'CARMELITES NEED TO UTILISE THE GIFTS OF GAYS'

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'It is a question of clericalism inherent in the very culture of the Church, which we must look at very honestly.' When I read these words in a Carmelite JPIC newsletter this week I saw red. Literally, as you can see. 

'Clericalism' is paraded as scapegoat for rampant homosexuality once more, in this instance by Bishop Vincent Long, Parramatta, the newbie in the episcopal chorus line I mentioned in my last post-but-one. Bishop Long was speaking to 'The Concerned Catholics of Canberra and Goulburn' - who should certainly now be more concerned than ever. 

And guess who should bob up in the November Welcom, #Me Too-ing about clericalism for all she's worth, but Sister Joan Chittister. I'd hoped we'd heard the last from her but she's obviously in Palmerston North Bishop Charles Drennan's good books. It figures.

What's more scary is that the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel has been dragged onstage  to join the performance of the New Church can-can by the Prior Provincial for Australia and New Zealand, Fr Paul Cahill O Carm, who shows he can kick as high as any bishop. So Carmelites world-wide should be extremely concerned also. (Although I'm very sorry to say many - in an order decorated with two Doctors of the Church - will agree with Fr Cahill who knows that too, otherwise he'd never have fronted up.)

Bishop Long says 'this celibate clerical club provides the ideal conditions for the disease of clericalism to fester'. In other words, priests should be married. Like Anglican priests. Excuse me, but what's that achieved for the Anglicans? 

Catholics - especially the Rad Trad push-back movement - should watch for the following buttons, pressed by Bishop Long and bound to be pushed again and again by clerics seeking to destroy the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church: 

• People of God: Jesuit, Marxist priests-speak, their term for the Catholic Church.
• Pilgrim Church*: franciscan-speak for Changing Church.
• A new culture 'of humility, accountability and service.' New? That's the 2000+ year-old Catholic, Gospel culture of the Catholic Church. Jesus instituted His Body the Church for humble service, and we its members will be held accountable at our particular judgment for "what we have done and what we have failed to do". It's also post-Vat II culture: priests "mortify in themselves the deeds of the flesh, and devote themselves entirely to the service of men … they should see to it that every part of their being is dead to evil habits and desires … let them practice the ascetism proper to a pastor of souls, renouncing their own convenience and seeking what is profitable for the man and not for themselves, so that the many may be saved(PO 12, 13) … (priests) should understand very clearly that they are not called to domination nor to honours (OT 9)… in a program of humble living (ibid) (like Jesus) who came not to be served, but to serve" (Mt 20:28).
• Voices from the margins and outside: code for homosexuals and the divorced and 'remarried'.
• Cultural and structural change: means advancing the "Church of Arbitrariness in which anything goes and we can finally, finally please the world" as German theologian Dr Markus Buning puts it.
• 'Incorporating the gift of women and the feminine dimension of our Christian faith':  just as the Church has done ever since the Blessed Virgin Mary modelled this gift and dimension by praying with the apostles in the Cenacle.
• 'Christian': Catholics get lumped in with Protestant (heretical) denominations. 'Blending' is good. It helps pave the way for the 'New Church', the 'Church of Nice', the Church of Arbitrariness.
  

Bishop Long winds up: As a religious bishop I often find myself in situations of conflict (because) bishops are custodians of tradition, while religious are more concerned with the people on the periphery. 

Pardon me? Where's the conflict? Tradition has always been concerned with people 'on the periphery' (the fancy franciscan term for bystanders and rejects), simply because Jesus Christ was concerned with people 'on the periphery'. Blind people, lame people - women with issues! 

But wait, there's more: Bishop Long's understudy, Fr Cahill, says that 'as Carmelite Family we need to utilize the gifts of each other, whether priests, religious or lay, gay or straight.'

Fr Cahill, you're lining up apples with oranges. Priests, religious and lay are supposedly following their vocations, meaning the state of life to which God calls them.  Being gay is not following a vocation. God calls no one to be gay, because being gay means choosing to live in serious sin. Saying we need to utilize the gifts of sodomites is like saying we need to utilize the gifts of unrepentant axe murderers, corporate swindlers and terrorists. 

