August/September 2006
Homosexual and Paedophile Clergy
~ Liberal Catholicism's Gift to the Church ~
- PART II -
THE EDITOR
In Part I we looked at how the Vatican's November 2005 Instruction on the assessment of homosexually "inclined" seminary candidates was watered down during the course of its long gestation within the Curia. After having clearly signalled its zero tolerance position on the matter, Rome performed a predictable U-turn, finally issuing a post-conciliar fudge which was welcomed by fragrant Liberal opinion everywhere as a "wise compromise" since "celibacy, not homosexuality is the key issue" [Catholic Herald editorials, 9/9/05 and 2/12/05].
We also considered the influence of endemic homosexuality within the Church, and the ensuing blackmail, explicit or implicit, on this sea change in the traditionally black and white magisterial attitude to sodomy and inclinations thereto.
Indefatigable Canadian writer Randy Engels plunges much deeper into this modern clerical cesspool in The Rite of Sodomy, released last month. Throughout 1,318 pages she tracks the rise of homosexuality in the Catholic hierarchy, diocesan priesthood and religious life in the United States over a span of 100 years and three generations of bishops, along the way providing biographical data on more than 30 homosexual prelates.
Roman "friends"
Engels' massive and meticulously footnoted research, revealing dozens of prelates whose personal lives would not bear close scrutiny, doubtless accounts for the fact that the US bishops conveniently subjected their clergy to the disciplinary provisions of their Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (around 700 of whom they have removed from ministry in the U.S. since January 2002) but exempted themselves!
And it is also surely due to the fact that they have "a profound personal interest that there be no public examination of the connections between their sexual appetites, their convictions, and their conduct of office," as CWNews put it, that the same hierarchy devoted precisely one sentence to homosexuality in its 84-page "Program of Priestly Formation" document, released several months before the Vatican Instruction. "With regard to the admission of candidates with same-sex experience and/or inclinations," it states benignly, "the guidelines provided by the Holy See must be followed."
"Followed"? Or interpreted by their liberal lackeys? Men like Catholic University professor Dean Hoge, an advisor to the said document who commented indignantly to The Washington Times [15/6/05]: "There are persons in the Vatican who have decided we should exclude homosexual men from seminaries in the United States. … [But] [t]he general feeling is that if a man is chaste, celibate, responsible and relates well, we don't care if he has a same-sex attraction or not. That's my view." And he added for spurious good measure, "Not all heterosexual priests are chaste either, but nobody talks about that." (Of course we do, Dean. Often. But unlike you and your episcopal masters, it's not Liberalism but Natural Law common sense and the John Jay findings that shape our priorities.)
In any event, if not Dean Hoge, interpretations of Vatican documents are made by the bishops themselves – men like (just retired) Theodore McCarrick of Washington, Howard Hubbard of Albany and Roger Mahony of LA against whom there are credible accusations. The latter, as reported by The Los Angeles Times of 14 March 2004, is engaged in a struggle, "to maintain the secrecy of Church documents involving priests accused of molesting children...[and] has adopted a legal strategy more aggressive than that of any other bishop in the country, according to scholars and attorneys. At the center of the fight are thousands of pages from priest personnel files that Mahony has succeeded for more than a year and a half in keeping from prosecutors, lawyers for victims, and the public. ... [T]he cardinal's opponents say that if all the files became public, they would hobble his leadership of the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the United States."
What those documents might reveal, as reported by San Francisco Weekly on 19 March 2003, is that Mahony not only protected pederast priests by shifting them from one parish to another, but that he was aware that Bishop Ziemann of Santa Rosa, a former Los Angeles auxiliary, was long known to be a homosexual predator. Indeed, as the same paper reported in June 2002, the documents that Cardinal Mahony is trying to keep secret could reveal information, not only on the internal workings of his inner circle, but also on a host of his colleagues and former classmates and what they knew about homosexual activity at St. John's Seminary as they rose up the Church's hierarchy.
Now, readers might recall that Mahony went crying to Rome in 1997 when Mother Angelica famously lambasted him on EWTN and denounced his corrupting pastoral on the Holy Eucharist. As Chris Ferrara recounts in his recent release EWTN: A Network Gone Wrong:"Under pressure from Mahony's friends in the Vatican apparatus, Mother made an on-the-air apology; but the 'apology' was even more defiant than the original commentary. … An infuriated Mahony filed a canonical complaint in Rome. [EWTN anchorman] Arroyo quotes one elderly curial Cardinal as admitting that 'Mother Angelica has the guts to tell him [Mahony] what we do not'."
The point here is that this renowned protector of perverts has "friends in the Vatican" to protect him. Why? Because Mahony knows where the bodies are buried: he possesses files containing information which could bring down a good part of the American hierarchy and not a few cardinals in Rome.
CASE STUDY:
~ One Just Man meets The Pink Fist ~
This episcopal protection racket widens and deepens with time. The diocesan decadence and vice it facilitates and covers up in equal measure is increasingly blatant. Yet clerical whistleblowers who draw attention to it are hung out to dry and crushed by the Lavender Mafia.
Father James Haley of Arlington, Virginia, is one such courageous priest. His case embodies both the deep homosexual infiltration/corruption we have touched on thus far (the encrusted "filth" within the Church to which Pope Benedict has referred) and the iron fist in the pink velvet glove that awaits anyone who challenges this deviant status quo.
Pervert I
In July 2002, as writer Michael Rose explained in a review of the saga, 48-year-old Fr. Haley was subpoenaed to testify in a lawsuit that was brought against his Bishop, Paul Loverde, and the Diocese of Arlington by James Lambert, a Catholic layman whose wife was impregnated by Fr. James Verrecchia, then pastor of All Saints Church in Manassas. Mr. Lambert alleged that the diocese had long known about the public scandal given by Fr. Verrecchia's illicit relationship with his wife, but failed to remove the priest from the Lamberts' parish. Although the lawsuit was eventually dropped, Fr. Haley's testimony corroborated Mr. Lambert's contention. Nancy Lambert later divorced her husband in order to marry Fr. Verrecchia, who is now an Episcopal 'priest' serving in Atlanta.
Fr. Haley worked as an associate at All Saints, where he discovered that his pastor had stored up homosexual pornography on the rectory computer. He also discovered over three hundred email "love letters" written by Fr. Verrecchia and sent to Nancy Lambert. The emails closed with fancies such as "Feel my hug and know of my kiss." Fr. Haley testified that Fr. Verrecchia had long been involved in a very public romance with Mrs. Lambert, saying it was a source of grave scandal to parishioners at All Saints. Moreover, Fr. Haley presented Bishop Loverde with incontrovertible evidence of Fr. Verrecchia's misconduct by downloading all the homosexual pornography and emails onto a compact disc.
