Silence of the Shepherds

Why is it that Catholic bishops seem to be plumping for Muslims? Why do they issue statements about Islam that are dishonest and misleading? Why do they appear to be so intent on protecting the image of Islam? If you’ve asked yourself these questions, you’re not alone. Given current events and the historical record of Islam’s aggressive campaigns against the Christian West, the rational thinker could be forgiven for believing that the leaders of the Christian world might just want to pay a bit more attention to contemporary anti-Christian violence — thousands of terror attacks, beheadings, stabbings, kidnappings, rapes, torching of churches and Christian-owned businesses — committed by Muslims, in the name of Islam.

Instead, most of the world’s Catholic bishops (with some heroic exceptions, such as Ignatius Joseph III Younan, patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church of Antioch, and Jean-Clément Jeanbart, Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Aleppo), when they’re not extolling the virtues of Islam as a “religion of peace,” can be found counseling their flocks against so-called Islamophobia — anti-Islam sentiment, bias, or violence — typically in the immediate aftermath of a Muslim-perpetrated act of terror or instance of anti-Christian persecution.

For example, in May, after Muslim militants in the Philippines burned down the Cathedral of Mary Help of Christians, murdered more than a hundred Catholics, and held a dozen others hostage, Bishop Edwin de la Peña y Angot of the Marawi prelature worried out loud that the ensuing anti-Muslim sentiments might damage interreligious dialogue. “Some of the natural biases that Christians have against Muslims will be stirred up again,” he said in an interview (Zenit, June 9). “Interfaith dialogue is a very fragile process and these incidents can destroy the foundation that we have built.” About anti-Christian sentiments among Muslims, the bishop was silent.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider on the Social Kingship of Christ

By all accounts, this is one of the best recent presentations on the subject to be found. The first video is the presentation. The second is the Q & A. Enjoy.



[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

Lamont: "Considerations on the dubia of the four cardinals"

For the record, John R. T. Lamont, "Considerations on the dubia of the four cardinals" (Rorate Caeli, December 5, 2016).

Important! Four Cardinals OFFICIALLY ask Pope Francis to clarify Amoris Laetitia

"EXPLOSIVE! 4 Cardinals OFFICIALLY ask Pope Francis to Clarify Amoris Laetitia" (Rorate Caeli, November 14, 2016). The four signatories are Italian Carlo Cardinal Caffara, American Raymond Cardinal Burke, and the Germans Walter Cardinal Brandmüller, and Joachim Cardinal Meisner. Read further for details ...

For the record: SSPX Communiqué on relations with the Holy See

• New Catholic, "IMPORTANT: SSPX Communiqué after meeting of all Superiors (on Canonical recognition)" (Rorate Caeli, June 29, 2016).
• New Catholic, "Rorate Analysis: SSPX communiqué on relations with the Holy See" (Rorate Caeli, June 29, 2016).
• Related: New Catholic, "Press Release of the Bishop of Regensburg concerning the Ordinations of the Society of Saint Pius X" (Rorate Caeli, June 28, 2016).

The sad and abominable case of Justice Anthony Kennedy and the Most Reverend Paul Stephen Loverde

Adfero, "Justice Anthony Kennedy: 'full communion'" (Rorate Caeli, June 27, 2016):

This was his third sodomy case at the Supreme Court where [Justice Anthony Kennedy] authored the pro-sodomy opinion....

Justice Kennedy, who has also voted to uphold a constitutional right to abortion, resides in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, along with many other pro-sodomy and pro-abortion politicians. He has been seen at Mass often, including at parishes run by conservative priests.

The bishop, the Most Reverend Paul Stephen Loverde, has stood firm in a position of Communion-on-Demand, no matter who presents himself at the altar rail (or missing rail, as the bishop has also banned the construction of altar rails).

Bishops who simply watch from the sidelines

So suggests Phil Lawler in his article, "In Georgia's religious-freedom debate, Catholic bishops sit on the sidelines" (CatholicCulture.org, April 7, 2016).

"And how did the Catholic bishops of Georgia respond to this disgraceful claim that the Christian faith is a form of bigotry? Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta and Bishop Gregory Hartmayer of Savannah announced blandly: 'Gov. Nathan Deal has announced his intention to veto H.B. 757 and the debate will, thus, continue.'”