'Serious sin' no matter what its colour 'is the act by which man voluntarily detaches himself from God, the one source of life, charity and grace. … The sinner has, so to speak, obliged God to break all ties of friendship with him' (Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen OCD, Divine Intimacy (aka the Carmelite bedside book).

'In our (Carmelite) ministries we need to honestly (sic) evaluate our systems … for any traces of clericalism (and) reform those systems. We need to ensure that those "in formation" are prepared for life and ministry based on mutuality not exclusion' etc. We can conclude therefore that being 'gay' - being a sodomite and living in serious sin - does not exclude people from formation in Carmel. 

'Ministry that is based moreover, on incarnate grace not dualism.' But 'gays' - sodomites - have rejected that incarnate grace . By choosing a way of life that is seriously sinful they have excluded themselves from all Christian ministry.

It was truly fiendishly cunning to inject the Catholic priesthood with the deadly bacillus of homosexuality, which has all but destroyed the moral authority of the Church and of course is loved by the media and the world - which Pope Francis and his New Church proponents so ardently wish to embrace. And to nurture that bacillus by eliminating the sense of sin and our need for the Sacrament of Penance, where Christ waits to forgive and heal anyone who repents of their homosexual lifestyle. 

In one fell swoop, by attacking 'clericalism' Pope Francis attacks the authentic priesthood and promotes the evil of homosexuality. The definition of clericalism is the abuse of power by the clergy, and since Vatican II that abuse has been exercised chiefly in the clergy's abandonment of the Gospel and Church teaching by not stigmatizing very grave sins like sodomy.

Le clericalism - voila l'ennemi!' (Behold the enemy - clericalism!') was actually the cry of Masonic secularism in 19th century France, when schools were secularised, religious orders expelled, divorce was introduced and the Concordat with the Holy See abolished. The clericalism so despised by Pope Francis et al is seen by the Pontiff to be, fundamentally, the traditional model of Church hated by Freemasons and Modernists.  

We're all familiar with the caricature of people talking about the end times, standing on street corners, ridiculed and put down. Well, back in May it was a Dutch Archbishop, Jacobus Cardinal Eijk, who waved a banner so to speak, on the internet, quoting Article 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

'Before Christ's Second Coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the Faith of many believers. The persecution … will unveil the 'mystery of iniquity' in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.

And Venerable Archbishop Fulton J Sheen - a Catholic household word in NZ in the 50s -  has said, 
'We are living in the days of the Apocalypse .. the Mystical Body of Christ and the Mystical Body of Antichrist are beginning to draw up the battle lines … There will be a counterfeit church. Christ's Church (the Catholic Church) will be one. And the False Prophet will create the other. 

"The false church will be worldly, ecumenical and global. It will be a loose federation of churches and religions forming some type of global association. The mystical body on earth today will have its Judas Iscariot and he will be the false prophet. Satan will recruit him from among our bishops. … 

"Our Lord tells us that he will be so much like Himself that he would deceive even the elect. … Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. He will set up a counter-church which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the Mystical Body of Christ."

In 2016 in an unguarded moment with the German magazine Der Spiegel Pope Francis dropped a rather large and heavy hint: "It is not to be excluded that I will enter history as the one who split the Catholic Church".

And get this: Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen says "He (the Antichrist) will have one great secret which he will tell to no one: he will not believe in God."

I recall what my Protestant friend said recently, "I think Pope Francis doesn't believe in God", and the hairs rise on the back of my neck. 





*A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church is the book disgraced Milwaukee Archbishop Robert Weakland wrote to announce his 'coming out' after covering up sexual abuse by priests in his Archdiocese to the tune of bankruptcy for compo to victims of abuse ,and embezzling half a million dollars of archiocesan funds to pay off his blackmailing former partner. 

Anon says: Your list of buzz phrases from Bp Long is interesting and useful.  

THIS 'HEALTH ISSUE' IS A VERY SICK JOKE (letter to Dom Post, October 28)

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Calling abortion a ‘health issue’ is a joke, and a very sick joke at that. 

There’s no such thing as a safe or 'healthy' abortion. Of 1.5 million women who had medical abortions in the US over 11 years 14 died, 612 were hospitalised, 58 had ectopic pregnancies, 339 had blood transfusions and 256 suffered infections.

