April 2017
Swelling the Swamp
THE EDITOR
The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history. |
- George Orwell |
It would be hard to find a more succinct description of the accelerated covergence of Church and State under Pope Francis. The subjectivism and mendacity Orwell anticipated in the secular realm is now embodied in the Roman Curia and the Western Church (scattered clerical resistance notwithstanding). The outlook and actions of this oxymoronic Lutheran Papacy and its Lutheranised entourage are increasingly indistinguishable from the slithering, grasping, incompetent, degenerate morass that defines the arrogant Western Establishment. Alas, while the Brexit and Trump victories have triggered much talk of draining political swamps of godless self-interest in Brussels and Washington, far from draining the ecclesiastical swamp in Rome and abroad, Vatican infiltrators are inflating and institutionalising it.
In another context (the Vatican's incomprehensible betrayal of the underground Church in China) the wise and holy Cardinal Zen recently spoke of this unwise and unholy state of the Vatican under this ever more wretched and frightening papacy.
During an interview with LifeSiteNews, Zen noted how a "very competent" Vatican commission that was examining the question of Vatican negotiations with China under Pope Benedict, "just disappeared" when Francis took over. While that commission knew "the reality" about Communism in China, the Vatican under Francis is clueless. "The problem is with the Vatican!" the gentle Cardinal exclaimed. Recounting Rome's basic errors of understanding of the Chinese situation, he insisted that "the Vatican made all this trouble."
Beyond the incompetence is the overarching "problem" of Francis himself. Pleading with Rome not to "sell out" China's Catholics by striking a deal with the Communist government, the Cardinal recalled meeting with the Pope two years ago. "He listened to me very carefully for 40 minutes. He seemed to be very much agreeing with me," he said. "But then he doesn’t answer my ["many"] letters."
Your Eminence: Welcome to FrancisChurch!
A cesspool of dysfunction and scandal, it is governed by a disingenuous pontiff who proffers whatever he thinks his audience of the moment would like to hear — all the while pursuing his ultra-Modernist, this-worldly agenda. His dissembling and lies (CO passim) will certainly "pass into history", but not in the unchallenged and embedded sense intended by Orwell. Rather, they will go down as one more aberrant 'bad pope' episode amid a glorious history of holy, learned, wise and manifestly Catholic pontiffs.
Until the Lord sees fit to replace him, however, we must suffer with Christ as His current Vicar on earth turns His Holy Church on its head, even to reversing the valiant work of his predecessor in rooting out entrenched infidelity and immorality.
It was inevitable, of course. In subjectivising faith, Modernism cultivates heterodoxy, heresy and hedonism on a grand scale. Its Lutheran pseudo-theology engenders the pseudo-mercy that encourages sinners to indulge their sins while dispensing pseudo-absolutions: both to themselves and their innocent victims — even and most horrifically in the confessional.
It was the flow of such hellish cases to the CDF — involving the likes of Father Macial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who heaped sin upon sin by feeding his perversions through the Sacrament of Penance — that led its then Secretary, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, to decry the "filth" in the Church. Since he did so during the 2005 Stations of the Cross in Rome, and given the current state of Vatican play, it seems an appropriate time to revisit the full text of his renowned meditation. At the Ninth Station, Cardinal Ratzinger reflected:
What can the third fall of Jesus under the Cross say to us? We have considered the fall of man in general, and the falling of many Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism. Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church? How often is the holy sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts! How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realising that he is there! How often is his Word twisted and misused! What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words! How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him! How much pride, how much self-complacency! What little respect we pay to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to raise us up whenever we fall! All this is present in his Passion. His betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his Body and Blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us (cf. Mt 8: 25).
Elected by the conclave just several weeks later, and providentially equipped with intimate knowledge of scandals old and new, Pope Benedict XVI immediately acted to redress these evils.
Just a month after his election, he banned Father Gino Burresi, founder of the Congregation of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, from any public ministry. For years, Burresi had got away with sexually abusing his young followers, and the offences he committed had expired under the statute of limitations. Then followed the punitive action against Father Maciel, long protected by a toxic combination of Legionary influence and filthy lucre. [For more on those two cases see the Feb. 2012 editorial, also available on our website].
