'RADIO SILENCE' IN THE MEDIA

How quiet the media are, about Pope Francis and Archbishop Vigano!

I heard a media commentator today describe the silence in the media as 'creepy'. Just what I thought, having expected Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano's testimony to be all over the papers - until I thought how Pope Francis has promoted the homosexual agenda, and the media being left-wing are pro-homosexual. They're on his side.

But having watched the journos on that flight from Dublin home to Rome, I'd go further and agree with this commentator that "the media think Pope Francis is one of them". 

He spoke to those journalists not as the world leader of the millions of faithful Catholics wanting to know what the hell has been going on, but as a chum, their equal: "You read it, you make your judgment" - a response which the Pope's right-hand man, Cardinal Parolin, has just regurgitated. 

Obviously they haven't been able to think up a better one. Pope Francis wasn't "going to say a word". It was up to the media to make of it what they wished. 


Which was, very little. As the commentator said, "They're giving it as much of a pass as they can".

He drew parallels between Pope Francis and Juan Peron, citing "grandstanding and posturing", which is grist to the media mill. Right from the start, when after his election Pope Francis paid his own hotel bill and caught a taxi, the media fawned on him. 

But I was puzzled. Humility doesn't draw attention to itself. And: If  you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world but I have chosen you out of the world - therefore the world hates you (Jn 15: 18,19). The world loves Francis.

Right now, Cardinal Donald Wuerl is variously reported to be in hiding in a some hotel in Washington, flying to the Vatican, or there already, at the Pope's bidding. Because the US Department of Justice may open a RICO (Racketeer Influences and Corrupt Organisations Act) against the Church, and Wuerl would be a prime target for arrest for sex abuse cover-up and his testimony would lead straight to Rome. That's the Vatican's biggest fear.

Vigano's testimony that Pope Benedict placed sanctions on the former Cardinal McCarrick, now disgraced, has been corroborated. McCarrick was heard being told by the Papal Nuncio to leave the seminary in Washington. Not only that, but the priest ousted from his room at what we'd call the presbytery in an 'upscale' part of Washington has described in detail the renovations made to accommodate the  mystery guest: McCarrick.

Conservative US commentator Rush Limbaugh reminds us how Pope Francis recently summoned oil and finance executives to the Vatican to warn them of climate change which was "disturbing and a cause for real concern". 

"Has Pope Francis convened the cardinals?" Limbaugh asks. "Is rampant pedophilia not 'disturbing and a cause for real concern'? This is rampant and blatant hypocrisy!" 

As one who regularly receives Catholic JPIC newsletters which endlessly bang on about saving the planet instead of the Church's real business of saving souls, I have to say that strikes a chord.

The crowd at a Papal audience in Rome yesterday shouted, "Vigano! Vigano! Vigano!" They were presumably faithful Catholics, or they wouldn't be there. They want Pope Francis to "say a word". Confirm or deny!  

Faithful Catholics know not to believe what they read in the papers. They shouldn't need to. They want to believe what they're told by their pastors.  

Go to Lifesite News and sign a pledge to pray for Archbishop Vigano. God will hear the cries of his faithful, lowly people. 

Yesterday evening, praying the Divine Office, I was unusually affected by the Magnificat antiphon:

 The Lord brought down the mighty from their seats, and raised up the lowly.

A PRIEST'S TOLD OFF FOR ASKING CHILDREN TO KNEEL

What possible reason could a parish priest of the Palmerton North Diocese have for reprimanding a junior priest who asked First Holy Communicants to kneel to receive the Sacrament? The children duly knelt and received, but their pastor got told off.

The incident perfectly illustrates the abolition of 'fear of the Lord' from this diocese's official list of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Obviously its replacement - 'awe and reverence' - isn't enough to impel us to kneel in the presence of the Lord God Almighty. You can see that at Mass in the cathedral, where almost everyone stands or even sits during the Consecration.

I've been told off, too. 

The Scriptural 'fear of the Lord ' - which must have been shut up in a drawer somewhere in the Catholic Church and forgotten while cardinals and other clerics have got on with their heinous behavior - I'm told is 'terrible'. It's 'terrible' to fear God.

