PN'S CATHOLIC DIOCESE: ''A LEAKY BOAT' DRIFTING TOWARDS AN EVIL PORT

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SIX MEN IN A LEAKY BOAT

DAVID MULLINS

Diocese of Palmerston North 

A CRITIQUE

I guess it’s because David Mullins is employed by the Catholic Church that in this opinion piece posted on the PN Diocese website he prevaricates just a little bit.

Mullins refers tactfully to “sexual abuse among priests”, but not to homosexuality, and not among bishops.  “Cover-ups", he says, "allowed this behaviour to continue”. Cover-ups, that is, by bishops and cardinals.

“Lay people in NZ,” he says, “don’t know what to think”.

That’s because we don’t know what to believe. We haven't been formed in the faith,so we're deprived of that personal relationship with Jesus Christ which rightly informs thought and belief.

“Proud to be Catholic?”  asks Mullins.  

No, I’m not ‘proud’ to be Catholic. I’m profoundly grateful to be Catholic.

Mullins laments a “failure of personal integrity, hierarchy, governance”, which in reality is a failure to pray and consequently failure to love.

He advises that “the way forward is a radical reshaping of Church governance.” 

The way forward is the same as ever: the way Christ tells us is strait and narrow: the radical (back to the roots) way of the Gospel, Tradition and the Magisterium.

“The bishops and clergy (who) hold the major governance strings” have evidently forgotten – if they ever knew – how to pray contemplatively. If they were contemplatives they'd be equipped to listen and relate to the young people at the forthcoming Youth Synod (who, incidentally, will be addressed by the homosexualist Jesuit Fr James Martin) and be competent to address their issues. But because clergy don’t know how to pray and preach, young people have by and large deserted the Church. Young people who are mainly unchurched, but who get drafted for Synods and World Youth Days for a bit of OE, are in no position to make decisions influencing the future of the Church.

If the clergy were faithful to the Gospel, to Tradition and the Magisterium, young people would automatically be represented in 'governance', as priests - as we see in vocations to traditional Orders like the FSSP.

“Should the Synods of Bishops be reframed as Synods of the Church?’ Mullins suggests  moving the chairs on the deck.

‘A diverse range of people acting in a range of positions in real governance’ would certainly make a difference - a disastrous difference. What faith formation would be expected of this ‘diverse range of people’ before they’re given ‘real canonical clout’?

‘Ordination is ordination for service’, yes. It’s also ordination to nourish the Church with the word and grace of God in the name of Christ (CCC). That’s exactly what hasn’t been done. That’s why the ‘Church is dying’ (to quote my parish priest, Fr Paul Kerridge, in a recent Sunday ‘homily’). The Church is dying of starvation because the clergy have failed to nourish her with the word and grace of God.

So “the Australian Royal Commission in institutional child sexual abuse” says that the Australian Catholic Bishops should conduct a review of its governance and management structures including ‘issues of accountability, transparency, consultation and the participation of lay men and women' - and the Australian Conference of Bishops and Religious rolled over and accepted that recommendation.

Ahem. The Australian Royal Commission, no matter how highly powered and highly paid, could fairly be described as worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, causing divisions (Jude 19). The Catholic Church doesn’t need the Australian Royal Commission to tell us how to run the affairs of the Spirit: the Church needs Christ. She needs the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

And don’t get me started on Fr Thomas Rosica. Father Rosica is a creep. His hero is the arch-heretic ex-priest Fr Gregory Baum RIP (we may hope and pray). Rosica, a homosexualist just like Fr Martin (who was on the playlist at the last NZ Bishops’ Conference), told the Synod on the Family in 2015 that there is a sexual nature to the Eucharist. 

And then  this heretic gets appointed to run a week long retreat for parish priests. No wonder the American Church has gone rotten. In aftertimes there should be false teachers, scoffing and ridiculing all revealed truths, abandoning themselves to their passions and lusts, who separate themselves from the Catholic community by heresies and schisms (Douay Rheims).

Mullin quotes Rosica as saying: “Diabolical works are about monologue. The works of the Spirit are about dialogue.”

Que? Really? “The whole work of our sanctification may be reduced to a question of DOCILITY TO THE DIVINE PARACLETE. Before all else, WE MUST BE VERY ATTENTIVE AND DOCILE TO HIS INVITATIONS: If today you would hear His voice, harden not your hearts (Ps 94,8)” – Divine Intimacy, Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen OCD.

We don’t 'dialogue' with the Holy Spirit, we listen. And for that we need silence, interior as well as exterior.

Mullins’ gives a “model of governance” for the Church. He gets it right at the beginning (“discern the will of God”) and the end (“salvation of souls”) but it falls over in the middle. 

Who in the ‘communio’ (NB: new buzz word) is going to attempt Ignatian discernment? In our parish of Holy Trinity CHB we don’t have a liturgy group even. ‘Parish Team’ meetings, once a month maybe, take one hour. Only a handful of diehards still go to weekday Mass. That’s how much time and thought the much-vaunted 'spirit of Vatican II' has bequeathed us for discerning the will of God and the salvation of souls.

Mullins’ “crucial questions” are certainly begging to be asked. But ‘Six Men in a Leaky Boat’ is, to mix metaphors, from beginning to end a classic example of the tail wagging the dog. An awful lot of persiflage is employed on 'governance' while totally neglecting the imperative need for prayer and sacrifice. The Catholic Church is funded only by love of God and union with God. Only God can make it fruitful. There’s only one motive for saving souls, and that is love for God - or to give it the right name, charity.

People entrusted with “policy, direction, decision making and governance” must be people of spiritual maturity - which means people who spend a significant amount of time every day both in ‘communio’ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and in personal, contemplative prayer. And don’t tell me people don’t have time. If they make the effort, God will in the most inventive and amazing ways, give them all the time they need.

