Perhaps God has put us through this strange pontificate to expose It all right down to the evil tap root. Ever try uprooting a shrub like a lilac or hydrangea. It takes a truck with chains to yank it all the way out and even then little shoots keep trying to emerge. The tenacity of Tares. (Lilacs can become weedy and rogue after a while as do the old fashioned hydrangeas no matter how lovely they once were)
Fr Ripperger gave a wonderful talk, 'Levels of Spiritual warfare'. He says tha tthe devil is on a very tight leash; that the devil is a slave of Jesus. He can do nothing without God's permission. That the very areas were we are most tempted are the very areas were God intends we must most shine. If you translate thsi to the Church , things become a lot more hopeful. That we are going through this massive dark tunnel with a reason, a God intended End Point which is the Church's purification.
I think it is important to stay very spiritually positive. Not to kind of wallow in a mire of negative despond. This is not being falsely positive. Christ won the Victory in Calvary; everything esle is just a mopping up operation. As Billy Graham once wonderfully said, 'I have read the Bible to the End and it all works out fine in the end!'. All that is happening is with the permission of the Good God. It is His Church and He will and is looking after it. More than mother would charge into a burning building to save her child, God is rushing to the aid of His Church. We should have the most complete confidence in this. The Church is the Bride of Christ. He loves her and will take care of her. All that is happening now is passing and will pass. The Bride of Christ, His Church, will step forth from all this more beautiful and radiant than ever. None of this is easy. But then Christ never promised us, 'Easy'. Christ promised us the Cross and the Victory. We are getting and will get both. The Greater the Cross the Greater the Crown.
Agree. "Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." Jesus said this but I cant quote chapter and verse. God is sovereign. God is in control. "HE will keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee." One of the scriptures I memorized back in the day. Also from psalm 16 "I set the Lord always before me. With Him at my right hand I will not be disturbed."
Vatican spokesman, deputy resign suddenly amid overhaul by Pope Francis The spokesman for the Vatican and his deputy resigned suddenly Monday, weeks after Pope Francis appointed an Italian journalist -- and close friend -- as the new editorial director of communications. Vatican Spokesman Greg Burke tweeted the news that he and his deputy, Paloma Garcia Ovejero, had resigned, effective Jan. 1. "At this time of transition in Vatican communications, we think it’s best the Holy Father is completely free to assemble a new team," Burke wrote on Twitter. Burke, a former Fox News Channel correspondent, joined the Vatican in 2012. "The experience has been fascinating, to say the least," he wrote on Twitter. "Thank you, Pope Francis. Un abrazo muy fuerte." A Vatican statement said Francis accepted the pair's resignations Monday. Francis named a member of the Vatican's communications office, Alessandro Gisotti, as an interim replacement. The pope has recently overhauled the Vatican's media operations by ousting the longtime editor of the Vatican newspaper and naming a new director of editorial content for all Vatican media, Andrea Tornielli. Tornielli has worked as a Vatican correspondent for several Italian newspapers and publications for over 20 years, according to Vatican News. https://www.foxnews.com/world/vatican-spokesman-deputy-resign-suddenly-amid-overhaul-by-pope-francis
This is just horrifying..... I can't bring myself to paste the content of the article here - Boise, Idaho priest sentenced to 25 years for child pornography. He had become Satanist as well. The article mentions that 2 people came forward long ago but were ignored https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article223358745.html
Sadly the higher the calling the deeper the corruption when they fall. I seem unable to experience shock or outrage any more. 30 years ago when I first learned of this--without having a clue how deep and dark it was--i was devastated. I tried to tell people. Few wanted to hear it or believe it. Now I simply turn it over to Jesus. Knowing my own sins contributed to this darkness over the Church helps keep me grounded. We all crucified Our Lord. But this time now of horror upon horror being revealed in such detail has left me numb. Nothing surprises me any more it seems. Mary our Blessed Mother come soon and crush the serpent!
You have You have expressed my sentiments exactly. I too knew of these crimes long ago....but I could never dream that the magnitude....up to the highest levels of the church as we are now seeing, could ever happen. I always wondered why, if the hierarchy knew about one case after another, how it could be so ignored. Now we know....and it does leave you numb. And as we are all sinners in need ofGods Mercy, it is all the more painful that we now question the very men who’s charge by their vocation to administer the sacraments ....providing us with that grace....that leaves the faithful in even more doubt. Satan has unleashed his demons for sure. But, he’ll lose....his head is being crushed even now....the battle is on....we know who wins! Btw...no one wanted to see or hear the truth years ago. No one could ever believe that it could exist. That’s why it went on for as long as it did. I understand how hard it would be to comprehend if you did not have personal knowledge of such things. Victims were also shamed into silence....the reasons and the list is long. Sad.
