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August 1,
2014
In
my column for July, "Sometimes
in Life We Meet Our Destiny on the Road to Avoid It,"
the following paragraph appears near the end of the piece:
And as the person
of St. Peter always prophetically represents the papacy descended
from him, the hierarchy of the Church must also consider the dangers
of downplaying the evil of sin in our world, and practicing a
politics of appeasement in such a way as to shrug and say, "Who
am I to judge?" To deny the role of moral arbiter, and to cease
to proclaim Christ as the sole source of salvation of the world and
all her people, is to desert the Church's responsibility to the
world, and those who do this must expect to encounter the Lord
Himself, reinserting Himself in history and rectifying this in
person. And Revelation tells us this is anything but a journey to
Rome to be crucified again.
Now, I was taken to task
for these remarks because, though not attributed directly to Pope
Francis, it was clearly my intent to connect in the reader's mind the
point I was trying to make to his use of the colloquialism, "Who
am I to judge?" The key word here is "prophetically,"
and I used this device to link the ancient papacy of St. Peter with
the postmodern reign of Pope Francis in an effort to demonstrate the
danger inherent in using such colloquialisms because the media can,
in turn, misinterpret or purposely misconstrue his words into a
meaning he did not intend. This happens frequently with the pope,
and I think it fair to claim that it is often of his own design. Back
on the farm, we would often throw our chickens a piece of stale
bread, which one would pick up and run with while the others gave
chase, so as to create a diversion that allowed us to fill their food
hopper with corn. The Holy Father often throws the press chickens a
piece of stale bread such as "Who am I to judge?" and while
they run around tearing this apart and devouring it, he proceeds to
fill the food hopper of the faithful with the more nourishing corn
that is the knowledge he intends for us. To know Pope Francis, one
must seek out and read what he actually says and not rely on what
others say about what he says -- including and especially those who
do this from the Vatican.
I am an old man, and I
grew up in a time when public figures said what they meant and let
the chips fall where they may. Perhaps I'm merely nostalgic for a
time in which communication was more direct and not centered in the
sound bites, and the false hysteria created around them, which passes
for news today. Perhaps I felt the need to warn against playing into
this Orwellian nonsense that misinforms as it claims to inform.
Orwell's fictional dystopian future in which perception becomes
reality has become our dystopian present, and if this doesn't concern
us and frighten us, it sure as hell should. The Catholic Church is
the last voice on planet earth with both the knowledge of the truth
of Christ and the bearing to proclaim it to a world that has moved
away from historical Christian truth, and into a time in which life
is cheap, the vulnerable are shamelessly exploited, and those who
perpetrate this claim it is to the ultimate betterment of mankind. The
dualism in "Who am I to judge?" is found in the
response that comes from the hearts of those who hear the question. The
world that has subjected itself to the Orwellian "dictatorship
of relativism" answers this question, "Just another man
with no more authority to judge than anyone else." Those of us
who hold true to the Catholic Faith answer, "The Vicar of
Christ, the Holy Father: the representative on the earth of He Who
judges us all." It is this very dualism that Christ spoke of as
the separation of the sheep from the goats.
Pope
Francis has actually used this particular expression twice in a way
that has been deemed newsworthy by those who deem such things
newsworthy. The first, and most famous time, was during informal
remarks made to reporters concerning gay priests aboard the papal
flight home from Brazil in July, 2013. The second was in "off
the cuff" remarks made earlier this year at his daily fervorino at
his private Mass on March 17 at the Vatican.
This
article from The
New York Times
illustrates the spin the secular media put on the former use of this
remark, and the Holy Father's complete remarks are presented and
explained in this
article from Salt
and Light
by Father Thomas Roscia. Father John Zuhlsdorf offers additional
commentary on this incident in
this article from Father
Z's Blog,
and explains and comments upon the latter in this
article. If I
had the opportunity to do last month's column again, the
information presented here would be referenced to "Who am I to
judge" in a footnote, and I would rewrite the paragraph with
certain qualifiers so as to read as follows:
And as the person
of St. Peter always prophetically represents the papacy descended
from him, the hierarchy of the Church must also consider the dangers
of downplaying the evil of sin in our world, or even giving the
appearance of doing so, as this may be construed as the practice of a
politics of appeasement in which the Church shrugs and says, "Who
am I to judge?" To thus deny her role as moral arbiter is to
cease to proclaim Christ as the sole source of salvation to the world
and all her people; it is to desert the Church's responsibility to
the world. And those in authority who do this, or willingly create
or allow this impression, must expect to encounter the Lord Himself,
reinserting Himself in history and rectifying this in person. And
Revelation tells us this is anything but a journey to Rome to be
crucified again.
