Not Even a Bishop Can Be This Clueless...Can He?

In an NBC News interview yesterday, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago insisted that it was more than acceptable for Pope Francis to refuse to discuss Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s shocking testimony, which implicates a host of Catholic Church leaders — including the pope — in covering up sexual abuse and immorality.

“The pope has a bigger agenda,” Cupich told interviewer Mary Anne Ahern when asked about the pope’s refusal to discuss Viganò’s claims. “He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the Church.”

“We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this,” Cupich added. A rabbit hole, indeed. If this was satire crafted by SNL writers to mock the Catholic hierarchy, it’s hard to imagine how the cardinal’s remarks would come across any worse.

We Should All Memorize This!

I wish the Pope asked every Church to play this instead of read his letter.

A CALIFORNIA Bishop Has a Moment of Clarity!

 Alert the media!

The following is a message from Bishop Vasa of Santa Rosa:

I use my space in the North Coast Catholic this month to communicate to all the people of God a Directive already shared with the priests of the Diocese regarding “Communion Services”. In the Instruction on the Eucharist issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments on March 25, 2004, we read:

1. It is necessary to avoid any sort of confusion between this type of gathering (Communion Service without Mass) and the celebration of the Eucharist. The diocesan Bishops, therefore, should prudently discern whether Holy Communion ought to be distributed in these gatherings.
2. Likewise, especially if Holy Communion is distributed during such celebrations, the diocesan Bishop, to whose exclusive competence this matter pertains, must not easily grant permission for such celebrations to be held on weekdays, especially in places where it was possible or would be possible to have the celebration of Mass on the preceding or the following Sunday. Priests are therefore earnestly requested to celebrate Mass daily for the people in one of the churches entrusted to their care.

A Case For Window Control

Today in History...the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, 1572:


King Charles IX of France, under the sway of his mother, Catherine de Medici, orders the assassination of Huguenot Protestant leaders in Paris, setting off an orgy of killing that results in the massacre of tens of thousands of Huguenots all across France.
Two days earlier, Catherine had ordered the murder of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a Huguenot leader whom she felt was leading her son into war with Spain. However, Coligny was only wounded, and Charles promised to investigate the assassination in order to placate the angry Huguenots. Catherine then convinced the young king that the Huguenots were on the brink of rebellion, and he authorized the murder of their leaders by the Catholic authorities. Most of these Huguenots were in Paris at the time, celebrating the marriage of their leader, Henry of Navarre, to the king’s sister, Margaret.
A list of those to be killed was drawn up, headed by Coligny, who was brutally beaten and thrown out of his bedroom window just before dawn on August 24. Once the killing started, mobs of Catholic Parisians, apparently overcome with bloodlust, began a general massacre of Huguenots. Charles issued a royal order on August 25 to halt the killing, but his pleas went unheeded as the massacres spread. Mass slaughters continued into October, reaching the provinces of Rouen, Lyon, Bourges, Bourdeaux, and Orleans. An estimated 3,000 French Protestants were killed in Paris, and as many as 70,000 in all of France. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day marked the resumption of religious civil war in France.

Novena For the Abuse Crisis

The Catholic Church is again in crisis from the evil committed by some priests and bishops.
This is hurting the the body of Christ and it must stop. This novena is meant to help us pray for the victims of these terrible acts and for the Church. We will pray that all the abuse stops and any priests and bishops involved will be held accountable.
We’ll start praying this novena on Thursday, August 23rd.

You can sign up here.

Maybe the Bishops Can Put the Priests' Photos on the Carton de Laits

When Fr Joseph Longo arrived in France from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2003, he planned to stay just a few months to complete a philosophy doctorate. Today, having run large parish clusters in different dioceses, he has become one of many resident African priests helping to sustain the French Church.

Bishop Ignace Bessi Dogbo of Katiola (Getty)

It was hardly surprising that Fr Longo was prevailed upon to stay. Over the last half century the number of priests in France has been reduced by three quarters. Within six months of studying at Toulouse University’s Catholic faculty, Fr Longo had been asked to take over the medieval St Barthelemy’s Church at nearby Lauzerte, which also involved looking after 18 other parishes.
He is one of 1,800 foreign priests officially ministering in France, mostly from former colonies in Africa. The figure is nearly a fifth of the total number of diocesan clergy – 11,500. An unknown number of priests are also here without authorisation. And recently there have been signs of discontent at what some African bishops see as a new “ecclesiastical migration”.
In May, the Ivory Coast’s bishops’ conference complained that more and more priests were going missing in Europe and ignoring instructions to return after completing study and pastoral assignments. (It’s not just France: in Italy, for instance, up to 40 per cent of parishes are run by foreign-born clergy.)

