our pain.

Unless we embrace our own heritage of the sacred, we will not only deny the identity of Europe. We will also fail in providing a service to others to which they are entitled. To the other cultures of the world, there is something deeply alien about the absolute secularism that is developing in the West. They are convinced that a world without God has no future. Multiculturalism itself thus demands that we return once again to ourselves.

We do not know what the future of Europe will be. Here we must agree with Toynbee, that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and thereby to place itself at the service of all humankind.

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Synchronically, as Karl Jung would say, Cardinal Ratzinger's co-author in WITHOUT ROOTS was in the news today - criticizing Pope Francis for advocating unlimited acceptance of immigrants...

Italian philosopher says this pope
is strongly secularist, and his teaching
politics rather than the Gospel
GLORIA.TV
July 10, 2013



The Italian philosopher and politician Marcello Pera criticised Pope Francis in an interview published today by the newspaper Il Mattino. Pera is an atheist who co-authored a book with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

About Francis's plea for an unlimited acceptance of migrants Pera says, "I don't understand this Pope, what he is saying is beyond any rational comprehension." And, "Why does he insist on a total acceptance? The Pope does so because he hates the Occident, he aims at destroying it and does everything to achieve this goal."

For Pera, Francis's magisterium is "not Gospel but only politics." He adds, "Francis is little or not at all interested in Christianity as a doctrine, in its theological aspect." He considers Francis statements as "strongly secularist."

Pera says that Francis is not interested in the salvation of souls but in security and social welfare. But "when one goes into the details, he suggests to our states to commit suicide, he invites Europe to no longer be itself, he reflects all South American prejudices toward North America, the market, freedom or capitalism".

For Pera "a hidden schism" is going on in the Catholic world which Francis pursues "with obstinacy and determination."

The collaboration between Pera and Joseph Ratzinger continued with Pera writing the Introduction to the cardinal's book published after he became Pope as 'The Europe of Benedict in a Crisis of Cultures'. In 2008, Pope Benedict wrote a letter-review of Pera's book Perché dobbiamo dirci cristiani ("Why We Must Call Ourselves Christians").

Pera was among the famous 'devout atheist' intellectuals like Giuliano Ferrara and some leading Italian Marxists who gravitated around Benedict XVI and supported him throughout his Pontificate. (Though I still do not understand how they could remain atheist since they defend Christianity better than many men of the Church do.) Interesting contrast nonetheless, with Bergoglio's one 'devout atheist' fan, Eugenio Scalfari, who seems to fall all over himself dumbing down his papal BFF as if the latter didn't already do that more than enough by himself.

Pope Francis declined to renew the appointment of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Gerhard Cardinal Müller, on the very day — July 2, 2017 — on which his five-year term came to an end. [Actually, the pope informed Mueller two days earlier, on Friday, June 30, because July 2 was a Sunday.]

It is a gesture unprecedented in the Church’s recent history. In the last sixty years, prefects of the Church’s most important congregation (it has been called La Suprema) have retired due to age or health reasons, or was called, in the case of Joseph Ratzinger, to become the pope. After a few reflections, I will examine the reason for this strange act.

Though absolutely licit, the pope’s act may be considered a show of bad manners. Ordinarily, when a Church official comes to the end of his appointment before the normal age of retirement (Müller has not even turned 70 yet), either his appointment is renewed, or he is given a brief extension — six months, a year [sometimes more] — before being replaced. The formula for the latter is: You will remain in charge donec aliter provideatur, until we decide differently.

It seems clear that the dismissal has not arisen from any substantive reason involving the work of the congregation. No explanation of this kind has been made. The pope’s choice was made freely and executed the hard way, without delicacy. This behavior is not surprising for anybody who knows how Jorge Maria Bergoglio acted while provincial superior of the Jesuit Province of Argentina — he was dismissed from that position for being unduly authoritarian — and as archbishop of Buenos Aires. [i.e., He was always somewhat of a boor, as he tends to be these days as pope with anyone he dislikes.]

I suspect that Cardinal Müller is upset about his dismissal, but in a sense, he may see his own 'beheading' as a liberation. To write this article, I peeped into the confidential notes I had made during the last four years regarding the German cardinal and his relations with the reigning pontiff. The notes are the result of many private conversations with high-ranking people in the Vatican who enjoyed the cardinal’s friendship. It appears that Müller experienced life under Bergoglio as a sort of Calvary. This, despite Müller’s statements — he was a good soldier to the end, and even beyond.

