The Malefactors Are Squirming

During this past year, Theodore McCarrick has been living in a small Capuchin friary in Victoria KS.  He has remained silent - until now.  A few weeks ago, he granted an interview. The reporter, Ruth Graham, asked him point-blank if he "did it".  Here is his reply: “I’m not as bad as they paint me. I do not believe that I did the things that they accused me of.”

The italics are mine, for obvious reasons.  Dear readers, if someone were to state that you committed a crime, say of sexual abuse (like the ex-cardinal) or even something else like bank robbery or murder.  If you're anything like me, you'd be denying those accusations with all the vehemence that you could muster and would even demand that the accusations be retracted under pain of legal action.  His statements have both guilt and arrogance screaming all over them.

During the conversation he spoke of the former seminarians who accused him of abuse in his summer beach house, implying that they were put up to it.  He also had vitriol to hurl at Archbishop Vigano, who helped blow the cover off of McCarrick.  He said that Vigano was "talking as a representative of the far right".

McCarrick is not the only one to have a bone to pick with "the far right".  Yes, I'm afraid the pope gave another plane interview during which he inserted both feet into the papal speech apparatus.  He was presented with a book written by Nicolas Seneze entitled "How America Wants to Change the Pope".  Sadly the author is mistaken for there are plenty of progressives who just adore the pope as he is.  In many ways, the title of that book has things precisely ass-backwards.  Upon receiving the book the pope let out with this blooper: "For me, it's an honor that Americans attack me".  Of course his press handlers scurried into damage control mode, but too late. I thought the pope and other clergy were to be honored when they suffer for doing God's will; even then, they weren't expected to thump their chests over it.  Praying for fish, promoting LBGT supporters to the College of Cardinals, etc, is NOT "doing God's will".

Two prelates aren't quite as cheeky as they are facing the music for their misdeeds.  Recall that in Seattle, Archbishop Sartain approved a public Catholic funeral for a flaming gay who announced his planned suicide well in advance.  Years before, Sartain approved a Catholic funeral for a priest who had abused several boys.  Just days after his approval of Fuller's funeral was made public, Sartain resigned his position.

In Buffalo, NY, Bishop Richard Malone is under intense scrutiny owing to his own sexual misdeeds.  He knows it.  He has been recorded as saying, "this could be the end for me as bishop".  I hope he takes it further and realizes that if he doesn't repent and make a good confession, that the end could be hell - literally.

There are those good Catholics who state that only by prayer and fasting can these evils be purged from our Church.  I agree, except for that "only" part.  Prayer, fasting, sacraments are crucial, but by themselves they are insufficient.  The reactions related above have occurred because of intense scrutiny and protest as well as prayer.  We need both - from every single faithful Catholic.

Regarding Fuller's Suicide, The Clergy Knew Beforehand

Father Dupont knew of Fuller's diabolical plans at that Mass.  Dupont is not the pastor of St Therese in Seattle; rather, he is a priest who regularly assists with Masses and who frequently said Masses at which Fuller attended.  He gave Fuller a "blessing" and even embroiled First Communicant children in his stunt, giving scandal to them.  Now what was it that Jesus said about those giving scandal to little ones?  Oh, yes!

Regarding Fuller's funeral, Seattle Archbishop Sartain gave approval for a Church funeral, in direct contradiction to Canon law.  In recent years, funerals have been granted to suicides, assuming that they were not in their right minds when they committed the act.  However, Fuller's suicide was methodically planned.  He had a party to celebrate his planned sin and even compounded that sin with the celebration of his sodomite relationship by "marrying" his accomplice in sodomy just before his suicide.  I link now to a Church Militant article where two bishops are cited as stating that unrepentant homosexuals cannot be given Church funeral rites.

So here we have two clerics, one a bishop, cooperating with several mortal sins committed by Fuller this past May.  They have cheapened God's laws and the value of human life.  We pray for their own repentance.

A Journey Through The Cosmos Straight To Hell

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (from whence sprang the Nuts Nuns on the Bus) just had their annual meeting in Orlando Florida.  The keynote address was given by Sister Ilia Delio, a Sister of St. Francis.  She is director of Catholic studies and visiting professor at Georgetown University.   She has doctorates in pharmacology and historical theology.  Methinks the pharmacology and theology may have meshed a little too much in her fertile imagination.  As you read the piece you'll get some insight as to why Georgetown's Catholic identity is such an abysmal mess.  Before you delve into it, why don't you break out your "Hair" albums and have "Age of Aquarius" playing in the background for appropriate mood music?