Okay, my interlocutor was brought up nicely, as an Anglican. In a local ecumenical group who meet to choose Scripture verses for the local rag I've learned (if I didn't know already) that the fear of God doesn't sit well with niceness. 

That's one of the reasons for its deletion from our diocesan list of the gifts of the Spirit: the Catholic Church here and in the US now rivals the Anglican, as the 'Church of Nice'.

May I point out how children are taught to cross the road? They're told to look right then left then right again, and walk, not run, straight across the road. No jay-walking. 

And why are they taught thus? Because they and their parents and teachers fear the traffic. They want children to fear traffic too. And why should they fear the traffic? Because they might get run over and killed.

Just like a grown-up who doesn't fear God might die and go to hell - like most people, according to all the saints.

That's called servile fear. It's a good starting point. At St Joseph's convent school in Waipukurau the 'Black Joes' taught me to fear the Yellow Peril even more than God, but I was sometimes afraid to go to sleep at night, in case I didn't wake up. It wasn't a great feeling, but that servile fear of punishment, of hell, probably kept me out of a lot of trouble. And slowly I learned that I was in fact being kept out of trouble, by God. 

Slowly, I learned the filial fear of God which fears nothing but sin, which separates me from the God I've learned to love:

"Come, children, hearken to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord" (Ps 33:12): according to Fr Gabriel of S Mary Magdalen OCD, author of that spiritual classic, Divine Intimacy, "this is the first lesson the divine Paraclete teaches the soul desiring to become a saint". 

THE VATICAN IS RUNNING SCARED

It'll be all over the papers, I told a friend yesterday morning. 

She hadn't heard anything about the Vigano revelations, which for me were quite literally breathtaking. It was like a Force Eight earthquake for the Church and grist to the media mill - or so I thought.

How naïve. Have you noticed how subdued the reportage is? (Or have you noticed it at all?) 

That's because Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano is 'homophobic'. The media, who by and large are left-wing and pro-homosexual - and pro-Pope Francis - are trying to write Vigano's testimony off as a 'hard-line anti-gay' diatribe. It will indeed be interesting to see how the story's handled by the Catholic press here - a press described to me today as 'anodyne' and 'a projection of the bishops' non-negotiable agenda'. 

NZ Catholic for example is owned by the Bishop of Auckland, Patrick Dunn and like the NZ Bishops' Conference supports Pope Francis. That's fine: as 'good Catholics' we all support the Pope, I hope. 

But in today's unprecedented crisis in the Church, in the face of the Pope's lack-lustre appearance in Ireland - described by the Irish Times as "an exercise in deflection" - to suppress all but the most anodyne criticism of him and his bishops, is to contribute to that deflection and compound it.

Everything I've read today - not in newspapers, and not seen on the telly - tells me Vigano is for real and the Vatican is running scared. Actually what intrigued me, as opposed to shocking me, about Vigano's deposition was the statement that two Apostolic Nuncios in the US, Gabriel Montalvo and Pietro Sambri, were 'both prematurely deceased' and a reference to 'the unexpected death of Nuncio Sambi'. 

Why use those words, 'prematurely' and 'unexpected'? I have a feeling we'll find out. 

It was Nuncio Sambi who communicated to the disgraced McCarrick the news of Pope Benedict's sanctions against him. This has been corroborated at length today in an interview in France with Monsignor Jean-Francois Lantheaume, who was quoted by Vigano as overhearing the ensuing row between Sambi and McCarrick, in which 'the Nuncio's voice could be heard all the way out in the corridor'.

But what resonates with me personally is the lack of response from the Vatican to Vigano's memos about what was going on. For instance, he wrote to Cardinal Parolin, then Secretary of State, who Vigano says was complicit in covering for McCarrick - who after Pope Francis was elected boasted openly of his travels and missions to various continents. As Nuncio, Vigano asked Parolin if Pope Benedict's sanctions against McCarrick were still valid. 

'Ca va sans dire', says Vigano, he received no reply.

I know the feeling. That feeling of being ignored. 

Like when you write to your priest about his Protestant homilies. Or to your bishop asking why Church doctrine as taught in your diocese has been altered. Or to the same bishop asking for the shepherd's assistance which the Magisterium says is available to every Catholic in certain cases of mental illness, on behalf of someone in the diocese who's in danger of death from a family member.

