Pope Francis covered up McCarrick abuse, former US nuncio testifies

Certain bishops are cause of continued presence of predators in seminaries and parishes: U.S. bishop
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/c...continued-presence-of-predators-in-seminaries

SPOKANE, Washington, September 5, 2018, (LifeSiteNews) – A U.S. bishop says it is not “clericalism” to blame for the scandals now rocking the Catholic Church but “immoral actions.” Laity are needed to lead the way, he says, as are prayer and fasting to drive out demonic forces and degeneracy in the priesthood.

In a remarkable, strongly worded video statement recorded before the release of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò's testimony, Bishop Thomas Daly of the Diocese of Spokane rebuked the forces at work in the church in recent decades that tolerated and or covered up sexual abuse by clergy.

(read the rest at the link)

 

Here’s what the book ‘The Dictator Pope’ says about Pope Francis’ handling of sex abuse cases
Maike Hickson
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/h...or-pope-says-about-pope-francis-handling-of-s

Wed Sep 5, 2018 - 4:17 pm EST

September 5, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – In light of the recent allegations of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò concerning Pope Francis’ intimate involvement in the abuse scandal of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, LifeSiteNews thought to present to our readers some excerpts of the 2018 book The Dictator Pope, written by Henry Sire.

Regnery Publishing, the publisher of this book, kindly gave us permission to publish the following excerpts. Henry Sire shows on the following pages how Pope Francis has, over the years, compromised his own credibility by showing leniency toward clergymen who have sexually abused children. Sire also shows how the Pope has promoted clergymen to prominent positions who are either homosexual themselves or who have a lax attitude toward the practice of homosexuality.

Below are some excerpts of The Dictator Pope. LifeSiteNews thanks Henry Sire and Regnery Publishing for permission to republish them.

***

The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy, written by Marcantonio Colonna (Henry Sire)
The existence of a homosexual lobby in the Vatican, which was revealed by the cardinals’ report of December 2012, is a scandal which Pope Francis has taken no steps to correct, and which he has indeed accentuated. One of the most notorious cases is that of Monsignor Battista Ricca, who is prelate of the Istituto delle Opere di Religione. Monsignor Ricca made his career as a member of the papal diplomatic service. After a posting in Bern, he was sent to Uruguay in 1999 and thoughtfully brought with him his boyfriend, Patrick Haari, a louche captain in the Swiss Army. Taking advantage of an interval between the retirement of the nuncio and the arrival of his successor, Ricca, as chargé d’affaires, settled Haari in the nunciature itself, with a job, a salary, and lodging. The new nuncio, arriving in Montevideo in early 2000, tried to get both Ricca and Haari out, but the former was protected by his friendship with Archbishop (later Cardinal) Re, who was at that time sostituto in the Secretariat of State. The ménage was an open scandal to the clergy and to the nuns who attended the Montevideo nunciature, but nothing could be done, even after Haari was brought home from a house of homosexual encounters where he had been beaten up by some rough trade. Not until Monsignor Ricca himself was caught in an illegal and compromising situation by the police, in August 2001, was the long-suffering nuncio able to get rid of his subordinate. After a further posting to Trinidad and Tobago, where he again quarreled with the nuncio, Ricca was finally removed from the active diplomatic service in 2005, when he was given a job in Rome with the status of councilor of a firstrank nunciature. His responsibilities included the management of the cardinals’ guest-house in Via della Scrofa where Cardinal Bergoglio was wont to stay, and where he famously went to pay his bill on the morning after his election. Given that Montevideo faces Buenos Aires across the mouth of the River Plate, it seems unlikely that the then cardinal archbishop was unaware of the goings-on in the nunciature over the water, but that did not prevent him from striking up a close friendship with Monsignor Ricca, which stood the latter in good stead when Bergoglio was elected pope. Within three months of that event, in June 2013, Monsignor Ricca was appointed prelate of the Vatican Bank. The appointment was the subject of a journalist’s question to the pope a few weeks later, in one of his signature press conferences on board an aeroplane, when he was quizzed about this promotion of a notorious homosexual, and it drew from the pope the well-known comment, “Who am I to judge?” In fact, his patronage of Monsignor Ricca fits the pattern which was well established when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, whereby he surrounds himself with morally weak people so as to have them under his thumb. […]

