Parental rights and transgender kids

Sunday, February 24, 2019   

It’s hard to think of a more volatile topic than transgender transitions for children entering puberty. The number of kids demanding puberty-blockers so that they can transition to the opposite sex is exploding all over the developed world. It’s a mysterious and poorly understood phenomenon which involves a range of bioethical issues.

Is gender dysphoria really a medical issue at all? Or is it just a waystation on a spectrum of sexualities? How do we decide? Is it ethical to offer treatments which have yet to prove their efficacy? Is it ethical to offer treatments which will have negative side-effects? How can children make decisions which will affect their whole lives without understanding the medical, sexual and psychological implications? There is enough here to fill a library with contending points of view.

But this is far from being a theoretical issue. Children with gender dysphoria are suffering now. Who is to decide how can they be best cared for? A bioethicist writing in the American Journal of Bioethics effectively argues that parents are not the best judges. They are in the same position as loving, well-intentioned parents who want to use herbal remedies for their child’s cancer. Doctors, backed by governments, should decide. The state has to step in to save the child from suffering and even death.

It’s a controversial, even incendiary, point of view. But that is the way the debate is heading. We can expect to hear more, much more, in the future.

https://newswithviews.com/destroying-america-from-within-part-1/
by Pastor Roger Anghis.  

Destroying America From Within, Part 1

Feb 24, 2019 Read More Articles by Roger Anghis

America needs to wake up!  There is an ideology at work to take America down from the inside.  That ideology is Islam.  Some may think I’ve got a screw loose but those that think that are simply not paying attention.

There is a pattern that Islam follows for the taking over of a nation. They’ve done it for their entire history and if you are paying attention you can see them working their plan in the UK, Sweden, Germany and every other nation where they have a presence. It must be understood that Muslims do not assimilate!  Their only purpose of immigrating is to begin the take over of the nation they immigrate to.  Something else must be understood, they believe that they are above the law of any nation they immigrate to.  When they first immigrate, they keep a low profile but as their population increases, they begin to demand that their shariah law be allowed.

The Director of CAIR in Texas, Mustafa Carroll, stated: “If we are practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land.”  See their arrogance? They say that they must obey the laws of the land, but they are required also to lie, cheat and even kill to advance their ideology.  One of the biggest Muslim organizations in America is the unindicted co-conspirators in the Holyland terrorist organization case is CAIR, Council on American Islamic Relations.  The Founder of this terrorist-related organization, Omar Ahmad, stated: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith but to become dominant. The Quran the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”  Muslims will deny that he said this, but they don’t want you to know the truth about their ideology.  I refer to it as an ideology simply because religion is only about 18% of Islam.  The rest is military and covers their law which is shariah.

Under shariah, a Muslim can do anything to a non-muslim, rape women, make them slaves, kill the men or sell them into slavery.  Muslims were the ones that brought the slave trade to America in the early 1700s and still practice the trade to this day. It is necessary to understand how Muslims begin their take over to fully understand what is happening in the UK, Sweden, Germany and what they are doing in America which was helped along by Barak Obama for eight years.  I may sound crass but any so-called god that would use a man like Mohammad as a prophet has to be questioned.  Mohammad could not read nor could he write making him ignorant and illiterate and he ‘married’ a six-year-old girl and consummated the ‘marriage’ when she was nine making him a pedophile.  No sane ‘god’ would use a man like this to promote an ideology unless it was Satan, which is who their ‘god’ is.  Many have stated that Islam, Judaism, ND Christianity all serve the same God.  Ah, no! Their god says to kill Christians and Jews.  Our God says to love our enemies.

One of the aspects of Islam is jihad.  This is where they wage war against non-muslims.  This is part of their ideology.  What is very bothersome about this is there are jihad camps in America where they are training to kill Americans.  There are 22 camps scattered throughout America.  We know where they’re at, but nothing is being done to shut them down.  It is confirmed that there are over 22 Jihadi Training Camps in the United States of America, but the FBI says there is nothing that can be done about them.

These training camps have been connected to Muslims of America (MOA) and belong to Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a Pakistan Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda-related branch. These camps are nothing new, as at least 19 of them were established as early as 2012.

FBI documents obtained by “The Clarion Project” in 2007 detailed the Texas enclave.

The organization says it has a network of 22 “villages” around the U.S., with Islamberg as its main headquarters in New York. TheClarion Project obtained secret MOA footage showing female members receiving paramilitary training at Islamberg. It was featured on the Kelly File on FOX News Channel in October. A second MOA tape released by Clarion shows its spokesman declaring the U.S. to be a Muslim-majority country.

A 2007 FBI record states that MOA members have been involved in at least 10 murders, one disappearance, three firebombings, one attempted firebombing, two explosive bombings and one attempted bombing. It states:

“The documented propensity for violence by this organization supports the belief the leadership of the MOA extols membership to pursue a policy of jihad or holy war against individuals or groups it considers enemies of Islam, which includes the U.S. Government. Members of the MOA are encouraged to travel to Pakistan to receive religious and military/terrorist training from Sheikh Gilani.”

The document also says that “The MOA is now an autonomous organization which possesses an infrastructure capable of planning and mounting terrorist campaigns overseas and within the U.S.” ~Clarion Project [1]

The Muslims have a plan to take America down without a war.  They will use our own laws against us.  They have the help of the Democrat party as well. If you noticed in the 2018 midterms ALL Muslims that ran for office were in the Democrat Party.  I believe that the most dangerous Muslim group is the Muslim Brotherhood.  It has been around since 1929 and was able to work its way into our government all the way to the White House in 2008 with Valarie Jaret Obama’s closest advisor.  Of course, Obama is a Muslim as well.  Many deny it but what sane person would say the most beautiful thing to hear is the Muslim call to prayer?  Then there is Huma Abedin who was an intern in the Clinton White House in 1996 and has been with Hillary ever since as Hillary Clinton’s vice chair in Clinton’s 2016 presidential run and her deputy chief of staff from 2009 to 2013 while Clinton was Secretary of State and traveling chief of staff in Clinton’s 2008 run for the presidency.  Abedin’s family is deep in Islam.  Her father, Dr. Saleha Mahmood Abedin, founded the Institute of Muslim Affairs in 1979 and the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs of which Huma was an associate editor from 1996-2008.

Over the next couple weeks, we will look at how this vile and barbarous ideology works its way into different cultures all for the purpose of replacing that country’s constitution and laws with the warped ideals of shariah.

© 2019 NWV – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Roger Anghis: roger@buildingthetruth.org

Settimo Cielodi Sandro Magister 

22 feb 19

Second Day of the Summit. With New Accusations Against Bergoglio, From His Argentina

*

The following are five entries from the notebook of February 22, the second day of the summit between Pope Francis and the leaders of the hierarchy from all over the world, on the subject of the sexual abuse of minors.

*

1. On the question of the homosexuality that underlies most of the sexual abuse committed by priests, almost all of it with young and very young males above the threshold of puberty, an insurmountable wall of silence continues to be raised.

