BOOM!

Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review is not happy about Pope Francis. Read the whole thing.

Here's a sample:

There is a type of churchman that Francis seems to favor: the morally compromised and the doctrinally suspect. The archbishop of Bruges, Jozef De Kesel, was known to promote the ordination of women and the making voluntary of priestly celibacy, and was credibly accused of knowingly appointing a pastor who had molested a child. Francis made him a cardinal. There was the archbishop of Stockholm, Anders Arborelius, who ignored calls to investigate a pedophile priest for years. The victim was told to go see a therapist instead. Arborelius is sympathetic to the idea of creating a female version of the College of Cardinals. Francis made him a cardinal, and Arborelius speculated that his elevation was a way for the pope to honor Sweden’s commitment to refugees. There’s also Giovanni Becciu, who was working for the pope’s secretary of state. When the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers began uncovering financial fraud in the Church, Becciu suspended its audit. The auditor general from PwC later said he was forced out on trumped-up accusations; Becciu accused that accountant of being a spy. Francis then made Becciu a cardinal. Another cleric, Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, is set to stand trial in France for his role in covering up a child-sex-abuse scandal in Lyon. Francis made him the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which adjudicates abuse cases.

 His conclusion:

What Francis is slowly instituting is a religion of presumption. A religion of “good enough,” where our misguided efforts put God in our debt. Communion becomes a participation trophy. And by freeing the Church from its preoccupation with outdated sins such as adultery, Francis can refocus the Church on the things he likes to denounce, such as the building of border walls, or air conditioning.

And no wonder, then, that the Vatican itself is filled with moral mediocrities, with men who are sexually and financially compromised. No wonder the Vatican investigates and inveighs against whistleblowers immediately but waits decades to investigate predator bishops. Believing in sin is now worse than sin itself. No wonder this church has a pope who refuses to wear red shoes. They symbolize martyrdom. That’s for heroic Christians, not for men like Pope Francis.

Baseball For The Masses and the Catholic Mass

No one doubts the sincerity of his conviction that baseball is in trouble, though as a business MLB is obviously flourishing, or that the way out of the imagined crisis is to stress up the game by adding clocks, imposing deadlines on players between pitches, and in general pressuring everyone to hurry. Manfred may assume that it’s despite the increase in game length, not because of it, that more people watch baseball now than when games were shorter. And anyway, his ultimate goal is to quicken the pace of play, for which game length — or game shortness, rather — is only a rough proxy.
 

St. Louis Cardinal Yadier Molina

Bear in mind, however, that pace of play is slower in the NFL. There the ratio of live action to dead time is about half of what it is in MLB. And yet, according to Gallup, Americans prefer football to baseball by a ratio of four to one. Granted, it may be despite all the so-called dead time, not because of it, that football beats baseball in revenue as well as in opinion polls, but maybe that’s enough with the special pleading. Everyone knows that the pauses between the notes are where the art resides, and the evidence that fans like them is greater than the evidence that they don’t.

The assumption that they don’t follows a pattern you might recognize from the Catholic Church’s rewrite of the Mass in the 1960s. The liturgical reformers reduced the amount of dead air, as a radio engineer might think of it. The practice had been that during much of the liturgy the priest prayed sotto voce at the altar while the people in the pews did likewise as they turned the pages of their missal or moved their fingers down the string of their rosary beads. Another option was to close your eyes, forgo all visual, aural, and tactile stimulation, and be still. “Mental prayer,” they called it. It worked fine, at least for those who knew the ropes. For the benefit of those who didn’t, the Church slashed the amount of supposed dead time. That’s when Mass attendance in the West began to plummet. Of course, the people who stopped attending may have done so for other reasons. What we do know is that the increase in the ratio of bustle to quiet didn’t keep them from leaving.

New York Cardinal Dolan

A subcategory of the new Mass was the “guitar Mass,” pitched to the young people. Many of our elders weren’t that much older than we were, but they exaggerated the distance, treating us with the condescending benevolence of a Western anthropologist among people in the bush. They thought we would relate to the holy sacrifice better if we sang lyrics to a Cat Stevens song at the Offertory. God bless the Jesuits who taught my generation of Catholics in the 1970s. They meant well, but they got a lot wrong. A brother of theirs in Argentina grew up to become the pope. I never met him but I recognize his mind.

Cardinal, Can You Spare a Dime?