Mullins recognises that “any view I hold or idea I propose will need refining through discussion and dialogue with others who can influence”.

Er, excuse me, but the One ‘who can influence’ par excellence is the Holy Spirit – who has been effectively banished from any and all ‘dialogue’ in the Diocese of Palmerston North, by diocesan denial of the existence of the last of His seven gifts: fear of the Lord. 

The consequences of that denial are painfully obvious in this diocesan mouthpiece. The only mention of God is one Cardinal Williams (so, outdated) quote and the only reference to the Spirit is from the dubious Fr Rosica, who thinks ‘the works of the Spirit are about dialogue’. 

This would be incomprehensible to my good Protestant friends in Voice for Life. Let’s stop right there and reflect on the fact that the pro-life movement in NZ was once almost exclusively Catholic. Now in Central Hawke's Bay, for example, I'm the only Catholic on a committee of earnest Protestants. The pro-life movement in NZ is another witness to lack of fruits in the 'Church of Nice' which the Catholic Church in New Zealand has become.

No one comes to God except through Jesus, and no one comes to Jesus except through his Mother, but Mullin makes no mention whatsoever of the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God, Mediatrix of all Graces.

If our clergy had been taught how to pray – but I have it on good authority that contemplative prayer isn’t taught in our seminaries - they would never have talked down devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. When did you last see a priest on his knees praying the Rosary? The only time the Rosary gets a trot in my parish is at vigils before Requiems, and then it’s hideously truncated.

And when did you last see a priest on his knees before the Blessed Sacrament for longer than it takes to enunciate The Divine Praises? The Eucharist comes to us through Mary and from both flow authentic evangelisation and vocations to the priesthood and the religious life.

Six Men in a Leaky Boat is utterly predictable, given that for as long as I can remember – for as long as I’ve been a sentient Catholic – the Leaky Boat of the Catholic Church in New Zealand has been rowed mostly by weak and/or ambitious bishops.

So now it’s shipping water. In the global storm now howling around the Church, the lay faithful must awake, man the pumps, keep watch and pray that this Leaky Boat doesn’t drift into an evil port.

JACINDA IS ANYTHING BUT KIND (Letter to Dom Post, September 29)

Oh, spare me, Duncan Garner (Masterful Ardern dances through the UN minefield, September 29).

 

Jacinda Ardern is anything but kind. It is not kind to tote a baby Neve’s age to New York. It is not kind to risk depleting Neve’s breast milk supply by overworking and not being there to feed her when she wants. By denying herself the bonding with baby Neve in her early months that can never happen later, Jacinda is not kind even to herself.

 

Above all she is not kind to the unborn babies she would condemn, by liberalising abortion, to hideously painful deaths.

FATHER, WOULD YOU LIKE TO COME TO MY PARISH PLEASE?

I attended a Requiem Mass today. 

It was certainly a tribute to my classmate at Sacred Heart College Wanganui (colloquially known, according to a visiting Redemptorist priest during our time there, as 'the red light on the hill'). 

A tribute not just in the usual way, with photos and flowers and eulogies, but a tribute to her faith. The congregation actually seemed to know what was going on. They stood at the appropriate moments without being told. They prayed the responses. I wasn't looking, but it seemed like a lot of people received Holy Communion. Everyone including small children in the rows in front of me, filed out and queued up.

But not before they were invited by the celebrant to receive if they were Catholics in good standing with the Church. If they weren't Catholics but wanted a blessing, they should go forward with hands crossed on the chest. 

The Gospel was John 6: 48-58, the Bread of Life Discourse. You can't get more Catholic than that, and Father made the most of the opportunity. It was straightforward, honest-to-God, flat out orthodox, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church doctrine. When he concluded, the woman beside me said, "What a great homily".

I don't suppose it was Father, who hasn't been in the parish long, who was responsible for the bunch of flowers sited centre-stage where the tabernacle should be. At least the Blessed Sacrament was there, and clearly visible. Just side-lined and offside. But hey, we've got used to that. (No we haven't!)

On the way out, another friend and survivor of that superb school for Catholic girls, SHC, (now, unhappily and typically of our times, demolished to make room for a pretentious old people's home) said to Father, "Would you like to come to my parish, please?"

I didn't hear his reply, but I did explain to my friend when we got outside that he couldn't really, because he was going back to the States. 

"Why?" she asked.

"I should say, quite likely," I said, "because of what we've just heard. His homilies". I could have added, the fact that he is demonstrably very careful to avoid sacrilegious communions. 

Orthodoxy is not the way we do things in the Diocese of Palmerston North. But "orthodoxy is the first condition of sanctity" (Cardinal Pie, one of the greatest figures of the French Church in the XIX century and greatly admired by Pope St Pius X). That might go a long way towards explaining why the Diocese of Palmerston North has no saints and isn't likely to acquire any.

There are other reasons for Father's return to the States: an expired visa and an episode of ill-health. But there are, in Father's own words, "other significant considerations". The Diocese of Palmerston North is losing a beautiful priest, and we don't know all the reasons why.

Oh, in case you're still wondering, the celebrant at today's Requiem was Fr Bryan Buenger, of Tararua Parish.

POPE FRANCIS AND BONO HAVE 'A SORT OF CRUSH ON EACH OTHER'

Guess what? Pope Francis is 'aghast' at sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

So says Irish U2 rock star Bono, who was granted a private audience with the Pope last Wednesday.

Yes, the Irish have a sense of humour, but Bono really thought the Pope was 'sincere'. 

"We sort of have a crush on each other," said Bono. Isn't that cute?

And hey, they talked about "the wild beast that is capitalism". What does that tell us about the Pope's political agenda? 

And when Bono told Pope Francis that "in Ireland it looks as though the abusers are being more protected than the victims, you could see the pain in his face." 