Ugh. How lame. He won't even take sides in a fight where the other guy is trying to kill him?

Then there's this from a fellow college professor in another part of the country:

At the ... socially conservative college where I teach, after years of stonewalling, the administration has finally approved the charter of an LGBT student group. The school also sponsors the National Black Ministers Conference, one at which Obama spoke when he was campaigning. Sense the strange cultural cross currents? Anyway, kids are thrilled, and last night I walked across campus behind a couple of young ladies holding hands. In an advertising class I supervise, Target asked to sponsor a competition for ad design in which the students conceptualize and develop a campaign celebrating the chain's pro-LGBT stance. New world. But why should I or anyone blink or twitch, when "everyone knows the Church's teaching." (And no one believes in mortal sin any more than they understand String Theory).

Where are we now in terms of 'Building a Civilization of Love'?

Here's the kind of bishop we need:



And here's the kind of bishops we don't need:

Bishop Jugis appoints Rev. Matthew Kauth 1st rector of new Charlotte seminary

The Charlotte Observer Staff, "Charlotte Catholic diocese starting seminary for college-age men who want to be priests" (The Charlotte Observer, March 19, 2016).

I couldn't be more pleased. I know Fr. Matthew Kauth from my years in North Carolina. He's a good man. He is a well-known proponent and celebrant of the Extraordinary Form. He stands on principle.

In 2014 he came under fire for inviting a nun to speak at the Catholic Catholic High School where he was chaplain. After she offered a talk promoting Church teaching on homosexuality, dissident students and parents reacted with anger and protests, demanding Kauth's resignation. But Bishop Peter Jugis (may we have more bishops like him) supported the priest and refused to give way to their demands. And now the bishop is promoting Kauth as rector of the new St. Joseph College Seminary, which will be opening it's doors this September, on or near the Belmont Abbey campus in Gaston County.

Huzzah! This is WONDERFUL news!!


Fr. Matthew Kauth offering the Sacrifice of the Mass


Fr. Kauth & Bishop Jugis

A cardinal, a priest with a stripper, and gay days at Lourdes: Catholic crisis exposed

Our underground correspondent in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, just sent us a link to a video (see below) reporting on three scandals symptomatic of deeper problems in the Church, which the commentator sees as presaging an intensifying persecution of Catholoics effectively sold out by their leaders:

(1) Cardinal law, after resigning amidst sex scandal cover-ups in his Archdiocese of Boston in 2002, received John Paul II's permission to resign before the mandatory age of 75 and get himself appointed to the plum position of Archpriest at St. Mary Major in Rome, a position from which he retired in 2011, and continues living in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, the Renaissance palace near St. Peter's.

(2) Fr. Jay Baker, Vicar General to Bishop Shelton Joseph Fabre of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux in Louisiana, recently appeared in a photo posted on Facebook alongside a stripper on the homepage of Trixie Minx, a scandal prompting a troubled letter from a Louisiana parishioner who can't get a hearing with her stonewalling bishop.

(3) Catholic officials at the Catholic shrine of Lourdes threw open its doors to gays for Valentine's Day this year [HERE]

Guy Noir writes:

Look... I for one don't think we are being "persecuted" in any sense worthy of the word. We *are* being marginalized.

And, unintentionally, being sold out by our leaders. Matt, for my tastes, can be strident. But who can argue with him here. And note -- he's not gay-bashing. This is good old heterosexual roaming. And meanwhile, a bishop cannot even meet with a plaintiff. No one in the private sector could now get away with such stonewalling. Maybe it is a good thing the "bastions," as von Balthasar called them, are being raized.

Substantial interview with Bp Athanasius Schneider on SSPX, women and foot washing, consecrating Russia, anti-pastoral bishops, and more

As always, Bishop Schneider offers an amplitude of ecclesiastical red meat (appropriately before Lent!) in this exclusive interview with Rorate Caeli (February 1, 2016). Some quotable quotes here, which, if I had time, I would excerpt for you; but just read it. Very good, as always.