In June 2017 Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, the secretary of Cardinal Coccopalmerio, was caught by the Vatican’s Gendarmeria hosting a homosexual drugs party in his luxurious apartment in the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio. He had been using his car with Vatican number-plates in order to transport drugs without being stopped by the Italian police. Cardinal Coccopalmerio, who is one of Pope Francis’s foremost yes-men, had proposed this trusted assistant for a bishopric. Pope Francis’s liberalism has only given more power to the homosexual lobby in the Curia. He supported, for example, Archbishop Bruno Forte’s attempt to insert a relaxation of Catholic teaching on homosexuality into the report of the 2014 Synod of the Family (his insertion was rejected). Perhaps an even more scandalous case is that of the notorious liberal (especially on matters regarding homosexuality) Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who, incredibly, is president of the Pontifical Council for the Family and whom Pope Francis has recently made president of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, the body which John Paul intended as the watchdog of the Church’s teaching. One of Archbishop Paglia’s claims to fame is his commissioning of a prominent Argentinian homosexual artist to create a mural in his cathedral church that has been described as “homoerotic” and includes the archbishop himself in a net of nude or semi-nude bodies. […]

Despite verbal avowals from Pope Francis that he too is a champion against clerical abuse, this reform of accountability appears to have evaporated with Benedict’s resignation. In fact, for those paying attention, Francis started signaling the new direction immediately by choosing to honor one of the most notorious of the enabling bishops—namely his electoral ally Cardinal Danneels, who appeared with the new pope on the balcony at St. Peter’s Basilica on the night of the election. Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of Bishop Accountability, has remarked: “No other pope has spoken as passionately about the evil of child sex abuse as Francis. No other pope has invoked ‘zero tolerance’ as often.” Yet in the name of his favorite theme, “mercy,” Francis decisively broke with the Ratzinger/ Benedict program of reform, reducing the penalty for priest abusers to “a lifetime of prayer” and restrictions on celebrating Mass. In February 2017 it was revealed that Francis had “quietly reduced sanctions against a handful of paedophile priests, applying his vision of a merciful church even to its worst offenders.”

A particularly notorious case was Francis’ decision to overrule the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s penalties against the Italian priest Mauro Inzoli, who was found guilty in 2012 by an ecclesiastical court of abusing boys as young as twelve and suspended a divinis, which barred him from performing priestly duties. Inzoli had especially angered Italians for the brazenness of his behavior—he abused boys in the confessional and convinced them that his molestation was approved by God—and his love of an expensive lifestyle, earning him the nickname “Don Mercedes” in the press. But in 2014, following an appeal by Inzoli’s friends in the Curia, Cardinal Coccopalmerio and Monsignor Vito Pinto, Francis reduced the priest’s penalty to a “lifetime of prayer,” and a promise to stay away from children, giving him permission to celebrate Mass privately.

 

(cont'd)
Francis also ordered him to undergo five years of psychotherapy, a medicalized approach favored by bishops at the height of the sex abuse crisis years and demonstrated to have little effect. Inzoli’s two Curial friends were to become significant figures in later altercations between Francis and his critics within the College of Cardinals over Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis’s controversial apostolic exhortation on pastoral matters related to marriage and family life. Cardinal Coccopalmerio, a former auxiliary bishop to Cardinal Martini, is president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto now dean of the Roman Rota.22 Both these prelates have been key figures in supporting Francis against the critics of Amoris laetitia, who happen to include Cardinal Müller, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. One journalist has commented: “Pope Francis, following the advice of his clubby group of allies in the curia, is pressing to undo the reforms that were instituted by his predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI in handling cases of abuser priests.”23 This leniency, however, backfired, and after complaints from Inzoli’s home town of Cremona, police reopened the case against him. He was tried and convicted, and sentenced to four years, nine months in prison for “more than a hundred episodes” of molesting five boys, aged twelve to sixteen. Fifteen other offences were beyond the statute of limitations. After Inzoli’s conviction in the civil courts, the Vatican belatedly initiated a new canonical trial. Inzoli’s case is not an isolated one.