Since
last month's issue of Christian
Democracy,
Pope Francis has been embroiled in yet another controversy involving
the media, this time concerning yet another interview with the
Italian newspaper La
Repubblica
and it's founder and former editor, 90 year old professed atheist
Eugenio Scalfari. This interview yielded the pope's controversial
claim that two percent of the clergy -- priests, bishops, and
cardinals -- are pedophiles. As reported in The
Spectator and elsewhere, this
sent Vatican Press
Officer, Father
Frederico Lombardi,
scampering to diffuse the resulting situation by claiming that
Scalfari didn't record the interview,
didn't take notes, and is 90 years old, and, therefore, nothing
quoted in the
La
Repubblica
article should be considered reliable. To quote
Yogi Berra, this was "deja
vu
all over again," considering that this was the same response
Father Lombardi used to deny quotes from the Holy Father's previous
interview with Scalfari last September, in which he was reported as
saying that the Vatican court is, "the leprosy of the papacy."
The
traditionalist blog Rorate
Caeli
commented on all of this
astutely:
So,
what do we take away from it all? That the time for blaming the media
is over. The Pope is a highly intelligent media-savvy
nearly-80-year-old man, not a dimwit. For some reason, which we would
not venture to guess, that is the way he wishes to operate with a
part of the media - Scalfari certainly did not enter the Vatican
through a secret passage. Why would a pope have another unrecorded
conversation with the same man who is alleged (without any evidence
of the allegation, may it be clear) to have fabricated the content of
the previous interview, the man who is the founder and former
editor-in-chief of the most anti-religious large daily in Italy, if
the Pope did not consider him to be a faithful conduit of his
opinions? Following the enormous repercussion of his first main
interview with Scalfari in 2013 (which was even hosted in the Vatican
website for months before removal), the Pope wanted to send messages
(to whom?) through him once more. And that is what was done. One more
time.
Just
as it is often said that, by his own words, Our Lord was either God
or a completely insane man, Pope Francis, by his own actions, is
either a highly shrewd smooth media operator who uses the media in
order to advance and anticipate his positions or the very epitome of
gullibility - tertium
non datur.
I think it fair to
observe that Pope Francis is neither a "dimwit" nor "the
very epitome of gullibility." To the contrary, he is indeed
highly intelligent and he has used his media savvy to communicate to
those who are paying attention that he is well aware of the issues
that confront the Church in the 21st century, and he has done so in a
way in which the world hears a message that it interprets to be a new
openness to the old sins that it increasingly embraces; sexual
deviancy (and particularly homosexuality) being perhaps first and
foremost among them. My earlier warning was based upon the notion
that this is a walk on a tightrope, but the pope, to be fair, has
kept his balance and has been able to maintain his place as a darling
of the secular media at the same time that he has used them in
revealing some very profound and deeply disturbing truths about the
ills that exist within the Church herself. And the fact that he
seems to have Father Lombardi continually scampering and spinning and
denying is evidence that this is having the effect he intends at the
place where he intends it: within the Vatican.
One such example of this,
but a highly significant one, is the claim that two percent of the
clergy, from the parish level to the college of cardinals, are
pedophiles. While this revelation is shocking to many, to those like
myself who have done the research into this, it is nothing new and
the numbers are familiar. In my own exploration of this dirty
iceberg of an issue that rises above the surface only in so much as
we know of it from the public scandal that it has caused, the number
commonly suspected was something like 1.8 percent, and this rounds to
an even two without much quibbling. Most interesting in all of this
is the way in which this indicates that Pope Francis is preparing the
Church and the world for the illumination of the greater iceberg that
lurks beneath the surface, and the ensuing action that is surely
coming against it.
The cleansing of this
disease from the Church should not result in the collateral
destruction of clergy who have a homosexual inclination but serve the
Church faithfully and well. Within this context, I look to Pope
Francis and shrug and ask with him, "Who am I to judge?" Catholic
teaching on this subject truly does recognize that it is not
a matter of right or wrong sexual orientation, but of holiness versus
sin and depravity. Having a homosexual inclination is not a sin. Raping
children is. I attempted to make this point clear in my work
but was labeled a bigot and homophobe simply for having the audacity
to broach the subject. I know from my own experience, and from what
others report, that the hierarchy hasn't had much appreciation for
the laity delving into this, and now that the Holy Father himself has
brought it up publicly, it is little wonder that Father Lombardi is
scampering and spinning and denying in an attempt to get the cat once
more back into the bag.