According to the deposition, rather than investigating the matter, the bishop accused Fr. Haley of fabricating the emails and transferred him to St. Lawrence Church in Franconia. No investigation was ever carried out; Fr. Verrecchia received no disciplinary notice by Bishop Loverde, and was allowed to remain pastor of All Saints, where he continued his sexual romance with Nancy Lambert until he impregnated her and left the priesthood to marry her.
Pervert II
At St. Lawrence, Fr. Haley discovered that the pastor, Fr. William J. Erbacher, had been embezzling money from the collection baskets on a rather grand scale. He also discovered that this same priest possessed an extensive collection of homosexual pornography, including child pornography. According to the deposition, Fr. Haley went "to Bishop Loverde and told him he had a significant problem at Saint Lawrence. That there was immoral and criminal activity occurring, and that it was very obvious, and that he needed to go see it."
Once more, at the bishop's request, Fr. Haley presented him with documented evidence of the pornography, and again no investigation was undertaken at that time. Instead, Fr. Haley was transferred again. Two months later, only after Fr. Erbacher's activities were made public in The Washington Post, did Bishop Loverde take action. He immediately removed the offending pastor and audited the parish to discover that Fr. Erbacher had embezzled $320,000 from Church funds.
Pervert III
At Fr. Haley's next assignment at St. Mary's Church in Fredericksburg, he discovered that Fr. Daniel Hamilton was "involved in extraordinarily graphic and incredibly disturbing sadomasochistic, sexual torture, cross-dressing, transgender pornography that involved she-males." Fr. Haley testified that his fellow priest was addicted, "daily immersed in this kind of sexual horror." Fr. Haley went to Bishop Loverde again, this time to tell him of the disturbing problems at St. Mary's. According to the deposition, the bishop again asked for "credible evidence" of the pastor's misconduct. Fr. Haley responded to that request a week later with evidence of Fr. Hamilton's extreme perversion.
"At the end of that meeting, which was basically a slide show of the pictures of [Fr. Hamilton's] incredible collection," Fr. Haley testified, "the bishop told me that I had better watch out, that I did not know what he [Loverde] was capable of doing." One week later, Bishop Loverde summoned Fr. Haley to his office and instructed him to be out of St. Mary's by 7 o'clock that evening. According to the deposition, Bishop Loverde also presented Fr. Haley with a written decree that threatened his priesthood in no uncertain terms. Fr. Haley described the bishop's threat thus: "If you tell anybody by any means what has happened to Fr. Hamilton or anybody you will be immediately suspended from the priesthood without any warning."
Retaliation and Smear
Subsequent to this threat, Bishop Loverde removed Fr. Haley's priestly faculties and, according to Fr. Haley's testimony, made it clear to the whistleblower that he wanted him to enter a so-called "treatment center" before he would ever consider lifting Fr. Haley's suspension. When Fr. Haley requested to transfer to another diocese, the bishop responded that he would not grant approval. Bishop Loverde would settle for nothing less than the priest's laicization. According to his sworn testimony, Fr. Haley stated that Bishop Loverde "is trying to strangle me out of the Church."
In addition to the canonical charges relating to Fr. Haley's whistle-blowing, Bishop Loverde is also charging Fr. Haley with "sexual misconduct" and "absolution of an accomplice in sexual sin," an apparent reference to a decade-old incident involving a woman who made sexual advances toward the priest. Fr. Haley's attorney, Gregory Murphy explained to The Washington Times that "the priest was found not guilty of any impropriety by the former Arlington bishop, the Most. Rev. John R. Keating, who died in 1998." He went on: "They're throwing in any issue they could find against [Fr. Haley]. So they've dug up an incident that was, right from the start, found in Fr. Haley's favor."
"I've seen the vile filth that Fr. Haley documented in those three rectories," added Stephen Brady of Roman Catholic Faithful, who describes the evidence as hardcore homosexual pornography - both magazines and videos. "I've got copies of it all and the fact that Bishop Loverde failed to act on any of this evidence speaks volumes. Instead, he decides to persecute this priest while perverts and pedophiles walk free."
Asked whether he thinks Fr. Haley was innocent of the sexual misconduct charges, Brady said: "Anybody who has skeletons in his closet doesn't speak out as loudly as Fr. Haley has. If he were guilty of those charges, he would have been crazy to go public with his evidence."
Thus, as a direct consequence of his testimony in the Vecchia case, for which he was subpoenaed, Fr. Haley was suspended from the Arlington diocese. Despite the fact that the priest was legally bound to respond to the subpoena and give testimony under oath, Bishop Loverde informed Fr. Haley in a written decree dated 28 October 2002 that he was guilty of violating an order for him not to publicize priestly wrongdoing. In other words, Fr. Haley was disciplined due to his refusal to participate in an on-going cover-up. As Michael Rose states, he is a classic whistleblower.
At a 2004 St. Patrick's Day ecclesiastical trial in Philadelphia, Fr. Haley was charged with "using instruments of social communication to injure good morals, to express insults and to excite hatred or contempt against the Church or Diocese" (canon 1369); "publicly inciting subjects to animosities or hatred against the Ordinary [i.e., the bishop]" (canon 1373), and "ruining the good reputation of another."
Put in simpler terms, Fr. Haley is being charged for blowing the whistle on the bishop's administrative incompetence (at best) in dealing with clerical scandal.
Show trials
Priests in the Arlington diocese are reluctant to comment on Fr. Haley's case. Some have expressed concerns that any comments they make will leave them vulnerable to the kind of charges brought against Fr. Haley. "The Haley issue is a red flag to the priests of the diocese," explained one Arlington cleric. "This means any dissent, discussion, or even mild criticism of anything the [bishop] does can be met with a canonical suit." The priests seem to believe that the primary problem is not what they might personally think of Fr. Haley, but how his case has been handled and how the whistleblower has been treated.
"This kind of trial is almost unheard of," said canon law expert Charles Wilson, "especially concerning someone who is maintaining that he is innocent of the charges." Wilson pointed out that the tribunal was presided over by Bishop Thomas G. Doran of Rockford, Illinois. "The fact that Bishop Doran is a member of Rome's Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura suggests that this tribunal was convened by the Holy See." The Signatura is the Church's equivalent of a High or Supreme Court. "The fact that the trial took place in Philadelphia instead of in the Arlington diocese would seem to support this [assumption]," he added.
