THE SORT OF CARDINAL WHO GIVES THE CHURCH THE FINGER

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The clincher on Mr McCarrick for me was a 'crucifix' he sported while still a cardinal.

An up-close-and-personal shot of the ever-so-personable and likeable pederast reveals something you might find dangling on a stand in your $2 shop. Except of course, McCarrick's would be Extremely Expensive.

It's a stick figure, vaguely reminiscent of someone breasting a winning tape. Only he would never have won a race, because his right leg has been amputated at the knee. 

Pardon me??? What sort of cardinal would wear such a grotesque depiction of Jesus Christ his Lord and Saviour on the Cross?

The sort of cardinal whose intent is to cripple and disfigure the Church. And give it the finger while he's at it.

How come no one noticed???

Because "they are blind, and leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit" (Mt 15,14).

THE WORD THE POPE'S MAN FORBADE THE BISHOPS TO UTTER TO THE PRESS

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With Cardinal George Pell of Sydney wickedly, egregiously now proclaimed a convicted pederast, who cares that I've been called bitter and twisted? 

Well, not quite that, but nearly.  

"Bitter and negative" were the exact words used last week by someone I love very much, who because of my recent posts has 'unfriended' me on Facebook. This person is probably not alone in doing such a thing (previously unheard of by moi), and although  prepared by the words of Christ - "you will be hated by all because of my name" (Mt 10:22), still I was cut to the quick.

I'm 99% sure I was 'unfriended' because on this blog I've elucidated Catholic Church doctrine on homosexuality.

Useless for me to protest that my dearest-ever friend is gay - and anyway St Teresa's counsel stands me in good stead: don't ever defend yourself, because our Lord didn't. If you need defending, our Lord will prompt someone to do it for you.

I simply said my next post would be positive, and I knew and told her the topic: the Traditional Latin Mass.

But no matter what my deep joy in following Christ, in this reign of Pope Francis it's hard to sound positive. Now we have Cardinal Pell wickedly declared a pederast and the Pink Elephant Sex Summit-About-Now't has come and gone. (Serial plagiarism has forced the resignation from two Catholic universities of Vatican media chief and clerical homosexual lobbyist Fr Tom Rosica, so I'd better admit the 'Pink Elephant' appellation was coined by Remnant Tv's Michael Matt - a guy you need to get to know.)

The 'pink elephant' is of course, homosexuality, a word which Pope Francis' man, Cardinal Blase Cupich, actually forbade the bishops to utter to the press. I kid you not. This when 80% of sex abuse victims in the Church are male and over the age of 14. (So much for 'pedophilia'.)

If the mind boggles at that, let's get boggling seriously.

• Cardinal Cupich is a protégé and protector of the late, unlamented cardinal, now mere Mr Theodore McCarrick, laicized for serial homosexual abuse against seminarians. (But it looks now like his laicization was just a bone thrown to the media, clergy and laity howling for Something To Be Done.) 
• Cardinals convicted of sex abuse and/or coverups who are pals of Pope Francis include McCarrick, Murphy-O'Connor, Coccopalmerio. Bishops: Zanchetta, Pineda, Maccarone, Marx, Maradiaga. Priests: Grassi, Inzoli, Corradi.  
• Pope Francis not only lifted sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict against McCarrick, but allowed him huge influence in the Vatican.
• According to Michael Voris of Church Militant, who was in Rome covering the summit, "McCarrick's men were running the show".
• Cover-ups of clerical sex abuse, Voris says, were not really on the agenda.
• Accountability was not really on the agenda.
• Crimes against seminarians were not on the agenda.
• The pot of Pope Francis' personal involvement in sex abuse coverups in South America is about to boil over, with criminal charges said to be pending against the Pontiff. 
• The Pope's off-hand remarks about "the great majority of Catholic marriages" being "null" and being "sure that … cohabitations have the grace of a real marriage" are destroying young Catholic lives.
• The Pope has denied the miracle of the loaves and fishes, attributing it to the social justice ideal of 'sharing'.
• The Pope has said contraception is okay in 'grave circumstances'.
• Cardinal Cupich, who 3 years ago awarded McCarrick the prestigious 'Spirit of (Pope) Francis' award and who lobbied for a pro-abortion politician, says 'Ministers of Communion' must "respect the conscience" of people receiving who are in irregular situations, that is, not in a state of grace, that is, mortal sin.
• The very worst - so far - of the coveruppers, Cardinal Godfried Daneels, who publicly supported same-sex marriage and is said to have tried to persuade King Baudouin to sign off legalisation of abortion (against the monarch's conscience), and not surprisingly presided over the precipitous collapse of the Church in Belgium, was chosen by the freshly-elected Pope Francis to appear beside him on the loggia to wave at the crowds cheering the 'Great Reformer'. 