Associated Press reporter Nicole Winfield wrote that “two canon lawyers and a church official” told her the pope’s emphasis on “mercy” had created an environment in which “several” priests under canonical sanctions imposed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had appealed successfully to Francis for clemency through powerful Curial connections. The unnamed official noted that such appeals had rarely been successful with Benedict XVI. It was rumored that Francis intended to revert competence for sex abuse cases from Cardinal Müller at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Rota and Congregation for Clergy. Instead, Francis merely changed personnel. He summarily removed two Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith staffers in charge of handling sex abuse cases (declining to give any reasons to Cardinal Müller) and then dismissed Müller himself as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in July 2017. According to the Associated Press’s Nicole Winfield, Francis also overruled a request by his own sex abuse commission to create a tribunal of bishops to review sex abuse cases.

Perhaps worse, the commission’s guidelines for dioceses on handling abuse claims were never sent to the bishops’ conferences or even produced on the Vatican’s websites. Francis’s new approach of “mercy” and treating sex abuse as a psychological-medical problem, was criticized by a victimsurvivor on the sex-abuse advisory commission, Marie Collins, who later resigned, citing a Vatican culture of bureaucratic obstruction and inaction. “All who abuse have made a conscious decision to do so,” Collins told the Associated Press. “Even those who are paedophiles, experts will tell you, are still responsible for their actions. They can resist their inclinations.” Questions remain about Bergoglio’s knowledge and involvement in the case of decades of sexual abuse of students by priests at the Antonio Provolo Institute, a school for deaf children in Argentina and Verona, Italy. In 2009, twenty-four former students of the institute came forward with horrifying stories of sexual abuse. Pope Benedict’s Vatican ordered an investigation, and the diocese of Verona officially apologized to the Italian victims, but the Vatican has taken no action since, even though the students sent a letter to Francis in 2014, asking him for an investigative commission. The only response the group ever received from Rome was a note from Archbishop Angelo Becciu, who said the request for a commission had been passed on to the Italian bishops’ conference.

In 2016, two of the priests involved, Nicola Corradi and Horacio Corbacho, were arrested in Argentina. The Provolo Association representing the victims told the Associated Press after the arrests that the Vatican had still done nothing and raised questions about Francis himself. “We have to ask ourselves: the Pope, who was for many years the primate of the Argentine church, did he know nothing about clerical abuse in his country?” A canon lawyer for the group, Carlos Lombardi, told the press, “Either he lives outside of reality or this is enormously cynical...it’s a mockery.” The pope has outraged even his most faithful admirers in yet another sexual abuse case, this one involving Bishop Juan Barros of Chile. On January 23, 2018, the National Catholic Reporter, hitherto a bastion of Francis loyalism, carried an editorial proclaiming: “Pope Francis’s defense of Chilean Bishop Juan Barros Madrid is only the latest in a number of statements he has made in his nearly five-year papacy that have hurt survivors, and the whole body of the church.” The article went on: “Within the space of four days, Pope Francis twice slandered abuse survivors. On the papal flight from Peru Jan. 21, he again called testimony against Chilean bishop Juan Barros Madrid ‘calumny.’ Despite at least three survivors’ public accounts to the contrary, he also again said he had not seen evidence of Barros’ involvement in a cover-up to protect notorious abuser Fr. Fernando Karadima. These remarks are at least shameful. At the most, they suggest that Francis now could be complicit in the cover-up.... The pope’s statements on zero tolerance have been strong, but again and again he has refused to deal decisively with those who provided cover for the abusers.... In a bluntly critical statement, the likes of which we have struggled to find parallel in recent church history, Boston Cardinal Seán O’Malley said the pope’s slander against survivors has caused them ‘great pain.’...When it comes to confronting the clericalism that is the foundation for abuse scandal, the pope’s stony countenance is part of the problem.”

When Pope Francis’s friends start making remarks like that, a wheel has come off the Francis bandwagon. Matters got worse, when it was revealed in February 2018 that despite Francis’s insistence that he had seen no evidence of victims coming forward to accuse Bishop Juan Barros of a cover-up, apparently Cardinal Seán O’Malley had in fact handed him an eight-page letter by a victim alleging just that—that Bishop Juan Barros had not only covered up sexual abuse but was an eyewitness to it. A copy of a letter was acquired by the Associated Press. To say the least, Pope Francis has not held the “zero tolerance” line of Pope Benedict when it comes to clerical sexual abuse and has been far more lenient, or irresponsible, in dealing with this ongoing moral scandal within the Church.

