Pope Francis covered up McCarrick abuse, former US nuncio testifies

Discussion in 'Church Critique' started by Frodo, Aug 26, 2018.

  1. Tanker

    Tanker Powers

    The sheep and the goats.

    It's odd to watch the msm not engaged in crucifying the predators as they are doing in the world of politics. But I guess homosexual predators are ok and given a green light. The bishops have lost all credibility.
     
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  2. padraig

    padraig Powers

    Yes they strike me as Masons. The Pope himself strikes me very,very much as a Mason. If for no other reason their huge love for secrecy and doing things in secret.

     
  3. Praetorian

    Praetorian Powers

    Wow! What a priest!
    He went from zero knowledge of this to seeing everything clearly in almost no time flat!

    That is because he has no personal agenda. He is looking at the situation objectively and seeking the truth.

    And most importantly he is getting Grace!
     
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  4. garabandal

    garabandal Powers

    People like him become Bishop because of the poor quality of education in the seminaries.

    One wonders if they get taught much Catholicism at all:eek:
     
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  5. AED

    AED Powers

    Yep. Along with the media.
     
  6. padraig

    padraig Powers

    He also seems to be a mystic with special graces, that might help.:) He is very innocent though, I don't think he fully realises what danger he might be in for doing this. Poor man, may God and the Holy Angels protect him.

    I think he is kind of special and set apart by God for something great.



     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2018
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  7. Agnes rose

    Agnes rose Archangels

    God bless Him!!!!!
     
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  8. Don_D

    Don_D ¡Viva Cristo Rey!

    I think so too padraig he has a great way about him of explaining these things. No fear on this mans part what so ever. God Bless him.
     
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  9. padraig

    padraig Powers

    Yes he reminds me of things all over again; he reminds me why I am so angry and outraged.



     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2018
    AED likes this.
  10. HeavenlyHosts

    HeavenlyHosts Powers

    Padraig: thank you for those two videos with the young priests. Excellent messages
     
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  11. padraig

    padraig Powers

    I am comcerned for his health and well being; he is stuck right in the midst of this filth. I hope he has a good Bishop watching over him; please say a prayer.;)
     
  12. Don_D

    Don_D ¡Viva Cristo Rey!

    https://www.churchmilitant.com/news...ke-quits-knights-of-malta-over-pope-gag-order

    Judge Anne Burke Quits Order of Malta Over Sex Abuse Gag Order
    News: US News
    [​IMG]
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    by David Nussman • ChurchMilitant.com • October 2, 2018 15 Comments
    Cuts ties with lay order after instruction to keep silent on sex abuse scandal

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    CHICAGO (ChurchMilitant.com) - A top judge in Illinois says she left the Order of Malta because leaders were trying to silence her criticism of the Pope on sex abuse.

    Justice Anne Burke currently serves on the Illinois Supreme Court. In 2002–2004, Burke acted as interim chair of the U.S. bishops' independent Review Board charged with scrutinizing the way dioceses handled allegations of priest sex abuse.

    Chicago Sun-Times writer Michael Sneed reported on Sept. 24 that Burke had resigned from the Order of Malta after the lay order's leadership told members not to criticize the Church's handling of the sex abuse scandal.

    Peter J. Kelly, president of the Order of Malta's U.S. branch, had said in a letter to members, "Is it not the mission of the Order of Malta to participate in the debate concerning the current crisis. Therefore, official participation of members in the public debate regarding the aforementioned issues — beyond condemning abuse in general — is not helpful and could interfere with our work."

    Burke's response was to cut ties with the Dames of Malta — the female counterpart of the Knights of Malta. She said in a letter to Kelly, "I feel that I cannot remain silent and I no longer wish to be a part of a Catholic organization that is unwilling to take a stand on these issues."

    The judge's letter to Kelly pledged, "I will continue to speak out about the need to investigate the underlying causes and conduct by the hierarchy in our Church that permitted these crimes to continue."

