Sunlight and fire are both effective in purifying.
In the wake of The Viganò Testimony and in accord with what Francis said on the airplane, we need to get to the bottom of things, investigate, open the dark places up for exposure to light. I say that we also need to debride the wounds in the Body of Christ and may even apply fire to cauterize.
Here is a video I picked up via a tweet by Damian Thompson. It is part of a story at PJMedia.
We are all, I think, striving to understand how we got to the point where we are.
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Ann Barnhardt’s blog is not one I would normally recommend and certainly wouldn’t recommend to the faint of heart. Adults only at that blog. But what she has been posting over the past week regarding Bergoglio’s knowledge and involvement with predatory pedophiles and actively homosexual clergy in Argentina while he was there is damning and relevant to this post by Fr. Z about “how we got here.” Particularly horrifying is the evidence about Bergoglio’s one-time close friend Gustavo Vera and the case of Bishop Maccarone, and Bergoglio’s knowledge and acceptance of everything, and how widely known this has all apparently been in Argentina, even prior to the conclave that elected Bergoglio to be pope.
Ann is very smart and extremely tenacious, but she has some positions that might be considered out there. For example, she considers Francis to be an antipope and that Benedict XVI is still the reigning Pontiff.
Anyone striving to understand how we got here ought to spend some time reading and viewing what Ann has shared on her blog in her effort to open up dark places to sunlight. It’s not stuff that can easily be dismissed as coming from crazy conspiracy town.
[Ann is feisty! As far as her “out there” positions are concerned, we have to keep in mind that it takes very little to see them as at least credible. For example, there are those who say that Benedict was pressured to resign, and his resignation was not entirely of his own volition. If that is true, and no one has substantiated it yet, then his resignation might not have been entirely valid. The implications of that are obvious. On another point, if we accept that there was a group that lobbied for the election of a certain cardinal in the conclave, against the laws governing the election of a Pope, then there would be problems with the legitimacy of the vote, since they would have incurred excommunication. The implications of that are obvious. So, her positions might be “out there”, but if you have either of those situations verified, they are not that far out there at all. The problem is that they can’t be verified.]
Blessed Mother, drain the swamp?
Some may want to say that we got here because of Vatican II, but that is akin to blaming the fruit while ignoring the flower, the branch, the trunk, the roots, and the seed.
A small part of how we got here is the bishops predominantly want to deal with such issues of abuse (and it is few and far between the bishop that will see any homosexual act as abuse and an intrinsically evil act) by sending offenders for psychological treatment. It is very much verboten to treat homosexuality as a psychosis that must be overcome. Rather, homosexuality is treated as having the patient understand it as an intrinsic part of their nature, overcome feelings of anxiety and guilt, and practice such homosexuality “appropriately”. Thus, such offenders return to their bishop with a clean bill of mental health and a good bishop cannot do much more than shuttle the offender off to a new parish.
This obviously provides wonderful cover for the homosexually abusive bishops and supporting bishops.
But this is not to blame the field of psychiatry, but rather to show that this problem is systemic beyond the edifice of the Church. And how this came about in psychiatry is very much well documented because how this change is something that those who suffer from LGBTQ speak openly about as they are proud of it.
How we got here really is about a disbelief in God stemming from a certain despair in the ability of man to know God and to encounter Him. You see it setting in after WWI amongst the population at large, but it goes back further. You see it in a change in spirituality — especially in the change in Jesuit thinking and the rise of “social working/justice” movements, which, at their core, have a theology that dispairs in encountering the numinous God who is (against this despair The Idea of the Holy by Otto was written) and instead falls back into trying to encounter God through service to fellow men. From this grows Theology and Liberation, aggiornamento, and everything else that seeks to place man and the encounter between men at the center of religion.
—The video at hand. Such reports did surface near the beginning of Pope Francis’ pontificate of his time in Argentina. Much of this is an “open secret” along with the fact that he speaks out of both sides of his mouth. I say this not to denigrate but to state a fact that, especially on matters of faith and morals, Pope Francis often says both positions, but his actions always speak to what he really believes.