Ca va sans dire, I've had no reply.

WHOEVER DOES IT IS A HERETIC (letter to Dom Post, August 28)

Oh, spare us the cries for female priests and married priests (Letters, August 27). Obedience, as the characteristic of the Church in the Middle Ages cited by John Whitty and a requirement of every Catholic, then and now, is a secondary issue here.

 

The relationship of the priest to the Church (the Catholic Church, that is) is spousal. Like Christ, the priest – no matter how sinful - takes the Mystical Body of Christ for his bride.

 

To quote Cardinal Walter Brandmuller of Germany, “female ordination is an ontological impossibility and gravely sinful. 

"Whoever does it or insistently demands it is a heretic – even if he wears the Roman Purple”.

"CORRUPTION AND FILTH MUST BE PURIFIED"

Many faithful Catholics saw a showdown like yesterday's Vigano revelations coming at us like an express train - even here in far-away New Zealand, where the NZ Bishops' Conference has hung on every word coming from the lips of Pope Francis, and we had to depend on the net for the real oil.

Today, Cardinal Raymond Burke - probably not so much a pin-up for the NZ bishops - says this:

"The declarations (of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Papal Nuncio to the US) must be totally taken to heart by those responsible in the Church. 

"Each declaration must be subject to investigation.

"After the truth of each declaration" (sounds like Cardinal Burke doubts them not) "has been established, appropriate sanctions must be applied for healing the horrible wounds inflicted on the Church and reparation of the grave scandal caused."

Back in May Cardinal Willem Eijk, lamenting Pope Francis' failure to bring clarity on intercommunion with Protestants, stated that such failure on the part of the Pope to uphold the Church's authentic faith made him think of the Catechism of the Catholic Church's prophecy of "a final trial" for the Church before the Second Coming of Christ.

And now Cardinal Burke is rallying "all good Catholics … to insist upon knowing the truth and asking them to pray and sacrifice for the Church at this tumultuous time … the corruption and filth must be purified". 

POPE FRANCIS AND HIS 'SINFUL CONDUCT'

At a Confirmation ceremony this morning I wondered what had happened to the last-named gift of the Holy Spirit, which I received many years ago at mine.

And at my computer this evening, I wonder what will happen to Pope Francis, called out today by a former Papal Nuncio to the US for "deceitful … grave, disconcerting and sinful conduct".
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano says Francis had revoked strict canonical sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict against the disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. 


The gift that was conspicuous by its absence from Bishop Charles Drennan's list of the gifts of the Spirit at Confirmation this morning was 'the fear of God', as listed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (p 512). It's been replaced (as I noted at a display in the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Palmerston North some time ago) by 'reverence and awe'.

That's not only undoctrinal, it's unintelligent. 'Reverence and awe' are by no means synonymous with 'fear of God'. Bishops have no authority to change Church doctrine, and when the attempt is made in such an ignorant way it's downright embarrassing.

I wonder also whether the disappearance of this last-named gift of the Holy Spirit has something - everything! - to do with the sex abuse scandal in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I wonder if priests like the infamous James Martin SJ *- whose video on refugees and migrants I'm told was sucked up recently by the NZ Bishops' Conference - feel free to live a homosexual lifestyle because fearing God is just so 'pre-Vat II'.

*Yes, that's the very same Fr James Martin described today by the former Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, as "a sad example of the deviated wing of the Jesuits - unfortunately today the majority - an activist who promotes the LGBT agenda, chosen to corrupt the young people at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin". 

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: all who attain it are wise (Ps 111:10). Popes and bishops and priests who think Scripture like this is outdated need reminding that the saints all say most people go to hell. And no one more expeditiously than a shepherd who hornswoggles his flock.

Which brings me back to the subject of Fr Brian Buenger, PP of Tararua Parish, and his reasons for returning to the US. Yes, officially, his visa's run out. Visas have run out before now and been renewed, and the PN Diocese has  offered - unenthusiastically, it seems - to renew this one. But Fr Buenger says there are other 'significant considerations'.

I got a whiff of what those considerations might be when a mover and shaker in his parish recently confirmed my suspicions by telling me, "He's a bit pious. People are missing out. He (Fr BB) doesn't take people, like Pope Francis does, 'where they're at'."