Questioned at the midday press conference, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the key man of the summit’s organizing committee, reiterated as he had the day before that homosexuality “has nothing to do with sexual abuse of minors.”

*

2. There reappeared in public, at the press conference, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, until a year ago  – and for valid reasons – the pope’s highest delegate in this field, but who later fell into disgrace and was excluded from the preparation of the summit, in spite of the fact that he continues to preside over the pontifical council for the protection of minors.

At his side O’Malley had none other than the two men of whom Pope Francis now avails himself as executors of his wishes: Cardinal Blase Cupich and Archbishop Charles Scicluna.

But this does not mean that O’Malley is on his way to being rehabilitated. It has been announced that for Monday February 25, the day after the end of the summit, Francis has convened a meeting with the members of the organizing committee, “in primis” Cupich and Scicluna, with the heads of the curia dicasteries relevant to the subject and with some experts. And the pontifical council for the protection of minors, with its president O’Malley? Not convened. The pope will continue to do without him.

*

3. The clash between Rome and the episcopal conference of the United States, which exploded last November with the pope’s ban on putting to a vote two practical decisions on how to oppose the mismanagement of individual bishops in matters of sexual abuse, has come to a head as widely predicted.

In fact it fell to Cardinal Cupich – archbishop of Chicago and a diehard Bergoglian, as well as being a protege of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, now reduced to the lay state because of his misdeeds – to give the official presentation during the summit of the same alternative solution that he himself, in agreement with Rome, had contrasted with what the American episcopal conference intended to put into effect.

In brief, the solution of Cupich and Pope Francis is to entrust the first phase of investigation into the mismanagement of a bishop in matters of sexual abuse not to an independent body of laymen – as in the plan of the American episcopal conference – but to the metropolitan of the bishop’s own ecclesiastical province. With the results of the investigation then being sent to the Holy See, which would see to deciding his fate.

*

4. Shortly before Cupich, on the morning of February 22, another talk was given at the summit by Indian cardinal Oswald Gracias, who is also a member of the council of 9 cardinals – now reduced to 6 – that assists Francis in the reform of the curia and governance of the universal Church.

Except that a few hours before Gracias was to speak, the BBC posted an article charging him with negligence in handling two cases of sexual abuse committed by priests of his archdiocese of Mumbai, one in 2015 and another in 2009.

On the 2015 case, the archdiocese of Mumbai immediately released a replywith a great deal of detail and conviction in justifying Gracias’s conduct, with all the names of the persons implicated.

Not one word, however, on the 2009 case, which – according to the account of the BBC – would constitute the classic script of the priest not penalized after the charge of the misdeed and left to work with the grave danger of repeating the abuse.

*

But much more than Cardinal Gracias, it is the pope himself who on the very opening day of the summit was again called to account for the protection he accorded to the Argentine Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta, his friend and spiritual son since he was undersecretary of the Argentine episcopal conference, promoted as bishop of Orán in the summer of 2013, who later resigned for unspecified “reasons of health” in the summer of 2017 but promptly elevated by the pope, in December of that same year, to the Vatican post custom-made for him of “assessor” of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.

Last Christmas the Argentine newspaper “El Tribuno” had broken the news that a complaint against Zanchetta, when he was bishop of Orán, had been forwarded to the nuncio in Argentina, charging him with abusing a dozen seminarians.

On January 4, the director of the Vatican press office denied this news, asserting that the accusations against Zanchetta did not reach the Vatican before the autumn of 2018 and that a preliminary investigation was underway in Argentina to assess their reliability.

On February 21, however, “El Tribuno,” under the byline of the journalist Silvia Noviasky, revisited the topic and provided the documentary proof (see photo) that very detailed charges of bad behavior by Zanchetta had been sent by churchmen of the diocese of Orán to the competent authorities, in Argentina and Rome, on several occasions from 2015 to 2017.

With the corollary that Pope Francis was aware of his protege’s misdeeds well before he accepted his resignation as bishop of Orán and promoted him as assessor of the APSA.

Where Zanchetta is still at his post. With the pope keeping mum, in the thick of the summit convened to bring clarity on this painful chapter in the life of the Church.

Condividi:

Recovering from Cultural Dementia

THE CATHOLIC THING

Anthony Esolen

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2019

The other day at Thomas More College I had an experience I’d never had, in my thirty-four years of teaching college students. I had stayed in the room after class, chatting with several of the students, who didn’t have to get anywhere fast, because the class was over at 11:00 and Mass wouldn’t begin until 11:30. One of the students, the only one in a class of twenty-five, had spent two years in a public high school, and we were talking about what kinds of literature were and were not taught there – or in almost any high school, public or private.

She told me one thing I suspected, and one thing that, in my naiveté, I had not.  The thing I did not suspect was that hardly anybody read any of the novels the teachers assigned.  They read bad crib notes online.  No delight, I guess, in Charles Dickens.  It’s a little like being at Yellowstone Park, but staying in your hotel room, looking at a few pictures of the place, playing video games, watching porn, and not bothering to go outdoors.  The thing I did suspect, because it confirms what I’ve seen all these years, is that poetry has been almost wholly abandoned.

I guess there are three reasons for that.

One is that the teachers themselves don’t know poetry, because we are into the third generation of its neglect.

Another is that poetry is thought to be hard. Modern poetry is hard because modern poets indulge themselves in distortions and disruptions of language. Earlier poetry is “hard” for the same reason Dickens supposedly is: our linguistic range is narrow.

The third reason is that you can’t teach the old poetry without knowing a lot about the Christian faith, and without being willing to take on their own terms ways of life that are not ours. Multiculturalism might more accurately be called multi-modernism: the same old modernism, wearying unto death, gussied up in a variety of dress.  It is a yawn.

But my students like poetry, and one of them brought up the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.  We’re going to have a Poetry Night, so they were thinking about possibilities for recital.  That got them going, and all at once, the three of us, without hesitation, began to recite his famous sonnet, “God’s Grandeur”:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God;
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck His rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod,
And all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil,
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

*

Yet for all this, nature is never spent:
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things,
And though the last lights off the black west went,
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs,
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with, ah! bright wings.

Nothing like that had happened before, in my whole career.

Mos amandi, mos cantandi: as we sing, so shall we love.  If we don’t sing, our love will become, or must already be, frail and thin.  Singing is what the lover does, said Augustine.  To know the truths of our faith, but not to sing them, is like knowing that God exists, but never to feel His presence; it is to know that we are loved, but never to feel the race of the heart.

“But we do sing at Mass,” someone says.  Yes and no.  There are songs, but most of the congregation is silent or is murmuring, because the songs are for Mass entertainment, having been conceived in form and content after the patterns of mass entertainment.

No one remembers the words, because the poetry is bad or nonexistent, and no one remembers the melodies, because they are bad or because they never were written to be sung by an entire congregation and its full range of human voices.

If people are defined by the poetry they share – by the songs they can all sing together with maybe one or two prompts to jog the memory, then we are undefined, not a people at all, only an aggregate.

When Jesus and his disciples prayed and sang at the Last Supper, they didn’t have to pick up a hymnal, good or bad.  They prayed and sang from their hearts, where they had kept their people’s poetry as treasure.  What pearls do we possess?