The Pope met with Cardinals today and went on the attack:

 Here let me allude to another danger: those who betray the trust put in them and profiteer from the Church’s motherhood. I am speaking of persons carefully selected to give a greater vigour to the body and to the reform, but – failing to understand the lofty nature of their responsibility – let themselves be corrupted by ambition or vainglory. Then, when they are quietly sidelined, they wrongly declare themselves martyrs of the system, of a “Pope kept in the dark”, of the “old guard”…, rather than reciting a mea culpa. Alongside these, there are others who are still working there, to whom all the time in the world is given to get back on the right track, in the hope that they find in the Church’s patience an opportunity for conversion and not for personal advantage. Of course, this is in no way to overlook the vast majority of faithful persons working there with praiseworthy commitment, fidelity, competence, dedication and great sanctity.

Huh....who would do that?

 
When he finished reading the inquiry drafted by the apostolic envoy he himself had sent to Honduras last May, Pope Francis’ hands went up to his skullcap. He had just found out that his friend and main councilor — powerful cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, a staunch supporter of a poor and pauperist Church and coordinator of the Council of Cardinals after he appointed him in 2013 — had received over the years from the Catholic University of Tegucigalpa around 41,600 US dollars a month, with an additional 64,200 dollars bonus in December. Bergoglio had yet to learn that several witnesses, both ecclesiastical and secular, were accusing Maradiaga of investments in some companies in London topping a 1,2 million dollars that later vanished into thin air, or that the Court of Auditors of the small Central American nation was investigating a flow of large sums of money from the Honduran government to the Foundation for Education and Social Communication and to the Suyapa Foundation, both foundations of the local Church and therefore depending on Maradiaga himself.

"The Pope is sad and saddened, but also very determined at discovering the truth," people of his entourage at Santa Marta, his residency, explain. He wants to know every item of the investigation Argentine bishop Jorge Pedro Casaretto conducted in Honduras, on top, of course, of the final destination of the jaw-dropping sums of money obtained by the cardinal. Just in one year, 2015, as shown in an internal university report L’Espresso obtained, the cardinal received almost 600,000 dollars, a sum that according to some sources he collected for a decade in his capacity as "Grand Chancellor" of the university. However, some other rather unpleasant items account for the rest of the sums he received according to Bishop Casaretto’s report. The pope’s trustworthy person put down on paper the serious accusations many witnesses brought forward (the audits totaled around fifty witnesses and included administrative staff of the diocese and of the university, priests, seminarians and the cardinal's driver and secretary) also against the Auxiliary Bishop of Tegucigalpa, Juan José Pineda, among the most loyal in Maradiaga’s inner circle and de facto his deputy in Central America.

Well, Thanks for Clearing THAT up!

Today, from the Catholic News Agency:

 Munich, Germany, Dec 11, 2017 / 10:00 pm (CNA).- The controversy regarding Amoris laetitia has come to an end, according to German cardinal Walter Kasper. What is more, he has affirmed that the admission of remarried divorced persons to the sacraments in individual cases is, in his view, the only correct interpretation of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation.
Writing in an op-ed for the German language section of Radio Vatican, the prominent prelate asserted that “with the official publication of the letter from Pope Francis to the bishops of the Buenos Aires region, the painful dispute over the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia is hopefully over.”

Also today, in National Review:

Must faithful Catholics now give a ‘religious submission of mind and will’ to Francis’s teachings on this issue? Last week, Pope Francis made another move to advance his teachings on Communion for the divorced and remarried. In September 2016, the pope sent a private letter to bishops in Buenos Aires to clarify his teachings on the issue, which he had expressed in his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Now, the pope declared this letter to be his “authentic magisterium,” which means it is one of his official teachings.

Questions surrounding divorce and remarriage have caused controversy over the past few years. The perceived ambiguity of Amoris Laetitia led four cardinals in September 2016 to sign the dubia — Latin for “doubts” — which consisted of five questions asking Pope Francis for clarification on his views. After being ignored by the Holy Father, one of the signers, Cardinal Burke, said the cardinals will have to issue a formal correction of the pope. A year later, in September 2017, more than 60 Catholic scholars signed a filial-correction document, which took a much harsher approach than the dubia. The filial correction alleged that Pope Francis committed seven heresies regarding his teachings on divorce and remarriage and moral relativism. One of the signers of the filial correction, Anna Silvas, told me via email that Francis’s decision to put this letter to the Buenos Aires bishops in the authentic magisterium shows that his intention is to breach “the moral and sacramental truth of the faith.” She added, “You cannot obey the disobedient,” referring to Francis.