And now let's wade into deeper, even murkier waters, which in 1917 Our Lady of Fatima warned might well engulf the world. 

During the summit, Michael Voris of Church Militant revealed information from former Communists agents who say that in 1950 ex-Cardinal McCarrick lived for a year in St Gallen Switzerland.

So what? 

So, subsequent to the fall of the Iron Curtain and collapse of the Soviet empire, released KGB records show the Communists ran an indoctrination centre in St Gallen at that time. It was only one of thirty such in Europe post-WW II where personable young men, preferably with homosexual proclivities, were trained for infiltration into the Catholic priesthood. 

You've heard that name, St Gallen, before, right? Yes, that's where, as Cardinal Daneels bragged, the 'St Gallen mafia' plotted the election of a socialist-sympathizing pope. Bergoglio.

The nexus between Communism and homosexuality is revealed in Joseph Stalin's plan to destroy Communism's main opponent, the Catholic Church, from within, destroying its moral authority chiefly by means of homosexuality. 

In an earlier post I wrote about the testimony of Communist-turned-Catholic Bella Dodd to a US Senate investigating committee in '52-'53, to the effect that she was personally responsible for insinuating 1100 intelligent, attractive young men into the Catholic Church. 

Since then a strange little book, AA-1025:The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle, has come into my hands. Published by French nurse and convert Marie Carre in 1972 in France as Eleve Seminariste (Seminarian)-1025, it's basically autobiographical notes she found in the '60s in the briefcase of a man with no ID, mortally wounded in a car crash in an unnamed French city, who died on her watch.

AA-1025 bears out Dodd's testimony, but from the perspective of a young man recruited in Poland by the Communists for a career in the Church. AA-1025, the designation given by his 'Uncle' in the KGB, signified that 1204 men had preceded him into Catholic seminaries, all with the impious hope of promotion to the hierarchy.

Now consider that, ironically, three years ago Cardinal Cupich awarded McCarrick the prestigious 'Spirit of (Pope) Francis' award, for making "his own unique mark on the Church". 

You can say that again.

Because in his international junkets (more like a diplomat than an archbishop, joked then-President Bill Clinton), Voris says McCarrick "sowed moral, doctrinal and spiritual confusion", smuggling his pet left-wing 'social justice' doctrine and Liberation Theology into South America in Jesuit baggage, undermining the Church there and in the last years of his cardinalate closing the deal with Communist China which many describe as "a total sell-out" for the Church in that country.

But I must Be Positive. 

The Sunday before last, I attended my second Latin Mass since Vatican II ushered in the Novus Ordo. My first experience was at the tiny Catholic church in Ashhurst; last week it was a funeral parlour, for heaven's sake, in Napier. Now I mustn't get started on the funeral parlour, I must remember to Be Positive. 

Is it positive to posit that ditching the Traditional Latin Mass, celebrated throughout the world for 2000 years, in favour of something that bishops and priests seem happy to tweak, interrupt (this week, with a discussion about leaks in the roof) or furnish with jokes and snickers, was the major factor in the Church's decline since Vatican II? And is the liturgical reform really, as Mons Dwyer, Archbishop of Birmingham, spokesman for the Episcopal Synod, put it, "where the revolution begins"? 

The moment I entered that funeral parlour, set up with altar and all its traditional furnishings but without pews - which had been lent for Art Deco Weekend - I was filled with a sense of mystery, reverence, and beauty. I understand now why St Alphonsus Liguori called the Mass the best and most beautiful thing which exists in the Church here below, and why Satan always tried and has succeeded, through his children the heretics, to deprive us of it.