The first step of Müller’s Calvary was a disconcerting episode in the middle of 2013. The cardinal was celebrating Mass in the church attached to the congregation palace, for a group of German students and scholars. His secretary joined him at the altar: “The pope wants to speak to you.” “Did you tell him I am celebrating Mass?” asked Müller. “Yes,” said the secretary, “but he says he does not care — he wants to talk to you all the same.” The cardinal went to the sacristy.

The pope, in a very bad mood, gave him some orders and a dossier concerning one of his friends, a cardinal. (This is a very delicate matter. I have sought an explanation of this incident from the official channels. Until the explanation comes, if it ever comes, I cannot give further details.) [Let me guess: The dossier could have been on Amato, Ouellet or Sarah if the cardinal is curial, or on one of the Four DUBIA Cardinals.] Obviously, Mūller was flabbergasted.

It is important to remember that Bergoglio has long exhibited an animus against Rome, and against the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in particular. He has disliked the Curia because, before he became pope, Rome often refused to appoint the men he designated as possible bishops. And because, for reasons never known, Rome resisted appointing as archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez (nickname Tucho), a theologian who is rector of the Catholic University of Buenos Aires. Tucho has written several books, among them one that is very strange for a theologian. It was published in 1995, and its title is Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing.

Fernandez became archbishop soon after the election of Bergoglio, and he is said to be the pope’s ghostwriter. He rebuked Müller when the latter said in an interview that the congregation he led had the role of giving “theological structure” to the pontificate. Fernandez said:

---

...Some say that the Roman Curia is an essential part of the Church’s mission, or that a prefect in the Vatican is the sure compass to keep the Church from falling into light-mindedness — or that this prefect guards the unity of the Faith and grants the pope a serious theology.

But Catholics, reading the Gospel, know that Christ gave to the pope, and to the bishops’ body [????], a special guide and illumination — not to a prefect, or to some other entity. When you hear things of this kind, you might even suppose that the pope is somebody who comes to cause trouble, and must be controlled.

---

Re-reading the notes I took in those four years, it is evident that Cardinal Müller and those working with him experienced great frustration, because the pope simply took no interest in their work. For the pope, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith simply did not exist. He did not ask for their cooperation; neither did he attempt any dialogue with them.

With Amoris Laetitia, the situation regressed dramatically. Müller, along with other cardinals, complained during the Curia’s spiritual retreat in 2016 that the pope had not employed “a collegial working method.” He said that his congregation had made at least two hundred observations concerning Amoris Laetitia, some grave, others light. These observations had received no answer at all.

One of Müller’s hearers expressed astonishment that the prefect for the CDF knew nothing of how the document had progressed. Müller answered jokingly: “On doctrinal issues, we are the only ones never taken into account. On liturgical issues, Cardinal Sarah is certainly never informed …” [Objective facts, passed on jokingly!]

The relationship between Müller and the pope was never warm. A couple of years into the pontificate, it got worse. If I comb through my notes, I see that Francis was talking with Benedict XVI in 2015, and asked casually: “What if I change the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith before the end of his mandate?” “You are the pope,” answered Benedict, “you do what you like.” “Very good, but …?” pressed Francis. “It would be a real revolution,” concluded Benedict, “something not feasible.” And there the matter rested, until this month.

Then came the dubia of the four cardinals: Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra, and Joachim Meisner (recently deceased). I think that the pope always suspected that behind this operation was Cardinal Müller, too. This suspicion — perhaps even the hypothesis that Müller was the real author of the dubia — might have put the seal on the decision to dismiss him. [NO! Müller has dissed the DUBIA and the fact they were made public at all so unequivocally that he has to be much more of a hypocrite even than I think if he had anything to do with the DUBIA at all, much less authored it. And what, Bergoglio did not think any of the Four DUBIA Cardinals were capable of raising those carefully chosen DUBIA and framing the questions the way they did?]

Since the publication of the dubia, Müller has been in a very difficult situation. He has been split between loyalty to the pope, and loyalty to the magisterial teaching of the Church on marriage and the Eucharist. He knew well that the pro-Bergoglio faction in the Curia wanted him to emerge as the main adversary of the pope — and he tried not to fall into that trap.

