1. THE PAPAL FOUNDATION & MCCARRICK’S CONFLICT OF INTERESTby Matthew B. O’Brien9 . 28 . 18

On July 28, 2018 the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had accepted Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals. This had the immediate effect of ending his nearly thirty-year relationship with the Papal Foundation, a charitable organization he helped to found, which is based in suburban Philadelphia and has an endowment of $200 million. 

As an ex officio member of the board of cardinals which controls the Foundation, McCarrick advocated and voted four times to approve an extraordinary, expedited grant of $25 million to the Vatican, in order to help it bail out a scandal-plagued dermatology hospital that it controls, the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI) in Rome: first in executive session in June 2017, then at the Foundation’s annual meeting in December 2017, again in January 2018, and finally in April 2018. 

During at least the latter three votes, then-Cardinal McCarrick knew that he was under a Vatican-authorized investigation, carried out by the Archdiocese of New York, for sexually molesting a boy. According to a source with first-hand knowledge of the matter, McCarrick knew by October 2017 at the latest that he was under investigation. Because the recipient of the $25 million grant was the Vatican, which was the very entity that would determine McCarrick’s fate as a result of the investigation it authorized into his conduct, McCarrick appears to have had a manifest and gross conflict of interest in considering the grant request in the best interest of the Papal Foundation. McCarrick stood to benefit personally if, by helping to secure $25 million for the Vatican, he could win leniency in how it handled his sex abuse case. 

Under Pennsylvania law, the directors of non-profits such as the Papal Foundation are under an obligation to disclose material conflicts of interest to their organization’s directors and officers, and to recuse themselves from board decisions in which their conflict of interest is implicated. McCarrick failed to make any disclosures to the Papal Foundation’s board or to recuse himself from board decisions, according to people present at the board meetings in 2017 and 2018. 

If McCarrick knew that he was under investigation during any of the four board votes in which he participated, then under settled principles of corporate law, he appears to have committed a fraud upon the board of the Papal Foundation. According to Robert T. Miller, a professor of corporate law at the University of Iowa, “The legal effect of McCarrick’s apparent fraud upon the board is to taint the vote of every board member participating in the decision.” This may render the grant voidable and returnable to the Foundation at the instigation of the Attorney General of Pennsylvania or any of the clerical or lay members of the Foundation’s boards. 

In June 2017 Cardinal Donald Wuerl received the grant request for $25 million from the Holy See’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, at the behest of Pope Francis. Wuerl pushed hard to meet it immediately. According to the draft of board minutes, he said the grant was an emergency measure on which the hospital’s survival depended. Wuerl moved formally to take it up later in June, outside of the Foundation’s normal grant cycle, and he convened an executive session of the cardinals’ board—including McCarrick, who also lobbied for making the grant—and drove a summary vote to approve the grant. 

Meanwhile, in May 2017, just weeks before Wuerl received the grant request from Parolin, McCarrick’s alleged victim had contacted the Archdiocese of New York’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program with the charges against him. Before the Archdiocese of New York could investigate the charges, it had to receive authorization from the Holy See, for as a cardinal McCarrick lay under the canonical jurisdiction of the Holy See alone. 

In August of 2017 the Foundation sent $8 million to the Vatican Secretariat of State—without having received from the Vatican a formal proposal for how the money would be spent, financial projections, a statement of the hospital’s financial condition, or an agreement about how the performance of the grant would be tracked, reported back to the Foundation, or evaluated. 

It was only after $8 million had been sent to the Secretariat of State that the Foundation’s entire tiered board—cardinals, bishops, and laymen—was presented with the extraordinary request, and they were then asked to approve the full $25 million (including the already-sent $8 million installment) at the Foundation’s annual meeting in Washington on December 12, 2017. After some tense discussion, and a presentation by Foundation attorneys about the board’s fiduciary duties, Wuerl made the remarkable decision to hold the vote by secret ballot. Fifteen cardinals and bishops and nine laymen comprise the Papal Foundation’s full board. According to a source who was present at the December 12^th meeting, the result of the secret ballot was 15 votes in favor, eight against, and one abstention. One of eight laymen voted for the grant.

Miller was surprised by Wuerl’s decision to use a secret ballot in these circumstances. “It’s astonishing,” he said. “Secret ballots are virtually unheard of in corporate board meetings. The members of corporate boards are meant to speak freely in order to persuade each other how to vote in the best interests of their corporation; the idea of a secret ballot, which is used in political elections where people fear retribution for their vote” is incongruous with the very idea of a deliberative fiduciary board.

A second installment of $5 million was sent to the Secretariat of State in January of 2018, again over strenuous objections from a number of lay donors to the Foundation who were involved. Since the first payment of August 2017 Wuerl was pressured into requesting some documentation from the Vatican about the use of the $25 million in order to assuage objections of lay members of the board of trustees, particularly because the IDI has been the persistent subject of fraud and embezzlement scandals. In 2016 Italian authorities indicted 40 officers and employees of the IDI on 144 counts of bankruptcy fraud, money laundering, and embezzlement, “in what prosecutors said was the 2007-2012 ‘despoiling’ of the religious entity,” according to the ANSA news agency. The Italian priest who oversaw the IDI during that time was ultimately convicted for personally embezzling millions of euros, and a recent article in Crux suggests that organized crime had also infiltrated the IDI’s operations. 

To help quell the lay dissent on the Papal Foundation board, Sr. Carol Keehan, DC, the head of the Catholic Health Association, was dispatched by Wuerl to Rome to visit the IDI and report back. Keehan returned with an assortment of documents from the hospital in a binder. Still missing, however, were any financial statements or balance sheet from the hospital, or any professional due diligence addressing its recent history of fraud or the sudden resignation, after just eight months on the job, of the CEO who had recently been appointed to clean up the hospital’s administration. The cardinals and bishops on the Foundation board nevertheless voted to send the $5 million.

The controversy over the $25 million made its way into the press in February 2018. Bad publicity prompted Wuerl to ask the Vatican to halt the grant, and to announce that the remaining $12 million due in the final installment would be canceled. Yet Wuerl reversed course again during the Papal Foundation’s annual visit to Rome in April 2018, announcing to a shocked gathering of lay donors at dinner in the Vatican that the board had decided to proceed after all with completing the full $25 million grant to the Secretariat of State. 

Although Wuerl, McCarrick, and other advocates for the $25 million grant justified its expedited approval by appealing to the IDI’s emergency need, several sources at the Papal Foundation told me that the $13 million already sent to the Vatican has yet to be disbursed to the hospital. More than a year since the first $8 million installment was sent, the Papal Foundation’s emergency grant apparently sits today in a Vatican bank account, undisbursed.

From 1990 to 2018 the Papal Foundation, made $120 million in grants to hundreds of Catholic charities around the world, primarily in developing countries. Each year, after approving a list of individual grants, the Foundation sent a check for the gross amount—typically between $10-15 million in recent years—to the Vatican Secretariat of State, and then relied upon the Secretary to send the appropriate amounts of money to the individual charitable beneficiaries of each grant. The adoption of this indirect procedure for disbursing grants through Vatican middlemen was a discretionary decision of the cardinals’ board and is not a requirement of Foundation’s bylaws or articles of incorporation.

What is required by the bylaws and articles of incorporation, however, is for the board to oversee and monitor whether individual grants are received by their intended beneficiaries and used for charitable purposes. Bylaw 6.2.4 states: “The Board shall require that fund grantees furnish periodic accountings to show that funds were expended for the purposes which were approved by the Board.” According to the Articles of Incorporation, “Where any contributions, gifts, grants, or other charitable transfers are made to foreign organizations [e.g., the Vatican], however, the foreign organization must be organized and operated in a manner analogous to United States tax-exempt organizations. In addition, contributions, gifts, grants, or other charitable transfers to such foreign organizations shall be made only for purposes which the Corporation has reviewed and approved and over which it maintains control and responsibility.” 

According to multiple independent interviews with people involved in the Papal Foundation, over its nearly three-decade period of grant making, virtually no accounting or audits were performed to confirm that individual grants reached their intended beneficiaries after annual checks were sent to the Secretariat of State. Moreover, the Foundation allegedly failed to make any systematic attempt to confirm that funds received by the intended beneficiaries were used for charitable purposes. 

The apparent failure on the part of the Foundation’s controlling board of cardinals to monitor the distribution or use of grants “raises an important issue,” according to Professor Miller, “because when a corporate board knows it has a duty and apparently does nothing to carry out that duty, a court may well find that the board failed to act ‘in good faith’,” which is an important, technical requirement in corporate law. This determination would have “the result of that every board member would be personally liable,” Miller said. “Since the duty to monitor the use of the money was in the bylaws, it would be impossible for the board members to argue they were unaware of this obligation. Plus, if it is true that they did virtually nothing at all to monitor, then there’s a good argument that they all breached their duty of good faith on every donation for nearly 30 years.” 

According to a source involved in the Papal Foundation with personal knowledge of the situation, worries about accounting for grant disbursement were raised by the audit committee in a Foundation board meeting in 2015 or 2016. According to this source, the matter prompted the board to ask the Foundation’s staff to look back at grants from recent years, and to compile a list of which grants had been acknowledged in correspondence to the Foundation. 