Maybe the clerics who fixed the date for the Pink Elephant Sex Summit's opening were too blinded by lust to read the liturgical calendar, where they'd have seen it was the feast day of St Peter Damian, who over 900 years ago declared that acceptance of homosexuality was "creeping through the clerical order, and indeed is raging like a cruel beast within the sheepfold of Christ".

St Peter Damian (Doctor of the Church) insisted that the Church must uncompromisingly preach, holistically and completely, God's beautiful design for human sexuality.

Otherwise, he warned, "it is certain that the sword of divine fury is looming to attack, to the destruction of many". 

Come back, St Peter Damian, we need you now!

Adelie Reid on Facebook says: 
An interesting read.

Paul Collits says:
A truly outstanding post Julie. Posting things like photos of your food or what you had for breakfast gets lots of likes in Fb world. Saying serious things gets fewer. Telling unpleasant truths approaches zero. I guess most people don't go to Fb for anything but fun comms. Sigh.


'Anon' says:
What a good post. We don't know the detailed truth re infiltration into the Church, but the results speak for Satan and if by the communists then are we surprised. And McCarrick did the job of corruption of other priests and seminarians before that. Similar to Fr Maciel of the Legions of Christ. A lot funny there.

You are correct that you will be vilified, but only by the ignorant, ignorant of the True Faith that is. 

Sharon Crooks says:

As a sacristan it is hard to imagine how the case against Pell could play out. I maintain that the Australian hatred for Pell stems back to mass media attention accorded him in walking Gerard Ridsdale (convicted Ballarat pedophile) to court and denying any knowledge of his sexual abuse, thus seemingly supporting him. 

It was from this seed that the monster now being played out sprang  from, yet no one in the international media has joined these dots - yet!!

What I remain undecided on is how much Pell knew 30-40 years ago and did nothing about.  However regardless of whether he knew nothing back then or he believed what he was told, this would seem the point of departure for Catholics in Australia - from their pews first, then their faith in general, followed by the growth of hatred, which has spread like leaven and is now shaping what is being dished up as staple fare, that is a menu seemingly governed by the ‘vox populi’. 

I say: 

From what I glean about Cardinal Pell's character, I believe that the idea of such sex abuse might never have occurred to him (Charity thinketh no evil, Cor 13:5).

Linda Clarke says:
Oh, it's great. I'm not alone in thinking he's innocent. It doesn't fir that a man so faithful, so true to our Tradition, would suddenly stoop after no apparent going-down-the-drain to such incredibly heinous acts. No sense at all. The Church is all he loves, all he has lived for and for my part, I believe he is suffering as did our Lord, who was wrongly condemned. He will be a great saint, methinks!

I say:
With our prayer, I agree; he will be a great saint.

THE MOST IMPORTANT CAREER (letter published in NZ Herald Feb 28)

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Talk about unsung heroines! Your story The Rising Cost of Raising Kids says nothing about the women and their husbands who collaborate in raising kids without the dubious benefit of childcare depleting their bank account.

Significantly shedding a poor light on the stay-at-home state, the only such mother mentioned is counting down the days till her only child gets to kindy, stumping up $46 a week for childcare “for a moment’s sanity”.

This kid needs company, but maybe mother thinks the prohibitive cost of childcare also prohibits her son from the company of any siblings.

I wish she could get to know Christian families who don’t run the risks of long-term contraceptives and/or abortion, who have several children in quite quick succession who amuse one another, challenge one another and okay, sometimes fight - but soon sort themselves out.

And in the meantime, in the hubbub the mother makes their clothes, and their meals (often home-grown), and sometimes schools them too, teaching them the skills she uses in order to do all the above.

This is by far the most important career: making happy families and future citizens, of this world and the next.

AT CLEARVIEW ESTATE IT WAS A PERFICK DAY - NEARLY.

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We've all had that feeling, right? 

That dithery one where you're thinking, do I say something, or keep quiet. This time, it was actually fairly agonizing and I'd really like your opinion on whether I did The Right Thing.

It was a perfick summer afternoon at Clearview Te Awanga yesterday, at the end of a long lunch, when the conversation veered towards the dire state of our health services. Not just here but in the UK, home to four of the eight rellies gathered round a table among the olive trees and oleanders.

