Five years into his pontificate and coming out of the "summer of shame" (McCarrick, Pennsylvania report, death penalty, Vigano, China) the agenda of Pope Francis has become crystal clear. It is not from what he says that this pattern emerges: in what he says he is complex, contradictory, impulsive, incoherent and irrational. It is in what he does that a logic emerges: his decisions and especially his appointments. His priorities are:
1. The politicization of the papacy and episcopacy on behalf of a liberal program, especially welcome to immigrants and protection of the earth. These are the heart of his papacy. They are worthwhile goals, befitting of a politician, social activist or policy advocate. Not a pope! In this he accommodates to the ideology of secular Western elites and it is why he is their darling. Previous popes offered a framework of moral teachings to use in evaluating specific policies and practices without becoming partisan. Francis is the hero of the secular, liberal West. He is also the Anti-Trump!
2. Communion-for-the-divorced (and remarried without annulment) is the signature initiative by which he has polarized the Church. When his behind-the-stage maneuvers at the Synod were decisively rejected by the bishops he defiantly endorsed it in regard to the Argentine bishops' interpretation of Laetitiae Amoris and then slipped this into the official Church records. In one swap, he dismissed the clear teaching of St. John Paul of just a few years previous, the tradition of millennia, and the explicit will of the synod of bishops. To be sure Francis is no sexual libertarian or gay militant; he himself seems to be of two minds and has at times disappointed his progressive collaborators. But he lacks the stomach, fortitude or intellect to engage, in confident conflict, Cultural Liberation in the manner of his two predecessors. Instead he has clearly accommodated himself to the gay lobby and distanced himself from his predecessors in favor of a soft, welcoming, uncritical "accompaniment" approach to sexual license.
3. In China, he hopes to expand the reach of the Church by subservience to the Communist Party through giving them veto power over the choice of bishops. This is probably the single most catastrophic decision he will make. China will only have pro-abortion bishops who are devoid of any capacity speak Truth or to confront that dreadful government, overtly or covertly. Again we see the spirit of accommodation. And again, we see an indifference to Truth.
4. Elected to clean up the mess in the Vatican, he has now been exposed by the McCarrick/Vigano revelations to be the prime protector of the curia's web of financial irresponsibility, gay sexual immorality, and a heterodox theology of sexual liberation. John Paul seems to have been given over to his mission and blissfully unaware of the culture of sin that was growing around him. Benedict apparently recognized it, attempted to discipline McCarrick, but found himself without the personal stamina and social capital to confront it and so resigned with dignity. Francis has befriended this network because it helps him with his agenda: a progressive internationalism, a softening on sexuality, and normalization in China. McCarrick may be seen as iconic of all these concerns.
5. Accommodation is the substance of his agenda: accommodation to progressive politics, sexual liberation, Chinese communism, and the lavender mafia of the Curia. With his customary verbal flourish, he prefers the expression "accompaniment" which lends a cherubic glow to all he does as welcoming, warm, and nurturing. The underlying spirit of this pontificate is an emotivism that disdains objective Truth in favor of sentiment and a mercy without justice. He clearly has internalized the secular West's stereotypical view of the Catholic Church as rigid, regressive, heartless. Reactive against that, he distances himself from demands, theology, authority, tradition, dogma, and law. Everything with him is feeling, passion, sentiment. When he is mad (at capitalist, clerics, mafia) he spews venom and resentment, demonizing his enemy even as he cloaks himself in righteousness. Entirely lacking is judicial sobriety, temperance, or the patient correction of a confident father.
There seems to be a "splitting" in the dense, strange personality of this Pope: the good Francis and the bad Francis. Clearly, the good Francis is welcoming, merciful, kind, and sweet. The bad Francis is cold, calculating, Machiavellian and brutal in use of power. Like his counterpart, Trump, his dictatorial instincts equip him to remake the Church in his own image without regard to protocol, tradition, or due process. His manipulation of the Synod was quite grotesque. His appointments to the college of cardinals have discarded normal procedures and favored those closest to him in ideology. Liberal Thomas Reese S.J. admitted that had John Paul or Benedict been so subjective and partisan in their appointments that he and other liberals would have been enraged. He has steadily eliminated opposition from within the Vatican (Burke, Mueller,) and surrounded himself with fellow-travelers. John Paul and Benedict were academics, comfortable in the give-and-take of intellectual debate and confrontation; both confronted the repression of Nazism and Communism; both valued freedom even as they protected the Truth entrusted to their care. Francis is instinctively a Peronist in that he weilds power to eliminate his foes and achieve his political goals.