In fact, the Philadelphia soap opera was not a trial per se. It was not until a full three years after Loverde's original finding against him that Fr Haley appeared before an ecclesiastical court in Washington, on Wednesday 16 February 2005. According to a Washington Times report the following day:
The priest submitted five volumes of documents bolstering his contention that the Catholic priesthood is heavily weighted with homosexuals. 'All I am doing is trying to get an answer to a very complicated question,' Father Haley said Tuesday. 'Is it moral, proper and prudent to ordain homosexual priests?' Bishop Thomas G. Doran of Rockford, Ill., is presiding over the case, which will be forwarded for judgment to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican, headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
The report continued: "Yesterday's hearing was the first time he was deposed by church lawyers, Father Haley said. 'To this day, no one has asked me anything. I think that waiting three years for any trial is ridiculous,' he said Tuesday. A diocesan spokesman declined comment on the case because it had been forwarded to the Vatican."
Poverty and despair
In a statement posted on MichNews.com by Matt Abbott on 15 November 2005, Fr Haley stated: "Amazingly, after four years, I have still not heard anything significant about my 'trial.' In fact, from what I understand, my case has still not been received by the Vatican, where it may sit for many more years. And again, this is a trial about my behavior, not the bishop's, nor the chancellor's, nor the behavior of so many homosexual priests.
"I believe all is lost unless some wealthy individual gives me the necessary funding to do a real exposure - the money being used primarily for my predicted legal defense because the Church will do, and has done, everything to prevent their dirty 'little' gay secret from being exposed. And the last thing I want is to end up in prison worrying about homosexual rape; I had too many 'roving' eyes in the priesthood."
Now a despairing, broken man "living in poverty in a 30ft. trailer", Fr Haley considered that "A brief 'instruction' from the Vatican will do nothing to solve this outrageous moral dilemma, nor prevent the infiltration of future homosexual men; in fact, it will probably encourage even more to join. Am I angry? Not anymore. Just completely and utterly disgusted."
Turning to a desolate Catholic landscape overseen by so many wicked priests, he lamented the compliant laity who have "no real recognition of the inherent Sacrifice of the Eucharist, or the stunning Miracle of Transubstantiation; they do not know where the Tabernacle is located in their church; they have not been, nor have they been encouraged to go, to confession in years; they have not heard a homily about the Cross, living a moral life, the Blessed Mary, the saints, or often times, even about God Himself." And he concludes:
Although the presence of homosexual men serving as priests and bishops cannot be said to be the exclusive reason for these stunning changes in Catholic life, it is certainly one of the most apparent and horrific aberrations of good Catholic morality: A real abomination that is seriously and tragically afflicting the very core, or heart, of the Church today.
The hidden lie, the extraordinary cover-up, and the duplicitous life of so many homosexual men in the priesthood and episcopacy, can in fact go a long way to explaining the disastrous decline in morality we have all witnessed in the Church - the increasing presence and inexplicable morality of homosexual men re-presenting Christ to us, the homosexual abuse and rape of teenage boys, the secret and frequent homosexual relationships of so many priests, the refusal to give us the moral truth about the issue, and the absolute silence of those who should be proclaiming, professing and teaching the fullness of truth.
Meeting of minds
And so, Bishop Loverde has all but broken Fr Haley. Like his soulmate Cardinal Mahony, however, he could not have done it without his "friends" in Rome who, in this case, have contrived to leave the 'one just man in Gomorrah/Arlington' in a tortuous clerical limbo for years.
What a shocking pass and grave injustice!
Yet one easily explained by the meeting of Liberal clerical minds in Head Office and the ecclesiastical regions.
Insofar as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF] is involved in the Haley injustice, let us briefly compare, for instance, Bishop Loverde's mindset with that of the Prefect of the CDF, Cardinal William Levada.
Firstly, while Loverde is busy covering up clerical perversion in Arlington, readers will recall that the controversial Levada is a prelate with his own form in this arena ["Benedict's Choice", CO, Aug/Sept, 2005]. As the respected Phil Lawler of Catholic World News wrote at the time of Levada's elevation to the CDF by Pope Benedict: "The Portland archdiocese, which he led from 1986 to 1996, is now bankrupt because of payments won in court by abuse victims. Several of the devastating lawsuits against the archdiocese involved priests who were restored to parish work by Archbishop Levada after having been accused of molesting children, or protected from criminal prosecution when their misdeed came to the archbishop's attention."
And like the Bishop of Arlington, the Prefect of the CDF dealt summarily with troublesome priests who dared to protect the innocent by exposing the rot. In a disturbingly familiar case that occurred under Levada when Archbishop of San Francisco, whistle-blower Father John Conley got into trouble for attempting to draw attention to the behaviour of another priest, Father James Aylward, for alleged sexual misconduct. Conley allegedly disobeyed an order from Levada to stop making public accusations against Aylward. As a result, according to Lawler, Aylward was quietly moved to another parish and Conley was suspended from priestly ministry. Eventually, the archdiocese had to pay Father Aylward $750,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a young man against Aylward.
Conley then won a cash settlement in a lawsuit against Levada for being wrongly stripped of his priestly ministry. As part of the finding the archdiocese was required to make an official announcement that "Fr. Conley was right in what he did" when he told the police about seeing Aylward wrestling with a teenage boy. Lawler says, "That concession was all the more noteworthy because, in a deposition, Archbishop Levada had testified that he would not have reported the incident to police."
Levada then had the gall to tell the assembled bishops at Dallas in June 2002 that "We are suffering for the mistakes of bishops and administrators who did not place the future protection of children above their desire to protect the reputation and service of priests who had proven themselves unfaithful to their duties"!
This is the duplicitous calibre of the man not only charged with protecting doctrinal and moral orthodoxy throughout the universal Church, but directly or indirectly involved in canonical litigation brought against clerical whistleblowers of the sort he, like Bishop Loverde, clearly despises and persecutes.
There are many other parallels. For instance, and consistent with his wicked behaviour described above, Bishop Loverde fired his Vocations Director, Fr. James Gould, a man who would not allow practicing homosexuals to enter the diocesan seminary. For his part, when the police caught the Academic Dean of his San Francisco seminary soliciting sex with minors and peddling pornography and had him gaoled for six months, Archbishop Levada replaced him with Fr. Coleman, a priest renowned for pushing the homosexual agenda by urging homosexual and bi-sexual seminarians to accept their sexual orientation and calling for "faithful and loving (homosexual) unions" to be accorded rights under civil law.
Which raises yet another point of comparison.