Her address was in two parts.  The first was entitled, "Religious Life on the Edge of the Universe".   Given the way these gals of LCWR carry on, it might as well have been titled "Religious Life on the Brink of Damnation".  Here are some of the key heresies, uh, points!

• "If we are to rethink in terms of religion, we have to think in terms of cosmology."  Uh, sez who, Sister?  From which of the Church Fathers (dare I use that sexist term?) do you glean this precious pearl of wisdom?  And just what is the idea behind rethink?
• "There is no cosmos without God (arguably true) and no God without cosmos."  Major fail, Sister!  God is eternal.  He was before anything came into being (of course He brought everything, including this "cosmos", into being).  I learned this in first-grade religion.  This is obviously symptomatic when pharmacology overwhelms theology, I suppose.
• "A mixture of Scripture and Greek philosophy helped develop our theory of Jesus Christ - unchanging, static - a mechanical God".  Well yes, God is immutable.  He, being the sum of all perfection, cannot change or become "more perfect".  He also can't be molded into some caricature that the LCWR might find less obnoxious to their own rebellions and silliness.
• "We are on the cusp of an (wait for it!) an evolutionary breakthrough, one that requires our conscious participation as co-creative agents of love, midwives of the new creation".  Just what do these ditzy broads think is so new that it hasn't been seen in the thousands of years of human history?
• "Nothing is more awesome than to give birth to God".  If she were speaking of the singular privilege of the Blessed Mother Mary, that would be true enough.  But in context with the rest of her drivel, she obviously believes that she and her LCWR cronies are going to go into labor very soon.

Before I write this next gem of wisdom, please put away the "Hair" albums and replace them with Woodstock music.  Because (drums and trumpets, please!)

WE ARE STARDUST!

She prefaced that with the word "literally".  And all the aging hippies said, "groovy"!  Well maybe not out loud.  Of course it's no surprise that she is a devotee of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, as she reminded the attendees that the Church is not opposed to evolution (it is opposed to Piltdown hoaxes, but I digress).    Now we know why Georgetown University is going to seed.

On the other hand, a voice of sanity strove to be heard.  Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, appointed by the

Pharmacological studies at Woodstock

Vatican to oversee the LCWR, met with about 800 of them.  The meeting was closed and was held literally under lock and key.  One statement that he made, their role is "to be thinking with the Church and fidelity to the magisterium of the Church" met with predicable disdain.  Please understand that this link is to the Not-At-All Catholic Reporter so you'll need to "read between the lines", as it were.  I'm sure that experience will count towards His Excellency's purgatorial pit-stop after he passes on.

Time to get the dust mop, spray with Endust and clean up the dust and cobwebs.

Leadership Conference Of Women Religious To Undergo Desperately Needed Reform

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops today announced that the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has called for reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).  The USCCB press release is here.  That in turn links to the "Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious".  I urge you to read it and to save that pdf to your own hard drives.

The CDF, in that document, spells out some fundamental anomalies that the LCWR has been exhibiting for some time:

• Dissenting speakers at various conferences
• Embrace of the erroneous concept of women's ordination
• Embrace of "social justice" issues at the expense of life issues

All in all, I think the reform process is off to a solid start.  A key to its ongoing success will be the support that the CDF receives from the US bishops, as there is sure to be some "push back" from the LCWR itself, along with other progressives who have infested the Church hierarchy.

Some of the progressives have begun their apoplectic seizures already.  From the Not-so Catholic Reporter we read that "the Vatican investigation into U.S. women religious, which began in 2009, is bearing its first toxic fruit."  (Emphasis mine).  The author goes on to express his terror at the thought of Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain leading the reform effort.  And why?  Because Sartain is a "bishop against gay marriage"!  Gasp!  Who'da thunk it??   A Catholic bishop upholding the teachings of Jesus Christ through His Church!   I realize that this is a novel concept for these progressives, but they'd better start getting used to it.  That goes also for the progressives infesting the LCWR.