June-July 2007

First 100 Days

THE EDITOR

News that Nicolas Sarkozy flew off to a Corsican monastery to "meditate" before his presidential inauguration was a bit rich. The pious inference ill-befits an adulterer who targeted and took another man's wife. Still, we pray it did him good. This pugnacious Frenchman will require every last ounce of strength as he attempts to save France from itself, starting with a 100-day legislative blitz to revive its ailing economy.

His list of 'things to do' and promise to "restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect for the nation" has struck fear among the once smug unions and Socialists who have run France into the ground. They have lost no time orchestrating violent demonstrations in a frenzied bid to stop their notorious gravy train grinding to a halt under Sarkozy's proposed measures. These include: scrapping inheritance tax for 95 per cent of the populace because "the fruits of a lifetime of work should not be handed over to the government"; dismantling the compulsory 35 hour week by allowing workers to do overtime without employers having to pay extra taxes to the state if the limit is exceeded; introducing compulsory minimum prison sentences for repeat offenders; giving working students total exemption from income tax; ensuring compulsory minimum levels of public transport even during strikes because "people have a right to strike, but people also have a right to work."

Just getting elected, amazing in itself given his unapologetic programme of reform, is half the battle won. Yet it is only the start of Sarkozy's attempt to effect a social and political revolution - to undo the French welfare state and the entrenched Gallic habits of a lazy lifetime.

It will be fun, if bloody, to watch. And as we do, we can live in hope that Rome will one day send us a similarly determined individual with a radically orthodox plan to shake off the shackles of Modernism and upend England's Liberal status quo, which has turned casual dissent and disobedience - like the French culture of bullet-proof jobs, long lunches and relaxation - into a devilish art form. And make no mistake, even today such strong-willed prelates can be found.

The relentless slog of daily life in a Modernist Gulag skews our broader vision. In particular, it is easy to assume that episcopates everywhere constitute a Liberal closed-shop: as comprehensively secularised, effete and cowardly as our own.

Happily, it isn't so. Unlike England and Wales, not all bishops beyond these shores are Modernist clones of each other. Across the seas there do exist episcopal conferences peppered with several genuine Catholics who stand apart from the Liberal collective: shepherds who actually shepherd!

A noteworthy example is Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis, USA.

Last April, he resigned from the board of a Catholic charity after it booked singer Sheryl Crow for a benefit concert. The Archbishop publicly condemned the board's decision, stating that in view of Crow's public advocacy for legal abortion and embryonic stem cell research, "actions which result in the deliberate killing of innocent human beings", her appearance at the Cardinal Glennon Children's Foundation event would be a "scandal" that could confuse others and lead them to evil. He declared:

For good measure, His Grace posted a video statement on YouTube, the popular website that boasts around 20 million visitors a month, explaining:

On cue, the local St. Louis Post-Dispatch feigned shock-horror that a Catholic prelate would actually defend the Faith with something more than the orthodox platitudes so familiar to English Catholics. It called in the usual rent-a-quote clique to rail against Burke's "very aggressive counter-cultural position" and his "belligerent attitude toward the culture." A dissident attack which merely underscored his righteous Christ-like stand.

Archbishop Burke has serious 'form' in this unfashionable arena of fearless shepherding:

In 2002, as Bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, ignoring the practice of virtually every diocese in the country, he ordered his parishes not to support the annual "Crop Walk" sponsored by the Church World Service to fight global hunger, after he discovered that one of the agency's weapons in fighting hunger is to send condoms to Third World countries.

In 2004, he caused a storm by declaring that pro-abortion presidential candidate John Kerry could not receive Communion in his diocese. Moreover, after three local dissident politicians rejected his private pleas "to make their consciences correct with Magisterial teachings", he also issued a "canonical notification" stating that: " ...Catholic legislators who are members of the faithful of the Diocese of La Crosse and who continue to support procured abortion or euthanasia may not present themselves to receive Holy Communion. They are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, should they present themselves, until such time as they publicly renounce their support of these most unjust practices" (canon 915). In a follow up pastoral letter he told his flock that "Catholics who support such pro-abortion candidates participate in a grave evil" and thereby commit "a mortal sin". He also appeared on EWTN denouncing Cardinal Bernadin's insidious "seamless garment" which places abortion and euthanasia on a par with issues like the death penalty and the Iraq war.

In 2005, after a homily at St Louis cathedral in which he described the pro-life fight as "a battle against Satan and his cohorts", he led 400 Catholics in the Rosary as they marched to the nearby Planned Parenthood abortuary for a prayerful protest.

In April 2007, his archdiocesan policy forbidding a public forum for speakers who diverge from Church teaching forced a private Catholic high school to "reluctantly" withdraw an invitation extended to a 'Catholic' Senator to speak at her daughter's graduation ceremony, in view of the Senator's promotion of abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.

Mindful of the "rightful aspirations" of the traditional sheep among his flock, this solicitous shepherd is generous in his application of the Ecclesia Dei indult and his diocesan priests are free to offer the Traditional Latin Mass privately at any time. This month he will ordain two Deacons of the Institute of Christ the King in his Cathedral-Basilica (the Institute's first ordinations in America).

