Showing posts with label homosexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homosexuality. Show all posts

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Catholic News | Was Pope Francis Disappointed by the Synod? | American Catholic

Catholic News | Was Pope Francis Disappointed by the Synod? | American Catholic

Was Pope Francis Disappointed by the Synod?
By
Francis X. Rocca Catholic News Service
Source: AmericanCatholic.org
Published: Monday, November 3, 2014
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Pope Francis speaks with Archbishop Forte (left, synod special secretary) and Cardinal Assis (a delegrate president). (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
Since the end of the Oct. 5-19 Synod of Bishops on the family, news outlets have portrayed the outcome as a "setback" or "loss" for Pope Francis -- even a "rebuke" to him.
Journalists have pointed to the absence, in the synod's final report, of an earlier version's strikingly conciliatory language toward people with ways of life contrary to Catholic teaching, including those in same-sex unions and other non-marital relationships. Commentators have also noted the relatively low support, as measured by bishops' votes on the final document's relevant sections, for continued discussion of whether to make it easier for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion.
In these respects, it is said, the synod rejected moves consistent with Pope Francis' well-known teachings on mercy.
The pope never expressed his views at the synod; he kept silent throughout the two weeks of discussions. Yet there are good reasons to think he and the assembly were not of the same mind on these questions.
Pope Francis had invited the author of the Communion proposal, German Cardinal Walter Kasper, and no one else, to address a gathering of the world's cardinals on the family in February. And the synod's controversial midterm report was the work of the pope's handpicked team, who presumably would never have departed from the usual tone of official Vatican documents on moral teaching unless they had understood that to be what the pope wanted. So if they were right, the synod's reaction must have disappointed him.
But at the same time, the pope got just what he asked for: a more assertive synod.
"Maybe it is time to change the methods of the synod of bishops, because it seems to me that the current method is not dynamic. This will also have ecumenical value, especially with our Orthodox brethren. From them we can learn more about the meaning of episcopal collegiality and the meaning of synodality," Pope Francis told an interviewer last year.
Opening the synod's first working session Oct. 6, the pope told participants, "Everyone needs to say what one feels duty-bound in the Lord to say: without respect for human considerations, without fear."
Recalling that some cardinals at the February meeting had reportedly hesitated to speak out for fear of disagreeing with him, Pope Francis said: "This is no good, this is not synodality."
The synod fathers took Pope Francis at his word. In their remarks on the floor of the hall and in their meetings as small working groups, bishops said the midterm report lacked necessary references to Scripture and traditional Catholic teaching, and they demanded extensive changes to the final report.
For decades, critics have complained that the synod is not a true expression of the bishops' collective authority, as rooted in Catholic tradition and reaffirmed by Second Vatican Council. They have characterized it instead as a mere advisory body to the pope. Had the bishops this October simply ratified what they assumed Pope Francis was proposing, it would have been hard to argue anything had changed. It was their very resistance to the pope's perceived wishes that made their self-assertion convincing.
Upon reflection, the pope could hardly have designed a better way to elicit an exercise of collective responsibility from this group -- bishops named by St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, during whose pontificates they had come to rely on the pope as the ultimate guarantor of orthodoxy -- than to confront them with a document that seemed to take traditional teaching for granted.
This is an irony that Pope Francis, who once taught psychology to high school students, was surely well prepared to appreciate, whether or not he anticipated it.


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Saturday, November 8, 2014

Cardinal Burke to Malta, Mamberti to Apostolic Signatura |Blogs | NCRegister.com

Cardinal Burke to Malta, Mamberti to Apostolic Signatura |Blogs | NCRegister.com

Cardinal Burke to Malta, Mamberti to Apostolic Signatura

Saturday, November 08, 2014 8:04 AM Comments (29)
Edward Pentin
Cardinal Raymond Burke
– Edward Pentin

Pope Francis today appointed Cardinal Raymond Burke, hitherto prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, as patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, replacing Cardinal Paolo Sardi who has served in the position since 2009.
Confirmation of the appointment was widely awaited: rumors had been circulating for some time, and Cardinal Burke disclosed the Pope’s decision himself in an interview last month.
The move means that Cardinal Burke, 66, is completely removed from the Curia and holds a purely honorary position without any influence in the governance of the universal Church. Given his age and seniority, such a move is unprecedented and many therefore view it as a demotion.
He will be replaced by Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican Secretary for Relations with States – effectively the Holy See’s foreign minister.
Some have speculated whether Cardinal Burke’s appointment is a result of his outspoken criticisms during the synod. But rumors of the transfer, first circulated by veteran Vatican watcher Sandro Magister, began in mid-September, considerably earlier than the meeting.
Although he has criticised how the synod was run, the cardinal has insisted he supports the Pope, saying he remains at Francis’ service and has no personal animosity towards him.
Last year, Pope Francis removed Cardinal Burke from a committee of the Congregation for Bishops that advises the Pope on episcopal appointments. It’s widely known that a small group of cardinals advised Francis to remove him from the committee because of his tendency to block candidates who were considered not sufficiently orthodox or capable of serving as bishops.
His position as patron of the Knights of Malta is Rome-based and mostly ceremonial. He is nevertheless likely to continue and perhaps even step up his defense of the Church’s teaching in the face of continued efforts to radically alter pastoral practice in the run-up to next year’s second synod on the family.
Archbishop Mamberti will be replaced by Archbishop Paul Gallagher, a native of Liverpool, England, who is currently the apostolic nuncio to Australia. Gallagher notably succeeded Archbishop Michael Courtney as apostolic nuncio to Burundi after Courtney was murdered in the country in December 2003.


Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/cardinal-burke-to-malta-mamberti-to-signatura#ixzz3IViJ8OZZ

Cardinal Burke to Malta, Mamberti to Apostolic Signatura |Blogs | NCRegister.com

Cardinal Burke to Malta, Mamberti to Apostolic Signatura |Blogs | NCRegister.com

Cardinal Burke to Malta, Mamberti to Apostolic Signatura

Saturday, November 08, 2014 8:04 AM Comments (29)
Edward Pentin
Cardinal Raymond Burke
– Edward Pentin
Pope Francis today appointed Cardinal Raymond Burke, hitherto prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, as patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, replacing Cardinal Paolo Sardi who has served in the position since 2009.
Confirmation of the appointment was widely awaited: rumors had been circulating for some time, and Cardinal Burke disclosed the Pope’s decision himself in an interview last month.
The move means that Cardinal Burke, 66, is completely removed from the Curia and holds a purely honorary position without any influence in the governance of the universal Church. Given his age and seniority, such a move is unprecedented and many therefore view it as a demotion.
He will be replaced by Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican Secretary for Relations with States – effectively the Holy See’s foreign minister.
Some have speculated whether Cardinal Burke’s appointment is a result of his outspoken criticisms during the synod. But rumors of the transfer, first circulated by veteran Vatican watcher Sandro Magister, began in mid-September, considerably earlier than the meeting.
Although he has criticised how the synod was run, the cardinal has insisted he supports the Pope, saying he remains at Francis’ service and has no personal animosity towards him.
Last year, Pope Francis removed Cardinal Burke from a committee of the Congregation for Bishops that advises the Pope on episcopal appointments. It’s widely known that a small group of cardinals advised Francis to remove him from the committee because of his tendency to block candidates who were considered not sufficiently orthodox or capable of serving as bishops.
His position as patron of the Knights of Malta is Rome-based and mostly ceremonial. He is nevertheless likely to continue and perhaps even step up his defense of the Church’s teaching in the face of continued efforts to radically alter pastoral practice in the run-up to next year’s second synod on the family.
Archbishop Mamberti will be replaced by Archbishop Paul Gallagher, a native of Liverpool, England, who is currently the apostolic nuncio to Australia. Gallagher notably succeeded Archbishop Michael Courtney as apostolic nuncio to Burundi after Courtney was murdered in the country in December 2003.


Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/cardinal-burke-to-malta-mamberti-to-signatura#ixzz3IViJ8OZZ

Friday, November 7, 2014

Pope shocks Jesuits with unexpected phone call | National Catholic Reporter

Pope shocks Jesuits with unexpected phone call | National Catholic Reporter

Rome
As the receptionist at Rome's headquarters of the Jesuit order was going about his business Friday, he got an unexpected phone call.
The man on the other end of the line said simply: "This is Pope Francis. May I speak to Fr. General?"
That's former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit himself and as of Wednesday night the bishop of Rome and global leader of the Roman Catholic church.
In perhaps a bit of fidelity to the priests and brothers he's served amongst since he entered the order's novitiate in 1958, the new pontiff had called down the street from the Vatican to speak to Fr. Adolfo Nicolás Pachón, the order's superior general.
The receptionist was so shocked at the call, according to an email being circulated among the Jesuits, the pope had to continue: "This is not a joke. I am Pope Francis. Who are you?"

After gaining some composure, the secretary forwarded the call to Nicolás' personal secretary.
"I am Pope Francis", said the pontiff again. "May I speak to the General?"
"Holy Father, we are praying much for you," said the secretary, a Jesuit brother.
"Praying for what?" asked the Pope. "To go ahead or to go back?"
"To go ahead", the secretary said, walking into the Nicolás' office with mobile to his ear and still speaking.
According to the email, the superior general was also shocked and so disoriented he switched between calling his confrere "Pope," "Your Holiness," and "Monsignor."
"Thank you for your personal letter to me", the pope said, referencing a letter the Jesuits had sent upon learning of Bergoglio's election to the Roman see.
"I look forward to meeting you", said the General.
"And I you", said the Pope. "We shall meet as soon as we can. I will phone you and we can fix a date."
It's traditional for the heads of religious orders to meet with a new pope in the first few months of his pontificate.
For a flavor of the event, see before for a video interview from CPRO Rome of the Jesuit curia's receptionist.


Pope Telephones Fr. General at the Curia

Monday, November 3, 2014

The True Story of This Synod. Director, Performers, Assistants

The True Story of This Synod. Director, Performers, Assistants

The True Story of This Synod. Director, Performers, Assistants


New paradigms of divorce and homosexuality are now at home in the highest levels of the Church. Nothing has been decided, but Pope Francis is patient. An American historian confutes the ideas of “La Civiltà Cattolica”

by Sandro Magister




ROME, October 17, 2014 - “The spirit of the Council is blowing again,” Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle has said, a rising star of the worldwide episcopate as well as being a historian of Vatican II. And it is true. At the synod that is about to conclude there are many elements in common with what happened at that great event.

The most visible similarity is the distance between the real synod and the virtual synod driven by the media.

