BOMBSHELL? YES WHEN YOU CONSIDER ONLY TWO CARDINALS ARE NOT INTO CLERICALISM

See here the full Open Letter:

OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENTS OF THE CONFERENCES OF BISHOPS

Dear Brothers, Presidents of the Conferences of Bishops,

We turn to you with deep distress!

The Catholic world is adrift, and, with anguish, the question is asked: Where is the Church going?

Before the drift in process, it seems that the difficulty is reduced to that of the abuse of minors, a horrible crime, especially when it is perpetrated by a priest, which is, however, only part of a much greater crisis. The plague of the homosexual agenda has been spread within the Church, promoted by organized networks and protected by a climate of complicity and a conspiracy of silence. The roots of this phenomenon are clearly found in that atmosphere of materialism, of relativism and of hedonism, in which the existence of an absolute moral law, that is without exceptions, is openly called into question.

Sexual abuse is blamed on clericalism. But the first and primary fault of the clergy does not rest in the abuse of power but in having gone away from the truth of the Gospel. The even public denial, by words and by acts, of the divine and natural law, is at the root of the evil that corrupts certain circles in the Church.

In the face of this situation, Cardinals and Bishops are silent. Will you also be silent on the occasion of the meeting called in the Vatican for this coming February 21st?

We are among those who in 2016 presented to the Holy Father certain questions, “dubia,” which were dividing the Church in the wake of the conclusions of the Synod on the Family. Today, those “dubia” have not only not had any response but are part of a more general crisis of the Faith. Therefore, we encourage you to raise your voice to safeguard and proclaim the integrity of the doctrine of the Church.

We pray to the Holy Spirit, that He may assist the Church and bring light to the Pastors who guide her. A decisive act now is urgent and necessary. We trust in the Lord Who has promised: “Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Mt 28,20).

Walter Cardinal Brandmüller
Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

WHEN TELLING ONLY PART OF THE TRUTH IS THE PROBLEM AND THE AGENDA

Pedophilia, as I was taught by experts, when I was vocation director, is not related to homosexuality. In fact most men interested in prepubescent boys are heterosexual in their adult attractions. In fact the smallness of the child, vulnerability, passiveness remind him of his vision of the ideal woman. So it is correct to state that pedophilia is not related to homosexuality.

However, the crisis in the Catholic Church isn't related to rampant pedophilia is it! It is related to men who take advantage of teenage boys who have undergone puberty and thus have adult body characteristics and usually not feminine in any way.

Yes it is arrested development of the perpetrator. Yes it is an abuse of authority over the one violated and yes it can be considered rape or at least statutory rape.

The reason that homosexual ephebophilia is greater in the Catholic priesthood is that parents trusted their boys with priests presuming they were heterosexual and mature heterosexuals at that. However, most parents would not have entrusted their teenage girls to a mature heterosexual priest as this would have been considered placing a temptation before the priest if he were to be alone with her as he could be alone with teenage boys.

So there was a cultural barrier and still is a cultural barrier from hetersexual mature priests being left alone with teenage girls for camp overs, nights at the rectory and horseplay in a ministry setting where games were included. That cultural, common sense barrier was not present with teenage boys.

Heterosexual men with arrested development are attracted to teenage girls as well, although the cultural disgust with this isn't as great as it is with men, be they priests or laymen attracted to teenage boys.

Thus these survivors of clergy sexual abuse were small children evidently and this has skewed their understanding of this problem and will prevent the Church from getting to the truth. We have already heard Cardinal Cupich babble the same thing and it is all to be politically correct and avoid criticism of people like the ones in this article:

Blaming homosexuality for abuse of minors is distraction, victims say

By Carol Glatz • Catholic News Service • Posted February 19, 2019 

ROME (CNS) — People must stop using homosexuals as scapegoats for the sexual abuse of children, two male survivors of abuse by priests told reporters.

“To make this link between homosexuality and pedophilia is absolutely immoral, it is unconscionable and has to stop,” said Peter Isely, a survivor and founding member of the survivor’s group SNAP.

Speaking to reporters outside the Vatican press office Feb. 18, he said: “No matter what your sexual orientation is, if you’ve committed a criminal act against a child, you’re a criminal. That’s the designation that counts. Period.”

Isely and other survivors were in Rome to speak with the press ahead of a Vatican summitFeb. 21-24 on child protection in the Catholic Church.

Phil Saviano, who founded SNAP’s New England chapter and is a board member of BishopsAccountability.org, told reporters Feb. 19 that he felt “there has been a lot of scapegoating of homosexual men as being child predators.”

To lay the blame for the abuse of children on homosexuality “tells me that they really don’t understand” the problem and have made a claim “that is not based on any source of reality.”

“I will admit that if a priest is abusing a 16-, 17- or 18-year-old boy, that part of the element that is going on there is homosexuality, but that is not the root of the problem” of abuse by clergy, he said at an event at the Foreign Press Association in Rome.

Saviano was a prepubescent boy when he was abused by Father David A. Holley of Worcester, Massachusetts, and he said, very often, a perpetrator is no longer “interested” in his victim when the child goes through puberty.

Saviano, whose story of abuse triggered the Boston Globe investigation and was featured in the film Spotlight, said he hears from victims from all over the world “and many of them are women who were abused as children.”

“Trying to lump it all together under homosexuality,” he said, is “a dodge” and will not “lead to a proper solution.”

“It is also an insult to all the women who have been sexually abused as children,” he added.

The report of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice on clergy abuse in the Catholic Church in the United States found there was no “causative relationship” between either celibacy or homosexuality and the sexual assault of children by church members.

The report concluded clerical sexual abuse of children was more a crime of opportunity with abusers violating whomever they had more unsupervised access to — regardless of age and gender — and that abusive priests almost always had more access to boys.

