Might This Be The REAL Reason Why Cardinal Pell Was Thrown Under The Bus?

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, while President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, diverted hundreds of thousands of euros away from its intended charitable purposes to real estate renovations.  One of those renovation projects was the refurbishing of his apartments in Rome.  This misappropriation was discovered by Cardinal Pell in his capacity of Secretariat for the Economy in 2014.  In 2015 attempts were made in earnest to have Cardinal Pell imprisoned on the basis of decades-old allegations of sexual abuse.  My!  Isn't the timing of these legal shenanigans such a coincidence?  Nothing to see here!  Move along!

Side note: If Paglia had spent some of that money to have this eyesore removed from his titular cathedral, perhaps that might have been an acceptable expenditure.  But I digress.

Paglia currently heads the much-disgraced Pontifical Academy for Life.  Recently one of the academy's moral theologians, Father Maurizio Chiodi, claimed that Humanae Vitae is not part of the Church's magisterium and thus its contents were basically fair game for change.  Among his excuses for this attempt to change centuries-old teachings is the attempt to change other centuries-old teachings of the church, namely the teachings regarding the death penalty.

Chiodi validated a point that I and others made regarding the pope's attempt to mutilate the Church's teaching on the death penalty.  Over four years ago I blogged that the death penalty attempt was an attempt to buy into the erroneous notion that Church teaching can be changed.  If it could be changed for the death penalty, why not contraception?  It's a classic case of calling good (death penalty) evil and calling evil (contraception) good. 

Regrettably, their ploy seems to be working.  We can fault not only Francis and Paglia for that, but also ourselves for not educating ourselves regarding authentic Church teaching.

It's Not Just About Capital Punishment

In a blog post yesterday, Msgr Pope appears to be minimizing the damage done by Pope Francis' attempt to change Church doctrine and to chide faithful Catholics (including Yours Truly) into silence.  Please remember that this blog is hosted on a server owned by the Archdiocese of Washington and that he has been quashed by them before.  However, if you read through the comments, you'll see that many of his readers comprehend the far-reaching implications of this latest action by Pope Francis.  Edward Feser of First Things elaborates on this further.

The Not-At-All Catholic Reporter opined last week that abortion should not be criminalized and that if we really want to end abortion, we'll need "support for birth control".  In other words, to eliminate one evil, substitute another.  In this screed against laws to prevent abortion, I wonder what the authors would think if we were to substitute "racism" for "abortion"?  But I digress.

Of course they waxed lyrical over Francis' death penalty gaffe and what they acknowledge as an attempt to change Church teaching.  They really have no concern for obeying Church teaching, as evidenced by their dismissive attitudes towards contraception.  But perhaps they believe that the pope will try to bastardize the Church's teachings on contraception.  I regret they may be correct in that prediction.