One abortion carries a 30 per cent risk of complications in future pregnancies. Following an abortion women are more likely to have to use IVF. They may be under enormous pressure, from partner, family or abortion provider to act like nothing happened and can develop PAS (post-abortion syndrome). Abortion increases prematurity in subsequent pregnancies with its risks of infant death and disability. Shall I go on?

Only in the alternative universe of abortion activism could a procedure which is always violent and always ends in death be called ‘a health issue’. Minister of Health Andrew Little is on foreign turf and looks uncomfortable, as well he may.

This ‘health issue’ is such an horrific assault on women, I’m wondering if Little and ALRANZ’ s Terry Bellamak are using the same PR firm as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince.

BISHOP CHARLES DRENNAN CHANGES THE SUBJECT

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"Even Satan reacts to the stench of sodomy, leaving the scene in disgust once satisfied that the foul deed is accomplished. How much more satisfying, to entice priests to perpetrate the unspeakable act on innocent souls."

Since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has cosied up to the world to such effect, she's lost that sense of revulsion at the act of sodomy so eloquently expressed in this exchange between Jesus Christ and St Catherine of Siena.

Kowtowing to the values of the world, many priests now use the world's word for sodomites: 'gays'. But mostly priests avoid any mention of homosexual practice - and any or all aspects of sexuality as framed so well in terms of Catholic doctrine by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae.

For instance, in the October Welcom Palmerston North's Bishop Charles Drennan reports on the recent 'professional development week' for NZ priests. ('Professional'? The priesthood is now a profession? I thought it was a vocation.) At that happening in Christchurch they changed the subject from the malaise which threatens the very life of the Catholic Church - rampant sodomy and predator priests - to 'clericalism'. 

Bishop Charles says he loathes clericalism. It makes him 'shudder'. Ah, how do you feel about sodomy, +Charles? 

As for instance, practised by Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, a drug dealer busted by the Vatican police in an orgy at a Vatican apartment with a senior official at the Pontifical Council of Legislative Texts, a protégé of Cardinal Coccopalmerio who is one of the Pope's inner circle? Practised apparently with impunity, as Capozzi was not handed to the Italian authorities for prosecution?

Or by Monsignor Battista Ricca, a notorious sodomite who enjoys the Pope's personal protection and curial promotion? It was Ricca who occasioned the Pope's most famous remark, "Who am I to judge?" That typical, ingenious, Jesuitical avoidance of the subject - Ricca's international record as a sodomite and his promotion by Pope Francis - turned a potential for serious damage to the pontifical image into a huge coup in the eyes of the media and the world.

So, +Charles and the rest of NZ's bishops have hastened to pick up their skirts and join the international episcopal chorus line, blaming clericalism instead of homosexuality in the clergy for the crisis in the Church. And why?

For one thing, because the world and its media love 'gays', and the Church under Pope Francis wants more than anything  else to be popular. (And to climb the hierarchical ladder in the Church under Pope Francis, a bishop needs to be popular. To be on the winning side.) 

But more sinister is the other thing: going after clericalism allows bishops to go after traditional, orthodox priests - and encourages lay people who like Pope Francis want to 'meet people where they're at' to complain about those priests as they have in this diocese, in Tararua, Hastings, Palmerston North and Marton. 

Traditional, orthodox priests preach the Gospel and Church doctrine, instead of squirming in mock humility, trying to be just an ordinary guy, putting the Church down (especially those pre-Vatican II antics like wearing hats and mantillas) and fancying themselves, in their Sunday homilies, as Agony Uncles instead of priests. Priests loyal to Tradition 'read the black, do the red' and may even wear a cassock or beretta - until they're told not to, like at least one priest in the Palmerston North Diocese. 

Or until they decide they've had enough, like Fr Bryan Buenger of Tararua Parish, and go back home to the US. 

In  Welcom +Charles veers off-track from the chase of clericalism only to pursue 'a radical change in governance', which in its plea for 'diversity at the Bishops' table' is not 'inching towards shared insight' so much as inching towards what German theologian Dr Markus Buning describes as "a new Church from Francis". 

