Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Cardinal Cupich Doesn’t Like You Distracting Bigots

Cardinal Blase Cupich is not happy with you bigots who think Pope Francis should resign or, at the very least, think Francis’ promotion of apostate predators and wolves should be thoroughly investigated.
“The pope knows we have a bigger agenda. We have to speak about the environment, about the poor, we have to reach out to people who are marginalized in society. We cannot be distracted at this moment,” Cupich said.
Yes, the Gospel, the purity of the church, and protecting the young are such annoying distractions from lib/left political activism.  And Vigano’s testimony is a really bad distraction:
Cupich described the contents of Archbishop Carlos Maria Viganò’s 11-page testimony, published Aug. 25, as a “rabbit hole” that he does not think the Church should be going down.
Yes, the church should ignore Pope Francis’ rehabilitation of Uncle Ted McCarrick and the appointment of Uncle Ted’s libchurch allies as Cardinals.  Nothing to see here!
And Cupich knows the real reason I and others dislike Francis:
“Quite frankly, they also don’t like him because he’s a Latino,” said Cupich. Pope Francis was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to parents of Italian descent.
But don’t let that detail keep you from playing the race card, Cardinal.
Now there is a reason I mock Cupich’s statements other than that there are such easy targets.  Backed by the predatory Uncle Ted, this is the sort of libchurcher with which Francis has stacked the College of Cardinals. Therefore, if we are to have a robustly orthodox Pope in our lifetimes, it is not enough that Francis resign. The likes of Cupich, Wuerl etc. must be shown the door as well. 
But I have serious doubts that even Francis will resign.  I might get to that another time.

Monday, August 27, 2018

Abusing and Covering-Up Libchurchers Elected Pope Francis and Were Rewarded

Yes, I have been slow to respond here to the explosive statement of ex-Nuncio Archbishop Carlo Vigano for a number of boring personal reasons and for a not so personal reason – that statement was so candid and so from the inside that I doubted at first that it was authentic.  But by now it is obvious it is authentic.  And it is a must read.
Francis responded to the statement yesterday if it can be called a response:
“I will respond to your question,” says the pope in a video of the plane presser translated by LifeSiteNews. “But I would prefer that we first speak about the trip, and then other topics[.] … This morning I read that statement. I read it, and I will say sincerely that I must tell you all this – you [CBS] and all of you who are interested: Read the statement carefully yourselves and make your own judgment.I am not going to say a word about this.I believe that the statement speaks for itself, and you all have sufficient journalistic ability to draw conclusions.”

And overnight, Vigano’s statement received important confirmation:

Meanwhile, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) obtained a brief statement from Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, the former first counselor of the nunciature in Washington, whose job it was to inform Cardinal McCarrick of the sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict XVI. Lantheaume, who declined to give an interview, merely confirmed the veracity of Viganò’s report.
Viganò said the truth. That’s all,” said Lantheaume, in a written response to CNA.

A number of traditionalist catholic sites are covering this closely.  (The twitter of Rorate Caeli is particularly impressive.)  And I do not want to duplicate their efforts. So I will try to restrain myself as this unfolds to pointing out some aspects that may be below readers’ radars or are in some other way value-added. 
First, it must be noted that there is an ugly pattern here as pointed out by Damian Thompson:
In other words, key libchurchers who abused/enabled abuse/covered up abuse backed Bergoglio for Pope and, behold!, were rehabilitated after the election of Francis.  Not only that but, as Vigano’s statement states, they become influential in the appointment of other libchurchers, some/most of whom are also tied to abuse.  I hope no reader is so naïve as to consider all this a coincidence.
Uncle Ted McCarrick himself has been quite open about throwing his influence behind the election of Bergoglio.  And, lo and behold, his record of abuse, very well known in the Vatican, and the restriction of him by Pope Benedict was then [Anglican Understatement Alert] overlooked.
This mafia-like pattern is one reason it would not be enough for Francis to resign.  The libchurchers who conspired to elect a Pope who would favor them and sweep their sexual abuse and cover ups under the rug must be done away with as well.
But I will likely say more about that another time.

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Bishop Jack Iker to Retire in 2019

I hate to see Bishop Iker retire soon.  We need more bishops like him.  The man is a hero to me. 
But he has announced his intention to retire at the end of 2019 and has called for the election of a Bishop Coadjutor.
Beyond that I am at a loss for words.

Monday, August 20, 2018

We Want Not Words, But Wuerl! UPDATED

It took a while, but Pope Francis has issued a letter “to the people of God” concerning the abuse of minors in the Roman Catholic Church.  I’ve read it, but not closely enough to parse it.
I have good reason for my negligence. Unless Pope Francis repents of being a libchurcher and pledges to remove libchurchers from positions of power, his words are close to pointless.  For, as I and others have pointed out, it is the dominance of libchurchers in key areas of the Church of Rome that has enabled its widespread sexual predation.
If Pope Francis’ concern is worth anything, he will give us not mere words, but Wuerl.  He will accept the resignation of Cardinal Wuerl.