The Church is now in a full-scaled civil war about this pontificate. It is a cold war, a quiet war, a behind-the-scenes war. It is no longer possible to see continuity between Pope Francis and his predecessors: the contradictions are glaring! It is hardly possible to be loyal to the Tradition and the past and to this pope. It is like being in Spain in the 1930s! The moderates and mediators (Dolan, O'Malley ) will have to decide, in ways dramatic and hidden. Every thinking Catholic will have to decide!
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Our President, Our Pope, and the Flight from Truth into Emotivism
If my father is diabetic, schizophrenic or alcoholic, it is neither reverence nor charity to deny, ignore or dismiss it. The first step towards health for a dysfunctional family or community is recognition of the underlying pathology. Genuine respect, compassion and justice...informed by Truth rather than unthinking obeisance or pious, saccharine sentimentality...require sober, clear-minded scrutiny and evaluation, of a President and even more importantly of a Pope. It is worth considering Ross Douthat's suggestion about the similarities between President Trump and Pope Francis.
The most significant, astonishing characteristic of our President is his absolute, relentless disregard for truth. His pathology is much deeper than that of a compulsive liar because the concept of "lying" implies a truth or objectivity that is distorted, deliberately, for gain. And so a lie-detector test probably detects the mind's dissonant awareness of incongruity between the truth and the lie. Trump might well pass every lie detector test because he is oblivious of a Reality exterior to his preferences, needs, impulses. Developmentally, he is about 2-years old. His is a pathology that (to my knowledge) has not to date been identified (as in the DSM IV). It resembles the psychopath or sociopath who lacks any conscience (regard for good and evil) and empathy (for the suffering of another) but it is distinct: he is indifferent to Truth. If we understand "intellect" classically as the ability of the human mind to receive, grasp or understand Reality or Being, we might name him an: intellectopath, one who is unaware of and indifferent to Reality and thereby inclined to deceive and manipulate facts for his own purposes. In the case of Donald Trump, this pathology exceeds, in moral gravity, even as it informs all his blatant defects of character: boundless narcissism, incompetence, incoherence regarding policy, inconsistency, disrespect for women, and the vile contempt for those who resist him in any way.
His intellectual pathology has catastrophic consequences for our society: it is not only his followers who mimic his disregard for facts, but his adversaries on the left by an inverted imitation increasingly demonstrate that same emotionalism, irrationality, and will to power (witness the histrionics at the recent hearings for Judge Kavanaugh!) Our society is polarized now even more than during the Vietnam War and the crises of the 1960s. We would probably have to go back to the Civil War to find such division but even that conflict had about it a dignity and honor that is entirely lacking in our body politic today.
Trump did not create this condition, but he is a prime symptom and a vast inflamation of it. Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, notes the rise of "emotivism" as the basis for ethics in modernity as there has been a loss of tradition and of the cultivation of intelligence as the apprehension of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Trump can be viewed as the final and absolute embodiment of this trend: almost an Anti-Christ of Untruth. The ultimate expression of Pilate's skepticism: "What is Truth?"
Pope Francis has a much milder form of this malady, to be sure, but it is more significant because of his office and mission: he is The Custodian of Truth. Like Trump, his pontificate has been characterized by impulsiveness, inconsistency, incoherence, polarization, emotionalism, and an extraordinary disinterest in Truth and facts. He has an aversion to dogma, rules, and tradition. He is at pains to set himself against the past, rather than develop in continuity with it. He is sentimental, histrionic and wholly unpredictable. Like our President, he has around him those who would restrain his impulses: his Kelly/Matis is Mueller/Sarah/Burke.