ARE WE IN THE THROES OF A NEW PURITANICAL SALEM WITCH HUNT BUT THIS TIME A CATHOLIC JANSENISTIC WITCH HUNT?

The Catholic Church's Sacraments, all of them, are being questioned, challenged and neutered by the current and might I say hysterical responses to the clergy sex abuse scandal.

At the core of this scandal is the desire to keep scandal quiet, hidden to preserve the ministry of the Church and its institutions. This has backfired to say the least, but it wasn't and is't just a Catholic thing and was quite common prior to the Information Age and talk shows like Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer.

People now, rather than recoiling from salacious details of scandal eat them up and want more and more kind of like an addiction to pornographic images and videos. Have you read the pornographic details of sexual abuse or seen it on the news? Even the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia had details of what he forced (allegedly) his girl friend to do and words like "gag" were used for the general public to hear! If I were a parent, and in a sense I am, I would be horrified for my children no matter their age to hear this kind of stuff and see it reported on television. It is also a kind of abuse, no?


But the problem I see with Catholic Jansenism, which is Catholic puritanicalism is that we expect people to be angels and we divorce their disorders from mercy and forgiveness and second and third or more chances at life. One strike and you are out is puritanism pure and simple. I am speaking about trysts with adults not the sexual abuse of minors.

But even with minors, civil law has age limits for them if a sex act is to be considered illegal. In some places it is 13 (South Carolina allows men to marry girls who are 11 years old as I have reported  before). In their places it is 16 or 18 and maybe 21 in other more enlightened states. But is it enlightened? Wasn't the Blessed Virgin Mary 14 when she conceived and was betrothed to Saint Joseph?

The fact of the matter is that priests do break the 6th commandment in the variety of ways it can be broken. Most of it isn't criminal and all of it can be forgiven in the Sacrament of Penance. That doesn't mean that further sanctions should not be taken in serious cases that are actually abusive. But not all cases are abusive unless you believe the puritanical media of our day.

Priests are not always the ones who commit the abuse. Sometimes they are pursued and seduced. This is an inconvenient fact that the Jansenistic and pruritancial leftist media ignore. Of course I am speaking of adults here not minors. But in today's world we know that teenagers are also prostitutes for various reasons and quite versed in the art of seduction. Why they are this way is never discussed or acknowledged or that it even exists in the minds of the political left puritans.

I think the Church must be open with the laity when a priest falls into a consensual sexual situation with adults. And it isn't always because of psychological issues, but simple human weakness exacerbated by loneliness, alchohol abuse or clinical depression/anxiety. It is consensual regardless of the fact that one is a priest and the other is a lay person. To claim abuse in these settings is simply a hoax for some other agenda on the left be it the Church's left of the political left.

Do we insist now that a husband who in a drunken stupor commits adultery must be divorced from his wife and forbidden to ever marry again?

Let's stop with the Jansenism and Puritanism of the left because it stands in the way of adequately addressing the real pathologies that are associated with the abuse of minors and even here not all cases are equal. 

A TIME CAPSULE IN THE PRESENT: WHAT CAN THE SSPX TEACH US ABOUT THE SEXUAL ABUSE OF MINORS?

I don't know where my former parishioner and frequent commenter Marc has gone. I hope all is well. But I post this exquisite video that tells us about the "Way We Were" and how the SSPX still is. Since Marc, a lawyer, has intimate experiences with the SSPX, I hope he can shed some light on the issues I raise below.

Many in today's Ordinary Form Church would say that this video shows forth the clericalism of the pre-Vatican II Church which is now through the Extraordinary Form of the Church and its mentor, the SSPX fraternity, today's form of the Church too.

Since this form of the Church is accused by progressives as the font of clericalism, how do they deal with the sex abuse scandal in all its forms and unfortunately all lumped together by puritanical progressives or is it Jansenistic progressives?

How do they screen their candidates for the priesthood? How do they supervise them? What percentage of their priests have had proven accusations against them? How do they handle these priests? Are they a smaller and purer Church or not?

Perhaps the clericalism as progressives love to label them can teach us if what the progressives say is true or is it the liberalization of the post-Vatican II Church symbolized by the Ordinary Form of the Mass the culprit?

Inquiring minds want to know!

SHOULD WE LET THE FACTS OF HISTORY STAND IN THE WAY OF USING THE FAILED PRACTICES OF THE PAST TODAY?

John Nolan has an interesting comment that I make into a post like Vatican II magic:

In 1973 the English Catholic writer John Eppstein wondered how a 2000 year old supernaturally-orientated institution that was 'the most solid and venerable pillar of civilization' was transformed, almost overnight, into an organization where every form of disorder and disorientation 'in the fields of morals, faith, authority and worship' was not only tolerated, but encouraged.

At about the same time, Malcolm Muggeridge (not then a Catholic) wondered why the Catholic Church was embarking on a reformation of its own just when Luther's 16th century reformation was 'running into the sand'.

In 1971 a number of British academics and literary figures, many of them non-Catholic, signed an open letter to Paul VI voicing their concern that the cultural patrimony of the Roman Rite appeared to have been abandoned. The result was the so-called 'Agatha Christie indult' allowing the celebration of the old Mass in certain circumstances. The same pontiff, in an extraordinary address on Advent Sunday 1969 had lamented the loss of much of the Church's liturgical heritage, including Gregorian Chant, but maintained it was a price worth paying to achieve the 'renewal' demanded by the Council.

Every innovator, every 'creative' liturgist (and there were plenty around at that time) justified his actions by referring back to Vatican II. Of course the currents which surfaced in the years 1962 to 1965 had been around for some time. Pius XII was aware of them, and even endorsed some of them. But he believed that the wilder excesses could be checked by the exercise of his own authority. There have been numerous books written about the Council, and no-one seriously argues that it wasn't at the very least a catalyst for far-reaching change.

