"Entschuldigen Sie While I Barf"

Frank J. Sheed, "Entschuldigen Sie While I Barf" (October 32, 2018):

In Rome, Pope Francis is in the news again for his implicit endorsements of Universalism. Nothing new here, really, but it is a depressing reminder of what I will call The German Captivity of the Church. And I am not talking about Luther. For decades now modernist theology has captivated the theologians and leaders of both mainline Protestantism and, apparently, Catholicism. You see the same pattern in Evangelicalism, too, where the theology of Karl Barth has been the pet affection of those raised in but chaffing under the Old Time Religion. Somehow it also brings to mind then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s eulogizing of Hans von Balthasar as “the most cultured man in Europe.”

Years ago I picked up Richard Brookheiser’s rather reactionary -- and also rather right -- book called The Way of the WASP. It was there for the first time I read the suggestion that Karl Barth actually had a mistress. When I investigated, I read reams of internet defense that explained the relationship was a professional one, of something to that strange-sounding effect. OK, fine. Much like belleletrist Hans von Balthasar and his box-faced muse Adrienne Von Spear, I thought. Or Karl Rahner with his semi-to-sexual mistress. Or whatever... These avant garde theologians, always equivocal, often neutered, and apparently incapable of getting along by themselves... OR so I thought. It turns out the first, gut instinct was correct. 2 + 2 = 4. And while it’s sometimes “Both/And,” a la the new fashion in the Vatican, it’s much more often “Either/Or” or “Heaven or Hell.” Read for yourself...

Read more >>

Lord of the Rings star blasts pedophile devils of Hollywood

David Outten, "Frodo Bravely Speaks Out on Pedophilia" (Movie Guide, May 31, 2016):

Wood told the London Sunday Times that Hollywood is in the grip of a child abuse scandal. Wood said the activity is all organized, “There are a lot of vipers in this industry, people who only have their own interests in mind.” He continued, “There is a darkness in the underbelly. If you can imagine it, it’s probably happened.”

The very real darkness Wood speaks of is darker than the darkest scene in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. When Wood says, “If you can imagine it,” he means it. In 1998, Jon Benet Ramsey was murdered at six years old — bound, gagged and strangled with a chord. This was an act of lust at its ugliest. The dark forces driving such behavior are not imaginary. They may not look as frightening as an ork, but they’re just as ugly.

... Elijah Wood says his mother protected him. He told the London Sunday Times, “She was far more concerned with raising me to be a good human than facilitating my career. I never went to parties where that kind of thing was going on. This bizarre industry presents so many paths to temptation. If you don’t have some kind of foundation, typically from family, then it will be difficult to deal with.”

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.

Wow! What happened to Michael Voris as a 19-year-old lad at Notre Dame

Using the movie "Spotlight" as a foil, Mr. Voris launches into an amazing account of what happened to him personally while a student at the University of Notre Dame. It helps bring clarity to a number of things, though it's not easy hearing.

The rest of the story about "Spotlight": "Spotlight Exposed" (The Media Report)

Wherein Fr. Z. takes Card. Danneels to the woodshed

Fr. John  Zuhlsdorf, "Wherein Card. Danneels makes excuses" (Fr. Z's Blog, November 13, 2015):

Retired Belgian Godfried Cardinal Danneels – who protected a child abuser priest – was invited to the last Synod on the Family despite the fact that he was over 80. HERE That was a surprise, both because of the scandal Danneels was involved in and because of his age. Because of his age because the Cardinal Bishop of Hong Kong (who is standing up to homosexualists), younger than Danneels, was told that he was too old to participate.  Double standard?  You decide.

Danneels was also apparently involved in a group that – contrary to the rules that John Paul II established for conclaves and which Danneels and the others swore oaths to obey – conspired with a group to influence the election.  HERENow Danneels is in the spotlight again, for these comments. From Catholic World News:

Worth reading: Read more >>

No kidding?

"Gay married couple who got divorced after just one year to include a THIRD man in their relationship now plan to have children with their sisters as surrogates" (Daily Mail, October 15, 2015). Why stop there? Why not include pets? Why not include the children you have by your sisters as surrogates? If marriage is artificial, not natural, then the sky's the limit isn't it.