But there is an even more substantial resemblance. Both at Vatican Council II and at this synod the changes of paradigm are the product of careful coordination. A protagonist of Vatican II like Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti - the consummate strategist of the four cardinal moderators who were at the controls of the conciliar machine - asserted this with pride. He said that he had “transformed the fate of the Council” thanks to his capacity to pilot the assembly, which he had learned in his previous political experience as the leader of the foremost Italian party.

The same thing has happened at this synod. Both the openness to communion for the civilly divorced and remarried - and therefore the admission of remarriage on the part of the Church - and the startling change of paradigm on the issue of homosexuality that found its way into the “Relatio post disceptationem” would not have been possible without a series of skillfully calculated steps on the part of those who had and have control of the procedures.

In order to understand this, it is enough to review the stages that led to this result, even if the provisory finale of the synod - as will be seen - has not met the expectations of its directors.

The star of the first act is Pope Francis himself. (Actually Pope Francis is the ont who ultimately orchestrated the whole thing-that is if it wasn't the superior of the Jesuits, and then we really would have a 'black pope')
On July 28, 2013, at the press conference held on board the plane taking him back to Rome after his voyage in Brazil, he issued two signals that had a powerful and lasting impact on public opinion.

The first on the treatment of homosexuals:

“If a person is gay and is seeking the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

The second on the admission of remarriage:

“Also – a parenthesis – the Orthodox have a different practice. They follow the theology of what they call oikonomia, and they give a second chance [of marriage], they allow it. But I believe that this problem – and here I close the parenthesis – must be studied within the context of the pastoral care of marriage.”

There followed in October of 2013 the convening of a synod on the family, the first in a series of two synods on the same issue in the span of a year, with decisions postponed until after the second. As secretary general of this sort of permanent and prolonged synod the pope appointed a new cardinal with no experience in this regard, but very close to him, Lorenzo Baldisseri. Beside whom he placed, as special secretary, the bishop and theologian Bruno Forte, already a leading proponent of the theological and pastoral approach that had its guiding light in the Jesuit cardinal Carlo Maria Martini and its major adversaries first in John Paul II and then in Benedict XVI: an approach explicitly open to a change of Church teaching in the area of sexuality.

The proclamation of the synod was associated with the issuing of a questionnaire throughout the whole world with specific questions on the most controversial questions, including communion for the divorced and homosexual unions.

Thanks in part to this questionnaire - which would be followed by the intentional publication of the answers on the part of some German-speaking episcopates - public opinion would be given the idea that these were questions to be considered “open” not only in theory but also in practice.

Proof of this breaking ahead of the pack came, for example, from the archdiocese of Freiburg in Germany, headed by president of the German episcopal conference Robert Zollitsch, who in a document from one of his pastoral offices encouraged access to communion for the divorced and remarried on the simple basis of “a decision of conscience.”

From Rome, the prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, Cardinal Gerhard L. Müller, reacted by republishing on October 23, 2013 in “L'Osservatore Romano” a note he had already issued four months earlier in Germany reconfirming and explaining the ban on communion.

But his call to have the archdiocese of Freiburg withdraw that document came to nothing. On the contrary, both German cardinal Reinhard Marx, and in more blunt terms Honduran cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga criticized Müller for his “presumption” of cutting off discussion on this matter. Both Marx and Maradiaga are part of the council of eight cardinals called by Pope Francis to assist him in the governance of the universal Church. The pope did not speak out in support of Müller.

On February 20 and 21, 2014, the cardinals met in Rome in consistory. Pope Francis asked them to discuss the family and delegated the introductory talk to Cardinal Walter Kasper, already in the early 1990’s a combative supporter of dropping the ban on communion for the remarried, but defeated at the time by John Paul II and by Joseph Ratzinger.

At the consistory, held behind closed doors, Kasper revived all of his ideas. Many cardinals opposed him, but Francis approved him with the highest praise. Afterward, Kasper would say that he had “coordinated” with the pope on his proposals.

Moreover, Kasper gave the pope the privilege of breaking the secrecy on the things he had said at the consistory, unlike all the other cardinals. When his talk came out by surprise on March 1 in the Italian newspaper “Il Foglio,” it was already being prepared for the presses by the publisher Queriniana. The coverage of the publication was immense.
 
 (NOTE CAREFULLY THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH!!!)

In early spring, to balance the impact of Kasper’s proposals, the congregation for the doctrine of the faith planned the publication in “L'Osservatore Romano”of a n opposing presentation by a prominent cardinal. But the pope vetoed the publication of this text.

Kasper’s ideas were nevertheless the object of severe and substantiated criticism on the part of a good number of cardinals, who spoke out repeatedly through various media outlets. On the eve of the synod, five of these cardinals republished their previous statements in a book, accompanied by essays by other scholars and by a leading official of the curia, a Jesuit archbishop expert in the marriage practices of the Eastern Churches. Kasper, with widespread consensus in the media, deplored the publication of the book as an affront aimed at the pope.

On October 5 the synod opened. Unlike in the past, the statements in the assembly were not made public. Cardinal Müller protested against this censorship. But in vain. One more proof, he says, that “I am not one of the directors.”(THEY ONLY WANT THEIR DISSENTING VIEW HEARD (PROGRAMMING THE SHEEP?)and yes, unfortunately this seems to be the pope's view also. He does seem to be the manipulator in chief, unless of course he is only the second in command and following the advice(orders) of his Jesuit Superior who was also  appointed to the Synod as one of those writing up the final document by Pope Francis/ Do we actually have a 'black pope' through Pope Francis or is he acting on his own. Either way, this does not look good. St John Paul II, pray for us. Mother Mary and St Joseph. pray for us. St Joseph and Michael the Archangel, DEFEND US IN BATTLE!)

The operational center of the synod is made up of the general and special secretaries, Baldisseri and Forte. But alongside of them the pope has placed, selected by him personally, those who will attend to the drafting of the message and the final “Relatio,” all of them belonging to the pro-change “party,” led by his trusted ghostwriter Víctor Manuel Fernández, archbishop and rector of the Catholic University of Buenos Aires.

The fact that this is the true cockpit of the synod became overwhelmingly evident on Monday, October 13, when in front of two hundred journalists from all over the world the cardinal delegate who figures as the formal author of the “Relatio post disceptationem,” Hungarian cardinal Péter Erdõ, asked about the paragraphs regarding homosexuality, refused to answer and gave the floor to Forte, saying: “The one who drafted the passage, he should know what to say.”

To the request for clarification on whether the paragraphs on homosexuality can be interpreted as a radical change in the church’s teaching on the matter, Cardinal Erdõ again responded, “Certainly,” displaying his disagreement here as well.

In effect, these paragraphs reflect not an orientation expressed in the assembly by a substantial number of fathers - as one would expect to read in a “Relatio” - but things said by no more than three out of almost two hundred, in particular by the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, director of "La Civiltà Cattolica,” appointed a member of the synod by Pope Francis himself.

On Tuesday, October 14, at a press conference, South African cardinal Wilfrid Napier denounced in biting words the effect of the prevarication carried out by Forte by inserting those explosive paragraphs into the “Relatio.” These, he says, have put the Church in an “irredeemable” position, with no way out. Because by now “the message has gone out: This is what the synod is saying, this is what the Catholic Church is saying. No matter how we try correcting that, whatever we say hereafter is going to be as if we're doing some damage control.”

In reality, in the ten linguistic circles in which the synod fathers carried out the discussion, the “Relatio” was heading for a massacre. Starting with its language, “overblown, rambling, too wordy and therefore boring,” as the official relator of the French-speaking “Gallicus B” group mercilessly blasted it, although this group contained two champions of its language - and of its likewise vague and equivocal contents - in cardinals Christoph Schönborn and Godfried Danneels.

When the assembly resumed its work on Thursday, October 16, secretary general Baldisseri, with the pope beside him, made the announcement that the reports of the ten groups would not be made public. A protest exploded. Australian cardinal George Pell, with the physique and temperament of a rugby player, was the most intransigent in demanding the publication of the texts. Baldisseri gave up. That same day, Pope Francis saw himself forced to expand the group charged with writing the final relatio, adding Melbourne archbishop Denis J. Hart and above all the combative South African cardinal Napier.

Who, however, had seen correctly. Because no matter what may be the outcome of this synod, intentionally devoid of any conclusion, the effect desired by its directors has to a large extent been reached. (YES THEY ACCOMPLISHED THEIR PURPOSE! Father, please let your Spirit enlighten pope Francis. Protect him from Satan and his minions and convert his heart to Peter's heart, in Jesus name , I pray!)

******
On homosexuality as on divorce and remarriage, in fact, the new talk of reform inserted into the global media circuit is worth much more than the favor actually gained among the synod fathers by the proposals of Kasper or Spadaro.

The match could go on for a long time. But Pope Francis is patient. In “Evangelii Gaudium” he has written that “time is greater than space.”*****

*

In steering the Synod toward the admission to communion of the divorced and remarried, “La Civiltà Cattolica” has shown itself to be particularly enterprising, with the publication of an article according to which the Council of Trent itself had opened a loophole in this direction:

> Second Marriages in Venice for “La Civiltà Cattolica”

“La Civiltà Cattolica” is directed by the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, and each issue is printed after examination and approval by the highest Vatican authorities, in this case it is easy to imagine with the personal “placet” of the pope, with whom Fr. Spadaro has a close and confidential relationship.

But how well-founded, historically, is the notion of the Council of Trent as a forerunner of the “openness” of the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the matter of marriage and divorce?

The following is a confutation of the article in “La Civiltà Cattolica.” Its author is a professor of moral theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, in the United States, and has thoroughly studied the proceedings of the Council of Trent with regard to marriage.
(Are we sure that isn't 'amoral' theology?)
__________



DAMNATIO MEMORIAE ?

by E. Christian Brugger



Jesuit priest Giancarlo Pani, professor of Christian history at the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” recently published an essay in "La Civiltà Cattolica" entitled "Matrimony and 'Second Marriages' at the Council of Trent." In it he defends the Greek matrimonial practice of “oikonomia” by which failed marriages can be dissolved and spouses permitted to remarry, or, what’s more often the case, to have their “new marriages declared valid” by the Church “after penance”. He plainly hopes that this “tolerant tradition” may find its way into the Catholic Church.

For that aspiration, he claims no less an authority than the Council of Trent, which he believes implicitly sanctioned the Greek divorce practice in its "canones de sacramento matrimonii".