Maureen Mullarkey on Bishop Barron on Paris

First, here's Bishop Barron, sounding more like a Mennonite pacifist than a Catholic moralist:


Next, here's Maureen Mullarkey on "Bishop Barron on Paris" (Studio Matters, November 27, 2015). Mullarkey's piece is more a response to responses to her earlier piece, "The Incredible Shrinking Bishop Barron" (One Peter Five, November 23, 2015), in which she had written:

The massacre aroused no outrage, not even a wince of distaste. . . . [Bp Barron] found the atrocity “especially poignant” because he had studied in Paris for three years. And because he remembered some of the locations involved, the attacks were “moving and poignant.”

Mullarkey comments: "Moving. Poignant. Had the bishop been watching a film version of the death of Little Nell? The sentiment, and the genial detachment it signified, seemed a bizarre reaction to the slaughter and maiming of scores of innocent Parisians." Then, quoting from the earlier article, she writes: "The syrup thickened":

He glided on to a serene tutorial on mercy, on the obligation to “respond to violence with love,” and “to fight hatred with love.” He enjoined Catholics to mercy and “a non-violent stance.” . . . This time on camera, he confused Paris in 2015 with Selma, Alabama, in 1965.

Mullarkey concludes her latest piece with these words: "Bishop Barron has an influential platform. If he uses it to promote confusion between Christian love—caritas—and dispassion in the face of the murderous ambitions of Christianity’s oldest enemy, then he will be evangelizing for evil. No matter the Christ talk."

Was Bp Barron imprudent in his remarks? Was Mullarkey overly harsh? You decide. Guy Noir's only words were: "... the syrup gets thicker. But as I said, certainly the Bishop's lines are the Church's now standard lines!"

Related:  Steve Skojec, "The Perils of Popularity: Critiquing Bishop Barron" (1P5, November 30, 2015).

Pope Francis "systematically" revolutionizing college of bishops and cardinals

Sandro Magister, "The Real Francis Revolution Marches to the Beat of Appointments" (www.chiesa, November 14, 2015): "In the United States and in Italy the changes are most spectacular. With new “Bergoglio-style" bishops and cardinals. In Belgium, Danneels’s revenge against Ratzinger. The triumph of the St. Gallen club."

ROME, November 14, 2015 – Much more than reforming the Vatican curia and finances (to which he is applying himself more out of obligation than out of passion, with no comprehensive plan and too often relying on the wrong men and women), it is clear by now that Pope Francis wants to revolutionize the college of bishops. And he is doing so in a systematic way.

Fr. Blake on "Michael Voris the American Polemicist"

Fr. Ray Blake, "Michael Voris the American Polemicist" (Fr. Ray Blake's Blog, October 26, 2015).

Some genuine positives here, including his appreciation of Voris' reporting from Rome; his attempt to disambiguate Voris's critique of Benedict; some very good analysis of behind-the-scenes politics involving the Vatican secretary of state.

But also some dubious bits, beyond the perfunctory knee-jerk "Don't you find Michael Voris 'STB,' the most irritating man?" (That's a grandstanding cheap shot, Father, I'm sorry to say; and particularly sad when the Church has imploded to the point that the cheers and boo's of our "grandstands" are little more than tempests in a tiny teapot.)

Other dubious bits ... SUCH AS the well-intentioned but limping attempt to salvage Cardinal Dolan's role in the Gay Pride Day St. Patrick's Day Parade in NYC; the too facile contrast between the "black-and-white" "American" "conservatism" of Voris vis-a-vis Fr. Blake's own "European" "trad" position; or the bald statement that Benedict "believed in the Tradition" (well, of course, it depends on what one means, doesn't it; as when we try to interpret what the emeritus pope meant by declaring Gaudium et spes the "Counter Syllabus"...).

Well, I usually love Fr. Ray's columns. Wish I could say more here; but I've gotta run. God bless.