I have watched young Christians go into the world like minnows into Leviathan.  They go with imaginations unformed, and that is that.  They may attend services on Sunday, but they are as worldly as anybody.

So I am issuing a challenge to every Catholic school and parish – a poetic challenge:

First, get rid of the lousy poetry and lousy music. Stupidity is always a vice, says Maritain.  Nobody says, “It doesn’t matter what movies my child watches, so long as he watches movies,” or, “It doesn’t matter what my husband drinks, so long as he drinks.” Get rid of it.  Nobody but the church performers enjoys it anyway.  Replace it with real hymns.  Don’t think you can get those from the big presses, OCP and GIA and such, because they have mangled the texts and dragged them through the mud. Sing the poems, as they were composed.

Second, return to poetry.  The time is short, and the reward immense.  Fifty lines of Tennyson can be committed to memory; five hundred pages of Dickens, not so fast.  Have every student in your schools learn, say, twenty poems by heart.  And their elders, too, might join in – have a Poetry Night in your parish, with the stipulation that every poem be written in meter.

We are suffering from cultural dementia, muddied and dulled by the strokes of the modern.  It is time, little by little, for recovery.

*Image: G.M. Hopkins (right) with friends, Alfred William Garrett and William Alexander Comyn, members of the Oxford Movement [photo by Thomas C. Bayfield, 1866]

Thursday, February 21, 2019

University Scholar: Francis’s Book “Dialogos” shows Pope “Favors Socialism… Cuban Dictatorship… Authoritarian Role for the State… [&] not… the People”

Jose Azel, a senior scholar at the University of Miami, in the respected international relations quarterly journal World Affairs wrote a review of a book by Pope Francis, which he wrote in 1998 while he was still the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, which apparently the pontiff and Vatican don’t want publicized or read.

There is only one copy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s book “Dialogos Entre Juan Pablo y Fidel Castro [Dialogue between John Paul II and Fidel Castro]” available on Amazon and it is selling for $864.

The Spanish speaking Azel in his review of the book reported “[i]n my reading of the pope’s complex Spanish prose… :

– “he favors socialism over capitalism provided it incorporates theism…”

– “He does not take issue with Fidel Castro’s claim that ‘Karl Marx’s doctrine is very close to the Sermon on the Mount’… “

– “… and views the Cuban polity [form of government] as in harmony with the Church’s social doctrine…”

– “… Francis leaves no doubt that he sympathizes with the Cuban dictatorship…”

– “… and that he is not a fan of liberal democracy or markets…”

– “… He clearly believes in a very large, authoritarian role for the state in social and economic affairs…”

– “… his language in the prologue is reminiscent of the ‘liberation theology’… very intertwined [with] Marxist ideology. Fathered by Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez, the movement provided the intellectual foundations that, with Cuban support, served to orchestrate’ wars of national liberation’ throughout the continent. It’s iconography portrayed Jesus as a guerrilla an AK-47 slung over his shoulder…”

– “… Francis speaks of a ‘shared solidarity’… that solidarity appears to be with the undemocratic, illegitimate authority in Cuba and not with the people…”

– “… Cubans will remember that this pope had a choice between freedom and authoritarianism.”
( World Affairs, “Whose Pope? Francis and Cuba,” Fall 2015)

The University of Miami senior scholar Azel in the article in his own translation of Francis’s book quotes the pope saying:

“[N]eoliberal capitalism is a model that subordinates human beings and conditions development to pure market forces… thus humanity attends a cruel spectacle that crystallizes the enrichment of the few at the expense of the impoverishment of the many.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church.

FRED MARTINEZ

http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2019/02/university-scholar-franciss-book.html?m=1

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NEWSCATHOLIC CHURCH, FAITHThu Feb 21, 2019 – 11:05 am EST

Archbishop Viganò issues message to Pope and bishops on opening day of Vatican sex abuse summit

 Vatican Sex Abuse Summit

ROME, February 21, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has written an open message to Pope Francis and presidents of episcopal conferences around the world, who are gathered in Rome for the opening of a Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse. 

Here below is the full text of Archbishop Viganò’s message, issued on the liturgical memorial of St. Peter Damian — Bishop, Confessor and Doctor of the Church.

*** 

We cannot avoid seeing as a sign of Providence that you, Pope Francis, and brother Bishops representing the entire Church have come together on the very day on which we celebrate the memory of St. Peter Damian. This great monk in the 11th century put all his strength and apostolic zeal into renewing the Church in his time, so deeply corrupted by sins of sodomy and simony.  He did that with the help of faithful Bishops and lay people, especially with the support of Abbot Hildebrand of the Abbey of St Paul extra muros, the future Pope Gregory VII.    

Allow me to propose for our meditation the words of our dear Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI addressed to the people of God in the General Audience of Wednesday, May 17, 2006, commenting on the very passage of the Gospel of Mark 8:27-33 that we proclaimed on today’s Mass.

Peter was to live another important moment of his spiritual journey near Caesarea Philippi when Jesus asked the disciples a precise question: “Who do men say that I am?” (Mk 8: 27). But for Jesus hearsay did not suffice. He wanted from those who had agreed to be personally involved with him a personal statement of their position. Consequently, he insisted:  “But who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8: 29). 

It was Peter who answered on behalf of the others: “You are the Christ” (ibid.), that is, the Messiah. Peter’s answer, which was not revealed to him by “flesh and blood” but was given to him by the Father who is in heaven (cf. Mt 16:17), contains as in a seed the future confession of faith of the Church. However, Peter had not yet understood the profound content of Jesus’ Messianic mission, the new meaning of this word:  Messiah.

He demonstrates this a little later, inferring that the Messiah whom he is following in his dreams is very different from God’s true plan. He was shocked by the Lord’s announcement of the Passion and protested, prompting a lively reaction from Jesus (cf. Mk 8: 32-33).

Peter wanted as Messiah a “divine man” who would fulfil the expectations of the people by imposing his power upon them all:  we would also like the Lord to impose his power and transform the world instantly. Jesus presented himself as a “human God,” the Servant of God, who turned the crowd’s expectations upside-down by taking a path of humility and suffering.

This is the great alternative that we must learn over and over again:  to give priority to our own expectations, rejecting Jesus, or to accept Jesus in the truth of his mission and set aside all too human expectations.

Peter, impulsive as he was, did not hesitate to take Jesus aside and rebuke him. Jesus’ answer demolished all his false expectations, calling him to conversion and to follow him: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men” (Mk 8: 33). It is not for you to show me the way; I take my own way and you should follow me.

Peter thus learned what following Jesus truly means. It was his second call, similar to Abraham’s in Genesis 22, after that in Genesis 12: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospel’s will save it” (Mk 8: 34-35). This is the demanding rule of the following of Christ:  one must be able, if necessary, to give up the whole world to save the true values, to save the soul, to save the presence of God in the world (cf. Mk 8: 36-37). And though with difficulty, Peter accepted the invitation and continued his life in the Master’s footsteps.