There you have it: doctrinal differences. I take it (and I stand to be corrected) that Fr BB doesn't give Holy Communion to divorced or separated people who are living in adulterous relationships.

I've already suggested that Fr BB might have been set to re-order one of his parish churches to meet the requirements of the Magisterium, as opposed to those followed at OLOL in PN - and the cathedral.

Obedience to the Magisterium demonstrates the wisdom which derives from fear of the Lord. What's clever about defying the Judge who judges justly, and by so doing condemning oneself to Hell?  For Heaven's sake (and I say that advisedly) how can 'good Catholics' not go down on their knees thanking God for a good priest, even if he's not to their franciscan liking? Tararua Parish, and the diocese, may lose a priest of proven worth because he obeys the Magisterium, when other parishes, even in Godzone, are losing their priests they're predators. How clever is that?

Not only, but also: I'm reliably informed that another priest in the PN Diocese is on the verge of leaving, and for similar reasons: he doesn't enjoy being bullied - by the diocese. These two priests join two others I know of in this neck of the woods who feel ostracized for their orthodox, traditional belief and practice.

Laity deserve to know the real reasons for priests coming and going.  As Archbishop Vigano said today:

"The people of God have the right to know the full truth, also regarding their shepherds. In order to trust them they have to know them openly in transparency and truth as they really are."

TWO CHURCHES, ONE ROTTEN, ONE FAITHFUL

NZ's Catholic bishops are now chiming in with the Pope's letter to "the People of God" ... "asking forgiveness for the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults perpetrated by clergy … Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others".

Pardon me if I say the Church must beg forgiveness firstly from the Lord our God, who is the One most offended by such betrayal of priestly vows. The Holy Spirit will not give anyone the grace of conversion which the Pope so poetically asks for, unless "these crimes" are confessed and  absolved in the Sacrament of Confession and Reconciliation. 

"These wounds", say the NZ bishops, "never go away". But the Church teaches that even the wounds of victims of such heinous crimes will "go away" - I suppose the good bishops mean healed - if they are brought to Christ in a true spirit of prayer.


And now to address my brother Karl du Fresne's column on the question of sex abuse in the Catholic Church, published in yesterday's Dominion Post.

First:  it was a column begging to be written.

Second: The prosecution of Cardinal George Pell of Sydney for historical claims of sex abuse is, I'm convinced, a put-up job. I knew this intuitively before I was told that ABC journalist Louise Milligan 'basically went out and begged people to give evidence against Pell'. (I didn't have any such intuitions about the disgraced former cardinal McCarrick, and I don't have them about New York' s Cardinal Dolan or Washington's Cardinal Wuerl either. Just don't get me started on them.)

Third: Pope Francis' apology to all Catholics for this scandal is indeed 'too little, too late'. I only wish this was all Pope Francis has to apologise for.

Four: du Fresne is right also in saying the scale of offending 'beggars belief'. But only natural belief. It's certainly not beyond supernatural belief, because the power of Satan to pervert and corrupt is well known to the Church and in the Church. That's what Satan is here for: primarily, to attack the Eucharist which he hates more than anything. To achieve that he destroys the priests who consecrate the Host.

Fifth: In saying 'there seems to be two Churches. One is rotten and diseased and the other remains true to the faith', du Fresne hits the nail on the head. One has promoted Protestant beliefs - heresies - and has set out systematically to destroy all that stands in the way of a vision for a World Church - chiefly, the Sacraments. The other is typified perhaps by the Latin Mass communities and the SSPX, forced to celebrate the Eucharist in out of the way country churches and funeral parlours.

Sixth: the last thing the Church needs is another Martin Luther, a mentally unbalanced heretic whose 'Reformation' (in truth, Deformation) wreaked destruction for the Church and for Europe on a scale to rival the present crisis in the Church and in society.

Seventh: in joining the chorus of  'Let Priests Marry', I have to wonder if our sex-saturated and subverted society is prompting du Fresne to think that possibly priests could marry one another. Of course he's not - but given that it's homosexually active and predatory priests who are the problem, it would be logical to suggest only same-sex marriage would solve it.

