Wednesday, February 20, 2019
“You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.” —Walker Percy, an American Catholic writer
Tomorrow
CNS photo/Paul Haring
Tomorrow the long-awaited Vatican “summit” on the sexual abuse of children in the Church begins.
For four days, February 21, 22, 23 and 24, the heads of all the world’s bishops’ conferences will meet with Pope Francis, many cardinals and many Vatican officials to discuss this tragic corruption inside of the Church.
The Church and the world are watching to see how our Church, and Pope Francis, face this problem.
This meeting will be, in a sense, the “final act” of the 6th year of Pope Francis’ pontificate (the 7th year of his papacy will begin in mid-March 2019 — Francis was elected on March 13, 2013, and he inaugurated his papacy six days later, on March 19, 2013).
These past few days have been filled with:
—preliminary decisions (the exemplary “de-frocking” of former archbishop and cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 88, now to be referred to simply as “Mr. McCarrick”)
—preliminary scandalous books (Sodom: In the Closet of the Vatican, by French self-described homosexual activist Frederic Martel, a book that is in many ways a peculiar “curtain-raiser” for this week’s meeting)
—preliminary Vatican and other press conferences to “set the agenda” and “manage expectations”
—preliminary interviews of victims about what they expect and hope for from the meeting
—preliminary denunciations from critics of Rome’s decision to limit the discussion to the abuse of children, and to leave out of the proceedings the “other question” of an apparently very widespread acceptance, for decades, of active homosexuality in the Catholic priesthood.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of these days has been a new willingness of Francis’ critics to criticize him directly, openly, almost defiantly.
Most striking in this regard has been the new tone from German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller.
Mueller, a tall, physically imposing man — he seems to be the tallest of all of the cardinals — has up until recently been “meek and mild”… the soul of “sweet reason.”
But just in recent days, Mueller has begun to speak with a new voice.
There is a new toughness in his talk, especially regarding the circle of advisors around Pope Francis. (You will be able to see this toughness in the interview with Mueller published below.)
This seems all the more significant since Mueller is arguably the cardinal among all of the cardinals who is intellectually closest to Emeritus Pope Benedict, 91 (Mueller is the general editor of Benedict’s collected works — this means Benedict has put his entire life’s work into Mueller’s hands.)
Yet, Mueller is not alone.
Other critics of Pope Francis — including the German cardinal Walter Brandmueller and the American cardinal Raymond Burke — have begun to speak out with new vigor (Burke has just established a new website).
Mueller, Brandmueller, Burke, and others, have taken to criticizing “the circle around the Pope” for “misleading” the pontiff, and to calling on Francis to take decisive action to end the “confusion” they say is now widespread in the Church. (See text at end below)
All of this culminated today in a striking “silent protest” in Rome’s Piazza San Silvestro (St. Silvester was Pope at the time of Constantine, in the early 300s) with 100 Catholics from around the world simply standing in silence to “break down the wall of silence created by the Church authorities.” (You can see a picture of the protest in the link to an article about it published below, Article #3)
So, here we are.
Three things seem important to keep in mind:
1) The abuse of children, an abomination, must be prevented, and, when not prevented, punished.
But the entire modern world, our entire post-Christian culture, this entire “deranged age,” as novelist Walker Percy called it, is abusive toward the innocence of children, with its confusing messages, its almost limitless internet pornography, its flawed “sexual education” programs.
To help defend innocent children from abuse of all types requires a strong Christian presence and witness.
The weakening of the Church, the dismantling of the Church under secular pressures, would leave millions upon millions of children with less defense against such abuses.
The sins of men and women in the Church do not mean the message and “Good News” of the Church — of Christ — have failed or should be abandoned. On the contrary… the message is more important than ever.
2) The “world” and the “Prince” of this world have always sought to possess, control, condition or even to eliminate the Church (the great persecutions); today’s conflicts risk breaking the unity of Catholics, diminishing the strength of the Church. This is a danger.
We must strive to retain our unity, and reaffirm it.