And it seems to me that these conversions of St Peter on different occasions, and his whole figure, are a great consolation and a great lesson for us. We too have a desire for God, we too want to be generous, but we too expect God to be strong in the world and to transform the world on the spot, according to our ideas and the needs that we perceive.

God chooses a different way. God chooses the way of the transformation of hearts in suffering and in humility. And we, like Peter, must convert, over and over again. We must follow Jesus and not go before him:  it is he who shows us the way.

So it is that Peter tells us:  You think you have the recipe and that it is up to you to transform Christianity, but it is the Lord who knows the way. It is the Lord who says to me, who says to you:  follow me! And we must have the courage and humility to follow Jesus, because he is the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

Maria, Mater Ecclesiae, Ora pro nobis,

Maria, Regina Apostolorum, Ora pro nobis.

Maria, Mater Gratiae, Mater Misericordiae, Tu nos ab hoste protege et mortis hora suscipe.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò

Tit. Archbishop of Ulpiana
Apostolic Nuncio
February 21, 2019
Memorial of St. Peter Damian

The Coming Global Storm

Robert Royal

THE CATHOLIC THING

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Many people – even many Catholics – who only follow Church matters vaguely, have been puzzled by the Vatican’s conspicuous lack of a sense of urgency about the sexual abuse crisis. Yes, there’s a “summit” on abuse that starts today, but only after months and with a program that looks very carefully stage-managed to keep the most troubling questions at a distance from the Vatican itself.

And it is strange, given that – as many in Rome are certainly aware – instantaneous communications in our digital world make the slow response look less like the Vatican’s usual leisurely procedures and much more like a desire not to know too much – or how high the problem may reach.

But it’s rapidly becoming impossible to keep the lid on. Just two days ago, for example, The Washington Post carried a story about a case in Argentina (available here) involving the abuse of minors at an institute for deaf children. An Italian priest, Nicola Corradi, was spiritual director there and later at a similar school in Italy, and along with others abused dozens of underage children for decades.

This story is not entirely new – there had been reports about abuse at the Argentinean school for several months. In many ways, it seemed to be just one more case of sexual exploitation of the vulnerable and a lack of Church oversight.

What is new, however, is quite shocking: “The Italian victims’ efforts to sound the alarm to church authorities began in 2008 and included mailing a list of accused priests to Francis in 2014 and physically handing him the list in 2015.” If the accusations are to be believed – and they seem quite credible on the basis of the Post’s investigative reporting – this means that the pope knew of the abuse of minors, at an Italian school under the supervision of the Vatican. And either he or those who, under his direction, should have acted, did essentially nothing.

That story has been widely circulated in America and victims in Argentina and Italy are now demanding justice – one has even begun a hunger strike. But if you think that it has caused much of a reaction in Italy or in Rome, you would be wrong. And that may be one reason why officials in the Vatican seem to continue to believe that they can manage the revelations that have come out and, no doubt, the others that we will see in the next few days. But they can’t.

It may be difficult for most American Catholics to believe, but there’s little interest about the abuse summit in Italy, or most of Europe, at the moment. The New York Times, in its bigoted anti-Catholicism, may run “news” stories intended to discredit the Church almost every day. But in a way, that’s a backhanded tribute to the fact that even the Times believes that the Church means something and is worth the trouble of attacking.

By contrast, you’d have to work hard to find news about the summit or the abuse crisis in Europe’s mainstream media. There’s been a little interest in a related story that just appeared about the Vatican’s rules about how to handle the children of wayward priests – 50,000 of them according to the Vatican itself. But about the global abuse crisis and the lack of response by figures from the pope on down, all but nothing.

[Late addition: Owing to time changes, this couldn’t be included in the original article, but the BBC, which takes an interest in Britain’s former colonies, is reporting that Mumbai’s Cardinal Oswald Gracias also failed to act on allegations about abuse that were brought to him. Furthermore, Gracias is one of the four main organizers of the summit. And as is the case with Pope Francis, this did not happen in some distant past when policies were different but as recently as 2015.]

An Italian journalist who, though a serious Catholic, has worked at the very highest levels of the secular media here, told me the other day that most Italians are virtual “nihilists” (his term) when it comes to corruption in the Church. They believe that it’s always been that way and always will be. They don’t show anything like the anger and outrage – or simple surprise – that is common in places like America and, increasingly, Latin America.

Italian friends who know the Roman landscape well say that the gay lobby in the Vatican – and the Vatican more generally – continue to exercise a very effective, old-school-style control over Church-related news. And not only locally, but in some of the most prestigious news outlets in Italy.

Vatican officials have for some time made it clear that they believe that, by contrast, the  American bishops mishandled the abuse crisis and let things get out of hand in the American press. They even occasionally give the impression that they – and perhaps the pope – think the American bishops are their enemies.

Neither charge is true. In fact, it would be truer to say that the bishops in America have a better – not perfect, but better – grip on the priestly abuse problem now than do bishops in any other country. (Holding bishops accountable, of course, is still unfinished business – and Rome hasn’t much helped with that.)

Their conflicts, such as they are, with Pope Francis mostly stem from the fact that – given constant media exposure, criminal investigations by civil authorities, and demands of justice for victims – they can’t count on media to ignore problems or a largely cynical laity to just go along, as in Europe. They need to act – and be seen to act.

And it’s not only in America that a storm is brewing. Abuse survivors from several continents met yesterday with the organizers of the summit – though not with the pope, a sore point among them. It’s hard to say whether their collective efforts will bring enough pressure to bear on the Vatican that it will break through the logjam. On the whole, you’d have to say: it appears not. But the victims are playing a prominent role now and are not going away.

To really address the problem would mean some painful moments of truth, such as we have experienced in the United States. Corruption this serious would, of course, require that some heads roll (not only McCarrick’s), in the Vatican and elsewhere, and that there be public acts of repentance. But the very general and broad program the organizers have published seems designed to make sure no one in the Vatican will need to lose much sleep.

I’ve been expecting for the last several weeks that there’s going to be some surprise announcement near the end of the summit, some striking move that will dominate news coverage creating the impression that some radical breakthrough has been achieved.

I don’t know exactly what that would be or whether it would be some real step forward or mere window dressing. But just as “synodality” materialized out of nowhere at the end of Synod on Youth, there is probably some plan in place to do something newsworthy to make it appear that the Vatican has turned a corner in dealing with abuse.

It’s had to believe that that will be really so or that it will convince the victims who have now assumed a public role in holding Church officials accountable at the very highest levels. But keep an eye on those victims. They will provide us with the best insights into what, if anything, has changed.