Eighth: if, as it seems, that du Fresne is promoting women for the priesthood, it simply cannot happen. The priest's relationship with the Church is spousal. Like Christ, he takes the Mystical Body of Christ for his bride.

Female ordination, to quote Cardinal Walter Brandmuller, is "an ontological impossibility and gravely sinful" ... This is dogma as revealed by Jesus Christ Himself, about the Church of Jesus Christ whose sole Lord He is. A change of the teaching of the dogma is unthinkable. Whoever does it or insistently demands it is a heretic - even if he wears the Roman Purple."

Ninth: Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan quotes St Athanasius, speaking to faithful Catholics in the 4th century during the Arian heresy which was supported by the overwhelming majority of bishops: "The Arians (the public bishops) have the churches, the buildings, but we have the faith".

Tenth: Bishop Schneider adds that "today it is true: they have the administrative power, but we have the faith. And this faith is more powerful: this is what will last."

BEING A REAL CATHOLIC IS NEVER EASY

My brother Karl is a respected journalist , and an apostate. Many will have read his latest column, published in 'The Dominion Post' today, on the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church which he tactfully sent me yesterday, not wanting me caught unawares. 

Ironically, given the subject matter, last night I was one of 180 Catholics celebrating the eightieth birthday of a beloved parish priest and as a result I'm feeling a little under the weather.

So I'll let you savour his remarks before adding my comments tomorrow. Except right off I'll say this much: being a real Catholic is never easy.

'It can’t be easy being Catholic right now. Barely a week passes without fresh revelations of sexually predatory behaviour by priests and squalid attempts by their superiors to cover up their crimes.

Recent examples include the exposure of historic abuse by monks at two English Benedictine schools and a grand jury report detailing accusations against 300 priests in Pennsylvania.

And the finger of blame points ever higher. An American cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, was recently removed from office following allegations involving boys as young as 11. A sickening photo from 1974 showed a gloating McCarrick, then a priest, in swimming togs with his arm around the bare waist of one of his alleged teenage victims.

Another prince of the church, the Australian cardinal George Pell, has been ordered to stand trial over historical claims of abuse. Pell’s countryman Philip Wilson, the archbishop of Adelaide, resigned after being convicted of protecting a paedophile priest in the 1970s.

In Chile, three bishops quit under a similar cloud. Thirty-one others offered their resignations, suggesting some degree of culpability. Only months earlier, Pope Francis had dismissed accusations against one of the offending bishops as slanderous.

The pope has now issued a letter apologising to all Catholics. I wonder what the Latin translation is for “too little, too late”.

Here in New Zealand, the Church continues to shudder at a steady stream of sordid disclosures.

Two recent examples: the late Father Michael Shirres of Auckland, who admitted abusing a young girl – although it’s suspected there were many others – and was quietly placed on a sex offenders programme; and Fr Magnus Murray of Dunedin, who remained a priest for nearly two decades after his offending against boys was revealed to his bishop. He eventually admitted 10 charges and was jailed in 2003.

Records show that Murray was shifted from parish to parish while his past was kept secret – the so-called geographical solution.

The scale and impunity of offending by priests beggars belief. A 2012 American documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, chronicled in chilling detail the brazen, systematic abuse of vulnerable boys and young men and the ease with which the perpetrators – playing on their standing in communities that were conditioned to revere priests – were able to evade accountability for their monstrous acts.

The offenders were typically charismatic and confident – so confident that they would even abuse boys during the rite of confession. The Church hierarchy was principally concerned with protecting itself, paying off complainants and binding them to declarations of confidentiality.

How far up the hierarchy did the cover-up extend? “The higher you go, the more they know,” said a former Benedictine monk who now counsels victims of clerical abuse.

Courageous whistle-blowers within the Church have been ostracised as troublemakers – even traitors.

All these themes are explored in the Australian novelist Thomas Keneally’s book Crimes of the Father. It’s a rather plodding novel but Keneally, who once trained for the priesthood, accurately depicts what you might call the “atmospherics” of the Church – the calcified rituals, the deference to hierarchical authority and the resistance to outside scrutiny.

It goes without saying that preying on the young and vulnerable, and cynically taking advantage of parents’ reluctance to believe that priests could do anything wrong, is the antithesis of what the Church is supposed to stand for.