This 'new Church', says Dr Buning, is "the Church of arbitrariness, in which anything goes and one can finally, finally please the world; yes, where one may finally expect the praise of nearly everybody." Features of this "new Church", he warns, will be "intercommunion, Communion for 'remarried' divorcees, blessing of same-sex partnerships, Masses without clear rubrics, everything ad libitum (the way you like it).

According to Dr Buning, in planning this revamped Church, the Pope's "episcopal vassals" must themselves stand accused of clericalism, of "a form of bourgeois episcopalism which aims at only one thing: to please the world". 

This episcopalism, he says, "blames everything on the lower clergy who are supposedly infected by this self-aggrandizing clericalism. Those priests are being defamed who have wished only one thing: to be loyal priests!" 

And hooray I say, for Dr Buning, who wants to know how bishops used their power over recent decades while kneelers and statues and sanctuary rails were being thrown out, while homilies were turning heretical, when communicants were encouraged to receive the Lord of lords with grubby fingers and sacrilegious hearts? 

He speaks of "office drawers of German ordinariates filled with letters of complaint concerning these matters and most probably the letters have already been shredded". 

"As long as these bishops do not exercise their ecclesiastical office as it is given to them by God and as it is exercised according to the Church's tradition, they are facing the accusation of conformist clericalism which is not willing to fight the abuses in this Church."

Pity the poor layman/woman, even those of the Protestant variety: 

• A devout Catholic, a guy who'd never speak and probably never even thinks ill of anyone - said to me yesterday, "I don't know what to think about Pope Francis". I just looked at him (meaningfully, I hope).  
• Then there's the woman who says she has to suppress an urge to run screaming from the church during her PP's Sunday sermons. 
• And a church-going, bible-reading Protestant who says, "I don't think Pope Francis believes in God".

 'Anon' says: Julia, your piece is tough but necessary.  I missed this Dr Buning, he makes some good points.  He has seen right through clericalism and the big game.

I was fascinated by your description of priests becoming 'agony uncles', defined as a man who answers letters in an agony column.  Dr Buning speaks of 'office drawers ....filled with letters of complaint'.  From what I hear there are two classes of letters.  If a parishioner complains a priest is too orthodox (too Catholic), the priest likely gets a reprimand.  If the complaint is about a priest being un-Catholic, well, don't expect much to happen visibly or otherwise.  As I say, from what I hear.  I also understand there are a lot of letters.

There is no point getting upset about the loss of good priests.  If the laity wont fight for them, expect to lose them. Crying into our lattes is not going to fix anything.

A NATIONAL MALAISE NEITHER PHYSICAL OR MENTAL (letter to NZ Herald, October 24)

Back in the day when hospitals were strictly and simply for healing, they shone with cleanliness. They provided medical and surgical treatment for the sick and wounded. 

 

Now that hospitals are also for hurting, for killing infants in utero and damaging mothers for life, they’ve gone mouldy, they leak rain, dangerous bacteria and poisonous asbestos – all symptomatic of a national malaise which is neither physical or mental, but spiritual. 

 

The consequence is huge expense to rate and levy payers, who because of the abortions carried out in those hospitals are 500,000 fewer than they should be.

 

Hospitals are no longer ‘fit for purpose’ precisely because they’ve lost their purpose, which is to heal and preserve life.

NOW THAT PARENTS ARE NOT FIRST TEACHERS ...(Letter to Dom Post, Oct 20)

In saying “Two politicians in the headlines this week have forgotten what they should have learnt many years ago”, Linda Wilkins (Letters, October 20) inadvertently implies a fundamental truth about early childhood education. 

She hopes that in pre-school, children are taught “how to behave in our society”. In pre-school they’re taught by people who are strangers at first, and come and go. When it’s not our parents who teach us in the home “to play fair” etc, the message is not absorbed into our marrow. 

The evidence is all around us: cheating on partners and ‘buddies’, escalating abuse, violence, prisons stuffed full and police on the back foot.

What’s more, depriving very young children of parental role models, male and female, is an essential tool in the Marxist kit for building the all-property-owning state. Left-leaning domination of educational institutions, including pre-school and kindergarten teacher training, has the advantage in shaping very young minds, shut up as they are in alien, racketty, crowded pre-schools and let out into normal life only in crocodiles.