“The list compiled by the staff showed that most gifts had been acknowledged by the charities or the various papal nuncios who were meant to send them on to the charities in their countries,” the source said. “But many of these thank-you notes didn’t mention any amount describing the size of the grants they had received from the Papal Foundation” via the Secretariat of State. Moreover, although in most cases these thank-you notes were from the charities that were the actual grantees, in many cases they were not. In these cases the thank-you notes were from the nuncios—who themselves are employs of the Secretariat of State. The intended charitable beneficiaries are required by the Foundation bylaws to be the subject of “periodic accountings,” and not merely the nuncios, who were supposed to be middlemen in distributing grants. There was generally no mention in the grant acknowledgements about oversight for or documentation of the ultimate charitable use of grant funds. 

According to the list compiled by the staff, there were grants for which the Foundation had no records whatsoever. “They found about $3 million unaccounted for,” the source told me. This discovery prompted the Foundation to look into these grants more closely, which resulted in money being returned to the Foundation, at least in one case. In this instance, the source said, “the Foundation got about $600,000 back from the papal nuncio in Egypt,” which had previously been sent in approximately $200,000 installments over three years for the purpose of helping to fund the building of a new seminary. 

After the Foundation followed up with the nuncio in Egypt and inquired about the $600,000 and the new seminary, it learned that the seminary building project had been canceled due to political instability. The nuncio had not notified the Foundation and had kept the $600,000, intending to use the money for other projects in the future. The Foundation asked the nuncio to return the money, telling him that he should apply again for grants when those projects materialized, and the nuncio complied. 

The source also recalls that a solution to the absence of any systematic grant accounting was then proposed by Cardinal Wuerl, the chairman of the cardinals’ board, for future grant cycles. Wuerl suggested that the Foundation begin to spot check three to five grants from the hundred or so made each year, in order to determine that the intended beneficiaries received their grants and used them appropriately. According to the source, when the question arose of what method should be used to select the grants that would be scrutinized, “Wuerl said that he would pick those grants himself.” 

First Things asked a representative of the Papal Foundation to comment on the forgoing account of its operations. Mark Corallo, a public relations consultant, replied via email: “The Papal Foundation has worked closely with the Vatican Secretary of State who in turn works with papal nuncios to ensure the administration of grants throughout the world. As the Secretary of State is in close communication with the Papal Foundation office throughout each grant cycle, every effort is made to ensure that grants that are given are acknowledged and reports are made.” 

Mr. Corallo also noted that the Papal Foundation is audited annually by an independent accounting firm. “To date, these audits have confirmed that the Papal Foundation’s procedures and operations are well functioning and consistent with the foundation’s by laws and charitable mission,” he wrote. 

This description of the scope of the Foundation’s annual audit does not appear to correspond with the actual attestation of CliftonLarsonAllen LLP, the independent auditor which conducted the most recently available audit (2016-2017). The auditor’s report does not seem to express any opinion upon the Foundation’s general “procedures and operations” and whether or not they comport with its bylaws or charitable mission. Rather, like conventional annual audits of non-profit organizations generally, the Papal Foundation’s audit simply expresses an accountant’s opinion on the organization’s assets, liabilities, and cash flows. A phone call to CliftonLarsonAllen seeking clarification about whether the firm was hired for additional consulting services beyond the performance of the audit was not returned. 

In late 2017 Cardinal Wuerl tasked the Foundation’s legal counsel to review its operations and bylaws for legal compliance. In a letter dated December 29, 2017, a copy of which was provided to me by a person involved with the Papal Foundation, its own attorneys identify five problem areas in the Foundation’s operations and procedures. Two of these were particularly important: first, an apparent general failure to confirm that the ultimate recipients of its grants were operated in a fashion analogous to US public charities; second, an apparent general failure to obtain meaningful audits or accountings of how grant beneficiaries spent the money they received. The Foundation’s attorneys concluded this assessment with an injunction, “There must be some accountability for the Board to satisfy itself that funds are indeed expended for charity.”

The cardinals’ board of the Papal Foundation apparently distributed its charitable grants in a manner that made them remarkably vulnerable to fraud and embezzlement, and in so doing, the board appears to have contravened its own bylaws, and thus violated Pennsylvania civil law as well. The Foundation’s chosen partner in distributing grants, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, has a longstanding reputation of financial mismanagement. In recent years the Secretary of State himself, Cardinal Parolin’s predecessor Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was personally involved in misappropriating $500,000 in charitable assets to double pay a contractor friend to renovate his Vatican apartment, and also in directing millions of dollars from the Holy See into now-failed Italian television venture owned by his friends.

No prelate has been more consistently and intimately involved in the Papal Foundation than McCarrick, who helped to found the non-profit in 1988 alongside the late Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia and Cardinal O’Connor of New York. The current chairman of the controlling board of cardinals is Cardinal Wuerl, McCarrick’s successor as Archbishop of Washington. Before he was elevated to the cardinalate and moved to Rome, then-Bishop Kevin Farrell, McCarrick’s protégé and former housemate in Washington, was a member of the Papal Foundation’s board of trustees. The current president of the board of trustees is another McCarrick protégé, Bishop Michael Bransfield.

McCarrick was a principal co-consecrator of Bransfield as a bishop. Before Bransfield became a bishop, he served as rector of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC during McCarrick’s tenure there as Archbishop. From the Papal Foundation’s inception until McCarrick’s creation as a cardinal in 2001, McCarrick himself served in the position now occupied by Bransfield. 

Like McCarrick, Bransfield stands accused of sex abuse. His recent resignation from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston was announced on September 13, 2018, at the same time that the Holy See announced a special investigation into Bransfield for the alleged sexual abuse of adults. Before the announcement of the investigation, Bransfield had been dogged for years with allegations of sex abuse and alleged complicity in rape and molestation carried out by priest friends of his in his native city of Philadelphia. 

The first executive director of the Papal Foundation, who served from 1988 until 2001, was a priest named Monsignor Thomas Benestad. Benestad, who retired early from his home Diocese of Allentown and now lives in Boca Raton, Florida, is accused in the Pennsylvania Grant Jury Report of sexually abusing boy over a period of years in the early 1980s, beginning when he was nine years old. 

Law enforcement officials in Pennsylvania determined that the allegations against Benestad were credible, according to the Report, but they declined to press charges because the state statute of limitations on the alleged crimes had expired by the time they were made in 2011. At the time the Diocese of Allentown forwarded Benestad’s case to the Vatican, and the Vatican restored his priestly faculties in 2014, although the Diocese of Palm Beach where he now lives has still apparently refused to authorize him to celebrate the sacraments there. 

Benestad, Bransfield, and McCarrick have been three of the most important clerical leaders of the Papal Foundation, and all face serious allegations of sex abuse. Some of these allegations were widely known for decades, but did not prevent the men from rising from one ecclesiastical preferment to the next. Did these men use the grant-making power of the Papal Foundation to curry favor and buy protection from Vatican officials? Did they enable the misappropriation of the Foundation’s charitable grants? The only way to answer these questions is with an independent investigation of the Papal Foundation, along with a forensic accounting of its past grants.

Such an investigation would not face canonical impediments or infringe upon the proper authority of bishops over their dioceses. The Papal Foundation is not an ecclesiastical entity, but an ordinary 501(c)(3) religious non-profit. No permission from Rome is necessary. The Foundation’s board could commission an investigation with a simple vote. If the Foundation does not authorize its own independent investigation, it may nonetheless find itself facing one from state or federal authorities. 

Matthew B. O’Brien is a writer in Philadelphia. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Texas +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Viganò’s Verities Hang like a Black Cloud over the Vatican

Elizabeth Yore

October 3, 2018

OnePeterFive 

In the Gospel of St. John, from the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, (the date of Archbishop Carlo Viganò’s second attestation), Jesus observes, “Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.”

One can’t help but ascribe this same observation to Archbishop Viganò. His brave and bold witness rings authentic and true. There is no duplicity in him. As the messenger of the hidden and hideous, Viganò urgently proclaims the unvarnished truth to the faithful.

What is next for the Church? This question hangs, like the sword of St. Michael, over the pope, bishops, and laity. We cannot walk away in disgust, although the temptation is ever present and seemingly justified.

Now that we know, we must act. We must stay, dig in, and fight to purify the Church from the evil that engulfs it. God chose us to live during this precise time of monumental crisis. We will be judged on our personal and sustained effort to cleanse Holy Mother Church.

During the decades of clerical sex abuse in America, cowardice, conniving, immorality, and cover-up dominated the episcopacy. Once the screaming headlines vanished, it was back to business as usual. Devastated and disgusted millions left the Catholic Church. Nothing changed; homosexual predation populated the clerical ranks in America, the world, and the Vatican.

Viganò continues to sound the alarm that the Catholic Church is engulfed in the corrupt clutches of the “homosexual current.” Reading Viganò’s two testaments underscores that the Catholic Church is imploding at every level.

It’s no surprise that Pope “Who Am I to Judge” Francis remains steadfastly silent, intentionally inactive, content to slow-walk any requests for investigations into McCarrick and the Viganò allegations. With each passing day of deliberate inaction, a child or a seminarian remains at dire risk of exploitation and assault. With the upcoming Synod on Youth and Vocations, the papal dismissive silence perpetuates the grave risk to body and soul of boys and young men.