I say this as someone who grew up immersed in Catholicism and remains what Kenneally calls a “cultural Catholic” – someone who, like him, rejects Catholic dogma but has absorbed Catholic values and can empathise with those who have stayed loyal to the Church.

I feel sorry for the many blameless Catholic clergy who must live with the taint of suspicion, and for the many devout and holy Catholics who have remained staunch despite being repeatedly failed by their leaders. Obviously, they see beyond “the cold and largely self-interested corporation” – Kenneally’s term for the Church – to something much nobler.

There seems to be two Churches. One is rotten and diseased while the other remains true to the faith.

The Catholic Church as an institution needs its doors thrown wide open, metaphorically speaking, so that a cleansing wind can blow through. Perhaps it needs another Martin Luther to purge it of its impurities, or a takeover by lay people.

A good start would be to allow priests to marry, which might go some way toward destroying the Church’s appeal to sexually dysfunctional men seeking a shelter in which to safely pursue their warped predilections.

Another would be to give equal status to women, who have a proud history in the Catholic Church of standing up to the vain, controlling males who have made such an ungodly mess of running the show.'
- My emphasis. 

BE HARD ON YOURSELF, NOT YOUR KIDS

“A steady rise in truancy and absenteeism” in our schools (Prosecutions to boost parenting?, August 20) can quite plausibly be sheeted home to the steady rise in solo parenting.

 

One in four Kiwi children are now growing up with only one parent: 23%, as opposed to an average of 14% in 27 countries surveyed by the OECD. And that parent is almost always the mother.

 

With no Dad at home and Mum out working, lots of those kids skip school. Studies show more truancy after divorce and separation, and more emotional problems. All children in schools with a high percentage of single parent families tend to perform less well, with teaching time and learning conditions adversely affected.

 

And now there’s another class of single mothers: professional women who want to have children with sperm donors because their careers took precedence over child-bearing.

 

The Jumbo in the room, strenuously avoided by the media, is the family factor. Children with two committed parents do better by almost any measure than those with only one.

 

We know it’s really hard at times to stick with the person with whom you made a family. But it’s better to be hard on yourself than on your children.

 

IT WILL BE HARD GOING FOR THE CHURCH

Here's the former Father Joseph Ratzinger, on the same subject - crisis in the Catholic Church - as Pope St John Paul talked about in 1976.The future Pope Benedict XVI had prophesied similarly nearly a decade earlier, in 1969.

This came to me today from a dear friend, an eremitical religious, who was sent it by her friend, an Orthodox monk. (You didn't know I moved in such spiritually exalted circles ...)

From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek… But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.”

– Father Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI), 1969

TRULY AWFUL NEWS FOR CARDINAL DONALD WUERL

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, mentioned below as Archbishop of Pittsburgh for 18 years and accused of entanglement in two of its sex abuse scandals, but since promoted to Washington and the title of Cardinal, is one of Pope Francis' most trusted confidants. 

Cardinal Raymond Burke's take on sex abuse in the Catholic Diocese of Pennsylvania, USA is under dispute on Facebook by Susan Jacobs and Paul Collits.

Cardinal Burke's view is that the facts of this horror story are aggravated by society's culture of contraception and abortion, which often reduces sex to the level of entertainment. Jacobs can't see his point and says denying these allegations - which the Cardinal does not do - is another example of shifting the blame.

Collits points out that allegations are just that: allegations, which remain allegations until proven in a court of law. "Law 101", he says.

Amid the current mass hysteria on sex abuse I've had moments of wondering if I should go after the Greek hairdresser who rubbed himself up against me while giving me a blow-dry in Hastings around 1960. Hmmm.

Why am I laughing? The sheer number of priests said to be involved in the Pennsylvania scandal almost defies belief - on the natural level, that is; at the supernatural level it's credible, considering the power of Satan and his agents.

In 1972 Pope Paul VI warned us that "the smoke of Satan has entered the Church", and we see now that this smoke came from a fire which by then was well ablaze. If only a fraction of these priests were to be proved guilty, it would be truly awful news for the Catholic Church in the US - and in other states and countries around the world where clerical sex abuse is now said to be 'cultural'.