Wilkins can’t blame these two politicians, both almost certainly grads of pre-school, for forgetting what they never learned.

A TALE OF TWO PRIESTS. AND THEIR BISHOPS. AND A POPE.

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How bizarre. On the one hand, the Catholic Church in NZ is losing a fine priest to the US, and on the other is importing one from the US who was defrocked there for adultery. 

Even more bizarre is the silence smothering both issues. How bizarre, that is, in the eyes of the world, and simply wrong  - sinful - in terms of Catholic, Gospel morality. 

But the global Church is getting used to 'Omerta' - the term used to describe the silence deployed and enforced by the Mafia to cover up criminal activity, and employed by some commentators in regard to Pope Francis.

• The Pope's had his finger on the mute button since his days as cardinal in Buenos Aires, when he refused an audience to a woman claiming sex abuse by a priest, and 13 other victims whose letter was acknowledged by a receipt. (That's better than the response to my request to Bishop Charles Drennan of Palmerston North for an exorcist, which was nil.) 
• He refused to take questions on the McCarrick scandal. Even Cindy Wooden, Rome Bureau Chief for the US Bishops' Conference, tweeted that she'd been "shot down by +Pope Francis".
• He hasn't answered the four cardinals who penned the Dubia in response to Laetitia Amoris. 

So it's only to be expected that New Zealand's complaisant bishops would follow the Pontiff's lead and say next to nothing about the impending departure of Father Brian Buenger from Tararua Parish. The Palmerston North Diocese asked for an extension of his visa. It was refused. + Charles could have appealed but he didn't. 

Fr Buenger in a letter to his hapless parishioners stated there were "other significant considerations". Now I know, from a reliable source, that "he didn't get on with the bishop". "There were complaints." 

I know first hand about the complaints. Fr Buenger "doesn't meet people where they're at." I'd guess that's code for not giving Communion to the divorced and/or remarried. Why were these parishioners not down on their knees giving thanks to God for a good, faithful (and I might add, discreet) priest? Because they haven't been formed in the Faith. God only knows who they'll get in his stead.

And then there's the story about the defrocked priest, a Philipino, whom Bishop Patrick Dunn has reinstated as parish priest of Northcote in Auckland. Apart from an article by Jonathan Milne for Stuff  he seems to have accomplished it sub rosa. 

Father Lio Rotor was a canon lawyer in a matrimonial tribunal in the US, enforcing the law on marital fidelity. He was formerly private secretary to the late Cardinal Sin in Manila and a Vatican diplomat. He had an affair with the wife of his best friend and was defrocked for it. 

Years later, he bobs up in Auckland, being nice to the injured and dying at Auckland Hospital. He gains residency as a lay chaplain. If a lay chaplain can get residency, why not a priest? He starts thinking he'd like to be a priest again and +Dunn says, in effect, why not? 

The bishop felt sorry for him. As for Fr Rotor's cuckolded friend, Bishop Dunn "wants him to have peace. But poor old Gab can't let it go." Understandably perhaps, as 'poor old Gab' (Gabriel) alleges Rotor slept with two other women around the same time. And when 'poor old Gab' made his deposition for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles he was warned not to tell anyone. "There was a gag order."

So now he's Father Rotor, parish priest at St Mary's Northcote. In August NZ Catholic ran a story on how Fr Lio Rotor is ‘strengthening’ the parish with ‘liturgical teachings’ once a month instead of a homily. Nothing about his being defrocked. It’s old news but news that seemingly was never news officially for NZ Catholics. 

This isn't a question of forgiveness and reconciliation, as in marriage when there's adultery. Of course the Church forgives Fr Rotor. He repented his sin, so forgiveness is a sine qua non. Specially in view of the way Pope Francis insistence on "God is Mercy".

Ah, God is Love, actually, and God's love (charity) means always wishing and doing what will most help others to attain eternal life. 

So is it charitable to put Fr Rotor in the way of temptation again? Wouldn't he be better off serving humbly as a lay chaplain in a hospital, safe from the type of woman who find the priesthood a special enticement and temptation? Better off not 'taking confessions' as Stuff put it, in the snug little private room we call a confessional these days, where women with arms' reach may share their sexual desires and troubles with the priest? (Bring back the grille!)