Don’t be fooled. Francis is signaling his permission with a wink and a nod to the global current of homosexuals in the Church.

The Viganò testaments read like a criminal indictment, laying out documentation with specificity and clarity, from a firsthand eyewitness, which names the co-conspirators involved in a modernist plot to overthrow the Catholic Church. This able prosecutor has clean hands, no ulterior motive, armed only with knowledge based on years of service and observation.

What does the pope’s abject silence and inaction in the face of endless charges of criminal sexual exploitation of seminarians and minors indicate? The only rational conclusion is that Francis is totally indifferent to or acquiesces to this immoral conduct.

This is truly remarkable moment in the history of the Church. There has never been an archbishop who exposed the filth by naming names of the conniving and guilty hierarchy in the Vatican and around the globe. Don’t the countless suffering clergy abuse victims deserve as much?

Viganò unleashed a growing restlessness, a militant resistance movement of faithful Catholics determined to restore the Church to purity, fidelity, and the sacred. Now that this bronze door is opened, it will never be closed, despite the concerted effort of a complicit pontiff. Ultimately, the laity must demand that the reign of Francis I and his “current” of malefactors end in ignominy.

The Truth is self-evident, argued Thomas Jefferson. By its essence, truth confirms itself, powerfully, without force or weapons. It is sufficient unto itself, shining a bright light into the darkest corners of the soul and mind. Its power not only shines, but shatters and convulses evil powerful institutions and people.

In the battle of good and evil, the truth stands as a formidable enemy, who must be squelched and defeated at all costs by the evildoer. Once it is proclaimed, the truth cudgels the sinister and the demonic, throwing him off balance, forcing him to make so many mistakes that he teeters on chaos and instability. We are witnessing such mayhem in the Vatican. The pressure of the Viganò truths exposed the mind and soul of Jorge Bergoglio. As they say in the military, Viganò smoked out the enemy, like an avenging angel.

Francis is now exposed. His cabal has been outed and named.

Nothing will ever be the same in the Church until this apostasy has been defeated.

It’s been one month since the Viganò verities descended upon the Church. They hang like a suffocating black cloud over Vatican City, choking its inhabitants, forcing them to run for cover, gasping for air, covered in the filth of their malevolence.

Yet don’t be fooled: the Francis cabal is doubling down on its secrets, threatening truth-tellers, tightening the noose, and battening down the hatches of the Barque of Peter. These people are in survival mode, and they won’t relinquish power. They will fight to the bitter end.

The polluted climate of the Francis papacy will not change until, as Viganò pleaded, “everyone, especially Bishops … speak[s] up in order to defeat this conspiracy of silence that is so widespread, and to report the cases of abuse they know about to the media and to civil authorities.”

This statement, more than any other, instills panic in the papacy.

Archbishop Viganò knows who knows.

How pitiful that Archbishop Viganò must plead with Cardinal Marc Ouellet to confirm the cover-up of the Church’s most notorious sexual predator. If Ouellet hesitates, he ought remember the admonishment of St. Thomas Aquinas: “as a matter of honor, one man owes it to another to manifest the truth.”

Why are our bishops and cardinals such faithless cowards? The answer lies in the stirring words of St. Catherine of Siena in a letter to Pope Gregory XI in 1376:

A shepherd, such as this, is really a hireling! Not only does he fail to rescue his little sheep from the clutches of the wolf; he devours them himself! And all because he loves himself apart from God. He does not follow the gentle Jesus, the true shepherd who gave his life for his little sheep;. How dangerous then, for oneself and for others, is this perverted love!

Carlo Maria Viganò sacrificed everything. He stepped up, stood at the front of the line on this battlefield, inspired by the love of the Blessed Mother and Jesus Christ, with nothing but the truth as his shield.

Where are his brother bishops? Where are the laity?

The words of the great Catherine of Siena resonate today. Catherine, like Viganò, fearlessly spoke truth to the pope:

Delay no longer, for your delaying has already been the cause of a lot of trouble. The devil has done and is doing his best to keep this from happening, because he sees that he will be the loser.

Catholics, heed St. Catherine’s battle cry, before it is too late:

Raise the standard of the most holy cross, for it is with the fragrance of the cross that you will gain peace.

Courage! Courage!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE 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.



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 PlumeUn ami des Papes

Revising the Uniform Determination of Death Act Revising the Uniform Determination of Death ActI was impressed by this editorial in the October 2009 issue of Nature: “Delimiting death: Procuring organs for transplant demands a realistic definition of life’s end.” The article notes: “In practice, unfortunately, physicians know that when they declare that someone on life support is dead, they are usually obeying the spirit, but not the letter, of [the UDDA]. And many are feeling increasingly uncomfortable about it.” “The kind of clear, unambiguous boundary assumed in the 1981 law simply does not exist. Ideally, the law should be changed to describe more accurately and honestly the way that death is determined in clinical practice. . . .  The time has come for a serious discussion on redrafting laws that push doctors towards a form of deceit.” These sorts of calls for revising the UDDA have only become louder and more frequent over the past nine years.

Of Dante and Our Current Crisis

Anthony Esolen

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2018

Friends: I know I needn’t remind you that Robert Royal is in Rome watching the proceedings of the Synod of Bishops on Youth (and faith and vocational discernment).  Bob has filed his second report, this one on the first day, which includes thoughts on the comments of Pope Francis. Click here to read Papal Aspirations: Day One. Throughout October, you’ll be able to find all Bob’s reports by clicking on the Events category above, then on the drop-down menu: Synod Reports. Check back often. -Brad Miner, Senior Editor

In these bad days I have called to mind Dante’s Inferno.  I think of the structure of the City of Dis, the Hell within Hell.  Outside of its miserable walls are punished those sinners who gave in to immoderate desires for things that are naturally good, such as the intercourse of the sexes, male and female, food and drink, and wealth; and who misused faculties that are natural to the human person, such as anger and the longing for rest.

But your ticket for entry into Dis is an active malice, the tang of loving things that are simply evil.

The first of these sinners are the heretics, whose prime representatives are men of powerful intellect who denied the immortality of the soul, and therefore cut themselves off intellectually from the roots of life itself.  It is an offense against the image of God in man.  They dwell in tombs just within the walls of Dis, and are as it were the front end of a pair of brackets, enclosing all of Dis’s depraved citizens.

At the other end, in Hell’s dead center and bottom, we will find the traitors, the worst of whom, Judas Iscariot, is chewed and mangled forever by the worst of the fallen angels, Satan.

Between heresy and treachery lie violence and fraud, the lion and the fox.  Fraud is more wicked than violence, Dante says, because it perverts man’s highest power, that of the mind; therefore it is punished in a lower ring, that of the Malebolge, the ten Pouches of Evil.

In one of those pouches we find the Simoniacs, those who traded in ecclesiastical offices; they are planted upside down in holes in the ground that parody the baptismal font, with their feet slicked with oil and set aflame.

The violent are divided into three groups, according to the victim of the violence: worst are the violent against God Himself.  These suffer the punishment of a rain of fire-flakes that spark the burning sands beneath them.  They must take that fire lying down (blasphemers), sitting at the brink of the gulf of the fraudulent (the usurers), or racing about continually (the sodomites).

If Nature is the daughter of God, Dante reasons, then those who violate Nature in their sexual deeds, meant for the bringing of new life into the world, show their contempt of the Creator Himself.  If human industry is the daughter of Nature, then those who do nothing for their wealth but rub coins together to make them breed are blasphemers too, as are the sodomites.

It is not pleasant to ask where in this scheme the wicked prelates of our time belong.  Perhaps the question is too narrow.  In our age of easy travel, after all, people can get around.  Bishop Black might touch down in Sodom, in scorn of God, but only after he has supinely accepted the heresies that make Sodom conceivable to him; and then he takes the Eucharist in hands that smell of that foul city in an act of blasphemy.

But he cannot rest there.  His fundamental “creative” sin must remain always in act; there is in fact no end to it, nor can there be.  So he weaves about himself a web of sinners of like mind, and this is preeminently the sin of simony, which in this instance is to replace the bride of Christ with a male in drag, and set him about to pander and procure.

It would be cleaner just to sell the mitre and crozier for good old ill-gotten money.  But all of this is to commit treason against Christ, who gave His life for the Church, to have her as his bride, pure and without spot.

It appears that if we pull at one string of the rats’ nest we will catch the rest too.  I am not saying that all of the bad bishops have been formal heretics, or that they have all been sodomites or men who condoned that sin in others, or that they have all made a habit of putting priests and other bishops in their hip pockets, or that they have all built their lives upon betraying Christ and His Church at every pass.

There is no need to make that claim.  Nor do I say that we should always expect to find, among the prelates of Sodom, plenty of the other two ways that Dante identifies of being violent against God – in our time, the blasphemy of gross liturgical abuses, and the laundering of millions of dollars pressed from the hearts of the faithful.

Not always, not always. 
  I do not make any universal claim.  One sinner is not the same as another.  The great general claim will do.

Nor do I say that the people in the pews have been paragons of orthodoxy, charity, truth, and fidelity.  We have not.  But now we know why some of our superiors have treated the most faithful of the laity with irritated indifference at best, and thinly veiled hatred at worst.