    In the letter, Justice Burke blasted Cdl. Timothy Dolan of the New York archdiocese for hiring a former judge to "investigate" the archdiocese. Burke opined, "It's unbelievable that New York City's Cardinal Timothy Dolan just picked a special attorney to investigate child abuse in his archdiocese! It's nonsense!"

    "Why would anybody trust this when she is working FOR the archdiocese?" she added.

    I will continue to speak out about the need to investigate the underlying causes and conduct by the hierarchy in our Church that permitted these crimes to continue.Tweet
    The Chicago Sun-Times also interviewed Burke in mid-August after the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report. Burke said at the time, "I wasn't shocked. Not at all."

    She related the bombshell report to her own experience investigating the Church's sex abuse scandal on the National Review Board.

    "We did a lot of research, but a lot was kept from us and we knew it," she said.

    "It was happening in Chicago, but we had to rely on files the bishops were willing to give us — and we knew there had to be more, but we had no subpoena powers," said Burke to her interviewer. "We had no government authority!"

    "And shockingly," Burke noted, "the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops charter our National Review Board was appointed under did NOT include investigating the BISHOPS! Or even penalizing the bishops or cardinals for transferring these priests!"

    The judge said she would like to see more states have similar investigations into the Church's handling of sex abuse allegations. She was quoted as saying, "Finally … at last … government authorities — like those in Pennsylvania — are getting involved in investigation of this criminal activity."

    She opined, "I think every state should convene a grand jury into this culture of secrecy that protected offenders at all costs."
     
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  13. Dolours

    Dolours Guest

    I looked him up. He's Canadian, a member of a society of priests called the Companions of the Cross which was set up in 1985 in response to Pope John Paul's call for a new evangelisation. They work in parishes with the consent of the local Bishop. Fr. Goring is the Director of the Charasmatic Centre in Houston, Texas, so I suppose his Bishop would be Cardinal DiNardo. Just as well he isn't working out of Chicago. https://companionscross.org/who-we-are
     
  14. Dolours

    Dolours Guest

    Good for her. How can a layperson employed by the Archbishop of New York investigate the relationship between Cardinal McCarrick and other senior figures in the US Church as well as his relationship with the Vatican Curia? A proper investigation of McCarrick would have to include following the money. If Cardinal Parolin requested and was given the documents in Cardinal Ouellet's possession, there's no reason to believe that the same thing hasn't happened to documents in every diocese (and probably the nunciature). It appears that in Rome Cardinal Parolin is investigating himself. It's all a sick joke.
     
  15. AED

    AED Powers

    Yes Dolours. Well said. A sick joke. I hear the sound of mortar and shards crumbling down like first silent footfall of an avalanche. The edifice (NOT the true Church) is beginning to loosen and fall. I believe soon the sound will be defeaning and the clouds of dust choking with visibility temporarily lost—to carry the metaphor further. I can’t stress enough our need to hide in the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
     
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  16. Dolours

    Dolours Guest

    With the hierarchy closing ranks and covering for each other, it looks like the only investigative route for the laity to piece together the network of corruption is by following any money trail left by dodgy clerics. That kind of investigation would require people with a specific skillset. They don't come cheap and a thorough investigation would be too time consuming for volunteers.

    Incidentally, someone posted an interesting comment beneath the First Things article about McCarrick. In 1998, the Diocese of Newark, New Jersey, took over responsibility for the Turks & Caicos Islands in the British West Indies. Prior to that, they were in the ecclesiastical territory of Nassau in the Bahamas. It appears that the Turks & Caicos had a bit of a reputation in financial circles. Here's a report from 2009: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/mar/17/tax-haven-turks-and-caicos

    Here's a link to the website of the Catholic Mission Siu Iuris on the Turks & Caicos: https://www.catholic.tc/index.html
    Looks like an island paradise, worth considering for a Benedict option when I win the Lotto: https://www.luxuryretreats.com/vaca...MIy6yfxI3q3QIV4Z3tCh28Dg8KEAAYAyAAEgJhSvD_BwE
     
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  17. SgCatholic

    SgCatholic Guest

    Cardinal Müller confirms sex abuse investigation against UK Cardinal was stopped
    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/c...abuse-investigation-against-uk-cardinal-was-s

    October 3, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Gerhard Müller has confirmed that the Vatican investigation into sexual abuse by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor was not completed, but instead was stopped for lack of the Pope’s approval.