Last February in Germany, his latest book was published: The Pope, Mission and Mandate. [OMG, I had forgotten about that. I haven't read a review of it, much less the book itself, but my first impression when its publication was announced was that it was yet another way in which Müller was seeking to make nice with the Pope, despite statements like those quoted by Tosatti here. Obviously, it didn't work because as far as Bergoglio was concerned, Mueller was a dead man walking almost from the very beginning!]

Müller writes that as far as the Magisterium is concerned, the pope, too, might be wrong: for instance, if he omits to teach the Faith. No pope can change “the criteria concerning admission to the sacraments,” nor “give absolution, and allow the Eucharist, to a Catholic in mortal sin, who does not repent and resolve not to repeat that sin.” In that case, “the pope himself would sin, concerning the truth of the Gospel, and the salvation of the faithful, whom he would induce to commit a mistake.” [His Bergoglian confreres must have chosen to ignore the book completely, or they would have reacted violently to those statements!]

Prior to the publication of that book, something happened that deeply distressed the cardinal. It was the dismissal of three priests from his congregation. Müller received a letter from the Secretariat of State, ordering the priests’ dismissal but giving no reason for it. When Müller did not answer that letter, a second letter came. Müller requested an audience with the pope. Time passed, with dates for the audience repeatedly fixed and then changed at the last minute.

Finally, Müller got his audience. “I received this letter,” he told the pope, “but before acting on it, I wanted to talk with you, and know the reason for the dismissal. They are good priests and good workers.” “I am the pope,” answered Francis, “and I need give no reason to anyone for my decisions. I said they must go, and go they must.” Then the pope stood up and held out his hand, indicating that the audience was over. Müller was deeply upset. [That is why one concludes from Muller's account last week that the meeting at which Bergoglio informed Müller he was not re-appointing him only took a minute, literally!]

Then the same thing, more or less, happened to him. The cardinal told his story to a German newspaper, the Passauer Neue Presse. In an interview, he said that the pontiff had “communicated his decision” not to renew his appointment “in one minute” at the end of the last day of his five-year term as prefect. As in the case of the three priests, Müller was given no reason for his dismissal. “This style I cannot accept,” Müller declared, adding that in Rome, too, “the Church’s social teaching should be applied.”

Such a style of governance can hardly be considered democratic, or centered on dialogue, or collegial. Müller does not wish to be the leader of any anti-Francis movement. He states that he has “always been loyal to the pope” and wishes to remain loyal —“as Catholic, as bishop, and as cardinal, just as it is due.” Coherent to the last.
[Perhaps Tosatti means his last sentence to be positive, but I interpret it to mean that to the very end, and beyond, Müller has chosen to be consistent (or coherent - the Italian word for 'consistent' in this context is 'coerente') with his flipflopping conduct in the past four years as CDF Prefect, and as in the two interviews he gave after his dismissal. In the first, he claimed "I have no dissent whatsoever with Pope Francis", and in the second, after complaining about the manner he was dismissed, he ends by pledging his loyalty, come what may. Where do you stand, exactly, Your Eminence, or will you choose to continue straddling, or blowing hot and cold about this pope? When will you finally decide to be true to your better self?... Even Tosatti's title "The Good Soldier" bothers me - and pardon the analogy (I am not saying Müller is acting like a Nazi because, in a general way, he has expressed some objections to this pope's taking the faith to the cleaners, as it were, although in a generic way and never directed at him specifically) but every Nazi soldier who ever fought Hitler's war gladly (and most of them did) as well as the thousands of civilians like Adolph Eichmann were each of them 'good soldiers' too.]

On July 3, in the preceding page of this thread, I posted a commentary by the Catholic Herald’s Fr. Lucie Smith on the dismissal of Cardinal Mueller
from the Curia, in which he notes that “The Pope has told Cardinal Müller that from now on all heads of dicastery will serve five years only.
Which I felt compelled to counter right away with what I believe to be well-founded reasonable skepticism, as follows:

---

[Let's see how that works out in practice:
Cardinal Amato, who was named by Benedict XVI to head the Congregation for Sainthood causes on July 9, 2008, was entitled to serve until July 9, 2013, and yet, on March 16, 2013, when the new pope confirmed most of the Curial officials in place at the time, Amato was the only one who was placed 'on hold' with the notice of 'donec alter provideatur'(until otherwise provided), for some reason that has never been explained. Likewise, he has now continued to be Prefect for another four years this July 9, without a reappointment from the pope, who has not even invoked the age-75 retirement rule for Amato who turned 79 last month. He may even get to serve a full five-year term by next year, even if he is compelled to resign when he turns 80!