We'd just done the overland trip to Cape Kidnappers. The recently-retired accountant on my right has a son who's a paediatrician in the UK. Across the table was 'im indoors (my husband) who's served as chairman of HB Primary Health. Next to him was the accountant's wife who we gather also works in the health sector; there were  also a recently-retired senior university lecturer in public health nutrition and his wife, who not so long ago was 'The Fat Director' of Scotland, teaching the Scots how to eat for health, and now volunteering for the government to distribute food for a huge charity.

Then there was an Anglican priest, and his wife who volunteers for  a hospice. 

So they were all qualified to have a point of view, and it seemed all were one in bemoaning and bewailing our health systems.

I so badly wanted to ask, what else can we expect but failure from 'health' services which deliberately and routinely fail their patients by dealing them death instead of life, to the tune of 12,000 dead by abortion per annum in NZ and 186,000 in the UK.

The entire health edifice has been undermined by this legalized invasion of the mother's womb, killing its smallest patients and damaging their mothers physically, emotionally and spiritually, often for the rest of their lives. And that's to say nothing of the effect that killing rather than healing has on the death peddlers themselves.

But I didn't say any of that. I said nothing. I thought, this group is together for the first and likely the last time in our lives, and we'll break up to go our separate ways in a few minutes' time. 

Was I right to keep quiet and let everyone go away feeling pleased with themselves and one another, or should I have spoken out for the voiceless, the most vulnerable of all humankind? I worried about it all night. 

And then this morning at Mass, the first reading was from Genesis (9:1-13):  

I will demand an accounting for human life. If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.

Our Western civilization is shedding its lifeblood, literally and figuratively. I can tell you, when I read those words my own blood ran cold.


'Anon' says:
Chilling.

THE COVINGTON KID'S BISHOP SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE FIRST TO DEFEND HIM

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I don't want to rub anyone's noses in this, but just to set the record straight, that Covington Catholic kid who dared to smile at an old man drumming has been cleared of all charges of harassment and racism.

When print and social media around the world burst into flames over that incendiary photograph of his 'smirk', Nick Sandmann and his classmates - who were waiting at the Lincoln Memorial for their bus to take them home after the Pro-Life March - were promptly accused by their school and diocese of behavior "opposed to the Church's teachings", with a suggestion even of expulsion from school. 

But someone was praying for those boys. As the facts began to emerge from the media mist of rage, Bishop Roger Foys had a rethink and ordered an independent third-party investigation, meanwhile apologizing on behalf of Covington Catholic High School and the Diocese for "allowing ourselves to be bullied and pressured."

And when the investigation revealed that the boys' reaction - to what was now recognized by the bishop to be a bizarre and even threatening situation - was, in the bishop's words, "expected" (que?) "and one might even say laudatory", no apology was forthcoming.

The good bishop, who may well be demoralized by the reports in the US of clerical sex abuse, claimed that "the immediate world-wide reaction to the initial video led almost everyone to believe our students had initiated the incident." 

Well excuse me, but even here in the antipodes there were people who did not believe that, and said so. This boy's bishop should have been the first to defend him against the world's fury. 

Even if he lacked the discernment to analyse Nick's smile and the forces ranged against the pro-life movement in general and its Catholic origin in particular, the principle of 'innocent until proved guilty' should have put school and bishop firmly on Nick's side. It beggars belief that as Christians, as Catholics, instead they hung him and his classmates out to dry.

And the story's not finished yet. The FBI is reported to be investigating threats of violence against the school. 

Make no mistake: what's going on here is diabolical. Nick Sandmann is white, male and middle-class, a condition which now lends itself to charges of racism and harassment; but what really fired up the ladies of the liberal left, the Democrats - and their cohorts here in NZ (Jacinda, ALRANZ et al) was that Nick is a Catholic, and he was protesting against abortion, which is implacably opposed by the Catholic Church - dare I say, even by Pope Francis?

That's why Nick was accused of racism. It's the convenient pretext, the politically correct cause of the moment. Those school kids' chaperones said they were "targeted from the get-go".

As some commentator said recently, before they accuse you of being Catholic, they'll accuse you of racism. Well, I've been accused of racism already and I'm bracing myself for what's coming.