We might suppose that the 'pain' was caused by feelings of guilt. Shouldn't the audience have been for victims of priestly sex abuse in his own former diocese in Argentina, whom the Pope's refused to see, rather than a rock star? 

Okay, so Bono was chumming up for an agreement between his education charity, ONE, and the Pope's version, Scholas. 

But let's not forget that Bono and U2 are famously (or should that be infamously?) pro-abortion, tweeting support for ending Ireland's pro-life Eighth Amendment and legalizing abortion in the Emerald Isle. 

And then there was 'pro-choice' Dutch former minister of development Lilianne Ploumen, who launched 'She Decides', a campaign promoting abortion, whom Pope Francis has made a Dame in the Pontifical Order of St Gregory the Great.

And Nigel Biggar, a philosopher appointed to the PONTIFICAL ACADEMY FOR LIFE who would 'be inclined to draw the line at 18 weeks' gestation'. Othewise for Biggar, an ANGLICAN MINISTER, abortion is fine.

What about Katarina Le Blanc, the eugenicist who experiments on unborn babies for a pro-abortion institute, also appointed to the Pontifical Academy for LIFE?

Two further appointees to the Pontifical Academy for LIFE oppose Catholic doctrine by their support for using multiple embryos for stem cell research. They are Shimya Yamanaka and Avraham Steinberg. Plus there's Father Maurizio Chiodi, who's all for contraception and EUTHANASIA BY STARVATION.

If you find this hard to believe, there's a pic online of Pope Francis, the Head of the Catholic Church, simpering at Ms Ploumen, who's a very busy abortion lobbyist. After a storm of protest the Vatican fell over itself explaining the honour was merely a matter of diplomacy and the Pope didn't know what she'd been up to. However, Vatican watchers say Francis just "flat out knows what's going on".

An outspoken American priest, Fr Peter West, says the Pope giving an award to a pro-abortionist is like Jesus bestowing an honour on Herod. "Jesus," says Fr West, dined with sinners and called them to conversion. He did not bestow public honours on them and affirm them in their sins."

BONO. LILIANNE PLOUMEN. KATARINA LE BLANC. SHIMYA YAMANAKA. AVRAHAM STEINBERG. FATHER CHIODI: a veritable Rogues' Gallery.

 

By their friends ye shall know them.

GO ON, VILE JUDASES, GO TO THE HOLY TABLE

"A gay profession." That's what the New York Times is calling the Catholic priesthood.   

Catholics in the US are furious with their bishops, who looked the other way while thousands of young people were perverted and abused by gay, predator priests, and now those bishops have come back from Rome with the clerical tail between the legs, because  ope Francis has refused to investigate Archbishop Vigano's testimony against the evil Theodore McCarrick and his cabal of bishops and cardinals.

As Pope Francis is heavily implicated, were the bishops being just a teeny bit naïve, asking him to investigate himself? How useful would such an inquiry be? Anyway, without the Pope's consent, the US bishops can't do a thing. 

Don't feel too sorry for them. They're way too late trying. The horse of homosexuality bolted from its stable in the hierarchy years ago and is now galloping gaily, you might say, all over the world - viz Father James Martin LGBTQSJ, fresh from proselytizing at the Synod ON THE FAMILY in Ireland and soon to trot up to Catholic youth at their synod next month.

This synod sounds like a jack-up. A best-selling papal biographer (of Pope John Paul II), George Weigel, says its 'Working Document' is "a 30,000+ brick … a bloated, tedious doorstop full of sociologese but woefully lacking in spiritual or theological insight."

Worse, "it has little to say about 'the faith' except to hint that its authors are embarrassed by Catholic teaching (which) challenges the world's fanatical commitment to the sexual revolution". And for the first time ever in a Vatican document, we see the loaded term LGBTQ.

EIGHT YOUNG PRIESTS IN THE STATES HAVE CHIMED IN. THIS WORKING DOCUMENT FOR THE SYNOD ON YOUTH, they say, FAILS TO COUNTERACT SEXUAL IMMORALITY. 

THEY SAY WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE DESPERATELY NEED IS A PERSONAL, POWERFUL ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS CHRIST.

Which returns me to that diocesan priests' seminar in Christchurch, where a Canadian import, a Fr James Mallon, promoted another 'import', the Anglican Alpha Programme. Fr Mallon says that for 1600 years a 'mistranslation' had priests "doing sacraments, catechesis and more catechesis".

Fr Mallon may not realise how rarely priests in NZ 'do sacraments' - and does he realize the quality of our catechesis?

In New Zealand, how many still bother with the Sacrament of Reconciliation? The result of its neglect is, as Our Lady said years ago to the Marian Movement of Priests, "there is hardly a Mass today where there is not a sacrilegious Communion".

Who even realizes what that means?  When we see one occurring, as we do on a regular basis, in one case with the knowledge and connivance of the priest, we can only pray for the communicant - and for the priest. As St John Vianney, patron of parish priests and the only parish priest ever canonized, has said: "go on, vile Judas, go to the holy table, go and give death to your God and your Saviour!" 

As for catechesis, here in New Zealand we're told that "THE CHURCH IS DYING", and the only consolation offered to Catholics sitting by the deathbed of their Mother the Church, is  some vague idea of  'Encounter with Jesus Christ'. How we do that is left to our imagination.

BUT THOSE YOUNG PRIESTS IN THE STATES SAY THAT AS WELL AS A PERSONAL, POWERFUL ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS CHRIST, YOUNG PEOPLE NEED A JOYFUL PROCLAMATION OF ORTHODOX CATHOLIC FAITH.

HERE IN NEW ZEALAND HOWEVER, OUR YOUNG PEOPLE ARE TOLD CATHOLICS DON'T HAVE TO BELIEVE ANYTHING.