As Bishop of Connecticut in 1991, Loverde supported two homosexual civil rights bills; laws that allow sodomites to adopt children and act as foster parents, as well as allow the state to impose quotas for homosexuals on employers. As Archbishop of San Francisco, Levada took a neutral position on a gay-rights initiative that required all organisations dealing with the local government to provide spousal benefits to "domestic partners" of their employees (including same-sex couples).
Lavender law unto itself
With like-minded "friends" in high places it is easy to see why Lavender dioceses the world over pursue their nefarious agenda so brazenly, without fear of Roman reproach, even turning the sexual abuse crisis they engendered to their own advantage by promoting further sexualisation of children.
As mentioned last month, rather than working to ban homosexuals from the priesthood, hose down the seminaries, teach the Catechism, root out dissent and promote holiness among their schoolchildren, the American episcopate has preferred to fuel the fire of abuse with so-called "safe-environment" sex ed. The Wanderer reported that most of the these programmes repeat the party line of the homosexual lobby, to wit: "The problem is not homosexual rape but, rather, homophobia."
The bishops have routinely forced parents to withdraw their children from Catholic schools if they objected to these mandatory sex ed classes for children as young as kindergarten. One leading enforcer, Cardinal McCarrick of Washington, whose bed-sharing with his seminarians we revealed in Part I, ordered his schools to expel any children whose parents refused to allow their participation in the Child Lures programme. Now there's a surprise.
On 15 May 2006, however, the very day McCarrick's retirement was accepted by Pope Benedict, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops released a single paragraph statement on its website reversing this wicked policy, suddenly allowing "parents to remove their children from diocesan-sponsored training programs in child sex-abuse prevention."
Queried The Wanderer: Did Rome order the USCCB to reverse the mandatory character of these programs? Did the USCCB then wait until the very day that Cardinal McCarrick retired to announce it in a barely visible paragraph? Did the USCCB bureaucracy fear that a timely and prominent announcement of the reversal would be interpreted as a slap in the face of the outgoing Cardinal McCarrick, who was one of the most steadfast supporters of mandatory sex-abuse education?
It's hard to tell. But this policy reversal is unlikely to rein in Bishops like Paul Loverde who had also made his "sexual-abuse prevention program", Good Touch, Bad Touch, mandatory in all the diocesan parochial schools and religious education classes, despite intense protests that the program itself is abusive: violating the modesty of children, endangering their faith and, through the use of trained "facilitators", usurping the rights of parents.
One father, who after exhaustive efforts was allowed to see the course materials, said: "One poster shown to the children during the sessions depicts sexual abuse 'scenarios': One illustration shows a woman fondling a child; another shows a man groping the [crotch] of a young boy."
He found the material pornographic. Yet, as we have seen, it is the father's whistleblowing that disgusts Loverde, Levada and their numerous repellent brethren - like Minnesota Archbishop Harry Flynn of Saint Paul-Minneapolis to name just one more.
A Lavender Mafia archetype, Archishop Flynn served as chairman of the USCCB's Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse that developed VIRTUS and Talking About Touching, "safe environment" programmes supported by the "gay" lobby and Planned Parenthood. For attempting to protect children from this perverted sex ed, renowned preacher Father Robert Altier was removed from his busy parish by Flynn and sent to work as assistant chaplain of a small outlying nursing home where he has very little to do. (This in a diocese with nearly a dozen priestless parishes.)
"The silencing of Fr. Altier sharply contrasts with Archbishop Flynn's policy of turning a blind eye to open dissent from fundamental Catholic teaching in other parishes of his diocese and in his own cathedral," reported Life SiteNews on 6 March 2006. "In December 2004, Flynn claimed that he had Vatican approval to welcome the homosexual activist group, The Rainbow Sash, to receive Communion in St. Paul Cathedral during their protests against Church teaching on homosexuality. Archbishop Flynn was included in a list of US Catholic prelates who were personally thanked by the Rainbow Sash movement for their support of the homosexual agenda within the Church."
Commented friends of Fr Altier involved in his Voice in the Desert internet apostolate (now closed down by the Archbishop): "The archdiocese continues to sink deeper and deeper into depravity while the homosexual community is pandered to, and meanwhile we witness this wrongful action and extreme marginalization committed against a priest who has been a faithful son of Holy Mother Church. Why should it be that our own elderly Archbishop is personally thanked by the gay Rainbow Sash movement for his support of the homosexual agenda within the Church, and a good, holy, young orthodox priest like Father Altier gets sent to a nursing home?"
The group suggests that concerned laity contact "Vatican officials to express your grave distress at the blatant injustice we are seeing unfold before our eyes - because, after all, one wonders what will be next."
The Instruction according to William…
Yet contacting Rome to protest the brutality of the Lavender Mafia is an increasingly futile gesture, especially since Pope Benedict himself elevated the appalling Levada to head the key Congregation charged with overseeing adherence to Catholic moral and doctrinal teaching! As demonstrated above, his absolutely indefensible and quite needless appointment only served to reinforce the 'joined up thinking' between Rome and the Lavender provinces, virtually guaranteeing the emasculation of any Vatican documents on homosexuality.
The process is seamless. Vatican heavyweights like William Levada insert pliable Vatican II-style provisions intended to give their like-minded episcopal brethren in the field sufficient room to maintain the post-conciliar status quo: in this case to "spin" the emphasis away from a blanket ban to a limited ban on the admission of public homosexuals to the priesthood, as the Cardinal himself has done in his recent pronouncements.
As reported by Catholic News Agency on 2 March 2006, during an installation ceremony of the new rector of the North American Pontifical College in Rome, Levada said to the assembled seminarians that "A priest with open manifestations of homosexuality makes it difficult for the faithful to see him as a representative of Christ." He added that "the public recognition of homosexuality places the priest at odds with the spousal character of love as revealed by God and imaged in humanity…" Then Levada asked: "Does [a priest who makes his homosexuality public] recognize how this act places an obstacle to his ability to represent Christ the bridegroom to his bride, the people of God? Does he not see how his declaration places him at odds with the spousal character of love as revealed by God and imaged in humanity?"
"This is very curious," commented Christopher Ferrara. "Why did the Cardinal-elect cast his discussion of the unfitness of homosexuals for the priesthood entirely in terms of open, public and declared homosexuality? Are we expected to believe that the secretive, private and undeclared homosexual is not 'at odds with the spousal character of love as revealed by God and imaged in humanity'? Is the Cardinal-elect saying that the problem with homosexuals in the priesthood is merely that 'open manifestations [but not private ones] of homosexuality make it difficult for the faithful to see' homosexual priests as representatives of Christ? (Difficult? How about absolutely impossible?) Why the repeated emphasis on the visibility of homosexuality to the public rather than on the perversion itself - visible or hidden - which is the real impediment to the priesthood?