    The cardinal spoke with LifeSiteNews yesterday in Washington, D.C. while there to speak at the Napa Institute’s Conference on Authentic Catholic Reform.

    LifeSiteNews asked Cardinal Müller if Pope Francis had indeed halted the investigation into Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who passed away in 2017. Müller was until recently the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Vatican body tasked with investigating sex abuse cases. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor was accused of abusing a girl when she was 13 or 14 during the 1960s.

    Cardinal Müller told LifeSiteNews he was “bound by Pontifical Secret,” but said that “the Pope’s approval is required for investigations” of a Cardinal. LifeSiteNews informed Müller that some news reports were suggesting he had completed the investigation, rather than the investigation having been interrupted and prevented from continuing.

    LifeSiteNews asked the cardinal if he would at least go on the record to indicate that the investigation was stopped, rather than completed, and he agreed, “yes.”

    ‘The Pope wants to speak to you’
    Despite suggestions to the contrary, neither LifeSiteNews nor Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò claimed that Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor was guilty of the abuse. Rather, LifeSite’s original report focused on the fact that the investigation into the allegations did not follow proper Church protocol, and Archbishop Viganò mentioned the halting of the investigation in the context of the Pope’s larger record on sex abuse cover-up.

    The bizarre circumstances around the Pope stopping the investigation were revealed by famed Vatican reporter Marco Tosatti. From a source close to Cardinal Müller, Tosatti learned that the Cardinal, when he was Prefect of the CDF, was interrupted by a phone call from the Pope while saying Mass in June 2013 at the Church of Santa Monica (next to the CDF building) for a small group of German students.

    As Tosatti put it in an article for First Things last year:

    His secretary joined him at the altar: “The pope wants to speak to you.” “Did you tell him I am celebrating Mass?” asked Müller. “Yes,” said the secretary, “but he says he does not mind—he wants to talk to you all the same.” The cardinal went to the sacristy. The pope, in a very bad mood, gave him some orders about a dossier concerning one of his friends, a cardinal.

    In a joint report with LifeSiteNews last week, Tosatti revealed for the first time, via a source close to Cardinal Müller, that it was the CDF’s investigation of Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor that Pope Francis nixed during that urgent phone call.

    The allegation, and failed investigations
    From a source in England close to the Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor case, LifeSiteNews learned that the lady around 2009 accused Murphy-O’Connor of involvement in her abuse. She had been, as a young teen in the 1960s, a victim of notorious pedophile priest Michael Hill. She asserted around 2009 that there were several priests involved in her abuse at the time, with Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor being one of them. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor later infamously transferred the known abuser Hill to be the chaplain at Gatwick airport despite warnings that he would offend again. (He did indeed offend again.) The lady in question is an acknowledged victim of Fr. Hill and was paid at the beginning of the 2000s a £40,000 settlement by the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton for the abuse she suffered.

    While the left-leaning Tablet in England has claimed that the woman’s allegations against Murphy-O’Connor were investigated by police and the Church and found lacking in credibility, our source in England provides needed clarification.

    Our source notes: “The police did not decide that she was not credible, but that they did not have corroborating evidence.” The source added that, had the police not found the victim a credible source, “they would not have investigated the case.” Rather, the source said, the police took the case so seriously that they interviewed Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor himself “under caution,” which means that they made it clear to him that his answers could be used against him in court. Moreover, the source says the police never closed the case, but put it aside awaiting corroborating evidence.

    The Tablet author Christopher Lamb omits in his description of the history of the case that the Archdiocese of Westminster altogether refused to investigate the allegations of the female victim according to Church protocols. As LifeSiteNews has reported, it was not the Archdiocese of Westminster, but two other dioceses – Portsmouth and Northampton – which filed a case directly with the CDF in 2011. As our well-placed source in England has affirmed, it was not Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster since 2009, who instigated the CDF investigation. Only in 2011 – that is, three years after the lady started to claim Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor abused her – Nichols finally had his diocesan officials meet with her in person. Still, they did not open an investigation.