In subsequent years, others called to account— laicised and dismissed from the clerical state for sexually abusing minors — included: Don Lelio Cantini, leader of a community in Florence (2008); a German priest belonging to the Missionaries of the Holy Family of Munich (2009); Don Marco Dessi, a missionary in Nicaragua, Don Andrea Agostini, a paedophile priest in the diocese of Bologna who supervised a Catholic nursery school, and Don Nello Giraudo from the diocese of Savona (2010); Fernando Karadima, a powerful and influential Chilean priest, and Don Riccardo Seppia, a Genoan priest and cocaine addict who preyed on young boys (2011).
"Benedict XVI rarely granted clemency petitions and defrocked 800 priests, who had raped and molested children, during his eight-year papacy," noted the Daily Mail (26/2/17). It mentioned this by way of comparison with his successor, "[who] is said to be applying his vision of a 'merciful church' to sex offenders by reducing punishments to weaker sentences." The report continued:
It has been revealed by Church officials that Pope Francis overruled advice given to him by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about two priests — allowing them to be punished by a lifetime of prayer.
One of the priests was the Reverend Mauro Inzoli, who was found guilty of abusing young boys by the Vatican in 2012 and was ordered to be defrocked. However, he appealed, and in 2014 Francis reduced the penalty to a lifetime of prayer, prohibiting him from celebrating Mass in public or being near children, barring him from his diocese and ordering five years of psychotherapy.
Rev Inzoli was then convicted by an Italian criminal court for his sex crimes against five children as young as 12. He is now facing a second church trial after new evidence emerged against him. [See also Elizabeth Yore on Fr Inzoli herein - Ed.]
A Church official has said some paedophile priests and their high-ranking friends appealed to Pope Francis by citing the pope's own words about mercy in their petitions. They said: "With all this emphasis on mercy ... he is creating the environment for such initiatives."
Marie Collins, an abuse survivor and founding member of Francis' sex-abuse advisory commission, expressed dismay that the congregation's recommended penalties were being weakened. She said: "All who abuse have made a conscious decision to do so. Even those who are paedophiles, experts will tell you, are still responsible for their actions. They can resist their inclinations."
Many canon lawyers and Church authorities argue that defrocking paedophiles can put society at greater risk because the Church no longer exerts control over them. They argue that keeping the men in restricted ministry, away from children, enables superiors to exert some degree of supervision.
What a hugely successful strategy that was! Not. And Marie Collins also rightly pointed out that, in any event,
... the Church must also take into account the message that reduced canonical sentences sends to both survivors and abusers. "While mercy is important, justice for all parties is equally important," she said. "If there is seen to be any weakness about proper penalties, then it might well send the wrong message to those who would abuse."
Needless to say, a Vatican spin merchant-cum spokesman was on hand to repeat the Mercy Mantra. "The Holy Father... knows that the Gospel message of mercy is ultimately a source of powerful healing and of grace," he reassured one and all.
Be that as it may, the difference in approach to clerical perversion and criminality between Benedict and Francis could not be starker — or more telling. The former acted immediately to remove the "filth," and continued in that vein throughout his pontificate. The latter merely talks about cleaning house, even as he non-judgmentally panders to sodomites, praises notorious sexual deviants, and surrounds himself with them (CO passim).
Indeed, one of the most sickening photos of this papacy is the June 2013 shot of Francis giving former Vatican diplomat and notorious sodomite Mgr Ricca a benign 'you've-been-a-naughty-boy' look, as Ricca touches the papal cheek and gazes unctuously into the papal eyes. At the time, having experienced (in a seminary) the nauseous interaction of homosexual infiltrators, both with each other and their non-homo sympathisers, that image set the present writer's "filth"-antennae abuzz. Especially given Ricca's renowned escapades in Uruguay — e.g., cruising 'gay' districts, being caught in a lift with a rent boy, and installing his Swiss 'boyfriend' in the nunciature itself. His Mercifulness rewarded this sodomitic history by leaving Ricca in charge of his HQ, the Casa Santa Marta guesthouse, and setting him up as his personal delegate to the Vatican bank.