Anonymous [commenter on this blog] reminds me of Mikhail Gorbachev. He could see that the Soviet Union was failing both economically and politically. But he could not bring himself to accept that the ideological concept of Marxism-Leninism was the root cause of this failure. A/K is similarly blinkered. There's no point in telling him that historical cause and effect can't be proved in the same way as can a scientific theory, since he won't listen, and doesn't want to listen.  

ARE WE IN THE LAST MINUTES IN CHURCH SPEAK OF THE DESTRUCTIVE FORCES OF THE SPIRIT OF VATICAN II AND ARE THOSE WHO CONTINUE TO USE THESE DESTRUCTIVE FORCES RUNNING SCARED?

You can read The National Chismatic Reporter's anguish over this New York Post article HERE.

Behind Ted McCarrick’s fall: the wrong kind of ‘openness’

 Chad Pecknold an associate professor of theology at the Catholic University of America.  

The Roman Catholic Church is sometimes viewed as an impenetrable fortress. To many liberals, that’s exactly the problem.

The church, they think, needs to come of age, modernize its teachings and ­accommodate ­itself to the sexual revolution that has been roiling the West since the 1960s.

Yet those who want a church “open to the world” must face an inconvenient truth: Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick championed just this kind for openness. And this emblem of openness, this man who caused so much pain to underage boys and young seminarians under his authority, will be laicized, likely Saturday.

Before last summer’s sexual-abuse revelations put an end to his brilliant ecclesial career, McCarrick, as cardinal archbishop of Washington, promoted Catholic chumminess with cultural liberalism. He was a regular visitor to President Barack Obama’s White House. He ran interference for Notre Dame University when it conferred an honorary degree on the pro-abortion-rights Obama. He opposed calls to deny Communion to pro-abortion-rights politicians. He was beloved at Davos.

An entire generation of boomer-age bishops, priests and theologians claimed that the Second Vatican Council demanded a concordat with liberal values. But no one chanted the mantra of openness louder, or raised more money around its central aims, than did McCarrick.

He personified the spirit that swept the church in the immediate years after the council — one that mistook the council’s teachings for an invitation to endless experimentation and the demolition of ancient moral barriers. McCarrick’s laicization is a judgment not only against the man but also against that rebellious spirit.

But what does laicization mean exactly? In Catholic teaching, ordination to the priesthood “confers a gift of the Holy Spirit” that changes a man and his personal status. A man ordained to the priesthood has the right and duty to exercise a sacred power “which can only come from Christ himself through his church.” This imprint of God’s power can never be erased — but the church can remove an ordained man’s right to exercise the power of that imprint.

A priest can voluntarily choose to set aside this sacred power, which belongs to Christ. Or, as with McCarrick, the church can divest his right to exercise it as a penalty for crimes. The boys and young men who suffered his predations should know that it wasn’t a sacred power that ­molested them but rather what Saint Paul called “the world” — the damnable human world of ­degraded desires.

And it is to this world that ­McCarrick returns.

Pope Francis already removed McCarrick from the College of Cardinals, but the expected ­laicization will mean that McCarrick can never be called ­“Father” again.

He has lost his right to be supported by the church. In his lifelong mission to be open to the world, McCarrick cultivated wealthy friends, who no doubt will support him in these final years of shame. He won’t be able to celebrate the sacraments.

Those who continue to cry that “the problem is the church isn’t open enough” haven’t been paying attention. McCarrick’s worldliness was as well-known as his openness. His predations were known to many, as the ­retired Vatican diplomat Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò insisted.

McCarrick’s brother bishops, the priests under his authority, the teachers at the religious order near whose seminary he lived in retirement — all knew or should have known. As the Catholic News Agency has reported, sometimes the rector of the seminary would warn students to avoid McCarrick’s “worldly tastes,” which included Learjets, casinos and the Jersey beach house, where he is alleged to have abused seminarians under his authority.

That house is now a metaphor and a warning about what happens when churchmen forget the wages of sin.

McCarrick is only the most ­extreme representative of such forgetfulness. Elsewhere, openness to the world has meant ­removing the crosses from Catholic classrooms or turning altars around to the face the people rather than the dying Jesus on the cross. Such openness has shifted not only the direction the priest faces during the Mass — but which way he faces in his heart.

There is a good kind of openness, to be sure. The openness that Vatican II actually called for wasn’t an accommodation with the world but a mission to illuminate it with the eternal truths that Christ entrusted to the church.

The kind of openness that McCarrick represents was different. It was desperate to remake the church in the world’s image. This Saturday, Pope Francis will judge justly that McCarrick’s brand of openness has reached its powerless, pathetic end.

THE GAY AGENDA OF THE ELITE MEDIA NOW FOCUSES ON THE CHURCH

There is a salacious book on the pink mafia of the Vatican (which oddly enough confirms my contention that the relaxation against concupiscence after Vatican II is in part the culprit for the scandals we are experiencing by saying it all started with Paul VI) and then there is a New York Times hit piece about gays in the priesthood and there are a number of articles about the closested situation of priests in the Church.

The point of all of this is not to tighten up the discipline of professed celibacy in the Church which means chastity, no matter what one's orientation is, but rather to relax it so that priests can marry whoever they want to marry, especially gay marriage. That's the agenda. It is an attack on two of the Sacraments of the Church, Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders not mention an attack on Original Sin, Baptism and Penance.

I have to tell you that currently in my diocese, I do not know of any priests who are living double lives especially of the gay variety. I do know that beginning in the 1970's heterodox theologians were promoting the agenda of recruiting men with homosexual tendencies who could also be celibate. During the vocation crisis that Vatican II's liberal, heterodox agenda fomented, fewer heterosexual men were considering the relaxed, feminized seminary and priesthood with its feminized liturgy but more gays were interested and many dioceses thought "what the heck" and recurited gay men thinking they would be orthodox, or maybe not, who cared. That is now coming home to roost and destroy the moral credibity of the Magisterium to include Pope Francis's credibility.

