By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch
THE WEEKLY BRIEF
THE POPE'S MAGNIFICAT - TO LIFT UP THE LOWLY AND CAST DOWN THE MIGHTY: PRAYER AND FASTING TO PREPARE THE CHURCH FOR COMBAT AND EXORCISM.
Responding to the American bishops' McCarrick coverup and the recent grand jury report in Pennsylvania, Pope Francis wrote a powerful letter to Catholics as the People of God. He said it is inconceivable that we will right this wrong unless we act together in solidarity against these sins. He builds the letter on the Marian Canticle which he prays every evening. His soul cries out to the Lord who "hast cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly." He says we as "an ecclesial community" have "abandoned the little ones".. "but their outcry was more powerful than all the efforts to silence it." "We have realized that these wounds never disappear and they require us to condemn these atrocities and join forces to uproot this culture of death; these wounds never go away." He calls on us to stand at the Cross of the Suffering Christ with Mary. We stand by the suffering ones and unite with them in prayer and fasting. Together in solidarity we shall respond to the "suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience, perpetuated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons." "No effort must be spared to create a culture to prevent such situations from happening but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated." We must "fight all forms of corruption especially spiritual corruption-the latter is a comfortable and self satisfied form of blindness.
Everything then appears acceptable: deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of self centeredness, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light." "To see things as the Lord sees them will take conversion of heart. Prayer and penance will help. ... I invite the entire holy faithful people of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord's command.
"To say no to abuse is to say an emphatic "no" to all forms of clericalism." "We, as a Church, must acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetuated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with watching over and caring for the vulnerable."
He concludes: "May the Holy Spirit grant us the grace of conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before these crimes of abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat them."
The Pope is enlisting us in a battle against the culture of death that has spread filth over the priesthood. He asks us to pray and fast so we can cast out those demons that only can be exorcized by prayer and fasting. He tells us the hunger from fasting will whet our appetites for justice for these little ones WHO WILL NEVER FORGET WHAT BEFELL THEM. We must not forget either. May the hunger of serious fasts help sustain our memories. All of us as the holy people have to act together and in our different capacities to rid the Church of the consecrated persons and clerics who perpetrated these crimes and then covered them up. The Pope is not saying we are all guilty. He is saying we are all needed to purge the diabolical consecrated and clerics from Holy Mother Church. The deep homosexual infiltration of religious orders and chanceries throughout the Church must be confronted and excised. Egotistical homosexual clericalism must go. The Apostolic Fraternity of protective shepherds must reappear. The laity must keep clear these distinctions and make them clear in public. We have many resources to drive the Catholic narrative. A priest is our advocate before God. A homosexual predator is the agent of Satan. Who shall we blame for the abuse of the little ones? Right now they are both wearing Roman collars. Let the separation begin.
WHEN THE POPE SAYS "CLERICALISM"
The Pope also sees the sexual confusion about women's ordination as a type of clericalism. Here is his response to a query about women becoming cardinals.
"I don't know where this idea sprang from. Women in the Church must be valued not 'clericalized'. Whoever thinks of women as cardinals, suffers a bit from clericalism."
ABOUT CLERICALISM BY CHURCH HISTORIAN JAMES HITCHCOCK
"None of this is understandable without recognizing a fact which has been systematically obscured for three decades—the post-conciliar Church is more clerical than it used to be, not less.
"In many ways the clericalism of the pre-conciliar Church was tempered by the very legalism which liberals denounce—priests and bishops had authority which was carefully circumscribed by Canon Law, and they were not free, for the most part, to act capriciously. In the 'open,' anti-legalistic Church, however, clergy are often free to impose their own theologies, their own liturgies, their own moralities, their own ecclesiologies, on defenseless parishes, since there is no effective way by which the authenticity of renewal can be judged, nor any effective way by which priests can be made to conform to Church law. The Church is also more clerical now because a large number of lay people have in effect been inducted into the ranks of the clergy, as diocesan or parish bureaucrats."
THE CHURCH DOES NOT NEED A CHANGE OF POLICIES...