He is a people-pleaser who responds sympathetically to whoever is close to him. When mad at the mafia, he tells them they are going to hell; when talking with an aging agnostic, he assures him God sends none to hell. He supports conscientious objector Kim Davis and a few days latter has Fr. Lombardy peddeling furiously away from that posture. He brutally castigates the Chilians who alleged sex abuse only to apologize later and blame bad information. He has attacked gay marriage as an artifice of the devil and then he surrounds himself in the curia with the gay mafia. There are increasing suspicions of mental or emotional disorder. (http://magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2018/09/12/francis-a-pope-who-says-one-thing-and-the-opposite/ ). As with Trump, his is not a conventional psychological disorder but a profound character pathology which makes him incapable of a coherent, intelligent vision of reality. Actually, he is lucid and steadfast in his political ideology but that is not what we look for in our pope. As a Jesuit he hardly embodies the rich intellectual legacy started by St. Ignatius in favor of an emotionalism and sentimentality. Perhaps that explains that he chose for his papal name that of the least intellectual of our saints: Francis of Assis.
The Pope's response...actually, complete lack of response...to the dubia presented by a group of Cardinals for clarification is significant. He offers no answer, no rebuttal, no clarification. He does not operate in the world of theological discourse. He prefers to be left free to follow his feelings, impulses, and passions. His "pastoral approach" of "accompaniment" would allow priests and ministers to follow sentiments of empathy and kindness, unrestrained by objective truths, dogmas, rules or by the moral order.
Worst of all is his response to the Vigano testimony. A simple yes, no or clarification on the allegations is all that is required. He dances around that question with a breath-taking contempt for facts and truth. "You make your mind up" he tells the journalists. And he ends with: "It is a matter of faith." He can only be saying by this: "If you are against me and my papacy, you will believe these allegations with my right wing enemies. If you are with me and my agenda (global warming, immigration, death penalty, etc.) you will care about Vigano's testimony as much as I cared about the sex life of Fr. McCarrick, a marvelous ally in my political crusade." Just recently he speaks in his daily homily about the strategy of the Accuser (Satan) in unveiling the sins of bishops so as to scandalize the faithful. Again: disdain for Truth. He has forgotten that Satan is the father of lies; that Jesus is the Truth; that the "truth will make you free." He proclaims a mercy that is cheap: depleted of justice, truth, contrition.
In a startlingly narcissistic, self-regarding twist, Pope Francis, in his daily homilies, has cloaked his silence before the dubia and Vigano in a robe of prayer and profundity, identifying himself and his McCarrickian cadre with the silence of Christ before Pilate as he slanders the whistle-blowers as agents of The Accuser! The subtlelity and depth of this self-deception is something the crude and superficial Trump could only envy.
John Paul was the great prophet of Mercy but this message was enriched, also by Benedict, through the retrieval of "The Splendor of Truth." This dual pontificate recovered the ancient reverence for reason as complimentary of faith as reception, wonder and grasping of Reality in all its Beauty. At the same time, they incorporated all that is best in contemporary science and philosophy. Francis appears to lack the slightest appreciation for this priceless legacy. He is a man of emotion, heart, spirit, and impulse. As The Theologian of the World, he is the endearing scarecrow of the Wizard of Oz.
His absolute condemnation of the death penalty follows this pattern: his feeling is all prisons systems present and future will be adequate; his sentiment is that capital punishment offends haman dignity. He offers no philosophical argument; nor any exhaustive social science research. He dismisses the tradition of natural law that has always seen that the state must protect innocent life and the common good, if necessary by use of lethal force (military, police, execution.) He neglects to consult with bishops around the world but inserts his opinion into the Catechism in a dictatorial fashion.
He is referred to as a "Peronist" for his tyrannical impulses and in this again resembles our President and the regrettable worldwide strengthening of dictatorships. When he was rebuked by the Synod of Bishops (notably the Africans) on communion for the divorced, he high-handedly approved the Argentinian interpretation of Amoris Laetitiae and installed his letter and their document into the official Church record. Thereby, he covertly and tyranically elevated his sentimental view, even as he pays lip service to diversity, collegiality and decentralization.