3) Pope Francis has often spoke of the modern danger of “ideological colonization”; that is, of the pervasive, almost irresistible power of post-Christian and anti-Christian “ideologies” which propagate an ambiguous, de-sacralizing vision of man and are antagonistic to and derisive of the traditional Christian teaching that men and women are made “in the image and likeness of God.” The deep source of our dignity…
So Pope Francis has encouraged us to stand strong against such ideologies. He has been in this courageous and in many ways exemplary.
Therefore, what seems to be needed now is a clear, entirely unambiguous re-statement of these traditional beliefs — what we believe is the nature and destiny of men and women (“what a man is and what he should do,” to use Percy’s language) — and this by Francis himself, to overcome the doubts and divisions that threaten his papacy, and the Church.
Below are four articles:
(1) A recent Cardinal Mueller interview, in which he speaks in his new “tough” tone
(2) A February 16 Catholic News Agency article by American writer Ed Condon wrapping up the McCarrick case — and noting several open questions that need answering, including the question of… money
(3) An article by Italian Catholic Prof. Roberto de Mattei about the “silent protest” in Rome today
(4) An article about the 500-page book Sodom: In the Closet of the Vatican, written by Italian journalist Maria Antonietta Calabrò
(5) The appeal to the attendees at this week’s meeting released today by Cardinals Burke and Brandmueller
(1) Vatican’s former doctrine chief: Pope is ‘surrounded’ by people who don’t know much theology
By Maike Hickson
February 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – In a new interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Cardinal Gerhard Müller stated that Pope Francis allows himself to be “dependent” upon his counselors who have “base motives.”
He also said that when he was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), he had “the statistically perfect overview” over the clerical sexual abuse cases, pointing out that “far more than 80% of the victims of sexual abuse under 18 were young men in puberty or post-puberty.”
Furthermore, Cardinal Müller responded to the recent harsh criticism coming from Cardinal Walter Kasper over his Manifesto of Faith, calling the criticism a “commissioned work.”
Speaking to Walter Mayr of Der Spiegel (16 February edition), Cardinal Müller criticized Pope Francis, his pontificate, and especially his leadership and personnel policy. When Mayr said to Müller that “you do not only criticize the papal teaching, but also the leadership of the Vatican,” and asked, “what goes wrong?”
Cardinal Müller responded: “For example the arbitrary handling of personnel. There is no dismissal protection, no staff council. One can be dismissed here, without receiving any reasons, as it happened with three of my employees [at the CDF]. I also told the Pope that I find this impossible.”
Further commenting on the Pope, Müller added: “Unfortunately, he is surrounded by people who have little understanding of theology and of the Church’s social teaching, but who do not wish to abandon the century-old mentality of a courtier.”
Further commenting on these courtiers, whom he called “courtesans,” the German cardinal added that they “take every [papal] word, every comment made in passing – even if it be issued in an interview – as sacrosanct. As if God Himself had spoken.”
Here, Cardinal Müller made it clear that “that, which the Pope says as a private person, has not the slightest thing to do with infallibility in questions of the Faith.” Anybody who questions something the pope did or said is the “accused” by the courtesans of “plotting against the Pope.”
Müller added that “persons with the highest achievements for the Church” are not spared from such accusations. “This is how one polarizes, instead of contributing to the unity in the truth,” he said.
The German prelate made it clear that when Pope Francis speaks about “this or that event in the world, it has just the same value as the judgment of any citizen who expresses his opinion.” “In worldly matters,” he added, “reticence would be desired.” The Church’s authority is needed there, he explained, “where it is about the moral dimension in politics, economy, and environmental questions.”
When asked why he was dismissed as the prefect of the CDF in 2017, Cardinal Müller responded that there were people in the circles around the Pope – “among others some Argentine counselors” – “who had launched for quite some time, resentments against the Congregation for the Faith and against me as the Prefect. After all, one knew what I stood for, and that Pope Benedict XVI had appointed me.”
Here, Cardinal Müller was likely referring to Archbishop Manuel Fernandez who, already in 2015, publicly criticized Cardinal Müller (see here a report on the controversy between these two prelates).