His argument has two flaws. The first and more serious I can only mention here. In his essay, he not only assumes, but states several times that this form of divorce and remarriage is not in conflict with the doctrine of indissolubility without providing an argument to vindicate the claim. The claim was refuted by Germain Grisez, John Finnis and William E. May twenty years ago in their critical response to German Bishops  Walter Kasper, Karl Lehmann, and Oskar Saier, who had proposed a compromise to allow divorced and remarried Catholics in Germany to return to the eucharist.

The second problem is with Pani’s interpretation of Trent’s Canon 7 on indissolubility. He follows the popular interpretation of Flemish Jesuit Piet Fransen (1913-1983), whose account, though widely followed, is badly flawed (1). Pani’s article summarizes adequately the events of August 1563 so they need not be repeated here. But the wider story he tells deserves consideration.

Although the Eastern Orthodox Church [– Pani writes –] “rigorously affirmed and recognized the indissolubility of marriage,” nevertheless it permitted divorce and remarriage in some cases. The Fathers and theologians at Trent knew of the East’s ancient “ritus” (“custom”) and respected it. Many council Fathers were doubtful about the “exceptive clause” in Matthew’s Gospel (“except in cases of porneia”). They doubted whether divine revelation absolutely excluded remarriage in cases of adultery. Given the doubt, they resolved to “speak clearly on the indissolubility of marriage, but also to say that the doctrine cannot be regarded as a constituent part of revelation.” Their doubts came to a head in August 1563 with the famous intervention of the Venetian delegation, which urged the council Fathers for the sake of the divorce practices of the Greeks in Catholic lands not to directly condemn divorce and remarriage in cases of adultery. The petition won the day, and in the end the Council published an indirect formulation of Canon 7. This was obviously because a large majority of Council Fathers preferred leaving open the question of the legitimacy of the Greek divorce practices.

Pani laments that this “page” in Trent’s teaching on marriage “seems to have been forgotten by history.” But how can it have been forgotten when Walter Kasper (2), Charles Curran (3), Michael Lawler (4), Kenneth Himes (5), James Coriden (6), Theodore Mackin S.J. (7), Victor J. Pospishil (8), Francis A. Sullivan S.J. (9), Karl Lehmann (10), and Piet Fransen S.J. (to name just a few) have repeated it continuously over the past fifty years? The story actually goes back to the 17th century. The anti-Roman theologian Paolo Sarpi and the Jansenist Jean Launoy (12) argued that the Council meant to leave open the question of whether remarriage after divorce was sometimes legitimate (13).

Pani indicts the secretaries and diarists of the Council for their “eloquent silence” about this story. An alternative interpretation of their silence seems to me more obviously correct: Pani’s story is a post-conciliar creation. Not that the events he cites, especially the Venetian intervention, did not occur. They plainly did. But there is no historical basis for his claim that the Council – by which I mean the vast majority of voting bishops – saw Canon 7 as excluding the divorce practices of the Greeks. Many scholars before the middle of the 20th century argued that Trent intended to define absolute indissolubility as a "de fide" truth, for example, Dominic Palmieri (14) and Giovanni Perrone (15), the eminent author and editor of the French "Dictionnaire De Théologie Catholique" Alfred Vacant (16), and dogmatic theologian George Hayward Joyce, S.J. (17). More recently the same has been defended by future pope, Joseph Ratzinger (18), and moral theologians, Germain Grisez and Peter Ryan, S.J. (19).

To demonstrate conclusively the falsity of the Pani-Fransen interpretation would take a book length treatise. But several things can be said to show that it is questionable. To understand the true intentions of the Fathers at Trent, we must not first look, as Pani does, to the intervention of the Venetian delegation. We must first look at the rock solid consensus of the Fathers and theologians in every discussion of marriage from 1547 till August of 1563.

When Canon 6 (which became Canon 7) was presented to the Fathers on July 20, 1563, after undergoing several iterations, it read as follows:

"If anyone shall say, that on account of the adultery of a spouse the marriage can be dissolved, and that it is licit for both, or at least the innocent spouse who gave no cause for adultery, to remarry, and that he is not an adulterer who dismisses an adulteress and marries another, nor she an adulteress who dismisses an adulterer and marries another: let him be anathema" (20).

There is nothing extraordinary about this formulation, since its content is more or less the same as the content of the very first condemned propositions (numbers 3-5) proposed by Angelo Massarelli, Secretary General, to the Council in April 1547 (21). It directly condemns the propositions that marriage can be dissolved on account of adultery; that it is ever licit for adulterous spouses to remarry; and that a spouse who divorces an adulterous spouse and remarries is not guilty of adultery.

From Trent’s earliest discussions this was the consensus of the Council Fathers. As to authorities, the prelates referenced Our Lord and St. Paul, the Canons of the Apostles, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, Origin, Hillary, Popes Innocent I, Leo I, Alexander III, and the Councils of Mileve, Elvira, Constance, Florence, and Lateran IV, among others. When Catholic thinkers of the 16th century, such as Erasmus and Catarinus, suggested that the doctrine of absolute indissolubility should be watered down, their proposals were condemned by the faculties of theology of the Universities of Cologne, Leuven, and Paris. Augustine’s conclusion that the exceptive clause in Matthew should be read in accordance with the more restrictive teachings found in Luke 16, Mark 10, and Romans 7:1-3 was held by most everyone; “separation of bed, not bond” was the maxim of the day.

Pani mentions the significant doubt against absolute indissolubility posed by the Bishop of Segovia on August 14, 1563, as does every author who follows this interpretation (22). He does not mention that from the earliest discussions of marriage, a consistent and substantial majority affirmed, contra the Segovian view, the Augustinian maxim "bed, not bond," no exceptions. A few names should suffice to demonstrate this: Council President and Papal Legate, Cardinal Cervinus; Archbishops Materanus, Naxiensis, Aquensis, and Armacanus; Bishops Aciensis, Sibinicensis, Chironensis, Sebastensis, Motulanus, Motonensis, Mylonensis, Feltrensis, Bononiensis, Sibinicensis, Chironensis, Aquensis, Bituntinus, Aquinas, Mylensis, Lavellinus, Mylensis, Caprulanus, Grossetanus, Upsalensis, Salutiarum, Caprulanus, Veronensis, Maioricensis, Camerinensis, Thermularum, Mirapicensis, and Vigorniensis.

In a summary statement recorded in the Acta on September 6, 1547, we read: “The responses of the fathers varied; but the vast majority agreed that adultery cannot dissolve a marriage; that if one marries another when his spouse is still alive, he commits adultery; and that for no reason can they be separated except as far as the bed” (23). To authorities who oppose this view, the majority agreed “that separation should be understood only so far as separation of bed and not bond according to the interpretation of the doctors (and declaration of St. Paul in 1 Cor. 7:10ff and Romans 7:2ff, and Mark 10:11 and Luke 16:18 as well as Matthew 5:32 itself).” Finally, the majority agreed “the understanding of scripture should be according to the declaration of the Church” (24).

When presented with the July 20, 1563 draft of Canon 6, more than 200 Council Fathers (Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and Generals of Congregations) commented on it. All knew that the end of the debates on marriage was drawing near. If there were widespread doubts or dissatisfaction among the Fathers about the directness of the formulation, the inclusion of the anathema, or its implications for the divorce practices of the Greeks (25), we would expect a significant number of Fathers to register an objection – “non placet” – to the canon. Only 17 register disapproval, mostly on account of the “opinions of the Greeks.” More than 85 percent of the voting prelates were satisfied with a direct formulation of an anathema condemning remarriage after adultery, with a large majority explicitly approving its content ("placet").

Three weeks later, on August 11, came the Venetian proposal for an indirect formulation. Approximately 136 prelates spoke out in favor of the proposal. What accounts for this change? Was it because the Council Fathers preferred leaving open the question of the legitimacy of the Greek divorce practices, as Pani et alii suggest? This conclusion must be rejected. Is it plausible that within three weeks the vast majority of voting prelates abandoned absolute indissolubility in order to permit some instances of divorce and remarriage? In the final version of Canon 7 the Council adopts four other important changes that contradict this conclusion.

First, it added the phrase “iuxta evangelicam et apostolicam doctrinam” to ensure that the following propositions condemning the denial of indissolubility in cases of adultery are understood to have their origin in divine revelation.

Second, it replaced the normative term “should not… contract” (“non debere… contrahere”) with the substantive term “cannot… contract” (“non posse… contrahere”) making it clear that not only is remarriage after divorce always wrong, but impossible.

Third, to ensure that the canon transparently addresses the indissolubility of the bond of marriage, it adopted the term “vinculum matrimonii” to replace “matrimonium”.

Finally, it adopts for the first time a doctrinal preface to precede its canons on marriage. This is plainly meant establish a doctrinal framework within which to read and interpret the canons. The introduction grounds the truth of indissolubility in the natural law (the created order), the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, and in the will and teaching of Jesus as expressed in the New Testament. And it asserts that not only are the “schismatics” condemned, but also “their errors” (“eorumque errores”), that is, their erroneous propositions about the nature of marriage, including their unquestionable denial of the absolute indissolubility of marriage.

The more plausible explanation for the sudden turn is that the Council Fathers remained convinced that marriage cannot be dissolved on account of adultery, or anything else, and that they should teach this as a truth of faith. They had been willing to teach it in the form of a direct anathema condemning its denial. But Venice’s intervention had alerted them to a possible consequence of doing so, namely, the disrupting of the delicate balance of relations between Greek Christians and the Roman hierarchy on the Mediterranean Islands.

They believed the proposition asserting the absolute indissolubility of marriage was true and that it pertained to divine revelation, and they intended to teach both of these, but to do so in a way that minimized undesirable consequences. They did not turn to an indirect formulation because of doubts about the interpretation of the “exceptive clause,” for fear of scandal by “anathematizing Ambrose,” or because they wished to leave the Greeks free to follow their ancient divorce customs. The Venetian appeal won the day on the pastoral ground that an indirect formulation was less likely to disrupt Greek-Roman relations in Venetian territories.

Pani’s idea that the Fathers when publishing Canon 7 intended only to condemn Luther and the Reformers but leave uncriticized the divorce practices of the Greeks is inconsistent with the reasoned judgment on the absolute indissolubility of marriage of the vast majority of Council Fathers and theologians from Spring 1547 to the end of Summer 1563. As Ryan and Grisez state: “Although Trent does not [explicitly] anathematize the practice of 'economia', canon 7 entails that its application to ‘remarriage’ after divorce is contrary to faith” (26).

Pani’s ironic term “damnatio memoriæ” is indeed fitting. But it is not the Council Acta, secretaries, diarists or commentators who impose a silence on Trent’s true teaching. Rather, it is those who in the name of “evangelical mercy” would replace a "de fide" truth with a “tolerant” fancy.