IS THAT OKAY WITH OUR BISHOPS? ARE THEY LIKELY TO LEARN FROM THEIR BROS IN THE US, AND STAND UP FOR THE FAITH NOW, BEFORE THE POPE HAS THEM OVER A BARREL TOO?

IS IT OKAY WITH NEW ZEALAND CATHOLICS? AND IF NOT, WHAT ARE NZ CATHOLICS GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

CATHOLICS DON'T HAVE TO BELIEVE ANYTHING!

At Mass this morning Father told us how he gets asked by people who want to become Catholics, "Where's the list of what I have to believe?" 

"There isn't one!" says Father, and he waves his arms. "You don't have to believe anything to be a Catholic!" 

And then he asks us to stand up and recite the Nicene Creed. 

I ask you ... 

So this is what the recent national diocesan gathering of Catholic priests in Christchurch was all about. 

They call it 'Evangelisation and Mission'.

FRANCIS GETS TO BE CALLED THE POPE AND THE COMMOS GET TO CHOOSE THE BISHOPS

Today it looks like it's all over for the Catholic Church in China, bar the shouting.

Pope Francis has done a deal, to be signed by the end of the month. He gets to be recognized as the Pope and the Communist regime in Beijing gets to choose the bishops. And this at a time when the Communists are cracking down on religious freedom. Given their method of cracking down on women who conceive a second child (forced abortion), we can only imagine how they'll crack down on Catholics who worship a 'foreign' God. 

Sounds like in future the patsy Catholic bishops in China will be good shepherds about as much as the bishops in New Zealand, in the Church of Nice. 

Niceness like beauty is only skin deep: scratch the surface and what's exposed is Nasty.

NZ's bishops are led by +Patrick Dunn, who enthuses about Luther and his disastrous 'Reformation' - more properly called the Deformation - and about Fr James (Jimmy) Martin, the homosexualist Jesuit who at the blasphemous Met Gala tweeted the compliment paid him,"I love that you got dressed up like a sexy priest". 

Last year in NZ Catholic +Dunn wrote a review of Fr Martin's Building A Bridge, Dah-De-Dah, calling it 'a beautiful book'. It's all about LGBTQs feelings of 'rejection' by the Church - which by the way should cease forthwith to use the word 'homosexual'. LGBTQs don't like it. It's like calling a black person a 'negro'. 

+Dunn thinks 'devout Catholics' should get over their 'fear' that celebrating Masses with and for the LGBTQ community would be seen as giving tacit approval to everything they do, because after all, a Mass for business leaders doesn't mean the Church approves of everything they do. This is what now passes for apologetics in the Church. It's embarrassing.

Dear Bishop Dunn, when one calls oneself a businessman, one is not defining one's morals. The Catholic Church defines active homosexuality as 'intrinsically disordered'. It does not define business as 'intrinsically disordered'. Oops! That's not a nice term. +Dunn thinks it's 'needlessly cruel'. 

What I want to ask is, is 'intrinsically disordered' more or less 'needlessly cruel' than 'immoral' or 'shameful', which are the adjectives St Paul applies to active homosexuality? And anyway, what, may I ask, can possibly be needfully cruel?

Kiwi Catholics are in general nice people. I suspect they see the perversion of predator priests and bishops, and its cover-up by bishops, cardinals and many Argentinians would also say, the Pope, as being far away, in 'Rome' - which is held up from time to time at Mass as an object of mild derision. "In New Zealand," says Father, "we do things differently".

So where were those photos taken that were shown on Tv One News in July last year of what looked to be a gay wedding? The happy couple were posed in front of what looked remarkably like the high altar in the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Palmerston North. Even more remarkably, Year of Mercy flags were hung on either side of the altar. 

Maybe these guys just thought it would be a fun thing to walk in off the street for a pic, just to take the mickey out of the Church. But the photos were two of a series shown on Tv One News of a wedding. Was it really a same-sex wedding, or maybe just a blessing? Questions have been asked, but in the tradition of the Bergoglian era, not answered.

And just a couple of weeks ago, at a weekday Mass at the same cathedral, an openly gay couple were enthusiastically welcomed with hugs, and then given Holy Communion. Maybe they're celibate. But if so they, and the presider, should be more discreet.

One wonders how long will it be before we see photos of the parish priest posing in the sanctuary in front of the tabernacle - below the crucifix! - with a somewhat stunning but very sad collection of drag queens, as in the Canary Islands last month.


"We should be disgusted by the filth and corruption in the spotless Bride of Christ, the Holy Catholic Church. The Church has been made a cesspool, a sewer which is poisonous. Toxic."

That, from last Sunday's sermon at South St Paul's, Washington DC, is what we need to hear in New Zealand. Instead, Father told us last Sunday that "the Church is dying!".Not because it's poisoned itself, but because the Church that is our Mother is past it. Out of date. So our Mother the Church is dying. But apart from that, Father's reflections on the diocesan priests' gathering at the 4 star +  hotel in Christchurch, where the food was so good and so plentiful, gave us to understand that business will be as usual. 

+Carlo Maria Vigano, an archbishop who was once the third most powerful man in the Vatican, who managed all the papal nuncios throughout the world, who turned the Vatican budget around from loss to surplus and made enemies for exposing corruption, was demoted to the office of nuncio himself and like the prophets of the past was, in an attempt to silence him, sent into exile and is now in hiding, in fear literally for his life; but for the Church in New Zealand it's business as usual. 

Faithful Catholics need to pray. I recommend prayer to Our Lady of Good Success, who in the 16th century in Quito, Ecuador, made astoundingly accurate prophecies about the state of the Catholic Church last century and now. 

We need to pray, fast and do penance. Pope Francis asked for the first two, but not for the last. Penance after all, is a bit … well, Catholic, isn't it.  . 