Time is short.

"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]

Voris: late Fr. Richard Mcbrien had a "common law wife" while at Notre Dame

Starting at the time signature of 4:50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422579428&x-yt-cl=85114404&feature=player_embedded&v=dXgcjuBJlsw#t=284

For the record: No link between celibacy and clerical sexual abuse

William Oddie, "There is No Link between Celibacy and Clerical Sexual Abuse" (Crisis Magazine, December 30, 2014)

Damian Thompson on the Pope's hatred of Vatican corruption

Damian Thompson, "The Pope and ‘paedophile cardinals’: another clue that Francis is at war with the Vatican" (The Spectator, July 18, 2014), just in case you missed it -- which concludes, amazingly:

So why did Francis go back to Scalfari? I reckon the uncheckability of the quotes suits him fine. He can express his views that the Vatican is crawling with fawning backstabbers and that sexual perverts are over-represented among the clergy right up to the level of cardinal – yet leave himself diplomatic legroom by allowing for the possibility that he’s been misquoted. He is a Jesuit, after all. So is Lombardi, but it’s obvious who is being more Jesuitical here.

The background to this is the Pope’s war on the Vatican. I think he hates the place. And it’s interesting that he’s placed enormous power in the hands of Cardinal George Pell, who is also full of contempt for its greedy placemen. My guess is that the reforms, when they come, will be savage. (emphasis added)

[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

The political trap set by rushing these canonizations

Before the recent canonizations, we asked "Why are these canonizations being fast-tracked?" (Musings, April 23, 2014). Already in the weeks preceding the momentous event, there were signs that the timing of these canonizations might not be propitious, given the many unsettled questions about the relationship between these popes and scandals and crises of recent Church history (not only the sex scandals under Pope John Paul II, but the crisis of Vatican II associated with Pope John XXIII, whose last words on his deathbed, as reported by the peritus Jean Guitton [EWTN link], were: "Stop the Council; stop the Council"). In other cases, the Church has backed off from pushing through canonizations, precisely because there remained publicly unsettled questions and confusions about a candidate's possible complicity or guilt-by-association with some scandal or other, as in the case of Pope Pius XII and whether he could have done more to help the Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust during the Second World War.

Below are some excerpts from articles in the secular press shortly before the recent canonizations. I think the sentiments expressed in them are widely shared concerns that are perceived as not only as legitimate but gravely serious. I would agree that they are. Given the following statements and questions they raise, it's hard for me to make sense of why so many traditional safeguards in the canonization process were deliberately waived in order to fast track these particular cases. I cannot help thinking that even the two men canonized would have certainly counselled the prudent course of first resolving the disputed questions surrounding their cases. Given their particular associations with scandals and crises that have rocked the Church in recent decades, these fast-tracked canonizations would appear to be everything that the enemies of the Church and anti-Catholic media could possibly want in order to permanently link the Church to scandal in the public mind. Have a look below, and see what you think.

1. "Vatican Under John Paul II Knew About Sex Abuse In Legion Of Christ For Decades, Documents Reveal" (Huffington Post, April 21, 2014):

   The late Pope John Paul II and his top advisers failed to grasp the severity of the sexual abuse problem until late in his 26-year papacy, especially concerns about the troubled Legion of Christ order and its leader, the Rev. Marcial Maciel. But the Legion's troubles were not news to the Vatican, according to a trove of 212 Vatican documents exposed in the 2012 book "The Will to Not Know" and placed online at www.lavoluntuddenosaber.com. Here's a look at some of the more pointed criticism about Maciel from the archive, which also included plenty of letters from bishops and Vatican officials praising him and his order....

2. Daniela Petroff and nicole Winfield, "John Paul Saint-Maker: Pope Not Involved in Legion" (ABC News, April 22, 2014):

   John Paul and his closest advisers had held up the Legion and its late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, as a model for the faithful, even though the Vatican for decades had documentation with credible allegations that Maciel was a pedophile and drug addict with a questionable spiritual life.
   
   ...
   