"The message Levada was sending to his audience of seminarians seems to be this: If you are seen to be homosexual, there is a problem. But if you are not seen to be homosexual, then you can go on as you are without fear of exclusion from the priesthood. Thus the Vatican instruction on homosexuals in the priesthood, already rendered next-to-worthless by its ambiguous, loophole-laden language, has been reduced to the suggestion that homosexuals can be ordained if only they are willing to stay in the closet."
Considering what we know of Levada's background in Portland and San Francisco, who could doubt that this precisely conveys his intended meaning, and that intended in the text and subtext of the Instruction he helped construct.
It is certainly the way it will be interpreted by most bishops in the West. Above all by an English episcopate which in 2001 accepted prime time TV revelations of rampant homosexual depravity in English seminaries with nary a murmur of regret, apology or intention to tighten the selection process and filter out the filth [see "Cronies, Crooks and Crisis Popes," CO, Jan. 2002]. Thus, five years on, a young reader who recently attended one of their retreats for prospective seminarians informed the present writer:
"During the course of the weekend, the subject of celibacy and sexual impurity - masturbation, pornography and disordered sexual inclinations - was not even broached. This despite the fact that the average age of the retreatants was perhaps 23 at most and the Church finding itself in the middle of scandal. So much for renewal and purification! [To make matters worse, one diocesan vocations director] seemed to me to be permanently inebriated. He was certainly drunk Saturday evening and I stayed up until 1.30 watching him and our priest host (also drunk) speaking complete rot."
Viewed in this sordid context, it is hard to doubt the shocking results of a questionnaire returned by nearly half the Catholic clerics of England and Wales in which 53% of priests under 45 supported the ordination of practising homosexuals [The Sunday Telegraph, 6/4/03. See CO, Aug/Sept, 2003, p. 467]. Last year, meanwhile, a visiting Cardinal Archbishop confided to his English hosts that in his opinion the English episcopate's Diversity and Equality Guidelines (2005) - a veritable "Gay" Charter - constitutes the greatest sell out of the Faith since the Reformation [see also the disturbing letter about this document on page 80].
Never mind the fate of the Vatican Instruction - what hope England?!
Homosexual as subversive
Of course, nothing we have considered in this essay in terms of conspiratorial collusion, manipulation and deception should surprise us. Pope Paul's famous reference to the "smoke of Satan" having entered the Church was more a matter of public record than a colourful metaphor. It alluded to the infiltration of Holy Mother Church by dark and hostile forces personified by Communist and Masonic agents. In a 2001 interview with the Latin Mass Magazine, Dr Alice von Hildebrand stated that the ex-Communist Bella Dodd once told her "that when she was an active party member, she had dealt with no fewer than four cardinals within the Vatican 'who were working for us'."
Dr von Hildebrand also spoke of the black arts practiced in the Vatican at the highest level:
Paul VI had asked Gagnon to head an investigation concerning the infiltration of the Church by powerful enemies. Cardinal Gagnon (at that time Archbishop) accepted this unpleasant task, and compiled a long dossier, rich in worrisome facts. When the work was completed, he requested an audience with Pope Paul in order to deliver personally the manuscript to the Pontiff. This request for a meeting was denied. The Pope sent word that the document should be placed in the offices of the Congregation for the Clergy, specifically in a safe with a double lock. This was done, by the very next day the safe deposit box was broken and the manuscript mysteriously disappeared. The usual policy of the Vatican is to make sure the news of such incidents never sees the light of day. Nevertheless, this theft was reported even in L'Osservatore Romano (perhaps under pressure because it had been reported in the secular press). Cardinal Gagnon, of course, had a copy, and once again asked the Pope for a private audience. Once again his request was denied. He then decided to leave Rome and return to his homeland in Canada.
No wonder the late great Father John Hardon, S.J., got precisely nowhere on his visits to Rome with dossiers on perverts like Bishop Daniel Ryan of Springfield. And how unsurprising that the Curia watched on as Ryan and his predatory homosexual pals ruined countless lives while scandals piled up over the years, without lifting a finger. Even when the American bishops were summoned to Rome in 2002 for the much feted crisis meeting at the height of the abuse saga, what was achieved? "Other than offering the media a change of scenery, very little" wrote Randy Engels. "Unfortunately, it could not have been otherwise."
Nor, it seems, could anything bar a compromise Instruction have issued forth from this corrupt mileu on the rather obvious matter of barring men attracted to other men from seminary and priestly life: since the homosexuals are the third group of "powerful enemies" known by Paul VI to have infiltrated the Church.
Their influence in the Vatican is manifest in so many ways: the virtual non-response to homosexual abuse scandals; the protection of homosexual pederasts, like the founder of the Legionaries of Christ Fr. Marcial Maciel; the cosseting of complicit prelates like Cardinal Law of Boston, who was made archpriest of the Basilica of St Mary Major. (Reportedly, Law even received one vote on the ballot that elected Pope Benedict! "A token of gratitude from someone he'd covered up for?" mused James G. Bruen in Culture Wars.)
There were also Lavender fingerprints all over paragraph 2358 of the first edition of the Catechism, which carried the quintessential "gay" propaganda line that homosexuals are 'born that way', despite there being no scientific data whatsoever to suggest that fact: "None," says expert Judith Reisman. "Historical and cross-cultural data confirm homosexuality is traumatically created and can sometimes be reversed." Countless thousands have testified to the fact. (The multi-talented English singer-actress and author of Extreme Motherhood, Jackie Clune, for one, was a lesbian for twelve years before marrying and producing 4 children - including naturally conceived triplets!)
The disgraceful #2358 entry - "They do not choose their homosexual condition… " - was subsequently amended to read: "This inclination, which is objectively disordered… ." Nonetheless, that clerical perverts and their fellow-travellers had this pivotal "gay" lie actually inserted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and that they have continued to ignore Rome's amendment while citing the original error as Church teaching in diocesan guidelines (cf. "Sex and Relationship Education", Archdiocese of Westminster Education Service, 2005, p.40) is shocking in the extreme, and testimony to their naked power.
While movement between them is doubtless fluid, the Communist, Masonic and homosexual networks are separate entities. The homosexual clique, however, is perhaps the most naturally tailored to secretiveness, concealment and subversion.