It is hard to take divorce seriously, I suppose, or cohabitation, or the smutty stuff peddled to children in many a Catholic school, when you have your hands down a seminarian’s pants, or when you seat your homosexual lover in the front pew, or when you cannot bring yourself to call God “He,” because the pronoun is too personal for comfort.

Perhaps the scandal will have this immediate effect:  The next time you find a prelate who treats the Mass with blithe innovation, or who pushes a rainbow of sexual wickedness in the schools, or who seems allergic to the masculine character of Christ Himself, or who hedges himself with yes-priests and yes-nuns who promote these things, you will wonder perhaps where he is and what he does on a Friday evening.

That may not be fair.  But what in this scandal has been fair?

*Image: The Simoniac Pope by William Blake, c. 1825 [Tate, London]. The pope depicted is Nicholas III.

© 2018 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.orgThe Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

• About the Author
• Latest Articles

Anthony Esolen

Anthony Esolen is a lecturer, translator, and writer. His latest books are Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child and Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture. He directs the Center for the Restoration of Catholic Culture at Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts.

The Parallels Between Karamazov and Kavanaugh

by Randall Smith within Constitutional Law Oct 03, 2018 08:00 pm http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/10/22646/ Justice is something we must establish every day—in the way we live with others, in the way we speak humbly and attend to all the facts patiently, in deference to reality and the truth of things.Share this article:       The final chapters of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s great novel The Brothers Karamazovdepict the trial of the eldest of the three Karamazov brothers, Dmitri, who stands accused of having murdered his father, Fyodor Pavlovich. The evidence against Dimitri is damning, but he maintains his innocence. And for a good while, even we the readers are left unsure as to his guilt or innocence.Prosecution vs. Defense: Battling for the Soul of RussiaFrom the very beginning of the trial, it quickly becomes apparent that the two competing narratives about the state of Russian society, instead of the crime itself, will take center stage. The prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, an elderly civil servant at the end of a humble career, argues that the “real crime” is not this isolated act of murder, but rather “that we are so used to it.” To Kirillovich, Dmitri Karamazov is Russia, and Russia is Dmitri Karamazov: a foolish libertine finally gone too far, a once-noble soul now corrupt and open to scorn. Dmitri Karamazov represents all that has gone wrong with a once-proud and once-great nation. The course is clear: convict Dmitri Karamazov and save Russia from its decadence and decline.Pitted against our lowly, local prosecutor is one of the greatest defense attorneys in all of Russia, a man identified only with the single name “Fetyukovich,” as we might say “Madonna” or “Sting” or “Hillary,” with no need for further identification. As his first move, our brilliant young defense attorney turns the prosecutor’s opening argument on its head. The sorry state of Russia’s soul should convince the jurors that they must exonerate poor Dmitri, not convict him. Who, after all, made the poor boy into the wretched man he has become? No one but his disreputable father who, by his lack of care of the boy, showed himself to be no sort of father at all.The defense attorney adds that the jury must “not be afraid” of “the progress of the past few years,” a progress that, if we are not too timid to embrace it, will cause us to realize that uncaring, irascible fathers are not fathers at all. The defense attorney clearly thinks there is a certain something to be gained by tying his point about “worthy” fathers to claims concerning cultural “development” and modern “progress.”The defense attorney continues interpreting ‘father’ to also mean that “though a monster, though a villain to his children, [my father] is still my father.” The defense attorney knows that if he is to convince the jury to jettison their traditional moral code forbidding killing, he must first undermine the other fundamental element that made up “traditional” Russian society: namely, its traditional devotion to religion. And what better way to undermine it than in the name of “progress”—a progress that can only come about if they are “not afraid” of “new words and ideas”? “Let other nations have the letter and punishment,” he tells the jury and the assembled crowd, “we have the spirit and meaning, the salvation and regeneration of the lost. And if so, if such indeed are Russia and her courts, then—onward Russia!”These are great speeches, and they must have moved Dostoevsky’s Russian readers in ways we can only imagine, given our detachment from the political and social currents of the time. Those with generally “conservative” views, unhappy with what they would have viewed as the decline of society and its standards, would undoubtedly have cheered the prosecutor’s criticism of the younger generation and cringed at the defense attorney’s diminution of the traditional meaning of the term “father” so as to suggest that parricide is not parricide if the man in question is not a worthy father.Readers with more liberal progressive or “enlightened” views, by contrast, would probably have found the prosecutor’s case laughable, as they would have found the prosecutor himself contemptible in his antique ways of thinking. In him, they would have seen an old man of the previous generation who never made much of himself in the larger society, stuck in a government job in the small town in which he was raised, overmatched in the biggest trial of his life. Contrast him with the defense attorney Fetyukovich: dynamic, well-spoken, open-minded, a St. Petersburg luminary, educated at the best universities.An Important Lesson about TrialsAs great as these speeches are, they both share one glaring flaw: they have next to nothing to do with the point of the trial, namely, determining whether Dmitri Karamazov did or did not kill his father. Russia may indeed have become a moral cesspool, and Dimitri Karamazov may well be an irresponsible libertine (so too was his father), but neither claim establishes his guilt of this particular crime.Turning to the onlookers,  Dostoevsky gives us the reactions of the trial’s spectators at various points, most of which are foolish and biased, intriguingly he tells us nothing about the reactions of the jury, except to provide this comment: “Yes, sir,” says one of the townspeople, “our peasants stood up for themselves.” “And finished off our Dmitri,” says another.“Our peasants stand up for themselves” is in fact, the title of the chapter. But the title is ambiguous. Did they “stand with” Kirillovich because he represented the old order and noble Russia of years past? Or did they “stand against” the sophisticated, enlightenment-era courtroom savvy of the canny St. Petersburg attorney? Either way, the result is the same. In “standing up for themselves,” the peasants convict an innocent man of a crime he did not commit. They “finished off” Dmitri.It’s not clear whether the jury accepted the defense attorney’s narrative about Russia or the prosecutor’s, but it is clear that the dueling meta-narratives are what most enthralled the spectators of the trial. These are naturally very humanreactions—as human as not being able to avert one’s eyes from a car crash on the highway. And yet, another lesson we can—and must—learn from Dostoyevsky’s wisdom is this: the sorts of considerations that enthrall the crowd are often entirely immaterial to the particular details of the trial of a particular man. Dmitri Karamazov’s guilt cannot be determined from the sorry state of the Russian nation any more than his innocence can be established from fact that decadent old Russians make bad fathers.“We Can Just Tell” With this in mind, it is thus only with the greatest trepidation that I venture to make the slightest comment in retrospect about the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford in the US Senate. I was busy working so I did not watch the testimony, but a friend reports from viewing Facebook posts that there seem to have been four different testimonies—so different, in fact, that they must have been given by four completely different people. There was the Kavanaugh who was strong and defiant, a man rightfully disputing his unjust treatment; a man who, though clearly angry, was mature enough to show some emotional vulnerability. Then there was another Kavanaugh. This Kavanaugh was overly emotional and his responses were “chilling.” There was the Ford whose testimony was calm, entirely credible, and heart-wrenchingly honest. And then there was the other Ford whose testimony was vague, rambling, and deficient in crucial details, an odd contrast to her claim that she was “100% certain” that it was Kavanaugh who had assaulted her.Each person commenting online and in the press seemed absolutely certain that he or she could “just tell” what the truth was simply from looking in the person’s eyes and listening to his or her words. The fact that studies by groups like the Innocence Project have repeatedly shown that people cannot reliably judge the veracity of claims simply by gauging the credibility of the speaker did not deter them. Nor did the fact that studies have repeatedly shown that “100% certain” eyewitness testimony is no guarantee that a person’s memory is accurate.The fact that others had arrived at completely different conclusions from their own after viewing the same testimony seems not to have shaken their faith in their own judgments either. Rather, it suggested only that these other viewers who saw something different must be either fools or scoundrels.I have nothing to say about the substance of either person’s testimony, other than to remind us, in retrospect, of something of which we need to remind ourselves before every “trial of the century” of the sort we get every three or four years in this country: Trials are not the place for working out our social grievances and anxieties.An obvious rejoinder would be that Judge Kavanaugh is not “on trial.”  But isn’t he?  Can anyone seriously say he is not?  As Alan Dershowitz has argued in a recent Wall Street Journal article:Judge Kavanaugh is on trial for his life. At stake are his career, his family, his legacy and a reputation earned over many decades as a lawyer and judge.  If he is now denied the appointment, it will be because he has been depicted as a sexual predator who deserves contempt, derision and possible imprisonment. He may no longer be able to teach law, coach sports or expect to be treated respectfully. He could be forced to resign his current judicial position, because having a ‘convicted’ rapist on the bench is unseemly. For these reasons, he now has the right—perhaps not a legal right, but a right based on fundamental fairness—to have the charges against him put to the test of clear and convincing evidence or some standard close to that.The court of public opinion is different from a court of law, but it too is an important court. Wouldn’t anyone rather be convicted in a court of law of drunken driving—also a serious crime—than convicted in the court of public opinion of being a serial sex predator? Many would even rather go to prison for a year on drunken driving charges than be labeled a sexual predator for life. In a nation dedicated to fairness and due process, explicit constitutional rights often serve as a metaphor and guide in the kind of basic fairness we demand even in nonlegal proceedings. That model should operate here as well.Indeed, “being disqualified based on a false accusation of a crime would be a violation of the fundamental right to fairness.”In some other setting—say, in the hands of a great novelist—someone like Karamazov (either the bad father or the dissolute son) may represent “what’s wrong with Russia.” But in a court of law or any other legal proceeding, Dmitri Karamazov is simply himself—a man who has either killed his father or not. If he has, then he should be punished. If he has not, then there is no injustice in not punishing him.We must seek to identify the actual perpetrator of a crime, whether it is the murder of a despicable old Russian aristocrat or the sexual assault of an inebriated young woman.  If we allow such cases to be about “what’s wrong with the country” rather than a search to know what actually happened, then all such proceedings, whether they are held in a courtroom or on a college campus, become a legal mask for creating a scapegoat.  And as René Girard has made clear, scapegoating is not about the guilt or innocence of this particular man or woman—that question becomes immaterial as long as we as a society can pour out our guilt, our unclean feelings, our impure souls, upon him, and then cast him into the wilderness so that we may at long last be clean again.The problem is, the Scottsboro Boys did not “stand for” the dangers that black men posed to white women in 1931 any more than Alfred Dreyfus “stood for” the dangers Jews posed to France in 1901. We don’t hang men like Adolf Eichmann because the Holocaust disgusts us; we hanged Eichmann because he committed crimes against humanity. We need to make sure the guilty are punished. But if the persons we accuse did not commit the crimes for which they are accused, and we hang them anyway as a therapy for our collective guilt, then we will have become what we condemn: victimizers of the innocent. Justice For AllLegal proceedings are an imperfect process. But I would rather trust those rigorous rules of due process to arrive at a clear understanding of the truth of the matter than trust that awesome responsibility to the ever-excitable denizens of the contemporary media circus or those who feed their insatiable appetite for sleaze in the political class. This is why political “show trials” are affairs for totalitarian states, not for republics governed by respect for the law.Legal proceedings are not circuses or soap operas for our amusement and titillation. Nor should we view them as a sideshow to the great emotional debates of our age. Legal proceedings are disturbingly particular in their details, and as a result, unusually dull to those who lack patience for such matters. The health of a society is shown not when they’ve forced judges and juries (or Senators and public opinion) into what they’ve convinced themselves is the “right” outcome. Health is shown, rather, when society has had the patience to allow “due process,” with all its faults and restrictions, to do the limited job it was designed to do.Justice isn’t only something judges and juries do. Whether a person is in a courtroom arguing for his or her life or in a hearing arguing in defense of his or her reputation, justice is still necessary. It is something we must establish every day—in the way we live with others, in the way we speak humbly and attend to all the facts patiently, in deference to reality and the truth of things. + + Randall B. Smith is the Scanlan Endowed Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, where he teaches the core class on moral theology, “Christ and the Moral Life.” He is also the author of Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (Emmaus, 2016) and the forthcoming Principia: Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Culture of Preaching and Prologues at Paris. He is currently at work on an introductory text on moral theology. This essay is adapted from a previous Public Discourse essay.