More importantly, Cardinal Ouellet was named Prefect of Bishops by Benedict XVI on June 30, 2010. Like all the other Curial officials, his appointment was considered terminated when Benedict XVI resigned, but Pope Francis 'confirmed' him in the position on March 16, 2013, as was the now-terminated Cardinal Mueller. Yet Ouellet's original 5-year term would have ended on June 30, 2015 - i.e., two years before Mueller's did - at which time he should have been reappointed or dismissed by this pope, but obviously he is still in place and I do not see any record that he was reappointed at all.

If the papal confirmation of the Curial appointments on March 16, 2013, meant that each official was thereby starting a new five-year term, then Mueller should have been good to stay until March 16, 2018. Amato, Ouellet and Mueller, BTW, were not only Benedict XVI appointees but also considered among the foremost 'Ratzingerians' in the Catholic hierarchy, even if Ouellet immediately turned his coat after March 13, 2013.

Consider the first dicastery head named by this Pope on Sept 21, 2013 - now Cardinal Beniamino Stella to replace the demoted Cardinal Mauro Piacenza as head of the Congregation for the Clergy, and considered by most Vatican insiders as the 'stealth figure' among the pope's closest advisers. Does anyone think this pope will compel him to leave when his term ends in 2018? AThat's as likely as that he will compel Cardinal Parolin to leave State in October 2018 when his five-year term ends!

So, Fr Lucie-Martin, there is not necessarily a rule, because all totalitarian leaders, whether czar or Caudillo Maximo de la Iglesia Catolica, can and usually are arbitrary.]

---

I bring this up because one week later, Sandro Magister on his blogpost today, apparently went through the same exercise I did with the few cardinals I mentioned above, except he goes through all of the major players in the Curia.

I got my information from the www.catholichierarchy.org site which I have always consulted for the ecclesial biodata of prelates, bishops and cardinals I wish to look up, as it presents this in clear tabular chronological form, and has always appeared to me to keep itself up to date. I doublechecked its information against the individual Wikipedia entries for the cardinals concerned. You may doublecheck yourself. Yet Mr. Magister is, of course, a veteran Vaticanista and topnotch investigative journalist, so how can he be wrong about Cardinals Amato and Ouellet? Anyway, here is his post:

In the Curia, ‘no more than five years service
and then out’, the pope tells Cardinal Mueller –
Really? Let’s wait and see what happens to his pets!
By Sandro Magister
SETTIMO CIELO
July 10, 2017

Commenting in Allgemeine Zeitung on his removal as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, upon the expiration of his five-year mandate on July 2, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller reported that Pope Francis “no longer intends to prolong roles in the curia beyond five years, and that he was the first one to whom this practice has been applied.”

That Müller’s removal is the first of this kind is beyond a doubt. So much so that in the days and months leading up to it, other officials in the curia whose terms expired were kept in their positions by the pope. [I obviously missed the news!] But it remains to be seen if in the future everyone will be removed at the end of their five years.

Francis loves to move with a great deal of freedom when it comes to the rules, which moreover include two age limits: 75, when a resignation letter is supposed to be sent by all sitting bishops to the pope, and the age of 80, when all curial positions are supposed to expire automatically.

For example, the dean of the tribunal of the Roman Rota, Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto, is 76 but remains in his position. And it is doubtful that Francis will want to take him from it on September 22, when his five-year term will expire.

To Pinto, in fact, the pope has entrusted himself “in toto” for the reform of the processes of marital nullity, in spite of his mediocre credentials as a canonist and the criticisms that have been heaped upon him because of the disjointed arrangement of the new procedures.