Bishops are shepherds who are to lead their flock towards eternal life. They can't indulge the wishes of individual parishioners, no matter how sorry they feel for them, if that means putting their flock at risk - apart from anything else, of being scandalized. 

You may say that by putting this story out there I'm contributing to scandal. But there would never have been any scandal if the bishop, having prayerfully discerned this decision was the right one in view of his people's sanctification as well as Rotor's, had openly discussed it with the parishioners of St Mary's Northcote, and as president of the NZ Council of Bishops with his fellow bishops, and through NZ Catholic - which he owns - included the entire Church of New Zealand in his decision. "Inclusiveness." Isn't that one of Pope Francis' watchwords?

Lay people are not children, to be sent out of the room when certain issues are discussed by adults,  or to be told, "we're going to see a man about a dog".  Silence and cover-ups - in Argentina, the United States, Ireland, Italy - just don't cut it any more.

As Jesus said in this morning's Gospel (Lk 12:1-7): 

There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops.

I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more. … Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. 

Karl du Fresne said: 

I like your line that lay people are not children to be sent out of the room so that adult issues can be discussed. It seems to me that’s the way the Church has always treated the laity.  The pattern was set in the 16^th century when William Tyndale was branded as a heretic for translating the Bible into English so that it could be read and understood by ordinary people.

Linda S Clarke said: 

Terrific point about the grille.....I'm absolutely over the chats - I want the Holy Spirit to instruct me through the mouth of the priest, thank you very much.   And absolutely, the move to allow Fr. Lio Rotor to be a priest again is hardly helpful to him or to the women he will encounter at cosy chat time.   AND clever point about Pope F's watchword!

Anonymous said:

So we are to understand that Bishop Drennan has implemented the provisions of Amoris Laetitia. I understand this is putting many of the priests in a very invidious position. For instance, Father Buenger and others.

But we only get the message by implication, when the 'informed elites' tell us that Fr X "doesn't meet people where they're at."   As Julia says we non-elites only get the code, and have to guess at the substance.

In the spirit of transparency and inclusiveness and dialogue why has Bishop Drennan not told us straight? Why has the implementation (or otherwise) of Amoris Laetitia in our diocese not been put in writing? If we are to be obedient to the Church hierarchy, how can we be obedient to unwritten doctrine that we don't even know for sure is being used?

Gone (maybe?) are the days when divorced parishioners paid the Church $1,000 to get their annulment and receive the Eucharist in good standing with God.  Waste of time and money so soon.

I assume when Bishop Drennan does one day tell us in writing that he has implemented Amoris Laetitia he will also give us some solid writings to resolve the doctrinal conflicts that Amoris Laetitia raises. But no, Pope Francis will not respond to the Dubia that told him of the doctrinal conflicts, so Bishop Drennan has no obligation to resolve the doctrinal conflicts either?

It seems the carefully written doctrine of the Church, crafted with the grace of God, has been replaced by unwritten doctrine and innuendo.  It seems the same rules apply to the sex abuse and homosexuality crisis. The results there speak for themselves.

How long do we parishioners put up with this craziness and deceit? We must make more noise to encourage Bishop Drennan to be more Catholic.

WHAT ABOUT MEN WHOSE BABIES ARE ABORTED AGAINST THEIR WISH? (letter to Dom Post, Oct 15)

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‘He controlled every aspect of my life’ (October 15) begs some awkward questions.

 

It’s unspeakably awful for women to be forced to have babies, but what about men whose children are aborted against their wishes? Are some (inexcusably) violent men traumatised by that loss? Do some live with the suspicion that their wife or partner killed the child they longed for?

 

Jacinda Ardern wept at the sight of empty shoes representing people who tragically died by suicide. How did she feel about 13,000 empty booties at Parliament representing lives lost last year by abortion?

 

Jackie Edmond’s Family Planning mantra, ‘Every child a wanted child’, ushered in legal abortion which was meant to end child abuse and sexual abuse. Why has it sky-rocketed? And now that 500,000 ‘unwanted’ children have been aborted, where are the teachers, builders, nurses and police we’re desperate for?

 

Instead of Women’s Refuges where ‘they would be heard’, would the needs of pregnant abused women be better met at pregnancy help centres?

