October 2012
CHRONIC CONVERGENCE
On Scandals and Mafias in Church and State
THE EDITOR
- Part II -
| "I have seen an underside [of the hierarchy] that I never knew existed. ... |
| To act like La Cosa Nostra and hide and suppress, I think is very unhealthy." |
| - Frank Keating |
Fifty years ago, bewitched by a world on the verge of miraculous possibilities opening up through science and technology, the Church lowered her defences. Like a swooning adulteress torn between between Christ, Her one true Love, and this sparkling future peopled with brave new men, she abandoned her sacred mantle of Tradition and embraced the profane tenets of the Revolution. Selling out Aquinas for a diabolic mess of pottage, neo-Liberalism became her philosophy of choice. Dressed up and sold to her hapless children as maturative "change" and "renewal," the cast-iron protection of the Traditional Mass was ditched to allow elastic neo-conservative "liturgies" free reign to introduce the cancers of Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité into her bloodstream. Attempting thereby to serve both God and Mammon, she lost sight of her Great Commission to convert "all nations" [Matt. 28:19], proceeding to converge with them instead. Accordingly, the rate of Eucharistic "sacrilege, outrages and indifference," for which the Angel of Fatima sought reparation, rapidly accelerated as the secularisation of faith and morals within kept pace with the dissolution without.
Today, as scandals proliferate in Church and State, we find analogies, metaphors and parallels of this corrupting convergence at every secular turn. World Youth Day extravaganzas fronted by celebrity popes, which ape a world defined by hype and "celebrity," spring immediately to mind. As does the springboard itself, Vatican II, which launched all the profane mimicry that induced the crisis of Catholic identity and resultant worldly woes now afflicting Holy Mother Church.
Overrated and over-hyped, the verbose Council has been one long ideological sales pitch from the beginning. It might be compared with Obama spinning fantastical yarns about the new dawn his administration has ushered in, even while the country sinks to new depths of malfeasance, division and turmoil. Similarly, the Catholic reality — grave corruption and continuing decline — is masked by incessant propaganda.
Council "anniversaries" come so thick and fast it's hard to keep up with precisely which portentous date or ambiguous document is being exalted. Did I hear mention that this month, for instance, marks the Golden Jubilee of its fateful opening? Excuse the sarcasm. How could we possibly feign ignorance before the blizzard of "events" organised to celebrate 50 purposeful years
of deconstruction.
Myriad talkfests have been scheduled to extol this alleged "great grace bestowed on the Church in the twentieth century" (John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte). Typically, we are advised of "A Four-Day Symposium Reform and Renewal: Vatican II after Fifty Years," to be conducted by the arch-dissident Catholic University of America. Elsewhere, on behalf of its 12 million Lutheranised members, the Central Committee of German Catholics organised a "Council Gala" featuring neo-Modernist celebrity Cardinal Kasper. The former President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, His Eminence preaches ecumenical convergence and derides as passé the very idea of conversion to Catholicism and return to the one true Church. (Hans Küng, who makes Kasper seem Ultramontane, declined to join the party, whining that "there is no reason for a festive Council Gala but rather for an honest service of penance or a funeral service." For once, albeit for the wrong reasons, the old heretic was right.)
Neocons scramble to counter the liberal take with conferences of their own. Sadly, these are designed not to bury the Council but to praise it; to acquiesce and turn a blind eye. They do not decry, for instance, Cardinal Ratzinger's perverse lauding of Vatican II as a "counter-Syllabus" (— i.e., a Catholic corrective to Blessed Pius IX's rigorism, thereby reconciling the Church with the 'better nature' of 1789 as supposedly embodied in the American Revolution and US democracy). They do not protest its having been engineered and foisted on the Church by previously suspect/condemned neo-Modernist theologians (like Ratzinger himself). Nor do they point out the clear link between that liberal takeover and the ominous signals from Pius XII, Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of Good Success that it was the wrong Council at the wrong time. Why swim against the tide of received wisdom and human respect? Far easier to let self-serving papal mantras go unchallenged — like John Paul II's risible insistence that vacillating Vatican II provides "a sure compass by which to take our bearings in the century now beginning." Much less stressful to continue hammering square Conciliar pegs into the round whole of Catholic Tradition, blaming all on the "bogus spirit" while ignoring the "fuzzy letter" that gave the Council legs.
In one way or another, therefore, hopes, dreams, worldviews, careers and/or lifestyles are rationalised and sustained by selling us the Council's revolutionary "counter-Syllabus." All but "a remnant selected out of grace" [Rom. 11:5] have a stake in the scam. This is why we cannot escape deluded New Springtime fantasies any more than we can evade the reality of our Endless Winter of self-destruction. It is a vicious cycle. The false optimism of the neocons, who deny the insuperable problem of the New Mass, both fuels and prolongs the downward spiral facilitated by the liberals, who are at total war with Tradition and the ancient liturgy that promotes and defends it like no other.
Secularising engine
Clearly, there is much blame to spread around. But among the worst offenders in the Conciliar cheer squad are the functionaries. In timeworn bureaucratic fashion these rely on the relentless hype to maintain their careers and fiefdoms, all the while sucking supernatural life out of the members of the Body of Christ. Exploiting the goodwill of the faithful, they manipulate and bleed them dry. The Kreitzer and Scharplaz articles herein explain how these ideologues embedded in the US episcopal conference work hand in glove with the secular Left to impose the social gospel on parishes across the country. This corrupt ecclesiastical Establishment, decried by Arlington's Fr Jerry Pokorsky for promoting "salvation by policies and procedures," is mirrored in local Churches everywhere [cf. "Contributing to CAFOD is a Sin!" CO, Jan. 2005].
Essentially, whether unwitting neocons realise it or not, Vatican II 50th anniversary bashes are celebrations of this secular dovetailing ushered in by Jacques Maritain's "Integral Humanism." Known as the social gospel, it was beloved of the ecclesial and secular left alike, including Maritain's great friend, the Marxist Saul Alinsky. Effectively baptised at the Council by the humanistic Pope Paul, who admired both Maritain and Alinsky, it has been preached ever since under various sophistical guises, all of which aim to strip away the supernatural essence of the Church and level her raison d'être down to the natural plane. Unsurprisingly, instead of reforming the world in terms of Christian humanism, as Paul VI and Maritain clearly intended, it has deformed the Church according to the dictates of the secular humanism preached by the cultural Marxists they sought to befriend.
We cannot say we were not forewarned. Enemy objectives and strategies have been repeatedly disclosed. As related in June/July, A.S. Herlong Jnr. revealed to the U.S. Congress on 10 January 1963, for instance, that one of 45 official Communist Goals was to "Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with 'social' religion." Yet even as Congressman Herlong was sounding the alarm, this very process of "death by a thousand cuts" was being kick-started by the hard core movers and shakers at Vatican II. It involved the dissemination of a faux Catholicism stripped of the Cross and Judgement and tailored for a Legislating Church; a sterile institution churning out Social Policy Papers and Ecumenical Discussion Documents in preference to hands-on evangelisation and prosyletism, now officially designated as dirty words.