    (continues...)
     
  18. SgCatholic

    SgCatholic Guest

    According to our source in England, Bishop Crispian Hollis (of Portsmouth, now retired) and Bishop Peter Doyle (Northampton) both knew the female victim for years and found her a credible person. “All people involved [i.e., police, as well as the English bishops filing the case with the CDF] found that the female victim is a credible witness,” the English source told LifeSiteNews.

    The Tablet reports on a CDF investigation in 2011 of the case under then-CDF head Cardinal William Levada. That investigation apparently determined there was no case. However, our English source states that the CDF’s investigation in 2011 was not thorough, inasmuch as the victim herself was not even personally interviewed by the CDF officials.

    As The Tablet so ambiguously puts it, the need to restart the case then in 2013 was due to an “administrative gap.” Of what that “administrative gap” could be, our source commented: “The CDF itself had not followed protocol.”

    That is the very reason why, in 2013, Peter Doyle – the Bishop of Northampton who originally worked in Portsmouth and who knows the victim personally – together with Portsmouth “complained to Rome” and urged Nichols to restart the CDF investigation in 2013, according to our English source. But once Cardinal Müller finally got the 2013 CDF investigation underway, Pope Francis put a stop to it.

    Damian Thompson, editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, notes that there were “some English bishops” who were “unhappy at Westminster breaking rules.” Speaking of The Tablet article, he wrote on Twitter September 30: “This report is basically accurate. I believe in ++Cormac’s innocence. But this isn’t the whole story. Some English bishops unhappy at Westminster breaking rules; the CDF intervened. ++Mueller knows the truth.”

    “Cardinal Nichols should explain precisely how he handled the Cormac allegations,” Thompson wrote on Twitter September 26. “They may have lacked credibility, but there’s no indication that the Church’s abuse procedures were properly implemented. Far from it.”

    Viganò vindicated
    On Twitter, The Tablet’s Lamb and Austen Ivereigh, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor’s former assistant, suggested that The Tablet’s report discredited Archbishop Viganò. Viganò listed in his recent follow-up testimony Pope Francis’ “halting of the investigation of sex abuse allegations against Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor” as one example of the pontiff’s complicity in sex abuse cover-up. The discrediting of Viganò would vindicate Pope Francis, not only with regard to his role in the Murphy-O’Connor case, but in the face of larger cover-up accusations surrounding the ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick debacle.

    Cardinal Muller’s confirmation that the CDF’s investigation of Murphy-O’Connor was indeed halted would seem to vindicate Viganò, though.

    Murphy-O’Connor had been the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton from 1977 until 2000, when he was appointed Archbishop of Westminster. He was also a member of the St. Gallen Group that tried to get Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) elected, first in the 2005 conclave, and then again in 2013.

    In his biography of Pope Francis, Ivereigh wrote that days prior to the conclave, which began March 12, 2013 in Rome, Murphy-O’Connor was tasked by the St. Gallen “mafia” to inform Jorge Bergoglio of a plan to get him elected. According to Ivereigh, Murphy-O’Connor was also tasked with lobbying for Bergoglio among his North American counterparts as well as acting as a link to those from Commonwealth countries. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor recounted in his memoir An English Springthat when Pope Francis met the English cardinal in July 2013, the Pope told him, “You're to blame!”

    (emphasis in red is mine)
     
  19. AED

    AED Powers

    I have no words.
     
  20. Jarg

    Jarg Archangels

    I agree 100% with the below -precisely because it is for the very wellbeing of those lost souls like McCarrick.

    Scott Hahn: Don’t laicize sexual predators–excommunicate them
    Catholic, Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal, Excommunication, Scott Hahn, Sex Abuse Crisis In Catholic Church, Theodore Mccarrick

    WASHINGTON, D.C., October 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Catholic apologist, author, and Franciscan University of Steubenville professor Scott Hahn has stated that clergy convicted of being sexual predators shouldn’t be defrocked, they should receive “excommunication.” He appeared to be referring to now ex-Cardinal McCarrick without mentioning him by name.