“Someone was obviously not content with my position – that is to say, we are not to place ourselves in contradiction to Holy Scripture and to essential statements of the Church’s Tradition, but, rather, we are to serve them,” Müller stated. When asked whether the Pope is a heretic, the cardinal responded: “No. This Pope is orthodox.” “But,” he added, “it is his task to unify the Church in the truth, and it would be dangerous if he gave into the temptation to play that group that vaunts its progressivism against the rest of the Church.”
Further criticizing the Pope’s style of governance, Müller stated that “it also cannot be that the Universal Church is being led according to the rules of the Jesuit Order. The Pope – in this case, Pope Francis – is not to the Church that what a Jesuit General Superior is to his provincials or to individual priests.” Further explaining his thought, the cardinal said that everybody is formed by one’s own life experience, but that such experience can be “a little bit one-sided.” To counter this one-sidedness, he added, one would need various counselors, for example from “the College of Cardinals and the theologians and bishops of the world.”
Asked whether Pope Francis has made himself too dependent upon his counselors, Cardinal Müller responded: “He makes himself dependent upon informers [“Zuträger”] and their often base motives, when he allows himself to be involved in personnel decisions concerning employees, all of whom he cannot know personally. Those three [employees] from my Congregation – who were very competent, especially in questions of sexual abuse – were fired without speaking one word with them.” He asked: “What does this do to young people who did not commit any fault and who always served the Church and the Pope loyally?”
Asked about his recent Manifesto of Faith and whether this is not a “late vengeance” against the Pope, Cardinal Müller answered: “True Catholics only wish a successful pontificate, also of Pope Francis, and they support him in every respect. For that, one has to put aside personal things.”
When speaking about the upcoming 21-24 February Sexual Abuse Summit in Rome, Cardinal Müller once more pointed to the homosexual factor in the clerical sex abuse crisis that he said is being ignored.
“In the Congregation for the Faith, we had the statistically perfect overview. Far more than 80% of the victims of sexual abuse under 18 years of age were young men in puberty or post-puberty. But at the upcoming Abuse Summit starting Thursday, these data are not to play any role, which is unreasonable,” he said. He made it once more clear that a priest “who cannot control himself, is not fit for the priesthood.”
For Cardinal Müller, Cardinal Kasper’s recent critique of his Manifesto of Faith and his comparing Müller with Martin Luther, as LifeSiteNews reported, is a “commissioned work,” in which ecclesial power politics was victorious over theology.”
“Kasper calls the foundations of the Catholic Faith, which have been presented in the Catechism of our Church by Pope John Paul II, as ‘half-truths’; thereby, he [Kasper] gives us a riddle that he alone can solve, perhaps because he saw that his sovereignty of interpretation concerning Pope Francis challenged, according to the motto: ‘This is my Pope.’” Further commenting on his own Manifesto of Faith, Müller made it clear that “my text nearly exclusively made out of quotes from the Creed, Holy Scripture, and the Catholic Catechism.”
Kasper “insinuates that I identify the Antichrist with the Pope. To attribute this to me, only shows that he has read my Manifesto of Faith with the wrong set of glasses.” Müller called Kasper’s claim “the greatest ecumenical joke of the century.” Müller added that he agrees with Luther on one point, namely, that “in principle, and also today, the truth of the Gospels should have priority in the Church over power and politics.”
(2) Analysis: After McCarrick sex abuse verdict, money and power questions remain
By Ed Condon (CNA)
Vatican City, Feb 16, 2019 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Holy See announced Saturday the conviction of Theodore McCarrick on charges of the sexual abuse of minors and adults — aggravated by the abuse of power — and solicitation in the confessional. The administrative penal process imposed a penalty of laicization.
A special congresso of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith imposed the Jan. 11 decision. It was appealed to the Feria IV, the regular meeting of the CDF’s full episcopal membership, who rejected the appeal on Feb. 13. No further appeal is possible.
The final disposition of McCarrick’s case marks the end of a luciferian fall from grace by a man once seen as the leader of the Catholic Church in the United States, and one of the most influential cardinals world-wide.
To go from membership in the college of cardinals in June to being expelled from the clergy altogether in February is unprecedented.
While the intervening months have seemed interminable for many Catholics in the pews, as accusations mounted and details of abuse emerged, the canonical process which declared McCarrick guilty proceeded at lightning speed by Vatican standards.