This revolution unfolded down the years in hypocritical tandem with papal condemnations of the relentless secularisation it produced. In 2001, for example, Pope John Paul II was still warning the leaders of Kazakhstan against a "slavish conformity" to Western culture which is in a "deepening human, spiritual and moral impoverishment" caused by "the fatal attempt to secure the good of humanity by eliminating God, the Supreme Good." All the while, however, the worldly convergence of his flock continued apace.
The end result is embodied in billionaire CINO Melinda Gates and her "passion" for contraceptive population control.
Lay symptoms: clerical causes
"I am inspired by the voluminous Catholic literature on God's commitment to the poor ... I would not be so passionate about saving women's lives if I hadn't been steeped in teachings about social justice," Gates enthused. "Access to contraceptives is a social justice issue." Despite her commendable desire to live out her Catholic college motto "I will serve," however, her social gospel formation at Ursuline Academy perverted her understanding; placing the service of man, by the power of man for man's sake — not for the sake of God, by His grace and in accord with the truths of His Teaching Church — at the forefront of her deliberations. This diabolic inversion led her ineluctably to the Culture of Death which now utilises her billions to deadly effect. Both spiritually and physically.
Are the Ursulines beaming with pride? Does Melinda's personal conviction trump her trashing of Catholic truth and human life? The answer is a resounding "Yes!" — since unfettered personal autonomy is the golden-calf of the social gospel preached by the entrenched cliques (and claques) of the ecclesiastical left.
"Let me say very clearly what this lawsuit is not about: it is not about preventing women from having access to contraception," wrote Notre Dame President Fr. John Jenkins, explaining the university's decision to join in the dozen lawsuits filed simultaneously on behalf of 43 Catholic organisations who are challenging the contraception mandate in President Obama's national healthcare legislation ["Obamacare"]. "Many of our faculty, staff and students — both Catholic and non-Catholic — have made conscientious decisions to use contraceptives. As we assert the right to follow our conscience, we respect their right to follow theirs."
Pope John Paul II said that "contraception is so profoundly unlawful" that rephrehensible justifications of the Jenkins variety which subjectivise truth and morality are "equal to maintaining that in human life situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God." Tragically, the late Holy Father was as renowned for failing to act against clerical killers of the spiritual life as he was for his ardent defence of human life. Hence the socialistic 'human rights' mantra promoted by Fr Jenkins has been allowed to fashion two contracepting generations indistinguishable from their pagan counterparts. This has condemned us to a passing parade of malformed souls continually misrepresenting our holy Faith. "Despite the media's concern with my faith," says Gates, "this experience has helped me think more seriously about it. I have been contacted by thousands of Catholic women who tell me they are inspired by what I'm doing. That has been a humbling experience. I will always find comfort and wisdom in the values of my Catholic upbringing — and I will remain deeply committed to giving women access to the lifesaving contraceptives they want."(1)
Fr Jenkins could have said as much. But if Gates is a scandalous symptom, Jenkins is only the minor cause. He and his dissident clerical and Religious ilk have only survived and flourished worldwide due to the major cause: faithless hierarchies. By sanctioning anti-catechesis which omits the soul from the "social question," ignores the Magisterium and reduces morality to a personal feel-good factor, they have sent forth CINOs who "look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand" [Matt. 13:10-17]; generations good for nothing but giving scandal of the wrong kind, as explained last month. Even the recent stirring of the somnolent US bishops speaks to this grand betrayal since they, like Fr Jenkins, also wish to avoid the stumbling block of contraception, despite its centrality to their Obamacare concerns.
After 44 years of cowardly silence, a golden opportunity has finally presented itself to dust off copies of Humanae Vitae and give virile voice to a counter-cultural, demonstrably prophetic teaching. "Pope Paul VI predicted that contraception would evolve from 'a lifestyle choice' into a weapon of mass destruction. How dreadfully his prophecy has been vindicated by population control and coercive sterilization programs, fertility reduction quotas, and the promotion of abortion literally everywhere in the world," wrote Fr Paul Marx shortly before his death in 2010. "By breaking the natural and divinely ordained connection between sex and procreation, the Pope saw that women and men — but especially men — would focus on the hedonistic possibilities of sex. People would cease seeing sex as something that was intrinsically linked to new life and to the sacrament of marriage. Does anyone doubt that this is where we find ourselves today?"
In the same year, Charles Rice, Professor Emeritus of Notre Dame Law further explained the encyclical's practical relevance to the disappearing American flock. He reminded the students of Christendom College that "Catholics practice contraception at the same rate as everyone else. One reason is that they have not been adequately informed. Many Catholic churches and schools are closing or consolidating for lack of parishioners and students. A fair response would be respectfully to say: 'Most Reverend Bishop (or Father), you would not have this problem if you and your predecessors had been doing your job, over the past four decades and still today, of educating your people about the evil of contraception and about the entire positive teaching of the Church on marriage and the gift of life.' Christendom graduates know the score on this. Don't be afraid to live it. And teach it, by word and example."
Sadly, mitres are not doled out to plain-speakers like Fr Marx and Professor Rice. They are worn by men so compromised and overwhelmed by the sinful fruit of their own negligence (which saw their presidential bête noire elected with 54% of the Catholic vote!) that they see contraception as a long lost cause: too hot to handle. Best to avoid the unpalatable solution, the Social Kingship of Christ, and stick with the failed Social Gospel of Maritain, fighting Obama on religious liberty.
In a letter read during Sunday Mass in most dioceses around the country earlier this year, many of the bishops flatly said: "We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law [requiring virtually all health care plans to cover the provision of sterilisations, contraception and abortifacients, and related education and counselling]." Tough talk. Despite the deafening silence of these same men apropos Humanae Vitae and their bureaucratic blame-shifting response to clerical sexual abuse, the sudden flash of apostolic zeal made us foolishly dare to hope.
The inevitable let down soon followed when Cardinal Timothy Dolan invited President Obama to make merry at an annual Catholic fundraiser to be held in New York on 18 October. At a stroke he undermined his own tough rhetoric and that of his episcopal brethren against Obamacare. Especially perverse given the President's contemptuous response to the Cardinal's concerns, a roar of righteous protest over the invitation fell on deaf ears [e.g. "Open Letter to Cardinal Dolan," p. 30].
What can explain the self-defeating disregard for God-given authority at play here, other than ecclesial minds more attuned to the standards and judgements of this world than the next?