Both pope and president present as populists but are brazenly elitist in important, but contrasting ways. Trump is a wealthy celebrity whose tax and tariff initiatives are seen as promising for lower income folks by only the most optimistic (possibly delusional) Trumpistas. Pope Francis is a sharp contrast. He is champion of the poor, immigrants and the environment. In this he has emerged as the symbolic world-leader of Western liberalism: darling of our media and all democrats. He faces off against Trump-Putin-et.al who represent the opposing emergent ideology of nationalism, zenophobia fear and rage. Strangely (and painfully, for many of us) the Trump-Putin axis is more protective of innocent life, traditional marriage/family, and religious liberty than is Pope Francis who is contradictory but mostly guided by the lavender mafia surrounding him.
With both pope and president, we have left the cosmos of objective truth, moral order, stability and tradition and been thrust into the chaos of unending marxist-nietzchian conflict: one interest group against the other, the clash of wills and interest, the triumph of dionysian passion and feeling. To be sure, Francis is different as he practices a sentimentality of kindness and compassion for the victimized even as he expresses hatred for those he perceives as oppressors.
Jorge Bergoglio is an admirable man and priest in many ways. He would be a superb counselor-therapist; chaplain for prisons, youth, hospitals or military; spiritual director or retreat leader; social worker; community organizer or political activist. He is simply a very bad pope. A person might be a saint but a bad teacher or mechanic or CEO. Bergoglio is a catastrophe as a pope because he is theologically-challenged. The first job of pope (in my mind) is to teach; the second is to govern the Church. His two immediate predecessors were splendid in the first task but not strong in the administration of a Church bureaucracy that has grown beyond bounds. Pope Francis is a failure in the first task of teaching but worse in the second of governing: he has not just lost control (the way Benedict apparently realized so that he retired) but surrounded himself with a corrupt, secretive network that covertly propagates a culture of perversion and publicly advocates the agenda of Western, elite liberalism.
I am told that in Rome he is disliked by conservatives but also by liberals since he has failed to deliver them their agenda. He is unpredictable and unreliable. Does this remind you of someone who is despised by liberals and by many (economic and moral) conservatives as well?
In the wake of this Summer of Shame (McCarrick, death penalty, Pennsylvania report, Vigano) we now know the the hierarchical Church is corrupted beyond what most of us would have guessed even months ago. A drastic cleansing is required. It is vastly improbable that this Pope, curia and college of cardinals are capable of it. We will probably need a drastic reduction of the Church in its bureaucracy, property, and organizational reach. Until this cleansing is underway, many of us will be diverting our resources away from "the Church" ...that is to say the institutional Church, not the Church our Mother, the body and bride of Christ, the servant of the poor and herald of the Gospel. To do differently would be to enable our dysfunctional pope and hierarchy. Meanwhile, Pope Francis and his lieutenants are tightening their veil of silence and conspiracy with the fierceness of a Mafia family under attack.
We need to practice a kind of detachment from our hierarchy, renouncing patterns of co-dependence and enabling. Something like Al-Anon for families of alcoholics, we might call it "cleric/bishop/pope-anon." We remind ourselves that we belong not to Peter or Paul, not to John Paul or Benedict or Francis but to Christ even as we cherish, protect and develop the legacy of Mercy-in-Truth that is being squandered by the current pontificate.
This grieving process involves working through unavoidable feelings of hurt, disappointment and anger and has a particular twinge for those of us who have enjoyed such a tender, ennobling intimacy with St. John Paul and our Pope Emeritus. But this sober, lucid scrutiny of our leadership can serve to deepen and purify us in filial loyalty to Pope Francis and truthful charity for Jorge Bergoglio, like ourselves, a poor sinner and brother-in-Christ who has consistently asked for our prayers.
Slowly but surely, the Truth will be manifest. The civil authorities will help. The Church is pathetic, embarrassing, and even tragic! But the Holy Spirit is at work and will prevail. This crisis of moral corruption, financial wrongdoing, and politicization of the Church, nevertheless, in no way inhibits our own growth in holiness but can be a stimulus for it. We can wait patiently and observe as Christ purifies His Bride and Body. And so, we continue to hope, pray, support each other and all our good priests and bishops in our shared life with the Holy Trinity, our Blessed Mother and the Communion of Saints.
