At First Things more good advice has been offered to their collective Excellencies before their upcoming plenary meeting, which begins next Monday. Just the other day, another piece of advice was extended by a writer at The Catholic Thing. HERE
However, at First Things, the director of the Augustine Institute, Jayd Henricks, has pointed words. He is also a former senior staffer at the USCCB, so he knows what he is talking about.
Let’s see a sample with my usual treatment:
[…]
There is, however, something wrong with how the body of bishops functions as an assembly and how bishops relate to and interact with one another. Far too often, fear appears to govern what is done or not done by you as a body. There is the fear of disunity, fear of conflict, fear of disrupting a superficial collegiality, and today, more than ever, fear of Rome. Though the pressure you face—each in your dioceses and together as an assembly—is intense, the bottom line is that it sometimes appears that many of you are governed by fear of each other and of the institutional order more than by the fear of God.
It has also been my observation that your work as an association of bishops leads many of you to value the appearance of unity over adherence to principle. This habit, in turn, leads to patterns of conflict avoidance. In some instances, this is the path of charity. Conflict and division are not good things. Far too often, however, I watched good men back away from conflict when what was needed was confrontation and forthright debate. This culture of fear enabled the likes of Theodore McCarrick to attain power and to scheme and maneuver at the highest ecclesial and political levels.
All serious observers of the Church see that the current ecclesiastical situation stands on the edge of a cliff. It seems to me that there are two dominant camps among the bishops in the United States, and perhaps worldwide. One regards the Church as a platform for political interests. My professional experience taught me that this group includes key authorities in Rome. The other regards the Church as a pastoral reality. This second group, while genuinely desiring to serve, is reluctant to address critical issues if doing so would entail conflict with Rome.
The curial advisors of the Holy Father have failed to understand the nature of the present crisis. They have chosen a path that only exacerbates it. [It could be that they do understand it and they chose that path with that understanding in mind.] They have failed to undertake a swift and full investigation of the McCarrick case. The Vatican’s failure to act is now aggravating the real harm done to the Church. In the end, however, the faithful in the United States will hold you—and not the curial officials—responsible for what does or does not happen in the wake of the most recent scandals.
I urge you to petition forcefully for an open investigation led by the laity. Do not allow a false notion of unity to prevail, a false unity in which your integrity as bishops is sacrificed to expediency.
[…]
There is quite a bit more, which you should read over there.
As far as that point about curial advisors is concerned, …
… I am more and more of the mind that, beyond the usual and always valid explanation of sheer incompetence, real malice has been revealed.
I say “malice” because those involved seem to hate what the Church has been and, by their directives and their urgings around Francis, they want to transform the Church into something it has never been and which Christ never intended.
You can get more of what I mean by going back to what I wrote in June 2017 about the vision of one of the key players in Francis’ dugout, the creeps-inducing and plagiarist Víctor Manuel Fernández. Call to mind the “governing principles” – or Four Guiding Postulates – Fernández included as ghostwriter of Evangelii gaudium. One of them concerns constant conflict of positions which will, over time, produce lasting change.
If you want to understand what Francis and Co. are doing, you have to review those things that I linked.
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Why is it that we never seem to remember the “Bella Dodd” expose of Communist Russia’s effort to destroy The Church in the 1920s with an infiltration of some 11,000 Homosexuals into the priesthood and their eventual elevation into the hierarchy??? Also, their effort to discredit Pope Pius XII with a play called “The Producers” in the 1960s.
The secular problem in this country is exactly the same sourced with the creation of the “Communist Party, USA” in 1919. If Hillary had won; they would have been able to celebrate their 100th anniversary with a “Bloodless Coup” of the American Government next year 2019. The takeover of the Democrat Party by the Communists started in 1972 with defeated Presidential candidate George McGovern who remained the head of the Democrat Party.
We live in very dangerous times both Religous and Secular.
Yes! Thank you for saying it out loud! Once one realizes that what has happened in the Church in the last 200 years is not the result of mere incompetence or negligence, although these were not lacking, but a plan and a concerted effort, then all the cognitive dissonance dissolves. Starting with the The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita (Italian Masonic Lodge), published as a warning by Pope Pius IX and again by Pope Leo XIII, continuing with the infiltration programs described by former Communist Bella Dodd and also the homosexuals, described by Fr. Enrique Ruede in The Homosexual Network, the decades-long machinations of the Modernists to engineer and hijack Vatican II, and finally the full-blown homosexual network that is just beginning to be exposed, we have been subjected the masterful workings of Satan and his willing cooperators.
They have corrupted our morals, buried our doctrine, and devastated our liturgy. Today in the usus antiquior we heard the Gospel of the wheat and the tares. It tells us to leave the weeds in place until the harvest, which might make us think we should do nothing. But our celebrant explained that wheat and tares look very much alike when the plants are young and so they cannot be safely separated. But the mature plants differ in height and color, the tares being shorter and purple. When the tares, which are poisonous, show their true colors, then they must be separated and thrown out. He also said that like all analogies, this one limps. A weed cannot become wheat, but a sinner can convert. He said, “Go to Confession!”
I submit that the tares are ready to be found, called to conversion, and failing that, separated and thrown out.