When I was vocation director, I interviewed many homosexually inclined applicants, some of whom were quite experienced, and I don't recall knowingly accepting anyone who professed to be "gay." That is not to say that men with same sex attractions can't be celibate, but in a gay culture of like minded men in the seminary or priesthood, it become somewhat impossible

There are those in the liberal media and the heterodox wing of the Church that want the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church to become like the Anglican Communion and Protestantism in general.

Haven't Protestant ministers always dated members of their church and married them? Did this ever raise eyebrows about abuse, unequal relationships and the like?

And now liberal Protestantism allow for same sex marriage. Where are these homosexual ministers finding their partners?

And the same if true of divorce. Do liberal Protestants fire ministers who divorce because of adultery and marry their paramour and then are allowed to continue in ministry?

Before gay "marriage" became the law of the land, two gay Episcopal ministers in Macon, both at different parishes, were in a gay relationship and living together with their Bishop of Atlanta saying it was just fine and their Board of Vestries (all laity) saying it was fine with only one woman worried about public displays of affection on church property or at their liturgies.

I asked if heterosexual ministers living with their boyfriend or girlfriend would be cut the same slack. They said NO!

I personally think that the media, secular and heterodox "catholic" are exaggerating the number of gay priests in the priesthood. They want it to be so because they want it canonically and morally legalized in order that gay priests can come out and model gayness for their congregations and do so in "marriage." After all, concupiscence along with original sin and sin in general are a thing of the past unless one opposes the gay agenda for the Church and world. So-called homophobia is the greatest mortal sin everrrrrr!

I AM NOT BUYING THAT IT IS RUST! THESE THINGS ARE INVADERS FROM PLUTO!

2 orange alligators spotted in Bluffton, South Carolina both invaders from Pluto intent on a world takeover! Orange is the new black!

BY MANDY MATNEY

STEPHEN TATUM via AP

An orange alligator is seen in Hanahan, S.C. The color may come from where the animal spent the winter.

Two orange alligators that look like they took a bath in some bad self-tanner are raising eyebrows in the Lowcountry again.

Exactly two years after a Cheetos-colored alligator from the Charleston area made headlines all over the world, a Bluffton man spotted two of the reptiles sunbathing next to a neighborhood pond Sunday.Chad Godwin told The Island Packet he spotted the two carrot-colored alligators, which are approximately 4- to 5-feet long, in a Cypress Ridge pond this week.

Usually Lowcountry gators only make headlines when they’re incredibly large or when they’ve done something strange (such as the one that rang a doorbell, the one that fell asleep on the porch or the one that ate Thanksgiving dinner).

But these ginger gators are turning heads all over the internet.

Commenters on social media, of course, have many theories for what’s giving the gator sweet potato skin.

Some say the gators are supporting President Donald J. Trump. Some say the alligators are fans of the National Championship-winning Clemson Tigers. Some even have worried that the alligators are a sign of pollution.

But experts at the S.C. Department of Natural Resources have a more simple answer for the brightly colored swamp creatures.

“It’s likely due to alligators hibernating somewhere near rust, like by an old drainage pipe,” David Lucas, spokesperson for SCDNR, told The Packet. “It’s like if you stuck your hand in a bucket of rusty water where metal had been sitting for a while.”

DNR has not seen an “uptick” in rusty reptiles over the past couple years, and it’s “unlikely” the coloration is a sign of pollution in the water, Lucas said.

He also said it’s not really a coincidence that the orange gators are being spotted around this time of year.

“February is typically when we start seeing alligators come out of hibernation for the first time,” Lucas said. “They’re not fully out of hibernation yet, but once they get away from the source of rust, the coloring will go back to normal.”

South Carolina isn’t the only state seeing the mysterious gators. A burnt orange alligator was spotted this week at a golf course in Dublin, Ga., according to a video posted on Facebook.

South Carolina alligators move more in the springtime as they make their way into warmer waters after hibernating during the winter, and their movement patterns change as it gets closer to mating season, according to DNR.

DNR officials urge the public to keep its distance from alligators and never to feed them. Though alligator attacks are rare, a Hilton Head Island woman was killed by an alligator while walking her dog near a pond in August.

Mandy Matney: @

IS THE POLYANNA CHURCH OF POST VATICAN II INCAPABLE OF CONFRONTING CONCUPISCENCE AND BECAUSE OF IT DOES IT ENCOURAGE IT?

Anthony Cusack writes this in a tweet. I happen to agree with him but I also know that there were scandals in the pre-Vatican II Church but kept quiet from the faithful:

The fall of McCarrick from the greatest rank of power in the Church sounds the death knell of something much larger: the whole Vatican II mania with accompanying Catholic amnesia forgetful of the moral law along with the liturgy. Lex orandi est lex vivendi.

My comments: 

LET'S FACE IT, CONCUPISCENCE IS A HUMAN PROBLEM RESULTING FROM THE DISORDERS THAT FLOW FROM ORIGINAL SIN. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE PRE-VATICAN II CHURCH KNEW THIS AND OFFERED ACTUAL MEDICINE TO COMBAT THIS SPIRITUAL DISEASE, DISCIPLINE, ASCETICISM AND STRICT MORAL TEACHINGS.

VATICAN II TRIED TO BUILD A TOWER TO HEAVEN AND MAKE HEAVEN ON EARTH AND ILLIMINATED MUCH OF THE CHURCH'S GREAT DISICIPLINE, ASCETISM, MORAL CERTITUDE AND MERCY WITHOUT JUSTICE.