IMPORTANT

 Better Church Governance, Cardinals, CatholiC, Papal Conclave, Red Hat Report

October 3, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – As Catholics in the pews and the hierarchy continue to grapple with the Church’s sexual abuse scandal, a group of lay Catholics have launched an initiative to foster accountability among the Church’s hierarchy, specifically cardinals. 

The Better Church Governance (BCG) group announced plans Sunday to research and publish a survey of each of the Church’s cardinal electors, those eligible to vote in papal conclaves, in hopes of having it ready in time for the election of the next pope.

Numerous cardinals have remarked about how difficult it is for the cardinals to know one another, BCG’s Operations Director Jacob Imam told LifeSiteNews, and consequently, this would inhibit informed decision-making.

Jacob Imam, Better Church Governance’s Operations Director.John-Henry Westen / LifeSiteNews

“A number of cardinals have mentioned to me and quite a number of other people that the most precarious part of a papal conclave was knowing who the cardinal electors are,” Imam said. “We thought; we needed to change this.”

BCG made the announcement at a private event hosted on campus at the Catholic University of America. The University, which was founded by the U.S. Bishops and has all six resident U.S. cardinals sitting on its Board of Trustees, was not associated with the BCG event. 

BCG’s premier project, The Red Hat Report, will offer a brief introduction to each of the currently 124 cardinal electors, noting their handling of abuse and corruption, both sexual and fiscal, and their theological and pastoral priorities, Imam told LifeSiteNews’ Editor-in-Chief John-Henry Westen Monday in an exclusive interview.

“We live in very dark times, with very dark corners,” he said. “We must shine light in them so that the laity might be more vigilant.”

A lay response to clergy sex abuse and cover-up

Announcement of The Red Hat Report follows several months of jarring revelations of sexual abuse in the Church, from allegations of serial predation of seminarians, young priests and other young men by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, to the Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing seven decades of abuse by at least 300 priest abusers in six dioceses there. 

Both scandals have raised the question of whom in the Church’s hierarchy knew what and when they knew it, and what action was taken to cover for abusers. 

The McCarrick accusation of abuse of a minor decades ago that surfaced in June opened the door to the “open secret” that everybody knew about the high-level cardinal, leading more victims to come forward against him and others, and shining light on the issue of homosexual predation among clergy.

Allegations at all levels of the Church

The scandal has reached the Chair of Peter, with former Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S. Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s August 25 testimony implicating Pope Francis and other senior prelates in covering up for McCarrick.

Francis has yet to directly address Vigano’s claims.

The Pope also faces charges he failed to adequately act upon abuse allegations when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had hoped for assistance from Rome in investigating the McCarrick scandal – as bishops and cardinals are answerable to the pope. 

However, after the apparent rejection last month by Francis of USCCB’s leadership’s request for an apostolic visit to address the abuse crisis in the U.S., the USCCB announced efforts it would undertake on its own authority to investigate McCarrick. 

Information – for laity and cardinals

Imam, a Marshall Scholar of the University of Oxford who was baptized 10 years ago and received into the Catholic Church three years ago, explained the overall mission of The Red Hat Report is two-fold; to inform both the laity and the cardinal electors about the men in the running for pope.

“We must do a good job to help the princes make an informed decision about who shall be our Holy Father,” he said.

“We will ultimately package this together in a very critical academic volume that we will give to each of the cardinals,” said Imam. “They can use it or not, it’s just for them to make an informed decision. We’ll also put this online so that it will be more accessible to the laity.”

BCG is in the start-up process, which also means fundraising mode. It projects expenses the first year of the project at some $1,126,500. 

After the first edition is completed, the cardinal list will need continual updating and revision as cardinal electors age out and pass away and new ones are selected. BCG currently expects its projected budget could drop by roughly $500,000 in subsequent years.

The group does hope to expand into more projects. 

“With the USCCB’s call for a lay review of bishops in Aug 2018 and Pope Francis’s meeting with world bishops slated for Feb 2019,” BCG states, “we see the potential for expanding our work to include the entire episcopacy and becoming a permanent, independent watchdog.”

It has begun by building a team of roughly 60 researchers comprised of professional academics and reporters, according to BCG’s prospectus, along with lawyers and other professionals from 15 different institutions in North America, Europe, and Asia. 

Investigators include former FBI agents looking into the most ‘papabile,’ or influential cardinals, as well as those who are little known.

BCG is currently constructing the dossiers of the American cardinals, and plans to soon start forming groups in Italy to begin researching their cardinals.

The group looks to launch a website in February 2019 with the results for the North American cardinals, followed by the dossiers of the Italian cardinals, along with most ‘papabile’ cardinals worldwide completed the following month. 

The rest of the cardinals’ dossiers will be published in regional groups, leading up to the final publish date of January 2020. The first full edition of The Red Hat Report is scheduled for release in April 2020.

Research will entail collecting and organizing credible facts on the cardinals, discerning credible reports from unsubstantiated claims, and integrating the data. When necessary they will travel to investigate locally. 

The need to know about these men

“We want to have complete dossiers done on every single cardinal elector,” Imam told LifeSiteNews. “That means knowing their background, their history of sexual abuse or sexual corruption, financial corruption.”

The cardinals’ theological leanings will be published but not critiqued, he said. 

“We want to know their theological priorities,” he said. “It’s not our job to declare a prelate to be orthodox or unorthodox, we merely know that this is an important aspect of a cardinal when making a decision about who shall be Holy Father that they will want to know. And so we’ll mark their theological priorities without, of course, giving judgment about them.”

Also important is where a given cardinal’s backing generates from – especially in the wake of McCarrick – who rose to prominence in the Church while allegedly preying continually on young men. 

“We’ll also note their patronage,” Imam said. “We know that this is important; who are their mentors, what are their connections, who are those that they’re associated with.”

Clarity and truth

Imam also said there’s a lot of false rumors and false accusations of people out there, and BCG wants to dispel those as well.

“We want to bring clarity to the conversation,” he told LifeSiteNews. “And it is through our research, through our investigative teams that we’re hoping to do that.”

This new lay-led initiative for reform in the Church stems from a great love and care for Jesus and His Church, Imam said.