__________



NOTES


(1) Fransen’s doctoral thesis on canon 7 ("De indissolubilitate Matrimonii christiani in casu fornicationis.  De canone septimo Sessionis XXIV Concilii Tridentini, Jul.-Nov. 1563") was submitted to the Gregorian in 1947. In the 1950s, Fransen went on to publish six influential essays in the journal "Scholastik" on Trent’s teaching on marriage, which are reprinted in a collection of Fransen’s essays entitled "Hermeneutics of the Councils and Other Studies", eds. H.E. Mertens and F. de Graeve, Leuven University Press, 1985.  He summarized the conclusions of these essays in a widely read English essay entitled “Divorce on the Ground of Adultery – The Council of Tent (1563)”, printed in a special edition of the journal "Concilium", entitled "The Future of Marriage as Institution", ed. Franz Böckle, New York, Herder and Herder, 1970, 89-100.

(2) Kasper, "Theology of Christian Marriage", New York, Crossroad, 1977, note 87, p. 98, also p. 62.

(3) Charles Curran, "Faithful Dissent", Sheed & Ward, 1986, 269, 272.

(4) Michael Lawler, “Divorce and Remarriage in the Catholic Church: Ten Theses,” New Theology Review, vol. 12, no. 2 (1999), 56.

(5) Kenneth Himes and James Coriden, “The Indissolubility of Marriage: Reasons to Reconsider,” Theological Studies, vol. 65, no. 3 (2004), 463.

(6) Ibid.

(7) Theodore Mackin, "Divorce and Remarriage", New York, Paulist Press, 1984, 388.

(8) Victor J. Pospishil, "Divorce and Remarriage", New York, Herder and Herder, 1967, 66-68.

(9) Francis Sullivan, "Creative Fidelity: Weighing and Interpreting Documents of the Magisterium", New York, Paulist Press, 1996, 131-134.

(10) Karl Lehmann, "Gegenwart des Glaubens", Mainz, Matthias-Grünwald-Verlag, 1974, 285-286.

(11) Paolo Sarpi (1552 -1623), “Istoria del Concilio Tridentino”, London, 1619; English translation: "History of the Council of Trent" (1676). His "Istoria", much read by Protestants, has been criticized as slanted against the Roman Curia; see L.F. Bungener, "History of the Council of Trent", New York, Harper & Brothers, 1855, xix-xx.

(12) Jean de Launoy (1603–1678); see "De regia in matrimonium potestate" (1674), par. III, art. I, cap. 5, no. 78; in "Opera", Cologne/Geneva, 1731, tom. 1, cap. I, p. 855.

(13) Bossuet wrote of Sarpi: “He was a Protestant under a religious habit, who said Mass without believing in it, and who remained in a Church which he considered idolatrous.”  See Bertrand L. Conway, C.S.P., “Original Diaries of the Council of Trent,” The Catholic World, vol. 98 (Oct. 1913-March 1914), 467.

(14) Dominic Palmieri, "Tractatus de Matrimonio Christiano", Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide, Rome, 1880, p. 142.

(15) G. Perrone, SJ., "De Matrimonio Christiano", vol. 3, Rome, 1861, bk. 3, ch. 4, a. 2, p. 379-380.

(16) A. Vacant, s.v., “Divorce",”Dictionnaire de théologie catholique", 1908, vol. XII, cols. 498-505.

(17) George Hayward Joyce, S.J., "Christian Marriage: An Historical and Doctrinal Study", London: Sheed and Ward, 1933, 395.

(18) In a 1972 essay, “Zur Frage nach der Unauflöslichkeit der Ehe: Bemerkungen zum dogmengeschichtlichen Befund und zu seiner gegenwärtigen Bedeutung” (in Ehe und Ehescheidung: Diskussion Unter Christen, eds. Franz Henrich and Volker Eid, München, Kösel, 1972, 47, 49), Ratzinger says he follows Fransen on Canon 7.  By 1986 he shows that he changed his mind: “The Church’s position on the indissolubility of sacramental and consummated marriage… was in fact defined at the Council of Trent and so belongs to the patrimony of the Faith” (see quote in Charles Curran, "Faithful Dissent", Sheed & Ward, 1986, p 269).

(19) Peter F. Ryan, S.J. and Germain Grisez, “Indissoluble Marriage: A Reply to Kenneth Himes and James Coriden", Theological Studies 72 (2011), 369-415.

(20) CT, IX, 640.

(21) See CT, VI, 98-99.

(22) CT, XI, 709.

(23) _CT, VI, 434.

(24) CT, VI, 434-435.

(25) “Non placet, quia ferit Graecos and Ambrose” (Archbishop Cretensis), CT, IX, 644.

(26) Op. Cit., footnote 180.

__________

(***IMPORTANT)
THE complete text of the important article written in 1994 for the journal of the English Dominicansi "New Blackfriars" by Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and William E. May against the ideas of the German bishops Walter Kasper, Karl Lehmann, and Oskar Saier in favor of admitting the divorced and remarried to communion:

> Indissolubility, Divorce and Holy Communion

__________


The text read at the synod at the conclusion of the first week of discussions in the assembly, with the three explosive paragraphs (50-52) on homosexuality:

> Relatio post disceptationem


And the reports of the ten linguistic circles that ripped it to shreds:

> Relazioni dei circoli minori

__________


For a more complete profile of the special secretary of the synod:

> Diario Vaticano / La conversione del vescovo-teologo Bruno Forte (10.9.2012)

__________


English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.

__________


For more news and commentary, see the blog that Sandro Magister maintains, available only in Italian:

> SETTIMO CIELO



__________

17.10.2014  
                 

Evidence Emerges of an Engineered Synod |Blogs | NCRegister.com

Evidence Emerges of an Engineered Synod |Blogs | NCRegister.com

Evidence Emerges of an Engineered Synod


More and more there is talk in Rome that this synod is being engineered by groups intent on steering the Church in a heterodox direction, and increasingly evidence is coming to light that points to it.
The first and most obvious example was the interim report published on Monday. It still remains unclear who exactly wrote it and how many eyes had seen it before it was made public, but the strong criticisms of it from such Church leaders as Cardinals Raymond Burke and Gerhard Mueller are enough to point to a lamentable lack of scrutiny, with consequences for souls.
Archbishop Bruno Forte, the synod’s special secretary, known to be a keen advocate for changes in pastoral practice, is thought to have been one of the main authors -- certainly the passages on homosexuality that drew most media attention.
It's also believed the general rapporteur, Cardinal Peter Erdo, was cajoled into signing off on it. To help the cardinal along, observers say, he was given five assistants on Friday, including Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Fr Adolfo Nicolas, the head of the Jesuits. There was notably no one from Africa, but as Cardinal Walter Kasper told me yesterday, these five were chosen because they are “open people who want to go on with this.”
Many synod fathers have made it known they were not expecting the “relatio” to be made public, despite it being common procedure during synods for such a document to be published.
“Just like you, I was surprised that it was published,” Cardinal Wilfrid Napier told reporters Tuesday, adding: “You people got the document before we got it, so we couldn’t have possibly agreed on it.”
Even more revealingly, Cardinal Napier lamented the “media exaggerations” (they portrayed the Church as making a “stunning” and “revolutionary” step towards homosexuals), saying that once such media perceptions are “out there” in the public, “there’s no way of retrieving them.”
This is common sense and could have been predicted given the controversial subject matter, as Father Lombardi admitted yesterday: “It’s something all of us with anything to do with communications could have foreseen,” he said.
So whoever was behind the release of the document most probably knew the impact it would have, and effectively sent it over the heads of everyone, including the Pope. When I asked Father Lombardi today if the Holy Father had seen it before it was published, he returned to the fact that it is standard procedure to send out the report -- remarkably for such a sensitive document -- without even the Pope or the synod presidents having to see it.
But there are other examples of this being engineered. The restrictions on reporting on the synod, ostensibly to free up discussion, is perhaps the most obvious. The move has been criticized by Cardinals Mueller and Burke, among others.
Other examples can be seen at the daily press briefings, where a picture of unity and harmony is often conveyed, but it’s one at variance with what one hears coming from individuals in the synod hall. Interestingly, it has been observed how little Jesus is mentioned during these briefings, replaced by the generic language of welcome, feelings and accompaniment.
In his interview with the Register published yesterday, Cardinal Burke said what is being presented to the media does not tally with what’s happening in the assembly. “What is coming out does not reflect the reality, in my judgment,” he said. “I am speaking very openly about it because I think it is my moral obligation.” And he added people “are pushing the agenda” of Cardinal Kasper and his proposal for the divorced and civilly remarried.
Some have said this synod reminds them of the methods used to hijack the Second Vatican Council. Veteran Vatican watchers say such engineering is unprecedented in the modern Church.
Perhaps given the reported shenanigans, and what is at stake, the best answer is to pray. Earlier today, Voice of the Family – an international coalition of pro-life groups – drew attention to the fact that Archbishop Zbignev Stankevics, the archbishop of the Latvian capital Riga, is making an “urgent call” for prayer for the outcome of the synod.
The archbishop has called on the synod to take a strong stand in defense of Catholic sexual ethics and to avoid diluting the Church’s message in order to appease her critics.
Voice of the Family recommends praying the following traditional Catholic prayer for bishops:
“O God, who hast appointed Thine only-begotten Son to be the eternal High Priest for the glory of Thy Majesty and the salvation of mankind; grant that they whom He hath chosen to be His ministers and the stewards of His mysteries, may be found faithful in the fulfillment of the ministry which they have received. Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.”
Voice of the Family also recommends that families pray for themselves during the Synod, saying the following traditional Catholic prayer to the Holy Ghost:
“O eternal Spirit of Love, Bond of unity in the Holy Trinity, preserve love, unity and peace in our home. Make of it a faithful reproduction of the Holy House of Nazareth, upon which Thou didst look with such kindness. Bind us all together, not merely by worldly ties, but by the golden bonds of charity, prayer, and mutual service. By the gift of piety, help us to forgive and forget the little grievances which the events of life and diversity of character may foster among us. Whatsoever duty may call us, let us never bring dishonor upon our home and family. Ward off from our home the spirit of pride, irreligion and worldliness. Allow not the lax principles and perverse maxims of the world to take root among us. Teach us to love and respect that Christian modesty which reigned supreme in the Holy Family. As by Thy help we live in unity here below, give us, we beseech Thee, the grace of final perseverance, that together we may praise Thee and love Thee through a happy eternity. Amen.”


Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/evidence-emerges-of-an-engineered-synod#ixzz3I00PXbbn

Saturday, August 23, 2014

ChurchMilitant.TV - Links CIA/FBI Faith Based Investigations

ChurchMilitant.TV - Catholics are born for combat  

This program used to be call CIA for Catholic Investigative Agency.
Now it is called FBI for Faith Based Investigations


CIA - Catholic Investigative Agency
Catholic Investigative Agency is ChurchMilitant.TV's program devoted to in-depth examination of scandals, betrayals and evil in the Church. Bringing extensive knowledge of the Church and decades of investigative journalism experience together, Michael Voris and his team of researchers bring to light the dark deeds of evil Catholics-in-name-only, who are hijacking the Church for their own ends, not the ends of Christ! Watch these meticulously researched programs and learn about the dangers facing the Church from within.
Below is the episode list for CIA - click the links to learn more about each episode!

Sunday, August 17, 2014

An open letter to Pope Francis

An open letter to Pope Francis

November 10, 2013
An open letter to Pope Francis
 
By Randy Engel

On a Papal Commission of Inquiry into Homosexuality, Pederasty and La Lobby Gay in The Catholic Church

9 November 2013

His Holiness, Pope Francis
Apostolic Palace
00120 Vatican City State
Europe

Your Holiness,

It's difficult to know how or where to begin this Open Letter on the necessity of establishing a Papal Commission of Inquiry into Homosexuality, Pederasty, and the "Gay Lobby" in the Catholic Church. But since I must begin somewhere let me start with Question 21 posed to you by Brazilian journalist, Ilze Scamparini, during your first press conference of July 28, 2013 aboard the papal aircraft on route to Rome from World Youth Day in Rio,

Here is the reported dialogue between you and Scamparini which touches upon the key topics of this missive: [1]
    Ilze Scamparini: I would like to ask permission to ask a somewhat delicate question: another image has also gone around the world, which is that of Monsignor Ricca and news about your privacy [and the news of his private life.] I would like to know, Holiness, what do you intend to do about this question? How to address this question and how Your Holiness intends to address the whole question of the gay lobby?

    Pope Francis: Regarding Monsignor Ricca: I did what Canon Law mandates to do, which is the investigatio previa. And from that investigatio there was nothing of that which they accuse him of, we did not find anything of that. This is the answer.

    But I would like to add something else on this: I see that so many times in the Church, outside of this case and also in this case, they go to look for the "sins of youth," for example, no? And this is published. Not the crimes. Crimes are something else: the abuse of minors is a crime. No, the sins.

    But if a person, lay or priest or Sister, has committed a sin and then has converted, the Lord forgives, and when the Lord forgives, the Lord forgets and this is important for our life. When we go to confession and truly say: "I have sinned in this," the Lord forgets and we don't have the right not to forget, because we run the risk that the Lord won't forget our [sins]. That's a danger.

    This is important: a theology of sin. I think so many times of St. Peter: he committed one of the worst sins, which is to deny Christ, and with this sin he was made Pope. We must give it much thought.

    But, returning to your more concrete question: in this case, I did the investigatio previa and we found nothing. This is the first question.

    Then you spoke of the gay lobby. Goodness knows! So much is written of the gay lobby. I still have not met one who will give me the identity card with "gay." They say that they exist.

    I think that when one meets a person like this, one must distinguish the fact of being a gay person from the fact of doing a lobby, because not all lobbies are good. That's bad.

    If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge him? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this in such a beautiful way, it says, Wait a bit, as is said, and says: "these persons must not be marginalized because of this; they must be integrated in society."

    The problem isn't having this tendency, no. We must be brothers, because this is one, but there are others, others. The problem is the lobbying of this tendency: lobby of the avaricious, lobby of politicians, lobby of Masons, so many lobbies. This, for me, is the more serious problem. And I thank you.
The Language of Gayspeak

When I first read your response to Scamparini, I must confess that my attention was not drawn immediately to the Ricca scandal, but rather to the fact that you used the term "gay" or "gay person" no less than five times.

On June 6, 2013, you allegedly made a private comment to the members of the Latin America Confederation of Men and Women Religious affirming the existence of a "gay lobby," inside the Vatican, but the term was later reported with quotes. [2] Such was not the case this time round. I must assume that your unfortunate decision to use the politically correct language of gayspeak was deliberate. In normal times this action might have been overlooked with a wink and a nod, but in wartimes it smells of treason and corruption.

The war of which I speak is the war being waged by faithful Catholics and other civilized men and women across the world against the forces of organized sexual perversion. These are the forces of the enemies of the cross of Christ "whose end" Blessed Paul the Apostle tells us "is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." (Epistle. Philip. 3, 17-19). The Homosexual Collective, aka, La Lobby Gay, has long been aware that to control language is to control the way people think since we think in terms of words. The words we speak determine the thoughts we have. It is by controlling language, a form of Pavlovian conditioning, that the Collective seeks to change the dominant shape of reality.

Unlike the word, homosexual, or the more traditional term, sodomite, the word "gay" is used by the Collective and its sympathizers to denote a "consciously united resistance to homophobic and heterosexual deployments of power relations." [3] It is the task of the Homosexual Collective to transform the homosexual or sodomite into a "gay" man, and to define, control and validate "authentic" homosexual identity and behavior and all other aspects of "gay" life.

"Homophobia" as Ideology

As a related aside, in recent public statements you have consistently condemned the substitution of "ideology" for true Faith going as far as to denounce "ideological Christians" who "simply recite the same prayers they've memorized," (presumably this includes the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be, traditional prayers which we cradle Catholics learned at the knees of our parents and which are especially helpful at times of great crisis in our lives). Yet you seem totally oblivious to the use of ideology by the Homosexual Collective when it is presented right in front of your nose.

Case in point is your personal, hand written correspondence of June 2013 with the leadership of the Italian pro-homosexual group Kairos which is based in Florence.

In their initial letter to you, Kairos called for openness and dialogue, and noted that closure to discussion "always feeds homophobia." [4] Although the official text of your correspondence has not been released, according to a Kairos spokesman, your letter contained a "benedictory greeting" or "blessing." A second letter from the Vatican Secretariat of State confirmed that you "really enjoyed" the Kairos letter, despite the fact that it was filled with all manner of ideologies including that represented by the use of the word "homophobia."

Like "gay," the term "homophobia" is a construct and successful political catchword in the Homosexual Collective's arsenal which has acquired a special function in the service of power.

According to New Ways Ministry co-founder, Sister Jeannine Gramick, who was silenced for her promotion of homosexuality by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (although the CDF never enforced the silencing), "homophobia" refers to "any systemic judgment which advocates negative myths and stereotypes about lesbian and gay persons." [5] Gramick states that the roots of the "sin of homophobia" are found, "in religious and familial and sexual dogmatism, including belief in the traditional family power structure, i.e. a dominant father, submissive mother and obedient children," as well as traditional religious beliefs and traditional attitudes toward women." [6]

So please enlighten me, Holy Father, as to how the use of the anti-life and anti-family term "homophobia" found in the Kairos letter, not only escaped your condemnation but was deemed worthy of your praise.

Kairos was obviously on an ideological fishing expedition and you foolishly swallowed the bait. At the same time, you also managed to undermine the teaching authority of Archbishop Giuseppe Betori of Florence whose Catholic sense and common sense has wisely led him to consistently refuse to meet with Kairos leaders lest such a misadventure be interpreted by the public as a degree of acceptance of homosexuality. Further, Betori has publicly favored a ban on homosexual ordinations and has made the defense of human life and the traditional family his top priority.

I believe that you owe Archbishop Betori a public apology.

The bottom line is that Kairos understands, as you apparently do not, that in any war, verbal strategy is as important as military strategy. This axiom dictates that all combatants for the Faith, especially those of highest rank, should never use the language of the enemy except that which they place in quotes or preface by a qualifier.

By your repetitive use and acceptance of gayspeak you have put yourself in opposition to the forces of Christ, and aligned yourself to the worldwide "Gay Lobby." By your use and acceptance of gayspeak, you have validated and advanced the cause of the Homosexual Collective world-wide.

No wonder the English pro-homosexual group Quest praised your use of the word "gay," as "a Pentecost moment for the Church, comparing it with the theophany when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles following Our Lord's Ascension." [7]

My advice to you is simply, "Stop it!"

Homosexuality, Pederasty and Criminality
    But I would like to add something else on this: I see that so many times in the Church, outside of this case and also in this case, they go to look for the "sins of youth," for example, no? And this is published. Not the crimes. Crimes are something else: the abuse of minors is a crime. No, the sins.
From this short comment alone made during your July 28th press conference, I believe one can draw the following conclusions:
  • You do not recognize any connection between homosexuality and criminality, nor do you acknowledge the historical link which binds homosexuality to pederasty, that is, the sexual abuse of minor boys by adult males.

  • You show little or no appreciation of the depths of depravity, violence and degradation associated with the act of sodomy, referred to as "the Devil's Congress" by the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages; as "the negation of all moral values" by the Marquis de Sade, an advocate and practitioner of the perversion; and as the as "the unnatural vice" by the Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas.

  • You do not appear overly concerned with the world-wide metastasis of the Catholic deaconate, seminary, diocesan priesthood, religious life, and hierarchy by the moral malignancy of this grievous sin which Scripture tells us brought the wrath of God in the form of fire and brimstone down upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

  • And finally, you have no intention any time soon of taking the lead in challenging the Homosexual Collective at the secular level nor cleaning out the Augean stables of sodomites that reside in the Curia, the Catholic hierarchy, religious orders, and the diocesan priesthood, and seminaries.
Let us examine each of these charges beginning with the disconnect you obviously hoped to engender in the Scamparini interview between the private "sin" of homosexuality and the "crime" of pederasty.

Homosexuality and Pederasty – An Ancient and Universal Connection

You will notice that in referring to clerical crimes of sexual abuse against minors I use the term pederasty, rather than the clinical term pedophilia, since the majority of clerical sex abuse cases in the Catholic Church today involve sexual contact between adult homosexual males and adolescent boys, and not infants and young children of either sex.

The term pedophilia is of relatively recent origin having been coined in 1912 by the Austro-German psychiatrist Professor Richard von Krafft-Ebing to describe a form of sexual perversion or pathology in which an adult, almost exclusively a male, is erotically attracted to infants and very young children of the same or opposite sex. [8]

In contrast, pederasty, derived from the Greek paiderastes, literally, a lover of boys, is a term found in the annals of antiquity and is almost universally understood as sexual acts between an adult male and a male adolescent or male child approaching puberty.

Up until the early 1980s, the terms pederasty and pederast with their obvious connection to male homosexuality were used by both Church and State to define sexual relations between adult homosexuals and underage boys.