There are far too many of these chilling red flags to recount here. Like his proceeding with the episcopal appointment of a deeply compromised Chilean priest despite desperate pleas from local clergy, faithful and politicians not to do so, which ended in a riot in the cathedral during the enthronement.
Those in any doubt about this Pope's accommodation of the "filth" — that is, anyone still deceived by his feigned resolve to clean house — need only read Elizabeth Yore's summary of several more cases in point, and Matthew Cullinan Hoffman's article on Archbishop Paglia. A "filthy" prelate sporting an unspeakably "filthy" mural in his desecrated cathedral, Paglia is a Bergoglian placeman par excellence. Among much else, he is also behind the Vatican's "filthy" sex ed programme that we have previously reviewed. What a surprise.
But His Grace is hardly alone. Parents have been warring with bishops for decades over classroom sex ed. And there is no let up. In imitation of Rome's corrupting lead, our local episcopate has recently ramped up its signature collusion with the government's relentless abuse of children. As Eric Hester recounts, not content with 40-50 years of selling out the little ones of Christ to sexually graphic, anti-Christian material in their classrooms, the bishops have now acquiesced in its compulsory dissemination.
This is the trickle-down Francis Effect writ large. Since all that we are witnessing under his governance and example in this arena — viz., the rolling back of Benedict's serious attempt to drain the ecclesial swamp — bears the stamp of the Diabolical Sequence. Which is to say that wherever we find liturgical abuse on the sanctuary of a parish church, we inevitably find spiritual child abuse in the parish school by way of heterodox and heretical religious 'education', and complementary classroom sex-ed. And what is sex ed but the grooming of sexually knowing children, even and especially during the precious years of innocence — the infant latency period — for the abusive gratification of the "filth" in Church and State.
Let me put it another way. Before epic levels of child abuse and child slavery worldwide (curiously given minimal coverage in the mainstream media), and faced with ever more coercive and degenerate State-sanctioned sex ed, who would have believed that the Vatican itself would abandon its landmark Catholic exposition of The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality [Pontifical Council for the Family, 1995] to join the pornographic ranks of secular sex ed publishers; thereby grooming future generations to admire rather than flee in disgust and horror from Archbishop Paglia's pornographic 'mural' (which must be viewed online to appreciate its blasphemous magnitude and flagrantly sodomitic inspiration).
Truly, the sulphurous stench of this pontificate burns the nostrils of all but the most wilfully ignorant and cowardly neoconservatives. Quick to concede the historical reality of dissolute popes, they pull down the shutters before the manifest evils sanctioned, facilitated and perpetrated by Francis!
May I remind these Francis diehards not only of Benedict XVI's urgent approach to draining the swamp, but also his dramatic pronouncement in 2010 at the height of the child abuse scandals, when he insisted that "the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from enemies on the outside" but "is born from the sins within the Church." And may I add that seven years on from that public confession, the manifold papal sins of his successor serve to heighten Benedict's linking of this internal persecution to the message of Our Lady of Fatima. "We delude ourselves if we think that the prophetic mission of Fatima has come to an end," he added.
Of course, persecutory FrancisChurch is not all down to Francis. It is the culmination of all Catholic infidelities, high and low; to include our own contributions to the accumulated sins that finally trigger God's just punishment through wars and persecutions of the Church, as Our Lady warned at Fatima and elsewhere.
During Holy Week, therefore, we should make Cardinal Ratzinger's following prayer our own. Recited at the Ninth Station right after his reflection on the filthy state of the Church,it combines Contrition, Petition and, above all, Easter Confidence: in the redeeming grace won by the cruel Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the all-conquering power that forever flows from His glorious Resurrection:
Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion. Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again, after all our lofty words and grand gestures. Have mercy on your Church; within her too, Adam continues to fall. When we fall, we drag you down to earth, and Satan laughs, for he hopes that you will not be able to rise from that fall; he hopes that being dragged down in the fall of your Church, you will remain prostrate and overpowered. But you will rise again. You stood up, you arose and you can also raise us up. Save and sanctify your Church. Save and sanctify us all.
| [The Lodge has proclaimed] that the moment has come to suppress the Roman Pontiff's sacred power and to completely destroy this Papacy which was divinely instituted. – Pope Leo XIII |