It
is not individual homosexuals but a homosexualist
agenda
in the Church that is the issue and it needs to be rooted out. This
is not about the persecution and "marginalization" of
homosexuals within the Church, as those within the so-called
"Lavendar
Mafia,"
would have you suppose, it is about the practice of an active
homosexual lifestyle within the clergy and the laity, and the
necessarily anti-Catholic agenda that promotes it. It is about the
way in which this homosexualist agenda, in condoning the practice of
the sin of homosexual activity, opened the way for those with a
preference for sex with male pubescent children to enter the
priesthood and gain access to those who were most vulnerable, in an
atmosphere of trust, and in an environment in which higher ups were
at best complacent and at worst complicit. While there are those
within this agenda who are vocal and eloquent in their denial of such
intent, it too often did become the common practice, and the clergy
sexual abuse scandal is the undeniable evidence and testimony to the
truth that this is so.
When we first moved to
this diocese nearly a decade ago, the acceptance of this agenda, and
the teaching against the Catholic faith that accompanied it, was so
pronounced that my wife and I actually took our children out of the
Catholic Church for a period of seven months. In a profound
spiritual revelation in which Jesus made it clear to me that He
remained in His Church regardless, I suddenly knew that we needed to
do so also. Much has changed for the better here since, and, at
least publicly, nothing has ever surfaced indicating the widespread
pattern of abuse that has been such a horror in such larger and more
urban communities as Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and elsewhere.
And we thank God for that.
At
the time in which we came back to the Church, we were directed to a
deeply faithful old German priest who was pastor of a small parish in
the most far flung corner of the diocese, and he heard our
confessions and graciously welcomed us home to the Catholic Church. The
penance that he gave me was to write down and meditate upon those
things which had caused me to leave the Church, and the result was
this essay, The
Church Possessed: The Homosexual Revolution in the
Roman Catholic Church. I'm sure this was more than Father had
bargained for, but he read it
carefully and thoughtfully and then advised me to go to the diocese
and explore the permanent diaconate. I was not surprised to learn
that I was not considered to be a good candidate for deacon, but I
also discovered what it was Father wanted me to know. I was told
that, while my research was sound, I should take some comfort and
reassurance in knowing that there were indeed those within the
hierarchy who knew this to be the abomination that it is, and who
remained faithful to the Magisterium. It was further suggested that as a
layperson I had the advantage of
presenting these issues in public, whereas the hierarchy of the
Church chose to work out these things behind the scenes. The purpose
of this column is to add the necessary postscript to this, "...until
the arrival of Pope Francis."
Since I wrote the words
of one month ago, it has become much more clear that there is a
method to what many perceive as the Holy Father's madness, and a
pattern now emerges in which we are able to see how deftly he is
using the most secular and least Catholic (and even most
anti-Catholic) of media to throw down the gauntlet of Christ and
challenge openly and publicly the forces of evil even within the
Church herself. And each time Father Lombardi scampers to the
microphone to spin and deny what the Holy Father has said in public
in order "to clarify" the Vatican's "official
position," we are seeing the Curia tremble at the way in which
he has taken the message of God to the Catholic people, and has done
so using the secular media which are oblivious to that which is
actually taking place.
The evil in the world
that Jesus would have us address by the conversion and re-conversion
of every people and nation cannot be accomplished until the House of
God, the Catholic Church, is cleansed and readied again for this
task. To do this, the Holy Father has determined that the battle
must be waged in the coliseum of the secular media and in full view
of the public. This is bold. It is very bold. But it is the only
way. The demons that must be cast out take the form of not merely a
deeply entrenched and powerful homosexual lobby, but include the
"lepers" of the Vatican court, the moneychangers of the
IOR, the recently excommunicated mafia, and on down the line to the
very devil himself. These are demons and devils that will not go
quietly and they will raise their tormented screams into the night
and howl as the banshees of hell that they are.
And
so with a new and deeper understanding, I end this month's column in
similar fashion to last month's: with a warning for our Holy Father,
Pope Francis. However, rather than warning of the misconceptions
current in the secular media, and the false perceptions this may
breed, this warning, though also prophetic, is more personal and
warns of more intimate dangers. It comes with the urging of all
faithful Catholics to repentance and prayer, the beseeching of all of
the angels and saints, the Blessed Mother, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Holy Spirit and God the Father to come to the aid of our Holy Father,
Pope Francis, that he might be successful in what he is endeavoring
to do, and that he might be protected by heaven so as to not end as
the pope of the Third
Secret of Fatima.
Be so warned, Holy
Father. Watch your back, especially when in Rome. Godspeed in
cleansing His Holy Church as God has so called you to do. And know
that should you fail, the Lord Himself will reenter history and
rectify this in person.
And as for what you say
in public and how you say it, "Who am I to judge?"
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