IT IS A POLYANNA CHURCH WHICH HAS FAILED CATHOLICS MISERABLY AND LED TO THE LOSS OF MORAL AUTHORITY OF THE MAGISTERIUM OF THE CHURCH AND THE BLEEDING OF CATHOLICS TO OTHER RELIGIONS OR NON.

IT IS TIME FOR A RESTORATION AND TIME IS RUNNING OUT TO DO IT!

AMEN BROTHER, I MEAN FATHER!

At Crux Father Jeffrey Kirby has a very good commentary. I think most Catholic laity and clergy would agree with his suggestions. Most of us know what clericalism is and it is epitomized by Pope Francis’ stonewalling as well as those of his supporters, his cohorts like Cupich. However, their stonewalling is the clericalism at the root of the rot—root rot and placing oneself on a pedestal above reproach.

Press title for full article. Below it are the three common sense requirements:

Voicing ‘immense hope’ that Francis will act swiftly and honestly on abuse

• Father Jeffrey F. Kirby
  Feb 17, 2019
  SENIOR CRUX CONTRIBUTOR

And so, here are only three pressing issues:

1) The pope needs to address the charges leveled against him by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano and the questions surrounding portions of his episcopal ministry in Argentina. If he made mistakes, he needs to repent. If he put his trust in the wrong people or for the wrong reasons, then he needs to address them and take accountability.

Dismissing these and thinking he can make veiled comments in liturgical homilies and that they will go away, only indicates that he does not realize how much this omission hurts his moral authority and the trust that people of goodwill wish to place in him.

Right or wrong, the pope needs to clear the air and regain a higher level of trust in himself and in his authority to shepherd and reform the Church.

2) The ecclesial life and series of promotions of Theodore McCarrick need to be fully investigated. We are beyond a mere laicization. Now, the names of enablers and protectors need to be given. Other clerics need to be disciplined.

If this doesn’t happen, then trust in the internal governance of the Church will be lost. The hierarchy will appear to be a stained boys’ club which looks out and protects its own, even when they abuse and hurt others. The enablers and protectors of McCarrick need to be removed and disgraced for their shameful compliance with evil. It must be clear to all that there are consequences for cooperating with evil.

3) The obvious question of gay priests needs to be taken seriously. Attempts to place this abuse and cover-up solely within an arena of clericalism is only a raw and unthinking display of the very clericalism that is supposedly being exposed and denounced.

Beyond these empty efforts, the pope needs to legitimately address whether men with homosexual tendencies should be in the Catholic priesthood. Supposedly that is already our discipline, and yet it doesn’t seem to be enforced or taken very seriously.

These are only three of the many issues in the hearts and minds of the faithful.

As the international gathering approaches near the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, it’s the immense hope that the pope will act swiftly and honestly and that the harm done to victims, to the faith and to the Church will be taken seriously and that a concrete path of repentance and wide-scale reform will be spelled out and justly followed by all.

JUST AS IN 1954 SO TOO IN 2019 ARCHBISHOP FULTON SHEEN MAKES GREAT SENSE! THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES!

ARCHBISHOP VIGANÒ SPEAKS

UPDATED WITH MY COMMENTS EMBEDDED IN RED!

From The National Catholic Register:

An excerpt from Archbishop Vigano's talk:

In my third testimony, I begged the Holy Father to face up to the commitments he himself made in assuming his office as Successor of Peter. I pointed out that he took upon himself the mission of confirming his brothers and guiding all souls in following Christ along the way of the cross. I urged him then, and I now urge him again, to tell the truth, repent, show his willingness to follow the mandate given to Peter and, once converted, to confirm his brothers (Luke 22:32).

Gustav Doré (1832-1883), “Jesus Calming the Tempest”

COMMENTARY |  FEB. 10, 2019

Despite Grave Problems, the Lord Will Never Abandon His Church

REGISTER SYMPOSIUM: I continue to have hope, because the Lord will never abandon his Church. (My comments in red embedded in the talk.)

Archbishop Carlo Viganò

THE EDITORS What to Expect From the Vatican Summit?

CARDINAL WILFRID NAPIER Love, Care and Justice Must Be Paramount

MARIE COLLINS Plea for Commitment and Transparency

CARDINAL GERHARD MÜLLER The Rotten Fruit of Secularization

JANET SMITH Overcoming a Credibility Crisis

ARCHBISHOP CHARLES CHAPUT Mix Appropriate Anger With Confidence

ROBERT ROYAL Create Space for Bishops to Take Action

ARCHBISHOP CARLO VIGANÒ The Lord Will Never Abandon His Church

FATHER ROGER LANDRY Renewing Spiritual Fatherhood

AL KRESTA Stay With Us, Lord, For It Is Nearly Evening

I thank you for inviting me to take part in this symposium on “Abuse and the Way to Healing” in anticipation of the upcoming bishops’ summit at the Vatican. My contribution will draw on my personal experience of 51 years of priesthood.

It is evident to all that a primary cause of the present terrible crisis of sexual abuse committed by ordained clergy, including bishops, is the lack of proper spiritual formation of candidates to the priesthood. That lack, in turn, is largely explained by the doctrinal and moral corruption of many seminary formators, corruption that increased exponentially beginning in the 1960s.

I entered a pontifical seminary in Rome and began my studies at the Gregorian University when I was 25 years old. It was 1965, just months before the end of Vatican II. I couldn’t help but notice, not only in my own college but also in many others in Rome, that some seminarians were very immature and that these houses of formation were marked by a general and very serious lack of discipline. (Oddly enough, this is in the pre-Vatican II Church but by 1968, and in my own seminary in Baltimore, St. Mary's, there would be a complete collapse of pre-Vatican II discipline--which may have been too authoritarian, but motivated by the lax spirit of Vatican II! But we have to admit that immature men need strict discipline and when the discipline is removed and the immaturity is not, we see what happened and happens. Marriage and family has a tendency to mature immature men; the previous discipline of the Church did that for immature celibates or at least kept them in line.)
 