The most significant, astonishing characteristic of our President is his absolute, relentless disregard for truth. His pathology is much deeper than that of a compulsive liar because the concept of "lying" implies a truth or objectivity that is distorted, deliberately, for gain. And so a lie-detector test probably detects the mind's dissonant awareness of incongruity between the truth and the lie. Trump might well pass every lie detector test because he is oblivious of a Reality exterior to his preferences, needs, impulses. Developmentally, he is about 2-years old. His is a pathology that (to my knowledge) has not to date been identified (as in the DSM IV). It resembles the psychopath or sociopath who lacks any conscience (regard for good and evil) and empathy (for the suffering of another) but it is distinct: he is indifferent to Truth. If we understand "intellect" classically as the ability of the human mind to receive, grasp or understand Reality or Being, we might name him an: intellectopath, one who is unaware of and indifferent to Reality and thereby inclined to deceive and manipulate facts for his own purposes. In the case of Donald Trump, this pathology exceeds, in moral gravity, even as it informs all his blatant defects of character: boundless narcissism, incompetence, incoherence regarding policy, inconsistency, disrespect for women, and the vile contempt for those who resist him in any way.
His intellectual pathology has catastrophic consequences for our society: it is not only his followers who mimic his disregard for facts, but his adversaries on the left by an inverted imitation increasingly demonstrate that same emotionalism, irrationality, and will to power (witness the histrionics at the recent hearings for Judge Kavanaugh!) Our society is polarized now even more than during the Vietnam War and the crises of the 1960s. We would probably have to go back to the Civil War to find such division but even that conflict had about it a dignity and honor that is entirely lacking in our body politic today.
Trump did not create this condition, but he is a prime symptom and a vast inflamation of it. Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, notes the rise of "emotivism" as the basis for ethics in modernity as there has been a loss of tradition and of the cultivation of intelligence as the apprehension of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Trump can be viewed as the final and absolute embodiment of this trend: almost an Anti-Christ of Untruth. The ultimate expression of Pilate's skepticism: "What is Truth?"
Pope Francis has a much milder form of this malady, to be sure, but it is more significant because of his office and mission: he is The Custodian of Truth. Like Trump, his pontificate has been characterized by impulsiveness, inconsistency, incoherence, polarization, emotionalism, and an extraordinary disinterest in Truth and facts. He has an aversion to dogma, rules, and tradition. He is at pains to set himself against the past, rather than develop in continuity with it. He is sentimental, histrionic and wholly unpredictable. Like our President, he has around him those who would restrain his impulses: his Kelly/Matis is Mueller/Sarah/Burke.
He is a people-pleaser who responds sympathetically to whoever is close to him. When mad at the mafia, he tells them they are going to hell; when talking with an aging agnostic, he assures him God sends none to hell. He supports conscientious objector Kim Davis and a few days latter has Fr. Lombardy peddeling furiously away from that posture. He brutally castigates the Chilians who alleged sex abuse only to apologize later and blame bad information. He has attacked gay marriage as an artifice of the devil and then he surrounds himself in the curia with the gay mafia. There are increasing suspicions of mental or emotional disorder. (http://magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2018/09/12/francis-a-pope-who-says-one-thing-and-the-opposite/ ). As with Trump, his is not a conventional psychological disorder but a profound character pathology which makes him incapable of a coherent, intelligent vision of reality. Actually, he is lucid and steadfast in his political ideology but that is not what we look for in our pope. As a Jesuit he hardly embodies the rich intellectual legacy started by St. Ignatius in favor of an emotionalism and sentimentality. Perhaps that explains that he chose for his papal name that of the least intellectual of our saints: Francis of Assis.
The Pope's response...actually, complete lack of response...to the dubia presented by a group of Cardinals for clarification is significant. He offers no answer, no rebuttal, no clarification. He does not operate in the world of theological discourse. He prefers to be left free to follow his feelings, impulses, and passions. His "pastoral approach" of "accompaniment" would allow priests and ministers to follow sentiments of empathy and kindness, unrestrained by objective truths, dogmas, rules or by the moral order.