The more one digs into things, the more it is all just an “open secret”.
There are some things about this that are so uncertain, such as the real guilt or innocence of Fr. Grassi, which it is said the Argentine public was divided over. Should I assume he was rightfully convicted? I don’t know anything about the case but I feel reluctant to assume that justice was really carried out. And if he is innocent is it still wrong for the Church to try to defend him? But Cardinal Bergoglio making no reply to people who say they were abused, then categorically denying that there is any problem in his diocese, is hard to understand.
A person with faith can look to God, knowing that nothing is hidden to Him, and that He is the standard of justice and the Judge. Justice should be sought on earth, but in the end, in finality, there WILL be justice that no cover up or denials can thwart.
That exchange at 10:30 is utterly amazing.
Sawyer, I’m with you. She does sort of shoot herself in the foot by being on the lam for not rendering unto Caesar. But she makes some good points just the same.
~Elizabeth D
There is more out there than just the Fr. Grassi issue. We should expect a divided populace given how popular of a priest he was. Not to tie the two together but Mr. McCarrick was and is still popular in certain ecclesial circles.
Fr. Grassi was found guilty by a court of law, upheld by an appellate court, and finally the high court in Argentina. Our inclination should be to trust the court system unless there is proof to not trust it. Obviously, Bergoglio did trust the court system’s ability to act justly else he would not have commissioned that “book”.
One of the problems that we have now is the issue of who should we trust to deal with the problem of using authority to abuse (sexually and spiritually) others — who will bring about justice. Will the episcopate bring about justice? Let me point out that the episcopate are the ones who self-exempted themselves from the Dallas Charter and who since then continued to promote and protect abusers. The line currently is that the Church is now safest place for children, except that it isn’t with priests caught in vans, the Fr. Martins prancing around, the fact that it can take decades for abuse victims to come forward, and (most) bishops being unwilling to really do anything.
As an example of the unwillingness, let me point to a diocese over from the Extraordinary Ordinary. 864 N Van Buren St Milwaukee WI remains the Archbishop Weakland Center to this day, two archbishops later. If it is too hard to remove a sign and change the name of a building, what a truly impossible task it must be to deal with abuse amongst fellow clerics. Card. Dolan was the first Archbishop after Weakland. He is one of the more powerful US Archbishops and the small placard outside 864 was too heavy for him to remove. How impossibly heavy then will it be to remove bishops who are abusers/enablers/protectors?
I do though applaud those who are doing things.
This video needs to get copied and disseminated before someone disappears it.
Its not like the Church has been infiltrated by a diabolical Secret Society hell bent on destroying its moral authority, like the illuminati or anything like that. Just because occult elements of the Freemasons and Rosicrucians have been explicitly planning to destroy the Catholic Church by infiltrating it from within for hundreds of years doesn’t mean they were actually serious. . . . . right? I mean, I’m sure its all just regular human frailty and politics as usual. . . What will those crazy conspiracy theorists come up with next ?. . . .
To Fr. Z’s comment to Sawyer, I thought that the validity of papal elections was a matter of ecclesiastical faith (fides ecclesiastica), since the validity of papal elections can impact the certainty of dogmas defined by him. For instance, we hold, with divine and Catholic faith (and therefore absolute certainty) that the Mother of God was assumed into heaven. We believe this on the authority of God revealing, of course, but also on the authority of the Church proposing this to our belief. But since this was dogmatically defined by Pope Pius XII, we must therefore hold, with ecclesiastical faith that Pius XII was the duly elected successor of St. Peter. If we don’t, well then, his definition wouldn’t be infallible, and our faith wouldn’t be absolutely certain. I’m certainly not trying to accuse Fr. Z of error, as I’m sure he could clarify here, but I’m not sure how doubting or denying the legitimacy of Francis’s election squares with this. I’m not saying that Francis has been a good Pontiff (in fact, I think he’s been one of the worst in the history of the Church), but I certainly don’t deny that he’s the true Pope. Thoughts, anyone?