A few examples will suffice. Seminarians sometimes spent the night outside my seminary, as the supervision was woefully inadequate. Our spiritual director was in favor of priestly ordination ad tempus — the idea that ordained priesthood could be a merely temporary status. (Both of these were quite common in my seminary of the 1970's--the temporary idea of priesthood was talked about! But I had more freedom in the seminary than I ever had at home with my parents! Now I must say, that I was mature and wasn't carousing with the boys or the girls! I enjoyed the freedom I had for the first time as a 22 year old.)
 
At the Gregorian, one of the professors of moral theology favored situation ethics. And some classmates confided to me that their spiritual directors had no objection to their presenting themselves for priestly ordination despite their unresolved and continual grave sins against chastity. (I was taught what was called the "new morality" which is situational ethics and that a person could just about justify anything through following various steps in a decision of conscience. I read that homosexual relationships could be good, that oral and anal sex (sodomy) could be legitimized and the rest of it. I had never heard of any of this until I got to the major seminary in Baltimore and began to think that my pastor back home in Augusta was not telling us what Vatican II really anticipated and that my seminary was teaching us the way the future would be!)

Certainly, those who suffer from deep-seated same-sex attraction should never be admitted to seminary. Moreover, before any seminarian is accepted for ordination, he must not only strive for chastity but actually achieve it. He must already be living chaste celibacy peacefully and for a prolonged period of time, for if this is lacking, the seminarian and his formators cannot have the requisite confidence that he is called to the celibate life. (But there was a push beginning in the 1970's to accept homosexuals thinking they could be celibate too if God was calling them to the priesthood. Some of our seminarians were quite effeminate, but to say anything about that would be considered rude and homophobic even in the 70's!)
 

Bishops have the paramount responsibility for the formation of their candidates to the priesthood. Any bishop who has covered up abuse or seduction of minors, vulnerable adults or adults under a priest’s pastoral care, including seminarians, is not fit for that responsibility or for any episcopal ministry and should be removed from his office. (Bishop Lessard was quite concerned about the gay culture and the immaturity of seminarians at my seminary when I was there. I wrote him that it wasn't the seminary's fault entirely but bishops who were sending this broken men to the seminary--I actually put into writing to my bishop and as a seminarian, that bishops were the problem! I was so ahead of my time. Thankfully, Lessard didn't dump me!)

I am praying intensely for the success of the February summit. Although I would rejoice greatly if the summit were successful, the following questions reveal that there is no sign of a genuine willingness to attend to the real causes of the present situation:

• Why will the meeting focus exclusively on the abuse of minors? These crimes are indeed the most horrific, but the crises in the United States and Chile that have largely precipitated the upcoming summit have to do with abuses committed against young adults, including seminarians, not only against minors. Almost nothing has been said about sexual misconduct with adults, which is itself a grave abuse of pastoral authority, whether or not the relationship was “consensual.”

• Why does the word “homosexuality” never appear in recent official documents of the Holy See? This is by no means to suggest that most of those with a homosexual inclination are abusers, but the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of abuse has been inflicted on post-pubescent boys by homosexual clerics. It is mere hypocrisy to condemn the abuse and claim to sympathize with the victims without facing up to this fact honestly. A spiritual revitalization of the clergy is necessary, but it will be ultimately ineffectual if it does not address this problem. (Because Pope Francis and others surrounding him want to appease the world in this regard--it is a worldly ideology to say the least.)

• Why does Pope Francis keep and even call as his close collaborators people who are notorious homosexuals? Why has he refused to answer legitimate and sincere questions about these appointments? In doing so he has lost credibility on his real will to reform the Curia and fight the corruption. (The Holy Father has much to answer here as well as his cavalier answers regarding a homosexual network in the Vatican!!!)
  

In my third testimony, I begged the Holy Father to face up to the commitments he himself made in assuming his office as Successor of Peter. I pointed out that he took upon himself the mission of confirming his brothers and guiding all souls in following Christ along the way of the cross. I urged him then, and I now urge him again, to tell the truth, repent, show his willingness to follow the mandate given to Peter and, once converted, to confirm his brothers (Luke 22:32).

I pray that the bishops gathered in Rome will remember the Holy Spirit, whom they received with the imposition of hands, and carry out their responsibility to represent their particular Churches by firmly asking for, and insisting on, an answer to the above questions during the summit.

Indeed, I pray that they will not return to their countries without proper answers to these questions, for to fail in this regard would mean abandoning their own flocks to the wolves and allowing the entire Church to suffer dreadful consequences.

Despite the problems I have described, I continue to have hope, because the Lord will never abandon his Church.

Archbishop Carlo Viganò is the former apostolic nuncio to the United States

YOU’VE HEARD OF THE TALKING HORSE, MR. ED; WILL MR. TED BE THE TALKING CANARY?

Mr. Ted must be enraged by what Pope Francis has done to him. There is nothing worse than a pathologically disordered homosexual, whose narcissism makes him feel entitled to his homosexual disorders, when he becomes enraged.

Will this cause Mr. Ted to talk and answer Archbishop Viganò’s accusations and name names of those who enabled and maintained his lust for power all the way up to Pope Francis papacy?

Hell hath no fury than a homosexual scorned! Time will tell. But just imagine how much Mr. Ted would make when he writes his tell all book!

We can be sure of this, at the final judgment which is already but not yet, everything will be spoken and seen in the Lord’s painful purification.

POWERFUL! THIS VICTIM SEES THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE CHURCH SINCE VATICAN II AND THE SEXUAL ABUSE CRISIS!