We know that homosexuality and cover-up scandals have the Church in a vice-like grip and that the Pope's choice to head the bishops' meeting this month to sort the problem includes Cardinal Cupich, who denies homosexuality is a problem and defended the indefensible former cardinal and since-laicized Theodore McCarrick. (An instance perhaps, of setting a thief to catch a thief?)

With the Catholic Church now discredited, distracted and in disarray, the forces of evil are going for the jugular.

When I say diabolical, I mean that literally, as demonstrated by the call this week US Democrat Senator Patty Murray for the legalization of  infanticide. Aborted babies who are born alive, says Senator Murray and her ilk, should be left to die. New Zealand has a habit of following the US. Wait for infanticide, coming soon to a hospital near you.

Satan hates woman. He hates her potency for giving life and seeks to destroy that life, today by abortion and tomorrow by infanticide. 


Satan hates the Church, who always has been and always will be opposed to his culture of death, and especially he hates her Sacraments, with their potency for spiritual life. Through the practice of homosexuality he works to defeat humanity's potency for physical life, and by infecting the Catholic priesthood with this vice he defeats the priest's potency, through the Sacraments, for the life of grace.  

Satan intends the homosexual and cover-up scandal to be his coup de grace, putting the Catholic Church out of its misery. 

Catholics must have recourse to Mary, who together with the Church is symbolized in the Book of the Apocalypse as the woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 

We must pray her Rosary every day. In the end, as she herself has promised, her Immaculate Heart will triumph.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.    

SHEPHERDS WHO SHINE, SHEPHERDS WHO STINK

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Now that Fr Bryan Buenger is lost to the Diocese of Palmerston North, I can say without embarrassing him that he is a shepherd who "shines with self-sacrifice".

So why did he feel he should leave this diocese and this country, to return to the US? Yes his visa had expired. But good heavens, a good bishop and a good cardinal should have been able to get it renewed. 

Highly respected commentator Peter Kwasniewski says, in regard to Pope Francis' famous statement (one of many, often obtuse and confusing, and usually made in the air) that the "good shepherd smells of his sheep", that we should worry more about the "smell of the shepherd". 

An evil shepherd, says Kwasniewski, "stinks of egoism" while the "good shepherd shines with self-sacrifice".

So what do we make of Pope Francis' recent promotion of Bishop Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta, who had to resign for making a mess of his diocesan accounts in Argentina, to the position of 2 IC at APSA, the Vatican's minder machine of its enormous investment and real-estate holdings? To a post, furthermore, which was apparently created just for this particular bishop?

Is that weird? Curiouser and curiouser, to quote Alice in Wonderland - and the Catholic Church gets to be more of an ecclesiastical wonderland every day - is the fact that on Christmas Day this same prelate was revealed by the Argentine newspaper El Tribuno as being accused by seminarians of sexual abuse, in charges dating back to 2015. 

So Zanchetta, who is apparently incapable of organizing himself out of a wet paper bag, and accused of sex abuse, by seminarians note, not by altar boys, is given the job of sorting out the Vatican Bank.

Now consider that as we speak the Vatican is gearing up for a world-wide meeting of bishops on this very question, sex abuse, this very month. Consider if Pope Francis knew about the charges against +Zanchetta (sounds like some small Italian sports car) before he delivered him to APSA but ignored those charges, same as he ignored the case against Bishop Juan Barros, and (according to Archbishop Vigano, and no one's contradicting him) against the disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. 

And then there's Monsignor Battista Ricca, who reportedly shocked his fellow priests and the nuns at the Holy See's nunciature in Uruguay (where he was once caught with a rent boy in the elevator) by having a live-in lover, a Swiss army officer. Mons Ricca was appointed by Pope Francis to be his personal rep at the Vatican Bank and run the Domus Santa Marta, where the Pope resides. It was Mons Ricca Pope Francis was talking about when he made the infamous remark, "Who am I to judge?" 

I don't enjoy digging dirt on the Pope, on the successor of St Peter; especially I don't enjoy my beloved Church being held up to ridicule and contempt by the likes of NZ's very own 'Whale Oil' Cameron Slater. But birds of a feather flock together. By your friends ye shall know them. You get my drift. 

