I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH
Fact: The New York Archdiocese Commission that uncovered the abuse of a minor by Theodore McCarrick offered financial compensation to victims in exchange for a promise they would not sue the Archdiocese.
THE US BISHOPS
FROM NOVEMBER BALTIMORE MEETING TO JANUARY CHICAGO RETREAT
AWAITING THE MACCABEES
They sold the young boys for harlots. exchanging a young girl for the wine they drank... Announce this to the nations. Proclaim a holy war! Alert the warriors! Let all the soldiers report and march. Beat your plow shares into spears and your pruning knives into spears. Let the weakling boast, "I am a warrior." Joel 4:
Cardinal Vigano was right about the infestation of the Vatican with a homosexual subculture but he was very wrong about the influence of Theodore McCarrick on Pope Francis. However the influence of Donald Wuerl and Blaise Cupich on the Pope is undeniable and pernicious. They are his most trusted American advisors. One significant contribution American laymen and priests could give the Church and Pope is to make a serious case against both of these men. The evil of these men has not been properly and definitively exposed. That has not been done yet.
On the diocesan level, each Bishop should appoint a cleric as promoter of justice in his diocese. He can use lay and private investigator techniques as well as direct interviews and chancery records to assess the worthiness of every priest in his diocese to offer Mass and remain a priest. Any priest who has committed pedophilia(sex with a minor under 18) or incest(sexual relations with a family member) or sodomy(sexual relations with a male of any age with or without consent) should be barred from any priestly sacramental acts. Procedures should then be initiated for laicization and loss of any benefits or privileges of the priestly office. The initial act of authority is a duty of the local bishop--not a lay committee and not the Pope. The higher authorities are needed to formalize laicization.
(Pedophilia, Incest and Sodomy should be clearly delineated in Canon Law as " by the act separation offenses" (graviora delicta) against sacred orders. These desecrations of the fatherhood, filiation and fraternity of the Apostolic Priesthood are more profound trespasses than the current misguided approach of classifying these depravities as individual failures in "keeping the sixth commandment". That formulation is a serious "category error."
Pope Francis is urging retreats and face to face encounters among bishops so a truth telling separation can occur between the Petrine apostolic priests who have failed but are reforming themselves vs the Judas priests who have defiled the sacred bond and must be expelled. There can be no integral apostolic fraternity until there is a violent separation and exorcism of the many evil clerics. To avoid these acts of separation and punishment in the name of priestly unity and affection is an evil form of clericalism which must be rooted out.
The bishops do not owe abuse victims sympathy or a role in decision making. They owe them a purified priesthood. This will take courage and acts of authority; not sympathy and acts of service. The February worldwide meeting of bishops needs a template of bishops in some nation calling each other out by name. The 197 US dioceses and 2900 worldwide dioceses need an example of a bishop who starts cleansing the priesthood of his local church. The February worldwide bishops' meeting is not coming too late because "the Vatican has no sense of urgency." It may be coming too early because no Donald Trump Bishop has yet found his voice nor has a Philippine like diocese found Duterte's punitive sword.
Our bishops are still having difficulty accusing one another by name--starting with Rembert Weakland. Not a one was brave enough to confront Cardinal Levada or Cardinal Mahoney face to face when they dared to speak at the Baltimore Conference in November, 2018. Not a single bishop was sharp enough to ask Cardinal Cupich who was winking at "sexual acts by consensual adults" if that is his euphemism for sodomy. His fellow bishops were not agile enough to use his speech as a signal to declare adult consensual sodomy by a cleric as an act that forever separates a man from the holy act of consecration. (Cupich removed a famous Latin Mass priest in Chicago for just that sin). Cardinal Cupich should be asked how many Chicago priests have desacralized the collar and altar by committing sodomy since they have been ordained. It is a big number in Chicago. It should have been a big issue in Baltimore. The Lord commanded the apostles to do as He had done after washing Judas from the group. Local bishops know the local offenders much better than the Pope or any committee he might appoint. Papal or Vatican authority is needed for laicization but investigation and ritual separation is part of the oversight duties of local bishops. Laymen should be feeding clerics with well documented dossiers on local Judas priests so that conversation among priests and bishops can begin in every diocese.
"When thy glorious disciples were enlightened by the washing of the feet before the supper, then the impious Judas was darkened. " Eastern Holy Thursday Liturgy |
The Second Vatican Council was not a Council of the Laity. It was a Council about the Apostolic Church bringing the Word and Eucharist to the Modern World. It was about the brotherhood of bishops as an Apostolic Church being a light to the nations. It was about the well formed sacramental priestly Church asserting itself in the middle of the 20th century to meet the Pentecostals of the South full of the Spirit but in search of Confession and the Mass. The Council was a Council of Bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome. It was an ecclesial act of masculine priestly authority in a world searching for meaning after centuries of war, revolution, and skepticism.
In his diocese surrounded by his priests or in a synod accompanied by his fellow bishops, the main actor in rebinding humanity to Christ is the Bishop in apostolic fraternity. If a single bishop would grasp his apostolic identity and respond to the disgrace of priestly desacralization like Phineas or Mattathias Maccabee, both the sacral Eucharistic office of the bishop and the fruits of Vatican Two would be truly revealed. Pope Francis is pushing his Bishops to be men in face to face fraternity. This is the proper form of patriarchal fraternity-- not lay reform committees. Pope Francis will be as surprised as we are when a few good men respond to his challenge. A lot of "the first" will turn out last.