Ex-Cardinal and now Mr. McCarrick’s most well-known abuse victim responds to laicization (full statement)

Statement of James Grein

(Sexual abuse victim of Mr. Theodore McCarrick)

For years I have suffered, as many others have, at the hands of Theodore McCarrick.  It is with profound sadness that I have had to participate in the canonical trial of my abuser. Nothing can give me back my childhood and I have not taken any pleasure in testifying or discussing what happened to me. There are no winners here. With that said, Today I am happy that the Pope believed me. I am hopeful now I can pass through my anger for the last time. I hope that [Mr.] McCarrick will no longer be able to use the power of Jesus’ Church to manipulate families and sexually abuse children.

This great historical and holy situation is giving rise to all Catholics and victims of abuse across the world. It’s is time for us to cleanse the church. Our Lady’s work is in process.

McCarrick has haunted the church for the last 50 years.  A church which has been cut off from Jesus. Run by men who have chosen to worship money, power, greed.  The exact opposite of God’s Holy Teaching. 

This has to change. It’s Jesus’ Church – I want to return. 

I must thank my family for without their belief and guidance I would be somewhere else.  I must thank my lawyer Patrick Noaker for helping me through the legal world. I must thank the important journalists who have listened to me and believed me.

We must continue to pressure state AG’s and senators to open the statutes of limitations. It’s these SOLs that has kept all of the abuse hidden from us.  Hundreds of priests, bishops and cardinals are hiding behind man made law. It is Time that we opened the books and expose the pure evil of these men.

Again, it is Jesus’ Church – I want to return.  

Stand Up For Jesus and walk with me

James Grein
Jesus is my savior

POPE BENEDICT’S WAY OR POPE FRANCIS' WAY: I THINK IT IS ABUNDANTLY CLEAR

The 1980’s, 90’s, 00’s, until 2013 saw the Church recovering from the addiction to change, upheaval and loss of Catholic identity which created for the purveyors of this confusion a drunken euphoria.

St. John Paul II began the restoration of the great discipline of the Church and Pope Benedict brought even greater clarity to his common sense “renewal of the Church in continuity” as well as liturgical restoration and recovery of Catholic culture and customs.

Pope Francis as an affinity for the Church of the period of 1965 to 1978 roughly and has tried successfully to bring the Church backwards to this time period of loss of Catholic identity, culture, custom, clarity and confused disunity.

It appears more of a psychological need than a theological one although there is a theology and ideology involved.

I think we are so approaching the next conclave. Catholics born around 1970 and later are seeing for themselves in real time what happened to the Church beginning around 1965 until the death of St. Paul VI.

Currant cardinals are reliving the 1970’s either to their horror or delight.

My clairvoyant sense of things is that the good things about Pope Benedict’s magisterium will be rehabilitated and promoted as the way forward to recover from the current 1970’s morass.

I can’t believe that the current confusion, division, rancor, resentments and missteps created by the current occupant of chair of St. Peter is appreciated by the majority of cardinals eligible to vote in the upcoming conclave, even within those cardinals created by the current pope.

BOMBSHELL! IT’S MR. MCCARRICK NOW OR MR. TED!

Press title for story. My only comment or criticism is that he should have been publicly excommunicated with the view of motivating him to publicly confess and repent of his mortal sins and sacrileges. He has admitted to nothing. Excommunication is medicinal and meant to be lifted after a public repentance.

McCarrick removed from priesthood after being found guilty of abuse, solicitation

ON THE DAY AFTER HIS HOLINESS OFFERS A TEACHING ON THE GLORIES OF THE REFORMED MASS, HE MODELS WHAT HE TEACHES-HOW GREAT IS THAT?

IS IT HEALTHY THAT WHAT ONCE WAS KEPT SECRET AND TABOO AND ONLY WHISPERED ABOUT IT NOW BEING SHOUTED FROMTHE ROOFTOPS?

I have to say I hope Cardinal Mueller and his diagnosis and prescription are being taken seriously by Pope Francis and his cohorts. But trust is lacking today and it is a self-inflicted wound that may be deepened in the coming days if the Holy Spirit is thwarted with ideologies rather than common sense.

What do you think of Cardinal Mueller's latest salvo and attempt to influence the direction of the Church and this papacy:

(From the National Catholic Register): 

 The Rotten Fruit of Secularization

Cardinal Gerhard Müller

CARDINAL GERHARD MÜLLER The Rotten Fruit of Secularization

The root cause of this evil is disregard for the Sixth Commandment. Without chastity, piety and strict discipline, priestly life cannot succeed. Only he who lives according to the commandments of God can be a good shepherd and a model for the flock. When it comes to a path toward healing with respect to episcopal accountability, some bishops and their propagandists, particularly in Germany and the United States, do not want to admit at any price that the sin of unchastity is the root of the problem. They don’t want to know anything more about Christ who died because of our sins, only to arrive at the zeitgeist.

They feel as if they are the Church’s new founders.

The “old Church” came from a man 2,000 years ago, but the “new Church” comes from them, in their image and likeness. They defend the group that they call “homosexuals,” and especially homosexual practice, because they believe it is legitimized through human relationships among these individuals. But their task should be to defend the many good priests, the sacramental priesthood and celibacy. They pretend that affections for a person of the same sex, and the opposite sex, include the right to sexual contact.

It has been said that if priests and bishops were allowed to practice homosexuality with persons over 18 years of age, boys and young men would be protected. Therefore, the prohibition, rooted in divine law, to keep practicing homosexual candidates away from the priesthood must be dropped. Those “enlightened” individuals place themselves above Revelation by wanting to free the word of God from prejudice against homosexual practice. They discriminate against those who are not homophile and mercilessly persecute them.