Worst of all is his response to the Vigano testimony. A simple yes, no or clarification on the allegations is all that is required. He dances around that question with a breath-taking contempt for facts and truth. "You make your mind up" he tells the journalists. And he ends with: "It is a matter of faith." He can only be saying by this: "If you are against me and my papacy, you will believe these allegations with my right wing enemies. If you are with me and my agenda (global warming, immigration, death penalty, etc.) you will care about Vigano's testimony as much as I cared about the sex life of Fr. McCarrick, a marvelous ally in my political crusade." Just recently he speaks in his daily homily about the strategy of the Accuser (Satan) in unveiling the sins of bishops so as to scandalize the faithful. Again: disdain for Truth. He has forgotten that Satan is the father of lies; that Jesus is the Truth; that the "truth will make you free." He proclaims a mercy that is cheap: depleted of justice, truth, contrition.
In a startlingly narcissistic, self-regarding twist, Pope Francis, in his daily homilies, has cloaked his silence before the dubia and Vigano in a robe of prayer and profundity, identifying himself and his McCarrickian cadre with the silence of Christ before Pilate as he slanders the whistle-blowers as agents of The Accuser! The subtlelity and depth of this self-deception is something the crude and superficial Trump could only envy.
John Paul was the great prophet of Mercy but this message was enriched, also by Benedict, through the retrieval of "The Splendor of Truth." This dual pontificate recovered the ancient reverence for reason as complimentary of faith as reception, wonder and grasping of Reality in all its Beauty. At the same time, they incorporated all that is best in contemporary science and philosophy. Francis appears to lack the slightest appreciation for this priceless legacy. He is a man of emotion, heart, spirit, and impulse. As The Theologian of the World, he is the endearing scarecrow of the Wizard of Oz.
His absolute condemnation of the death penalty follows this pattern: his feeling is all prisons systems present and future will be adequate; his sentiment is that capital punishment offends haman dignity. He offers no philosophical argument; nor any exhaustive social science research. He dismisses the tradition of natural law that has always seen that the state must protect innocent life and the common good, if necessary by use of lethal force (military, police, execution.) He neglects to consult with bishops around the world but inserts his opinion into the Catechism in a dictatorial fashion.
He is referred to as a "Peronist" for his tyrannical impulses and in this again resembles our President and the regrettable worldwide strengthening of dictatorships. When he was rebuked by the Synod of Bishops (notably the Africans) on communion for the divorced, he high-handedly approved the Argentinian interpretation of Amoris Laetitiae and installed his letter and their document into the official Church record. Thereby, he covertly and tyranically elevated his sentimental view, even as he pays lip service to diversity, collegiality and decentralization.
Both pope and president present as populists but are brazenly elitist in important, but contrasting ways. Trump is a wealthy celebrity whose tax and tariff initiatives are seen as promising for lower income folks by only the most optimistic (possibly delusional) Trumpistas. Pope Francis is a sharp contrast. He is champion of the poor, immigrants and the environment. In this he has emerged as the symbolic world-leader of Western liberalism: darling of our media and all democrats. He faces off against Trump-Putin-et.al who represent the opposing emergent ideology of nationalism, zenophobia fear and rage. Strangely (and painfully, for many of us) the Trump-Putin axis is more protective of innocent life, traditional marriage/family, and religious liberty than is Pope Francis who is contradictory but mostly guided by the lavender mafia surrounding him.
With both pope and president, we have left the cosmos of objective truth, moral order, stability and tradition and been thrust into the chaos of unending marxist-nietzchian conflict: one interest group against the other, the clash of wills and interest, the triumph of dionysian passion and feeling. To be sure, Francis is different as he practices a sentimentality of kindness and compassion for the victimized even as he expresses hatred for those he perceives as oppressors.
Jorge Bergoglio is an admirable man and priest in many ways. He would be a superb counselor-therapist; chaplain for prisons, youth, hospitals or military; spiritual director or retreat leader; social worker; community organizer or political activist. He is simply a very bad pope. A person might be a saint but a bad teacher or mechanic or CEO. Bergoglio is a catastrophe as a pope because he is theologically-challenged. The first job of pope (in my mind) is to teach; the second is to govern the Church. His two immediate predecessors were splendid in the first task but not strong in the administration of a Church bureaucracy that has grown beyond bounds. Pope Francis is a failure in the first task of teaching but worse in the second of governing: he has not just lost control (the way Benedict apparently realized so that he retired) but surrounded himself with a corrupt, secretive network that covertly propagates a culture of perversion and publicly advocates the agenda of Western, elite liberalism.