Now that the McCarrick verdict is announced, just in time for the pope’s looming summit on sexual abuse, many of the former archbishop’s former colleagues are hoping he will exit the news along with the clerical state.
But McCarrick’s laicization answers few of the questions raised by his case, the most pressing of which is how a man with an obviously scandalous track record was able to rise so high in ecclesiastical responsibility.
Since the first allegation against McCarrick was made public in June, a number of accounts have emerged apparently showing that Rome was aware of McCarrick’s behavior, or at least his proclivities, for years.
Former apostolic nuncio to Washington, Cardinal Agostino Cacciavillan, has said that he first heard accounts of McCarrick’s misbehavior in 1994.
Fr. Boniface Ramsey raised the issue of McCarrick’s misconduct with seminarians at the now infamous beach house to Cacciavillan’s successor in 2001, receiving a tacit receipt of the allegations — together with a request for any related information about a Newark priest — from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State in 2006.
In January, CNA broke the news that McCarrick’s eventual successor in Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, had delivered a similar accusation about McCarrick, seminarians, and the New Jersey beach house, to the nuncio in 2004.
During this decade, McCarrick rose seemingly unchecked to become archbishop of the American capital see, a cardinal, and a wielder of enormous diplomatic influence, both within the Church and in the wider world.
Despite repeated calls from across the Church in the United States, and a rather qualified response from Rome, any serious account of how and by whom McCarrick was shielded for so long seems unlikely — at best.
Lurking behind the headlines of sex abuse remains the perennial question concerning murky Vatican affairs: what about the money?
McCarrick’s reputation as a cardinal with ready access to money was undisputed during his time in office, and is believed by many to have tipped the balance in favor of his laicization instead of a life of prayer and penance.
Ordinarily concerns about laicizing a cleric often center on their ability to provide for themselves if they are either infirm or of advanced age – McCarrick is 88.
Sources close to the former cardinal have previously told CNA that while McCarrick declined to draw a salary or a pension from any of the three dioceses he led, he does have access to a private income, unconnected to the Church.
One source close to McCarrick described him as “not without resources,” and that McCarrick received an income from annuities purchased over several years.
The size and sources of McCarrick’s private means remain unclear, especially if, as those close to him claim, he previously declined a salary or pension as a bishop.
Other unanswered questions about McCarrick’s finances concern the Archbishop’s Fund, a charitable fund under his personal control from 2001 until June of last year. CNA has confirmed that McCarrick was able to arrange for other institutions with which he was affiliated to give hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for his “works of charity and other miscellaneous expenses.”
McCarrick gave over control of the fund to the Archdiocese of Washington during June 2018.
While the archdiocese told CNA in August last year that the fund was audited annually and that “no irregularities were ever noticed,” it would not confirm the balance of the fund at the time McCarrick turned over control, how much money had passed through the fund over the years, or where it had gone.
McCarrick was known for both his institutional charitable support and also for more personal acts of generosity.
In September 2018, a former curial official, a cardinal, recalled McCarrick’s habit of doling out large sums, in cash, to senior officials in Rome.
“When he would visit Rome, Cardinal McCarrick was well-known for handing out envelopes of money to different bishops and cardinals around the curia to thank them for their work,” the cardinal told CNA.
“Where these ‘honoraria’ came from or what they were for, exactly, was never clear — but many accepted them anyway.”
Tracking the flow and effects of money in Rome has eluded generations of reforming efforts. Pope Francis began his reign by showing serious signs of reforming intent, setting up the Council for the Economy and the Prefecture for the Economy. But despite early efforts, attempts at financial transparency have met with numerous setbacks, and significant internal resistance.
Meanwhile, in his seismic “testimony” released in August last year, former papal nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano said that McCarrick’s rise was opposed by at least some senior curial figures, including Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re as head of the Congregation for Bishops. But no clear account has emerged of who championed McCarrick’s cause, or if they may have benefited from his largesse.
Beyond the Vatican, questions remain unanswered in Washington, DC, where the State Department has declined to answer questions about the nature and scope of work undertaken by McCarrick on behalf of the United States.