   Asked Tuesday about John Paul's overall record on sexual abuse, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, noted that sainthood isn't a judgment on a papacy or even an evaluation of someone's perfection in life.
   
   "The important thing is that the intentions were upright and that there was respect," Lombardi said. "This does not mean that he or she was perfect."

   Is not this a bit odd? Here is a Vatican spokesman essentially apologizing for the candidate for canonization just days before the event. Yet as noted in our earlier article cited above, Prof. Roberto de Mattei states that when the Church canonizes one of the faithful, "it is not that she wants to assure us that the deceased is in the glory of Heaven," but rather that "She proposes them as a model of heroic virtue." So why should a Vatican official be apologizing about the questioned virtue of a saint? What is the purpose of canonization if NOT to propose him as a model of virtue, and heroic virtue at that? Please note: I am not suggesting that these saints are not in heaven or that they were not virtuous, even heroically virtuous. I am questioning whether questions and confusions about their virtue in the public mind have been adequately addressed and resolved for their canonizations to be judged prudent.
   
   
3. Brett M. Decker [a Catholic journalist], "Pope puts Catholic rebirth at risk: Column" (USA Today, April 21, 2014):

   Canonizing pontiffs from the era of abuse is not only tone deaf but also exposes a continuing, stubborn refusal to acknowledge the institutional coverup that occurred for decades and that those at the highest levels — including popes — didn't do enough to prevent the crimes, enabling the crisis to continue.
   
   ... The other major factor in papal complicity for sex crimes is that popes personally appoint all the bishops in the Catholic Church and are responsible for their tenures. All 5,000 bishops serve at the pleasure of the holy father and resign or retire when their boss says so.
   
   ... Some of the most egregious offenders, such as Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, and Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles who withheld a list of potentially abused altar boys from police and has settled $700 million in abuse claims, were not only promoted to bishop but also given the cardinal's prestigious red hat by John Paul II.
   
   ... The Catholic Church declares individuals to be saints to give the faithful role models of heroic virtue and show how one should live life to get to heaven. Because of their sins of omission in face of horrors at the hands of their clergy, neither John Paul II nor John XXIII should be canonized as exemplars of sanctity.

There is an old song we used to hear ("They'll know we are Christians by our love"). A poorly-made song, it was nevertheless based on John 13:35 ("By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another") and implicitly argued that the watching world has a right to know who we are by our love.

By extension, someone could suggest that the world has a right to understand the kinds of values that the Church espouses by the values clearly exemplified in the lives of the saints she canonizes. As Jesus said, after all, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven" (Mt 5:16).

Which gives some pause in light of the foregoing extracts from public media. Will the world know we are Christians by our love? by the clear values exemplified by the saints we've canonized? Things hardly look as auspicious as all that. Sad to say, some wag might even go so far as to suggest that the canonizations come closer to signing the Church's political death warrant before the watching world.

[Hat tip to M.M. and C.R.]

"Secrets of the Vatican"? A response

A reader and long-time friend recently shared with me the following response he wrote to his non-Catholic mother who saw the documentary, "Secrets of the Vatican" (Frontline, Feb. 25, 2014), about Vatican corruption and queried him about it:

Mom,

I didn't see the documentary, so I can't begin to comment on all of its claims.That said, some non-journalistic perspective may be helpful to you in understanding the situation as it actually exists.

1) Homosexual activity is, by most measures, described as occuring between people of the same sex.

2) Most of the crimes, unspeakable sins, too, were committed by men against boys. (This activity was, therefore "homosexual", regardless of the cause or excuse.) Yes, their behavior was bad, both morally and legally. No amount of "nuance" can or should change that. If they have confessed their sins to a priest and received absolution, they are forgiven in the eyes of God. We know this because each one of us has the same offer: confess your sins, be truly sorry for them, and receive a penance and absolution. It is possible, therefore, that these priests may go to heaven, (to quote Pope Francis, "Who am I to judge?") just as it is sure that if they aren't sorry and die with these (presumably) mortal sins on their souls, they will spend eternity in hell.