Blurring distinctions
Vastly overrated by neocons too busy laughing at his jokes to notice his serial compromising, the gregarious Dolan personifies the crisis of faith, authority and identity behind the rise of the Church Convergent: apostolic successors who look the part and talk a good fight, while actually fleeing the Church Militant so we can all "just get along." In this he radiates "Americanism": a veritable Heresy of Convergence condemned by Leo XIII in Testem benevolentiae nostrae. In this 1899 encyclical Leo explained to the American bishops that "The underlying principle of these new [Americanist] opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions."
Cardinal Dolan would argue that he is not conforming Catholic teaching to the zeitgeist. But tough talk is cheap. It is utterly disingenuous to present himself as a fearless champion of orthodoxy, railing against Obama's implacable attack on the freedom of Catholic conscience, only then to "relax" the "severity" of his condemnation by cuddling up to the President at a hail-fellow-well-met shindig. Nor can the circumstances be compared to Jesus dining with sinners and tax collectors, as his apologists feebly insist. On the contrary, like his liturgical acquiescence in the "gay"-New Age agenda in Milwaukee and New York, or his shrinking from the New York "gay marriage" debate, the message is loud and clear: No conviction. No guts. Appeasement pure and simple.
Americanism was given new impetus by the Integral Humanists of Vatican II who placed the democracy spawned by the American Revolution on a pedestal. As within the secular Establishment, this has led to a progressive blurring of ecclesiastical distinctions and labels, so that Catholic "conservatism," like its political counterpart, has become a false-flag at the service of Liberalism. Which is to say that although orthodox in many respects, "neo-conservatives" have made an easy accommodation with a post-conciliar status quo that is not Tradition's legacy but Liberalism's.
In his 2001 essay "Defining Conservatism Downard," Joe Sobran applied Senator Moynihan's observation that "we have 'defined deviancy downward' — that is, we have become so inured to behavior formerly recognized as deviant that we have tried to cope by lowering our standards." Likewise, we have defined faith and morals downward. Forty years of egregious scandals has numbed the Catholic conscience, rendering the faithful shock-proof, as it were. Rampant dissent has so blurred the black and white lines of magisterial teaching that Catholic sights have been lowered to subtle shades of grey, now passed off as an acceptable compromise.
Consequently, yesterday's heresy and heterodoxy has become today's de-facto orthodoxy. This epochal shifting of Catholic goalposts has allowed Great Pretenders — Obama appeasers, "gay" Mass tolerators, pro-abort politician defenders, et. al. — to pose as Great Defenders of the Faith. But their "conservatism," to paraphrase the late General Haig's rebuke of the Republican leadership, dates from 1960s and is a populist con detached from Catholic Tradition; calling it a neo-con doesn’t make it any better.
False-charity
Indeed it makes it far worse because the appointments of Dolan-like figures are welcomed as part of the "conservative" solution to "liberal" chaos, even as they continue to appease our enemies within and without. Accordingly, rather than boycott the Democrats and help scupper its vital Catholic vote, Cardinal Dolan also accepted an invitation to give the closing benediction at their National Convention on 6 September.
After clear opening references to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and the right to life "without which no other rights are secure," the Cardinal called for God's blessing on the unborn, "that they be need welcomed and protected." He then concentrated on the "American genius of government" which has thus far protected "freedom" and "religious liberty." In the process, he framed reference to truth and the moral law only in terms of "nature's God" rather than Truth Himself, His Social Kingship and all it implies about the supreme authority of Christ over every single individual, society, government and nation on earth.
By present degraded standards it was a passable effort. But it was not, as one might have gathered from delighted neocon reaction, the Pentecostal rocket so sorely needed; the blunt and salvific counsel of a Catholic Shepherd inspired by the holy fear of God. Rather, it was the restrained offering of a Reasonable Man imbued with false-charity — that devilish ruse implanted at the Council and long advocated by the Cardinal. During a 25 June 2001 interview with Zenit, in response to a question on how the Church can express its "disapproval of homosexual behaviour without being accused of bigotry or hate crimes," he explained that the post-conciliar Church prefers to accentuate the positive aspects of sexual love within marriage rather than condemn vice. This sunny non-judgementalism doubtless pleased the "gay"-infested archdiocese of Milwaukee he signally failed to reform. It obviously suits homosexualised Manhattan parishes (like St Francis Xavier) to which he gives free rein. But it is not Catholic. Period.
Far from cautioning against judgement and condemnation, Christ was not even averse to a little righteous violence, if pushed [Jn 2:15]. So delivering mere affirmations and soundbites to an "Abortion Party" led by an advocate of partial-birth infanticide who is persecuting Him [Acts 9:4], was underwhelming, to put it charitably. In fact, having decided to address the enemy on their turf, His Eminence had a clear choice: to be a First Springtime stumbling block [Acts 2], or a New Springtime trampoline somersaulting over serious confrontation. Simply and predictably, he chose the latter: to be John Paul instead of Peter or Paul.
Demilitarized Church
Piling further false-charity on complicity, the neocons rent their garments, crying 'Unfair! Niggardly! It wasn't the time or place to say more!' But there is no best "time" or "place" to address apologists for the abortion holocaust and the outlawing of Catholic faith and conscience. The War is Now! And that is the difference between Dolan's Church Convergent and the Church Militant of Mother Teresa, who always spoke truth to power without holding back, no matter when and regardless of who was sitting in the front row. "Once I saw her in a breathtaking act of courage," wrote Peggy Noonan in Time Magazine.
She was the speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington in 1995. All the Washington Establishment was there.... "I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion", she said, and then she told them why, in uncompromising terms. For about 1.3 seconds, there was complete silence, then applause built and swept across the room. But not everyone: the President [Clinton] and the First Lady, the Vice-President and Mrs. Gore, looked like seated statues at Madame Tussaud's, glistening in the lights and moving not a muscle. She didn't stop there either, but went on to explain why artificial birth control is bad and why Protestants who separate faith from works are making a mistake. When she was finished there was almost no one she hadn't offended. A U.S. Senator turned to his wife and said, "Is my jaw up yet?" [CO, Feb. 1998].
"Human respect" is a phrase foreign to the saints because it is not in their traditional lexicon; the one the Council replaced with slippery verbiage. If "Obama" is now a synonym for the deconstruction of Christian America, "Vatican II" is code for a demilitarized Church governed by convergent prelates and apparatchiks who have defined the language and meaning of the Faith downwards to suit their own character flaws and sexual disorders. Like all politicians when exposed by scandal, they are quick to obscure this lowering of the Catholic bar by shifting blame and attention. So, on cue, in a move that anticipated his pulled punches at the Democratic Convention, Cardinal Dolan immediately sought refuge from the peals of protest set off by his Al Smith dinner invitation to Obama by latching on to "Civility in America," a Knights of Columbus campaign for civility in public discourse.