This intimate connection between homosexuality and pederasty was recognized by the early Church Fathers of the East and the West, and by great saints like Saint John Chrysostom (344?-407) who condemned the unnatural and diabolic desires of the sodomites especially those pederasts who came to church to look with lustful curiosity upon handsome youth. [9]

Saint Peter Damian specifically condemned the seduction of youth by homosexual clerics in his classic treatise on homosexuality and pederasty titled The Book of Gomorrah written in 1049. [10] I suggest you put this work at the top of your reading list to reread, or read for the first time, which I think is probably the case. Please mark it "urgent!"

The Handbook of Moral Theology by Dominic M. Plümmer, O.P. (1866-1931), which served as a standard reference on moral questions for generations of Catholic priests and confessors and seminarians in the pre-Vatican II era, lists both "paederasty" and "the unnatural vice," as synonyms for sodomy (525. 2.).

As late as 1961, the Sacred Congregation for Religious continued to make the connection between homosexuality and pederasty as evidenced by the dual reference found in the pre-Vatican II document Careful Selection And Training Of Candidates For The States Of Perfection And Sacred Orders.

Section 31 (4) addresses the issue of grave violations of chastity by candidates for religious life states: "Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers." [11]

So why after almost 2000 years, did the post-Conciliar Church decide to abandon its traditional linkage of homosexuality to pederasty and adopt the clinical term, pedophilia?

Why else but to accommodate and protect the Homosexual Collective.

Predictably, the use of verbal gymnastics by Catholic officials with the intension of preventing the Catholic laity and general public from making any connection between the rise of homosexual practices in the Catholic priesthood, religious life, and hierarchy, and the increase of sexual abuse of male adolescents by those same persons, has led to numerous unforeseen and dangerous consequences for victims and perpetrators alike. Realistically, how can the Catholic Church be expected to solve this grave problem when its leaders steadfastly refuse to correctly define the problem?

Why the Etiological and Behavioral Differences

Between Pederasty and Pedophilia Matter
[12]

Although there are some general similarities between the two groups of criminal offenders, in that pedophiles and pederasts both reflect immature, narcissistic and heavily compartmentalized personalities, there are significant etiological and behavioral differences which impact upon the nature of their crimes, the potential for rehabilitation of the perpetrators and the rate of recidivism.

Typically, the pedophile is a married heterosexual male with children of his own. He is of normal intelligence and gender-traditional in almost every way.

The child victims of pedophiles are normally prepubescent girls between the ages of six and twelve years with peak ages between eight and ten years. Most pedophiles know their victims who may be related or may be children of a friend or neighbor.

Immature, non-coital sexual gratification in the form of fondling, being fondled, exposure of genitals, or voyeurism, is the signature behavior of the classic pedophile. These acts mirror the perpetrator's mental and emotional state of arrested psychosexual development which has never gone beyond the prepubertal stage, or a case of regression or return to this immature stage due to certain stresses in adult life, or a modification of the sexual drive in old age. Overt acts of violence and sexual deviancy against young children are rare.

In terms of treatment for this class of sex offenders, contrary to what the Catholic or popular secular media would have you believe, heterosexual pedophilia is treatable with a good success rate especially in cases involving first time offenders of any age, and "situational" incidents related to traumatic familial events.

This is not the case, however, with homosexual pederasts.

At this point, Holy Father, I suggest you pay close attention to how pedophilia differs from pederasty so that in the future you will not confuse the two terms or use them interchangeably. I believe this information will also contribute to your better understanding of the complex issues surrounding clerical sex abuse case in the Church today. God knows we need it.

Pederasts – A Different and More Dangerous Breed of Sexual Offender

In sharp contrast to the clinical profile of the heterosexual pedophile, that of the homosexual pederast who is fixated on hunting young boys and young men is more grave due to the increased violent nature, timing, and magnitude of pederastic acts.

The peak age for male victims of pederasts is between 12 and 15 years of age, that is, homosexual predators of young boys start just about where heterosexual pedophiles leave off.

In addition, the number of victims usually increases right through puberty giving the pederast a wider age of victims than the heterosexual child molester. That is to say, homosexual sex offenders of minor children have a larger number of victims than do heterosexual pedophiles. In some pederast cases reviewed by this researcher and author the numbers of victims of a single pederast ran into the hundreds and in rare cases, more than a thousand.

In addition to claiming more victims, the nature of the abuse by the homosexual predator is more aggressive, orgasmic and dangerous than that of the heterosexual pedophile, that is pederastic acts committed against young boys and young men mimic adult homosexual behaviors and frequently include oral-genital contact (fellatio), masturbation, frottage, and sodomy.

It is important for the layman as well as Church leaders like yourself, to remember that the sexual acts of homosexual pederasts perpetrated against their adolescent male victims are by definition "deviant" acts. Thus the overt sexual abuse of a young boy about to enter puberty or well into puberty by an adult homosexual often raises serious gender identification problems for the victim and seriously interferes with his normal psychosexual development. When that adult homosexual predator is a Catholic priest, or bishop or cardinal, the spiritual and moral devastation upon abuse victims is even more grievous.

In most cases, the homosexual pederast has no strong emotional bond to his young victims, as was the case, I presume, with Msgr. Ricca's reported late evening elevator tryst with a young male prostitute at the Vatican nunciature in Uruguay in August 2001. [13] Thus, depersonalization remains the sine qua non of pederasty as with adult homosexual relations A primary source of potential victims is a place where the boys are – all-boy organizations such as scouting, church youth groups and camps, and minor seminaries.

Statistically speaking, while there are more heterosexual pedophiles in the general community, homosexual pederasts account for a greater percentage of sexual offenses against minors. When one considers the fact that homosexuals, whatever the age of partner preference, represent a very small minority of the general population, it is clear that they are substantially overrepresented in criminal cases involving minors. Further, the sexual offense rate of pederasts are likely to be underestimated as boys are less likely to report incidents of sexual abuse, including repeated and violent assaults over a long period of time, than young girls.

With regard to pederasty in the Catholic Church, the aging factor may account for the high incidence of arrests of older priests and religious accused and convicted of sexually soliciting and abusing underage boys. In these cases, the young and middle age homosexual priest or religious of yesterday, and the predatory clerical pederast of today may be one and the same person, not two distinct classes of deviants.

Finally, we come to one of the critical issues involved in cases of pederasty, both clerical and secular – that of the successful treatment for this class of sex offender. Here the prognosis for the complete rehabilitation of the homosexual pederast is very, very poor. As a group, homosexual pederasts claim the highest rate of recidivism and are among the most difficult types of sex offenders to successfully treat.

All of this news, of course, regarding the intimate relationship between homosexuality and pederasty, is not good news for the secular Homosexual Collective, which continues to stridently disavow any connection between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minor boys.

Nor is it good news for the La Lobby Gay which exists in the post-Conciliar Church, and like its secular counterpart, has attempted to mask the nature and extent of pederasty in clerical ranks.

I ask you, Holy Father, not to be part of this ongoing dangerous charade. The sooner you correctly identify pederasty, and its handmaiden, homosexuality, as major factors in the clerical sexual abuse of minors as well as the corruption and disintegration of the Catholic priesthood and religious life, the sooner you will become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

The Post-Conciliar Church's

Dalliance With the Homosexual Collective


Throughout her 2000 year history, Holy Mother Church has always viewed widespread sodomy in its clerical ranks and hierarchy as a clear and present danger to the Faith and the flock. Unfortunately, the post-Conciliar Church no longer upholds or teaches and preaches this Truth.

We often hear it said that "Modern Man has lost his sense of sin." I would add that "Modern Man has also lost his sense of the horror of perversion." And nowhere is this latter condemnation more in evidence than in the post-Conciliar Church's sympathetic treatment of not only the individual habituated and unrepentant practitioner of the unnatural vice, but of the Homosexual Collective, both within and without the Church.

If one carefully examines the documents dealing with the issues of homosexuality and pederasty following the close of the Second Vatican Council it is clear that the Holy See and many National Episcopal Conferences, especially the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference have been carrying on a unabashedly open dalliance with the Homosexual Collective for nearly 40 years. [14]

Persona Humana – Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on December 29, 1975, under the reign of Paul VI, himself a casualty of the unnatural vice and a major player in the paradigm shift in the Church in favor of homosexuality, gave the Homosexual Collective its first major victory in the post-Conciliar Church. [15] By making a fictitious comparison between "transitory or at least not incurable homosexual tendencies" and homosexuality resulting from "some kind innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to incurable," Vatican authorities gave credence to the well-known agitprop slogan, "homosexuals are born that way." [16]

By the time the CDF got around to attempting to rectify the error some eleven years later, in "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of the Homosexual Persons," the Homosexual Collective had already milked the propaganda cow dry. [17]

Unfortunately, the 1986 document also had major problems of its own beginning with its ill-founded use of the term "homosexual person." The truth is that there is no such creature as a "homosexual person." God did not create "homosexual persons," anymore than He created "theft persons" or "sadomasochist persons."

God created man in His likeness and image with a rational mind and immortal soul. He gave man an Order of Being and a free will by which man chooses to live his life according to that Order or rejects that Order and in the fashion of the Gnostic attempts to create his own reality. The post-Conciliar Church took a wrong turn in the road when it adopted the concept of the "homosexual person" and this error needs to be corrected, the sooner the better. And you should refrain from making any further reference to "gay persons." [18]

The effect of all this pandering by the Church to the forces of organized perversion is that the average Catholic boy and girl, man and woman, lay or religious, has been systematically stripped of the natural and supernatural revulsion that the normal person feels when confronted with sexual perversion.

Coupled with 12 years of pro-homosexual sex instruction in Catholic schools and CCD classes, few adult Catholics have been able to withstand the onslaught of the enemies of the Faith and purveyors of perversion.

The Plague of "Gay Parishes" and

"Gay Ministries"


Along the same lines, isn't it about time that you order the closing down and exorcizing of so-called "Catholic gay parishes" and the termination of "Catholic gay ministries" supported by Episcopal Conferences which are found in almost every major diocese in the United States, including the notorious Holy Redeemer Parish in San Francisco and St. Xavier Parish in Manhattan? These once thriving Catholic ethnic parishes have been transformed into "gay parishes" which cater to the perverted whims and agenda of La Lobby Gay without so much as a peep from the U.S. Apostolic Delegate in Washington, D.C. or the CDF. Decades of complaints from the Catholic faithful begging Rome to close down these moral sewers have been met with systematic silence.