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TWELVE VALID CARDINALS, i.e. CARDINALS APPOINTED BY POPES BENEDICT XVI AND SAINT JOHN PAUL II, MUST ACT SOON TO REMOVE FRANCIS THE MERCIFUL FROM THE THRONE OF SAINT PETER BEFORE HE DAMAGES THE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH EVEN MORE THAN HE HAS ALREADY DAMAGED IT. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CARDINALS OF THE HOLY ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND OTHER CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN FAITHFUL IN COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE Recently many educated Catholic observers, including bishops and priests, have decried the confusion in doctrinal statements about faith or morals made from the Apostolic See at Rome and by the putative Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis. Some devout, faithful and thoughtful Catholics have even suggested that he be set aside as a heretic, a dangerous purveyor of error, as recently mentioned in a number of reports. Claiming heresy on the part of a man who is a supposed Pope, charging material error in statements about faith or morals by a putative Roman Pontiff, suggests and presents an intervening prior question about his authenticity in that August office of Successor of Peter as Chief of The Apostles, i.e., was this man the subject of a valid election by an authentic Conclave of The Holy Roman Church? This is so because each Successor of Saint Peter enjoys the Gift of Infallibility. So, before one even begins to talk about excommunicating such a prelate, one must logically examine whether this person exhibits the uniformly good and safe fruit of Infallibility. If he seems repeatedly to engage in material error, that first raises the question of the validity of his election because one expects an authentically-elected Roman Pontiff miraculously and uniformly to be entirely incapable of stating error in matters of faith or morals. So to what do we look to discern the invalidity of such an election? His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, within His massive legacy to the Church and to the World, left us with the answer to this question. The Catholic faithful must look back for an answer to a point from where we have come—to what occurred in and around the Sistine Chapel in March 2013 and how the fruits of those events have generated such widespread concern among those people of magisterial orthodoxy about confusing and, or, erroneous doctrinal statements which emanate from The Holy See. His Apostolic Constitution (Universi Dominici Gregis) which governed the supposed Conclave in March 2013 contains quite clear and specific language about the invalidating effect of departures from its norms. For example, Paragraph 76 states: “Should the election take place in a way other than that prescribed in the present Constitution, or should the conditions laid down here not be observed, the election is for this very reason null and void, without any need for a declaration on the matter; consequently, it confers no right on the one elected.” From this, many believe that there is probable cause to believe that Monsignor Jorge Mario Bergoglio was never validly elected as the Bishop of Rome and Successor of Saint Peter—he never rightly took over the office of Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and therefore he does not enjoy the charism of Infallibility. If this is true, then the situation is dire because supposed papal acts may not be valid or such acts are clearly invalid, including supposed appointments to the college of electors itself. Only valid cardinals can rectify our critical situation through privately (secretly) recognizing the reality of an ongoing interregnum and preparing for an opportunity to put the process aright by obedience to the legislation of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, in that Apostolic Constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis. While thousands of the Catholic faithful do understand that only the cardinals who participated in the events of March 2013 within the Sistine Chapel have all the information necessary to evaluate the issue of election validity, there was public evidence sufficient for astute lay faithful to surmise with moral certainty that the March 2013 action by the College was an invalid conclave, an utter nullity. What makes this understanding of Universi Dominici Gregisparticularly cogent and plausible is the clear Promulgation Clause at the end of this Apostolic Constitution and its usage of the word “scienter” (“knowingly”). The Papal Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis thus concludes definitively with these words: “. . . knowingly or unknowingly, in any way contrary to this Constitution.” (“. . . scienter vel inscienter contra hanc Constitutionem fuerint excogitata.”) [Note that His Holiness, Pope Paul VI, had a somewhat similar promulgation clause at the end of his corresponding, now abrogated, Apostolic Constitution, Romano Pontifici Eligendo, but his does not use “scienter”, but rather uses “sciens” instead. This similar term of sciens in the earlier abrogated Constitution has an entirely different legal significance than scienter.] This word, “scienter”, is a legal term of art in Roman law, and in canon law, and in Anglo-American common law, and in each system, scienter has substantially the same significance, i.e., “guilty knowledge” or willfully knowing, criminal intent. Thus, it clearly appears that Pope John Paul II anticipated the possibility of criminal activity in the nature of a sacrilege against a process which He intended to be purely pious, private, sacramental, secret and deeply spiritual, if not miraculous, in its nature. This contextual reality reinforced in the Promulgation Clause, combined with: (1) the tenor of the whole document; (2) some other provisions of the document, e.g., Paragraph 76; (3) general provisions of canon law relating to interpretation, e.g., Canons 10 & 17; and, (4) the obvious manifest intention of the Legislator, His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, tends to establish beyond a reasonable doubt the legal conclusion that Monsignor Bergoglio was never validly elected Roman Pontiff. This is so because:1. Communication of any kind with the outside world, e.g., communication did occur between the inside of the Sistine Chapel and anyone outside, including a television audience, before, during or even immediately after the Conclave;2. Any political commitment to “a candidate” and any “course of action” planned for The Church or a future pontificate, such as the extensive decade-long “pastoral” plans conceived by the Sankt Gallen hierarchs; and,3. Any departure from the required procedures of the conclave voting process as prescribed and known by a cardinal to have occurred:each was made an invalidating act, and if scienter (guilty knowledge) was present, also even a crime on the part of any cardinal or other actor, but, whether criminal or not, any such act or conduct violating the norms operated absolutely, definitively and entirely against the validity of all of the supposed Conclave proceedings. Quite apart from the apparent notorious violations of the prohibition on a cardinal promising his vote, e.g., commitments given and obtained by cardinals associated with the so-called “Sankt Gallen Mafia,” other acts destructive of conclave validity occurred. Keeping in mind that Pope John Paul II specifically focused Universi Dominici Gregis on “the seclusion and resulting concentration which an act so vital to the whole Church requires of the electors” such that “the electors can more easily dispose themselves to accept the interior movements of the Holy Spirit,” even certain openly public media broadcasting breached this seclusion by electronic broadcasts outlawed by Universi Dominici Gregis. These prohibitions include direct declarative statements outlawing any use of television before, during or after a conclave in any area associated with the proceedings, e.g.: “I further confirm, by my apostolic authority, the duty of maintaining the strictest secrecy with regard to everything that directly or indirectly concerns the election process itself.” Viewed in light of this introductory preambulary language of Universi Dominici Gregis and in light of the legislative text itself, even the EWTN camera situated far inside the Sistine Chapel was an immediately obvious non-compliant act which became an open and notorious invalidating violation by the time when this audio-visual equipment was used to broadcast to the world the preaching after the “Extra Omnes”. While these blatant public violations of Chapter IV of Universi Dominici Gregis actuate the invalidity and nullity of the proceedings themselves, nonetheless in His great wisdom, the Legislator did not disqualify automatically those cardinals who failed to recognize these particular offenses against sacred secrecy, or even those who, with scienter, having recognized the offenses and having had some power or voice in these matters, failed or refused to act or to object against them: “Should any infraction whatsoever of this norm occur and be discovered, those responsible should know that they will be subject to grave penalties according to the judgment of the future Pope.” [Universi Dominici Gregis, ¶55] No Pope apparently having been produced in March 2013, those otherwise valid cardinals who failed with scienter to act on violations of Chapter IV, on that account alone would nonetheless remain voting members of the College unless and until a new real Pope is elected and adjudges them. Thus, those otherwise valid cardinals who may have been compromised by violations of secrecy can still participate validly in the “clean-up of the mess” while addressing any such secrecy violations with an eventual new Pontiff. In contrast, the automatic excommunication of those who politicized the sacred conclave process, by obtaining illegally, commitments from cardinals to vote for a particular man, or to follow a certain course of action (even long before the vacancy of the Chair of Peter as Vicar of Christ), is established not only by the word, “scienter,” in the final enacting clause, but by a specific exception, in this case, to the general statement of invalidity which therefore reinforces the clarity of intention by Legislator that those who apply the law must interpret the general rule as truly binding. Derived directly from Roman law, canonical jurisprudence provides this principle for construing or interpreting legislation such as this Constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis. Expressed in Latin, this canon of interpretation is: “Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis.” (The exception proves the rule in cases not excepted.) In this case, an exception from invalidity for acts of simony reinforces the binding force of the general principle of nullity in cases of other violations. Therefore, by exclusion from nullity and invalidity legislated in the case of simony: “If — God forbid — in the election of the Roman Pontiff the crime of simony were to be perpetrated, I decree and declare that all those guilty thereof shall incur excommunication latae sententiae. At the same time I remove the nullity or invalidity of the same simoniacal provision, in order that — as was already established by my Predecessors — the validity of the election of the Roman Pontiff may not for this reason be challenged.” His Holiness made an exception for simony. Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis. The clear exception from nullity and invalidity for simony proves the general rule that other violations of the sacred process certainly do and did result in the nullity and invalidity of the entire conclave. Comparing what Pope John Paul II wrote in His Constitution on conclaves with the Constitution which His replaced, you can see that, with the exception of simony, invalidity became universal. In the corresponding paragraph of what Pope Paul VI wrote, he specifically confined the provision declaring conclave invalidity to three (3) circumstances described in previous paragraphs within His constitution, Romano Pontfici Eligendo. No such limitation exists in Universi Dominici Gregis. See the comparison both in English and Latin below:Romano Pontfici Eligendo, 77. Should the election be conducted in a manner different from the three procedures described above (cf. no. 63 ff.) or without the conditions laid down for each of the same, it is for this very reason null and void (cf. no. 62), without the need for any declaration, and gives no right to him who has been thus elected. [Romano Pontfici Eligendo, 77: “Quodsi electio aliter celebrata fuerit, quam uno e tribus modis, qui supra sunt dicti (cfr. nn. 63 sqq.), aut non servatis condicionibus pro unoquoque illorum praescriptis, electio eo ipso est nulla et invalida (cfr. n. 62) absque ulla declaratione, et ita electo nullum ius tribuit .”] as compared with:Universi Dominici Gregis, 76: “Should the election take place in a way other than that prescribed in the present Constitution, or should the conditions laid down here not be observed, the election is for this very reason null and void, without any need for a declaration on the matter; consequently, it confers no right on the one elected.” [Universi Dominici Gregis, 76: “Quodsi electio aliter celebrata fuerit, quam haec Constitutio statuit, aut non servatis condicionibus pariter hic praescriptis, electio eo ipso est nulla et invalida absque ulla declaratione, ideoque electo nullum ius tribuit.”]Of course, this is not the only feature of the Constitution or aspect of the matter which tends to establish the breadth of invalidity. Faithful must hope and pray that only those cardinals whose status as a valid member of the College remains intact will ascertain the identity of each other and move with the utmost charity and discretion in order to effectuate The Divine Will in these matters. The valid cardinals, then, must act according to that clear, manifest, obvious and unambiguous mind and intention of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, so evident in Universi Dominici Gregis, a law which finally established binding and self-actuating conditions of validity on the College for any papal conclave, a reality now made so apparent by the bad fruit of doctrinal confusion and plain error. It would seem then that praying and working in a discreet and prudent manner to encourage only those true cardinals inclined to accept a reality of conclave invalidity, would be a most charitable and logical course of action in the light of Universi Dominici Gregis, and out of our high personal regard for the clear and obvious intention of its Legislator, His Holiness, Pope John Paul II. Even a relatively small number of valid cardinals could act decisively and work to restore a functioning Apostolic See through the declaration of an interregnum government. The need is clear for the College to convene a General Congregation in order to declare, to administer, and soon to end the Interregnum which has persisted since March 2013. Finally, it is important to understand that the sheer number of putative counterfeit cardinals will eventually, sooner or later, result in a situation in which The Church will have no normal means validly ever again to elect a Vicar of Christ. After that time, it will become even more difficult, if not humanly impossible, for the College of Cardinals to rectify the current disastrous situation and conduct a proper and valid Conclave such that The Church may once again both have the benefit of a real Supreme Pontiff, and enjoy the great gift of a truly infallible Vicar of Christ. It seems that some good cardinals know that the conclave was invalid, but really cannot envision what to do about it; we must pray, if it is the Will of God, that they see declaring the invalidity and administering an Interregnum through a new valid conclave is what they must do. Without such action or without a great miracle, The Church is in a perilous situation. Once the last validly appointed cardinal reaches age 80, or before that age, dies, the process for electing a real Pope ends with no apparent legal means to replace it. Absent a miracle then, The Church would no longer have an infallible Successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ. Roman Catholics would be no different that Orthodox Christians. In this regard, all of the true cardinals may wish to consider what Holy Mother Church teaches in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶675, ¶676 and ¶677 about “The Church’s Ultimate Trial”. But, the fact that “The Church . . . will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection” does not justify inaction by the good cardinals, even if there are only a minimal number sufficient to carry out Chapter II of Universi Dominici Gregis and operate the Interregnum. This Apostolic Constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis, which was clearly applicable to the acts and conduct of the College of Cardinals in March 2013, is manifestly and obviously among those “invalidating” laws “which expressly establish that an act is null or that a person is effected” as stated in Canon 10 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. And, there is nothing remotely “doubtful or obscure” (Canon 17) about this Apostolic Constitution as clearly promulgated by Pope John Paul II. The tenor of the whole document expressly establishes that the issue of invalidity was always at stake. This Apostolic Constitution conclusively establishes, through its Promulgation Clause [which makes “anything done (i.e., any act or conduct) by any person . . . in any way contrary to this Constitution,”] the invalidity of the entire supposed Conclave, rendering it “completely null and void”. So, what happens if a group of Cardinals who undoubtedly did not knowingly and wilfully initiate or intentionally participate in any acts of disobedience against Universi Dominici Gregis were to meet, confer and declare that, pursuant to Universi Dominici Gregis, Monsignor Bergoglio is most certainly not a valid Roman Pontiff. Like any action on this matter, including the initial finding of invalidity, that would be left to the valid members of the college of cardinals. They could declare the Chair of Peter vacant and proceed to a new and proper conclave. They could meet with His Holiness, Benedict XVI, and discern whether His resignation and retirement was made under duress, or based on some mistake or fraud, or otherwise not done in a legally effective manner, which could invalidate that resignation. Given the demeanor of His Holiness, Benedict XVI, and the tenor of His few public statements since his departure from the Chair of Peter, this recognition of validity in Benedict XVI seems unlikely. In fact, even before a righteous group of good and authentic cardinals might decide on the validity of the March 2013 supposed conclave, they must face what may be an even more complicated discernment and decide which men are most likely not valid cardinals. If a man was made a cardinal by the supposed Pope who is, in fact, not a Pope (but merely Monsignor Bergoglio), no such man is in reality a true member of the College of Cardinals. In addition, those men appointed by Pope John Paul II or by Pope Benedict XVI as cardinals, but who openly violated Universi Dominici Gregis by illegal acts or conduct causing the invalidation of the last attempted conclave, would no longer have voting rights in the College of Cardinals either. (Thus, the actual valid members in the College of Cardinals may be quite smaller in number than those on the current official Vatican list of supposed cardinals.) In any event, the entire problem is above the level of anyone else in Holy Mother Church who is below the rank of Cardinal. So, we must pray that The Divine Will of The Most Holy Trinity, through the intercession of Our Lady as Mediatrix of All Graces and Saint Michael, Prince of Mercy, very soon rectifies the confusion in Holy Mother Church through action by those valid Cardinals who still comprise an authentic College of Electors. Only certainly valid Cardinals can address the open and notorious evidence which points to the probable invalidity of the last supposed conclave and only those cardinals can definitively answer the questions posed here. May only the good Cardinals unite and if they recognize an ongoing Interregnum, albeit dormant, may they end this Interregnum by activating perfectly a functioning Interregnum government of The Holy See and a renewed process for a true Conclave, one which is purely pious, private, sacramental, secret and deeply spiritual. If we do not have a real Pontiff, then may the good Cardinals, doing their appointed work “in view of the sacredness of the act of election” “accept the interior movements of the Holy Spirit” and provide Holy Mother Church with a real Vicar of Christ as the Successor of Saint Peter. May these thoughts comport with the synderetic considerations of those who read them and may their presentation here please both Our Immaculate Virgin Mother, Mary, Queen of the Apostles, and The Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.N. de Plume Un ami des Papes __________________________________________