"Civility in America is giving voice to the desire of Americans of all backgrounds and political parties for more civil discourse during this election season," the Cardinal said, as he sought to rationalise his Obama invite by asking the presidential and vice presidential candidates to sign the Knights' "civility pledge." Carl Anderson, the Knights' supremo, responded: "I think it’s great. I think that this is the kind of issue that religious leaders should be speaking out on. These are the kinds of religious values, like respect for each other, that our religious leaders ought to be furthering in society. [Many Americans are] fed up with the incivility of this campaign season. We’re grateful for Cardinal Dolan’s leadership."
Since when was leadership about "getting along" and seeking to avoid conflict? How very far Mr Anderson and the Cardinal are from the "judgemental" Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. Never mind "incivility," she was clearly more "fed up" with the mass butchering of babies and the turning away from God and His laws. She wanted to challenge the powers at every opportunity. "We have to affirm the rights of God and we have to do it without fear," insisted the late Cardinal Gagnon. "Let no one tell us not to judge! We have to say this is right, and this is wrong. It is a form of charity to tell the sinner he is wrong." Even severely.
Mr Anderson, on the other hand, is the face of non-judgemental faux-Catholicism and the scandal-ridden Church of dumbed-down teaching and distorted priorities it has produced. A global charitable organization with 1.2 million members in the U.S. alone, his Knights of Columbus blithely admits pro-abortion politicians despite claiming that members need to be "in union with the Holy See." Anderson refuses to kick them out on their faithless backsides. Presumably that would not only be judgemental but uncivil? Ditto Cardinal Dolan. He should have called out the Democratic CINOs one by one, beginning with Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, informing them they are no longer welcome to darken the doors of Catholic churches as long as they support and defend legislation that has zero respect for life, morality and God’s laws. He should have sent a message to every man, woman and journalist:
Until you publicly repent of your public sins, keep your distance. And keep your money. We will care for the poor and the sick without you. We Catholics will no longer bend to your attempts to destroy good for political gains. We will no longer sanction your behaviour and your participation in the sacraments. Those gifts of the Faith are reserved for God's servants not his Adversary’s.
Dolan and Anderson are two hypocritical peas in a complicit neocon pod which absorbs the prevailing attitudes and approaches of the surrounding culture. Even when asked by a 60 Minutes interviewer (August 2011) about the possibility that allowing priests to marry might reduce child sexual abuse, the Cardinal reflexively parroted the spurious secular line. Without hesitation, he said "the greatest culprits in sexual abuse are, unfortunately, married men." Instead, he should have stated that children raised in a traditional intact marriage are the lowest risk group for child sexual abuse, hammering the fact that child abuse in cohabiting households with one parent and an unmarried partner is more than 8 times greater than the rate for children living with two married parents! Why let the enemy frame the debate? "Dolan's position," wrote one critic, "mimics marriage-phobic propaganda proffered by feminists for decades. Now we have the Catholic Church talking like Gloria Steinem. How many women of faith now erroneously suspect their husbands of child sexual abuse and are looking under every rock to confirm those doubts?"
This cringing deference and cultural copycatting is the norm: spectacularly reflected in experiential catechetics, many aspects of World Youth Days, and the Novus Ordo Missae (whose architect Annibale Bugnini firmly believed that the Church had to embrace secularism to survive). Raised on such pseudo-"renewal" propagated by smiley shepherds "thinking not as God does, but as men do" [Mk 8:33], the faithful have regressed into pale imitations of their counter-cultural forebears.
EWTN
Even supposed Catholic bulwarks have succumbed.
In EWTN: A Network Gone Wrong [2007], Christopher Ferraradetails how this enterprise that might have become a force for the restoration of Catholic Tradition under Mother Angelica, "devolved into a media mouthpiece for 'moderate modernism'," as one reviewer put it. Four years after the book's publication, a July 2011 Remnant commentary by Ferrara on the fall from grace of yet another EWTN "celebrity priest," Fr John Corapi, neatly summarised the inexorable convergence that occurs whenever our severely debilitated Church, even with the very best of intentions, seeks to mimic a virulent popular culture:
In the current ecclesial climate, to criticize EWTN is to suffer the consequences that attend any questioning of what common opinion has made into a sacred cow, even if one hastens to affirm (as I do) the sound elements in EWTN’s programming. The critic exposes himself to the easiest of demagogic cheap shots by those who are invested in the ecclesial status quo.
The fall of Father John Corapi, however, prompts me to revisit the Network Gone Wrong in order to note why it has gone wrong. As I showed in my book, the essence of the problem with EWTN is this: Catholicism cannot safely be presented in the form of 24/7 cable television programming by a network — all Catholic, all the time. Any attempt to present our religion to the world in that way will inevitably produce the demotic corruptions necessary to stimulate the widespread popular interest without which massively expensive non-stop TV programming is impossible to sustain financially, especially when it depends on donations.
[...] This is not to deny that the television medium is suitable for the presentation of Catholic subjects by way of discrete productions. Bishop Sheen is the classic example of how the medium can serve the Church. And, in fact, a number of EWTN programs are quite excellent, such as those by Dale Ahlquist and Jamie Bogle. The point, however, is that the business of running a television network that seeks inclusion in basic cable TV packages, as EWTN does, is at odds with the purity of the Faith as a supramundane reality leading man to his eternal destiny and away from the things of this world.
The main reason this is so is that the viability of any TV network depends on popular shows featuring celebrities who attract fans and are able to maintain a devoted "fan base." These celebrity-driven shows are what "anchor" a network in the viewing schedule. Corapi was such a celebrity — one of the most successful, if not the most successful, in EWTN’s history. Yet EWTN knew full well of his past as a rich playboy, a drug addict, and then a derelict wandering the streets. Amazingly enough, EWTN made Corapi a celebrity even though it was widely known that he had cohabited for years with a former prostitute at his ranch in Montana after becoming a priest, ostensibly in an effort to rehabilitate her. In pre-conciliar times, Corapi would not even have been considered as a candidate for the priesthood, no matter how sincere his conversion and repentance. Yet in front of EWTN’s cameras he became Super Priest, and thousands if not millions hung on his every televised word.
... The whole truth about Corapi finally came out in a report by a three-man investigative panel appointed by his order, detailing continuing sexual improprieties, drug abuse, and a lavish lifestyle contrary to his vow of poverty .... Shortly thereafter Corapi appeared in a video on his blogsite wearing a leather Harley Davidson jacket, his head shaven and his gray beard dyed black, to announce that he would pursue an Internet career under the bizarre moniker “Black SheepDog.” ... But I feel sorry for Corapi, a gifted man whose life has been filled with suffering and who is clearly haunted by demons he never really escaped. ... I feel nothing but contempt, however, for EWTN’s calculated decision to make Corapi a star knowing full well that he was damaged goods. Worse, having created this fallen celebrity, EWTN then proceeded to cover his fall as a news item on its pretend network news show, The World Over, .... as if [it] were covering breaking news of the day like any secular [channel], instead of a massive scandal for which EWTN itself is directly responsible.