I am told that in Rome he is disliked by conservatives but also by liberals since he has failed to deliver them their agenda. He is unpredictable and unreliable. Does this remind you of someone who is despised by liberals and by many (economic and moral) conservatives as well?
In the wake of this Summer of Shame (McCarrick, death penalty, Pennsylvania report, Vigano) we now know the the hierarchical Church is corrupted beyond what most of us would have guessed even months ago. A drastic cleansing is required. It is vastly improbable that this Pope, curia and college of cardinals are capable of it. We will probably need a drastic reduction of the Church in its bureaucracy, property, and organizational reach. Until this cleansing is underway, many of us will be diverting our resources away from "the Church" ...that is to say the institutional Church, not the Church our Mother, the body and bride of Christ, the servant of the poor and herald of the Gospel. To do differently would be to enable our dysfunctional pope and hierarchy. Meanwhile, Pope Francis and his lieutenants are tightening their veil of silence and conspiracy with the fierceness of a Mafia family under attack.
We need to practice a kind of detachment from our hierarchy, renouncing patterns of co-dependence and enabling. Something like Al-Anon for families of alcoholics, we might call it "cleric/bishop/pope-anon." We remind ourselves that we belong not to Peter or Paul, not to John Paul or Benedict or Francis but to Christ even as we cherish, protect and develop the legacy of Mercy-in-Truth that is being squandered by the current pontificate.
This grieving process involves working through unavoidable feelings of hurt, disappointment and anger and has a particular twinge for those of us who have enjoyed such a tender, ennobling intimacy with St. John Paul and our Pope Emeritus. But this sober, lucid scrutiny of our leadership can serve to deepen and purify us in filial loyalty to Pope Francis and truthful charity for Jorge Bergoglio, like ourselves, a poor sinner and brother-in-Christ who has consistently asked for our prayers.
Slowly but surely, the Truth will be manifest. The civil authorities will help. The Church is pathetic, embarrassing, and even tragic! But the Holy Spirit is at work and will prevail. This crisis of moral corruption, financial wrongdoing, and politicization of the Church, nevertheless, in no way inhibits our own growth in holiness but can be a stimulus for it. We can wait patiently and observe as Christ purifies His Bride and Body. And so, we continue to hope, pray, support each other and all our good priests and bishops in our shared life with the Holy Trinity, our Blessed Mother and the Communion of Saints.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
It Is All About Homosexuality
It is not hard to connect the dots:
1. The Church sex scandal overwhelmingly (81%) involves neither pedophilia nor women but young adolescent men. It is a homosexual problem. Married and women priests have nothing to do with it.
2. There was a surge of this activity in 1965-85 when there was an invasion of homosexual, especially actively gay, men into the priesthood. (Why I do not know.) Relatively few allegations outside of that time immediately after the sexual revolution. The good news: we are 30 years out of the storm!
3. The compulsive obsession with young men has been prevalent in gay culture and lifestyle since the Greeks. It is part of the condition.
4. Those gay men who came into the priesthood in that period are now in late adulthood (60s and 70s) and many are in high positions in the Church. They compose the Vatican's "lavender mafia" that protected McCarrick and provoked the Vigano testimony.
5. Pope Francis is probably not homosexual (by attraction) and certainly not gay (by lifestyle or ideology); he is ambiguous and confused as he has spoken on both sides of this polarizing issue. He is, however, zealous about his own agenda: climate change, immigrants, death penalty, and a softer and more people-pleasing Church. Therefore, he has accepted as his allies and advisors McCarrick and his mafia comrades. He befriends the gay lobby the way we pro-lifers in the USA are partnered with the conservatives (economically, diplomatically, etc.) and social-justice Catholics align with legalized abortion, gay marriage, embryo destruction and compulsive contraception taxation.
You cannot make this stuff up: this summer, as the McCarrick, Pennsylvania, and Vigano bombs all exploded, our Pope had Fr. James Martin and Cardinal Farrell in Dublin proclaiming, to the Conference on the Family (!!!!!) the values of homosexuality.