    Hahn said to participants at the Napa Institute’s Authentic Catholic Reform Conference in Washington D.C. earlier this week that excommunication is a “hard medicine” that ultimately seeks the good of the one being punished. He also said that calls for the predatory ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick to be “reduced to the lay state” indicated contempt for the laity.

    Hahn, whose lecture was titled “Universal Call to Holiness,” had just told his audience that lay people, no less than clergy, were called to be saints.

    “What has brought this to my attention recently is a prelate, that we may all have read about, who was convicted, and then he was basically forced to resign from his cardinalate,” Hahn stated.

    “And why? Because he was a predator. He was also a promoter of other predators,” he continued. “He was also a protector. And so what do they say? ‘He can no longer be a cardinal.’ And then people said, ‘That’s not enough’. So what should we do to punish him? ‘Defrock him!’” And what does that imply?”

    “Reduce him down to the level of the laity,” he answered his own question. “Think about that. What does that imply? What do people think about laity? That if you’re a prelate, and a predator, and a promoter, and a protector, and you’re caught... Boom! You can’t be clergy; you have to be at the level of the laity!”

    “So much for the universal call to holiness,” he exclaimed.

    The former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was removed from public ministry this June after a credible allegation that he had molested an altar boy was made public. Other allegations of abuse of boys and young men followed. In July, after Catholic institutions scrambled to distance themselves from the once-powerful prelate, McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals. Then in August, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former papal nuncio to the USA, released a testimony alleging that Pope Francis, knowing of McCarrick’s unsavory reputation, made him "one of his principal agents in governing the Church."

    Echoing an earlier lecture, Hahn pointed out that St. Paul prescribes the “hard medicine” of excommunication in his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 5:1-5). In this passage, Saint Paul condemns the sexual immorality of a member of the community and advises the community to banish the man:

    “In the name of the Lord Jesus...you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that on the day of the Lord Jesus his soul may be saved.”

    The point of excommunicating “this immoral man” is not “to get even” or even primarily “to purify the Church” but for “the man’s salvation,” Hahn said. He turned to the Second Letter to Corinthians (2 Cor 2: 1-9) to point to the “result of this excommunication.” The sincerely repentant sinner can now be welcomed back with joy, “for that was the whole point” of the punishment.

    Hahn exhorted his hearers not to concentrate exclusively on clerical sins — "It’s easy for us to hate the sins of the clergy" — but also to develop a “holy contempt” for the sins they “commit the most, and enjoy the most, and rationalise the most because they’re the sins that will do the most damage”, not just to themselves, but to the Church and their families.

    Nevertheless, the lecturer returned briefly to the subject of clerical sin to point out that although sex between clerics and consenting adults is not a crime, it’s a mortal sin.

    “But even more than mortal sin, it was desecration,” Hahn stated. “It was profaning that supernatural fatherhood in a way that is spiritually incestuous as well as sodomit[ical].”

    He said that it was “almost unbelievable” that people were confronting these sins and wondering if McCarrick should be merely stripped of the cardinalate or also laicized.

    Hahn believes we have a crisis that eclipses the Reformation of 500 years ago and is more akin to the three scandalous reigns of Benedict IX, the first pope in history to be accused of sodomy, almost one thousand years ago.

    Saying that the laity have to take the universal call to holiness seriously, Hahn encouraged them to take responsibility for changing those things they can change. But as well as investigating the clergy, lay people need to live a sacramental life.

    Key to this is going to confession, constantly tending one’s marriage, and being a good parent. Hahn emphasised that being a good father, implies having a fatherly, rather than a motherly love, a love that accepts children for who they are but still encourages them to do better.

    Quoting a professor from his student days, Hahn said that the culture would be transformed “if Catholics simply lived out the sacrament of matrimony.”
     
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