Author: Jim Bowman

Jim Bowman covered religion 1968-78 for the Chicago Daily News, since then has written books, articles, etc., mostly on corporate history but also on religion (Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968), and more recently on politics (Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters -- Lulu.com, Kindle). Longtime Oak Park, Illinois, resident, he lives now on Chicago's North Side, where four of his and Winnie's six children live close by.

The long arm of the law according to Francis reaches out . . .

, , , to shut down a Latin-mass-saying monastery.

The Trappist Monastery of Mariawald, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, was one of the very few monastic houses in the world to make use of the provision present in Article 3 of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum that allowed for the whole conversion of such a house to the exclusive use of the Traditional Rite.
We covered this momentous news in 2008 (see our 2012 post), and in 2015 we published the translation of a great interview granted by the abbot responsible for this change, Dom Josef Vollberg.
The traditional turn at Mariawald was too much for the current vindictive regime installed in Rome, and they forced the abbot out in 2016, as we also covered at the time.
Now, the inevitable outcome arrived: as GloriaTV reports, the old abbey is being closed and completely dismantled. What two world wars could not destroy, Bergoglianism could:
Read more »
Out out, damned blot on the Novus Ordo landscape. Monks propose, Francis disposes.

Francis lashes out at abuse victims in Chile

A new chapter in insensitivity:

In stunning new comments made during his visit to South America this week, Pope Francis has attacked the credibility of victims of notorious clerical sexual abuser Fr. Fernando Karadima.

The pope accused abuse victims of “calumny” for their allegations that Bishop Juan Barros, a Karadima protege, knew about the abuse, or even that he watched as it took place.

“There is not one shred of proof against him.” Francis said to a Chilean journalist at the end of his visit to Chile. “It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”

A stunner.

Plus National Catholic Reporter:

TRUJILLO, PERU — Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, one of Pope Francis’ key advisors on clergy sexual abuse, acknowledged Jan. 20 that the pontiff’s defense of a Chilean bishop accused of covering up abuse was “a source of great pain” for survivors.

In an unusually blunt statement from a church prelate in response to a controversial action of a pope, the cardinal also said that expressions of doubt about survivors’ testimony “abandon those who have suffered reprehensible criminal violations of their human dignity.”

What was he (Francis) thinking?

Iran May Be Experiencing A World-Changing, Legitimate Resistance Movement While American Media Yawns

Now that’s resistance:

Protests began to break out across Iran Thursday, beginning in small cities with a few hundred protestors and eventually ending up in the capital city of Tehran.

Not that you would know it by looking at American media outlets, who largely yawned and continued to cover fluffy, end-of-year feature stories even as it was reported that Iranian police had decided they could no longer arrest uncovered women, which some assumed was because too many had thrown off the hijab.

Do not blame our mainstreamers. They are so busy also with trumped-up Trump-Russia stories. They can’t do everything, you know.

Who is Francis to judge, anyhow?

At 27% of Dictator Pope, I find this about the gay lobby, its main agenda, and The Pope Who Can:

The wider significance of this infiltration is that the homosexual lobby is working to change the Church’s moral teaching in its own interest, and it has come into its own with the liberalising tendency introduced by Pope Francis.

For example, Archbishop Bruno Forte wrote for the Synod on the Family in 2014 the text which attempted to relax Catholic teaching on homosexuality. His text was rejected by the Synod, but not for any lack of effort on Pope Francis’s part to advance the liberalising cause.

Perhaps an even more scandalous case is that of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who, incredibly, is President of the Pontifical Council for the Family and whom Pope Francis has recently made President of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, the body which John Paul intended as the watchdog of the Church’s teaching.

Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 905-911). Kindle Edition.

Hit job? That would be to dismiss the book’s connecting dots on dozens of published sources. If it’s a case for the prosecution, it’s a strong one.

Chi Trib home run editorial tells us about taxes

State and local, that is.

Because of high property and sales taxes here, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation routinely ranks Illinois as imposing among the highest total state and local tax burdens nationwide. (The rankings always lag, but in the most recent, fiscal 2012, Illinois was fifth-highest.)

And the next politician who proposes raising taxes here will get an earful from taxpayers who realize that they alone will be stuck with the full impact. If they’re already paying $10,000 in property and income taxes, no politician can win their approval with that sweet promise of a fat federal deduction.

Which is because the new U.S. tax code says don’t even think about deducting those state and local taxes (SALT) above $10G — such as the Oak Park homeowner couple with a $22G annual bill on their house.,

No more fobbing that off on the other 49 states, as the Trib says, and quite a bit more heat on Illinois pols. Which some of us consider a very good thing.

As for l’affaire Franken, the accused senator . . .

. . . whose speech predicting his resignation was all about his being a defender of women, some senators are rethinking their support of his resignation. Not Sen. Gillibrand, however, who told a colleague he was entitled to due process but not her silence.

However, comments James Freeman:

It appears that the only ones entitled to Ms. Gillibrand’s silence were Bill and Hillary Clinton, who enjoyed Ms. Gillibrand’s enthusiastic support for more than a decade while they were politically useful. To stay, it seems that Mr. Franken will need to show how he too can be useful to the New York senator.

Come on. Can’t a girl pick and choose in these matters?