3) Since these actions were committed by men, and the victims were boys, one of several things could be true: a) homosexual behavior is a deformed, twisted expression of sexuality (because, as some people say, the reason they behave this way is that they have "repressed sexuality", and thus they act perversely; if they could marry and have "normal" sexuality, this would never have happened); b) homosexual actions must be approved by the Church, and there is, therefore, no victim, no crime, no sin, nothing to clean up and nothing to blame bishops with; c) in other cases of homosexual assault (if what these priests did was wrong, then the crimes were both sexual and assault) similar penalties should be sought, but no denomination or group of people who preaches less repressed sexuality should even have the problem.

4) There's an illusion being created by some folks in media outlets, that Pope Benedict and Pope Francis teach different doctrine on matters of sexuality. Good Pope Francis is "pastoral" and Bad Pope Benedict was "doctrinal". To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, "the nostrum if doctrinal then not pastoral is un- historical". Whatever people can say against Pope Benedict, it can't be said that he attempted to "cover up" or ignore the problem. Read his Stations of the Cross on the Good Friday before his election in 2005. Or, if you prefer, read accounts of his visit to this country. Most of the media were stunned that he kept bringing up the subject instead of being on his back foot by having the media raise the issue. When he said what they reported as "If someone uses a condom, this would be a sign of a step in the right direction", the reporting showed that it wanted the Pope to have said one thing, when in fact he had said something entirely different. (Using a condom when performing the evil these priests did wouldn't have changed the morality for the better!) When (IF) it happens, the real news will be "Media accurately report Church teaching and actions", but it will be a cold day in Hell before that happens on more than a microscopic level. I have my winter gear, just in case.

5) It is widely believed that the Vatican Bank has had book-keeping problems for years. It is (similarly-widely) believed that one reason for the book-keeping problems is active homosexuals in the Curia. In this sense, the Curia is the problem, but there's that homosexual problem again. I don't know about the actual state of the Vatican Bank, but I can believe there are "irregularities" there. When these problems exist, they don't exist because of people following the teaching of the Church, but because of disobedience to the teaching. The solution isn't changing the rules to allow what they did (or allegedly did) either in the Vatican Bank question or the pedophilia/pederasty one, but to remove those who failed to do their jobs in accord with the teaching of the Church. That, of course, requires bishops (and the Pope) to uphold and enforce not merely doctrine, but discipline -- but that gets us to Bad Pope Benedict again.......

In short, the solution is more of Papa Benedetto, not more un-hinged pastoral conduct. "Pastoral" conduct too often tells a sinner "I'm ok., you're ok., and what the pope says doesn't really matter anyway". If one tells this to divorced and remarried lay Catholics, can one expect clergy (including embezzlers and pedophiles) to want to hear anything else?

God bless,
C.G.Z.

De sodomitico vitio: the ensnared and inveterate sodomite

The Sword of the Saint, Unsheathed

by Anne Barbeau Gardiner

Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise against Clerical Homosexual Practices.By St. Peter Damian. Translated and edited by Pierre Payer. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 108 pages. $38.95.

By the time he published the Book of Gomorrah around A.D. 1049, St. Peter Damian had been preaching for some time against homosexuality. He told Pope St. Leo IX, to whom he directed this work, that he needed his support against those who despised him for this preaching. While others in authority remained silent, he lamented, homosexuality kept spreading: “Vice against nature creeps in like a cancer and even touches the order of consecrated men.”

That homosexuality was indeed a problem at that time may be inferred from the fact that the vice was addressed at the Council of Rheims (A.D. 1049) in the canon de sodomitico vitio. Also, Damian received, in reply to his treatise, what he had requested from Leo IX, “a decretal writing as to which of those guilty of these vices ought to be deposed irrevocably from ecclesiastical orders; and to whom, truly taking the view of discretion, this office can be mercifully granted.”

In the Book of Gomorrah Damian says he has preached against this sin “with a whole fountain of tears” because the sinner he addresses sheds none at all: “O miserable soul, I weep for you with so many lamentations because I do not see you weeping. I prostrate myself on the ground for you because I see you maliciously standing up after such a grave fall, even to the point of trying for the pinnacle of an ecclesiastical order.” Damian weeps from “fraternal compassion” because he sees a “noble soul made in the image and likeness of God and joined with the most precious blood of Christ” cast down from a great height of dignity and glory. Any Christian who commits sodomy, he explains, surpasses in sin the men of Sodom, for he “defies the very commands of evangelical grace.”

