Wilton Gregory, once of Chicago, always the nice, harmless man, has apparently done a very dumb thing.

If his treasure lies in this direction, therein lies his heart also?

via LifeSite

He’s too busy with extracurricular activities to perform his assigned duties?

Say it isn’t so, your eminence. Do you approach your Chicago duties that way? Are you telling us Cook and Lake County residents about your own priorities?

Friend Blase can run but he can’t hide.

See? They find him from across the pond, hearing him speaking as one with back to wall.

As for the rabbit hole imagery, Cupich used it shortly after he had mouthed the currently acceptable generality about who, actually what, is to blame — the demon clericalism. 

The clericalist mindset, responsible for so much of the scandal, must be purged from church life. As Pope Francis has urged, we need to remember that it is our baptism that unites us. We as a church must reflect more deeply on what we share in common, rather than what distinguishes us.

The one detail he specifies and endorses is the call from Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, the U.S. bishops conference president, for “substantial leadership by laity” in any future invesigation.

Nothing about lay people who have resigned such positions out of frustration with churchmen they had to work with — or registered their disgust after working with them. Illinois Supreme Court justice Anne Burke being one of the latter.

Clericalism remains an approved catch-all for blame, unspecified as to who, what, when, where, not even in the wake of recent detailed reports by the Pennsylvania attorney general and Archbishop Vigano, to name just two.

Anything is preferred to citing a gay network that binds McCarrick, Wuerl, and others who benefit from their patronage. Among whom appears to be Cupich of rabbit-hole fame, captured in all his glory by NBC-Chicago veteran Mary Ann Ahern.

The worms turn.

via The New York Times

PayPal co-founder likes him because he’s real.

Peter Thiel is not ready to give up on defending President Donald Trump just yet.

The PayPal Holdings Inc. and Palantir Technologies Inc. co-founder praised Trump’s honesty, adding that unlike other Republican presidential hopefuls from the 2016 election, he isn’t a “zombie” and was the only candidate who addressed what Thiel considers politics’ biggest problem: political correctness.

“I got to meet a lot of people running for president on the U.S. Republican side in 2016 and they all felt like zombies,” he said during a Monday event on entrepreneurship in Sao Paulo, Brazil. “They couldn’t say anything different other than programmed ideological soundbites.”

Trump, Thiel said, is “a very healthy corrective to that.”

My thoughts precisely.

via Peter Thiel Says Trump Is the Republican Who Isn’t a ‘Zombie’ – BloombergQuint

That’s because he’s not a bullshitter.

Smiling when he doesn’t mean it. Or looking glum. Whatever.

He hasn’t got where he is by saying what he doesn’t mean. It’s a major part of his appeal.

via The Daily Caller

. . . gathered by “deeply saddened” and wholly supportive Fr. Z.

First, his apologia pro vita sua, explaining why this, why now?

I had always believed and hoped that the hierarchy of the Church could find within itself the spiritual resources and strength to tell the whole truth, to amend and to renew itself.

That is why, even though I had repeatedly been asked to do so, I always avoided making statements to the media, even when it would have been my right to do so, in order to defend myself against the calumnies published about me, even by high-ranking prelates of the Roman Curia.

But now that the corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy, my conscience dictates that I reveal those truths….

Second,  how Benedict corralled McCarrick, or tried to:

Pope Benedict had imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis: the Cardinal was to leave the seminary where he was living [fox, get out of the chicken coup], he was forbidden to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance.

A through clipping of wings.

Third, the Wuerl effect:

Cardinal Wuerl, well aware of the continuous abuses committed by Cardinal McCarrick and the sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict, transgressing the Pope’s order, also allowed him to reside at a seminary in Washington D.C.

In doing so, he put other seminarians at risk.

Having abominably turned a blind eye to the s.o.b., not to mention thwarting Benedict, one of a long line of prelates who neutralized the Pope.

more more more to come . . .

via Archbp. Viganò testifies about corruption and cover up. Pope Francis knew. | Fr. Z’s Blog

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, nuncio (ambassador) to the U.S., 2011-2016, is the whistleblower.

Vigano made the claims in a lengthy statement that concludes with a call for Francis’ resignation: “In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example to Cardinals and Bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them,” he writes.

Admit you are wrong and get out of town. It’s the penance you recommend to the faithful.

via Pope Francis knew of abusive priest, claims former Vatican official in calling for resignation – CBS News

. . . launches the movement’s favorite missile, HOMOPHOBIA.

Aimed this time at Catholic pastors who object to or ignore his program.

Parishes, he said, should strive to listen to LGBT parishioners — “trust that the Holy Spirit will guide them in their formation as Christians and Catholics,” rather than “simply repeating Church teaching without considering their lived experience.”

That’s a key statement for him and his ilk. Go for the Holy Spirit, not for “church teaching.” So much for the church being guided by that very same Holy Spirit through the ages. (Or so we unenlightened have understood for a very long time.)

It’s tantamount to Francis’ recommendations to look into one’s heart for what is right, not  church teaching — a theme for this papacy.

That and the grossly misapplied spiritual tactic, discernment, intended by St. Ignatius as key to the strategy of finding one’s best (moral) choice among possibilities on offer, all of them moral, some better than others, in which the moral man or woman has a choice while remaining within bounds set by the church — by now driven into the ground by Francis as way to justify the impermissible.

Sloppy, opportunistic, mendacious.

Martin is a worthy disciple of Francis, though sometimes it looks the other way around.

via Fr. James Martin Criticizes ‘Homophobic’ Pastors at WMOF