Cardinal Gregory Cancels Youth Rally And Mass For Life - That May Be A Good Thing

Recently Cardinal Gregory of the Archdiocese of Washington announced that the Youth Rally and Mass for Life that the archdiocese sponsored for the past 25 years will be canceled.  Many pro-life people are outraged and understandably so.  Me, not so much, and I'll explain why.

Having been friends of a previous director and assistant director of the Archdiocese pro-life office, I have a bit of an insider perspective of these events.  I know that prior to each event, both directors worked for several months non-stop to pull these events together.  Many logistical details had to be worked out.  What that meant is that they didn't have time for other pro-life matters in the archdiocese.  I believe this is one reason why the parish pro-life organizations received no real direction from the chancery.  They were left to flounder.  Now, looking back at some of the prelates involved, I wonder if these rallies were meant to keep the two directors, who are honorable and sincere people, too busy to direct any meaningful and effective pro-life efforts at the grass roots.

The spiritual tenor of these events left much to be desired.  When they first started under Cardinal Hickey, the rally consisted of a few talks that were helpful to varying degrees.  That changed after his retirement when the former "Cardinal" McCarrick took over.  It moved from the DAR Constitution Hall to the MCI Center near Chinatown.  It became much more entertainment-oriented, geared towards the high school kids in attendance.  In other words, save for the Mass, it became quite a dog-and-pony show, taking up much effort and money that could have been spent on real constructive pro-life projects.

I also noticed something else.  When these Masses ended and the attendees went to join the main rally on the Ellipse, the main rally was ending and getting ready to process to the Supreme Court.  Realizing that these thousands of people were not being included in the counts taken by the DC police department, I decided to inquire about that.  I got the opportunity to do so at an event at the Rosensteel Knights of Columbus Hall in early January.  One of DC's auxiliary bishops, who is now deceased, gave an address.  Before he scooted out the door, I presented my concerns to him, suggesting the very thing that Cardinal Gregory is now doing.  First, he opined that the kids needed to be entertained or else they wouldn't accept the pro-life message.  I was appalled at the condescension towards the young people.  He also claimed that Nellie Gray had on the stage some speakers whom the chancery didn't think deserved a Catholic audience.  I found out later that one speaker whom they eschewed was the late Senator Jesse Helms, who I always held to be an honorable man.

After that conversation, I never attended another of those rallies and Masses.  I simply went to Mass elsewhere.  Actually I did attend one or two of them, but only because I had handouts to distribute.  I wanted to be included in the headcount for Nellie Gray's rallies.

I don't know why Cardinal Gregory decided to cancel these events.  Given other actions of his, I've no doubt that his reasons for doing so may well indicate no pro-life convictions.  I would simply suggest that the attendees go to Mass elsewhere at the numerous churches in the near vicinity.  The Catholic schools that once sent their students to the rallies need to redouble their efforts at teaching Catholic morality to their students.  They also need to get themselves to the March for Life rallies - the entire rallies.  Cardinal Gregory might well have done the pro-life movement a great service, even if inadvertently.  He may have communicated the message that young people need to obey God's laws for God's sake, not because they were "entertained" into doing so.

We Have Been Heard - Wuerl Not Presiding At Youth Rally Mass

In my previous post I wondered if Cardinal Wuerl would exhibit the bad taste and tone-deafness so as to preside at the Youth Rally Mass before the March for Life on Friday Jan 18.  I'm sure you share my delight in learning that he will not preside. The main celebrant will be the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Christophe Pierre.  The CNA article did not indicate whether or not Wuerl will be a concelebrant, but I hope not.

We can take a lesson from this, namely, when we speak up we can be heard.  Our voices (and yes, our money) do matter.  We must never be afraid or reluctant to take action to defend our Faith.  Will we be successful every time we try?  Probably not.  However, we will fail every time we decline to act.  Ora et labora.

In related news, our erstwhile bishop continues to make a fool of himself vis-a-vis his refusal to accept responsibility for allowing McCarrick to continue his predations for years after he learned of them.  First he asked for "understanding".  Now, in a word, he denies the denials that denied the denials.  Got that?  I trust that is as clear as mud.  Anyway, he can run at the mouth all he want's; faithful Catholics are no longer buying the, uh, "bovine excrement".

But the fecal matter continues to flow.  He tried to pin blame on a "memory lapse"?  A decent, sane human being doesn't have "memory lapses" about such weighty matters.  Perhaps he doesn't remember what he had for lunch on the day he learned of McCarrick's horrid crimes, but he would never forget the crimes themselves.  What we are seeing in reality is a "credibility lack".

Keep your eyes open, your rosaries in hand, and act.