I. POPE FRANCIS, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, AND US CLERICAL SEX ABUSE
LETTER FROM BISHOP MORLINO OF MADISON: The first bishop to explicitly name the problem. Two elements are missing in this excellent letter. One there is no clear statement that acts of sodomy consensual or otherwise lead to loss of the priestly office and request from Rome that there be rite of degradation from the office and loss of all benefices (pensions). The bishop's approach is still one of "bring me complaints" rather than the appointment of a Promoter of Justice who will investigate and aggressively seek out where the wrong doers are hiding. Detectives do not wait for phone calls but they like tips. They go out and investigate. As Ezekiel says, they go out looking for their lost and scattered sheep. Where is the desire to know the truth? (see McElroy below) The episkopos must turn his office into a much more aggressive agent for justice regarding a pressing duty - the spiritual integrity of his priesthood. His letter is an excellent beginning. May 100 bishops "try to top him." There is room to grow. Morlino is a curious fellow. Morlino was on faculty of Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit 1990-99. Bishop Nienstedt was rector there for the first 7 of his years. Morlino is a "conservative bishop" on the advisory board for the NAPA Institute who featured Nienstedt after he was run out of Minneapolis-St Paul. Nienstedt's modus operandi in St Paul was as a vocal anti-gay marriage activist who courted seminarians on the side. Did Bishop Morlino warn the NAPA folks that their favorite Mass celebrant was not quite the kind of fisher of men that Christ was calling?
McELROY RESPONDS TO THE DECEASED RICHARD SIPE - HE IS THE EPITOME OF BISHOP AS PASSIVE JURIST NOT AGGRESSIVE PROSECUTOR: Bishop McElroy sat down several times with ex-priest abuse investigator Richard Sipe discussing abuse claims against living bishops. McElroy, Bishop of San Diego, and on the promotion fast track as a network insider cut off all contact after Sipe served him a registered letter (under the guise of large donor) complaining that he was stonewalling. Sipe did this to document his nonchalance. Nothing so typifies the lack of spiritual oversight in our blinder bishops. If a complaint can't show beyond a shadow of a doubt without witnesses who openly testify - then the bishop refuses to consider the problem. He doesn't go seek evidence through his own channels which are much more extensive than any complainant. He quits looking. No search for truth here. NO DESIRE TO CATCH THE BAD GUY AND SAVE THE INNOCENT. Everybody is innocent till proven beyond a shadow of a doubt he is guilty. That is a principle in American citizen justice. It is not the standard in military trials, corporation human resource policies and most definitely not the rules of Church clerical discipline - not at all... not any way. But that is the standard of the radical libertarian "Show Me" bishops.
ROBERT GEORGE MISSES THE POINT: Like his friend, Richard Neuhaus, Professor George is peculiarly blind to how sodomy is a different crime than fornication. The sexless conservatives who think all of this as a fidelity problem have not led us well in creating a culture of protection to safeguard life and innocence. Cultures of protection are not just long articles about the dignity of stem cells. They are also clarion calls to men to be protectors of the nation and women to be virgins and mothers. Such sexual differentiation has never been a strong suit of the First Things project. It is a new day and somehow the voice of Robbie George no longer seems the voice of gravitas.
GEORGE WEIGEL REALLY MISSES THE POINT: Weigel in First Things focusing on the immorality of acts and suggesting if people had jut read his last two books more carefully, we'd all be in a better place. First Things is a great forum, but Robbie George and George Weigel are like Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz in the Republican primary against Donald Trump. They are being swept away by events and it is becoming clear that leadership from such men in the past produced a huge part of the mess we are in. Many of us learned a lot from the First Things writers but it is abundantly clear that their understanding of the priestly scandal and MASCULINE ANTHROPOLOGY was and is a fatal flaw. Rod Dreher at American Conservative has been invaluable in helping us take all this in. He sees the many layers of complicity in this crime. His take on Weigel and further reporting on the glaring failure of First Things neocons to emotionally understand the horror of abuse and the depravity of homosexual clerics. He shares insights from Damon Linker. We also note their lack of anger as an emotional response toward the clerical elite. Neuhaus only showed anger toward the writers who criticized bishops by name. You are weakening the bishops he would yell. That is called clericalism and it was/is a huge problem.
INSIDE THE SEMINARY CLOSET: One guy's story
HOW SEMINARIES MAKE GOOD MEN TAME - A KEY TO THE CULTURE OF COMPLICITY: Insightful psychological profile of the damage done to heterosexual men by living in the homosexualized environment of most seminaries. By a young priest Athanasius Fornwalt.