JUDGE FRANCE CAPTURED BY LIBERAL MARXIST IDEOLOGY (letter printed in Dom Post, Sept 17)

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Justice Simon France, who thinks promotion of “the traditional family cannot be shown to be in the public benefit” (Who's boss, God or the State?, September 12), is asking for it.

Surely anyone who earns a living in court rooms must notice the huge proportion of people who come before him who were not brought up in traditional families?

Or if he hasn’t noticed these people in court, doesn’t he read the papers? How many sad stories – two in today’s issue – feature mothers and children in trouble, with no mention of a father? 

How can the High Court be right in 2015 and wrong three years later? Because the judge, like the media, has been captured by the liberal Marxist ideology which thinks private lives are best managed, not by men and women committed in marriage to each other and their children, but the State.

The worse mess the State makes of our private lives, the more power and control will it assume. We’re falling headlong into the totalitarian trap, and it’s not of God’s making.

THE CHURCH IS IN SCHISM AND THE DEVIL IS PICKING ON THE BISHOPS

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"The lines have been drawn." 

So said a friend to me this morning as we left Mass - feeling not just shaken, I must say, but stirred as well.

So stirred, in fact, that in our ensuing conversation I actually stamped my foot. Because in a homily that shed light on the past week's national gathering of diocesan priests in Christchurch, at "a 4-Star Plus Hotel!" - a line delivered around the fake plum in Father's mouth, to general laughter - we were asked, "does God really want this church filled on Sundays?"

I supposed, mentally, with my hands clenched as they were throughout an horrific ten minutes or so, that yes, God probably does. That is, if He still wants his Third Commandment obeyed. 

But to return for a moment to that hotel in Christchurch. "The food!"  (Laughter.) The congregation were given to understand it was a bit upmarket for penny-pinching priests - "but - we got used to it". More mirth. 

What about the sexual abuse crisis? The thousands of victims around the globe whose lives have been wrecked by predatory priests? What about the Vatican's protection of power and corruption racket? What about the Catholic Church as a world-wide organized crime syndicate? Rampant homosexuality in the priesthood and hierarchy? What did that national gathering of diocesan priests have to say about that? 

Nothing, or nothing fit for our ears. Father wasn't "going down a rabbit hole on this", to quote Chicago's Archbishop Blase Cupich, when he explained why Pope Francis wasn't going to reply to the devastating +Vigano testimony - an infelicitous choice of metaphor, given that Dante in his Inferno has wicked priests spending eternity in hell stuffed head-down in rabbit holes. No, apparently for the priests in Christchurch and certainly for the congregation this morning, the message was keep calm and carry on.

And that's the Vatican's M.O. too. Pope Francis has ended his silence ("I'm not going to say a word about this") to utter two, which are: Conference February. He'll hold a conference on the sex abuse crisis in the Church in February 2019. Five months away. 

The Pope's line of 'no sex abuse in Argentina when I was in charge' has been declared by a group of victims there to be "a lie". "He receives celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio" but none of them had received from the Pope as much as an acknowledgment of their letter.

In the meantime, gay celeb Fr James Martin (that's 'Jimmy' to the LGBTQ+ crowd) will entertain young Catholics at the Youth Synod in October, and the Vatican is steam-rollering the canonization of Pope Paul VI. (Does it seem to you that the haste with which recent popes are being done up as saints is somewhat indecent? Specially Paul VI, who lamented "a spirit of auto-demolition" in the Church which he himself had unplugged, especially the liturgical reform which Cardinal Ratzinger defined as a "collapse of the liturgy"?)

The Pope has in the last week at least admitted that Satan has been at work. But whoa! Not the way you're thinking. Not for Luther's attacks and the Church's refusal to budge and reform herself which led to the unprecedented disaster of what I call the Deformation (celebrated so memorably by the Bishop of Auckland et al, last year); not for infiltrating the hierarchy with Freemasons and Communists since the 1920s; not for Protestantizing and vulgarizing the Catholic liturgy; not for getting Catholics to take the Most Holy Eucharist in their fingers as if they were accepting a tip.

No, Satan's just entered the Pope's picture of the sex abuse scandal in the last week or so - since Archbishop Vigano's revelations of nauseating wickedness in the Vatican, in fact. "The Great Accuser has been unchained and is attacking bishops," said Pope Francis.

Look, people, we got it wrong. It's not the sex abuse victims by the thousand (50,000 at one estimation) that we should be feeling sorry for, it's the bishops. We have to pray for the bishops. They're sinners, yes, said the Pope, but heck, we're all sinners. The Devil is roaming the world, said Pope Francis, looking for someone to blame for the sex abuse, and the Devil is picking on the bishops! "He tries to uncover the sins so they are visible, to scandalize the people."

Does this sound like character assassination to you? Surely the Pope couldn't be calling Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a man of impeccable credentials and character, the Devil? Nah. I'm imagining things.

Look people, we have to wake up. The Catholic Church is in schism. As my friend said this morning, the lines have been drawn. We have to choose, and I choose to be a Rad. Trad. 

Nothing can be done to force the Pope to resign. "A Pontifex indubitatis cannot lawfully be deposed or judged … even if he is so scandalous as to lead people with him by crowds into possession of hell" - Decretam of Gratian, quoted by Prieras in his Epitome against Luther. 

One thing we can do however, is refuse to give another cent to the Church until the Pope has addressed this burning issue.

And we can choose. We have to choose. Are we traditional Catholics, or apostates? 

But hey, don't let all this get you down. It's not that bad! Everything in the garden's rosy. If you don't believe me, look at a photo of Pope Francis and friends at a meeting today, chewing the fat on all the above.

They look like they couldn't be happier.

READY TO SACRIFICE A PRO-HOMO POPE

It's odds-on that the secular media will soon turn on Pope Francis. And for moi, it can't happen too soon.