When we see prelates like these promoted by the Pope, and a priest like Father Bryan Buenger leaving the Diocese of Palmerston North because he "lacks the support of his bishop", it's time for us as lay people and faithful priests to stop pretending everything in God's garden, His Church, is rosy.

I can only hope and pray that all faithful members of Christ's One, Holy and Apostolic Church - bishop, priest and lay - have signed Cardinal Gerhard Muller's Manifesto of Faith at  https://lifepetitions.com/petition/sign-cardinal-mullers-manifesto-of-faith 

We may be vilified and ostracized for speaking up and signing on the dotted line but Vatican II says that people baptized and confirmed in the faith, "as true witnesses of Christ ... are more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed".

Or as Scripture says:

To obtain justification we believe with the heart; to have salvation we profess our faith with our mouth. (Or in my case, on my blog.)

 … Help me raise up my head so that others may not be afraid to speak. You yourself say: if anyone is ashamed of Me before men, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him before the angels of God. 
Therefore let me not be ashamed of the ignominy of the cross which you, O Lord, did not hesitate to embrace for me, and make me repeat with the Apostle: far be it from me to glory in anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

WE CAN CONCLUDE THAT NOW THERE ARE NO RULES IN THE CHURCH

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Going by Bishop Charles Drennan's contradictory remarks on his WYD blog at https://pndiocese.org.nz/bishops-blog/wyd-2019/

Bruce Tichbon believes his people can conclude the following:

1) that now there are no rules in the Church

2) That there is such a thing as Church theology (which means doctrine and ‘rules’), but some of the ‘rules’ are wrong

3) That as ‘homosexuality’ and ‘gender dysphoria’ are within God’s plans for humanity already, we don’t need new rules

How does Bishop Drennan’s blog lead us to these conclusions? Let’s analyse the issues in more detail.

1) No rules in the Church: 

Bishop Drennan quotes from Pope Francis’ opening address at WYD:  “Christianity is not a collection of truths to be believed, of rules to be followed, or of prohibitions. Seen that way it puts us off. Christianity is a person who loved me immensely, who demands and asks for my love. Christianity is Christ.” *

Is this a bad translation? But it seems to be the official Vatican version. Surely Pope Francis means ‘Christianity is not merely a collection, etc’.

So should I take the Ten Ccommandments down from my wall?

2) Wrong theology (doctrine):

 Bishop Drennan says: "And in some areas, it’s time theology caught up with science."  Bishop Drennan is obviously saying that doctrine (he uses the word theology, but he clearly means Church doctrine) on homosexuality is wrong, it must change. The science you speak of Bishop, please show us, at least a couple of web links?

3) Bishop Drennan says, "I don’t mind putting my neck on the line for love. To pretend that homosexuality and gender dysphoria do not exist or are somehow outside God’s plan for humanity is a rejection not defense of truth and thus nonsensical." 

He seems to be asking for new rules on homosexuality.  But the Pope says there are no rules now, just ‘love’.

If we’re having a Catholic discussion on homosexuality, we should use Catholic terminology.  Then we know whether we’re talking about same-sex attraction, or homosexual acts.  If you use the unqualified term ‘homosexual(ity)’ the reader doesn’t know if you are referring to one or the other, or bundling them together.

If Bishop Drennan is telling us that homosexual acts are part of God’s plan, doesn’t Sacred Scripture tell us he is potentially sending that person to Hell (and potentially himself too, but to a deeper level of Hell)?

How can homosexual acts be love?  Love, in the eyes of God and His Catholic Church, means doing for others what will bring them closer to Christ and his Kingdom.  By quoting the Pope’s words, Bishop Drennan indicates that homosexual acts are love – but how can he say that?

These high-level statements are contradictory and ambiguous. Coming from Pope Francis and our Bishop, they just don’t cut it. 

They cause confusion in the Church; the Devil is here, in the detail.  So please gentlemen give us the truth – with clarification of the so-called 'science' – in a clear, consistent, statement of doctrine. It is your duty to your flock.

A final comment on our troubled communications: it’s good that our young people at WYD had a chance for group dialogue face to face with their bishop.  We parishioners back home don’t seem to get the same opportunity. 