The facts and statistics are clear for all to see: 80% male victims, 20% female victims. No doubt there is forgiveness before God for criminals who repent of their sins. But these perpetrators must also take responsibility for their actions, apologize to the victims, repair the damage as far as possible and not apologize cheaply as victims of clericalism or Church structures. Those who use the vague term “clericalism” to absolve the perpetrators of personal guilt and give them the opportunity to pretend to be victims of the sacramental structure not only sin against the victims of these crimes, but make God the author of evil because God’s Son has given spiritual authority to the apostles and their successors.

My expectations for the meeting are that, finally, the secularization of the Church’s thinking and acting is recognized as the cause of the unprecedented decline of Christianity in the West.
Rather than adaptation to the mainstream of a world without God, the salvation of the world through the return to God in faith and obedience is the way to the New Evangelization and renewal of priests, and especially of bishops. It is not sophisticated managers who are needed, but shepherds who give their lives — and who also have theological formation and deep piety.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller is prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Translated from the original German by the Register’s Edward Pentin.

IT DOESN’T TAKE A ROCKET SCIENTIST TO KNOW HOW TO CELEBRATE THE SO CALLED REFORMED LITURGY WITH BEAUTY PLUS REVERENCE AND PIETY

Yes, Virginia, this is an OF Mass:

For over five years the 12:10 pm Sunday Mass at St. Joseph Church in Macon was celebrated as all the Four other Masses were celebrated with the same vernacular music and words.

The only differences were two things:

1. The Liturgy of the Eucharist was celebrated ad orientem

2. Holy Communion was distributed at the restored altar railing by the priest and deacon to kneeling communicants. It took less time than the other Masses with four Host stations and communicants approaching single file.

This Mass, in my most humble estimation, was the most reverent Mass of the five weekend Masses and formed reverent and pious Catholic clergy and laity. It approached the reverence of the once a month EF Mass celebrated at this very same Mass time!

Interestingly, I think this group of Mass goers thought the only difference was the Mass once a month is that it was in Latin with more ceremony and more ad orientem!

As soon as I left Macon, within a few months,  that Mass reverted to facing the congregation and now because of a decline of practicing Catholics in Macon and white flight as well as economic decline, the Mass schedule went from three Sunday morning Masses to two, from 7:45 am, 9:30 am and 12:10 pm to 8:30 am and 11:00 am.

The problem with the glorious reform of the 12:10 pm Mass is that these perfectly legitimate options allowed in the Ordinary Form are not universally encouraged by the pope and bishops. The status quo, a failure on many levels, is!

It is a colossal lack of leadership not only on the liturgical level but on so many other levels as we see it play out in front of our eyes in real time.

THIS IS A BOMBSHELL AND SPEAKS OF THE GREAT SCHISMS IN THE MAGISTERIUM UNDER POPE FRANCIS AND FOMMENTED BY HIM--THIS IS BUT ONE

PRESS TITLE FOR FULL, LONG ARTICLE FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

‘It Will Cause a Scandal.’ The Pope and a Trusted U.S. Cardinal Clash Over Sex-Abuse Crisis

The once-warm relationship between Pope Francis and Cardinal O’Malley has become strained over the Vatican’s stance on sex abuse 

 These are excerpts:

 

VATICAN CITY—Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, chief adviser to Pope Francis on protecting children from sexual abuse, called a meeting with top papal aides in 2017, concerned the Vatican wasn’t living up to its promise of “zero tolerance.”

An appeals panel set up by the pope had reduced the punishments of a number of Catholic priests found guilty of abusing minors. In some cases, the panel canceled their dismissal from the priesthood and gave them short suspensions instead.

“If this gets out, it will cause a scandal,” Cardinal O’Malley told Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, in effect the pope’s prime minister, and other Vatican officials, according to a person present. No action was taken to address the issue.

-------


Today, interactions between the pope and the cardinal, previously friendly and spontaneous, have become noticeably formal and terse, says a person who has observed them together.
The Boston cardinal’s influence has declined to the point where, in November, the pope excluded him from the organizing committee of next week’s summit, which had been Cardinal O’Malley’s idea.

----------------


Cardinal O’Malley used his role in the new pontificate to push for stronger Vatican leadership on sex abuse. He persuaded the pope to create an advisory panel on child protection, led by himself, tasked with proposing changes to church policies and procedures.

In 2015, the panel recommended a special tribunal to try bishops who ignore or cover up abuse. At a Council of Cardinals meeting, Cardinal O’Malley won the pope’s agreement. The following year, the pope changed his mind.

Peter Saunders, a former abuse victim on the panel, asked Cardinal O’Malley what had happened to the tribunal plan. The visibly frustrated cardinal shrugged, rolled his eyes, and said: “I really don’t know the answer. I wish I did,” according to Mr. Saunders.

------------

On a trip to Chile in January 2018, the pope defended a local bishop accused of covering up sex abuse. The victims’ persistent allegations, he said, were “calumny” without proof.

ardinal O’Malley issued a public statement criticizing the pope—an unusual action for any cardinal to take, let alone one so close to the pope. “It is understandable that Pope Francis’s statements yesterday…were a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse,” he said. “Words that convey the message ‘if you cannot prove your claims then you will not be believed’ abandon those who have suffered…to discreditable exile.”

The cardinal mitigated the chastisement by adding that Pope Francis was committed to zero tolerance of sex abuse. The pope, talking to reporters, seized on that part of the cardinal’s statement and thanked him for it.

The pope also repeated his view that allegations without evidence are “calumny,” and said the victims had never approached him.

The Associated Press soon reported that Cardinal O’Malley had handed the pope a detailed letter from a Chilean victim telling his story in 2015.

Pope Francis’ troubles grew last summer when a former Vatican diplomat accused him of ignoring earlier reports of sexual misconduct with adults by retired Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Washington. The pope declined to respond to the allegations at news conferences last year.