I've been reminded today of an appalling story I heard some time back which has been engulfed, in what I laughingly refer to as my memory, by a tsunami of appalling stories concerning priestly pederasts in the Catholic Church ever since that infamous report by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury.

It's the story of an Italian bishop, Vincenzo Paglia, and the massive homoerotic mural he commissioned for his cathedral church of Terni-Narni-Amelia, featuring Jesus Christ modelled on a local homosexual hairdresser because Paglia considered that Jesus is thought of as "too masculine".

Paglia supervised every detail of the mural and had himself included, embracing a naked man among the netsful of nude homosexuals, transsexuals, prostitutes and drug dealers jumbled together in erotic poses, whom Jesus is carrying heavenwards. The artist, a homosexual Argentinian, wanted to include depictions of copulation but Paglia and his cohort, a Father Fabio Leonardis, said it wasn't necessary because the work already demonstrated the 'freedom that man has in reality in this world and the next.'

Well pardon me, but the Catholic Church teaches that those who exercise that sort of 'freedom' and die unrepentant will suffer eternal damnation.

This man Paglia was promoted to the archbishopric, to head the Pontifical Academy for Life. Pope Francis then appointed him president of the St John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family Life - but not before sacking all its orthodox members.

Under his presidency the Pontifical Academy for Life issued a new sex education programme which includes lascivious and pornographic images. A psychologist involved in its production suggested that Paglia be evaluated in accordance with the norms of the Dallas Charter, which is meant to protect children from sex abuse. 

What really disturbed the psychologist was that "the pornographic images in this programme are similar to those used by adult sexual predators of adolescents". Does this incident not give us a glimpse of the methods used by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to groom young people for illicit sex? 

Paglia's next move was to remove from the statutes the requirement for members of the Pontifical Academy to sign a declaration of fidelity to the Church's teaching on the right to life. And at last someone did something. In February this year all Academy memberships were terminated, leaving Paglia and his staff at the head of an empty organization. 

But Paglia's still there. That obscene mural is still there, in a Catholic cathedral in Italy. 

And Pope Francis who promoted Paglia is still there, in the Vatican. 

But the secular, left-wing media, formerly the Francis Fan Club, are scenting blood. They've weighed the mass of evidence and the mass of popular opinion and may be about ready to sacrifice a pro-homosexual pope, simply because he's the pope. If they can bring down this pope, they surmise they can bring down the next.


My eldest brother was named Peter Damian. He drowned in 1958. I adored him. What did the Saint and Doctor of the Church my brother was named for have to say, 900 years ago, about priests and pederasty?

He saw sodomy, especially in the priesthood, as a terrible plague that threatened to bring down the wrath of God.

"How am I loving my neighbor as myself," asked St Peter Damian, "if I negligently allow the wound, by whom I do not doubt him to be dying a cruel death, to fester in his soul? Seeing therefore the spiritual wounds, should I neglect to cure them by the surgery of words?"

St Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church, denounced prelates for their 'cruel mercy' and 'impious piety' in refusing to punish evildoers.

'Book of Gomorrah' by St Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church: recommended reading for Pope Francis. 

NO SODOMITES IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolators nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor robbers will inherit the Kingdom of God.

Pardon me? How judgmental is that? Isn't that hate speech? Surely!

Er, no. Priests the world over heard that message today - in New Zealand, read by a lay minister, probably a woman, probably blushing - at Mass. It comes from no less than the Apostle to the Gentiles, St Paul, writing to the Corinthians. (1 Cor 6,10).

You wouldn't get away with saying what St Paul does in any dreary JPIC seminar (where the primary social injustice, of killing the unborn, is never mentioned). And he certainly wasn't writing to NZ Catholic or Tui Motu. 

If he were, his letter would not be published. I  took a look at Tui Motu this week, for the first time in years and was reassured: I haven't been missing anything I shouldn't. From the first page to the last, Tui Motu is all about SOCIAL JUSTICE (except for the right to life). There's even a letter from a priest - who shall remain nameless here - advocating for women priests.

The Catholic Church - the Bride of Christ - is enjoying (if that's the right word) an adulterous affair, with that whore who Jesus Christ said hated him, and should also hate the Church: the World. As my brother Karl du Fresne stated in his column last week in The Dominion Post, it's as if the Christian churches have decided God "doesn't cut it any more" so even the Sallies are into social issues - homelessness, poverty, damp houses - instead of the Gospel. 

Actually I'm thinking of suing my bro for plagiarism. He talked about the churches' business being "saving souls, not the planet" - a phrase which has a very familiar ring to me. In regard to the Catholic Church, he talked also about "two churches" and there again, he's right on the button. There are franciscans, and there are Catholics who take the Gospel seriously and don't want the Church re-invented, because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. 

Pope Francis of course is a champion of social justice and Planet Earth, so much so that he backed the evil baby-killer Hillary Clinton for the US presidency against Donald Trump - even, Henry Sire, author of The Dictator Pope suggests, instructing the Patrimony of the Apostolic See to help finance her campaign. 

If it was good enough, apparently, for Pope John Paul II to back Ronald Reagan against Communism, it followed that Pope Francis could promote Hillary Clinton's liberalism, which rated unborn babies as being wanted about as much as plastic bags. Remember how Pope Francis ticked Trump off? It wasn't Christian, he said, to build walls. Remember how he ticked Clinton off for her loudly-touted pro-abortion agenda? No. I don't either.

Meanwhile, back in Rome: the Pope's wall of silence, studiously maintained in the face of the Filial Correction, the Dubia and the testimony of Archbishop Vigano - which has provoked such ad hominem attack - looks to be cracking. 

The Vatican has announced that "The Holy See is working on formulating potential and necessary clarifications". 