Quite apart from many other grave problems documented in his book, Ferrara then recalls the long line of other EWTN "celebrity priests" who also broke their vows: Fr Ken Roberts, 1998; Fr John Bertolucci, 2002; Mgr Eugene Clarke, 2005; Fr Francis Mary Stone, 2007; Fr Alberto Cutié, 2009; Fr Thomas Euteneuer, 2010. Reflecting on this "cavalcade of scandal," he comments: "EWTN needs celebrity priests in order to insure the survival of its cash-hungry network operation. When the Faith becomes show business, the scandals of show business follow. The private sins of priests — and there but for the grace of God go all of us — become public affairs to the shock and dismay of the faithful who were their devoted cable TV fans." Ferrara concludes with this charitable advice to EWTN in the hope of reversing the relentless convergence and helping the station achieve its true potential:
Abandon your attempt to be a Catholic version of a secular cable TV network. Avoid the cult of personality and all its pitfalls. Forget the lame pop content. Instead, isolate the many sound elements in your programming and present only those on a more limited schedule, to a more limited audience if need be. Let the truths of the Faith speak plainly and simply for themselves; let its unadorned beauty be your main attraction. And if viewership declines, then too bad for the viewers who tune out. .... The Faith is not a TV show and never can be; but TV can be a powerful medium for advancing the Faith. Learn that distinction and respect it, and EWTN — no matter how large or small it becomes — will more truly serve the cause of the Gospel.
Liberal-conservatives
If the Catholic mainstream contributes so mightily to this capitulation to the zeitgeist, not even recognising the scandals they act out, it is surely because their ready assimilation of secular fads and fashions was preceded by the osmotic absorption of neo-Modernism itself. It is perfectly understandable. Those raised on neo-conservative liturgies and catechetics can readily attest that the "synthesis of all heresies" is near impossible to pin down without an awakening to Tradition — according to which a hostile culture is to be confronted and denied, not flattered and befriended by imitation.
From the outset neo-conservatism was co-opted by the Revolutionary engineers of Vatican II. A 'good cop, bad cop' routine was naturally played out among the post-conciliar ruins, whereby reaction to extreme liberal prelates increased the standing of comparatively mild conservatives; neocon shepherds who, in practice, were often lukewarm, negligent and/or complicit. They had bought much of the neo-Modernist propaganda and were easy targets for manipulation. As a priest once lamented, it is testimony to the diabolic disorientation triggered by the Council that "Too many of our bishops sincerely believed and continue to believe that the Second Vatican Council and what came after was truly the long-awaited entrance into the Promised Land." In a private reflection on the internal convergence that put neo-conservatism at the service of the Revolution, he went on to explain that
There was a split during the Council between the Catholics (Cardinal Ottaviani etc.) and the liberals. The liberals won and being good Hegelians they quickly, after the Council, split up into two parties, this way occupying both spectrums: the liberal-liberal spectrum and the liberal-conservative spectrum. We didn't even notice that the Catholics were not around any more.
Then, the liberals succeeded in making us believe that the liberal-liberals were the bad guys and the liberal-conservatives were the good ones. Like in an American movie. Everybody was, therefore, happy when John Paul II was promoting the liberal-conservatives (most of them have become Cardinals).
But the more the game continues, the more one can see — surprise, surprise — that liberal-liberals and liberal-conservatives are one and the same group: Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose.
That thesis has been confirmed repeatedly over the 50 year period currently being celebrated by both parties: as again with Benedict's recent appointment of Archbishop Müller of Regensburg to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A champion of Liberation Theology (aka the Social Gospel), he holds heterodox/heretical views on the Real Presence ("Here, body and blood mean the presence of Christ in the signs of the medium of bread and wine"), the Perpetual Virginity of Our Lady even in childbirth ("not so much concerned with physiological properties in the natural process of birth... but with the healing and saving influence of the grace of the Saviour on human nature"), and the ecclesial status of non-Catholics vis-à-vis the Church. Müller should be investigated by the CDF not appointed to lead it. Yet there he now sits as the foremost defender of Catholic orthodoxy after the Pope: claiming that his critics have 'misread' or 'misunderstood' his writings; lauding Vatican II; and protesting his orthodoxy. Plus ça change..., indeed.
Though not completely homogenous, liberals and neocons still play by the same unwritten Enlightenment rules laid down by the anti-Thomistic movers and shakers at the Council. Thus far we have underlined the neo-conservative contribution to this covergent "game" because it is unplayable without their blithe acceptance of Benedict's "counter-Syllabus" agenda; complicity altogether consistent with their having made obedience to the Pope of the day, rather than faith, the subjective foundation of ostensibly orthodox thinking. Nonetheless, it is the neo-Modernist party that has dictated terms; its liberal leaven giving rise to the Counterfeit Church prophesied by Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. In this regard, Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah is a graphic metaphor for our predicament.
Ecclesiastical mafia
Broadly, Saviano's explanation of the criminal underpinnings of modern Italy, summarised last month, echoes the liberal coercion that binds the Church hand and foot: corrosion of the Italian moral fabric through a national grid of self-interest established by a noxious criminal minority, paralleling the corruption of Catholic faith by a neo-Modernist hegemony exploiting an easily led neocon constituency. More specifically, his depiction of the brutal, controlling secular Mafia constantly recalls the implacability of vested liberal interest groups within the Church. These range from the sort of criminal conspirators we reviewed in Part I, to writers and publishers with a lucrative monopoly on Modernist school programs and texts, to the enforcers of Modernist mob rule who pressure teachers to toe the heretical line and hound diocesan clergy inclined to Tradition. A Kiwi subscriber once related this routine instance of the latter and the affirming effect it had on the prejudicial attitudes of the malformed laity [names substituted]:
Fr. Smith conducted the traditional Requiem Mass with the permission of the Cardinal, in the parish church. He preached, as June and Peter had asked, on the four last things, and particularly on the need to pray for the souls of the dead that they may be released from purgatory.
... The reaction of the parishioners who attended the Mass has been most illuminating: accusations of uncharitableness on the part of Father Smith; references to a "black mass", outdated theology etc; and even an anonymous "hate" letter. No doubt letters also went to the Cardinal or his assistant, for my cousin, Bishop Merrick remarked to Fr. Smith that he had heard that Fr. Smith's sermon was "over the top". And all because Father preached a traditional Catholic sermon mentioning the unmentionable, death, judgement, heaven, hell and purgatory. Even the parish priest declined to be in the sanctuary for the Mass but I am told was in the congregation in ordinary non-clerical dress (for fear of contamination by association?). He dismissed the Mass to one visitor with the all too true words "we gave all that up 50 years ago". If you ever needed proof of the protestantising influence of Vatican II and the Novus Ordo this was it. They HATE tradition, orthodoxy, the Latin Mass, mention of purgatory or hell, or anything which disturbs their comfortable cosy feeling that God is all merciful and forgiving, and that we will all go straight to heaven when we die without having done anything at all to merit it!