Not only that. Last June 19, Francis placed beside him as chancellor of the Roman Rota his protege Daniele Cancilla, the first layman to be promoted to this important role, in spite of the fact that he had been fired for bad conduct from the Italian episcopal conference where he had long been in charge of aid for foreign dioceses but where he had also forged a friendship with none other than the archbishop of Buenos Aires at the time, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, one of the beneficiaries. [Ah so, this partly explains the reference made by Massimo Franco in his recent Corriere article to some hanky-panky regarding the aid to Third World dioceses by the CEI in Argentina!]

Returning to the Müller case, it must also be noted that Francis is reshaping the CDF to his own liking not only with the removal of the prefect unacceptable to him, but even more with the preceding and unexpected appointment as undersecretary of a man closely bound to him, Monsignor Giacomo Morandi, called there from outside - he was vicar general of the diocese of Modena - on the advice of Cardinal Beniamino Stella, a former nuncio to Cuba and Colombia, and now the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, perhaps the closest to Bergoglio among all the cardinals of the curia.

It was on Morandi’s advice that the pope summarily fired, a few months ago, three high-ranking from the CDF without explaining why to Cardinal Mueller. A firing that made quite a stir.

But let’s take a more detailed look at the state of service of various curia officials whose mandates have expired in recent days and months but have remained at their posts.

- Last July 1, the day before Müller’s removal, brought the end of a second five-year term for Argentine Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the congregation for the Oriental Churches. But he’s still there.
[Sandri was one of the cardinals I had originally lined up for my July 3 commentary, because this Argentine cardinal, who was one of the triumvirate of powerful cardinals (along with Cardinals Sodano and Re] who administratively backstopped John Paul II in his final years, had been Deputy Secretary of State (Sostituto) since September 2000, until Benedict XVI named him Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches in June 2007.

The entire Benedict Curia was considered resigned as of the time he resigned, but the new pope confirmed almost all of them – with the curious exception of Cardinal Amato as I pointed out earlier – to stay in their respective posts, including Cardinals Bertone and Mueller. But again, as I pointed out in the case of Mueller, this confirmation by Bergoglio in March 2013 did not mean that their terms began again from zero – otherwise, Mueller would have had the right to stay on till March 2018.

I decided not to include the Sandri case in my comments on July 3 because I could find no record that Benedict XVI re-appointed him in June 2012, when his first five-year term ended, nor did Bergoglio subsequently re-appoint him, although in February 2014 – almost two years since his first term expired - he ‘confirmed’ Sandri as Prefect when he announced some structural changes to the Congregation. Did that mean a new five-year-term? Obviously not, if we go by what happened to all the Curial heads ‘confirmed’ by Bergoglio in March 2013. Sandri therefore appears to be past his eighth year as Prefect without benefit of reappointment after his first five-year term ended.]

- June 26 brought the end of a five-year term for English Archbishop Arthur Roche, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine worship. But Cardinal prefect Robert Sarah still finds him at his side, and certainly not to his satisfaction considering their clashing viewpoints.

- Last February 15 brought the end of a second five-year term for Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. But Pope Francis has not removed him, in spite of the fact that he is over the age of 79. Enlisted among the defenders of communion for the divorced and remarried, Coccopalmerio seems to have survived even the scandal that three months ago toppled his former secretary, Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, caught in flagrante by the Vatican gendarmes in his apartment in the building of the Sant'Uffizio during a drug-fueled gay sex party.

- August 18, 2016 was the 75th birthday of Cardinal Beniamino Stella, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, and very influential with the pope. But he is still in office. [Theoretically, of course, he can legitimately stay until he turns 80, well beyond the 2018 end of his five-year term.]

And now let’s see a list of curia heads whose terms will expire in the near future and whom the pope - according to what Müller has reported - should be dismissing one by one:
- Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, will end his second five-year term as president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue in September.

- Likewise, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, ends his second five-year term in September – and turns 75 the following month.

- September 8 will be the 75th birthday of the Argentine bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and of Social Sciences, who will finish his fourth five-year term in October 2018. [In other words, Sorondo managed to serve as chancellor of these academies through John Paul II, Benedict XVI and now his fellow Argentine Bergoglio. Yet Sorondo never made news under the two earlier popes – he was a silent administrative officer - until he opened his wings and spread them wide under Bergoglio, outrageously pushing his most radical agenda items, from the environment to bioethics to the politics of poverty.]