Fr. Andrew Baker from the Congregation for Bishops stated in America magazine (September 2002) that homosexual men "may be more familiar with certain patterns and techniques of deception and repression, either conscious or subconscious, which were learned in trying to deal with their tendencies in a largely heterosexual environment." A lecturer in Rome also ventured that "homosexuals are almost universally prey to an exaggerated self-pity by which they overdramatize the hardship of their predicament both to others and to themselves. This makes them natural subversives; they are constitutionally predisposed to be sympathetic to any line of argument that presents the Church's sexual teaching as too demanding."
As Michael Rose documents in Good Bye Good Men, this is why only those sympathetic to the cause of the sexual revolution are accepted into the many seminaries and religious houses controlled by the homosexual network. Applicants who uphold the teachings of the Church - especially that homosexual acts are gravely sinful and the homosexual inclination intrinsically disordered - are systematically excluded.
This dissident homosexual underground movement continues to flourish. The pornographic St. Sebastian's Angels website for actively homosexual clerics, which featured South African Bishop Reg Cawcutt [see "Cronies, Crooks and Crisis Popes", CO, Jan 2002], is only one of a number of similar ventures.
Catholic author and apologist Patrick Madrid writes that "The cliques and networks and buddy-systems of actively homosexual Catholic priests are alive and well. A concerned Catholic reader sent me a link to 'Venerabilis,' yet another website dedicated to gay priests. Its [stated] purpose … is to allow gay priests to anonymously contact one another with an aim toward sharing information and personal stories, fellowship and mutual encouragement, and (surprise!) to facilitate face-to-face encounters." He continues:
One priest, posting under the name "Tim," wrote: "I am a lonely 44 year old priest. I am looking to connect with any priest over 45 who is built and stocky and stronger looking. Although im settled in my country I wish to move again to some parish abroad in UK or in Europe where english is spoken. IM a professional and feel so constrained and suffocated in my own country which is so conservative and homophobic. I need help and if any parish priest over 45 wishes to host me and become my friend im willing to offer a lot as long as he is gay and willing to also allow me to keep on studying and we support each other. Anyway would like to make lots of friends who are priests but im mostly attracted to older stronger men."
[…] Reading through the comments posted on this site in English, French, Spanish, and Italian is very saddening to me. I'm sad for the men who live this way, struggling with their sexual problem, furtively arranging encounters with other homosexual priests, and most poignant of all, their feeling lonely, yearning for "older, stronger" father figures. How incredibly sad. I pray that God will lead them to repentance and virtue, before it's too late.
I also feel irritation that the questing tentacles of this homosexual underground network of priests (of which this website is just a minor tendril) continue to spread. We need strong, decisive, and immediate action to guarantee that the screening process for all seminaries, diocesan and religious, will ensure as well as is humanly possible that men who are accepted as candidates for the priesthood are not going to wind up one day looking for sex on a gay priest hook-up website like this one. Or, worse yet, wind up on the front page of the local paper.
Homosexual as candidate
Before such tragic sexual addiction and deception, how irrelevant the "chaste homosexual" argument becomes and how naïve and one-dimensional the Vatican Instruction. Not least for its expecting such practiced masters of deceit to admit their disorder at seminary interviews! The onus placed on the candidate's honesty both with himself and the Church is problematic, to say the very least.
Certainly, reputable and diligently applied psychological testing can identify some candidates. Perhaps even most. Yet surely the best filter is a crystal clear message from Rome telling homosexuals to repent, do penance and then utilise their talents in the lay realm. As Fr. Charles Dahlby says: "Yes, as we must love all sinners, we love homosexuals! If they can carry the cross they have been given they can become great saints. But they have no place in the priesthood!"
Nor is that emphatic injunction simply down to the chastity factor, which is only the tip of a dysfunctional iceberg. A Roman professor writing in The Wanderer explained that due to some deeper problem men perversely attracted to other men are "less capable than others of overcoming stress, disappointments, loneliness, hostility and the challenges of celibate life with reasonable equanimity [so that] homosexuals have a harder time than normal men not only remaining chaste, but in resisting any temptation qua temptation - sloth, covetousness, envy, mendacity, you name it." Truly, as detailed in our February 2006 edition, homosexual disorders are fathomless and endless.
Sexual license, however, remains the most dangerous manifestation of homosexuality, clerical and otherwise. One need only consider the child sex abuse in the Church within the context of the larger crises in Western societies to confirm the extent of that danger. Researcher Judith Reisman cites the 1,331% increase in child sex abuse in America between 1976 and 1999; the fact that 67% of all reported sex abuse victims are children; that 34% are under 12 years of age; and that 64% of all forcible sodomy victims are boys under 12 with age 4 the most common age of assault on boys.
For good measure, consider that the U.S. Department of Justice reported 58,200 "non-family child abductions" in 1999, two/thirds involving sexual abuse; 35% were boys, commonly kidnapped by the 1-2% homosexual male population, bearing out the disproportionately high rate of homo-to-hetero child abuse.
"Basic math comparing U.S. Census data to child abuse data solves the issue of sexually predatory homosexuals," writes Dr Reisman. "Roughly the same number of boys are victimized by the 2% homosexual males as are girls victimized by the 95% heterosexual males. In one liberal study, homosexual pederasts admitted to 150 boy victims each, compared to 19 girl victims per heterosexual pedophile, conservatively an eight-to-one ratio." [See drjudithreisman.org for extensive documentation on this issue.]
Although pederasty constitutes only a small part of clerical sexual abuse, it is essential to air such facts because the sodomite lobby insistently turn the abuse scandal into a paedophile problem, while disassociating paedophilia from homosexuality and claiming that it is a heterosexual, or at most, a heterosexual/homosexual problem.
In Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, referred to in the U.S. Congressional Record of May 1996 as the "best book on homosexuality written in our times," Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist and authority on "gay" activism, writes:
Activists are aware of the adverse effect on the gay-rights movement that could result if people perceived any degree of routine association between homosexuality and pedophilia… They have denied this association by focusing on the (true) fact that - in absolute numbers - heterosexuals commit more child molestation than homosexuals…. But careful studies show that pedophilia is far more common among homosexuals than heterosexuals."
The plentiful data compiled by Timothy Dailey of the Family Research Council and printed in our February 2006 number testifies to that fact while documenting the very public nexus between the gay and the paedophile lobbies. "Although heterosexuals outnumber homosexuals by a ratio of at least 20 to 1," notes Dailey, "homosexual pedophiles commit about one-third of the total number of child sex offenses."