“This is not a project to condemn anyone,” he stated. “This is an attempt to make the purity of the Church more visible, so that more people will be saved, more people will be loved, see their love for God grow and love for one another.” 

“This is for the protection of our children, and for our friends and for ourselves,” he added. “And it is for the greater glory of God that we are doing all of this.”

LifeSiteNews will continue to follow the unfolding initiative of the Better Church Governance. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE 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.


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 PlumeUn ami des Papes

MAIKE HICKSON

BLOGSCATHOLIC CHURCH Wed Oct 3, 2018 – 3:46 pm EST

Italian abuse victims’ group accuses Pope Francis of ‘disastrous’ negligence in clerical abuse cases

  Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith Cdf, Domenico Calcagno, Ending Clerical Abuse, Francesco Zanardi, Luis Ladaria Ferrer, Mario Enrico Delpini, Mauro Galli, Philippe Barbarin, Pope Francis, Rete L’abuso, Sex Abuse Crisis In Catholic Church, Vatican Cover-Up

October 3, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – An Italian organization of sex abuse victims has accused Pope Francis and those who work closest with him of failing to “intervene” in Italian cases where they knew of clerical abuse. 

On 2 October, the Italian organization of sex abuse victims Rete L’Abuso, or “abuse network,” together with the international abuse victim organization Ending Clerical Abuse (ECA), hosted a press conference in Rome. According to a Kath.net report, Rete L’Abuso’s president Francesco Zanardi accused both the Vatican as well as the Italian government of gravely negligent omissions in this field of sexual abuse. 

Zanardi called Pope Francis’ dealing with sex abuse “disastrous.” 

“It’s been dramatic and disastrous,” he said, adding “His commitment to ‘zero tolerance’ is only on paper and for the TV cameras.”7

In four concrete cases, the Pope had been informed about the abuses of Italian clergymen, or those who covered-up for them, without his then taking steps against them, said Zanardi at that press conference. 

One case involved abuse allegations against Father Mauro Galli in Milan. The priest was transferred by Milan Archbishop Mario Enrico Delpini to another parish — in Legnano — and put in charge of youth ministry. The priest’s conduct and the Archbishop’s handling of it were reported to the Vatican on several occasions, Zanardi said. 

“Despite this,” he went on, in July 2017 Pope Francis made him [Delpini] the archbishop of Milan” while having detailed information of his background in covering-up for this abusive priest. 

Rete L’Abuso laid out three other Italian cases that they say Pope Francis was aware of and took no action. Reported Crux: 

Zanardi is of the opinion that the State should investigate ecclesial abuse cases. For that to occur, however, the Lateran treaties between the Holy See and Italy need to be altered. 

However, often it is the case that even state institutions act in a way that protects the Church, the speaker continued. Therefore, he calls for an independent inquiry commission according to the model of some other countries. For Italy, Zanardi estimates that some 300 ecclesial offenders are now said to have committed sexual crimes.

When LifeSiteNews reached out to Rete L’Abuso for more information, Simone Padovani explained that the organization has no political affiliation and that its main purpose is to work so as to “stop all the cover-up!” and, for sure, not to “tell the Church how to manage her priests.” (The organization has received, however, for one of their events the hospitality of the Radical Party in Rome.)

Upon request for more information also with regard to this organization’s accusations against Pope Francis, LifeSiteNews received from Rete L’Abuso a link to an article written in English by Zanardi himself. In that article, he covers in more detail his allegations against Pope Francis and the Vatican with regard to the ongoing cover-up of sexual abuse. 

In this article, Zanardi makes it clear that the Church’s approach to sexual abuse is still deficient in the way that it only looks at these crimes quite abstractly as a “crime against morality” and not as a “crime against the person.” This deficient concept leads to the Church’s not opening herself up to “civil interventions toward [on behalf of] the victims,” he argues. His organization is now working with the United Nations in these matters. It is important to note that he speaks mostly of pedophilia, and not of homosexual abuse, on the part of the clergy.

In his article, Zanardi also discusses the “Court of Bergoglio” and its cover-up of sexual abuse. He specifically names many of those whom he claims are involved. For example, the Italian points to Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer who currently heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Church (CDF). He claims that the Cardinal “is certainly not the person most suited to that charge who in fact boasts over the years [about] a significant recidivism in the firing and protection of pedophile priests.” 

Becoming more detailed, Zanardi says: “One of the cases that made the most clamor is that of Don Giovanni Trotta who in 2012 was reduced to the lay [state] laical and Ladaria who in a decree, ordered silence ‘to avoid scandal among the faithful.’ So the ogre violated other children undisturbed. In the CDF, Ladaria treated dozens of other cases, all unresolved in at least, regarding justice for the victims.”

After his being appointed as the Prefect of the CDF on 3 July 2017, explains Zanari, “we immediately see Ladaria working to cover-up alleged abuses of the pope’s altar boys.”

“Even here there is no solution indeed. The alleged molester, Don Gabriele Martinelli, was not only not even suspended, but in 2018 he even collected reservations for the spiritual exercises of the [religious association] Opera Don Folci, which was attended by the same Ladaria [Ladaria was a speaker. See here a link to that event]. A few days ago the news passed quietly in Italy, where Ladaria was sued in Lyon [along] with Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and five others [here a link to the story]. A process that could be avoided because Ladaria is not in France and the Vatican has not yet given any answer on its participation in the trial that will be held next January.”

Martinelli, according to one report, was a student at the Vatican’s St. Pope Pius X junior seminary under Pope Francis when he is said to have abused boys as young as 13 years old. Nonetheless, he was ordained – in spite of warnings – in July of 2017. However, the Vatican denied the allegations in November of 2017, claiming that they were unfounded. One specific victim claims to have been abused by an older boy in the pre-seminary from age 13 until 18. That abusing boy could be identified as a priest now serving in Como, according to the Avvenire report.

As the Vatican specialist Nicole Winfield reported in November of 2017, the Church had put strong pressure on those who went to the public with abuse allegations concerning the abusing student and later priest. However, even a high-ranking clergyman at one point admitted that he believed the allegations. As Winfied says: “However, [the journalist Gaetano] Pecoraro interviewed the Como vicar who handled the investigation, the Rev. Andrea Stabellini, who confessed when he thought the camera wasn’t filming that he had recommended the investigation continue because he believed there was sufficient evidence offered by the boys. He was overruled. In an interview with AP, Pecoraro said he had since come to learn that diocesan and other church officials were pressuring Stabellini to recant.”

As Rete L’Abuso’s speaker Simone Padovani informed LifeSiteNews, that his organization has already informed Monsignor Enrico Radice (the former rector of the pre-seminary at the Vatican where the Pope’s altar boys live) and Bishop Diego Coletti (Como), as well as the religious association Opera Don Folci – with whom Don Martinelli is currently working – that a penal process will be started with regard to abuse allegations against Don Martinelli, who still this summer organized events for that religious association which has affiliated nuns and priests and which is located in Como, Italy. The Opera Don Folci runs the pre-seminary St. Pius X, and in 2015, it honored Monsignor Enrico Radice when he left his position after twelve years as the rector of that seminary. This pre-seminary is a place for 11-18 year-old-boys who go to a nearby Catholic school and otherwise also help with the liturgical service at the Vatican.

Among the members of the “Court of Bergoglio,” the author also points to Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, the “protector of the pedophile priest Nello Giraudo who helped in the election of Bergoglio.” At the 2013 Conclave, Zanardi – who had himself been terribly abused by the now-convicted Father Giraudo – made his own public appearance in Rome calling for the removal of Cardinal Calcagno who had been complicit in the cover-up of this protracted clerical abuse, according to Zanardi. He was able to have some access to Vatican documents which showed that Cardinal Calcagno had asked the CDF’s Prefect, Cardinal Ratzinger, for advice, making it clear that he already knew of the abuse. However, according to Zanari, Calcagno nevertheless kept this abusing priest in places where he also had access to children.

As a CNN report has it: “Further documents reveal church officials were aware of [Father] Giraudo’s crimes from as far back as 1980. On 29th March 2010, [Titular] Archbishop Ladaria of Thibica wrote to the current Bishop of Savona, Vittoria Lupi. It says Giraudo ‘was reported in 1980 for abuse of minors’ and that Giraudo admitted his own ‘pedophile tendencies’ to the Vicar General of Savona in 2002. Despite all this, it took more than 30 years before the Church forced Giraudo to write a letter of resignation on March 27th, 2010.”

Zanardi also names “Archbishop Mario Delpini and his colleague Pierantonio Tremolada, who tried to cover up the case of Don Mauro Galli and, again, Bishop Diego Coletti and his colleague Angelo Comastri, collaborators of the alleged abuses of the pope’s altar boys.” He also names Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, “reported for the cover-up by the alleged victim on the basis of the Motu Proprio of Bergoglio, who never intervened.”

Zanardi concludes this part of his essay – which also deals with the Italian government’s deficient handling of sexual abuse – with the statement that “Bergoglio collects accusations from one pole to the other on the planet, even if the Italian newspapers do not speak of it, he did not intervene in the case of the Veronese priest Don Nicola Corradi [see here a report on this case involving Pope Francis] and now ‘the pope of transparency closes in silence,'” he said, finally “debunking the myth” that he is for “zero tolerance, which has never been there.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE 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.


