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If he were, his letter would not be published.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."