Yes, pray and trust. We know that Christ's Church will suffer (although it was impossible to imagine things would come to this) and we all will continue to be refined. We know as well that no matter what it will not be overcome. It will shine as a light in the darkness no matter how small it becomes or the enemies of the Church insist they have defeated us and scoff. Not even the fallen angels are so arrogant and puffed up as some men.
The priest that Cardinal Dolan is accused of covering for is not the only one. Here's another case Church Militant covered back in Dec 2015:
The National Catholic Register published this story on the parade led by Cardinal Dolan. I though it was well written and expressed the grave concerns of many Catholics about the message this sent to the faithful. http://www.ncregister.com/blog/pat-archbold/cardinal-dolan-and-the-nyc-st.-patricks-gay-parade
I can't quite get my head around the Cardinal's way of thinking on these matters. It seems so foreign to me. It seems to me if the way of the world was to change tomorrow and people were to turn against the , 'Gay Revolution', tomorrow Cardinal Dolan would be the very first to chase them with a hatchet. That he's a kind of , 'Go with the flow', kind of guy. One of the, ' Boys'. But then again most people are like that; like sheep. That's one thing I really love about being Catholic; it makes you counter cultural. Forces you to think for yourself. To stand out.
Agree Padraig...if we are living our faith, we’d better be countercultural. I can hardly believe the huge gap that has widened between the current social culture today from when I was a child. Things are so bad today, that living the faith , especially for the youth is very hard. Our clerics are called to live a life that is counter to this culture today...if they can’t or won’t preach the gospel, they are in the wrong vocation. As a parent, I often found myself in conflict over cultural differences with my children. They are living in a increasingly progressive, atheistic society ...void of any faith. When these differences between your children and your faith crop up, you cannot go along to get along....you need to be the parent, not the friend if you want to lead your child to heaven. It’s hard...very hard. But it’s also a vocation as a parent. If the leaders, priest, clerics of the church are not willing to live and preach the authentic gospel, then it will be lost to the generations to come. Sadly, I think we are already there.
That case surely couldn't be explained away by a breakdown in communications. Looking at some comments on Cardinal Dolan's Twitter page, I'm wondering whether he could be one of those clerics whom Fr. Mark Goring suggested could have been somehow compromised in the past. It looks like the deviants, especially deviant Bishops, had a clear field in the Church until the McCarrick scandals hit the headlines. One of the reasons I was inclined to give Cardinal Dolan the benefit of the doubt was that Fr. Murray seems to be free to express his opinions as part of EWTN's Papal Posse. Fr. Murray is a priest in New York. Were he in Cardinal Cupich's diocese he would likely have the men in white coats coming to take him away. The Review Board in NY (which blew the lid off the McCarrick can of worms) also seems to be able to work without interference. No matter how independent they are, the Archbishop must have had some say in choosing the Board's members. A new Bishop in New York could easily make personnel changes there. I read a piece in Catholic World Report where they said that the Vatican has handed the investigation of McCarrick to the New York Archdiocese. Imagine the impact on that investigation if Dolan were replaced by one of McCarrick's proteges like Cupich, Tobin or McElroy. The Akita prophecy does appear to be coming true with Bishops opposing Bishops, etc. If it results in the Church finally being cleaned of the filth it will be a good thing. God can bring good even from the worst mess created by man. We really need to step up our prayers for priests, and the Church needs to get its act together on introducing support services to help our priests.
Indeed, nobody could accuse Cardinal Dolan of being confrontational. With all the attention on Cardinal Dolan, nobody is paying much heed to this story: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...told-7-accused-priests-lived-at-gonzaga-27265 There's some more information from, of all places, the National Catholic Reporter, albeit buried beneath the reports about New York and a convicted priest in Pennsylvania: https://www.ncronline.org/news/acco...iest-sent-prison-after-guilty-plea-abuse-case From the Reporter: "In addition, at Gonzaga University, a Jesuit-run school in Spokane, Washington, two priests resigned as vice presidents over questions about the handling of abuse allegations against other clergy, the Spokesman-Review in Spokane reported. Gonzaga President Thayne McCulloh announced the resignations Dec. 21 of Jesuit Frs. Frank Case and Pat Lee in a letter to faculty, staff and students. In an email to Catholic News Service Dec. 26, David Sonntag, associate vice president of marketing and communications at the school, declined to explain why the departures occurred, saying he could not discuss personnel matters. The resignation of Case followed a report by the Northwest News Network and the Center for Investigative Reporting in mid-December. The report revealed Case recommended Jesuit Fr. James Poole, who had been accused as early as 1960 of sexually abusing Alaska Native women and girls, for a job as chaplain at a Tacoma, Washington, hospital in 1989. Case was head of the Jesuits' Oregon Province at the time. Case has said he was unaware of the accusations. He had served as vice president at Gonzaga since 2011 and was widely known as the chaplain for the nationally ranked men's basketball team. The situation surrounding Lee's resignation was less clear. He had been the university's vice president of mission and ministry since 2016 and served as vice president of mission from 2005 to 2008. Lee also served as a Jesuit provincial." Note that both priests who resigned were Vice Presidents at Gonzaga and both had previously served as Jesuit Provincials. Gonzaga College was the place where in 2013 official student club status was denied to a Knights of Columbus organisation on campus because it was all Catholic and all male and was "inconsistent with the policy and practice of student organization recognition at Gonzaga University, as well as the university's commitment to non-discrimination based on certain characteristics, one of which is religion." The decision was reversed months later. Bishop Blaise Cupich was Bishop of Spokane at that time but he chose not to interfere other than instructing student members not to talk to the media. Here's the National Catholic Reporter's coverage of the College's decision to reverse the ban: https://www.ncronline.org/news/pari...erses-decision-knights-columbus-student-group The abscess has been gathering for a very long time.