And the Border Wall!

 

 

Pope Says He Will Address Sex Abuse Scandal Once He’s Finished Talking About Climate Change

The Elephant in the Room

 

I'm talking to you, pervert

It is time for clergy and laity to begin a movement for the purification of the Church. The shameful sexual sins and crimes of clergy—including cardinals, bishops, and priests—can no longer be tolerated. Tolerance is precisely what has allowed these problems to multiply for decades and persist up to today. 

As Fr. Thomas Berg recently explained, the issue is sexually active priests and bishops. In the main, the persistent problem is with homosexually active priests.  Fr. Roger Landry argues—rightly, I think—that most priests who persist in infidelity with women eventually leave the priesthood, but priests who cheat on their vocation with men often continue to live a double life. Most of the issues stem from this kind of duplicity. Networks of active homosexual priests have developed: They protect and promote their own and others who will tolerate them. They become a major problem when they insinuate themselves into positions of power (in a seminary, in a chancery or diocese, in a religious order, in the Roman curia)—as occurred in the case of Theodore McCarrick. 
The sins here are more grave than adultery or homosexual acts because they besmirch what is holy. Properly speaking, this is sacrilege, the perversion of Holy Orders, and the defilement of a person solemnly and publicly consecrated to God in chastity. The sin is even more serious when a bishop, a seminary formator, or a priest uses the authority of his office—an office instituted by Christ for the sanctification of the faithful—in a perverse way, in the service of shameful and selfish passions. The higher the abuse of authority in the Church, the more grave is the sacrilege. These are not private sins of individual Christians, and the victims suffer more because they are abused not by “private individuals,” but by priests. These crimes dishonor and offend God, and they wound the Church in a unique way.

It's Not Catholic, But It Is a Religion

The Babylon Bee Clarifies

VATICAN CITY—Following his recent announcement that the Catholic Church no longer supports the use of the death penalty, Pope Francis clarified that it may still be applied to slow left-lane drivers. “It almost goes without saying,” the leader of the Church commented.

Whereas prior Church teaching allowed the death penalty in certain cases, the Catechism now teaches that the punishment is always impermissible. “Except,” said a Vatican spokesman, “for those reprobate souls who just hang out in the left lane as if nobody else has anywhere to be.”

The decision has angered some conservative Catholics, who favor applying the death penalty in wider circumstances. “What about that guy who brings his guitar to a party and totally ruins everyone’s good time?” one traditional Catholic asked. “Or those people who insist on making small talk while in line at the grocery store?”

It is unknown whether Pope Francis will also call for the death penalty for people who wake the whole neighborhood up mowing their lawns at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning, but sources close to the Pontiff state he’s leaning toward the affirmative.

The Pope Does His Jesuit Thing

I have been reading a lot about the latest shenanigans of Pope Francis, and I think this article from National Review is the best...


When the subject is the Catholic Church, I believe in candor. Bishops, priests, nuns and sisters, and laymen should all express themselves more candidly and more unguardedly about the state of things. Disappointments and disagreements should be stated clearly, rather than papered over. Although, lately, I’ve thought that the pope should be an exception to this rule. You may have noticed he made some news this week when he rewrote the Catholic Catechism’s paragraph on the death penalty.

Here's the part that made me think about this seriously...

 “Recourse to the death penalty . . . was long considered an appropriate response,” it asserts. Notice the passive voice and the lack of subject. Are we talking about previous popes and church authorities? Are we talking about the men and women of the Bible? Or just human society in a long epoch before today? Then the next paragraph: “Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes.” Whose awareness is increased? Are we saying that the world or the Church only recently stumbled on the idea of human dignity? Also, the previous teaching never held that by committing serious crimes, criminals lost all their human dignity. They were still owed justice. It was still impermissible to carry out their sentences in a spirit of vindictiveness and bloodlust. Their salvation was still to be sought. And, in fact, many of the Church’s theologians believed that a criminal’s acceptance of his just punishment conduced to his salvation.

That formulation — “It was long considered to be thus, but now there is an increased awareness of something else” — is a kind of rhetorical acid that must inevitably eat away at the Church’s claims to be an institution trustworthy to teach authoritatively on faith and morals. It is an invitation for any Church teaching that has lost popularity in the Western world to be chucked. And it is a prejudice toward Western norms. None of the theologians who want to see the Church’s doctrine “developed” to say its opposite are thinking of the beliefs that are unpopular in Africa. No one proposes that “It was long considered that marriage should be between one man and one woman, but now there is a fuller understanding that polygamous men have not forfeited their dignity, by adding wives to their household.”