The Coming Global Storm

Robert Royal

THE CATHOLIC THING

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Many people – even many Catholics – who only follow Church matters vaguely, have been puzzled by the Vatican’s conspicuous lack of a sense of urgency about the sexual abuse crisis. Yes, there’s a “summit” on abuse that starts today, but only after months and with a program that looks very carefully stage-managed to keep the most troubling questions at a distance from the Vatican itself.

And it is strange, given that – as many in Rome are certainly aware – instantaneous communications in our digital world make the slow response look less like the Vatican’s usual leisurely procedures and much more like a desire not to know too much – or how high the problem may reach.

But it’s rapidly becoming impossible to keep the lid on. Just two days ago, for example, The Washington Post carried a story about a case in Argentina (available here) involving the abuse of minors at an institute for deaf children. An Italian priest, Nicola Corradi, was spiritual director there and later at a similar school in Italy, and along with others abused dozens of underage children for decades.

This story is not entirely new – there had been reports about abuse at the Argentinean school for several months. In many ways, it seemed to be just one more case of sexual exploitation of the vulnerable and a lack of Church oversight.

What is new, however, is quite shocking: “The Italian victims’ efforts to sound the alarm to church authorities began in 2008 and included mailing a list of accused priests to Francis in 2014 and physically handing him the list in 2015.” If the accusations are to be believed – and they seem quite credible on the basis of the Post’s investigative reporting – this means that the pope knew of the abuse of minors, at an Italian school under the supervision of the Vatican. And either he or those who, under his direction, should have acted, did essentially nothing.

That story has been widely circulated in America and victims in Argentina and Italy are now demanding justice – one has even begun a hunger strike. But if you think that it has caused much of a reaction in Italy or in Rome, you would be wrong. And that may be one reason why officials in the Vatican seem to continue to believe that they can manage the revelations that have come out and, no doubt, the others that we will see in the next few days. But they can’t.

It may be difficult for most American Catholics to believe, but there’s little interest about the abuse summit in Italy, or most of Europe, at the moment. The New York Times, in its bigoted anti-Catholicism, may run “news” stories intended to discredit the Church almost every day. But in a way, that’s a backhanded tribute to the fact that even the Times believes that the Church means something and is worth the trouble of attacking.

By contrast, you’d have to work hard to find news about the summit or the abuse crisis in Europe’s mainstream media. There’s been a little interest in a related story that just appeared about the Vatican’s rules about how to handle the children of wayward priests – 50,000 of them according to the Vatican itself. But about the global abuse crisis and the lack of response by figures from the pope on down, all but nothing.

[Late addition: Owing to time changes, this couldn’t be included in the original article, but the BBC, which takes an interest in Britain’s former colonies, is reporting that Mumbai’s Cardinal Oswald Gracias also failed to act on allegations about abuse that were brought to him. Furthermore, Gracias is one of the four main organizers of the summit. And as is the case with Pope Francis, this did not happen in some distant past when policies were different but as recently as 2015.]

An Italian journalist who, though a serious Catholic, has worked at the very highest levels of the secular media here, told me the other day that most Italians are virtual “nihilists” (his term) when it comes to corruption in the Church. They believe that it’s always been that way and always will be. They don’t show anything like the anger and outrage – or simple surprise – that is common in places like America and, increasingly, Latin America.

Italian friends who know the Roman landscape well say that the gay lobby in the Vatican – and the Vatican more generally – continue to exercise a very effective, old-school-style control over Church-related news. And not only locally, but in some of the most prestigious news outlets in Italy.

Vatican officials have for some time made it clear that they believe that, by contrast, the  American bishops mishandled the abuse crisis and let things get out of hand in the American press. They even occasionally give the impression that they – and perhaps the pope – think the American bishops are their enemies.

Neither charge is true. In fact, it would be truer to say that the bishops in America have a better – not perfect, but better – grip on the priestly abuse problem now than do bishops in any other country. (Holding bishops accountable, of course, is still unfinished business – and Rome hasn’t much helped with that.)

Their conflicts, such as they are, with Pope Francis mostly stem from the fact that – given constant media exposure, criminal investigations by civil authorities, and demands of justice for victims – they can’t count on media to ignore problems or a largely cynical laity to just go along, as in Europe. They need to act – and be seen to act.

And it’s not only in America that a storm is brewing. Abuse survivors from several continents met yesterday with the organizers of the summit – though not with the pope, a sore point among them. It’s hard to say whether their collective efforts will bring enough pressure to bear on the Vatican that it will break through the logjam. On the whole, you’d have to say: it appears not. But the victims are playing a prominent role now and are not going away.

To really address the problem would mean some painful moments of truth, such as we have experienced in the United States. Corruption this serious would, of course, require that some heads roll (not only McCarrick’s), in the Vatican and elsewhere, and that there be public acts of repentance. But the very general and broad program the organizers have published seems designed to make sure no one in the Vatican will need to lose much sleep.

I’ve been expecting for the last several weeks that there’s going to be some surprise announcement near the end of the summit, some striking move that will dominate news coverage creating the impression that some radical breakthrough has been achieved.

I don’t know exactly what that would be or whether it would be some real step forward or mere window dressing. But just as “synodality” materialized out of nowhere at the end of Synod on Youth, there is probably some plan in place to do something newsworthy to make it appear that the Vatican has turned a corner in dealing with abuse.