Given this track-record, it is not surprising to learn that Archbishop Burke participated in one of the last Marian Catechist retreats given by the saintly Fr John Hardon S.J. before he died, and that the great Jesuit passed the mantle of the Marian Catechists to him.

America, of course, boasts other solid bishops: Archbishop Chaput of Denver, who publicly laid down abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and homosexual marriage as non-negotiable items for a US presidential elections, also stating that a vote for John Kerry would be a sin that must be confessed before receiving Communion; Bishop John Yanta of Amarillo who has closed down 17 of the 19 Planned Parenthood clinics in his diocese; Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Nebraska, the mercifully blunt prelate who has no qualms about publicly rebuking his Liberal episcopal brethren, who hosts the Fraternity of St Peter in his diocese and has excommunicated dissidents and adherents of the Lodge en masse; Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, who fosters access to the Old Mass and is re-Catholicising a deeply Modernist diocese, as recounted at length in our June-July and August-September 2006 editions; Bishop Thomas G. Doran of Rockford, whose episcopal calibre can be gauged from his commentary which follows. There are others, too.

A powerful motivation for such robust and dutiful care of souls can be found in Archbishop Burke's personal insistence that "I have a very serious responsibility to avoid giving scandal. Scandal involves leading others to be mistaken about what is right or wrong or even leading to doing what is wrong."

This Catholic mindset, rooted in a holy fear of God, is now so alien to our English episcopate that Cardinal Murphy O'Connor can institutionalise public blasphemy and sacrilege - through Masses which abandon the Body and Blood of Christ to active homosexuals - without a word of protest from his brethren. ["Selling Out to Sodom", CO, May 2007] Nor is this surprising when for all their huffing and puffing over the oppressive Sexual Orientation Regulations, not one bishop felt any moral discomfort with the established policy of 'Catholic' adoption agencies blithely referring homosexual applicants to other agencies willing to hand over children to sodomites. Yet as SPUC recently commented in a similar vein, doctors must not only refuse to perform abortions, they "must continue to resist the pressure to refer on for abortions - otherwise their moral and legal position will quickly be eroded." As with the CAFOD condom saga, the local episcopal conscience has been drained of all notion of scandal and complicity in sin [cf. 1Cor 5:9-13; Catechism #1868].

Just consider the intellectual, spiritual, doctrinal and moral chasm that separates Archbishop Burke and our two senior hirelings.

Recently, the Cardinal proclaimed that "the quarrels of the Reformation period are theologically at an end" (which must be news to the Protestants); told listeners of the BBC "Sunday AM" programme that praying for the conversion of the Jews is wrong and should be taken out of the prayers of the Old Mass; informed The Spectator's readership that he simply doesn't have time (15 minutes!) to say a daily Rosary.

His probable successor, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, has actively and tacitly undermined teaching on contraception down the years (even inviting the notorious Charles Curran to conduct Summer Schools at Upholland Northern Institute); accepts only that the Church cannot ordain women priests "at the moment"; directed the arch-Modernist Education Service (a secularising juggernaut); has explicit sex ed taught to infants in his Birmingham primary schools; allows radical homosexual group ADVENT to operate on his cathedral premises; would not concur when it was once put to him that Truth is more important than episcopal unity; declared on national television that "God is not a Catholic!" (surely news to St Paul [Acts 22:7-8]); praised the work of egregious pro-abort 'Catholic' MP Clare Short. (In sum, his recent orthodox posturing on moral issues is just another cynical career move: like the one-off anti-contraception talk he gave years ago in Liverpool Cathedral, at the instigation of his sponsor Archbishop Worlock, to boost his episcopal stocks.)

Elsewhere, a Quest "Lesbian, Gay and Bi-Sexual under 40s" group socialised on 12 May at the University Catholic Chaplaincy in the shadow of Liverpool Cathedral, where they enjoyed "watching an LGB/Catholic related dvd, chatting about our own experiences, attending Mass, then going out ... to experience a few of Liverpool's many vibrant bars." (Memo to Archbishop Kelly: Your Grace, even Basil Hume, "godfather to the gays", disowned Quest!). While in Lancaster, where property is being sold off and the parish levy raised to compensate for years of Modernist malfeasance [CO, Jan 2007, p.12], where still more cash is being frittered away on yet another "renewal"-programme-cum-propaganda-vehicle for downsizing a crumbling diocese, Bishop O'Donoghue finds time to rebuke righteous complainants. "You must learn to trust the Bishops in matters of faith and order", he writes.

And therein lies the tragedy: he's not joking! Yet it is risible to suggest that the English faithful might trust "this hapless bench of bishops" (as Bishop Bruskewitz described their US counterparts). It will never happen, until such time as Rome starts thinking 'outside the square' and delivers England leaders possessed of the Catholic conviction and manliness of Archbishop Burke and his aforementioned colleagues. Sadly, however, this will require a less collegial, post-postconciliar pontificate; one with a real awareness of England's plight and a willingness to exercise supreme papal power and jurisdiction on our behalf.

In the meantime, here is a rough 'First 100 Days' laundry list for Pius XIII, should he ever phone CO about launching a Sarkozy-style blitz to save Mary's Dowry. Guaranteed to unleash the gates of Hell, it would just as certainly restore our episcopal trust "in matters of faith and order", replenish parish pews and fill empty diocesan coffers overnight! Counting down: