Category: Pope Francis

The papal dander was up

When he attributed publicity about clergy abuse to satanic influences.

ROME—Pope Francis told a gathering of bishops from around the world that the Catholic Church is being persecuted through accusations—an apparent allusion to clerical sex-abuse scandals that have undermined the credibility of the papacy and church hierarchy over the course of this year.

Addressing the closing session of a synod of bishops at the Vatican on Saturday [in late October last year], the pope repeated warnings he has made in recent weeks against the “Great Accuser,” or the devil, who “in this moment is accusing us strongly, and this accusation becomes persecution,” and who seeks to “soil the church.”

Getting a raw deal, he says, who has kept the lid on himself on several, if not many, even ongoing occasions.

Sometimes he gets petulant.  You might say peevish.

The Vandals sack Rome….again

Bye, bye Humanae Vitae.

An exercise in raw intellectual vandalism has been underway in Rome since July 23: what was originally known as the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family has been peremptorily but systematically stripped of its most distinguished faculty, and its core courses in fundamental moral theology have been cancelled.

Concurrently, academics known to be opposed to the teaching of Humanae Vitae on the appropriate means of regulating fertility and the teaching of Veritatis Splendor on intrinsically evil acts are being appointed to teach at the reconfigured Institute, which is housed at the Pontifical Lateran University – the pope’s own institution of higher learning. [Italics added]

Sixteen hundred nine years after the first Vandal sack of Rome, they’re at it again, although this time the chief vandal wears an archbishop’s zucchetto.

Sic transit authentic teaching — in the reign of Bad Pope Francis.

I liken it to Chicago Mayor Daley II (Richie) demolishing an airport in the darkness of night or President Obama dropping billions in the Ayatollah’s lap.

Another Argentinian, Peron, couldn’t have done this vandalism any better.

via  Catholic World Report

Francis and the curia: finding people he can work with

Pope Francis has his eye on the curia, his cabinet of appointees who advise him on church matters and presumably carry out his wishes — or maybe they do, and if they do not, have been known to face the consequences.

Fr. Hunwicke has examined and discussed the curia’s role down the centuries, noting various authority they have been said to have over the years. In this the third of his discussions, he points out some elements of the current situation.

Commentators have not been slow to remark that, to the outside observer, it looks as if the current pope is attempting to prevent or eliminate the existence of strong foci within the Curia. He seems to be incapable of working with any Head of Dicastery [department] who is not a yes-man. It is a sign, not of the Holy Father’s strength, but of his weakness, that he cannot collaborate with as gentle yet principled a man as Robert Sarah, without deeming it necessary to humiliate him before the world. And Sarah was one of his own appointments.

And he also appointed Raymond Burke to be Patron of the Order of Malta. But as soon as a problem arose in the Order, he humiliated and sidelined him. When you appoint people, you should either back them up when the going gets rough, or confess that you yourself erred in making the appointment.

[Another such,] Gerhard Mueller was inherited, not appointed, by Papa Bergoglio. But he confirmed him in office, and the position is a highly significant one. The current pope is neither learned nor intelligent. To run the CDF [Congregation for Defense of the Faith] he needed someone who was each of these things. Mueller was and is. First he humiliated him by sending Schoenborn to front the Amoris laetitia news conference; then by sacking three of his collaborators without even telling him; lastly, he has humiliated him yet again by dumping him with a minute’s notice and invoking a principle he had not mentioned either to Mueller or the World before: that Heads of Dicasteries will not be continued in post beyond their first quinquennium.

In other words, Francis has acted in high-handed, dictatorial manner with those who are presumably his trusted helpers.

Which makes a person wary about what’s to come as regards reorganization of this crucial element of papal government.

via Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment: The Curia Romana (3)

Pope Francis covered up for bishop who had gay porn on his phone, Vatican journalist says

If the shoe fits . . . 

A prominent Vatican journalist has accused Pope Francis of covering up for an Argentine bishop who had gay porn on his phone.

Inés San Martin, who is one of the most respected journalists in the Vatican press corps, asked Archbishop Charles Scicluna at a press conference after the abuse summit: “We know there is a bishop in Argentina, Zanchetta, who had gay porn on his phone involving young people.

More:

“How can we believe that this is in fact the last time we’re going to hear ‘no more cover-ups’ when at the end of the day, Pope Francis covered up for someone in Argentina who had gay porn involving minors?

“How can we believe that this is going to change now?”

Followed by fumbling:

Archbishop Scicluna appeared to be taken aback by the question, responding: “Well I’ll quote what the Holy Father said this morning about the law. About the case, I’m not, I’m not, you know, I’m not authorised… I mean, yeah.”

And then, putting a stop to the whole thing:

Vatican interim press office director Alessandro Gisotti then cut off Archbishop Scicluna’s response, saying that questions about specific cases were not permitted.

It’s how it’s done in an organization pledged to openness.

For specifics on the Argentinian . . . 

 

 

No rest for the . . . Holy Father!

L’affaire Zanchetta:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis may have wrapped up his clergy sex abuse prevention summit at the Vatican, but a scandal over an Argentine bishop close to him is only gaining steam.

The Associated Press has reported that the Vatican knew as early as 2015 about Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta’s inappropriate behavior with seminarians. Yet he was allowed to stay on as bishop of the northern Argentine diocese of Oran on until 2017, when he resigned suddenly, only to be given a top job at the Vatican by Francis, his confessor.

New documents published by the Tribune of Salta newspaper show that the original 2015 complaint reported that Zanchetta had gay porn on his cellphone involving “young people” having sex, as well as naked images of Zanchetta masturbating that he sent to others.

Francis is carrying that “Who am I to judge?” business too far, it seems.

But you promised, Pope Francis . . .

. . . there would be something concrete!

On the first day of the summit Thursday, the pope fed hopes for concrete reforms when he gave bishops guidelines for discussion that suggested a code of conduct and the involvement of laity in their oversight.

There were speeches:

. . . three full days of televised speeches from bishops, laywomen, and a Nigerian nun who denounced the bishops for their “mediocrity, hypocrisy and complacency” in handling sex abuse.

Hopes sprang, as for . . . .

. . . a new Vatican office dedicated to policing misconduct by the hierarchy. Others wanted the pope to put “zero tolerance” into canon law and bring the world-wide church into line with the small number of national bishops’ conferences that require all clerical sex abusers who are convicted in church trials be removed permanently from ministry.

Alas, he couldn’t bring himself to do either . . .

‘The pope ignored them’: Alleged abuse of deaf children on two continents points to Vatican failings

You don’t have to go to the blogs for this story.

LUJAN DE CUYO, Argentina — When investigators swept in and raided the religious Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf, they uncovered one of the worst cases yet among the global abuse scandals plaguing the Catholic Church: a place of silent torment where prosecutors say pedophiles preyed on the most isolated and submissive children.

The scope of the alleged abuse was vast. Charges are pending against 13 suspects; a 14th person pleaded guilty to sexual abuse, including rape, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The case of the accused ringleader — an octogenarian Italian priest named Nicola Corradi — is set to go before a judge next month.

Corradi was spiritual director of the school and had a decades-long career spanning two continents. And so his arrest in late 2016 raised an immediate question: Did the Catholic Church have any sense that he could be a danger to children?

Yes.

The answer, according to a Washington Post investigation that included a review of court and church documents, private letters, and dozens of interviews in Argentina and Italy, is that church officials up to and including Pope Francis were warned repeatedly and directly about a group of alleged predators that included Corradi.

Yet they took no apparent action against him. [emphasis added]

Shame!

“I want Pope Francis to come here, I want him to explain how this happened, how they knew this and did nothing,” a 24-year-old alumna of the Provolo Institute said, using sign language as her hands shook in rage. She and her 22-year-old brother, who requested anonymity to share their experiences as minors, are among at least 14 former students who say they were victims of abuse at the now-shuttered boarding school in the shadow of the Andes.

No “field hospital” attitudes here:

Vulnerable to the extreme, the deaf students tended to come from poor families that fervently believed in the sanctity of the church. Prosecutors say the children were fondled, raped, sometimes tied up and, in one instance, forced to wear a diaper to hide the bleeding. All the while, their limited ability to communicate complicated their ability to tell others what was happening to them. Students at the school were smacked if they used sign language. One of the few hand gestures used by the priests, victims say, was an index figure to lips — a demand for silence.

“They were the perfect victims,” said Gustavo Stroppiana, the chief prosecutor in the case.

“The Vatican declined to comment on a detailed list of questions.”   . . . .

McCarrick Protégé Cardinal Kevin Farrell Given Key Vatican Position

Another case of Francis’ tin ear, blind eye, whatever, to prelates of shady pasts?

“It is absolutely staggering that Pope Francis would appoint a man like Cardinal Farrell to manage the administration of the Holy See in the interim between the pope’s death and the next conclave,” Hichborn said. “Cardinal Farrell made the incredible claim that he was ‘shocked’ by accusations against Cardinal McCarrick, with whom he had lived for six years.

Worse still is that Cdl. Farrell seems to have lied about his connection with notorious homosexual abuser, Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ. Someone this close to the homosexual cabal that is rumored to have been the cause of Pope Benedict’s resignation doesn’t belong anywhere near the position of Camerlengo, let alone even in the Curia.”

Pattern here, of course.

The Pope: Do not remain prisoners of ideas, open yourselves to new things

Consider your bicycle.

In Santa Marta [his Vatican City house], Francis warns against the risk of “rigidity”, “There are those who ‘distill’ the law and transform it into ideology”. “The Church is like a bike in equilibrium, if it stops it falls down”

It’s his pitch for an ever-changing church. All is flux to Francis? Like Heraclitus, who was active around 500 B.C. and is . . . 

. . . best known for his doctrines that things are constantly changing (universal flux), that opposites coincide (unity of opposites), and that fire is the basic material of the world.

The exact interpretation of these doctrines is controversial, as is the inference often drawn from this theory that in the world as Heraclitus conceives it contradictory propositions must be true.

We sincerely hope not, though Francis has an oracular way about him and as quick a draw of a metaphor as we have seen for a long time, in or out of papal office. But what of this?

. . . the Pontiff warns against the risk of “rigidity”, which leads to placing oneself at the center and thus remain untouched before the works of the Holy Spirit and insensitive to new things.

Well, it’s a generic enough statement. And who wants to be rigid? But can it be that he’s gone oracular again, using a phrase familar to him:

The doctors of the law [not found in John 8: 51-59, his text for the day], [he said]. . .  were incapable of “discerning the signs of the times”.

Oh.

They were slaves of words and ideas, Bergoglio [in an Italian publication, where familiarity breeds if not contempt, then a shorthand usage which we Americans eschew] observes in his homily reported by Vatican News.

“Slaves of words and ideas.” Red lights flashing. Slaves. What’s worse?

“They keep going back to the same questions [we’re dying to know some of these, but he’s holding back about it], they are incapable of leaving that closed world, they are prisoners of ideas.

We get it. And we will figure out what those ideas are, don’t worry.

They received a law that was life but they “distilled” it, they transformed it into ideology and thus they toss and turn it and are unable to move beyond. Anything new for them is a threat.”

These are people in a bad way. Let us not be deceived by them. But tell us, Francis, who they are. Please.

Now as a matter of fact, someone has ventured in that very direction. He is the noted “Fr. Z,” Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, regarding a March, 2015 homily. in which he offered a comment, “a snip from an off-the-cuff, non-Magisterial remark,” in which Francis spoke “disparaging words about ‘doctors of the law.’”

Someting was missing, he thought. The very thing I am wondering:

. . . it seems to me that he has set up a straw man: who the heck are these “doctors of the law” whom he has been disparaging with some frequency?

I think he means those who argue that people who are divorced and civilly remarried should not be admitted to Holy Communion because they are objectively living in a state that is inconsistent with our understanding of the Eucharist.

But he won’t come out and say so. It’s not what you want in a homily anyhow, hearing about someone the homilist resents. But Francis does it a lot. He did it in 2015, he did it just the other day.

It’s unseemly. His objectors have registered “dubia,” roughly doubts, about Francis’ read on the state of things as regards marriage the sacrament. He feels put upon but does not answer these “doubts,” these requests for clarification. Why the heck not?

Who knows?

via The Pope: not to remain prisoners of ideas, let’s open ourselves to new things – La Stampa

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.