It’s had to believe that that will be really so or that it will convince the victims who have now assumed a public role in holding Church officials accountable at the very highest levels. But keep an eye on those victims. They will provide us with the best insights into what, if anything, has changed.

CRISIS MAGAZINE

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

The Times, the Abuse Crisis, and the War Against Celibacy

DAVID G. BONAGURA JR.

CRISIS MAGAZINE

The New York Times has spent this past week in a less than subtle attack on clerical celibacy, insinuating it as the cause of the current crisis in the Church. On the eve of the Vatican summit on The Protection of Minors in the Church, the Times, in a panic that homosexuality will be blamed as the cause of the crisis, has decided to go on the offensive to discredit celibacy instead.

The Times has long been America’s doyen of the Sexual Revolution, using its pages to push the bounds of accepted sexual practice for decades—recently added to the mainstays of abortion on demand and homosexuality have been attempts to normalize transgender living and open marriages. The teachings of the Catholic Church and willful celibacy remain the final two bulwarks against this Revolution that asserts that sex—in any way, with anyone—is the ultimate expression of individual desire and personal fulfillment.

A chief lie of the Sexual Revolution is that human beings must act on their sexual urges, in whatever way they are manifested. Those who do not, the Revolution asserts, are acting against nature by “repressing” these urges, and such repression is likely to explode in an ugly manner at one point or another.

As essential as it is for the Church to teach the truth about human fulfillment and sexual morality, willful celibacy, especially clerical and religious celibacy, speaks even more powerfully by providing real-life witness against the lies of the Sexual Revolution. Through celibacy faithfully lived, our priests and religious show an incredulous world that the service of God and of other people is a great spiritual good that is worth the sacrifice of sex and other temporal goods.

Enter the Times narrative for the week of February 17. The Times is well aware that, since the scandal with ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick broke in the summer, faithful Catholics have vociferously demanded that the pope and Church leaders do something about the widespread reports of homosexual activity among some priests, a factor that they correlate to the sexual abuse of minors, 80 percent of whom were male and post-pubescent. So, with the Protection of Minors summit upon us and with conservatives looking for real action on the homosexual issue, the Times sprang into action.

First, on February 17, there was an opinion piece questioning the motives of the book, timed to be released as the Vatican summit opens, In the Closet of the Vatican, by French homosexual activist Frederic Martel. Ironically, whereas Martel told the Timeshe hopes the book will help people perceive homosexual priests as normal, the Timesfears the book will generate perceptions of homosexuals as “creatures of stealth and agents of deception.” Dissension in the ranks among progressives is a clear sign of tension over this issue.

Second, on February 18, on the front page, the Times published “‘It is not a closet. It is a cage.’ Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out”  in an attempt to elicit sympathy for homosexual priests, who were depicted as suffocating victims of an intolerant Church. The Timeseven distanced itself from its former champion Pope Francis, whom they celebrated vigorously after his famous “Who am I to judge?” remark in 2013, because he “has grown more critical in recent months” of homosexuality in general and the prospects for homosexuals in the priesthood. With the recent sex abuse crisis, the Times lamented that “widespread scapegoating has driven many priests deeper into the closet.”

In defending these priests, the Times asserted that “study after study shows that homosexuality is not a predictor of child molestation,” and pointed to the John Jay Report on abuse in 2004 as their proof, as did Cardinal Blaise Cupich, a key summit organizer, at the pre-summit press conference on February 19. Neither cares to mention the November 2018 study by the Ruth Institute, led by sociologist Father Paul Sullins, that, using the same data as the Jay Report, asserts “a strong correlation between the percentage of self-described homosexuals in the Catholic priesthood and the incidence of sexual abuse of minors by the clergy.” This study would not fit into the narrative they are trying to weave.

Third, on February 19, noted on the front page but found within the international section, the Times published “The Vatican’s Secret Rules for Catholic Priests Who Have Children” with a clearly stated intention: stories of priests fathering children “draw uncomfortable attention to the violation of celibacy by priests and, for some former clerics and liberals inside the church, raise the issue of whether it is time to make the requirement optional.” Whereas homosexual priests were depicted as victims, these heterosexual priests were shown as unfaithful villains. But both types have the same problem in the Times’s mind: celibacy is making the lives of priests—and those with whom they come in contact—miserable.

Contrast these three articles, perfectly timed and correlated, with a shorter article on February 19, located deeper in the paper and without a front page tip: “Southern Baptists Announce Plans to Address Sexual Abuse.” The article states that “nearly 400 Southern Baptist leaders have been accused of sexual misconduct or crimes against more than 700 victims since 1998.” The internet version of this article links to the Houston Chronicle piece that broke the story, one that horrifically echoes news pieces detailing sexual abuse and cover up within the Catholic Church. Yet the Times’s account makes no mention of a single gory detail, nor does it opine over the causes of this abuse. Celibacy clearly could not be one: the first act of abuse mentioned by the Chronicle was perpetrated by a married pastor.

As if all this was not enough, the Times piled it on with a fourth article, another opinion piece, on February 20, whose title makes it clear just how defensive its staff has become: “The Catholic Church Is Breaking People’s Hearts.” The subtitle is equally frenzied: “[The Church] fires gay workers, vilifies gay priests and alienates parishioners who can’t make any sense of this.”

“The best defense is a good offense,” goes the old adage. The Times has clearly taken that to heart in its reporting this week. In seeking to defend the Sexual Revolution’s dogma that homosexuality is good, normal, and should be accepted by society, it has deliberately insinuated that celibacy is the cause of priests’ mental anxieties and deviant behavior. But, as the Southern Baptist example illustrates, the Times is pushing an agenda rather than seeking the real causes of sexual abuse by clergy.

Celibacy itself is not the cause of sexual abuse or other sexual failures of clergy—the abuse of celibacy does not negate its use. These moral failures all stem from a lack of holiness, which makes one more susceptible to temptation, and a failure to properly integrate men’s sexuality within their lives. Instead, some priests, and especially the serial abusers, became driven by their sexuality, a tragic situation enabled by seminaries that formed men in accordance with the bankrupt dogmas of the Sexual Revolution rather than those of Jesus Christ.

Hence, contrary to Frederic Martel’s claim that the more loudly a cleric denounces homosexuality, the more likely he is to be homosexual himself, we have evidence that where prelates themselves were engaging in such practices—witness ex-Cardinal McCarrick, the late Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland, and Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee—their dioceses were not exactly known for being touchstones of holiness and fidelity to the teachings of the Church.

But the Times does not want to pursue these leads or causes, because it knows what it will find. As Father Sullins said in response to criticisms of his study on the causes of abuse, “[T]o people who hate the truth, the truth looks like hate.”

Tagged as Anti-Catholicism, lavender / gay mafia, media bias, Sexual Revolution, The New York Times47

By David G. Bonagura Jr.

David G. Bonagura, Jr. teaches classical languages at St. Joseph’s Seminary, New York. He is the author of Steadfast in Faith: Catholicism and the Challenges of Secularism (Cluny Media).