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 PlumeUn ami des Papes

Barnhardt

Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta.

Satanists Manifesting: Antipope Bergoglio Carries a Stang – the Ritual Staff of Witchcraft

As I have said and written before, one of satan’s most clever moves has been to foment, encourage and push mentally ill and demonically oppressed people to LOUDLY broadcast insane, ridiculous, totally false “conspiracy theories”.  We all know the types and categories.  Mind control beams, “chem trails”, shape shifting lizards, underground civilizations, flat earthers, the list goes on and on and on.

What this has done is make it almost impossible to point out, discuss, and warn about ACTUAL sinister goings-on and actual, honest-to-goodness conspiracies that are very real.  We all know that the word “Freemasonry” in the U.S. is automatically lumped into the above category, even though in Europe Freemasonry is largely understood to be the extremely powerful and influential socio-political entity that it is, and many Europeans further understand that the core of Freemasonry is the desire to exterminate the Catholic Church and replace it with the one-world secular humanist political religion of Freemasonry.

Trying to warn about such things as the musloid political system gets one lumped in with “conspiracy theorists”, as does trying to warn about the massive infiltration, influence, power and agenda of the sodomite cabal, both in the secular realms of politics and entertainment, AND in terms of the infiltration of the Institutional Church.

Perhaps the most difficult actual conspiracy to discuss without being dismissed out of hand is the actual cult worship of satan.  But, it is real, and it is manifesting before our eyes, so someone has to call these things out knowing full well that to do so means that 99.9999% of the populace will instantly call one a “crazy fool”.  That’s fine.  If fitting in to this culture constitutes sanity, then please God, let me never be sane.

Antipope Bergoglio carrying a Stang. Note the prominent iron nail, and the human form at the base of the fork. Textbook Stang.

It is a MORAL CERTAINTY that the stick that Antipope Bergoglio tried to pass off as a ferula yesterday in the Mass opening the Sin-nod on Sodomy is a “STANG”. Antipope Bergoglio said is was a “gift” from “young people” who SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED that he use it in the opening Mass of the Sodo-synod.  That story right there by itself is DAMN PECULIAR.

A Stang is a witch/warlock’s ceremonial staff.  It is always forked, and always has an iron nail driven through it. Ideally it has a human form carved or integrated into it somehow.  The Stang signifies several things, the first being a satan himself.  Read the quote below from a witchcraft blog:

“Gary describes the Stang as primarily a symbolic tool rather than a working one, and as such it stands in for the Devil himself, holding his power and his dual nature. The Devil and the Stang is often less about strict duality  and more about the transgressing of boundaries, The Devil being a spirit I often think of as non-binary and difficult to define in terms of absolutes.”

Almost like a… “god of surprises?”

Sounds familiar, eh?  Like every Casa Santa Marta sermon, and every airplane presser?  Yeah. That’s mild compared to this quote from the same article:

“The witch is bound to no dogma. This makes them a threat to a Christianity established on doctrine. The witch insists everything in creation has its place. The Church insisted on two contrary substances God and The Devil. The witch strives for synthesis.”
Nicholaj De Mattos Frisvold- Craft of The Untamed.

G.W.F. Hegel, please dial “666” on a white courtesy telephone….

Let us revisit the quote of the Canadian faggot priest Tom Rosica, who is, once again, the English language press spokesman for this Sodo-synod from just a few weeks ago:

“Pope Francis (sic) breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants because he is “free from disordered attachments.” Our Church has indeed entered a new phase: with the advent of this first Jesuit pope (sic), it is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture. “
-Fr. Tom Rosica, Vatican press spokesman

Anyway, the iron nail in the Stang symbolizes multiple things, including a phallus/coitus, a mocking of the Crucifixion of Our Lord, and is the triple motif of the threefold serpentine, telluric and cainic “powers”.

The “serpentine” meaning is obvious – the devil himself, in the garden, “gifting” Adam and Eve with the “liberating” and “enlightening” words, “No, you shall not die the death. For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.“

The word “telluric” refers to earthly power, whose source and symbol is “the serpent”, “deep in the earth”.

The third motif symbolized by the iron nail in the Stang is the Cainic “powers”.  Now, hold on to your hats.  Here’s the opening from the Wiki article on “Cainism”, and remember folks, we are talking about Cain, whose sacrifice God rejected and he thus murdered his brother Abel because as St. John teaches, “Cain slew Abel because his works were evil, while those of his brother were just (1 John 3:12), and we read in Hebrews that “by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain” (Hebrews 11:4).”

——

The oldest source is to be found in Irenaeus, adv. Haer. i. 31.

Cain and Abel

He tells us that the Cainites regarded Cain as derived from the higher principle. They claimed fellowship with Esau, Korah, the men of Sodom, and all such people, and regarded themselves as on that account persecuted by the Creator. But they escaped injury from Him, for Sophia used to carry away from them to herself that which belonged to her.

——

One thing I learned in researching the actual cult worship of satan once I learned about and confirmed that the Vatican is the nexus of satanism in the world today, is the fact that satanists are commanded, at some point once they have sufficient power, to openly MANIFEST their satanism.

If the Bergoglian antipapacy doesn’t constitute “having sufficient power”, then I don’t know what would.

I am morally certain that Antipope Bergoglio’s carrying of a Stang with the iron nail so prominently positioned, into the opening of a farce synod whose entire agenda is the ratification of sodomy, is a clear case of manifestation of satanism.

And if that makes me a conspiracy theorist, so be it.  Some conspiracies are real.

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.  May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O prince of the Heavely Host, by the power of God, cast into hell satan and all evil spirits who prowl throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

Links:

“How To Use A Stang”

Wikipedia article on Cainism (must read)

“The Stang and the Devil At the Crossroads”

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on October 4, ARSH 2018 by Ann Barnhardt.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE 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.


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 PlumeUn ami des Papes

03 ott 

A Synod Off the Rails. The Criticisms of the Archbishop of Philadelphia

> Italiano
> English
> Español
> Français

> All the articles of Settimo Cielo in English

*

Today is the beginning of a synod with a rather vague title: “The young, faith, and vocational discernment.” But even more flimsy is the document on which the synod fathers have been called to “work.”

The document is called, sure enough, “Instrumentum laboris,” working instrument, and it is the outline for the discussion to follow. Which for that matter has already begun, with strong criticisms that have been focused precisely on the formulation of this preparatory text.

These criticisms have been voiced above all by the archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput, elected by the previous synod from among the select intercontinental group of bishops charged with organizing the current synod.

And then, seeing that the synod would be held no matter what, he published on Saturday, September 29 the following critique of the “Instrumentum laboris,” choosing as his platform the Italian opinion daily “Il Foglio”:

> Un sinodo senza fede

The original text in English:

> The Issues of the 2018 Synod

In Chaput’s judgment, the preparatory document of the synod “needs to be reviewed and revised,” because “as it stands, the text is strong in the social sciences, but much less so in its call to belief, conversion, and mission.”

The critique of Chaput – whose thinking is shared by the four bishops whom the episcopal conference of the United States has elected as its representatives at the synod – greatly irritated the Vatican control center, to the point that Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the synod at Pope Francis’s beck and call, directly attacked Chaput, although without using his name, during the press conference for the presentation of the assembly, on Monday, October 1:

“Someone has said at first to cancel the synod and then that the ‘instrumentum laboris’ is not well made. However, he’s just one. And then the person in question has said that he does not agree because he had a theologian study the text. But the person in question is a member of the ordinary council of the secretariat of the synod, and was present at the time when the draft text was presented, and if he had any objection he could have expressed it, and we could have calmly inserted it. So I do not understand why he has made these statements. So much for loyalty and honesty.”

Properly speaking – unlike what Baldisseri said – Chaput did not “have a theologian study” the document. He instead made his own the criticisms of the “Instrumentum laboris” that a theologian had sent him some time ago. A theologian whose name has not been made public, but whom Chaput himself called “a respected North American theologian” in presenting him to the readers of “First Things”:

> Thoughts on the “Instrumentum laboris”

Chaput recommended that the criticisms of the anonymous theologian be taken seriously: they are “substantive enough to warrant much wider consideration and discussion.”

Here are a few of the passages.

– The first taken from the criticism of the “naturalism” of the “Instrumentum laboris,” abbreviated IL:

“There is much discussion about what young people want; little about how these wants must be transformed by grace in a life that conforms to God’s will for their lives. After pages of analysis of their material conditions, the IL offers no guidance on how these material concerns might be elevated and oriented toward their supernatural end. Though the IL does offer some criticism of exclusively materialistic/utilitarian goals (§ 147), the majority of the document painstakingly catalogues the varied socio-economic and cultural realities of young adults while offering no meaningful reflection on spiritual, existential, or moral concerns. The reader may easily conclude that the latter are of no importance to the Church.”

– These other three from the chapter entitled “An inadequate grasp of the Church’s spiritual authority”:

“The IL upends the respective roles of the ‘ecclesia docens’ and the ‘ecclesia discens.’ The entire document is premised on the belief that the principal role of the magisterial Church is ‘listening.’ Most problematic is §140: ‘The Church will have to opt for dialogue as her style and method, fostering an awareness of the existence of bonds and connections in a complex reality… No vocation, especially within the Church, can be placed outside this outgoing dynamism of dialogue [emphasis added].’ In other words, the Church does not possess the truth but must take its place alongside other voices. Those who have held the role of teacher and preacher in the Church must replace their authority with dialogue.”