Editor's Note: the excerpts are taken from the following pages of The Dictator Pope: pp. 63-65; p. 66; pp. 71-76.

 

Australia’s Daily Telegraph: Pope must answer Viganò’s claims or ‘resign’
Dorothy Cummings McLean

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/a...aph-pope-must-answer-viganos-claims-or-resign

SYDNEY, Australia, September 5, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Australia’s Daily Telegraphhas published an op-ed in which it is declared that Pope Francis must answer Archbishop Viganò’s allegations that the Pope covered-up for and promoted an abuser or he must resign.

“We need an honest explanation from the Pope or his resignation,” wrote Miranda Devine in her Sept. 1 column.

Devine said that it was “hard enough” to be a faithful Catholic defending one’s faith from “daily vitriolic complaints” without the Pope creating a new scandal by his silence.

“And this is why, when terrible crimes are uncovered in every part of the global Church--from the US to Chile, Honduras and Australia--and the Pope refuses to answer [allegations he promoted sex abuser Cardinal McCarrick], his flock loses faith in his ability to lead us out of the darkness,” Devine stated.

The journalist compared a humble admission of wrongdoing from the Australian Bishops Conference in response to the nation’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse to the pontiff’s reaction to revelations made by the former papal nuncio to the USA, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.

Viganò released a statement on August 25 alleging that Pope Francis had removed sanctions from the now-disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and returned him to a position of great influence in the Church, despite knowing of his sexual misconduct with seminarians and young priests. In June the Archdiocese of New York revealed that a “credible” allegation of sexual abuse of a minor had been made against the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, DC.

“When asked last week about Vigano’s allegations, Pope Francis’s reply was devastatingly inadequate,” Devine wrote. “‘I will not say a single word on this.’ He still has not responded.”

Devine says that the media has let Pope Francis get away without answering such serious charges because of his “open embrace” of a “left-wing agenda.”

“As a media darling, the Pope gets away with such evasians because of his apparent nudge-nudge, wink-wink rejection of the social conservatism of his two predecessors and his open embrace of such left-wing agenda items as climate alarmism and open borders,” she wrote.

Speaking as a Catholic, Devine said that such silence was unacceptable.

“Something shameful and sick is going on at the heart of the Church,” she stated. “Everything good the Church does is overshadowed by this crisis, and every Catholic in the pews and every good priest and nun suffers shame by association.”

“We need an honest explanation from the Pope or his resignation.”

 

Priest on CNN: I warned Church officials about McCarrick’s abuse, but was ignored
Claire Chretien
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/p...officials-about-mccarricks-abuse-but-was-igno

September 5, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Father Boniface Ramsey, the priest who for years alerted uninterested Church officials about ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick preying on seminarians, appeared on CNN last week to discuss the scandal and the unanswered questions about sex abuse cover-up.

“The Church...just wished it would go away,” said Fr. Ramsey. “I’m sure that’s the case.”

“I know you as a man of integrity,” anchor Chris Cuomo said, revealing that Fr. Ramsey was the celebrant at his marriage.

Fr. Ramsey and Cuomo discussed the priest’s November 2000 letter to Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, the U.S. apostolic nuncio at the time, warning that McCarrick was harassing seminarians and having them sleep in his bed.

“I certainly heard directly from people” who were victimized by the powerful archbishop, the priest recalled. He was teaching at Seton Hall University’s seminary, where seminarians of McCarrick’s diocese were.

“I know that the letter was received,” said Fr. Ramsey. “I never got a response, however, but I know that the letter was received.”

Fr. Ramsey said when he spoke with Cardinal Edward Egan, former archbishop of New York, in 2004, “clearly, he was embarrassed by this and didn’t wanna talk about it.”

Archbishop Carlo Vigano, the former U.S. apostolic nuncio, testified that Pope Benedict XVI placed private canonical sanctions on McCarrick which Pope Francis then revoked. Pope Benedict XVI was elected in April 2005. Pope Francis was elected in 2013.

Fr. Ramsey also wrote a letter to Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley in 2015, describing “in detail what McCarrick did.”