 Cardinal Kasper seems to be saying," Nothing to see here. Move along".

The Bishops Take Time Out From Fretting About Illegal Immigratioon to Take a Vote.

BALTIMORE—The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops chose a conservative archbishop for a key post Tuesday, signaling resistance to Pope Francis’s vision for the church among the Catholic hierarchy in the U.S.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann, of Kansas City, was elected chairman of the committee on Pro-Life Activities. In a vote of 96 to 82, he defeated Cardinal Blase Cupich, of Chicago, who is seen as a liberal in the church and a close ally of the pope. 

 Archbishop Joseph Naumann

 

 The vote breaks a longstanding tradition of the position being held by a cardinal—an unusual lapse of deference in a highly rank-conscious body—and suggests that Catholic leaders in the U.S. remain largely resistant to the changes Pope Francis is trying to bring to the church.
Some experts said that the slim margin of the vote shows growing support for Pope Francis’s agenda; others said it mostly reflected the tradition of a cardinal holding the post.
Like all the bishops, Archbishop Naumann and Cardinal Cupich are both strong opponents of abortion and euthanasia. Archbishop Naumann said that he would keep the committee focused on those two issues, as it has been in recent years.
Cardinal Cupich, meanwhile, indicated that he would have broadened the committee’s focus to include other issues like the death penalty, health care and poverty—a list more in line with the priorities Pope Francis advocated for.

Cardinal Cupich - maybe you can start caring about "life" issues in Chicago and work your way up. Or maybe by showing some gumption and canning Father Michael Pfleger.

If I Were Cardinal Burke or Cardinal Brandmuller, I Would Hire a Food Taster

 
Vatican City, Sep 6, 2017 / 09:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday the Vatican announced that Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, Archbishop Emeritus of Bologna, has died at the age of 79.  He was known for pastoral and academic work in support of marriage and families, especially through the founding of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family.
No details regarding the late prelate's death were included in the Sept. 6 announcement of his passing. However, his death comes almost exactly two months after that of Caffara's friend and collaborator, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who passed away July 5 while on vacation in Bad Füssing, Germany.

Cardinal Caffara

 Cardinals Caffara and Meisner were among the four cardinals who penned a letter with five “dubia,” or questions, about the interpretation of Amoris laetitia to Pope Francis, requesting that he “resolve the uncertainties and bring clarity.”
Signed by Caffarra, Meisner and Cardinals Walter Brandmüller and Raymond Leo Burke, the letter was sent to Pope Francis privately on Sept. 19, 2016, but was released to the public two months later.
The four cardinals believed themselves obliged to submit the dubia because of “the fact – which only a blind man could deny – that in the Church there exists great confusion, uncertainty, insecurity caused by some paragraphs of Amoris laetitia,” Caffarra said in a Jan.14 interview with Matteo Matzuzzi of the Italian publication “Il Foglio.”

Cardinal Tobin Walks the Tightrope

The Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark 

Newark, N.J., Jun 20, 2017 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Last month Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark welcomed a pilgrimage of self-identified LGBT pilgrims, with an archdiocesan spokesman saying it should be seen in the context of welcoming everyone, not as archdiocese sponsorship of the event.

Cardinal Tobin

“I think that the central point that is missing from the majority of the media coverage and blog postings about this pilgrimage is that the cardinal was asked whether he might welcome a group of pilgrims who identify as LGBT. He said yes, we welcome all in the name of Christ,” James Goodness, communications director for the Archdiocese of Newark, told CNA.

“This was not an event sponsored by the archdiocese, and we did not promote or advertise it,” Goodness said. “It was a purely private event.

Some news coverage of the pilgrimage depicted it as a shift within the Church.

Cardinal Mañoso

Mexico City, Mexico, Dec 14, 2016 / 03:37 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Norberto Rivera of Mexico City commended to Our Lady of Guadalupe the millions of migrants who have left behind their country for a better future in the U.S., asking her to help Americans welcome them – especially President-Elect Donald Trump.

Here are some exerpts from the "prayer":

We call upon you as the comforter of the afflicted, O Holy Mother of God, on this day of your blessed feast day, we have brought to you, as if it were an offering, the affliction of millions of your children who emigrated to the United States of America in search of bread for their families, of education to face the future, of the hospitality of those who also were one day strangers, and who knew how to form a great nation, diverse in its cultures.