Once, when I was just a wee youngster and I got into trouble with my Mom, before I could open my mouth, she said something to me which has stayed with me with my whole life. “Don’t lie to me, because if you lie to me and I find out, I’ll never be able to trust you again.”
Turns out that it would seem to me that this Pope has lied to us on several occasions. It’s very hard for me to trust anything he says, now. That sacred trust has pretty much evaporated.
(How did we get to the point of where we are? )
I think I have a few insights that have to do with the pastors I’ve had at my local parishes over the last 30 years of attending with my wife and family..
Father A.
We introduced ourselves as followers of what the Church teaches on birth control, we don’t use contraception or abortifacients but NFP (we prefer the acronym FAM, fertility awareness method). Father A was terrified of even discussing this in public, never mind a sermon on Chasity. He hushed us up and carried on a conversation in the corner, in very low tones. Shush, don’t say anything.
Father B
Again an introduction. This pastor was matter of fact. “It doesn’t work”. I explained that in the goodness of God, you can identify fertile times and abstain for serious reasons of course. “It doesn’t work” he said again. To this day I think he was referring not to the science, but the periodic abstinence. Abstinence was (to him) impossible.
Father C
After an introduction. This pastor was stern “people don’t need to follow this teaching of the Church on this”.
Father D
This was interesting. After the introduction, I asked: Why not do a sermon on Humanae Vitae? This pastor was angry, “I run things around here, I am the father here, I run things, I wouldn’t walk into your house where you are the father and ask for something to be taught!”
These are all true stories, in fact they all happened more than once with different pastors at different local parishes over the last 30 years.
And so we have:
A. Shush, don’t say anything.
B. Abstinence is impossible.
C. Don’t follow what the Church Teaches.
D. I’m in charge here. (Not God.)
Am I surprised at where we are now….. No. I’m strangely both relieved at the burst of daylight and disgusted at the cockroach infestation. Not surprised.
(How did we get to the point of where we are? )
I think I have a few insights that have to do with the pastors I’ve had at my local parishes over the last 30 years of attending with my wife and family..
Father A.
We introduced ourselves as followers of what the Church teaches on birth control, we don’t use contraception or abortifacients but NFP (we prefer the acronym FAM, fertility awareness method). Father A was terrified of even discussing this in public, never mind a sermon on Chasity. He hushed us up and carried on a conversation in the corner, in very low tones. Shush, don’t say anything.
Father B
Again an introduction. This pastor was matter of fact. “It doesn’t work”. I explained that in the goodness of God, you can identify fertile times and abstain for serious reasons of course. “It doesn’t work” he said again. To this day I think he was referring not to the science, but the periodic abstinence. Abstinence was (to him) impossible.
Father C
After an introduction. This pastor was stern “people don’t need to follow this teaching of the Church on this”.
Father D
This was interesting. After the introduction, I asked: Why not do a sermon on Humanae Vitae? This pastor was angry, “I run things around here, I am the father here, I run things, I wouldn’t walk into your house where you are the father and ask for something to be taught!”
These are all true stories, in fact they all happened more than once with different pastors at different local parishes over the last 30 years.
And so we have:
A. Shush, don’t say anything.
B. Abstinence is impossible.
C. Don’t follow what the Church Teaches.
D. I’m in charge here. (Not God.)
Am I surprised at where we are now….. No. I’m strangely both relieved at the burst of daylight and disgusted at the cockroach infestation. Not surprised.
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Malachi Martin said it very well, “The only way we could have descend 24 d SK rapidly from where we were in 1900 to where we are now is that God withdrew his grace.” He attributed it to the warnings and commands of the Fatina messages not being heeded, in fact, deliberately disobeyed.
Kinda made sense.