"Has Pope Francis decontaminated the Catholic brand? "

Damian Thompson (The Telegraph, July 29, 2013)

... my first reaction to the aerial shot of Copacabana beach was to think: this is perhaps the moment when the stereotype of the Catholic Church as a nest of lying hypocrites and child abusers will finally begin to fade....

It is one thing for the Church to face hostility because it challenges fashionable and comfortable ways of life; quite another for it to become synonymous with evil. If Pope Francis can create an atmosphere where Catholics are judged by their actions today rather than by the abhorrent crimes of a minority of their clergy, then even the most staunch traditionalist will be in his debt.

I can hear someone saying: "Wouldn't it be nice if the Church could just go back to being normal again?!" Ummmmmmm. No.

Wake up, my friend. There is no "normal." Not for the Church. The Church is a remedial institution whose existence is made necessary only by the historical accident of the Fall. It exists to save sinners. It is governed on earth by sinners. It is protected by divine Providence from error and is thus infallible in her doctrines; but it is not impeccable. Thus, the Church may be, in any given era, more healthy or ailing, because of the fidelity or infidelity of her custodians; but there will never be a "normal" for the Church in human history.

[Hat tip to JM]

The secret that died with Andrew Greeley

Matt C. Abbott (Renew America, June 30, 2013), via JM:

Father Andrew Greeley has died at the age of 85.

I've mentioned him a number of times in this column over the last several years. I was no fan of his, to say the least. He even sent me a cryptic email a while back.

Out of Christian charity, we should pray for his soul. But I do want to remind readers of the following excerpts in Father Greeley's non-fiction book Furthermore! Memories of a Parish Priest – something he never (to my knowledge) revealed while living:

80 Windmills

There are some exceptions of course, including Chicago. But even in Chicago, the ring of predators about whom I wrote in the paper-back edition of Confessions remains untouched. There is no evidence against them because no one has complained about them and none of their fellow priests have denounced them.¹ Those who have been removed are for the most part lone offenders who lacked the skill to cover their tracks. The ring is much more clever. Perhaps they always will be. But should they slip, should they get caught, the previous scandals will seem trivial. Others like them still flourish all around the country.

1. They are a dangerous group. There is reason to believe that they are responsible for at least one murder and may perhaps have been involved in the murder of the murderer. Am I afraid of them? Not particularly. They know that I have in safekeeping information which would implicate them. I am more of a threat to them dead than alive. [back]

[Hat tip to JM]

Haven't the sordid claims about Obama's Chicagoland "gay life" been discredited?

Snopes has nothing on this. Why?

• 2007 - Death certificates of Donald Young and Larry Bland, two of the three openly-gay members of Jeremiah Wright's church murdered execution-style (draw the inference)
• 2008 - Larry Sinclair speaks at the National Press Club
• 2010 (July) - Mom of Murdered Obama Gay Lover (Donald Young) Speaks Up
• 2010 (August)- Wayne Madsen, Special Report. Obama and Emanuel: members of same gay bath houe club in Chicago
  
  
• 2010 - Larry Sinclair publishes Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies & Murder?
• 2012 (April) - Federal judge dismisses libel case against Larry Sinclair
• 2012 (January) - Wayne Madsen Report, January 20-22, 2012 -- Silence about murders descends on Obama's former church
• 2012 (September) - Jerome R. Corsi airs evidence for claim that Obama hid 'gay life' to be elected
• 2012 (September) - Obama Was Member Of Gay Bath House "Mans Country" In Chicago?
• 2012 (September) - PBS Frontline article, "Barack Obama's Early Poetry" (on Obama's homoerotic poem, "Pop")

Again, I would have expected Snopes to be all over this. What's a citizen supposed to think? If a claim is just too indecent to be taken seriously in polite company, it can't be true? Giving any consideration to such claims is the obsession of pathologically prurient minds, so we shouldn't trouble ourselves with them? This stuff just doesn't matter when it comes to serious matters of state? The deeper you dig, the more it stinks.