That's a very big part of the previous silence and coverups. Now you can use a search engine and names upon names of the scurrilous come right into view.The sodomites and abusers got caught with the advance of technology, in large part. (God purifying His Church)
WHY MEN LIKE ME SHOULD NOT BE PRIESTS by Daniel Mattson8 . 17 . 18 Iam the sort of man the Catholic Church says shouldn’t be a priest. I experience what the Vatican calls “deep-seated homosexual tendencies,” which, according to the Church, make me an unsuitable candidate for the priesthood. The 2005 Vatican instruction on the question of homosexuality and the priesthood states this clearly: “The Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’” This teaching wasn’t new. In 1961, the Vatican declared that men with homosexual inclinations couldn’t be ordained. Seminarians who “sinned gravely against the sixth commandment with a person of the same or opposite sex” were to be “dismissed immediately.” I take no offense at this teaching. In fact, I agree with it. I’m convinced that if the Church had heeded its own counsel from 1961 and 2005, we wouldn’t be reeling from the shocking headlines of today: “St. John's Seminary Shakeup Amid Probe Into Sexual Misconduct”; “Victims recount sexual abuse horrors in Chilean seminary”; “Honduran Seminarians Allege Widespread Homosexual Misconduct”; “Vatican cops bust drug-fueled gay orgy at home of cardinal's aide”; “Man Says Cardinal McCarrick, His ‘Uncle Ted,' Sexually Abused Him.” Most of the horrific abuse detailed in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report involved adolescent boys and young men. This isn’t pedophilia. What unites all of these scandals is homosexuality in our seminaries and the priesthood: the result of the Church ignoring its own clear directives. If it is serious about ending the sex scandals, the Church needs to admit it has a homosexual priest problem and stop ordaining men with deep-seated homosexual tendencies. The first “Uncle Ted” scandal was “Uncle Ted” becoming a priest. I broach the subject with trepidation. I am convinced that most homosexual priests are good and holy men. One example of many I know is a priest who serves as a hospital chaplain. He regularly accompanies families through the pain of physical trauma, illness, and the death of loved ones. He has a special charism for men dying with AIDS, which I’m certain comes from his love for others with deep-seated homosexual tendencies like him. He has helped many of them reconcile with Christ before death. So I agree with Bishop Barron’s warning about the dangers of scapegoating people who share my attraction to men. But recognizing the overwhelming role that homosexuality has played in so many of our past and present scandals is not scapegoating. It’s the Church confronting the truth. Archbishop Charles Chaput, commenting on the 2005 document, wrote, “While persistent homosexual tendencies never preclude personal holiness—homosexuals and heterosexuals have the same Christian call to chastity, according to their state of life—they do make the vocation of effective priestly service that much more difficult.” From my personal experience, I believe there are many reasons why this is the case, but here I will focus only on two, directly connected with unchastity. The first reason is that men with homosexual tendencies find it particularly difficult to live out the demands of chastity. The vast majority of scandals in the Church since 2002 involve homosexual priests profoundly failing in chastity. This is no surprise to me. Chastity, I’m convinced (and the evidence bears this out), is much harder for men with a homosexual inclination than for others. Fr. James Lloyd, C.S.P., a priest with a PhD in psychology from NYU, has worked with homosexual men (including priests) for more than 30 years as a clinical psychologist. On the subject of chastity and homosexual priests, he says, “It is clear enough from clinical evidence that the psychic energy needed to contain homosexual drives is far greater than that needed by the straying heterosexual.” Like many same-sex attracted men, I have at times compulsively engaged in risky anonymous behavior with other men. If I had been a priest, my sin would have been compounded by committing a horrible abuse against someone for whom I should have been a spiritual father. Fr. Lloyd’s insight is invaluable here: “The compulsion dimension attendant upon the SSA [same-sex attracted] personality cannot be ignored. Too long has the Church turned away as if nothing were happening. We can no longer blink at the obvious … Whenever there is a doubt about any candidate for the priesthood, the doubt must be resolved in favor of the Church!” If the Church wants to avoid sex scandals, it must stop ordaining the sorts of men who have the hardest time remaining chaste. The second problem is directly connected with the first. If a priest isn’t abiding by the Church’s teaching in his own life, he won’t teach his parishioners to follow a teaching he doesn’t believe applies to him. Thus, a grave problem with homosexual priests is the high number of them who don’t agree with the Church’s teaching