It should also be truly awful news for Cardinal Donald Wuerl, formerly archbishop of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, now of Washington, who's denied allegations of moving predatory priests around his diocese but whom court records show has transferred at least two, the first implicated in the death of a 19 year-old football player and the second, Fr George Zirwas, murdered by a male prostitute in Cuba.

Cardinal Wuerl presided at Zirwas' funeral, praising his priestly service and assuring the congregation that 'Father Zirwas' (having himself stripped Zirwas of the title) was 'in heaven'.

We could reconsider Pope St John Paul II's prophetic statement of 1976:

We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long - such as demand of us a disposition to given up even life, and total dedication to Christ and for Christ. With your prayer and mine it is possible to mitigate this tribulation but it is no longer possible to avert it because only thus can the Church be effectively renewed. We must be strong and prepared, and trust in Christ and His Mother, and be very assiduous in praying the Rosary.

I don't think even John Paul II could have foreseen the nature of the tribulation the Church is now suffering - and this may be only an entrée.

When did you last hear a priest call his people to pray the Rosary? We were asking for it.

'WHY DIDN'T THEY ASK EVANS?' INDEED

Why Didn't They Ask Evans? Indeed …

Paul du Fresne comments on Facebook on my post on capital punishment as follows: "Timothy Evans would be gratified no doubt. And what about the seventh of the tenth (sic) commandments you keep banging on about - or do you know better?"

Timothy Evans was a cause celebre of the movement to banish capital punishment. Why Didn't They Ask Evans? was the book which gave it oxygen and was often quoted by my mother in her support for it.

The Seventh Commandment is, of course, "You shall not kill". It forbids killing by the individual (as in abortion for instance), which is properly called murder, but does not proscribe the legal judgment of capital punishment by the properly constituted authority of a democratically elected government.

To quote The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2266): 'The traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty.'

Getting over-exercised about the possibility of a wrongful sentence of death, as in the case of Timothy Evans, is evidence of a temporal perspective - not moderating it with the true perspective, which is that of eternity. We can and may - as perhaps with Evans - make a wrong call in sentencing an innocent man/woman to death, but God always judges justly. He will take into account that person's wrongful loss of life. It will not affect their chances of eternal happiness, which after all is the only reason for our life here on earth.

Capital punishment is not, like abortion and euthanasia, an intrinsic evil. In 2004 Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, told the US bishops that "it may still be permissible to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion or euthanasia.".

Capital punishment is, if you like, an extension of the principle of self-defence, applied to society. If we hadn't abolished the death penalty, would the taxpayer now be footing mega-bills for building mega-gaols?

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT CAN BE JUST

My mother, Kathrin du Fresne, a stout opponent of capital punishment before that position became de rigueur, would have conniptions but here's a statement from 'a consecrated person of private vows in the Diocese of Rome' defending capital punishment, and compellingly so.

This 'consecrated person of private vows' is Br Alexis Bugnolo, and he's all fired up by Pope Francis' proposed alteration to the Catechism of the Catholic Church on this subject. In fact he says the Pope needs to repent, be corrected and publicly recant. If he does not, no Catholic should regard him any longer as the Vicar of Christ or Bishop of Rome."

Hmmm. Here, in a nutshell, are Brother Bugnolo's grounds:

In John 19: 11 Jesus Christ Himself confirmed publicly that Pontius Pilate had authority to impose capital punishment. 

This is the express teaching of the Apostle St Paul in Romans 13: 4 where he declares that Almighty God has given the temporal authority to wield the sword, that is, impose the ultimate punishment of death upon malefactors. 

This has ever been the Faith of the Fathers of the Church. ... Capital punishment can be justly imposed. St Alphonsus de Liguori, Doctor of the Church, teaches this. This is the teaching of the Catechism of the Council of Trent and of the new Catechism published by John Paul II.

Let us not imagine that this is not a de Fide Dogma of the Faith.

Sounds to me like a pretty convincing argument.

Sorry, Mum.

IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN IN WHITBY (letter to Dom Post, August 14)

Here we go again. The perennial call for population control comes always from people like Randall Hughes who’ve enjoyed the good life - as we can infer from his Whitby address – and want to preserve it for themselves and their progeny.