In addition to serving as a flying Vatican envoy to China, McCarrick was invited to serve on the U.S. Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad in 1996. From 1999 to 2001 he was also a member of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.
Former President Bill Clinton once opined that the “litany of countries” visited by McCarrick “sounds more suited to a diplomat than an archbishop,” while praising the former cardinal’s work.
Although McCarrick made several overseas trips on U.S. business, in September 2018 the State Department avoided direct comment on whether his denunciation for sexual abuse had prompted a review of his work.
McCarrick’s own former auxiliaries in Newark and Washington, many of them now far advanced in their own careers, have also remained largely silent. Almost nothing is known, for example, about circumstances around settlements made by several of McCarrick’s former dioceses in New Jersey.
While the Diocese of Metuchen has said that the matter was forwarded at the time to the nuncio in Washington, only a cover letter has been released thus far, and it is not known exactly what level of detail made its way to Rome — or what if any action was taken there and by whom.
Meanwhile, McCarrick’s former auxiliary bishop in Washington, newly-minted camerlengo Cardinal Kevin Farrell, has insisted he never had any suspicion about the man with whom he shared an apartment and described as his mentor.
Whatever friends McCarrick may have acquired to help him along his rise seem to have deserted him as fast as he fell. Those same people, in Rome and the United States, now have a vested interest in seeing McCarrick banished from conversation, just as he is banished from the clerical state.
Some media outlets have tried to construct a narrative focused on “conservative” and “liberal” bishops and argued over which pope or popes could be held most responsible for McCarrick’s rise and fall.
But others have observed what appears to be a significant generational divide. Older bishops seem to experience this crisis through the lens of 2002 and its aftermath, and are therefore concerned about protecting the image and resources of the Church, while many younger prelates seem focused on revealing the full truth about sexual misconduct in the Church, regardless of the consequences, as the only sure remedy to a generational scandal.
The willingness of American bishops to insist on a full reckoning for McCarrick’s rise, as well as fall, could prove a strong indication of the extent to which there has been a change of attitude among the hierarchy about episcopal transparency.
Many are arguing that, with the maximum penalty already imposed on McCarrick, the only people who can now be harmed by further disclosures about his career are those who most want his name, and their links to it, forgotten.
Without answers about how he was able to rise so high and go unchecked for so long, his punishment by Rome appears, to many, to be a sentence without conviction, and McCarrick may be gone, but not forgotten.
At this link, (3) below, you may see a photo of this protest…
(3) De Mattei: The Catholic Resistance has made itself heard
By Prof. Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
February 20, 2019
According to the traditional calendar, the first Tuesday after Septuagesima — this year falling on February 19 — is dedicated to the Agony of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, which is perhaps the most painful [moment] of His Passion, of spiritual not physical suffering, culminating in the sweating of His blood. (Luke 22:43-44).
One of the principal reasons for His sufferings was His vision of unfaithfulness — not only in The Chosen People — but in all those during the centuries to come, who would guide the Church, founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Quae utilitas in sanguine meo? [“What usefulness is there in my blood (that is, in my death)”] (Psalm 29:10). This agonizing question penetrated His Heart and needs to penetrate ours, like a sharp sword. God responded that every act of unfaithfulness, every apostasy, every sacrilege which passed through the centuries, was permitted so that the purity of doctrine and life would shine with even greater splendor in those, who, throughout the course of the centuries had picked up and held high the blood-stained-banner of the Cross, opposing that of the followers of Lucifer.
Today, as it has always been throughout history, we are experiencing the battle between the two banners: that of the friends of the Cross and that of its enemies, who are not only persecutors, but also unfaithful apostles. The summit taking place over the next few days in the Vatican, in the eyes of many, is like a “confabulation” which has as its program, the diverting the attention of Catholics from the terrible crisis, caused by loss of faith and morals, so as to concentrate on one problem – the abuse of minors, a limited symptom of a much more extensive and deeper evil.
But, a word of comfort to Our Lord for His sorrows, has certainly come from three events that took place on February 19th. A coalition of lay-people, Acies Ordinata, lined up like an army on a battlefield — a hundred lay Catholics — coming from all over the world, stood upright in silence, to “break down the wall of silence created by the Church authorities.”