"What Francis Does vs. What He Says"

Rod Dreher, HERE (October 15, 2015), contrasting (1) the Pope's words in his general audience about need for loyalty to the promises we make our children and his apology for the scandals of recent times; and (2) his appointment of the confirmed pederast, Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels as a Synod of the Family father. Sad state of affairs. (Disclaimer: Rules 7-9)

Then there's this piece, on SEX, which makes the Synod on the Family seem, as our contributer says, "like a sorority pledge drive": Rod Dreher, "The ‘Yes We Can’ Catholics" (American Conservative, October 14, 2015):

I didn’t need Father to remind me every week in his homily to keep my pants up. That’s not the point. What I could have used was any sign that the life to which I had submitted, in obedience to what I believed was the truth, mattered to the Church. The message I constantly received from the silence in the parish(es) was: You are wasting your time trying to live out these teachings. Nobody here cares about this stuff, so why should you?

[Hat tip to JM]

St. Gregory Nazienzen: "avoid every assembly of bishops ..."

Guy Noir - Private Eye, who keeps us stoked with interesting articles, just sent us this:

Ratzinger in Principles of Catholic Theology, cited too many years after he coulda/shoulda heeded the advice:

"To tell the truth, I am convinced that every assembly of bishops is to be avoided, for I have never experienced a happy ending to any council; not even the abolition of abuses..." –St. Gregory Nazienzen

Guy Noir again!

[Advisory: See Da Rulz #9]

Some of you will remember the undercover detective from one of our eastern seaboard states whom I kept on retainer in the past, who provided timely and sometimes scandalously-amusing reports for us sent to us by carrier pigeon. Well, it seems that our erstwhile undercover detective has now taken a job somewhere as a professor, which is likely as amusing as it may be scandalous if his students only knew his previous employment. In any case, here's your chance to read at your own risk yet another report from Guy Noir - Private Eye:

This week my public speaking students have to choose an informative speech topic. The parameters are the topic must be someone or something commemorated on a U.S. Postage Stamp, because, well, you have to be dead and significant to land yourself on a stamp, right? 

Wrong, apparently, since 2011. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/postal-service-will-begin-honoring-living-people-on-stamps.html

Because "Having really nice, relevant, interesting, fun stamps might make a difference in people’s decisions to mail a letter,” said Stephen Kearney, the Postal Service’s manager of stamp services. “This is such a sea change.”

One point one, he was wrong: letter-sending continues to drop, even with Michael Jordan (and Harry Potter, a Brit!) now on envelopes. On point two, he’s right: we continue to tread water in a cultural sea change that has elapsed in the last 61 years.

61? Yes, that is how old I am.  And when I was born, Vatican II was just convening. Even when I was 12, the old-school Catholic vibe prevailed to such an extent that my Catholic best friend was not allowed to follow me to a Methodist potluck (though his mother let me take communion with them once at Mass).

All of which makes me think of Vatican II on its anniversary:

'https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pope-marks-60th-anniversary-of-second-vatican-council/2022/10/11/9f8507f0-4937-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html">https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pope-marks-60th-anniversary-of-second-vatican-council/2022/10/11/9f8507f0-4937-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html>

As the dust finally begins to settle, despite the current and last few popes’ determined propaganda campaigns to keep the Council’s relevance alive, some surprising counter-verdicts are in:

Blogger Amy Welborn muses, "It doesn’t seem to me to be unreasonable to label the Second Vatican Council as a failure.” How very different from the genial attempts in the 1980s by guys like Steubenville charismatic Alan Schrenk to claim it as part of glorious arc. 

Read all of Welborn’s thoughts:

https://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2022/10/06/expression-formulated/>

And her remembrance of the all-but-forgotten pop icon Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

https://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2022/10/12/jesus-livingston-seagull/>

Or hear the NYT’s Ross Douthat also flatly declaring. "The council was a failure.” His concluding note is a bit depressing, sort of like saying even when you regain civility with an ex-wife, damage done remains. That’s nice. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/opinion/catholic-church-second-vatican-council.html>

At National Review, MBD says this:

"Catholic theologians and bishops have been turned into sponges, soaked in metaphors that have no precise theological content but which retain an acid-wash quality, an iconoclasm aimed at a church and a theology of the past that is half understood, at best. So modernists such as Hans Kung could say that Vatican II promoted a “communio model of the church” over and against an “absolutist pyramidal model.