RAYMOND ARROYO AND CARDINAL BURKE: There are many interesting questions in this interview and a chilling clip of Fr Rosica and Cardinal Wuerl lamenting disappointment with "their mutual friend" Cardinal McCarrick. For people who think that Cardinal Burke is the face of reform or straight talk, it is very informative to watch this whole interview. In asking is there a problem with "episcopal leadership" Burke says he doesn't know, he "has never studied that." Burke is against the local bishops establishing investigative committees to deal with bishop misbehavior. He says that should only be done by Rome. {We need many fronts to open up. It is our job as laity and priests to serve up the facts--from hundreds of dioceses and within hundreds of religious congregations. Ted McCarrick was outed by a local investigative committee. Raymond Arroyo has picked up Burke's nonsense that only the pope can investigate bishops. If we accepted that Cardinal McCarrick would still be yukking it up with the other men in red. There are many ways to investigate including journalism and grand juries. Only the Pope can depose Bishops--that is right and just indeed. Laity, priests, diocesan promoters of justice and some new American Bishops Inquisition Committee are needed to investigate and tell the truth about the rot in our clerics and religious orders. Cardinal Burke's legalism and pinched notion of truth telling is a recipe for inaction by swamping.}
As Arroyo set up Burke to say there is a homosexual network in many dioceses throughout the world, Cardinal Burke demurs again. He dilutes the problem saying there has been a general apostasy in the church about sexual morality allowing consensual sexual acts outside of marriage. When asked about his service on the Congregation of Bishops which selects bishops for the Pope to consecrate, he said the procedures were fine. He is right about that. He never pointed out the next obvious conclusion. If the bishops on the committee are corrupt they will pick corrupt bishops... just as the lavender mafia does. Burke served from 2008-2013 when Pope Francis removed him. Cardinal Wuerl was appointed in his place. In this interview there were definitely Canon Law nuggets from the lawyer. But the inability of Cardinal Burke to face the homosexual corruption of fraternity and fatherhood in the living body of the priesthood is a glaring deficit. The fact that he has been the "leading voice of orthodoxy" with this little detail missing in his analysis is no small part of the problem in Catholic dialogue in America. It has been easier for him to say the Pope is flirting with apostasy then McCarrick, Weakland Bernadine and Wuerl are sodomites desacralizing the priesthood.
Here is a much better set of short responses to a good print interviewer by Cardinal Burke. It seems Burke's friends wanted to give him a chance the day after the EWTN interview to add what he previously left out when relying on his own instincts. The questions are pointed enough that he didn't have to rely on his own instincts. His answers are excellent. No one yet has asked Cardinal Burke about the one recent case put in his lap - Guam's homosexual predator Bishop Apuron. Pope Francis was a much firmer ruler in the McCarrick case than Cardinal Burke. The wrong judge was sent to the Guam. The little ones in Guam are still abandoned and the clericalism that led Burke to protect Apuron lives on.
THE TRIBULATION - A GREAT DECEPTION BEFALLS THE CHURCH: Brant Pitre on the Destruction of the Temple and Pierasmos (The tribulation)
II. AROUND THE WORLD R&G ROUND UP
SOUTH AFRICA - SEIZING THE LAND, PURGING THE WHITES: Looking a lot like Zimbabwe.
THE TERRITORIAL STATE PERSISTS IN THE MIDEAST: Iraq and Syria are real political entities.
END THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: Robert Merry at American Conservative makes a case. Military buildup in Afghanistan stays below the public radar.
VENEZUELA: The Church must be the template for societal reorganization. What is the state of the hierarchy there? The Church in the Crisis.
FEMALE ACTIVIST UP FOR EXECUTION IN SAUDI ARABIA: She is Shia and that won't excite the American press like driving bans do. But it is his accelerated campaign of killing Shia that is the real problem with the liberalizing Crown Prince Salman. That is what Yemen is about, the suppression of Bahrain and the draconian measures holding the Shia populated eastern oil provinces in check. It is also at the heart of the Saudi resistance to the Shiite majority states of Iraq and Iran. What an irony that America is still being urged by the Sunni salafists who attacked us on 911 to make war against their most effective enemies--Shiite Muslim countries that have recently won their status as nation-states.
THE TERRITORIAL STATE PERSISTS IN THE MIDEAST: Iraq and Syria are real political entities.
END THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: Robert Merry at American Conservative makes a case. Military buildup in Afghanistan stays below the public radar.
VENEZUELA: The Church must be the template for societal reorganization. What is the state of the hierarchy there? The Church in the Crisis.
FEMALE ACTIVIST UP FOR EXECUTION IN SAUDI ARABIA: She is Shia and that won't excite the American press like driving bans do. But it is his accelerated campaign of killing Shia that is the real problem with the liberalizing Crown Prince Salman. That is what Yemen is about, the suppression of Bahrain and the draconian measures holding the Shia populated eastern oil provinces in check. It is also at the heart of the Saudi resistance to the Shiite majority states of Iraq and Iran. What an irony that America is still being urged by the Sunni salafists who attacked us on 911 to make war against their most effective enemies--Shiite Muslim countries that have recently won their status as nation-states.
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