The demonstration took place right in the centre of Rome in the Piazza San Silvestro, which carries the name of the Church of San Silvestro in Capite, where the relic of the head of St. John the Baptist is kept. The precursor of the Messiah was not silent in front of Herod and underwent martyrdom for having broken silence about his conjugal infidelity. In this church, after the event, the demonstrators gathered together in prayer, reciting the Holy Rosary.
A little later, in the Foreign Press Room, before a large group of journalists, representing the most important international newspapers, seven Catholic leaders, from different countries, explained the reasons for the silent protest, stressing that it would be a scandal if the Bishops at the summit were silent on the problem of homosexuality, so intimately connected to that of pedophilia.
Lastly, the most authorative voice arrived in the evening, from two princes of the Church, Cardinals Walter Brandmüller and Raymond Leo Burke, who, all but responding to the supplication of the lay-faithful, addressed the Presidents of the Episcopal Conferences gathered in Rome:
“The plague of the homosexual agenda is pervasive inside the Church, promoted by organized and protected networks in a climate of complicity and omertà. The roots of this phenomenon are evidently found in that atmosphere of materialism, relativism and hedonism, wherein the existence of an absolute moral law i.e. with no exceptions, is openly put up for debate. Clericalism is blamed for sexual abuses, but the primary and principle responsibility of the clergy is not in the abuse of power, but of having strayed from the truth of the Gospels. The denial, even in public, in words and facts, of the Divine and natural law, is at the roots of the evil that is corrupting certain environments in the Church. Faced with this situation, cardinals and bishops are silent. Will you also be silent at the meeting convened in the Vatican this coming February 21st?”
We may say that for the first time since the start of this pontificate, the Catholic resistance against the auto-demolition of the Church, has shown itself forcefully and successfully.
The week Pope Francis has chosen to hold this summit of Bishops is precisely the one in the liturgy (February 23 in the ancient and February 21 in the new) when the great figure of St. Peter Damien is honoured, that Bishop-Cardinal who thundered against sodomy in his book Liber Gomorrhianus. To ignore his teaching, and that of the Catechism itself, as the Shepherds gathered in Rome appear to want to do, is a provocation. But the voice of St. Peter Damien and the Magisterium of the Church has resounded faithfully in Cardinals and lay-people, who, with their words and actions made themselves heard on February 19.
May Our Suffering Lord in the Garden of Olives and Our Lady of Sorrows, Who along with Him is watching over the agony of the Church, infuse courage and hope in these faithful people.
The highly anticipated book by Frederic Martel is released on Thursday. Five hundred explosive pages
By Maria Antonietta Calabrò
02/18/2019 14:44 CET | Updated 3 hours ago
Before writing Sodom, his latest book, greatly anticipated throughout the world (about what he claims are the vast majority of priests, bishops and cardinals who are gay and yet lead the Catholic Church, and that is making the Vatican tremble) Frederic Martel wrote almost 10 years ago another investigation: Mainstream. Subtitle: “How to build a global success and win the media world war.”
“Mainstream” culture, he explained, means “culture for the general public, dominant, popular.” And as Martel pointed out “it can have a positive connotation, in the sense of culture for all, but also negative, in the sense of a hegemonic culture.”
Mainstream was a book of geopolitics of culture, and the “soft power” that dominates the world. Equally necessary for “hard power,” that is, military and economic strength.
It is true that the investigation opened with the meetings held by Martel at Harvard with two scholars of opposing tendencies, but united by the belief that “values and ideas” are the true engine of history: Samuel Huntington, the scholar author of the controversial The Clash of Civilizations and with Joseph Nye, then president of the Kennedy School of political science and diplomacy, creator of the concept of “soft power.”
That the world is governed by ideas, moreover, has been argued from the time of the Greek philosopher Plato who stated that “the creators of fairy tales rule the world.” He wrote it in his main work, The Republic, which was partly a guide for the education of the political leader of his ideal state.
Today we no longer speak of “fables,” but of “narrative,” of “story telling.” The “battle” over the “contents” that influence the actions of political decision makers and citizens in a globalized world.