Without that opportunity we are forced to use web sites to communicate, which makes some in the hierarchy uncomfortable - during WYD, Pope

Francis said, "in some Catholic communications 

media, there is no compassion. Instead, one finds 

schism, condemnation, malice, fury, self-

aggrandizement (and) the denunciation of 

heresy." 

There is a communication problem, but with due

respect, the solution lies mostly in the hands of 

the hierarchy.

* https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-01/pope-francis-panama-wyd-2019-opening-ceremony-full-text.html

MaryAnn Keenan says: Very enlightening -and somewhat disturbing.. What can we do against the Goliaths but be pebbles in the Lords Hand. It only takes one.. He will show us what to do, but we cannot do it individually.. Let me know if I can help in any way.  

Paul Collits says: 
As someone far cleverer that either the Bishop or the current Pope once said, "love" contains within it both eros and agape.
It's Drennan and Francis who are hung up about the eros, not orthodox Catholics. 
And eros can be either ordered (to nature) or not.  
Homosexual desires are radically disordered. Homosexual acts are sinful. This has not changed, nor will it, despite what some temporary occupants of high Church office might think or say. 
Their time will pass. Eternal truths, such as those taught by St Thomas Aquinas, 'the Angelic Doctor'. will not.

I reply:

Dogma has truth, it is more true even than science, and the object of dogma is above and beyond man. Likewise, sins against dogma are the most grievous of all, and errors concerning ideas are more dangerous than those concerning men. 

Take away dogma and you take God away: to touch dogma is to touch God. To sin against dogma is to sin against God. 

- Fr Pierre Rousselot, 'The Intellectualism of St Thomas Aquinas'.

FR BRYAN BUENGER'S VALEDICTORY SERMON

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Fr Bryan’s beloved Dannevirke parishioners kept St Brigid’s Pahiatua waiting this morning for his final Mass in NZ.  He said they all wanted a hug and who could blame them!  

‘Pa Bryan’, as he is affectionately called, at St Joseph's Dannevirke, was not only their ‘beloved’ priest, he was their spiritual director and formator. That set him apart in their hearts and in their souls.  He’d cared for them, loved them, and importantly, catechised them!  

Not that he failed to offer formation like that elsewhere in Tararua Parish– he did – but fewer wanted it and his time was limited.  He was forced to commit only to programmes where the Spirit was most active.  Though the rest of us missed out on some official catechetical programmes in the wider Tararua Parish, we were no less loved, cared for, and spiritually formed (if open and willing!).  

That sums up Fr Bryan’s priestly ministry in NZ. That'’s what set him apart.  He had a pastoral heart and a true calling by Christ to take up his cross and follow His Master – that is, follow Him in every way. 

There was no mumbo jumbo, 'progressive', secularised and watered-down teaching.  What we got was what Christ gave – good old fashioned Truth – laid bare!  And how truly refreshing and sweet, the water of Truth actually is! 

Like many locals I was there when Fr Bryan first visited us from the Seminary, was ordained into the Diaconate, and received the Sacrament of Holy Orders.  We were there for his first Mass of Thanksgiving at St Brigid’s and gathered today, sadly, for his last.  In that time, we have witnessed Fr Bryan grow spiritually through the grace he has been given. 

He’s held fast to his ‘orthodox’ faith and that means to the Gospel of Christ and  Truth.  He hasn’t succumbed to the Modernist heresy of ‘needing to keep up with the times’, watering down our beautiful Traditional Faith, and that’s why he’s been loved deeply; why we were kept waiting for his arrival today!  

It is also why he’s had to endure hardships and suffered a heart attack.  He’s been referred to as ‘the enemy’, and denounced, at times even publicly.  

He doesn’t see the need to build a ‘new church’ (or a ‘Church of Nice’) when the truth Jesus gave us and the Deposit of faith in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has stood the test of time.  His homilies have always borne witness to such great faith!  They have been refreshing, provoking, and enticing!  He has given permission to publish his final one, openly today.  I can honestly say our souls have been enriched.  

I hope our Bishop Charles Drennan, who was notably absent today, realises just what a loss Fr Bryan’s departure is for this diocese, and for the salvation of souls.

Sharon Crooks.  