I sometimes have grave misgivings about confronting great evils in the Church and speaking out. I love to read the writings of the mystics who receive messages of heaven along the lines of how wrong it is to criticise priests and how blessed it is to remain silent. This troubles me very much. For if it were wrong to criticise priests; how much more wrong would it be to faults Bishops and Cardinals and even more so the Holy Father himself? It is a real problem at times and a concern for myself and I know a problem for many on the forum and millions of devout ordinary Catholics throughout the world. It brings me back to my time in the monastery. I was in kind of Spiritual outer space . I was just so happy to be in a place of prayer. All I wanted to do was pray. To grow closer to the Lord. What was going on around me not only did not bother or interest me; I was totally unaware of it. It was if I was in the monastery but not part of it. I think this was fine at the time for it was where I was supposed to be. It took me many , many years later looking back on it to untangle it all. Now having come to a diffferent place on the Spiritual Path I would , I think recognise all was not well there and I would have called these things out. In fact I suspect I would have been asked to leave the monastery very quickly indeed. One problem , which i was totally unaware of, probably the only one in the entire place to be so, was a priest who had been caught interferring with children ( I suspect more than once). The police and Abbot had collaborated in covering things up and he was still a priest in good standing. I suspect some of the brothers were unhappy with this. He was later caught yet again and sent to prison for five years.I think silence about such matters is as great and evil as the crime itself. So in this case we have not only a right but s duty to criticise but a right. Another problem was the monk who was doing the cooking. It was totally appalling. The kitchen was filthy and he used to buy vegetables that the grocer was about to bin as a Penance. This was fine if it was only himself that had to eat these but we all did. To make matters worse we were on a vegetarian diet . It was quite common to cut open a potato and to find it totally black inside. I did speak to the Abbot about this but his attitude is, 'What else can I do with him?' I think looking abck down the years my own attitude to wrongs in the Church is much, much more hard boiled now. If something or someone like the Holy Father is wrong we have not only a right but a duty to say so and, where possible to act. I suppose I'll always feel more than a little uncomfortable, uneasy and even sometimes a little guilty about this. But what can I say? It needs doing. I so admire Raymond Arroyo and the Papal posse as they do this. They are so professional, detached and clinical. I would so love to emulate them. Such sad times. I would much prefer to write on purely spiritual matters but things are so bad that there is a fire in my belly to speak out. I think that fire is the Holy Spirit . There is great film about the Prophet Jeremiah having this fire in his belly. The very last thing he wanted to do was speak out, but he just had to , God forced his hand;
I would love to see the criteria for choosing someone to be a Cardinal. Of course to be a Bishop some boxes would need ticked , like having a Doctorate, a good Pastoral background, administrative experience and so. But after the usual boxes are ticked what other boxes need to be ticked. I mean what boxes were ticked for Cardinals McCarrick , Wuerl, Tobin and Cupich to pass muster? I wonder does anyone , anyone at all place forward spiritual boxes to be ticked? Like is this a man of prayer? Or even, does he keep the ten commandments? Or even does he have a living Faith? Or , is he inclined to be a heretic? Is he a deviant? Sigh . Clearly not. How bizzarre. I mean how hard is it it to find good , ordinary decent honest people to fill these high Church positions? Surely it is not rocket science. yet time after time they seem to pick the worse possible people you can possibly imagine. Could it be that the people who are picking the worst possible people you could possibly imagine are themselves the worst possible people you could ever imagine?
Yes, knowing when to speak out and when to remain silent is a real problem. I suppose it comes down to the wisdom of knowing the difference between the things we can change and the things we can't. Only the hierarchy can change this but their track record isn't good. In some ways, it's easy for us to point fingers and complain because we have never carried the same burden of authority that Bishops and Abbots have. If I'm brutally honest with myself, I doubt that I would have done any better than the Bishops of 40 or 50 years ago. With the benefit of hindsight, we all can see the enormity of their bad decisions, but four or five decades ago they didn't have the benefit of hindsight to know the consequences. There's no doubt that some of those bad decisions were motivated by evil but I believe that the vast majority were cases of poor judgement or misplaced mercy and matters got out of hand resulting in unthinkable suffering for so many victims. Also, there may well be Bishops now who as young priests were, like you in the seminary, oblivious to the fact that some of their confreres were sexual predators. People who would never think of engaging in such activities themselves wouldn't be watching out for those traits in others. Wives are often the last to learn that they are married to predators. It's different now when sex abuse is daily news but when we were young people didn't talk about it and were unaware that it is so widespread. None of that explains or excuses sending McCarrick to China on Church business, nor does it excuse the continued acceptance of priests being sexually active, or homosexual cliques and predation in seminaries. Any Bishop protecting paedophiles now must be crazy. We're not prophets, Padraig, so perhaps Jeremiah isn't the best example for us.