Here, about 10 years ago, Martel himself gave us a key to fully evaluate his new book on the suffocating “cage” in which (it is not a “closet” that contains skeletons, but a “cage” declared a gay priest yesterday in the New York Times) in which the leadership of the Catholic Church is, he claims, locked up.
With all the potential of “blackmail,” of pressures, of poisons, of “unwritten codes.”
The release will be simultaneously on five continents, 20 editions, in 8 languages, on Thursday 21 February, just as the Pope has announced a world summit in Rome to counter clerical pedophilia.
The investigation provides abundant material to support the thesis of former nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò on the fact that ecclesiastical sexual abuse is due precisely to the gay cage (not a simple “lobby,” since according to Martel it is actually an absolute majority).
There were other pamphlets on this wavelength (as early as 1999, Gone with the Wind in the Vatican, then more recent Lust and Original Sin). But the difference is that Sodom is a “mainstream” book for the whole world.
With a stated purpose by the gay rights activist and LGBT: “The Vatican is the last gay stronghold (needing) to be set free after the Stonewall riots in the United States”, exactly 50 years after the violent clashes in New York, at the end of June 1969. Since the Church, according to Martel, has become a “sociologically homosexual” society, or rather the Vatican, after a selection of the ruling class (bishops and cardinals) for which homosexuality becomes the rule and heterosexuality the exception.
So it is not about a “gay lobby,” but about the only “gay state” in the world. This is what also emerges in the Report of the three cardinals asked by Benedict XVI, after the case of the butler Gabriele (Vatileaks I) and handed over to his successor.
Sodom is a disturbing book, which says and does not say, makes us understand what it cannot show, alludes… reveals “the terrorism of gossip” spoken of by Pope Francis. It contains some “portraits,” unforgettable, of opponents of Francis, such as that of Cardinal Burke or Cardinal Mueller, but does not discuss some sensational cases of gay lay people in Vatican positions of great influence.
The book has the ambition to redo the history of at least three pontificates and some twists in the history of the 20th century, read through the prism of homosexuality of the high hierarchy. In short, the author wants to provide a new interpretation of the recent history of the Church, beginning with the scandals of the IOR, the so-called Vatican bank at the time of (Archbishop Paul) Marcinkus, whom he alleges, surprisingly for an Italian reader, to have been homosexual (this is not true, if one reads the judicial acts relating to the Band of the Magliana and which were discussed often times in the press) and including the scandals of Vatileaks I and II nd the resignation of Benedict.
For John Paul II, the financial support of the former cardinal, laicized last Saturday, Theodore McCarrick to the Polish union Solidarnosc, and relations with the regime of General Pinochet, through the nuncio and then secretary of state Angelo Sodano, “sometimes compared to” Cardinale Mazarin, the 17th-century Italian prelate who served both the Pope and the kings of France, and whose number of enemies and secret relations would be legendary.
“The name of Stanisław Dziwisz (personal secretary of Wojtyla),” writes Martel, “recurs in dozens of books and articles on cases of sexual abuse, not because he is accused of such acts, but because, he is suspected of having covered, from the Vatican, priests linked with the Mexican serial pedophile, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Marcial Maciel, the Chilean Fernando Karadima, the Colombian Alfonso Lopez Trujillo and the Americans Bernard Law and Theodore McCarrick.” He continues: “His name also appears in several sex scandals in Poland, particularly in the famous case of Juliusz Paetz. In addition, Dziwisz personally knew the priest Jozef Wesołowski, ordained in Krakow: nominated nuncio to the Dominican Republic, this archbishop was the center of a vast scandal of abusive homosexuals before being arrested in Rome by the Vatican police at the request of Pope Francis.”
Cardinal Angelo Sodano arrived in Chile as ambassador of Paul VI in March 1978 (and remained there for 10 years). In the parish of Father Karadima, the pedophile priest already sanctioned in 2011 by Benedict XVI and expelled this summer by Francis, Sodano had at his disposal “the room of the Nuncio,” writes Martel. Sodano is “the” villain” of the pontificate of John Paul II, and the “bad guy” of this book.
At 91, Sodano is the Dean of the College of Cardinals, and is expected to play an important role in the event of an upcoming Conclave.