FR BRYAN’S FINAL HOMILY, ST BRIGID’S PAHIATUA, 10 FEB 2019:

We say it at every Mass just before we come to Holy Communion: 

“...But only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” What exactly is that ‘'word” that we are waiting for Jesus to say to us to heal our soul?

I’ll come back to that in a moment. Working with high school students in the youth group was something I really enjoyed. Some were quite lukewarm in their faith, some truly doubted, and a few on fire for the faith. But there were always a few discussions that would draw everyone’s attention and of course they involved human sexuality.

In the teaching of the Church’s doctrine, the subject of celibacy versus multiple partners would usually prompt a question from nature. The kids would propose whatever animal behaviour they saw in nature and say, “Why can’t humans act like that if it is natural behaviour?” In answering the question, I would usually point out a few things that made animals different from humans.

There are many reasons, of course, but some of the things we would discuss would be that the human person is the only animal that can recognise its Creator.

Another is that the human person is the only animal that can freely choose to honour its Creator by forgoing essential things like food, drink, or conjugal relations in order to achieve a great good.

And, perhaps most beautifully, the human person can forgive the one who has badly hurt – physically or emotionally – the other by showing mercy and choosing freely not to seek the destruction of the other person.

Luke’s Gospel points to these realities and highlights how disciples – in Jesus’ time or in our time – are meant to cultivate these elements of their higher nature rather than remaining trapped in the petty concerns of this world.

The earth is indeed filled with the glory of God, as Isaiah proclaims, but Jesus shows Peter that this glory is not just something in a far-away prophecy; it is right here, right now. God’s glory is in front of us at this moment; but our eyes are veiled with our sinfulness and we do not see God’s work as clearly as we could or should.

St Peter is a good, hard-working man, but he realises he hasn’t believed in the power of God at work in his life. It was this physical event of a miraculous catch of fish that helped Peter move beyond his sinfulness to see God’s work in the world. And because of that he feels ashamed, falls down on his knees and says, “Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

It’s a great example to help us ask what in this world or in ourselves might be blocking our eyes from seeing how God is working in this world – and within us.

In a discussion with the teens on how God came to save us, one asked, “From what has He saved us?”

How might you answer that question – for the teen and for yourself? In our relativistic world, and for some in the Church hierarchy where one’s conscience is now promoted as the determiner of what is right and wrong, this question demonstrates an earthly focus or even a lack of understanding of Jesus’ mission.

He came to save us from living a life of selfish isolation, from living unconnected to the power of the Divine, from living without intimate and personal understanding of the real power given to us who are absolutely able to love and forgive and live in holy communion with the Father and with one another.  That’s what makes us different from animals; that makes us His beloved sons and daughters.

We can live this way – if we choose. Luke’s Gospel points out that the power has been given to us to live as children of a loving and merciful God. St Paul testifies in 1st Corinthians that God’s grace has made him what he is, and that grace worked powerfully in him. St Paul acutely felt the mercy of Jesus in having saved him from his violent and degrading ways, putting him on the right path as a true son of God.

Peter also realised his sinfulness and blindness, but that realisation only let him live with the Lord. Learning how to live in Christ came from a long journey on the path of discipleship – just as it is for each one of us, myself included.

In order to see our God as He is, we must realise our sinfulness and blindness, just as St Paul did. That will allow us to see the Holy Eucharist for exactly what It is – Christ Himself; His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

At the beginning I asked a question: “What exactly is that word that we are waiting to hear from Christ?”

That word is the same command the centurion heard: “Go, let it be done for you according to your faith.”

And that statement begs the question: just what is your faith?

In whom or in what do you put your faith?

Bob Gill says:

During the two years I have lived in Dannevirke, I feel privileged to have known Father Bryan. Through my fruitless arguments via the Palmerston North hierarchy on matters of faith and at the same time the encouraging stance of Father Bryan, it didn’t take me long to appreciate just how far some priests have deviated from orthodoxy. From my observation, Father Bryan was a lone voice in the Palmerston North Diocese – their loss, I’m afraid. Sorry to farewell our friend, but I wish him well as he returns to an established orthodox diocese where I am sure his talents will be more appreciated. Note: A wonderful turnout of PARISHIONERS for Father’s farewell – and not a single Church representative, that I could see!	Julia du Fresne	on 24/02/19