What? Wuerl resigned?  Yes, back in 2015 when he turned 75.  Pope Francis could accept that pro forma resignation (as he has oh-so quickly when certain orthodox prelates reached resignation age).  And it would be a perfect resignation to accept. For not only has Wuerl presided over abuse and likely helped cover up the predations of his friend Uncle Ted Cardinal McCarrick, he is practically a prototype of a libchurch abuse-enabling bishop
He has suspended and intimidated conservative priests, and has even blocked conservative bishops from offering sacraments in his archdiocese, while doing almost nothing to combat the numerous shenanigans administered by Jesuits at Georgetown University. 
Of course, far far more needs to be done than accepting one resignation. Far far more libchurchers must have their church careers ended for the Roman Catholic Church to recover from their wolfish predations.  Nonetheless, more words mean little at this point.  Don’t give the faithful more of your words, Francis.  You talk too much anyway.  Bring us the mitre of Cardinal Wuerl.  Not words, but Wuerl!

Yes, Your Holiness, we know you don’t like capital punishment.  So the head need not be attached to said mitre.  At least it doesn’t have to be.

----
MORE:
Here’s a taste of Wuerl in action if you can stomach it: hard on orthodox priests, easy on predator priests.
With the WARNING that it’s difficult reading, here’s more details on how easy he was on predator priests.

He. Must. Go.
 ----
UPDATE:
And maybe he will soon.
 

One of Pope Francis’ Friends Lets the Truth Slip Out

With the current abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, it may be easy for some to miss its even bigger problem – the lack of faithfulness to traditional catholicity.  And as I noted in my last post, that lack of faithfulness has led to other problems, including endemic sexual abuse.  These problems have all been made worse by the lack of faithfulness of the current Bishop of Rome.
A fervent friend of Francis, Fr. Thomas Rosica has let slip the extent of that lack of faithfulness: 
Pope Francis breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants, because he is “free from disordered attachments.” Our Church has indeed entered a new phase: with the advent of this first Jesuit pope, it is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture.
When a furor promptly and rightly broke out, the remarks were revised.  But, too late, alert people remembered. 
There is a book out about Francis called The Dictator Pope.  Some may find its premise overwrought and even I hesitate to call Francis a dictator (although I can call him a lot of things).  But if the Church of Rome “is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture,” and Francis has acted in that manner in changing the catechism on capital punishment among other matters, that is a bit dictatorial, no?
Fr. John Hunwicke notes what a grave situation the Church of Rome is therefore now in.  I will let him conclude.


Bergoglianism has been encapsulated in an even more extreme form than this by the cynically blasphemous observation of the jesuit "General" that the Lord's Words were not captured on camera, and by Fr Rosica's boastfully candid admission that the Church is now entirely at the mercy of a pope to whom neither Scripture nor Tradition are prescriptive. Such exponents appear to offer a model of Christian teaching ministry unknown even to the heretics of earlier ages. Here we have not heresy, but the supraheresy. Earlier heresiarchs may have monkeyed around with, and perverted the sense of, both Scripture and Tradition, but, I think, never before have we had the diabolical claim that a major heretical teacher is quite simply free from any control whatsoever within the Word of God whether written or orally transmitted. When I use the term 'diabolical', I mean it in the fullest possible sense. The fingerprints all over these preposterous claims are unmistakeable.

Saturday, August 18, 2018

Understanding the Rot in the Roman Catholic Church

Like most of you, I am sickened by what a Pennsylvania grand jury has exposed about abuse of minors in the Roman Catholic Church.  But what most do not understand is the abuse is largely the fruit of a corrupt and liberal hierarchy.   Yes, there are outwardly conservative clerics who were involved in the abuse and/or cover-ups. But the abuse would not have gotten to be endemic without it being enabled by libchurchers.
Peter Kwasniewski is one of the few who gets it and is not shy about saying so:
The ring of criminal Nancy Boys is the same ring that has been sedulously working for decades to undermine the integrity of the doctrinal, moral, sacramental, liturgical Church. These men – McCarrick, McElroy, Wuerl, O’Malley, Mahony, Cupich, Tobin, Farrell, Lynch, Weakland, Paglia, Maradiaga, their lovable mouthpiece James Martin, Thomas Rosica, and far too many others, including ones who have passed on to their eternal fate, such as Lyons, Boland, Brom – are the same ones who have destabilized and adulterated catechesis, theology, liturgy, and most obviously the Church’s commitment to the unchanging moral law, as we saw in the Amoris Laetitia debacle and all that surrounded and succeeded it….
These are not just men of bad moral character; they are apostates, and they are trying to remake the Church in the image of their own apostasy. The Church has been smashed up in front of our eyes in slow motion for decades and few can even begin to admit that we are now faced with a Church in actual smithereens. The Nancy Boys have conducted their campaign of demolition with a kind of imperial sway. It is not this or that aspect of the Church that is corrupt; the rot is now everywhere. It is a rot on which the McCarrick Ring still sups, like maggots feasting on a corpse. For this reason, to hear well meaning people say Bergoglio must impanel some investigative body to set things right is Alice in Wonderland lunacy. It’s like putting Himmler in charge of Nuremberg….
It is a package deal. This, above all, is what people need to see. The moral depravity, the doctrinal heresy, the liturgical devastation – all of it goes together.