To this are added the “revelations,” about what Benedict XVI learned in Cuba in the spring of 2012, which would have led him to his renunciation.
Over 500 pages, and a host of legal advisers around the world, so great is the risk of lawsuits.
According to Sodom the homosexual tangle, grown out of all proportion, became “uncontrollable” under Benedict XVI, to whom a chapter entitled “Passive and White” is dedicated, the nickname given to him by gays active in the Vatican to attack him for his homophobia, despite his proximity (which is “special”) to Monsignor Georg Ganswein.
The other “bad guy” (after Sodano) of this book is “the vice Pope” of Ratzinger, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, described as “a J. Edgar Hoover” (the legendary FBI head), who “failed” (in his attempt to put the whole Vatican under control, after the Vatileaks I case) and on whom is cast the venom of Cardinal Rafaele Farina, one of the great “informants” of Martel.
The method used by the French journalist to write the book is singular. Among the 1,500 people interviewed were 40 cardinals (a third of the College of a future Conclave) who agreed to speak with the author, a declared homosexual, who in an interview published on February 15 said he had not warned any of them of the purpose of his book.
He apparently acted a little like an “undercover agent,” and he succeeded in his intent because he was”gay” and “a foreigner,” that is, not Italian. It would have been impossible, he said, for a heterosexual journalist to do what he did, and even more difficult for a woman (“they do not have the codes”). Martel also states in the book that he stayed for weeks in the Vatican, thanks to a monsignor friend of Pope Francis who “was the object of the famous comment by Francis on gay priests: Who am I to judge (July 2013)” — that is, Monsignor Ricca.
Pope Francis, writes Martel, does not have the (homosexual) tendencies of some of his predecessors, but precisely for this reason he is a “gay-friendly” Pope, while he is attacked by homophobic cardinals who are in reality homophiles, living “the double life of which Francis speaks.”
“The carnival is over,” the pontiff is said to have remarked to his master of ceremonies at the moment of his election. Now, however, that the doors of Sodom have been opened, who knows what else will happen.
—Maria Antonietta Calabrò, Journalist
(5) The February 19 Appeal of Cardinals Brandmueller and Burke
For the Record: Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller demand “A Decisive Act” to end the crisis of the Church
This letter was made public yesterday through many online sources.
Open Letter to the Presidents of the Conferences of Bishops
Dear Brothers, Presidents of the Conferences of Bishops,
We turn to you with deep distress!
The Catholic world is adrift, and, with anguish, the question is asked: Where is the Church going?
Before the drift in process, it seems that the difficulty is reduced to that of the abuse of minors, a horrible crime, especially when it is perpetrated by a priest, which is, however, only part of a much greater crisis. The plague of the homosexual agenda has been spread within the Church, promoted by organized networks and protected by a climate of complicity and a conspiracy of silence. The roots of this phenomenon are clearly found in that atmosphere of materialism, of relativism and of hedonism, in which the existence of an absolute moral law, that is without exceptions, is openly called into question.
Sexual abuse is blamed on clericalism. But the first and primary fault of the clergy does not rest in the abuse of power but in having gone away from the truth of the Gospel. The even public denial, by words and by acts, of the divine and natural law, is at the root of the evil that corrupts certain circles in the Church.
In the face of this situation, Cardinals and Bishops are silent. Will you also be silent on the occasion of the meeting called in the Vatican for this coming February 21st?
We are among those who in 2016 presented to the Holy Father certain questions, dubia, which were dividing the Church in the wake of the conclusions of the Synod on the Family. Today, those dubia have not only not had any response but are part of a more general crisis of the Faith. Therefore, we encourage you to raise your voice to safeguard and proclaim the integrity of the doctrine of the Church.
We pray to the Holy Spirit, that He may assist the Church and bring light to the Pastors who guide her. A decisive act now is urgent and necessary. We trust in the Lord Who has promised: “Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Mt 28,20).
+Walter Cardinal Brandmüller
+Raymond Leo Cardinal Bu
An invitation to walk down the Appian Way outside of Rome, where Peter met Christ and said to him, “Quo vadis, Domine?”…
Visit our new pilgrimage website for a complete list of our pilgrimages:
InsideTheVaticanPilgrimages.com
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