Your children who emigrated, Merciful Mother, took with them the memory of their families and towns, but they also took you. And so, now there is no Catholic church in the United States that does not provide an inn as it were for your blessed image, because you are the patroness and empress of Mexico and of the entire continent.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I am pretty sure that our immigrant friends are not here due to an Emperor decreed census. But the Church does provide solice and a safe place...whiich explains the huge turnout at the Spanish language Mass.

Then the Cardinal veers into a personal attack on the President --elect:

O Merciful Mother! Move the hearts of Americans so they make room for those who, with their hard work have given prosperity to their country, and touch the hardened heart of the new President-Elect who being a Christian – as he has declared – so he cannot see the poor and the immigrants as enemies but rather as brothers with whom he must be tolerant, generous and just.

I like the "as he has declared"part. Who does that remind you of?

Noted Theologian Nancy Pelosi

 Anyway, he wraps it up with:

But our supplication, O Mother, comes full of affliction for our Mexico, your beloved Mexico, which is sinking in the swamp of corruption and poverty, is sick with violence and wounded by injustices. Move the hearts of the violent and sinners, protect families, preserve our Catholic faith, give those who govern us the vocation of service, satisfy our hunger and thirst for justice, because we are under your protection, Holy Mother of God, despise not the supplications that we make in our necessities, but rather deliver us from all danger, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin!

Well, Cardinal...Cura te ipsum. 

I'd Like to Buy a Vowel

 I had to read this several times. I'm still not sure I understand it.


The Croatian government has reacted strongly to Serbia’s formal diplomatic protest of a Croatian court’s decision to annul the 1946 conviction of Blessed Alojzije Stepinac.
 The Croatian cardinal was convicted of treason in a Communist show trial.
 

Blessed Alojzije Stepinac

Miro Kovac, Croatia’s minster of foreign and European affairs, described the diplomatic protest as “a cheap attempt at destabilizing Croatia at a sensitive time.”
“That's a recipe from the 1990s,” he continued. “The vocabulary unfortunately recalls the time of Slobodan Milosevic and the Greater Serbia aggression.”
Kovac added, “I have to say that these assessments regarding Cardinal Stepinac are fictitious and unacceptable. This is meddling in Croatia’s interior affairs.”
The Serbian foreign minister later said that Croatia’s formal written response was so insulting that Serbia’s ambassador in Croatia refused to accept it.

Pope John Paul II elevated Bishop Stepinac to Blessed, so I am guessing it's legit. Stepinac was strongly anti-communist and particualrly harsh with the Freemasons, so hurray for him. I tried to understand all the ins and outs of what was going on leading up to his trial and all I took away from it was this: Yugoslavia was bad idea.

I THINK This is Satire...

 It's in The Eye of the Tiber, but you never know with Pope Francis:

Responding to Cardinal Robert Sarah’s suggestion that priests celebrate Mass ad orientem, or facing east, Pope Francis today praised the idea, asking all priests to face Mecca while saying Mass.

Speaking to a large crowd at his weekly Wednesday Audience in St. Peter’s Square, the Pope said that facing Mecca during Mass could be the ecumenical boost the Church and the east need “in these dark times.”

“It is very important that we return as soon as possible to a common orientation, of priests and the faithful turned together in the same direction, toward Mecca, the holiest site in all of Islam. This will accomplish two things…first, it will be as a sign of unity between east and west. Second, when we kneel at Mass, we will not only be kneeling for Christ’s forgiveness, but kneeling to those we harmed during the Crusades, which was our fault. They will, thereby, act in pseudo persona Christi as we humbly ask for God’s forgiveness.”

Francis went on to ask all priests to “implement this practice wherever possible, unless of course you’re already located somewhere in the east, in which case, ad populum will be permissible.”
After close to a ten second paused, Francis smiled, saying “Man…Sarah’s so smart, right? How does he come up with this stuff? He’d make such a great pope. He’s nothing like the Burke idiot I got rid of.”

I'm Offended That You Are Offended By My Taking Offense

Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera of Valencia, Spain, faces criminal charges for a speech in which he said that gender theory is "the most insidious and destructive ideology of humanity in all history." 

The hateful Cardinal Llovera

 The Spanish Network of Help to Refugees filed a criminal complaint against the cardinal, saying that his statement was a hate crime. The group charged that Cardinal Cañizares "is an ultra-conservative trying to subvert the constitutional order." Under Spanish law, law-enforcement officials are required to conduct an investigation when such a charge is filed.
Cardinal Cañizares was the prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship before his appointment in 2014 as Archbishop of Valencia.

Well, SOME would argue that maybe Nazism might have gender studies in the "insidious and destructive" category. And what the heck is the "Spanish Network of Help to Refugees"? And why do they even care?

