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.