None of this was meant with any real conviction. It was an ad hoc theology developed for the sole purpose of legitimating dissent on moral issues touching sexuality. In Kung’s model, if the pew sitters could be shown to not be following this teaching, then the teaching itself should be jettisoned. But this has lately been junked for more papal primacy, because the current pope is seen as more progressive than some of the pew sitters.

The church has thus proceeded from slogan to slogan, as if theological reflection or — more ominously — the development of doctrine were mere rumination on the latest sets of buzzwords, usually coming from bishops or the pope. The people of God in transit, the listening church, the new evangelization, the field hospital. The synodal church. Catholics used to be known by their distinctive devotional life — prayers to the saints, rosaries, abstaining from meat on Fridays. Now, devoted Catholics spend their time reading papal encyclicals and mastering this pseudo-theological jargon."

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/60-years-since-vatican-ii/>

Rod Dreher provides illustration of those thoughts by sharing a painfully crass but on-point video (at least the fictional priest avoids mentioning the ‘evidential power of beauty’).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUeShUhnZnk&t=126s

Part of me wonders if we could ever have a pope or council again who flatly declares anything dogmatic to be true. There seems to be a lack of confidence in dogma as even a possibility if it attempts to narrow the confines of belief. We know something has to be true, but what that something is, well ... ‘Love and let live!’  In all of this, today’s American Church has become just like the mainlines, the faded guardian of a tradition that remains in dusty volumes no one reads, but not much in parishes people attend. Everyone manifests strong symptoms reflecting Unitarianism and Quakerism, and endures settings animated by American Idol- and YoungLife-like liturgics. 

Which is why Robert Barron’s interview with Shia LeBouf was like an episode of Quantum Leap.

Card. Sarah: “We find ourselves between ‘gender ideology’ and ISIS”, apocalyptic beasts… demonic origin

This was the title of a post by Fr. Zuhlsdorf in a post today, which begins thus:

What Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion Ideologies and Islamic Fanaticism are today.

Thus, Card. Sarah.

Robert Card. Sarah is Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and an amazing fellow.  Read his great new book length interview.

God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith by Robert Card. Sarah  UK HERE

Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register (not to be confused with the National Schismatic Reporter) writes about the intervention (speech) made by His Eminence Card.  Sarah at the Synod.

Cardinal Sarah: ISIS and Gender Ideology Are Like ‘Apocalyptic Beasts’

Full text of synod intervention reveals the cardinal spoke of need to proclaim beauty of monogamy and family and called for more respect and transparency among synod fathers.

[… skipping LOTS of good analysis…]

Speaking to the Register and Aleteia at the end of a meeting of African bishops on Saturday, Cardinal Sarah said that by retaining the three controversial paragraphs in the instrumentum laboris, he believes “there is an agenda they are trying to impose.”

And now Card. Sarah’s own words [My emphases and comments]:

Intervention of Robert Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments

Ordinary Synod on the Family, October 2015 [emphases his]

Your Holiness, Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, participants of the Synod,

I propose these three thoughts:

1. More transparency and respect among us

I feel a strong need to invoke the Spirit of Truth and Love, the source of parrhesia in speaking and humility in listening, who alone is capable of creating true harmony in plurality.

I say frankly that in the previous Synod, on various issues one sensed the temptation to yield to the mentality of the secularized world and individualistic West. Recognizing the so-called “realities of life” as a locus theologicus means giving up hope in the transforming power of faith and the Gospel. [“realities of life” is code used to slither into the Kasperite position, which subjects theology to polls and fads and shifting mores, which in theology replaces philosophy with politics.] The Gospel that once transformed cultures is now in danger of being transformed by them. Furthermore, some of the procedures used did not seem aimed at enriching discussion and communion as much as they did to promote a way of seeing typical of certain fringe groups of the wealthiest churches. [read: Germany] This is contrary to a poor Church, a joyously evangelical and prophetic sign of contradiction to worldliness. Nor does one understand why some statements that are not shared by the qualified majority of the last Synod still ended up in the Relatio and then in the Lineamenta and the Instrumentum laboris when other pressing and very current issues (such as gender ideology) are instead ignored.  [Because the rules were changed to obtain a rigged outcome.]