- September 22 will bring the end, as stated above, of the five-year term of 76-year-old Monsignor Pinto, dean of the Roman Rota.

- October 1 will be the 75th birthday of Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Governorate of Vatican City State. [He was named to this post by Benedict XVI in September 2011, and theoretically his five-year term would have ended in September 2016. He has not been formally reappointed, but he also happens to be one of the cardinals in the pope’s advisory Council of Nine, and if he were on a second five-year-term, he could stay in office till 2021 when it ends and when he also turns 80.]

- October 1 will bring the end of a second five-year term for pontifical master of ceremonies Monsignor Guido Marini. [He was first appointed by Benedict XVI in October 2007, and would have been reappointed in October 2012. but never formally, acording to the record.]

- On December 7 it will be Archbishop Georg Gänswein, secretary of Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, who ends his five-year term as Prefect of the Pontifical Household. [Will Bergoglio do a Mueller 2.0 with Gaenswein?]

- February 3, 2018 will be the 75th birthday of Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, APSA, who has close ties with Pope Francis and has remained in his role even after the expiration of his first five-year term on July 7, 2016. [Calcagno is a very curious case, because during Benedict XVI’s Pontificate, where he was openly identified as ‘Cardinal Bertone’s man’, he was very often under fire for apparently opposing the financial transparency measures legislated by Benedict XVI with the help of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi in 2010. Gotti Tedeschi has since made it known that the 2010 law was substantially amended by Bertone and company in 2011-2012 in a way that ‘weakened’ the measures. The APSA which Calcagno heads was transformed into a virtual ministry of finance, functions which devolved to the new Secretariat of the Economy in February 2014 but which have since been substantially recovered by APSA, apparently on the strength of Calcagno’s ‘unexplained’ clout with Bergoglio.]

- On April 6, 2018, Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo will end his five-year term as Secretary of the Congregation for the Religious. [This Spanish prelate was Superior General of the Franciscan Order at the time Bergoglio made him his first-ever appointee to the Curia in April 2013. He has since been involved in two major scandals – the Vatican takeover of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, and the revelation in December 2014 of a financial mess involving tens of millions of dollars missing from the Order’s accounts, invested in offshore companies, in addition to accounts held in Swiss banks which Swiss prosecutors said were used for illegal operations including arms and drug trafficking, and bringing serious financial debt and near-bankruptcy to the Order, according to the results of an investigation ordered by Rodiguez Carballo’s successor as SG, the American Michael Perry. But apparently Rodriguez Carballo is very well Teflon-clad in this Pontificate.]

- July 9 will bring the expiration of a second term [that was never formally granted, as far as I can research] for Cardinal Angelo Amato - who will be 80 years old as of that date - prefect of the congregation for the causes of saints. [I am surprised Magister does not refer to the ‘donec aliter promoveatur’ proviso tacked on to Amato by Bergoglio in March 2013. As far as I can search, it has not been lifted, though Amato will complete a full second five-year-term by July next year!]

- July 10 of 2018 will be the 75th birthday of Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia, Adjunct Secretary of the CDF, confirmed in this role on September 21, 2013 “until reaching the age of 75.” [That's a curious proviso to spell out!]

- August 3, 2018 will bring the end of a first five-year term for the Almoner of His Holiness, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski.

- September 21, 2018 will bring the end of a five-year term for the Secretary General of the Bishops’ Synod, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, who is already 77 years old and is another favorite of Pope Francis. [And will conceivably stay on till he is 80.]

- October 12, 2018 will be the turn of Brazilian archbishop Ilson de Jesus Montanari, at the end of his first five-year term as Secretary of the Congregation for Bishops, placed in this crucial role by Pope Francis himself, to whom he reports directly. [Aha!, he’s Cardinal Ouellet’s ball-and-chain!]

Theoretically, these are all the foreseeable dismissals, going by Bergoglio’s ‘Mueller rule’, but in practice, what will he really do, especially about his pets? The bets are open.

[There were a number of 'new' Curial appointments in 2016 with the formation of three new super-dicasteries, but their terms will not end until 2021!]

Interestingly, the odious Robert Mickens tackles the same subject that Magister in his Letter from Rome posted on COMMONWEAL today.
www.commonwealmagazine.org/letter-rome-129
But his presentation is sketchier and less complete than Magister's.