Douthat on the importance of Church cleaning house

As a reader remarked to me recently, a couple of the sanest pieces written about Pope Francis amid the recent cacophony of conflicting voices may be found, of all places, on the Op Ed page of the New York Times.

The most relevant piece at the time of this posting is Ross Douthat's article, "Lifting the Shadow of Scandal" (New York Times, March 18, 2013). Douthat writes:

There has been so much enthusiasm around the public style of Pope Francis — who has been populist, self-effacing and unscripted in his first few days as pontiff — and so much eagerness from so many quarters to see him as the reformer that the Catholic Church needs, that I felt like a bit of a downer accentuating the negative in my Sunday column, and emphasizing all the moral credibility that still needs to be rebuilt. But if personal holiness and seriousness of faith were sufficient qualities in a Roman pontiff, the last ten years would not have been a period of crisis in Catholicism, and the shadow of the sex abuse crisis would be fully lifted from the church. And it’s especially important, at the outset of a new pontificate, to understand the precise nature of that shadow, because at this point it’s no longer really about priestly sex abuse itself. Rather, it’s about a church that has cleaned house effectively and set up impressive structures of accountability everywhere except at the most prominent levels of the hierarchy.

Here are two names whose cases richly illustrate that problem. First: Roger Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, one of the cardinal electors who just cast their votes in Rome — and among the worst of the worst when it comes to prominent hierarchs who kept predator priests in circulation while protecting them from prosecution....

Second: Angelo Sodano, formerly the Vatican’s Secretary of State under John Paul II, now Dean of the College of Cardinals. Sodano is alleged to have intervened on behalf of two prominent churchmen accused of sexual crimes — protecting Hans Hermann Groer, the former archbishop of Vienna, from canonical proceedings related to charges of sex abuse in the mid-1990s, and then protecting Father Marcel Maciel, the drug-addicted, seminarian-molesting bigamist who ran the Legionaries of Christ, from a church investigation until 2006, when the newly-elevated Pope Benedict finally barred Maciel from ministry....

* * * * * * *

[W]hile I can appreciate the qualities in Pope Francis that so many people have found immediately attractive, I would trade all the humble mannerisms and charming gestures for the promise that the Mahonys and Sodanos of the church would be consigned, once and for all, to lives of penitence and silence.

* * * * * * *
There are other names and cases I could cite, but Mahony and Sodano are particularly high-profile figures, and thus particularly representative of the unfinished business that Benedict’s papacy left behind.... [T]aking more punitive steps [than allowing age-mandated resignation to take its course] would have required Benedict to serve as a kind of “one-man Supreme Court” within the church — not the pope’s normal role, the mythology of papal power notwithstanding, and one that he clearly shied away from claiming.

But extraordinary crises call for extraordinary steps, and the choice to shy away from them was a fateful one: The absence of real accountability within the hierarchy helps explains why Benedict never earned sufficient credit for the many things he did right on sex abuse, and why the church as a whole is still struggling to put the era of scandal behind it. It ensured that the sex abuse crisis would recede only very gradually, that the closure that many ordinary Catholics want to feel would remain elusive, and that the crimes of the past would keep intruding, with every public appearance by a compromised cardinal, into an otherwise much-improved present.

If real closure is to come, if the sex abuse era is to be firmly ended rather than ever-so-slowly left behind, the beginning of this papacy is probably the church’s last, best opportunity. And so while I can appreciate the qualities in Pope Francis that so many people have found immediately attractive, I would trade all the humble mannerisms and charming gestures for the promise that the Mahonys and Sodanos of the church would be consigned, once and for all, to lives of penitence and silence.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Lavender blackmail, background of Papal resignation?

A reader sent me the article linked below:

John Hooper (Guardian's Rome correspondent), "Papal resignation linked to inquiry into 'Vatican gay officials', says paper" (The Guardian, February 21, 2013): "Pope's staff decline to confirm or deny La Repubblica claims linking 'Vatileaks' affair and discovery of 'blackmailed gay clergy'":

A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders....

The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called "Vatileaks" affair....

According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising "two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red" had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope's successor upon his election.

The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were "united by sexual orientation"....