Yet Another Good Priest Stifled By The Church Establishment Mafia - Updated

SEE BELOW FOR UPDATE

Cardinal Wuerl, although technically no longer archbishop of Washington owing to his complicity in covering for the now-disgraced pederast bishop McCarrick, still carries on like he did nothing amiss.  To the disgust of faithful Catholics, he was the main celebrant at Christmas Mass at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.  He is now slated to take center stage at the Youth Rally and Mass that usually occurs before the March for Life in January.  A petition is afoot to ask the archdiocese of Washington to rescind the invitation to the cardinal for that event.  Truth be told, I don't know how that can fly for Wuerl is still the administrator for the Archdiocese of Washington.

Some important comments about the "youth rally".  These have been going on ever since the archdiocese began to support the March for Life (yes, there was a time when the archdiocese ignored the march - surprise!).  When I first became involved in pro-life work, I attended those things (at the time, held at DAR Constitution Hall).  I soon stopped attending them.

• They occurred during the same time that the main rally was happening on the Ellipse.  That prevented the Catholics at DAR from being included in the Park Police's crowd size estimate.
• When I pointed that out to diocesan pro-life officials, it was admitted to me that the bishops didn't want Catholics to listen to some of the speakers that Nellie Gray and others had invited.  He specified that the now-deceased Jesse Helms was one such speaker.
• For many of the clergy, including the prelates, the rally was the only time during the year that they uttered one peep about abortion - nothing for the rest of the year.  In other words, they could use the rally as their token "pro-life activism" when we would chide them for their silence during the rest of the year.
• The rally and the Mass took an incredible amount of work and expense to throw together.  The pro-life office was staffed with good people, but they were ordered to waste many months on what was essentially a dog-and-pony show.  That time could have been better spent in providing leadership, goals, etc for parish pro-life groups that literally foundered and atrophied for lack of guidance.

Therefore, my advice is to eschew that extravaganza at the Verizon Center.  One can find a Mass at a local parish and be at the general rally - the entire rally.

Enough of that sad history - back to the present.  Cardinal Wuerl is going to strut through that rally as though nothing is amiss and pretend that he prioritizes pro-life matters.  Catholics are rightly outraged.

A priest of the Companions of the Cross, Father Mark Goring, put up a very fine video expressing what many of us believe, and urging us to take action.  Well, lo and behold, he was forced to take it down.  I regret that I did not get to it soon enough, for I would have downloaded it to prevent it from fading; I hope that other faithful Catholics were able to do so. Church Militant has an account of his video, and some snippets of Father's address are quoted therein.  Father put up another video explaining why he removed that video, and I did archive that.  Listen very closely; I'll offer comments below that.



Notice how he said - repeatedly - that he removed the video out of obedience to superiors.  As a priest and religious, he is vowed to obey his superiors, provided that the ordered action is not inherently immoral.  Never did he say that he agrees with their reasoning.

Now what else is going on this week?  YES!  The bishops are holed up in a seminary, supposedly on retreat to focus on how badly they botched up with their own sexual misbehviors!  Father Goring is director of the Catholic Charismatic Center in Houston TX (Wanna bet how long that will last?  But I digress!)  That is DiNardo's diocese.  We all know how he got railroaded at the USCCB meeting last month.  Either he contacted the superiors of the Companions of the Cross, Cupich and/or Wuerl beat on DiNardo to do that, or the two contacted the CC superiors themselves.  Father Goring repeated said the order came from his superiors; he mentioned no bishop.

Father Goring's facebook page is quite revealing.  It appears that he has issued several videos that detail the sad and sordid truth of episcopal scandals within the Church, all the way up to Pope Francis.  Scroll down the page and notice how many of those videos have been removed.  They've been removed at the behest of his superiors.

While Father Going is indeed vowed to obedience and had no choice but to assume silence, we the laity are under no such constraint.  Indeed, silence for us is NOT a morally valid option.  We must speak out, we must write, we must picket.  In short, we must make errant clergy squirm with discomfort on account of them dragging Holy Mother Church through the mud and scandalizing poor souls into hell.

To protest the treatment of Father Goring and the suppression of truth, contact:

• Cardinal Daniel DiNardo at 1-713-659-5461 (Bishop of Galveston-Houston)
• Very Reverend Allan MacDonald CC, General Superior of the Companions of the Cross, 1-613-728-3175
• Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the US, 1-202-333-7121

UPDATE: None too surprisingly, the video is gone - but only from Father Goring's page, that is.  I have a copy.  Once something is posted on the internet, it never really goes away.  I will explore ways to promulgate it myself.  The truth will NOT be suppressed. 

UPDATE AS OF 1-13: Indeed the truth is not suppressed, as I found the video elsewhere.