The Vatican Instruction, therefore, plays into the Lavender Mafia's hands by ignoring the statistical reality, both within and without the Church, and rejecting a sane and necessary blanket exclusion: preferring to use seminaries as part of ongoing rehabilitative therapy for those less "profoundly" inclined to a vice which, St. Peter Damian states, "surpasses the enormity of all others."
Heal homosexual minds, hearts and souls by all means, but why make seminaries and the priesthood part of the treatment? No doubt decisions are sometimes made in favour of admitting psychologically healthy but otherwise borderline candidates to seminaries in order to test vocations. But this cannot include the psychologically unhealthy who once suffered from varying stages of same-sex attraction – who were, as Pope Siricius put it, "formerly vessels of vice."
At the same time, if men suffering from same-sex attraction possessed real faith, they would never put themselves forward for consideration in the first place!
Realising that nobody has a right to the priesthood, while recognising their particular unsuitability for this sublime vocation and the huge risks involved for all concerned, they would simply get on with the business of saving their souls in the lay apostolate like the rest of us: humbly sacrificing their own desires in imitation of the Church they wish to serve ("Thus, the Church, although it needs human resources to carry out its mission, is not set up to seek earthly glory, but to proclaim, even by its own example, humility and self-sacrifice" – Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium,8).
If only Rome had encouraged all such presently or previously afflicted souls to entertain that hopeful possibility and noble calling and left it at that! But then, if only they had chosen to consult the common sense likes of America's Bishop John D'Arcy of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who stated:
To put a gay man in the priesthood, in a mostly male environment, is unfair, given the potential attractions.... We don't put these [heterosexual] men in with attractive women, ...You're putting him [the seminarian] in with men. It's not fair to him, it's not fair to them, it's not fair to the Church.... If we ordain men with pathologies and difficulties, they will draw the same kind.... Don't just pray for priests, pray for priests of good quality. … [the Church should ordain] men who would be good husbands, men who would be good fathers.
Despite his sad failure to quarantine and fumigate dissident Notre Dame University, the filthy festering wound in his diocese, this Bishop has long spoken out against the homosexual infiltration. He even warned Cardinal Law back in the '70s against notorious abuser Fr. John Geoghan. If Cardinal Law and Rome had listened to his wise counsel, many children, including Geoghan's 150 victims, would have been saved.
Virile Catholic shepherds like Bishop D'Arcy are whistling in the wind, however, since the Vatican is infiltrated, overcome and paralysed by Liberals.
Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex agendi
Liberalism, of course, is the root cause of all our problems. Homosexual and pederastic clergy are just one of its most repugnant symptoms: "gifts", if you will, bestowed on the Church by the zealous practitioners of Liberalism clerical and lay - the so-called Liberal Catholics - as a consequence of their interrelated liturgical, theological, and moral dissidence.
Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex agendi – how you worship determines what you believe which, in turn, determines how you behave. This is the simple formula and deeper truth behind the whole sordid mess we have examined.
Identifying, investigating and dealing with priests suspected of a homosexual lifestyle is vital. Such men, residing in parishes (particularly where there are schools) are a serious threat, especially to minors and young adults, and they need to be kept away from our families, out of the confessional (except as penitents), and off the altar, for the sake of their own souls as well as the souls of the faithful (and, since sodomy is a mortal sin, to avoid sacrilege).
Yet, these measures remain bandaid treatments which do not address the crisis at its Liberal Catholic roots, as explained by Father John Trigilio, PhD, ThD, president of the U.S. Confraternity of Catholic Clergy:
The biggest crisis we face is a three headed monster, i.e., bad theology, bad liturgy and bad morality. Dissident theologians who teach intellectual dishonesty and disobedience to the official Magisterium are only encouraged and sustained by horrendous liturgical abuses which in the extreme lead to complete irreverence for the sacred, especially the Real Presence and the Sacrifice of the Mass. These combined will inevitably nurture and spawn rampant immorality. Why?
Look at the dissent from Humanae Vitae in 1968. Once the Papal Magisterium was openly attacked, the next shoe dropped, i.e., liturgical abuses. Pedestrian celebrations which lack any reverence or any hint of the sacred let alone a sacrifice were proliferated by the cadre who usurped the 'spirit of Vatican II.' Hiding tabernacles, reducing the Mass to a mere 'meal', using invalid matter and form, etc., showed that like Humanae Vitae, the GIRM [General Instruction of the Roman Missal] was open for disobedience. These two spearheads created a third monstrosity, the disregard and then the denial or repudiation of the moral law.
If theologians and liturgists could misbehave, then why not married couples with regard to contraception? If the laity could that way, then why not the clergy? Sexual misbehaviour in seminaries usually coincides with heterodox teaching in the classroom and liturgical abuse in the chapel.What is learned there is then brought to the parish. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex agendi (in other words, how one prays is related to what one believes and both influence how one behaves).
Not every seminary went bad and even some which did have made significant improvements over the past 25 years, but there are still a few which remain cesspools of heresy, irreverence and sexual immorality. The ironic thing is that those are the places that instigated witch hunts not for perverts or heretics but to indentify and remove orthodox and pious men who would be loyal to Rome. These dangerous Catholics were labeled 'conservative,' 'traditional' and, of course, the infamous term 'rigid.'
[Matt Abbott, MichNews, 4 October 2005.]
For good reason did Leo XIII call the Liberal Catholics "the worst enemies of the Church." While Blessed Pius IX, in a letter to the French deputation headed by the Bishop of Nevers on June 18, 1871, was moved to exclaim:
"That which I fear is not the Commune of Paris - no - that which I fear is Liberal Catholicism ... I have said so more than forty times, and I repeat it to you now, through the love that I bear you. The real scourge of France is Liberal Catholicism, which endeavours to unite two principles as repugnant to each other as fire and water."
Nowadays, of course, our politically correct Western prelates, with relatively few exceptions, embody this destructive Liberal spirit! Which explains why, as Father Charles Dahlby lamented in our May 2005 edition, "The priesthood has come to be considered the primary 'gay profession.' We are the butt of jokes and presented as a pathetic caricature in the media." And he warned, prophetically: "If the new document from Rome on homosexuality soon to be released leaves it up to the bishops or leaves loopholes in dealing with such a 'complex issue', then the floodgates will swing wide."
In the event, not only have things been 'left up to the bishops', in the wake of the clerical abuse scandals Rome has favoured a pedestrian "visitation" of U.S. seminaries instead of a tough investigation with summary powers to close or restructure them and to remove dissident faculty. This merely reinforces the mixed-message conveyed by the November Instruction and underlines the reluctance to confront the pink prelates they feign to oppose.