Barring a miracle the Church here is lost.
Ten years later, on the other side of the world, the 30 June 2012 edition of L’Homme Nouveau carried a further classic example.
Abbé Olivier Horovitz, a Jewish convert ordained in 2007, was a Parisian curate in the 18th arrondissement who looked after a parish, along with a school and a very successful youth club. While the children most often attended the Novus Ordo, as one of the first of the very few priests in Paris to embrace Summorum Pontificum, Abbe Horovitz also introduced them to the Old Mass, which he offered alongside the New Mass at Notre-Dame-de-Clignancourt. Some parents opposed it but "the children don't see any disadvantage," he said. "Some have confided to me that this Mass makes a serious impression on them. The Motu Proprio allows it. You cannot be more papist than the pope! We are fed up with this ideology which has poisoned us for 40 years."
Unable to bear the energetic Abbé's successful integration of traditional faith and practice into his parish (where he began offering the Extraordinary Form twice a week between March and June 2008), the liberals ganged up. In June 2008, at a dinner held in his honour by parishioners distraught at the news of his impending departure, Abbé Horovitz explained the persecution he had endured for several months at the hands of the local clergy: criticisms of his wearing the soutane, of the traditional catechism (strictly controlled and forbidden by the parish priest), multiple obstacles to his celebration of the Old Mass. And most telling of all, the mafia-like "omertà" (code of silence) which descended after receiving the ecclesiastical equivalent of a fish wrapped in paper; a "Sicilian message" in the form of an admonishing phone call from the Vicar General, after which the clergy no longer spoke to him. He was forced to leave the parish in the summer of 2008.
While the post-Summorum "elimination" of Abbé Horovitz by the clerical mob is tragically common, the most obvious analogy involves the Modernist "godfathers" who issue the "contracts" (of harassment and ostracisation) to silence Tradition. A senior Westminster priest alluded to these during the Hume-Worlock era, whispering that "the Church in this country is ruled by a clerical tyranny." Recently, a veteran U.S. activist echoed the sentiment, confiding to the present writer: "When I think collectively of the Californian bishops, the word 'cabal' comes first to mind."
Not so long ago neocon critics of plain-speaking magazines like this one regarded such descriptions as extreme. Desperate to excuse the hierarchy at any cost, they wished away the awful reality: that no amount of material mayhem perpetrated by a secular mafia can even begin to match the spiritual/salvific death caused by ecclesiastical crooks. Since the American abuse-and-cover-up scandals first erupted in 2002, however, few now argue with the analogy — except, of course, the "godfathers" themselves! Indeed, when a lay leader appointed by the American episcopate compared their secrecy to the mafia, they forced him out!
In June 2003, after investigating the bishops' response to clerical sex abusers, National Review Board chairman Frank Keating delivered a devastating report on the U.S. hierarchy. He told the Los Angeles Times, "I have seen an underside that I never knew existed. I have not had my faith questioned, but I certainly have concluded that a number of serious officials in my faith have very clay feet. That is disappointing and educational, but it’s a fact. To act like La Cosa Nostra and hide and suppress, I think is very unhealthy." The Times had earlier reported that Keating fingered the notorious Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles as "a key figure in a move to block church officials from tallying up how many priests nationwide have been implicated in the abuse." (In response, one of Mahoney's henchmen delivered an Al Caponish put down, describing Keating as "a sincere and well-meaning person" and attributing his remarks to "extra zeal"!)
Naturally, Keating's stated goal, to remove bishops who tried to hide the problem or protect abusive priests, didn't help his cause. He soon resigned in frustration, indicating to the press that the behaviour of the bishops was worse than his experience with Mafia leaders when he had been a Federal prosecutor. He wrote in his letter of resignation:
As I have recently said, and have repeated on several occasions, our Church is a Faith institution. A home to Christ’s people. It is not a criminal enterprise. It does not condone and cover up criminal activity. It does not follow a code of silence. My remarks, which some bishops found offensive, were deadly accurate. I make no apology. To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my Church.
A year later, in a 30 March 2004 letter to bishops' conference President Wilton Gregory, who had been speaking about the sexual abuse saga in the past tense, the Board's new interim chairwoman, Justice Anne Burke, painted a similar picture: of hierarchical deception, public relations manoeuvring and "manipulation" of the Review Board itself to "deflect extensive national criticism." "In effect, they have 'dodged the bullet'," she said, "and they are anxious to put these matters behind them." She was roundly attacked by the indignant bishops for overstepping her mandate, a protest not wholly without substance as they did not want to be rushed into dubious recommendations. Nonetheless, having fallen on their scandalous swords and lacking all credibility, Burke's fears rang true: "to delay matters...", she insisted, "will reopen the wounds of deception, manipulation and control — all the false ideals that produced this scandal."
A further three years on, with the bishops still portraying the abuse crisis as done and dusted, attorney Charles Molineaux confirmed the Keating-Burke analogy. Addressing the October 2007 Annual Meeting of The Society of Catholic Social Scientists in New York, he described the episcopate's villainous attempts to oppose legislative extensions to statutes of limitation in order to protect themselves and the Church's image and assets. "With this mindset, the extension of statutes of limitation, however such extension might make justice available to victims, is to be resisted because lawsuits might result in expanded financial liability." At the same time, he said, "Recent commentary in quite diverse Catholic journals perceives a continuance of secrecy and a deflection of attention from the grave failures of the hierarchy. Just last week, the diocese of Providence revealed that the number of priests accused there of abusing children is twice what had previously been acknowledged."
Lamenting the damage already done to the credibility of the Church by "careerist, cowardly and criminal bishops," he noted that they "continue in the same modus operandi, which, in part, had contributed to the abuse-and-cover-up scandal. Sadly, the fact remains that the institutional Church has only acted in response to the legal compulsion of the secular courts and/or in response to media pressure and public outrage. In short, the bishops no longer have the credibility or enjoy the trust of the laity."
Very clearly "this hapless bench of bishops," as Bishop Bruskewitz of Nebraska famously labelled the self-satisfied episcopate, were not up to tackling the "massive and pervasive failure of leadership" that saw the "institutional acceptance of abuse" take root over several decades, as Boston's Attorney General put it. So it is not surprising that on 10 February 2011 Anne Burke was still bemoaning that since 2002 "little has changed." Writing in the Chicago Tribune she referenced continued cover-ups in the archdiocese of Philadelphia where "even after years of investigation of child abuse by priests, the cover-up of that abuse has been further institutionalized." Indeed the very Monsignor responsible for investigating reports of clerical sexual abuse from 1992 to 2004 had himself been charged for covering up abuse by priests. Yet as Burke insisted: to blame a clerical official, and not his archbishop, of such deviousness presents a mistaken analysis of how the Church works."