The big relief from the Vigano revelation is that now we know what is happening! Now we have, if not a cure, an accurate diagnosis! At the highest levels and widely beyond Rome, our Church is in the hands of a corrupt, secretive, pedarist network which has aligned its hidden, shameful intentions with the progressive political agenda of Pope Francis.
There is not much we can do about it. It is highly unlikely that our Pope will unveil the truth, clean up the mess, or resign from the papacy. The Vatican is clammed up like the very best of the "good fellows." To their credit, a critical mass of American bishops and leaders have demanded transparency but the pontiff retains monarchical powers and is unlikely to authorize a real investigation. The civil authorities, as in Pennsylvania, will chip away at the truth.
McCarrick and his cronies remind me of the 85-year-old mafia boss, feeble and senile and sickly, who is given a 50-year prison sentence and pleads "Your honor: I will never make it!" and is reassured by the judge "Just do your best!" This cadre of cardinals are now old and in decline. They have done immense damage to victims and to the entire Church. But they are pathetic: secretive, sterile, and depleted of virility, generosity, fruitfulness, and hope.
On our part, we are to wait, pray, hope, suffer, and do the good that is offered to us. A wise young man, when I had confided a tormenting situation, once told me: "Some things must be suffered." This curia and this pontificate must be suffered...patiently, peacefully, hopefully. This is all about the weeds and the wheat!
1. The Church sex scandal overwhelmingly (81%) involves neither pedophilia nor women but young adolescent men. It is a homosexual problem. Married and women priests have nothing to do with it.
2. There was a surge of this activity in 1965-85 when there was an invasion of homosexual, especially actively gay, men into the priesthood. (Why I do not know.) Relatively few allegations outside of that time immediately after the sexual revolution. The good news: we are 30 years out of the storm!
3. The compulsive obsession with young men has been prevalent in gay culture and lifestyle since the Greeks. It is part of the condition.
4. Those gay men who came into the priesthood in that period are now in late adulthood (60s and 70s) and many are in high positions in the Church. They compose the Vatican's "lavender mafia" that protected McCarrick and provoked the Vigano testimony.
5. Pope Francis is probably not homosexual (by attraction) and certainly not gay (by lifestyle or ideology); he is ambiguous and confused as he has spoken on both sides of this polarizing issue. He is, however, zealous about his own agenda: climate change, immigrants, death penalty, and a softer and more people-pleasing Church. Therefore, he has accepted as his allies and advisors McCarrick and his mafia comrades. He befriends the gay lobby the way we pro-lifers in the USA are partnered with the conservatives (economically, diplomatically, etc.) and social-justice Catholics align with legalized abortion, gay marriage, embryo destruction and compulsive contraception taxation.
You cannot make this stuff up: this summer, as the McCarrick, Pennsylvania, and Vigano bombs all exploded, our Pope had Fr. James Martin and Cardinal Farrell in Dublin proclaiming, to the Conference on the Family (!!!!!) the values of homosexuality.
The big relief from the Vigano revelation is that now we know what is happening! Now we have, if not a cure, an accurate diagnosis! At the highest levels and widely beyond Rome, our Church is in the hands of a corrupt, secretive, pedarist network which has aligned its hidden, shameful intentions with the progressive political agenda of Pope Francis.
There is not much we can do about it. It is highly unlikely that our Pope will unveil the truth, clean up the mess, or resign from the papacy. The Vatican is clammed up like the very best of the "good fellows." To their credit, a critical mass of American bishops and leaders have demanded transparency but the pontiff retains monarchical powers and is unlikely to authorize a real investigation. The civil authorities, as in Pennsylvania, will chip away at the truth.
McCarrick and his cronies remind me of the 85-year-old mafia boss, feeble and senile and sickly, who is given a 50-year prison sentence and pleads "Your honor: I will never make it!" and is reassured by the judge "Just do your best!" This cadre of cardinals are now old and in decline. They have done immense damage to victims and to the entire Church. But they are pathetic: secretive, sterile, and depleted of virility, generosity, fruitfulness, and hope.
On our part, we are to wait, pray, hope, suffer, and do the good that is offered to us. A wise young man, when I had confided a tormenting situation, once told me: "Some things must be suffered." This curia and this pontificate must be suffered...patiently, peacefully, hopefully. This is all about the weeds and the wheat!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)