Similarly, the very belated action to suspend the homosexual predator-Founder of the neo-conservative Legionaries of Christ Fr Marcial Maciel from priestly duties also seems half-hearted [see background history pp. 32-43]. While the fact that the homosexual predator-Founder of the suppressed "traditionalist" Society of St John, Fr Carlos Urritogoity and his partner in crime Fr Eric Ensey can flagrantly disregard the conditions of the suppression, parade around Rome as if in good standing with the Church and brazenly trumpet their plans to continue their homosexual cult in Paraguay under another bishop, speaks further volumes for a deeply compromised Vatican. [see CO Aug/Sept 2002 & May 2005]
Still, if the Maciel scandal and the SSJ suppression at least serve to keep neo-cons and traditionalists from smugly assuming that homosexual infiltration is solely restricted to the Liberal milieu, it is nonetheless true that the latter is its natural habitat. As the New Oxford Review has firmly declared:
"It should be obvious that liberal Catholicism and orthodox Catholicism constitute two different religions at war in the one Church. This can't go on forever. A monumental showdown is looming. The Church must rid herself of dissenting theologians and the Lavender Mafia in the priesthood and the episcopate. Otherwise the Church will become just one more shrivelled-up liberal Protestant denomination."
The November 2005 Instruction, however, is not the bold declaration of war we so urgently require. Just more appeasement and complacent inertia from rudderless Rome.
Prophesies
Yet while it is endlessly shocking that a dysfunctional Vatican seems incapable nowadays of issuing any documents, other than pro-life affirmations, that aren't templates of corrosive Modernism - containing orthodoxy and heterodoxy, clarity and ambiguity, piety and impiety, prudence and imprudence in equal measure - it has all been predicted. Many saintly prophets and seers have forecast the demise of a decadent Church.
Most readers will be aware of the approved message of Our Lady of La Salette to the young visionary Melanie in 1846, about the wrath of God being visited on the Church and Rome due to the sins of a hedonistic clergy. While in her new book, Randy Engels quotes the remarkable St. Nicholas von Flüe of Switzerland (1417-87) as prophesying that "The Church will be punished because the majority of her members, high and low, will become perverted. The Church will sink deeper and deeper until she will at last seem to be extinguished, and the succession of Peter and the other Apostles to have expired. But, after this, she will be exalted."
In the 1600s, too, as detailed in our May 2004 edition, Our Lady of Good Success revealed to Venerable Mother Mariana in her Ecuadorian convent that a universal crisis would afflict the Church in the 20th century, in the form of abundant heresies which would nearly extinguish the light of Faith. Impurity would inundate the world and Church "like a filthy sea," and the corruption of morals and customs would be almost complete.
Hence the scourge of homosexual and paedophile clergy - the filthy embodiment of Mother Mariana's prophesy and Pope Benedict's lament.
Crisis pontiff
Which takes me back to those sports page analogies that kicked off this analysis of the Vatican Instruction and its ramifications.
Firstly, to headlines of a soccer Premier League "still rife with bungs" i.e. with bribes and collusion whereby managers and players and their agents illegally line their pockets in the course of players transferring from one club to another.
Amidst this endemic corruption, one plain-speaking gentleman, the manager of Luton Town, approximated the noble clerical whistleblowers we have saluted in this analysis, hinting darkly as to why no action is ever taken: "What I suspect," he said, "is that people in high places are also involved with the agents. If it were all to come out there would be major worries – and I mean major worries… Why has it taken so long for people to realise what has been going on? What it needs is for someone to stand up and shout about it. I might be getting near the knuckle here, but what you might find is that a lot of people dealing with the agents and doing the deals are getting back-handers. That is without question."
He is adamant however, that if somebody at executive level makes a stand then changes could be introduced. "They have to stand up and say: 'No, we are not paying you [an agent] to renegotiate a contract, take it or leave it.' It could happen."
Similarly, given the papal Will and the exercise of that "executive power" examined in our April edition by Michael Baker, the Church could and would be purged of perverts, who, as we have seen, also exist and persist only on the back of Liberal blackmail and collusion from the top down.
For all his intellectual gifts, however, the present pontiff is not the sort of passionate, confrontational figure we need at this eleventh hour to pursue a "take it or leave" policy in respect of the Lavender Mafia and the Liberal prelates, priests and laity who undergird it.
The approach and temperament required was on show during the media ruckus last April over "Big Phil" Scolari, the ex-Brazilian and current Portuguese soccer manager who was offered the English post.
A highly successful club and national coach who turned a shambolic Brazilian team into 2002 World Cup winners, Scolari is a tough, uncompromising disciplinarian who demands and receives loyalty from his teams by creating an honest family atmosphere. "I say what I think. I'm no hypocrite," he explained while summing up his philosophy and attributes:
"I'm a good organiser, not too scientific – I try to keep it simple and be a friend to my players. Football is a very simple game. I don't expect my players to think about it as a science. It's not American football, you don't have to learn 33 plays. One-two-three, that's enough. In football, we have only three results: win, lose and draw. What else do you need to know."
Give that man a mitre!
A red hat! A white hat! And a papal pulpit to concentrate hearts
and minds on the only two results that really matter:
Heaven and Hell! Moreover, as one who declared his Brazilian squad
a "gay"-free zone, we could expect
Pope "Big Phil" I to provide a rather more peremptory Instruction
on assessing homosexual candidates for Our Lord's priestly team!
We can laugh (we need to!) but the serious point is this: if we are not blessed with a tough pontiff both to preach and enforce a simple 'back to basics' message, exhausted local Churches will soon disappear beneath that fetid Liberal swamp in which they've been treading water for decades.
Endless, wordy, migraine-inducing papal elucidations are no substitute for the saving hand of corrective action. Yet while our academic post-conciliar pontiffs understand papal power - "to bind and loosen in the sense that he can impose or prohibit whatever he considers necessary for the life of the Church," as Pope Benedict explained to 50,000 faithful in St. Peter's Square on 7 June 2006 - they refuse to exercise it!
And so, to vault this papal stumbling block to radical reform and restoration, we must pray for a resolute "Crisis Pope" of the sort described in our January 2002 edition. Without that urgent answer to prayer, the final Catholic crushing of the Liberal "filth", as prophesied by St. Nicholas von Flüe, will be witnessed by a very select "remnant" indeed [Rom 11:5].
St Gregory VII, St Pius V, Gregory XVI, St. Pius X, Pius XI, – Crisis Popes one and all, ora pro nobis!