The first hope is therefore that, in our work, there by more freedom, transparency and objectivity. For this, it would be beneficial to publish the summaries of the interventions, to facilitate discussion and avoid any prejudice or discrimination in accepting the pronouncements of the synod Fathers.

 2. Discernment of history and of spirits

A second hope: that the Synod honor its historic mission and not limit itself to speaking only about certain pastoral issues (such as the possible communion for divorced and remarried) but help the Holy Father to enunciate clearly truths and real guidance on a global level. For there are new challenges with respect to the synod celebrated in 1980. A theological discernment enables us to see in our time two unexpected threats (almost like two “apocalyptic beasts”) located on opposite poles: on the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism. [If I remember correctly Benedict XVI used a similar approach in his first Message for the World Day for Peace.] To use a slogan, we find ourselves between “gender ideology and ISIS”.

Don't you wish some cardinals would just stay away from the media sharks?

Cindy Wooden, "Stable gay relationship is better than a 'temporary' one, says Cardinal Schönborn" (Catholic Herald, September 11, 2015). You think there might have been something more significant for the cardinal to address on September 11th, or, heck, any day ...

Sodomy and the death of a civilization

Some will remember Cardinal Caffarra's critical response just two weeks after the Consistory in February, 2014, at which Cardinal Kasper, at the invitation of the Holy Father, addressed the assembled cardinals and floated the proposal of possibly readmitting divorced-and-remarried Catholics to the Eucharist.

More recently, in a June 19, 2015 article in Il Tempo, Caffarra is reported as saying [emphasis added]:

Many thoughts have crossed my mind since the motion [recommending recognition to same-sex 'marriages'] was voted by the European parliament [on June 9, 2015]. The first was this: We are at the end. Europe is dying. And perhaps, it doesn’t even want to live, because no civilization has ever survived the glorification of homosexuality.

I am not speaking of the practice of homosexuality. I am speaking of the glorification of homosexuality. For various ancient peoples, homosexuality was a sacred act. The word used in Leviticus to condemn this glorification of homosexuality clothed with a sacred character in the temples and pagan rites was “abominable”.

The only two civilizations which have resisted homosexuality for thousands of years are the same that have opposed homosexuality: the Jews and Christians. Where are today’s Assyrians? Where are today’s Babylonians? And yet the Jews were merely a tribe, a “nobody” in comparison to the other political-religious societies. But the laws concerning sexual acts as we find within the book of Leviticus became the highest form of civilization [Christianity]. Hence my first thought: we are at the end.

My second reflection is purely of Faith. Before such facts as these, I always ask myself: how is it possible that the mind of man be so blind to such fundamental evidence [that glorifying homosexuality leads to the destruction of society]? And I came to the conclusion: all this is literally a diabolical work. This is the last defiance which the Devil is throwing at God the Creator, by telling Him:

I am going to show You how I build an alternative creation to Yours, and You will see how men will say: it’s better this way! You promise them liberty, I offer them to become judges. You give them love, but I offer their emotions. You want justice, and I perfect equality which suppresses all difference."

A "Fighting Irish" Archbishop

New York's first Archbishop, John Hughes, was apparently not one for the "softer, gentler" approach when his churches and a convent were burned down by anti-Catholics in the 19th century. He did not, like Mr. Obama, call his constituency to a "thoughtful introspection and self-examination" to consider whether they may have offended their attackers or harbored any latent hostilities that might have provoked their anger. He did not, like Cardinal Kasper, call for a more "merciful" and "pastoral" approach toward sinners. No. The response of this native Irish fighter was to punch back and defend his flock. His response was to threaten the burning of protestant churches if one more Catholic church burned.

Let's be clear, writes Adfero, in "Catholic Archbishop threatens violent uprising against enemies" (RC, July 14, 2015), "we are not suggesting violence against those who persecute us today. What we are saying emphatically is that we need more than the weak-kneed responses of those of Wuerl, Cupich or the Great Silence of Pope Francis on the attack on true marriage in the United States, Ireland and elsewhere."

Adfero also suggests: "click here to listen to a wonderful sermon on His Excellency John Hughes."