All pomposity aside - and all the outrage too, over McCarrick's sexual predation being an open secret in the US Church - it's  deemed 'necessary' now at last, perhaps, because following on the horrific findings by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury, seven more US states have now issued subpoenas on the Catholic Church in all their dioceses on their reporting of sex abuse.


So while the Pope's nine cardinal advisors are thinking what to say, I'll leave the last remark to one of only four female Doctors of the Church, the great St Catherine of Siena:

 "We've had enough exhortations to be silent. Cry out with a thousand tongues! I see the world is rotten because of silence." 

"DRESSED UP LIKE A SEXY PRIEST"

"I love it that you got dressed up like a sexy priest" - 

Celebrity homosexual priest Fr James Martin SJ, author of a book advocating for affirmation for LGBTQs in the Catholic Church and nominated by US Cardinal Kevin Farrell to speak at the Irish World meeting for families, retweets a comment from a like-minded fan at the recent Met Gala Opening in New York.

You remember, that marvelous party where movie stars wore outfits insulting the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Vatican supplied priceless vestments for vulgar titillation and the Sistine Chapel Boys' Choir to perform, and New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan was guest of honour and just loved every minute of it.   

"Father Martin's desire for attention," says Joseph Sciambra, ex-gay and former porn star, "is sad and desperate. Who didn't hug him as a boy?"


Sciambra gives the lie to the statement I heard yesterday from a cradle Catholic, commenting on the homosexual scandal in the Church, "some people are born that way". 

If a lie's repeated often enough - especially in the media - it will be believed. And we know who invented lies, and how for a long time now Satan has been using this one to try to destroy the Catholic Church. And he's been successful to the same extent he got people to believe the even bigger lie, that he doesn't exist.

Sciambra says that in his youth, priest after priest in the confessional misrepresented the truth taught by the Catholic Church, encouraging him to pursue the homosexual lifestyle that nearly destroyed him. 

Those priests weren't told the truth, that homosexual relations are intrinsically disordered, in the seminaries where men like Cardinal 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick preyed on them and perverted them. 


A lot of sexy priests must be feeling queasy tonight, now that a lynch pin of the testimony of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has been confirmed. 

A diocesan priest in the US, Father Boniface Ramsey, warned the Apostolic Nuncio in 2000 that Cardinal McCarrick was harassing seminarians and having them sleep in his bed. Now the mainstream media have published a letter from the Vatican dated 2006 which inadvertently confirms the Vatican's receipt of that letter. 


Fr Ramsey had previously said he knew that his letter to the Vatican had been received but he'd had nil response. In 2004 he raised the matter again with Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, and guess what?

Cardinal Egan "didn't wanna talk about it". 

Just like Pope Francis on that plane from Ireland. He refuses to comment on the cover-up of McCarrick's sexual sins but he has plenty to say about the "emergency" of plastic waste in the ocean.

And the Pope says his critics are "a pack of wild dogs".

I suppose I'm one of them  - except I'm female. So what does that make me, exactly? Not that I care about that. 

I care about priests.

WHO NEEDS PRIESTS? LET'S HAVE 'LAY LEADERS'!

Our own Cardinal John Dew is one of  four highly placed prelates on the cover of  NZ Catholic for September 9. Their faces speak volumes. They are not happy men.

They were photographed in Ireland where on August 26, according to NZ Catholic, the Pope had 'solemnly asked forgiveness for the thousands of cases of sexual and physical abuse perpetrated by Catholics … acknowledging the failures of bishops, superiors, priests and others … to protect children from the "repugnant crimes" of physical and sexual abuse'.

The very next day, the bomb of Archbishop Vigano's 11-page testimony blew up in these clerical faces, and it was all about homosexuality.

Let's call a spade a spade. The obvious problem in the Church isn't sex abuse at all, it's rampant homosexuality, practised and promoted as a means to pervert the priesthood, putting roman collars on wolves in order to destroy the Church's moral authority and scatter the faithful.

And this homosexual culture - which is diametrically opposed to Catholic culture - is working pretty well: look at the dive in Mass counts even here in New Zealand, where the mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of evil) has been deployed in a far more subtle way than for example, in Pennsylvania, US. Look at the scarcity of priests.

Lack of priests, of course, follows lack of the Mass  as surely as night follows day - and make no mistake, it's the Eucharist which the mysterium iniquitatis means to take down.

But fear not, people! Cardinal John has the answer. The answer is not more priests to celebrate the Mass, but lay leaders! They will 'exercise many functions that normally would normally would be the responsibility of a parish priest'. And not just in New Zealand, but Australia and Ireland as well, because that's where the Cardinal has been pushing his barrow in recent weeks.

And these lay leaders will have impressive qualifications, theologically based qualifications from the Catholic Institute (TCI) - again, according to that pillar of the Church (because it's owned by Auckland's Bishop Pat Dunn), NZ Catholic.

It's been suggested to me that there was always A Strategy for dealing with a crisis like the stand-off between the Pope and the Archbishop. And it makes sense, doesn't it, because someone like Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Nuncio to the US, was bound to blow the whistle sooner or later.

The ground work for such a strategy, in New Zealand at least, would have been laid long ago, when our hierarchy - effete and PC to the nth degree, misunderstanding and/or subverting Vatican II's call for "active participation" - called for a cadre of 'lay leaders', and we heard cries from here and there for women priests, and married priests.

Cardinal Dew himself is reported in the Irish Times as saying, when asked if ordaining women of allowing priests to marry might help address the shortage of priests in Ireland, that it was "hard to say … it's clearly something that the Pope decides … there are a lot of people around who want that … it's a possibility." 

Really? I thought priests renounced marriage for 'the sake of the kingdom of heaven' (Mt 19,12). But I must say Cardinal Dew is doing well as understudy for Pope Francis. 

It's entirely credible that this is part of A Plan to destroy the Catholic Church from within originating with the 1100 'young, attractive' Communists in clerical collars who, Bella Dodd testified after her 'reversion' to the Church by Bishop Fulton Sheen, infiltrated the Church in the 30s and 40s and were rapidly promoted to positions of authority.

They were put there by the Party to weaken the Church's stand against Communism. Dodds told Alice von Hildebrand that 12 years before Vat II, four of them were cardinals. Go figure.

But we don't need the Party now. Instead we have well-intentioned, well-qualified lay people who in taking the place of priests in so many ways - especially leading 'Liturgies of the Word with Holy Communion' will have us asking, well who needs priests?

But don't pay any attention to moi. I'm just part of what the mainstream media characterize as a right-wing conspiracy to unseat Pope Francis. I'm probably homophobic to boot.

Remember, the mainstream media are largely run by the ladies of the liberal left, whom some might call 'fag hags'. They love Pope Francis because he's so kind to homosexuals. So kind he invited the disgraced Cardinal Daneels of Belgium, who was recorded in 2010 telling a young man to shut up about being abused by a bishop, to take part in his Synod on the Family.

Kindness is catching. Three years later Daneels lobbied (against all the rules) for Cardinal Bergoglio to be elected Pope, and then was invited by the new Pope Francis to stand with him on the balcony and wave at the crowds.

How kind is that?

WHY NOT EXPOSE THESE PRIESTS NOW?

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano's testimony, the express train which I've said many people saw coming, has arrived at the station of the Vatican and the Catholic faithful are waiting to watch its cargo of Judases disembark.

Curiously, this morning Pope Francis called for a nightly examen (examination of conscience), same as Cardinal John Dew does in the current NauMai. To me that suggests an orchestrated response to the sex abuse scandal in the Church, and as usual the tone is Protestant. Neither the Pope nor our cardinal suggests recourse, after practising the examen which any Christian of any denomination may do with great benefit, to the Sacrament of Penance.

And speaking of that Sacrament, I would suggest that one of the most truly awful 'reforms' following Vatican II was the abolition of the traditional confessional box which worked perfectly well for penitents in the Catholic Church for centuries.

If something ain't broke, don't fix it!

I used to wonder how many men joined the post-Vatican II stampede from the priesthood after yielding to the temptation to comfort and console a tearful female penitent who was no longer hidden behind a grille but sitting within arms' reach. But now we know that many predator priests preyed on their victims in the confessional.

IN THE TRADITIONAL CONFESSIONAL BOX WITH THE TRADITIONAL GRILLE THAT WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE.

I'm not easily embarrassed, but having been trained by the good 'Black Joes' at Sacred Heart College in Whanganui to confess weekly, I found the innovation after Vat II of a little room with two chairs placed for a comfy chat to be confronting and anything but comfortable. I think the alternative of a screen and kneeler was introduced later on, only to increase one's uneasiness: which way to go? Have a chat, or kneel behind the screen which is now redundant, because Father knows who's behind it, because they're the only person presenting for confession?

BRING BACK THE GRILLE!

Those Judases - men who have betrayed Jesus Christ by defiling their priestly orders - who will sooner or later be forced out of that express train, are active homosexuals and pederasts, which is why as I've said, there's this spooky silence in the media.

Why not expose these priests now? Because Francis is Pope.

Imagine if it were the conservative Pope Benedict who'd been indicted by Archbishop Vigano and asked to resign, how the story would be front-page in every newspaper. How would the media have reacted if it were Benedict who'd told journos on that plane from Ireland that he wasn't going to say a word? They'd have made a meal of it.

How the media reveled in their revelations of misconduct and evil in the Catholic Church under Benedict! But now we have a liberal pope and homosexual bishops are darlings of the media, journalists are silent, complicit in a cover-up which it is their specific task to reveal.

Which makes a nonsense of Pope Francis' appeal on that plane from Ireland to journalists' 'professional maturity'.

As US Bishop Robert Morlino says, "In the US and elsewhere, in fact, very little is more questionable than the professional maturity of journalists. The bias in the mainstream media could not be clearer and is recognized almost universally. I could never ascribe professional maturity to the National Catholic Reporter for example - and it's they who are leading the charge in the campaign of vilification against Archbishop Vigano."

FRANCIS WON'T SATISFY OUR 'CURIOSITY'

Silence. 

At his first Mass back at Santa Marta in Rome after his summer break, what does Pope Francis take from today's Gospel, in which Our Lord Jesus Christ stands up in Nazareth and identifies himself as the One of whom Isaiah speaks, and because he tells the Jews what's what, is hustled out of the synagogue and escapes an attempt to kill him?

Silence, that's what. 

The few words Pope Francis had to offer us were these: "Rather than satisfy their curiosity, Jesus used only the word of God." But actually in that synagogue in Nazareth, according to St Luke, "they wondered at the words of grace that proceeded from his mouth" (Lk 4,22). 

Oh, for some "words of grace" from the Vicar of Christ, for the faithful to wonder at now! (In fact, Jesus confronted the Jews with some home truths about God's preference, at times in their history, for the Gentiles.) 

Then the Pope added: "With people who only seek scandal" (viz, +Carlo Maria Vigano), "who seek only division, only destruction: silence, prayer."

So, people, shut up. Talk to God. He'll answer you. 

Ahem. Ironically, it was St Francis of Assisi who prophesied that there would come "a man raised to the pontificate … who, by his cunning, will endeavour to draw many into error and death" and at "the time of this tribulation" it would be necessary to "obey God rather than men" (Acts 5,29). 

So of course we should pray. That goes without saying. At all times, and at this time like no other. And as long as we're not seeking scandal and division and destruction, the question of obeying God rather than the Pope doesn't arise.

Not yet, that is.