“The theological consequence of this error is the conflation of the baptismal and sacramental priesthood. From the foundation of the Church, by divine command, the ordained ministers of the Church have been invested with the task of teaching and preaching; from her foundation, the baptized faithful have been tasked with hearing and conforming to the preached Word. Moreover, the mandate of preaching is co-instituted by Our Lord with the ministerial priesthood itself (cf. Mt 28:19-20). Were the Church to abandon her ministry of preaching, that is, were the roles of the teaching Church and the listening Church to be inverted, the hierarchy itself would be inverted, and the ministerial priesthood would collapse into the baptismal priesthood. In short, we would become Lutherans.”

“Apart from this serious ecclesiological problem, this approach presents a pastoral problem. It is common knowledge that adolescents from permissive households typically yearn for parents to care enough to set limits and give direction, even if they rebel against this direction. Similarly, the Church as mother and teacher cannot through negligence or cowardice forfeit this necessary role of setting limits and directing (Cf. § 178). In this regard § 171, which points to the motherhood of the Church, does not go far enough. It offers only a listening and accompanying role while eliminating that of teaching.”

– And this last one from the chapter headed “A partial theological anthropology”:

“Discussion of the human person in the IL fails to make any mention of the will. The human person is reduced in numerous places to ‘intellect and desire,’ ‘reason and affectivity’ (§ 147). The Church, however, teaches that man, created in the image of God, possesses an intellect and will, while sharing with the rest of the animal kingdom a body, with its affect. It is the will that is fundamentally directed toward the good. The theological consequence of this glaring omission is extraordinarily important, since the seat of the moral life resides in the will and not in the vicissitudes of the affect.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE 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.


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 PlumeUn ami des Papes

OCTOBER 3, 2018

The Pope as Supreme Being

JAMES KALB

The Pope as Supreme Being

Pope Francis famously downplays law and doctrinal formulations, which he often associates with Pharasaism, in favor of “discernment,” which seems to involve the direct application of ultimate considerations to particular situations. As he put the matter in his address at the conclusion of the Synod on the Family, “The true defenders of doctrine are not those who uphold its letter, but its spirit.”

Discernment of some sort is always needed, so the Holy Father is right to note its importance. A true musician does more than play the notes on the page one after another. But he does play the notes, and it seems that a true defender of doctrine would uphold the doctrines themselves as well as their spirit. Many Catholics are therefore concerned that Francis fails to balance his denunciations of legalism with warnings about lawlessness—a tendency that seems a far greater problem in today’s Church.

There’s a personal background to the Holy Father’s outlook. He’s a Jesuit, and Jesuit training famously emphasizes discernment. And he took his papal name from Francis of Assisi, showing his admiration for an unconventional man whose very personal discernment of the needs of the Church has benefited us all immensely.

But legitimate discernment is never open-ended. Saint Francis insisted on strict acceptance of Church authority, and Jesuit training emphasizes obedience and abandonment of ambition for ecclesiastical preferment. In the Holy Father’s case nothing substitutes for these limitations. He sits in the chair of Peter, is judged by no one, and has full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church. That suggests problems.

Rulers don’t perform all functions. They do not usually—for example—write poetry or speak prophetically. When they claim to do so it’s usually a bad sign. Nor are rulers often saints. The use of power isn’t evil, but effective governance usually requires a liking for it, and it brings temptations to pride and the sacrifice of principle to expediency. That’s one reason most popes haven’t been canonized, most canonized popes were in the early Church, and most of them were martyrs.

The Holy Father is the ruler of an ancient worldwide institution. His office depends on an elaborate structure of doctrine, and its most fundamental purpose is the defense of that doctrine—in the words of the First Vatican Council, “inviolably keep[ing] and faithfully expound[ing] the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles.” He performs that and his other duties with the aid of an extensive hierarchy and bureaucracy and the voluntary cooperation of 1,300,000,000 Catholics. Those people rarely know him or much about him, and he won’t be able to work with them effectively unless what he says and does makes sense by reference to the structure as a whole.

So a one-sided emphasis on discernment at the expense of law and tradition is radically at odds with the pope’s role in the Church. By their fruits you shall know them. The new emphasis on discernment has meant contention and confusion. It has also meant easier annulments, and opened the door to authorized reception of the Eucharist by people in adulterous second unions—and eventually (it seems reasonable to expect) by sexually active homosexuals and single people. But that will make perennial Church teaching on family life a dead letter. That won’t be good for anyone. How will it help people on the margins if family life disintegrates further for lack of binding standards? And will people form their lives on Catholic teachings if their significance depends on the election returns from the College of Cardinals?

There’s also another side of the question. The papacy is a principle of unity in the Church. Open-ended discernment not limited by higher authority is a principle of dissolution. The things people do on their own seem good to them, and they’ve thought them over in whatever way they think about things. If their discernment trumps law and tradition, the Church becomes an aggregation of people pursuing whatever projects they think make sense for whatever reasons seem persuasive to them. In other words, it disappears.

So when discernment becomes the highest standard, the Church will hold together only if the pope’s discernment trumps other people’s discernment. Similarly, bishops’ discernment will have to trump the discernment of priests, and priests’ that of laymen. So we end up with a system of truly radical clericalism, with the pope as dictator over a hierarchy of petty dictators.

When a ruler’s discernment trumps law he becomes a lawless ruler. The Holy Father has blamed sexual abuse by clerics on clericalism, and that’s certainly part of it. But theologian John Lamont points out that the understanding of clerical authority that led bishops to believe they could simply ignore canon law, and so led to recent scandals, is one that emphasizes obedience to the will of superiors—to their personal discernment of the needs of the situation—rather than law. He notes that such an understanding is found in its most extreme form among the Jesuits.

These problems are not merely theoretical. Opinions differ regarding the recent book denouncing Francis as The Dictator Pope, but it’s unquestionable that many of his prominent supporters present Francis as a dictator.

Thus, Father Thomas Rosica tells us that Pope Francis intends to transform the Church as he sees fit from time to time. As he puts it, Francis has a “commitment to a ‘conversion’ of the papacy as well as the entire church … [but] not even he is sure where the spirit will lead.” To that end the Holy Father

breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants because he is “free from disordered attachments.” Our Church has indeed entered a new phase: with the advent of this first Jesuit pope, it is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture.

So Francis does what he chooses and recognizes no limits on what he can do. Father Rosica thinks that’s good.

Father Antonio Spadaro seems to agree. The publisher’s description of his new collection of interviews with the Holy Father, which Father Spadaro presumably approved, tells us that Francis

has turned the Catholic Church upside-down, flung open the windows of the Vatican and purged the Augean stables of corruption, simony, nepotism and financial skulduggery.… The Franciscan revolution is under way and in spite of his vehement critics the revolution will roll on and new horizons will be opened for the one and a half billion Catholics in the world today.

The factual claims are dubious, but the vision of Francis as a unstoppable transformative force not bound by anything external to his will is similar to Father Rosica’s.

And Austen Ivereigh suggests, in connection with the pope’s silence in the face of Archbishop Viganò’s testimony, that we can’t judge his actions by ordinary standards:

[Christ’s silence during the Passion] is a very different kind of silence from, say, the silence of complicity or the silence of inaction faced with evidence of evil, as we have seen too often in the case of sexual abuse of minors.

The purpose of Christ’s self-emptying silence—his meekness faced with ferocious hostility—is to create space for God to act.…

Could it be that behind Francis’ silence is not guilt or evasion, but hope?

So in the case of Francis we should liken the silence of an immensely powerful man in the face of a subordinate’s accusation, joined by the silence of his collaborators and by supporters’ attacks on the subordinate’s motivations and character, to the humble silence of Christ before Pilate.

But why should Francis be judged so differently from other men? Apparently, because he stands on an entirely different plane of being. Father Spadaro presents him as a sort of unmoved mover:

The Pope draws energy from conflict and sees that his actions upset them as a sign. The driving force of the pontificate of #PopeFrancis manifests itself precisely in the paroxysm of the backlash that it generates and that is thrown at him, crossing over him without moving him.

And Bishop Gustavo Carrara, whom Francis recently appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, speaks directly of the pope as a divine manifestation:

I believe, this is a great moment: God’s spirit is embodying itself in Francis’s spirit, but not many comprehend this dimension.

Such statements are appalling. How can people in responsible positions, including a successor to the apostles, possibly speak in these ways about a man who has as many human limitations as others, and whose fundamental role is to pass down what he has received? Much more can be said on the sources and implications of these attitudes, but space grows short so further discussion will have to wait.

(Photo credit: Daniel Ibanez / CNA)

Tagged as Antonio Spadaro SJ, Fr. Thomas Rosica, papal authority, Pope Francis,Theological Discernment99

By James Kalb

James Kalb is a lawyer, independent scholar, and Catholic convert who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command (ISI Books, 2008), and, most recently, Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It (Angelico Press, 2013).

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE 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.


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 PlumeUn ami des Papes