on sexual morality and covertly (or overtly) undermine this teaching, both in the pulpit and in the confessional. A story from my own journey in chastity is instructive. Soon after reentering the Church in 2009, I sinned by having an anonymous sexual encounter with a man. Filled with remorse, I went to confession the next day, and shockingly, the priest (a stranger to me) told me that having sex with a man wasn’t sinful. Instead, he urged me to go find a boyfriend, saying, “the Church will change.” Later, when I discussed this priest with those who knew him, I was told it was widely acknowledged that this priest was homosexual himself. In his 1991 book Gay Priests, Dr. James Wolf interviewed 101 priests. All of them said they disagreed with Church teaching on sexual morality; only 9 percent of them said they would tell a layman like me to refrain from having sex with a man. Those men should never have been ordained. I readily acknowledge that the priests I describe above do not reflect all homosexual priests. The 2005 Vatican document does make an exception for those who may have had a “transitory” homosexuality—men who were able to overcome the grave wounds of same-sex temptations through counseling, hard work, prayer, and honest self-reflection, and thus are good candidates for the priesthood. Yet I think these men are rare. Because the sex scandals of the Church are overwhelmingly homosexual, the Church can no longer risk ordaining men with homosexual inclinations in the hopes that those inclinations turn out to be transitory. The Church needs mature men, confident in their identity and ready to be spiritual fathers. I love the Church, but I'm not the sort of man the Church needs as a priest. The Norms for Priestly Ordination, published in 1993 by the USCCB, reveal this to me: “In order to talk about a person as mature, his sexual instinct must have overcome two immature tendencies, narcissism and homosexuality, and must have arrived at heterosexuality.” What would the American Church look like today if our bishops had taken seriously the directives of 1961, 1993, and 2005? We can’t answer that question, but we can look to our future, and listen to the words of Pope Francis about admitting homosexual men to seminary: “If you have even the slightest doubt, it's better not to let them enter.” Let us pray that the bishops here in America and around the world heed his wise counsel. Daniel C. Mattson is the author of Why I Don't Call Myself Gay: How I Reclaimed My Sexual Reality and Found Peace.
Here's my personal voyage...since the 80's there was a homosexual contingent in the Seminaries. Some seminaries more powerful... others more hidden. It was controlled by seminary priest and they would make seminarians part of their group. Invite young and volatile seminarians to dinners and parties. The group I knew were the traditionalist...they loved the old style clothing and pageantry. I think what happened is... the seminarians are groomed homosexual sexuality is not a sin. The culture grows because there are priests that actively engaged in these activities. It becomes part of their life style. So, if they are caught, nothing happens because it is has its own culture. Its interesting, usually if a priest is heterosexual, if he gets caught... he leaves the church. And I think he leaves the church because he still has a conscious of right and wrong. Homosexual priest have there own community within the church. But evil breeds evil, once you enter that group darkness takes over...perversion grows with no conscious. Demons take over. But just like our politics there is a Holy side that counters the evil side. We might not see it but there are many holy priest. The difference is they walk alone. Makes it difficult to fight counterculture.
F.S. were you in the seminary? Your story makes feel very sad. Sad for mankind, sad for the way it offends our Lord. I still cannot understand or fathom how men can believe that homosexual activity between men is not being unchaste. I live in a small town of about 30,000 with 8 catholic churches. Publicly 5 priests have been removed, 2 from my very own parish. I am sure there are more that have not been dealt with. Even with in my own family, my father had a cousin that was a priest 50 years ago that was hushed up and no one talked about because of his waywardness yet he was able to continue on. As a child I new something wasn't quite right and my father would make it a very obvious point not to be around him, yet we were never told why. It wasn't until the internet that I was able to really find answers. I am sickened by it all and I feel like I am trying to journey through a dark forest of wolves in sheep's clothing. Trying to lead my family to Christ is very difficult. How can I say to people we have to believe in everything the Church teaches when our leaders won't do the same. The only thing that is helping me to keep afloat on this sinking ship is the realization that God has called me to this duty and I must persevere. I must stay true to the one Church Jesus has founded and I must be a beacon of light in this dark world to all I encounter. I must practice what I preach.