 

The evils of hunger and global warming will never be addressed by the evil of controlling others. What means does Hughes suggest we employ? Sterilisation? It would never happen in Whitby, so that’s a safe bet.

 

What needs controlling is not breeding, but greed and consumerism in over-developed nations like ours. If each of us ate and consumed only what we need, there’d be enough to go round the whole world.

 

Hughes wants to find “a new amazing source of non-polluting energy”. We found it two thousand years ago in the word of God, so it’s hardly new, but being greedy we don't use it.

If we did, we’d live as Christ did – frugally, and sharing what we have with those who have not.

PN'S LAY FAITHFUL NEED CLARITY

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A fellow priest of Fr Bryan Buenger, a priest of the Palmerston North Diocese, describes my remarks on this blog in relation to the latter and his return to the US as "perceptive", and adds, "he hasn't taken this decision without a lot of thought".

A lay person says she "can't sniff a rat". But she wonders if Bishop Drennan is sincere in his offer to extend his visa. Her husband, a staunch Protestant (so perhaps not realizing the nature of the spousal commitment made by a priest with his people the Church - a commitment deeply honoured, I'd say, by Fr Buenger), says "the poor bloke just wants to go home, for goodness' sake".

A third comment comes from someone in PN who's in the know. He says my PP won't speak supportively of Fr Bryan's priestly ministry in Tararua because the PP is "still in the position of dependency on the ordinary" (in 'ordinary' language, the bishop).

In his letter to Tararua parishioners, the bishop reportedly said he's prepared to appeal for an extension to his visa, but that Fr Bryan doesn't want it. Tararua parishioners will be wondering a) why the bishop isn't moving heaven and earth to keep a priest of Fr Bryan's calibre, a priest capable of pastoring four churches between Dannevirke and Pahiatua and b) what are Fr Bryan's reasons - reportedly described by Fr Bryan to his parishioners as "significant considerations" - for not wanting that extension.

Meanwhile, my PP is telling his 'Parish Team' that the bishop personally asked the Minister of Immigration to extend the visa but the Minister refused to intervene. 

If this is a case of a priest finding the care of such a large parish, geographically, a cross too heavy to carry on his own, we lay people need to be told. We should be asked to get down on our knees, for heaven's sake (I say that advisedly), and pray for our priests, and for more priests.

Even if Fr Bryan's considerations are personal, this diocese has dire need of not just the occasional, casual "for more vocations, Lord hear us", but sustained, intense prayer, offering the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and the Rosary, for the intention not of 'more vocations' but of good, holy priests. God is always calling boys and men to the priesthood, but plugged in and wired up as they are now with digital distractions, they're on a different wave length; they can't hear His sweet invitations.

The Diocese of Palmerston North needs clarity on this issue. Lumen Gentium (Vat II) emphasizes "the importance of lay faithful in maintaining … the Catholic faith". Well, to maintain the faith, lay faithful need to be trusted with the facts. For far too long the Church has hushed things up, with disastrous results.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan, a cleric who's earned an international reputation for defending the Catholic faith, warns against "a church of a relativistic or Protestant type". Speaking on the merely literal level, what is removing the tabernacle from its central position in the sanctuary to be replaced by the presider's chair, if not Protestant?

As demonstrated at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit and Our Lady of Lourdes in PN - and most egregiously at Sacred Heart, Hastings and St Mary's, Taradale - that shifts the focus of the Mass from the Eucharistic Presence of Jesus Christ to the priest. It seems that in spite of the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum, such improper promotion of the priest what we do, in this diocese.

St Brigid's church in Pahiatua, also in Fr Buenger's patch, is currently undergoing renovation plans and, I'm reliably informed, along the lines of St Joseph's Dannevirke where the tabernacle is in its rightful place. Is the St Brigid's reno a 'significant' factor in Fr Bryan's decision to depart?

Bishop Schneider says "the clergy are afraid and intimidated because they're afraid of (losing) their positions". He adds that the Second Vatican Council says this is the laity's hour:  "be defenders of the faith". And, I'm sure he would agree, defenders of the faithful priests.

"The Lord does not abandon His Church, even when the boat has taken on so much water as to be on the verge of capsizing" (Pope Benedict XVI).