You frequently talk about the need for social justice and ministries for the poor and disenfranchised, but I have yet to see the Holy See promote a special ministry of compassion and healing to the victims of clerical sexual abuse and their families, who are routinely treated as "enemies" of the Church instead of beloved members of the parish family who have been victimized by clerical miscreants in the name of God.

The Holy See has spent a great deal of time, money, ink and paper urging that homosexuals not be "marginalized" but rather fully integrated into the Catholic parish and community. I feel compelled to draw your attention, Holy Father, to the fact that the acronym for the "Gay Liberation Movement," GLM, has been readily expanding to include a host of other sexually deviant initiatives including lesbianism (GLLM), bisexuality (GLBLM), transgenderism and transexuality (GLBTTLM), and sadomasochism (GLBTTSMLM) with advocates of pedophilia, pederasty, polyamory and bestiality waiting anxiously for their debut on the liberation scene.

How far does the Church intend to extend its invitation to these deviant elements in our society without facing charges of endangering the faith and morals of the Catholic laity, especially Catholic youth?

Have you forgotten the warning of English poet, Alexander Pope?
    Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
    As to be hated needs but to be seen;
    Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
    We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
The Catholic Church must give neither succor nor quarter to the Homosexual Collective which views any concession by the Church as a sign or weakness and a waving of the white flag of surrender.

The truth is that La Lobby Gay represents an anti-culture, a form of psychosocial disruption, and a pathological segment of the social body, and it needs to be challenged and driven back underground. Christ did not "dialogue" with demons. He expelled them.

And let's not hear of any arguments from you that such action is uncharitable or impossible. It is neither. A public campaign supported by the Holy See and directed at eliminating and/or restraining the forces of organized perversion is simply an indication that civilized man has finally woken up from his stupor and is reclaiming his moral inheritance for himself, his posterity and the common good. I, for one, would be very happy if you would do your duty and join him.

Organized Crime and the Homosexual Collective

All of the above thoughts swirled in my head when I read your comments to journalist Ilze Scamparini in which you attempted to justify your appointment ad interim of Monsignor Ricca, a notorious clerical sodomite (your assurances of his innocence not withstanding), to the high office of Prelate of the Institute for Religious Works (Vatican Bank).

Your charge that journalists deliberately look for "sins of youth," is hardly applicable to the Ricca Case. After all, the diplomatic bugger was in his early 40s when he and his Swiss Army paramour, Patrick Haari, were carrying on their affair in the Uruguayan nunciature.

Although you are correct in stating that sodomy is no longer a "crime," having been legalized in most Western nations, nevertheless, you failed to reiterate the axiom that what is "legal" is not necessarily "moral."

Further, you fail to recognize that the contemporary Homosexual Movement remains as tightly bound today, as it has for centuries, to the criminal underworld.

The harsh reality is that urban "gay" life around the world, including the secret, lives of homosexual deacons, priests, religious and members of the Catholic hierarchy, is intimately tied to Organized Crime by way of illegal drugs, pornography, male prostitution, blackmail, rape, murder, homicides and suicides.

Homosexuality and the Drug Connection

Polydrug use is the universal norm among the urban homosexual population. Alcohol, a depressant, is the traditionally number one drug of choice, followed by chemical inhalants or "poppers" to enhance sexual performance, and a litany of "recreational drugs" including cocaine, heroin, mescaline, hashish, methadone, crystal methamphetamine, and phencyclidine, to name a few.

Official Catholic Church and police records of clerical abuse cases involving minors, seminarians, and vulnerable adults confirm that predator homosexuals and pederasts routinely ply their victims with alcohol and drugs to loosen their moral inhabitations and their internal anal sphincter muscle in preparation for sodomy.

Habituated drug use compounds the overall health problems that plague sodomites including venereal diseases, oral, penal, and rectal disorders, Hepatitis A, B, and C and HIV/AIDS.

Habituated sodomites including those wearing a clerical collar are walking Typhoid Marys.

Homosexuality and Pornography

As with illicit drugs, the use of homosexual pornography is a normalized feature of "gay" life and death.

As almost all homosexuals, including priests and religious caught up in the vice, are habituated masturbators, "meatrack" GMporn has become an indispensable tool for autoerotic use, and the inducement of same-sex masturbatory fantasies. [19]

The commercial production of GMporn with its emphasis on leather/sadomasochist/bondage/discipline genre and the glorification and romanticizing of male rape is closely controlled by the criminal underworld.

It should have come as no surprise then, that when the authorities from the Vatican's nunciature in Uruguay finally confiscated and emptied the luggage Msgr. Ricca's partner, Patrick Haari, left behind, one of the suitcases was filled with porn and condoms.

Pornography is also widely used by pederasts, including clerical pederasts to desensitize and seduce young boys and arouse their sexual curiosity and excitement.

GMporn contributes to the deconstruction of heterosexual norms, and has played a major role in the transformation of contemporary mores and practices and the corruption of society, the family, and the individual in the unrestricted pursuit of pleasure. The use and promotion of pornography, therefore, is never a victimless crime.

Homosexuality and Male Prostitution

Because of the high premium homosexual clients and the Homosexual Collective place upon youth, good looks, and ample sexual endowment, the life of the "male hustler" is relatively short. As male prostitutes usually work alone, without pimps or middlemen, their connection to Organized Crime is largely through the drug and porn trade.

Two common denominators found in the background of young male prostitutes are a pattern of family disruption including negative parental relationships, emotional deprivation, alcoholism, drug use, violence, and poverty, and a pattern of institutionalized care in orphanages and foster-care facilities. With poor educational backgrounds and no marketable employment skills, they soon find themselves turning to prostitution as a means of earning quick money in order to survive on the streets. [20]

Thus, same-sex prostitution today, remains what it has always been, a form of human exploitation where young boys and young men sexually service older men. The rule that the older the client, the younger his partner of choice, has been borne out by decades of statistics on patterns of clerical pederasty in the Catholic Church..

Homosexuality and Domestic Violence,

In-house Murder, and Homicide


Although Vatican documents, papal statements, and diocesan articles routinely stress the merits of "hate crime legislation" to protect homosexuals from outside violence, Catholics are rarely, if ever, informed that domestic acts of violence including assault, rape, attempted murder and homicide between homosexual partners, friends and acquaintances at all socioeconomic levels, are the most common form of violence within the "gay community."

The current epidemic of domestic battering and psychological abuse between partnered male homosexuals and between lesbians can be attributed to a number of factors including substance abuse, conflicts over "gender responsibilities," and the homosexual's penchant for "injustice collecting," and irrational jealousies.

The violence, perversity and "overkill" that accompany male homosexual homicides reflect the reality that both parties involved in the altercation are biologically engineered sexual aggressors.

Suicide, Self-inflicted Violence, and Blackmail

Nationwide statistics and relevant data concerning the suicide rate among homosexual males are not available, although there have been a number of academic studies on the subject with widely divergent views and conclusions.

From these limited studies we do know that suicide among white male homosexuals is a serious problem in the urban "gay community" and that suicides in this select population are related to high risk and delinquent behaviors including substance abuse, and the presence of mental, physical and emotional illnesses including clinical depression associated with homosexual practices, behaviors and relationships.

With the growth of the Homosexual Collective in the diocesan priesthood and religious life, has come the unpublicized high rate of suicide among homosexual clerics especially those accused and/or convicted of pederastic crimes. Also, unpublicized by Church officials is the incredibly high rate of suicides found among the innocent victims of clerical sexual abuse.

The issue of blackmail especially among men of wealth and influence including high-ranking members of the Catholic hierarchy has been an ongoing problem that predates the Second Vatican Council.

Wherever sexual vice rears its ugly head, the individual blackmailer as well as Organized Crime and agents of International Intelligence Services are never far behind. [21]

Blasphemy and Sacrilege

Finally, we come to what were once held to be crimes by the Catholic Church, but which today are hardly ever mentioned in connection with the Homosexual Collective by Catholic Church leaders.

They are the grave sins of blasphemy and sacrilege committed by homosexual and pederast priests, religious, and members of the hierarchy as well as the Homosexual Collective. [22]

One of the noticeable features of religious references found in contemporary GMporn and widely circulated "gay" magazines and books, is their irreligious scatological and even blasphemous content.

Since the early 1970s, outright blasphemies against Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, including references to Jesus as an active sodomite and a lover of Lazarus, have been increasing dramatically within the Homosexual Collective.

Similarly, sacrilege, in the form of acts of sodomy and oral copulation committed on and about the sacred altar have been recorded in a number of criminal cases involving Catholic priests and religious here in the United States.

In late July 2010, the Italian magazine Panorama ran an undercover story on the double life of three bona fied "gay" priests, two Italians and a Frenchman. One of the priests donned a cassock to have sex (secretly filmed) with the magazine reporter's "gay" accomplice, and later said Mass for the reporter. [23] There was no comment from either the Italian Bishops Conference or the Vatican.

Ask yourself Holy Father how often are these grave sins committed by homosexual priests, religious and prelates on a daily basis throughout the world. Don't you feel any sense of outrage? Have you ever made an act of public reparation to atone for these offenses against Almighty God? If not, why not?

It involves no stretch of the imagination to come to the sober and bitter conclusion, that if you, as the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, do not take the lead in enforcing an absolute ban on candidates for religious life with homosexual and pederastic tendencies in seminaries, the priesthood and religious orders, and if you do not enforce the rule of chastity for priests, religious, and members of the hierarchy afflicted by this vice as well as philandering heterosexual priests who are also making a mockery of their vows, then the Catholic priesthood and religious life will continue to disintegrate and become dens of iniquity.

But how can you undertake such an arduous task without first knowing all the facts concerning the extent to which the Homosexual Collective with its pederast contingent of clerics has already successfully colonized the Catholic priesthood, religious life, and hierarchy?

It is strange that despite more than three decades of clerical sexual abuse scandals in the Church, most linked to pederasty, neither you nor any of your post-Conciliar predecessors have ever made any attempt to investigate the extent and consequences of the dual plague of homosexuality and pederasty on the Catholic diocesan priesthood and religious life, and on the life of the Catholic laity? With thousands of convicted clerical abusers, and hundreds of thousands of victims, and billions paid out in legal and reparation fees world-wide, isn't it time that such an investigation were instituted?

A Papal Commission of Inquiry into

Homosexuality and Pederasty in the Catholic Church


I understand that there are many ways by which such an investigation by the Holy See could be carried out, but given the dismal track record of legal maneuvering and cover-ups that characterize most National Episcopal Conferences' handling of clerical abuse cases I would propose the creation of an independent Papal Commission of Inquiry into Homosexuality and Pederasty.