Though appreciative of the Charter the bishops had set in place to protect children (draconian measures rightly ignored by some prelates!), and their establishment of the National Review Board that "permitted the opportunity to examine the causes and effects of the scandal," she added the inevitable rider: "But the news that more than 24 active priests in Philadelphia face abuse accusations, and that some were allowed to remain in active ministry after accusations were made against them years ago, raises new fears. For me, these are much more than institutional nightmares. This makes me wonder what kind of people we are dealing with when we engage the bishops. How is it that they say one thing and secretly intend something else? Are they ever to be trusted?"
The Untouchables
For decades the faithful asked themselves the same questions about prelates who refused to act against interrelated liturgical, catechetical and sex ed abuse, finally to discover that many of them viewed sexual abuse committed outside the Church as a crime, but a mere 'moral failing' when perpetrated by a priest. While rightly stressing that only a tiny priestly minority actually abused children, the bishops never mention that the episcopal majority engaged in cover ups, including two-thirds of the American hierarchy. In Ireland, as Anne Burke noted, "A government investigation into the horror of Irish clerical abuse — both sexual and physical — brought everything to the surface. All the usual elements were there, thanks to the Irish bishops — cover-up, lying, bullying, threats, the hiding of evidence, the sealing of witness testimony, and most of all the willingness to let the guilty clergy get away with the crime."
It goes without saying that there is a clear distinction to be made here: between the solemn exercise of the Church's teaching office, guaranteed by Christ, and the ruling office, which is not blessed with that same guarantee. "Loyalty does not mean blind loyalty to, or tolerance of, thieving priests and luxuriating bishops," explained Charles Molineaux. "The MAGISTERIAL Church merits our total loyalty and acquiescence. No 'cafeteria Catholics.' The INSTITUTIONAL Church merits a sort of discrete loyalty." That said, however, a decade after the gruesome boil was lanced and the infection exposed, Molineaux's 2007 conclusion stands: "'clericalism' and accompanying secrecy continue in the institutional Church." It is this rule by clannish clericalism that continues to shake the faith of millions. Yet although acting like gangsters, as the fierce reaction to the criticism of Frank Keating and Anne Burke signalled, many bishops the world over view themselves in far loftier terms.
"The American bishops have not held each other accountable," observed Amy Wellborn. "They have used the traditional and canonical concept of their identity as individual 'princes,' if you will, to (apparently) refrain from making any kind of judgment or taking any kind of action against brother bishops who have been involved in all kinds of shenanigans, from settling sexual harassment cases against them to paying off former male lovers to sheltering pedophile priests." This wall of silence — omertà by any other name — which masquerades as the prudent avoidance of digging up the wheat with the cockle [Matt. 13:29], is the worst kind of false-charity. In days gone by, when bishops called each other to task not only privately but often very publicly, "There was a sense that something great was at stake, that there was something that had to be protected, no matter what the price. And that something," remarked Wellborn, "was not episcopal fraternity. It was the Gospel."
The Gospel of Jesus Christ, that is, not today's Enlightenment version which has disoriented the hierarchy, obliterating their supernatural conviction, courage and commonsense. It is the silence inspired by this false-charity of a false gospel preaching collegial fraternité at any cost (as if protecting Judas were a spiritual work of mercy) that has enabled the rise of the pernicious homosexual cabal overwhelmingly responsible for clerical sexual abuse.
The Lavender Mafia
A vicious subset of the hierarchical cabal, the Lavender Mafia's presence, unlike that of Italy's P2 Lodge, is not hidden within diocesan structures but openly flaunted. Its pervasive American network has been comprehensively documented by Fr Enrique Rueda [The Homosexual Network, 1982], Paul Likoudis [Amchurch Comes Out, 2002], Michael Rose [Goodbye Good Men, 2002] and Randy Engel [The Rite of Sodomy, 2006]. The latter voluminous work traces the rise of homosexuality in the American hierarchy back to Cardinal O'Connell of Boston and Cardinal Spellman of New York, early 20th century prelates who sponsored the first generation of effeminates and homosexual predators through the ranks. One of them, Fr John Wright, O'Connell's personal secretary, was to become the Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy.
During Wright's tenure as Bishop of Worcester (1950-59), the diocese became a "clerical pederast's paradise," the inordinate number of homosexual seminarians helping set the scene "for the pederast and homosexual scandals that broke out in the greater Boston area in the late 1980s." Wright himself, always lauded as "conservative," stands accused of the repeated sexual abuse of the young nephew of Fr Raymond Page, a predator priest who served under him in Worcester. According to the victim, William Burnett, Wright and his priest-uncle would abuse him in tandem during regular sessions (mainly from 1952 to 1955) at a private lakeside cabin owned by Page. His details provided to Randy Engel are not for the faint-hearted.
Wright's protégé was Father Donald Wuerl, his private secretary. Renowned for his fierce ambition and "frilly" attire, from 1980-85 Fr Wuerl served as Vice Rector and Rector of St Paul's seminary in Pittsburgh; a seminary which "had a reputation for rampant homosexuality going back to the days of Bishop Wright." Appointed as Bishop of Pittsburgh in 1988, for eight years Wuerl pampered the radical "gays" in Dignity, who referred to him as "Donna." He gave them two parishes and allowed a former Dignity president "to exhibit pro-homosexual propaganda for years at official diocesan functions." He also created his own sex ed programme which was mandated by the diocese with no opt out for parents. "The programme," writes Engel, "is a pedophile's dream come true — innocence destroyed and sexual curiosity initiated even before latency begins."
Under Wuerl, Pittsburgh became "a stomping ground for nationally known doctrinal and moral miscreants" and "howling feminists." He also had "an excellent working relationship with Pittsburgh's Freemasons." He even helped these arch-enemies of the Church revitalise the local Lodge by selling them ten acres of prime land from the Catholic Cemetery, so they could relocate their headquarters and attract new members. And while he closed many historical ethnic parishes in the diocese for no good reason, he paid an undisclosed sum to have "a complete forest in Israel named after him."
Now Cardinal Archbishop of Washington and doling out sacrilegious Communions to infamous pro-abort politicians because he is not comfortable with "confrontation," this episcopal girly-man recently stripped a priest of his faculties for denying Holy Communion to a lesbian Buddhist [see Letter pp. 33-34].
The Bernadin legacy
According to Engel, America now faces "the third generation of clerical homosexuals and pederast prelates that can be directly tied to Spellman and O'Connell and other homosexual prelates of the early 20th century." The Rite of Sodomy devotes an entire chapter to the Don Corleone figure who institutionalised this homosexualisation: the late Cardinal Joseph Bernadin of Chicago.
