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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.
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