I think that a kind of tradition developed where some dioceses were headed by Cardinals. So, being promoted to, say, Archbishop of New York, meant that the red hat was almost guaranteed. It wasn't a rule but it became more or less the norm. A Pope can't possibly know every priest in every country. I think that Bishops' Conferences have some influence in who gets to join their ranks. I read somewhere that they draw up a shortlist of candidates and submit it to the Vatican. There's also a Vatican Congregation for Bishops which has a major role in the selection process. Wikipedia explains the process for choosing new Bishops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_for_Bishops The Pope, of course, could ignore the recommendation. Soon after his ascension to the Papacy, Pope Francis removed 15 of the 33 members of the Congregation and appointed 12 new members, among them Cardinals Wuerl who is currently a member. Cardinal Nichols of Westminister is also a member of the Congregation for Bishops. Pope John Paul made him an Auxiliary Bishop. According to Wikipedia, he was a liberal who turned conservative following advice that if he wanted to get ahead he would have to make himself more Vatican friendly. Despite his move towards conservatism, a number of English Bishops objected to his appointment to Westminster, citing his ambition! The Congregation for Bishops couldn't reach a consensus on his appointment to Westminister but Pope Benedict gave him the job anyway. Pope Francis made him a Cardinal. Looking at his Wikipedia page, there must have been a collective groan in Heaven from the English martyrs when Nichols became a Bishop. In 2009 he became Archbishop of Westminister. The following February, Nichols was thanked by British education minister Ed Balls for supporting a sexual education bill which would require schools – including Catholic schools – to explain civil partnerships and, as Balls put it, give "a balanced view on abortion... give both sides of the argument... explain how to access an abortion, the same is true on contraception as well." Balls characterised the position of Nichols and the Church agencies as an improvement on the previous situation: "To have the support of the Catholic Church and Archbishop Nichols in these changes is, I think, very, very important, is a huge step forward." No surprise, then, that he found favour with Pope Francis. It seems to me that some priests are singled out for promotion from early in their career and placed in positions where they will be noticed. That's probably a good idea if they have some special talent or are exceptionally intelligent or very holy. I suppose it all depends on the quality of the assessor. Reading about the advice given to Nichols, recalling the reports of Cardinal Bergoglio telling his homosexual friends that he didn't really mean his opposition to gay marriage in Argentina, and Cardinal Muller saying that theologians (I reckon clerics too) are careful to conceal their dissent from Church teaching until they achieve tenure, the Church might as well abandon of the selection process and pull names out of a hat. Then, the Holy Spirit really would have an input.
Padraig, You have empresses the sentiments of so many of us...my friends, etc. None of us want to focus or expose the evils of our current church scandals. I tried for years to hint to others what I knew...but had no direct evidence that I could lawfully share. In addition, I was dealing with folks who revered some of the culprits involved. Like you, I too wondered about the admonition of the mystics about criticism of clerics....that bothers me still. But weighing the gravity of the evils that destroyed the lives of thousands, witnessing the systemic nature of it......possibly causing the colapse of the church, I have come uncomfortably to the same conclusion as you. It needs exposed. If I error in doing so, I error on the side of caution. I cannot accept the theory that God would have us remain silent in a evil that kills the faith and soul of innocent victims and the take down of the Catholic Church. It makes no sense. I believe we are duty bound by our faith to protect it . If damaged is being done spiritually, it is by the perpetrators of these crimes against God and man. I pray that I am not wrong...but the fire in my belly, hopefully from the Holy Spirit, demands me to speak out. If I am wrong, I ask Gods forgiveness...but He knows this decision comes from the love of my faith...not it’s undoing.
I just caught this church Militant VORTEX video... Just speaking for myself...I completely agree with Michael Voris. https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/st.-johns-seminary-rector-forced-out-amid-abuse-probe Im referring to the the vortex below the headline.
Yes but it is very difficult. Dr Marshall compares it to Noah's son finding his father naked and drunk.
That is what has come to mind to me lately also as well as Noah's other sons covering his nakedness in modesty and reverence for their father. I have no authority granted me by God to judge these men or the ability to do anything about it. Much of what we are told regarding these things I question the motive behind. We can only Trust God and know that somehow these things will work to His glory. If it means stepping back from things a bit and a bit of detachment on my part then so be it.
Yes...I can see the comparison. I really feel for recent converts....I pray they don’t regret their conversions. It’s heartbreaking if we didn’t know how this ended...but we do. Still, to actually be wittiness to it is sad.
I believe that the picks are very intentional....it happened over time when good men were either weeded out or push out and bad ones moved up and the chain of command and became the ruling force. Diabolical in my opinion.