 

Pregnancy Help provides not only sympathy, but accommodation and every practical support including referral, if chosen, for adoption - which transforms an unwanted pregnancy into a most wanted child.

 

CLERICAL BULLIES: CARDINAL OUELLET HAS UNDERSTUDIES IN PALMERSTON NORTH DIOCESE

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One mustn't - and can't - judge others' motivation, but Cardinal Marc Ouellet, in his open letter to +Vigano released yesterday, comes across as a bully. (I have belatedly realized this man is Prefect for the Congregation of Bishops.)

You know how some men, especially clerics, when contradicted or even merely questioned stick out their chest and raise their voice? Probably you didn't know that because, I suspect, priests are seldom contradicted.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet sounds like a man who's on the wrong side and believes attack is the best form of defence. He blusters about 'rumours' concerning Cardinal McCarrick.

Dear Cardinal Ouellet, that photograph of  McCarrick in togs, with his arm around a young seminarian also in togs, is not a rumour, it's a fact. And although I don't know when the pic became public, it was taken in 1974. That seminarian was sexually abused by McCarrick for 20 years. The expression on his face is unforgettable; McCarrick meanwhile, grins with delight.

Obviously Cardinal Ouellet doesn't mean to, but he actually confirms what +Vigano stated, that McCarrick was 'requested not to travel or make public appearances'. He says it was 'in order to avoid new rumours' (emphasis mine). He has a cute expression also for McCarrick's odious abuse of seminarians in virtually forcing them, by a devious arrangement of beds at his notorious beach house, to sleep with him. As one journalist commented, on hearing of it, "The bishop sleeping with seminarians? ***" (Expletive deleted.)

Cardinal Ouellet's word for McCarrick's serial sodomitic abuse is 'incoherence'.

He says there are no documents restricting McCarrick's movements signed by either Pope Benedict or Pope Francis. He does not however, deny that paper shredders exist, even or especially in the Vatican.

Cardinal Ouellet tells +Vigano he must avoid calumny and defamation. Dear Cardinal Ouellet, calumny and defamation involve falsehood. So if what +Vigano says is true, you haven't a leg to stand on. When Jesus Christ called the scribes and Pharisees 'whited sepulchres', that wasn't calumny or detraction. He was merely stating the truth.

How much I wish I could help you to return to communion with (Pope Francis), says Cardinal Ouellet. What? Has Archbishop Vigano been excommunicated?

Cardinal Ouellet says +Vigano's testimony is 'scandalous rebellion'; +Vigano is 'blasphemous'. Is Pope Francis God now, that to criticize him is to blaspheme? Certainly, Cardinal Ouellet makes Francis sound godlike: Pope Francis is "a true shepherd … a resolute and compassionate father with a prophetic grace for the Church and for the world" and (ominously) "for the missionary reform he has begun".

Just how can Pope Francis, be he ever so missionary, 'reform' the Church, the Bride of Christ? He sounds more and more like a reincarnation of Luther - who our own Bishop Patrick Dunn is so keen to rehabilitate.

Catholics must believe the revealed truths of the Deposit of Faith, just as they are, unreformed, because God revealed them and the Church has infallibly proclaimed them. Not to believe them is sin of the mortal kind. Which of these truths - or how many (starting with the indissolubility of marriage perhaps?) does Pope Francis intend to  'reform'?

To all these truths Catholics must give the assent of faith. Other Church teachings which are not proposed infallibly and so carry no guarantee of truth require religious assent, required only by obedience, not faith. And if there is conflict between the two, obedience gives way to faith. We are required to be faithful even if it means resistance to false teaching, even by the Pope.

Cardinal Ouellet must have forgotten what St Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, has to say about Popes and their utterances:

"Just as it is licit to resist the Pontiff that aggresses the body, it is also licit to resist one who aggresses souls or who disturbs the civil order, or above all who attempts to destroy the Church." Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano was asking legitimate questions about illegitimate activities in the Vatican. A Prince of the Church should surely accept that in charity and humility.

The clincher for me is, Cardinal Ouellet has Cardinal Robert Wuerl, Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago and named by +Vigano as promoting McCarrick, on his side. "Donald Wuerl is a criminal," says an angry mother - reportedly one of many in the Washington DC Diocese."He sent a Gay Mafia priest into our school and he destroyed it."