The most powerful ecclesiastical figure in America in the latter half of the twentieth century, Bernadin was credibly accused by "three different individuals in three different locations during three different time periods" of belonging to a ring of predatory homosexual bishops, some of whose activities were allegedly connected to occult and satanic activities. His Chicago archdiocese also harboured a clerical homosexual/pederast "Boys Club" involved in ritualistic, occult worship and the sexual abuse of underprivileged boys. A lay organist and choir director who wanted out of the Club was found gruesomely murdered in ritualistic fashion. (The creepy Cardinal turned up at the scene shortly after the body was discovered, raising all kinds of questions about how he found out about the murder so quickly, and what interest he had in the victim, whom he claimed not to know.)
By the time he was laid to rest, praised and honoured by Masons and sodomites alike, Bernadin had sponsored the next generation of homosexuals up the clerical ladder.(2) According to Paul Likoudis, as the architect of the "American Church" the scandals of recent times are nothing less than Bernadin's toxic lavender legacy: "the infestation of the American hiearchy with perverts and abusers; the homosexualisation of the seminaries and the clergy; the bare-knuckled legal tactics employed on abuse victims; the creator and staffer par excellence, of liberal apparats at the national, diocesan and parish levels; the motivator for a libertine sex education under 'Catholic' covers; the facilitator and enabler for the liturgical deconstruction of the Mass; the leader and protector of the theological dissenters who are responsible for the loss of faith of millions of Catholics."
Bernadin also introduced the infamous terms "Common Ground" and "Seamless Garment"; concepts which further relativised/secularised the Faith, neutralising the pro-life cause in particular. But most significantly, "On issues close to the heart of the Homoexual Collective," says Engel, "Bernadin could always be expected to do 'the right thing,' as was the case with 'The Many Faces of AIDS'." A 1987 episcopal document praised by Bernadin despite its promotion of educational materials promoting condoms as an AIDS preventative, a fierce rebuke by Cardinal Ratzinger only served to generate the marginally less corrupting "Called to Compassion" that still committed the Church to the "gay" political agenda. Typically, under Bernadin's deft guidance the LM emerged doubly victorious from the controversy; both documents remaining in circulation as grist to the "gay" mill of diocesan AIDS "ministries."
Through such comprehensive destruction of Catholic faith and life, Bernadin personified the overwhelming impact of the LM which networked and blackmailed its way to ecclesiastical security and spheres of influence after the Council.
The infiltration and honeycombing of the seminaries, as documented by Michael Rose, epitomised the ruthlessness and cruelty employed by the LM in pursuit of its most basic, bestial urges. Forcing out faithful students and crushing every last vestige of orthodox faith and practice, they assumed control of entire seminaries, with homosexual staff and student numbers sometimes reaching 60-70% or more in the U.S. — although far smaller percentages were sufficient to sow ruinous discord [see Goodbye, Good Men, CO Aug/Sept. 2002]. Adding fuel to the burgeoning fire of pre-conciliar homosexualisation, that strategic takeover inevitably roared into public view with the sexual abuse crisis. Blowing the lid off the media's concerted effort to cover up the statistical truth of its own exposés, the John Jay Criminal Institute calculated that 81% of the victims were (mainly post-pubescent) boys.
The mainstreaming of homosexuality allowed the LM to satisfy its lust for youthful flesh. Yet that is only part of its push to secularise the Church into oblivion. In a commentary early this year which neatly sums up much of our foregoing analysis, Michael Jones, the former editor of Fidelity magazine and now Culture Wars, reflected on "the programme that's in the mind of these bishops" as confirmed by a disciple of Bernadin at a "secret meeting" held by the bishops at Mount St Mary's University, Emmitsburg, just prior to the 1985 Synod on the Laity in Rome. Mount St Mary's theologian Germaine Grisez was present at the preparatory meeting and "spilled the beans." During an interview with Michael Vorris on ChurchMilitant.TV, Jones related that
Fr Bryan Hehir, a mover and shaker with the USCCB and a protégé of Bernadin, stood up and gave a speech about what we want to achieve at the Synod on the Laity. And he said basically: the Catholic Church has to learn from America. Because America is superior to the Church when it comes to the role of women, when it comes to sexuality, when it comes to democracy.
Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. Leo XIII called it Americanism. So you can be a Republican, or you can be Democrat, but just about every bishop here is an Americanist of some sort or other and feels he has this uncritical attitude toward America, whether it's the sexual left, or the capitalist right, whether it's the sexual revolutionaries or the neoconservatives, they are all Americanist and this has crippled the Church in America.
How are you supposed to oppose any evil when America does it because America is the model, Enlightenment State. This is the model, after Vatican II, after Dignitatis Humanae [the decree on Religious Liberty] and all that mythology that's been created around that thing. Well how are you supposed to criticise it? Well you can't. And if you can't criticise it then you're going to be eaten alive. And that is the history of the Church in this period. This great period of dialogue. This great period of being invited to the table and being part of the whole programme — and how do we end up? I'll tell you how we end up. The announcement in the diocesan newspaper of last week which says basically, "If you feel that you have been abused by a priest we encourage you to come forward and level your accusation."
This is what it's come to. This is horrible. This is an attempt to destroy the Catholic Church. The bishops feel they are so weak they have to run these enticements to have people come forward and level their accusations against their own priests. That is what it's come to. That shows you the failure, the failure of this paradigm.
We were running articles on the Knights of Columbus 20 years ago. How can they have all these pro-abortion politicians passing legislation on, well it was abortion then, now it's gay marriage. In 1992 we wrote about how they're all in bed with Teddy Kennedy.
"How is this possible?" sighed Jones. Short answer: betrayal by doctrinal, moral and ethical fudge is possible because the counter-Syllabus "paradigm" of the Enlightened status quo — whereby pre-conciliar orthodoxy has given way to toleration or promotion of post-conciliar heterodoxy and heresy — is not Tradition's legacy but neo-Modernism's.(3)
Thanks to its neo-conservative enablers, no cancerous cell within the Body of Christ has benefited more from that secularising legacy than the homosexual collective. A true mafia, it continues to corrupt the Church and eliminate whistleblowers with impunity.
FOOTNOTES
(1) Not content with secularising the flock entrusted to their care, the shepherds compound the degradation by inviting social-gospel icons into the fold to pass themselves off as Catholics: such as Cardinal Murphy O'Connor's scandalous reception of Tony (''I’m not a doctrinal ideologue’’) Blair. "His approach to religion relates to social change," noted Charles Moore in a recent wide-ranging interview with "gay"-marriage advocate Blair. "Indeed, it is not really possible to find a public policy issue where he takes a specifically religious view against the prevailing secularism" [Daily Telegraph, 23/7/12].
(2) See "The Beginning of the End of the Bernadin Legacy," CO, Nov. 2000; and "Bernadin's Boys," CO, Jan. 2002.
(3)"I myself, when I was a professor, have seen how the very same bishop who, before the Council, had fired a teacher who was really irreproachable, for a certain crudeness of speech, was not prepared, after the Council, to dismiss a professor who openly denied certain fundamental truths of the faith." — Cardinal Ratzinger, address to the Bishops of Chile, 13 July 1988.