Unless there's an army we don't know about.....

The Nation Is Going to Hell, But Hey! Transgender Bathrooms!

(CNSNews.com) -- "In your nation, God is being eroded, eclipsed, liquidated," Cardinal Robert Sarah, who was appointed as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments by Pope Francis in 2014, told hundreds of prominent Catholic clergy and lay people attending the 12^th annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast Tuesday in Washington.
In what he called "portentous times" for the Catholic Church and for the world, Cardinal Sarah condemned same-sex marriage, transgender bathroom laws, and attacks on the family as "demonic".
“All manner of immorality is not only accepted and tolerated today in advanced societies, it is even promoted as a social good,” the African cardinal said. “The result is hostility to Christians and increasingly, religious persecution.”

Boko Haram, Al-Qa'ida, Hamas, Al-Shabaab,and ISIS Were Unavailalbe For Comment

Cardinal Turkson

The president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has called for a broad discussion of the just-war theory, suggesting that a papal encyclical on the topic might be appropriate and questioning whether the just-war tradition should be abandoned.
Cardinal Peter Turkson spoke out after a Vatican conference co-sponsored by his Pontifical Council and Pax Christi, which concluded with a call for a break from the tradition of just-war teaching. The cardinal said that Pax Christi had made a "very legitimate" argument for change in the Church's stand.
"Too often the 'just-war theory' has been used to endorse rather than prevent or limit war," the cardinal said; "and it can undermine efforts to develop alternative capacities and tools for conflict to be overcome and transformed."

Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame!

Catholic News Service reports:

Writing in L’Osservatore Romano, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has stressed the importance of moments of silence in the liturgy.
“External silence is an ascetic exercise of mastery in the use of the word,” said Cardinal Robert Sarah, who contrasted the Marian silence of the one wishes to meditate on God’s word with the noise of the person who wishes to show off.

Quoting Sacred Scripture, the Second Vatican Council, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy, Cardinal Sarah said that “we must avoid transforming the church, which is the house of God intended for adoration, into a spectacle hall where you go to applaud the actors.”

Hurray for SILENCE!

 Cardinal Sarah, who hails from Guinea, also criticized the “long and loud” offertory processions, “including endless dances, in some African countries. One has the impression of being present at a folklore exhibition.”

If Nominated, I Will Not Run

 The "cardinal" mentioned in the opening sentence is Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who now leads the Congregation for Bishops, which is the Curia's department for selecting new bishops.

Catholic News Service
 
Speaking yesterday about the annual course his office sponsors for new bishops, the Cardinal was asked about rumours that more and more priests are saying they do not want to be a bishop and declining an appointment even when the Pope, on the recommendation of Cardinal Ouellet’s office, has chosen them.
“Yes, that’s true. Nowadays you have people who do not accept the appointment,” he said, adding that he would not provide statistics on how often it happens, although he insisted the number was not huge.

"If nominated I will not run. If elected I will not serve."

  Priests decline for a variety of reasons, Cardinal Ouellet said, pointing to the example of a priest who was chosen, but then informed the congregation that he had cancer and had not told others of his illness. “It was a sign of responsibility not to accept the appointment,” he said.
Others decline because of something in their past or because they think they cannot handle the responsibility, he said. In the latter case, he said, “normally we insist” because often people are not the best judges of their own abilities. But when a person makes “a decision in conscience,” the Vatican respects that.
As for the type of priests Pope Francis and the congregation are looking for as candidates, Cardinal Ouellet said the Pope “has insisted on the pastoral quality of the bishops. That’s very clear. It does not mean that they do not have to be masters of the faith because a bishop is, first and foremost, the first teacher of the faith in his diocese.”
“But the capacity to relate to people, to establish dialogue, to start from the point where people are – this is a quality that is also requested,” the Cardinal said.

That Oughta Fix It

 Catholic Culture reports:


At the invitation of Morocco’s government, hundreds of Sunni and Shiite scholars from 120 countries gathered in Marrakesh to consider the plight of non-Muslim minorities in largely Muslim nations.
 
“We in the Kingdom of Morocco will not tolerate the violation of the rights of religious minorities in the name of Islam,” King Mohammed VI stated as the January 25-27 conference began. “I am enabling Christians and Jews to practice their faith and not just as minorities. They even serve in the government.”

Participants in the conference issued the Marrakesh Declaration, which called for “full protection for the rights and liberties to all religious groups in a civilized manner that eschews coercion, bias, and arrogance.”

 Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington, was present in Marrakesh and welcomed the declaration.

After the summit, the Cardinal and the King played a little football.

Cardinal McCarrick (in red) and King Mohammed VI

This will be the most effective agreement since the Munich Agreement of 1938

A Distinction Without a Difference

 From Catholic Culture:


Communist authorities forbade Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich to enter the Diocese of Vinh during a recent eight-day visit to Vietnam, UCA News reported.

Cardinal Marx

We demand the Government Committee for Religious Affairs make clear the reason why it refused the visit, [and] in addition, obey the law and respect religious freedom specified by the constitution and laws,” Bishop Paul Nguyen Thai Hop of Vinh said in response.

Vinh, a city of nearly 500,000, is the site of particularly egregious violations of religious liberty, according to the report. 

Maybe the Socialists had him confused with KARL Marx. I mean, they both wrote books called "Das Capital", both of which were critical of capitalism.

 

Retired archbishop Jan Paul Lenga of Karaganda, Kazakhstan said of him "There was Marx, Karl Marx. And if present Marx says similar things, then there is no real difference.”

 

ee more at: http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=27226#sthash.UBlt4xJL.dpuf

Brawl at the Synod!

This just in from the Synod (from Eye of the Tiber, of course):

A massive brawl broke out Thursday morning at the Synod during the 90-hour opening address by Hungarian Cardinal Péter Erdo, witnesses are reporting.
The brawl broke out just after Cardinal Erdo appeared to have concluded his four day opening address to the bishops before informing them that he would begin the second half of his address after a short restroom break.

Cardinal Kasper, the Nancy Pelosi of the College of Cardinals

Footage obtained by EOTT shows a tired and disgruntled Cardinal Walter Kasper screaming at Erdo to “shut up and get on with the communion divorce stuff” when Archbishop Charles Chaput picks up what looks to be a thurible, lights it on fire, swings it around a few times before finally launching at the head of the German Cardinal.
“It was amazing how quickly it all escalated,” one witness told EOTT. “Next thing you know, a German bishop comes in throwing copies of Laudato Si like ninja stars at people. Lot of people were hit. Blood everywhere.”
At one point, Pope Francis is seen trying to separate the Cardinals, but is eventually pushed out of the way by the rival groups.
The video also shows Cardinal Robert Sarah being helped up on a horse before being handed a shield and sword, and is then heard trying to motivate his side of cardinals during a 15-minute hiatus in the brawl.

Cardinal Sarah

 “I am Cardinal Sarah,” Sarah is seen shouting to a large number of cardinals in front of him. “And I see a whole army of my fellow bishops, here in defiance of sin! You have come to fight as orthodox men. And orthodox men you are! What will you do without orthodoxy? Will you fight?”
One cardinal in the video is heard saying that they are outnumbered before shouting “No! We will run…and give communion to divorced couples!”
“Yes!” Sarah is heard shouting back. “Fight and you may die. Run and you will live and give communion to divorced and remarried couples at least awhile. And dying in your rectory many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here as aging and balding men and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they will never distort our doctrine! Oh, wait, they’re distorting our doctrine. Aren’t those German bishops a sneaky bunch. Everyone run.”
 

NOT SO FAST!

At press time, Benedict has shown up and is quoted as telling Sarah and the rest of the bishops, “Not so fast,” before hiking up his cassock to get up on his own horse.

Catholic Nero

As Christians are wiped out by Islamic terrorists, Cardinal Parolin has his priorities straight:

Cardinal Pietro Parolin

 No one is immune from the implications of climate change, the Vatican's Secretary of State has warned.
“When the future of the planet is at stake, there are no political frontiers, barriers or walls behind which we can hide to protect ourselves from the effects of environmental and social degradation," wrote Cardinal Pietro Parolin in a message to participants in a conference on climate change and economics, held at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.
Cardinal Parolin said that he hoped the conference would stimulate thinking on the ways in which the world economy can be re-oriented "to cultivate two interconnected objectives: combating poverty and easing the effects of climate change." 

"And Stop Covering Yourself With Banana Leaves and Mud!"

Thank you, Cardinal Tagle! This is a pet peeve of mine...

Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manila has told his priests that they should not say "Good morning" to their congregation as they begin Mass.
Cardinal Tagle said that the everyday greeting is a distraction, failing to convey the solemn joy of the Eucharistic assembly.
"Is not the expression, 'The Lord be with you,' more than enough?" the cardinal asked.