[La Repubblica] quoted a source "very close to those who wrote [the cardinal's report]" as saying: "Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments."

The seventh enjoins against theft. The sixth forbids adultery, but is linked in Catholic doctrine to the proscribing of homosexual acts.

La Repubblica said the cardinals' report identified a series of meeting places in and around Rome. They included a villa outside the Italian capital, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlour in the centre, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop....

La Repubblica's report was the latest in a string of claims that a gay network exists in the Vatican. In 2007 a senior official was suspended from the congregation, or department, for the priesthood, after he was filmed in a "sting" organised by an Italian television programme while apparently making sexual overtures to a younger man.

In 2010 a chorister was dismissed for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting. A few months later a weekly news magazine used hidden cameras to record priests visiting gay clubs and bars and having sex.

The reader who called my attention to this article, commented in the sent email:

Distressing.

And yet you would think the parties are warring over global warming or Left-handedness.

Really, people are prisoners of their own dented thinking. Read the last two sentences of the last paragraph of this piece:

The Vatican does not condemn homosexuals. But it teaches that gay sex is "intrinsically disordered".

Will these two statements make sense to moderns? Do they make sense at all? No. Does the Vatican "condemn" anyone? Any person? Of course not, not even Bishop Williamson. It would not condemn even Hitler as a man. But it is impossible to NOT "Condemn" homosexuals if you condemn homosexuality.

This is why the 'Born That Way" argument is in fact important (even if not decisive). But we have all but ceded the ground. There is absolutely NO conversation about the immorality or sinfulness of homosexuality, only noble posturing about "Defense of Marriage." You can't find arguments about it that include the idea that all other arguments aside, the practice of gay sex is itself wrong and should not be given any sort of tacit approval.

If you simply say, "Of course gays cannot marry. We can't approve of the essential sexual act the defines them, much less institutionalize it in a a sacred ceremony!" you have clarity. You would also have California rumbling so hard in rage it would detach itself from the continental plate. If you default to: "Well, the real purpose of marriage is after all procreation...," like our primary objections are functional, you turn the exercise of moral theology into a farce. The fact that marriage is meant for procreation is a far secondary argument. Marriage is made for men and women because Sex is made for men and women. To engage arguments that assume otherwise is to give them some legitimacy. Once you do that, unfortunately, you immediately lose all ground. If the boundaries of normal and abnormal, natural and unnatural, are blurred, there is no focus at all.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Update:

And then there is this: "The Pope & Homoheresy," based on "a blockbuster report produced by a PhD priest at the Pontifical University in Kraków, Poland, who was asked to prepare this report by various bishops and cardinals. It details how the secret homosexual lobby of priests and bishops in the Church is trying to gain a stronger foothold in his native Poland and how much damage has already been done by them in other parts of the world throughout the Church, from active homosexual clergy among priests to active homosexuals among bishops and those that are friendly to them, that promote them and protect them, as well as those who had been hidden and covered up the resultant child sex abuse at the hands of predator homosexual clergy." [The report: by Fr. Dariusz Oko, Ph.D., "With the Pope Against the Homoheresy" - PDF]

Update (2/26/13):

Worst fears about Cardinal Mahony confirmed

Letter from Most Reverend José H. Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles, posted under the title, "So we were right about what we presumed regarding the Mahony regime?..." (Rorate Caeli, February 1, 2013), who also links to George Neumayr's Cardinal Mahony's Cosa Nostra (Real Clear Religion, January 25, 2013).

Protestant Clergy Abuse Equals or Exceeds Catholic Clergy Abuse

As Janet Smith mentioned in an email, this is something that many of us have known for some time, but it's good to have some data verifying the fact publicly. It provides little consolation, but does balance out the picture.

Bob Allen, "Protestant Clergy Abuse Equals or Exceeds Catholic Clergy Abuse" (June 20, 2008):

The Associated Press reported recently that three insurance companies receive upward of 260 reports each year of young people under 18 being sexually abused by Protestant clergy, challenging the assumption that clergy sexual abuse is an exclusively Catholic problem that does not take place in other churches.

Read more >>

[Hat tip to Janet Smith]