Let us fast and pray that something new happens when the American Bishops go to pray together in January. By going to Chicago, they will be gathering at "the scene of the crime" for there was no cleric more central to the homosexual desacralization of the Catholic priesthood than Chicago's Cardinal Joseph Bernadine(1928-1996).
II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA
CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM AND IMMIGRATION: Forget the suburban women, the new nationalists have to go into the inner city and get the males. A real beginning is criminal justice reform to reverse the disastrous Clinton triangulation scene. Next is insuring that citizens without college degrees can get a living wage doing manual labor. This can only happen by stopping the swamped market in labor created by porous borders.
BANNNON AT OXFORD UNION: Steve Bannon explains the 2008 bailout and the populist revolt - a perspective not often shared of America's "bailing out the elite." Presidents Bush and Obama are not sinister. They were over their heads. Both were pliant to winds much stronger than their own sailboats could ever manage.
TRUMP AND THE SAUDIS: President Trump on Saudi Arabia. The virtue of President Trump is the clarity with which he explains our policy. The tragedy is that he is continuing the incoherence of supporting the Kingdom which is the protector of the Salafist Sunni leaders who are responsible for terrorist jihadism. President Trump once advocated closing our borders to Muslims "until our representatives figure out what the hell is going on." We have not yet figured that out and President Trump has allied himself with the religious movement that beheaded Christian men on the shore of the Mediterranean and killed 3,000 of our own on 9-11-2001. Israel has no interest in our understanding this more clearly because they want us in an alliance against Iran. President Trump is carrying out the logic of the foreign policy establishment that President Obama resisted. This is a huge strategic blunder about foreign policy which calls for a correction by the Senate. Instead there is an obsession with investigating the person of the President and threatening impeachment by the House. Our attention is misdirected; our allies and enemies are confused. See more below on MbS and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
THANKSGIVING DAY WAS ON NOVEMBER 22: Here is how Woodrow Wilson consecrated the day in 1918:
“Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, the twenty-eighth day of November, next, as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and invite the people throughout the land to cease upon that day from their ordinary occupations, and in their several homes and places of worship to render thanks to God, the ruler of nations.Don't call it "Turkey Day". Remembering John Kennedy - our religious countryman when liberals could still be masculine.
III. THE NATIONS
US AND CHINA IN EAST ASIA: China and US naval dominance East Asia.
NATIONAL FINANCES: Money, Currency, Gold Silver and Nations. A ten-part series: the secrets of money - a gold-centered introduction. A good way to start thinking about money and national currencies.
Khashoggi and MbS
There are very few leaders in the Mideast who think public life should not be organized around the religious culture of the dominant population. Israel has recently declared itself as a Jewish nation.
Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini was trying to organize a larger Muslim ummah than the Iranian nation. The sobering war with Iraq and negotiations with multiple nations and civilizations while dealing with the enmity of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US had driven subsequent Iranian leaders to understand Iran as Muslim but also a particular Shiite nation among the nations. A central dispute between Sunni Muslims about the future of Mideast political organization has been a "republican" form of Islamic rule vs the monarchical principal. Muhammed bin Salman and Jamal Khashoggi were on different sides of this dispute. Qatar (TheWahhabis of the Sea) are on opposite sides of this dispute with Saudi Arabia(The Wahhabis of the Land). Al Jazeera, the most successful of all Arabic media empires, has reported favorably and honestly about mass movements against royal families or military dictators. Shutting down that news outlet is a major demand of the Saudi led boycott against Qatar. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was a good example of a mass organized movement of non Royalists who honestly won an election and then were overthrown(by the el Sisi military coup). The Saudis opposed the Brotherhood and financed the coup. Qatar media aired the grievances of the Brotherhood.
The advocates of Sunni purification and monarchical rule are the Saudis and UAE. Egypt has joined them in an "anti populist" coalition of rulers. They have found Israel as an ally in their stance against Iran which supports most popular grass roots movements to restore Islamic rule. Many of the popular movements in Sunni majority countries are more tolerant of the Shia populations than the Wahhabis and Saudi royal family. This is noted in countries with significant Shia minorities--Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Syria. None have joined the Saudi attack on Yemen's Shiites(the Houthis) or the blockade of Qatar.
Jamal Khashoggi was no "western liberal." He believed in the Muslim revival without the excesses of MbS in Yemen, hatred of Shiites and stoking war with Iran. He knew where a lot of bodies were buried. He favored popular movements and elections including the work of the Muslim Brotherhood. Muhammed bin Salman (see Islam and Mideast section)saw him as a formidable ideological foe. If Khashoggi's death opens the American press and public to see the incoherence of our support for MbS and the Wahhabi front, his death will not be in vain. The greatest obstacle to such a reassessment is the temptation of the press to look at this only in terms of another chance to bash the unique perverseness of Donald Trump. This will obscure two decades of failed policy, religious blindness and strategic incoherence.
IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION
ATHEIST-HOMOSEXUAL HIJACKING: Why have American schools and the Democratic Party become so militantly homosexual and anti God? Profile of AFT head - Randi Weingarten. Born in 1957. Cornell University (BS) and Yeshiva University (JD). Considers herself very religious. President UFT 1998-2008. AFT President-2008-. Came out as Lesbian 2007, partner psychotherapist Liz Margolies. Now with female rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum. "Married" Mar 25, 2018.
Hillary Clinton and AFT Weingarten's "Rabbi wife". |
ABORTION DECLINE: Abortion rates drop in US last decade. In 2005 20% of pregnancies in the US ended in abortion. In 2015 it was 15%. There were 320 million Americans in 2015. There were 640,000 abortions. Black babies were aborted 3.5 times the rate as white babies. Guttmacher Report.
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