Described in broad strokes, such a Commission should be directed by a technically competent and morally straight Catholic layman endowed with broad investigative and discretionary powers by you, Holy Father, with full access to Church files containing the diocesan and religious order records of deacons, seminarians, priests, religious and members of the hierarchy who have engaged in homosexual conduct, and/or perpetrated acts of pederasty over the last 50 years. The Director's staff would include well-seasoned investigators of clerical and lay legal professionals, historians, linguists, and statisticians.

The Commission at Large should consist of specialists in fields related to the inquiry including medical, psychiatric, and law enforcement personnel with whom the Director could meet on an as needed basis. A separate group of Commission Advisors with direct connection to the inquiry, most especially, adult former male victims of clerical sexual predators, ought to round out the Commission.

When the Final Report of the Commission is completed, it should be made available to dioceses and religious orders throughout the world as well as Catholic lay groups and individuals.

This is how you spell T-R-A-N-S-P-A-R-E-N-C-Y.

Such a monumental undertaking covering a half-century of homosexuality and pederastic abuse in the Catholic Church would no doubt be a very expensive and time consuming venture. But I would respectfully suggest to you, that it would better than the alternative of having the Catholic laity continue to shell out billions of hard earned dollars to cover the legal and restitution costs of clerical homosexual and pederast cases in their dioceses, while suffering the loss of their parishes and parochial schools in the process.

The opening up of these secret archives and files for study and evaluation by competent personnel will be the equivalent of the amputation of a gangrenous limb – painful but therapeutic and life-saving for the Catholic Church.

Benefits to be Accrued by the Catholic Laity

From the Establishment of Such a Commission


Of what benefit would the findings and recommendations of a Papal Commission of Inquiry on Homosexuality and Pederasty be to the Catholic laity? Let me name just two ways by which such a Commission could be a source of enlightenment for the generally naive and ill-informed Catholic population sitting in the pews.

First, the Commission findings would provide the Catholic laity with a genuine understanding of the multitude of problems associated with the homosexualization of the diocesan priesthood, religious life, and hierarchy in the Church.

Such an understanding is virtually non-existent among Catholic adults today due largely to the Catholic hierarchy's failure to provide them with honest answers as to the nature and consequences of a homosexualized clergy and hierarchy including an increase of pederastic crimes with all the disastrous physical, emotional and spiritual repercussions these crimes bring upon innocent victims and their families.

Among the legal questions that such a Commission could help answer is to what extent have clerical sex abusers of minors been subject to civil law and punishment and what percentage of these cases were first reported to law enforcement agencies by Church authorities? Also, how many perpetrators of sexual crimes have escaped reporting and/or criminal trials due to statute of limitation laws?

By its willingness to answer these hard questions based on actual case studies of clerical sex abuse, the Papal Commission could began the arduous task of helping to restore confidence in the Church, especially among those Catholics who have left the Church in despair and disgust over clerical sex abuse crimes and their cover-up by the hierarchy and the Vatican.

Benefits to the Diocesan Priesthood and

Religious Orders


One could logically expect that the findings and recommendations of the Papal Commission of Inquiry into Homosexuality and Pederasty would greatly improve the vetting process of candidates to the religious life, although there will probably never be any substitute for the personal discernment and evaluation of a candidate by a truly holy and astute religious superior or spiritual director.

Assembled data on the numbers and other pertinent data of priests and religious laicized world-wide for homosexual or pederastic crimes alone, would probably be enough to sober up any bishop, cardinal, or pope, who has managed to retain even a modicum of the Faith and is not himself caught up in the vice of homosexuality.

The same is true with the collection and evaluation of data on the consequences of homosexuality and pederasty on the priesthood and religious life including the suicide rates of clerical homosexuals and pederasts; the rate of suicides among the victims of clerical sexual abuse; data on illicit drug use; data on histories of contact with male prostitutes; data on addiction to pornography; data on numbers of homosexual priests and religious who have contracted AIDS and other venereal diseases; and numbers and categories of cases involving violence, murders, blackmail and contact with Organized Crime.

To date, there have been no publicized follow-up studies on the recidivism rate of convicted clerical pederasts who have been laicized. Why not? What actions has the Church taken to keep law enforcement officials appraised of the potential dangers posed by these sexual predators once they are released upon society by their bishop or religious superior?

This information gap needs to be filled. Such a Commission as I have proposed with access to Vatican archives and records on convicted clerical predators could accomplish this task.

The Commission could certainly shed some light on an objective evaluation of "treatment centers," operated by church and secular agencies to which thousands of homosexual and pederast clerics have been assigned for "reorientation" and "rehabilitation," at a cost of hundred of millions of dollars.

The Commission might also provide the answers to heretofore unanswered questions related to the role of minor seminaries in the early sexual seduction of young candidates for the priesthood by predatory teachers and superiors. Such conditions have been know to produce well-documented, multi-generational lines of ambitious clerics whose homosexuality and common history have become their passports to clerical advancement in their respective dioceses and in Rome.

Concluding Thoughts

It might surprise you Holy Father, that until quite recently, I still hoped that despite your obvious sympathy for the Homosexual Collective, you nevertheless might find some merit in the concept of a Papal Commission of Inquiry into Homosexuality and Pederasty which I have briefly described in this Open Letter.

Unfortunately, that glimmer of hope was wiped out when by chance a close friend of mine, Mariaelene Stuart, a multi-lingual journalist and creator of the exquisite blog, Roman Catholic World, sent me a copy of an interview you gave to Rome reporter Andrea Tornielli of the Vatican Insider in February 2012 while you were still Archbishop of Buenos Aires. [24]

In an interview titled "Careerism and vanity: Sins of the Church," Tornielli's last question to you was: Can you tell us how the Roman Curia is perceived from the outside?

And you, Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio, replied:
    I see it as a body that gives service, a body that helps me and serves me. Sometimes negative news does come out, but it is often exaggerated and manipulated to spread scandal. Journalists sometimes risk becoming ill from coprophilia and thus fomenting coprophagia: which is a sin that taints all men and women, that is, the tendency to focus on the negative rather than the positive aspects. The Roman Curia has its down sides, but I think that too much emphasis is placed on its negative aspects and not enough on the holiness of the numerous consecrated and lay people who work in it.
Now the term "coprophilia" which you used spontaneously in the interview refers to a sexual perversion (fetish) by which a person derives sexual excitement from the presence of feces. The term "coprophagia" pertains to the actual act of eating excrement. Both paraphilias are commonly associated with homosexual behavior and are a regular feature of homosexual pornography.

That a bishop should so glibly refer to such disgusting and perverted practices in a public interview clearly indicates to me that you are not unschooled in the ways and dangers of sexual perversion, and hence, have no real need for me to instruct you on the perversity of homosexual behaviors, nor on the grave necessity of combating the Homosexual Collective and other forces of organized perversion.

And so it is with great sorrow that I bring this Open Letter to a close.

Whether or not it will have any salutary effect upon your pontificate, especially as regards the establishment of a Papal Commission of Inquiry into Homosexuality and Pederasty, only time will tell.

But then again, miracles happen every day and the Holy Ghost moves as He Wills.

On this point, at least, we can both agree.
    Sincerely in Christ,

    Randy Engel

    Randy Engel, author

    The Rite of Sodomy – Homosexuality in the Roman Catholic Church

    Box 356, Export, PA. U.S.A. 15632

    Phone: 724–327 – 8878
NOTES:

[1]  The full text of the July 28, 2013 papal press conference is available at http://themoynihanletters.com/from-the-desk-of/letter-80-popes-press-conference-commentary.


[3]  Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy – Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church (Export, PA: New Engel Publishing, 2006), p. 478.

[4]  Maria Cristina Carratù, "Gay Catholics Write to Pope Francis Who Responds With Blessing,"La Repubblica, October 8, 2013 at http://kairosfirenze.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/gay-catholics-write-to-pope-francis-who-responds-with-blessing/.

[5]  Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, xxvi-xxvii.

[6]  Ibid., p. 71.

[7]  See http://protectthepope.com/?p=8071, "The Quest homosexual dissent group considers that "this shift of language suggests empathy and engagement."

[8]  Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, p. 443.

[9]  Ibid., p. 40.

[10]  Ibid., pp. 48-59. See also Owen J. Blum, O.F.M., Peter Damian, Letters 31-60, part of the Fathers of the Church – Medieval Continuation (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 1990. For additional details see Randy Engel's article on Saint Peter Damian at http://www.newengelpublishing.com/products/Book-of-Gomorrah.html.

[11]  Careful Selection And Training Of Candidates For The States Of Perfection And Sacred Orders at http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/teach/ordersentry.htm. The document was distributed to the Superiors of Religious Communities, Societies without vows, and Secular Institutes on February 2, 1961.

[12]  See J.W. Mohr, R.E. Turner, M.B. Jerry, Pedophilia and Exhibitionism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964). To the extent that the 2004 John Jay Report on Clerical Sex Abuse in the Catholic Church, commissioned and paid for by the USCCB, touches upon the issue of pederasty and pedophilia, none of the conclusions reached by the authors of this meritorious work have found to be incorrect. On the contrary, the patterns for both the heterosexual pedophile and the homosexual pederast simply confirm the findings of the Toronto study conducted almost 40 years earlier.

[13]  See http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350561?eng=y. Sandro Magister, "The Gay lobby." l'Espresso, July 18, 2013.

[14]  Engel, pp. 549-614. An example of AmChurch documents which favor the Homosexual Collective includes To Live in Christ Jesus (NCCB, 1976). The NCCB/USCC has been consolidated and renamed the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

[15]  Full text at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19751229_persona-humana_en.html. For references related to Paul VI and the homosexual vice see Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 1129-1167.

[16]  Engel, pp. 387-389.

[17]  Full text at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html.

[18]  A later document titled "Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders" was issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education on November 4, 2005. It was approved by Pope Benedict XVI on August 31, 2005. The letter purports to bar homosexuals from admission to seminaries in all Catholic dioceses and religious orders, but the qualifying statements provide enough loopholes to drive a truck through. Further there are no penalties attached to any proven violation of the ban by a bishop or religious superior. The result has been that many dioceses and religious orders continue to recruit and accept homosexual candidates to the seminary and ordain homosexuals to Holy Orders.

[19]  For a discussion of GM porn see Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 415-418.

[20]  Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 418-426.

[21]  For a classic study of blackmail and homosexuality among the British elite conducted by the KGB during the 20th century see Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 295-363.

[22]  Sacrilege is the violation of sacred persons, places and things set aside for the worship of God. Blasphemy is primarily a sin of the tongue (also heart, and action). It is an insulting display of contempt in words or actions against God.



© Randy Engel