Like I said, he is not shy, but he is right. The abuse and libchurch apostasy go hand in hand, so to speak.  Take Boston, Cardinal Law (spit), and Paul Shanley for example.  Before Shanley’s predations on boys became public knowledge, he was well known as a radical “street preacher” who opposed church teaching on homosexuality.  He even spoke in defense of pedophilia at a NAMBLA conference in 1979. So, even apart from his abuse, why did it take decades after that for him to be defrocked?
Damnable lib bishops, that’s why.  From a 2002 New York Times article: 
Bishop McCormack, who served as a top aide to Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston before his appointment to Manchester, oversaw the transfer of several priests from parish to parish even after evidence of sexual misconduct grew with multiple accusations made against them.
One of those he helped to transfer around the country was the Rev. Paul R. Shanley, who has been accused of the sexual abuse of more than 20 young boys and who publicly defended pedophilia at a 1979 meeting of the North American Man-Boy Love Association.
The rot goes all the way to Vatican. Rod Dreher reveals how Uncle Ted McCarrick became a Cardinal:
Back then, I received a tip from a priest who had gone on his own dime to Rome, along with a group of prominent US Catholic laymen, to meet with an official for the Roman Curial congregation that names bishops. It had been rumored at the time that Theodore McCarrick, the Archbishop of Newark, was going to be moved to Washington, DC, and to be made a cardinal. This group traveled to Rome to warn the Vatican that McCarrick was a sexual harrasser of seminarians. The story this priest shared with me was that McCarrick had a habit of compelling seminarians to share his bed for cuddling. These allegations did not involve sexual molestation, but were clearly about unwanted sexual harassment. To refuse the archbishop’s bedtime entreaties would be to risk your future as a priest, I was told.
Rome was informed by these laymen — whose number included professionally distinguished Catholics in a position to understand the kind of harm this would cause –that McCarrick was sexually exploiting these seminarians, but it did no good. McCarrick received his appointment to the Washington archdiocese in 2000.
That’s some of the “smoke of Satan” in the Vatican Benedict warned about.
Roman Catholics in the pews, like the mainstream Protestant counterparts, have put up with these libchurchers for too long. Kwasniewski again:

We need the apostates identified, denounced, and removed. We need a reaffirmation of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith. To clean up this mess, we have to clean up more than the scandal of homosexuality, with all of its attendant horrors. We have to denounce and reject the apostasy that powerful and influential homosexuals and their friends have insinuated into the Church over decades.
 
Although I applaud and pray for those orthodox who are committed to reforming the Roman Catholic Church, I do not share Kwasniewski’s optimism that it can be done.  For one thing, Pope Francis has stacked the College of Cardinals with the likes of Blase Cupich and worse.  So I fear Benedict may be the last robustly orthodox pope.  Further, reform would require an orthodox pope with the will power and energy to clean up the Vatican and the College of Cardinals.  Not even Benedict had that nor has any pope since Vatican II.

That’s the thing about libchurchers. If you don’t put them in their place early, they end up taking over the place . . . with damnable consequences.
The rot in the Roman Catholic Church has implications of great import for Anglicans.  But I will get to that another time.

Friday, August 17, 2018

Is ACNA Nearing Broken Communion?

Statements by key Forward in Faith bishops at the Fort Worth FiF meeting earlier this month beg the question of whether communion within the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) will sooner or later go beyond impaired to becoming broken altogether over women's ordination among other issues.
Bishop Jack Iker of Fort Worth’s statement was particularly strong:

“I am extremely dismayed, because the [ACNA] College of Bishops has decided to fudge the issue by allowing ‘two integrities.’ There are two practices, one is apostolic, universal, scriptural, the other is schismatic, rebellious, feminist and revolutionary. Begun by the Episcopal Church illegally and forced upon the Church.” 
Iker then said that Forward in Faith, the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Mission in North America “came into ACNA” believing “we’d go into a theological discussion of the issue and move the right way forward. Now we’re being told that we signed on to ‘two integrities’.”…

Speeches by retired Bishop William Wantland and Missionary Diocese of All Saints Bishop William Ilgenfritz were perhaps even stronger medicine.  Read excerpts over at Forward in Christ Magazine.
In any case, this does not sound like bishops who intend to stick around if the “two integrities” status quo in ACNA remains the status quo.  Having said that, I do not expect anyone to leave before next year’s ACNA Provincial Assembly.  And with the Diocese of Ft. Worth there is the additional consideration of continuing litigation with The Episcopal Church.  They may want a resolution of that before deciding whether to stay in ACNA.  (But please note that I do NOT have any inside information in that regard.  This is my thinking only.)
As Fr. Michael Heidt concludes, “Whether and to what extent the Anglo-Catholic bishops of Forward in Faith North America will be able to live in a state of impaired communion with ACNA over female ordinations remains to be seen.”