And don't let's think that in New Zealand we above all that kind of thing. Bullying happens here too. 

• In the cathedral of Palmerston North for example, where a parishioner is forbidden to distribute pamphlets attesting to Church doctrine, because, the Bishop says, "This is my cathedral!" 
• In ostracism by priests of their few brother priests who like Archbishop Vigano are orthodox. 
• In the more subtle ostracizing of lay people who don't get to be on parish councils, for the same reason.
• In the forced resignation of an orthodox lay person from their position in a Church Order made completely untenable by overt bullying
• In the gaslighting by a parish priest of a skilled but orthodox organist (who he knew would play traditional Church music), refusing to allow her to play for Sunday Mass until she can prove her good health (physical or mental?) by attending four Sunday Masses  in a row, in his church.
• In a priest's manhandling of a communicant, forcing her from her knees to stand and refusing to give her Communion on the tongue. 

Yes, the 'missionary reform' of  Pope Francis is well under way in Godzone.

$22,500 TO PAINT A PIECE OF ASPHALT (letter to Dom Post, Oct 8)

As I skirted the rainbow crossing on Cuba St today, I was glad I’m not a Welly-dweller. 

Not that I object to ‘inclusiveness’ or ‘diversity’ per se, only the cost. $22,500 to paint a piece of asphalt when, if climate change scientists are to be believed, other parts of the city are set to sink beneath the sea? 

Thousands of ratepayers believe, archaically, that ‘male and female he created them’ and are not besotted with LGBTQ+ ideology so much as beset with the problem of petrol prices. 

And just how ‘diverse’ will Welly become? As diverse as Washington State in the US of A? 

In that hyper-inclusive State of Absurdity, you can now register on your birth certificate as any of the following: intersex, agender, amalgender, androgynous, bigender, demigender, female-to-male, gender fluid, genderqueer, male-to-female, neutrois, nonbinary, pangender, third sex, transgender, transexual, two spirit, or unspecified.

Take your pick, people!

FRANCIS OF ASSISI, LOVER NOT OF THE ENVIRONMENT BUT THE EUCHARIST

This morning at Mass on the Feast of St Francis of Assisi, in the Prayers of the Faithful which Father reads from a book, we had the usual incantation of St Francis, patron saint of the environment,  climate change, global warming, indigenous peoples and endangered species.

St Francis was anything but. Oh yes, he may have talked about 'Brother Sun' and 'Sister Moon' and maybe he talked to the birds. And if he hadn't been concerned for the poor and underprivileged he'd never have become a saint.

But for Francis, nothing mattered as much as the Eucharist, and nothing concerned him so much as disrespect for the Blessed Sacrament.

In his first extant letter, he is outraged at "the great sin and ignorance some have towards the most Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and his most holy names and words that consecrate his body".

Nothing got Francis going like the use of dirty or inappropriate vessels or containers, or the Sacrament being left "in dirty places, carried about unbecomingly and ministered to others without care".

What would St Francis of Assisi say about the use of common wooden 'patens', paper towels as purifiers, ripped pyx bags, and so-called 'Ministers of the Eucharist' who leave the Host lying around while they get on with other stuff, or chatting with people, pyx bag casually in hand, before leaving the church to take Holy Communion to the sick?

Francis insisted to priests and  his unordained brothers that "in every sermon you give, remind people about penance and that no one can be saved unless he receives the most holy Body and Blood of the Lord. When It is … carried anywhere, let all peoples praise, honour and adore on bended knee the Lord God, living and true.

He was determined to encourage the more dramatic and humbling act of kneeling  before the Sacrament in place of the older bow.

"We must be Catholics. We ought to visit churches frequently and venerate clerics, not so much for their own sake, for they may be sinners, but on account of their office and their administration of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ."

I beg you not to forget the Lord … for those who leave him in oblivion and turn away from his commandments are cursed and will be left in oblivion by Him.  The wiser and more powerful they were in the world, the greater will be the punishment they will endure in Hell.

 - Francis of Assisi, A New Biography, Augustine Thompson, OP (considered the definitive biography of the saint and now used in the formation of Franciscans).