O’Malley runs a papal commission on stopping clerical sex abuse. His office wrote back to Fr. Ramsey saying the issue was out of its purview. O’Malley fundraised and traveled with McCarrick after his office received that damning letter.

“You know if Boniface Ramsey knew, other people knew” about McCarrick, Cuomo commented. “Now, we know from the AG – from the [Pennsylvania] grand jury report – lots of people knew lots of things. Why was this covered up?”

The Pennsylvania report did not pertain to McCarrick, but documented sex abuse allegedly committed by 300 priests in six dioceses over decades, and the Church’s systematic cover-up.

“It’s hard to confront a fellow bishop…only a bishop could do that, and it didn’t happen [in McCarrick’s case] I suppose,” Fr. Ramsey noted, adding that the Church just “wished it would go away.”

He also said that he had only been blowing the whistle on McCarrick’s abuse of adult men. That McCarrick also abused minors was revealed this summer when the Archdiocese of New York announced it found an allegation McCarrick molested an altar boy credible, and then by a subsequent New York Times story on a different underage victim.

Fr. Ramsey speculated that when Church officials heard of McCarrick preying on adults, “they must have assumed…that’s pretty bad, but it’s not illegal.”

“Well, it depends on the age, it depends on the consent, it depends on the dynamic,” Cuomo added. As their boss, McCarrick held significant power over the seminarians and priests he abused. And priests cannot simply switch bishops as easily as those in the business world can switch companies.

Cuomo then brought up Viganò’s testimony.

“We don’t know if he’s been co-opted by anti-pope groups or whatever – we don’t know yet,” the CNN anchor said, even though Viganò has explained his reasons for going public with explosive details about the Vatican’s covering up of sex abuse.

“But do you believe there’s a chance that Pope Francis...people hold faith in him as a reformer – knew about McCarrick, knew about some of these things, and didn’t drop the hammer on them?” asked Cuomo.

Fr. Ramsey responded that “there’s always a chance,” and he doesn’t know what percent it is. He said it’s worth the Vatican answering, though.

Pope Francis has refused to say whether he helped cover up McCarrick’s sex abuse, choosing instead to focus on the “emergency” of littering in the oceans. He also compared his critics to a “pack of wild dogs” and suggested the best response is silence.

 

The silence is deafening in fact.

 

There is a gradual drip-drip of criticism emerging, which one would expect to escalate due to the increasing courage lent by weight of numbers. The defense, on the other hand, seems to be mostly confined to Pope Francis' dubious inner circle, and has been clumsy. That is my limited perception. However, this might be illusory and I could be missing vast swathes of defenders. Has anyone got any facts on this?

I wouldn't agree with immediate calls for Pope Francis' resignation. Perhaps Archbishop Vigano should have confined his call to asking all the others involved to do so. This course would put much more pressure to act upon PF, because none of these wolves command anything like the respect or affection that PF does among the middle-ground. The elimination of the homosexualist cabal that surrounds PF would devastate their power position and send a frightening message to those among the College of Cardinals that might escape the cull.

 

that picture is worth a thousand words.....look at the priest and the child....their different expressions.....so sick!

 

That's exactly why I posted this, Donna.

 

The Knights of Columbus are sponsoring a tour of the relic heart of St. John Vianney in the United States in the wake of the McCarrick scandal. The tour is set to begin in November.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/08/22/heart-of-st-john-vianney-to-tour-united-states/

 

What wonderful God sent idea.

 

DeGaulle, LifeSiteNews is keeping track of the bishops and cardinals who support investigating Archbishop Vigano's claims,
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/l...support-investigating-viganos-claims-live-upd .

As for the defense of Pope Francis, I think you are correct it has only been from his dubious inner circle as you have stated not swathes of defenders. The pope just gave a homily to justify the support he is not receiving. The pope believes that "Truth is in silence", https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/p...-silent-before-wild-dogs-in-face-of-vigano-al but when many Chileans burned down several (11?) churches* in their country this past January I don't believe that they agreed with the pope's ideas on silence. I am not saying that what some Chileans did was warranted but Pope Francis hasn't learned much from these past months in regard to how the Church is hurting due to the clerical sexual abuse crisis. Like many others, I also concur with the statement of Cardinal DiNardo, President of the US Bishops Conference:

"The recent letter of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò brings particular focus and urgency to this examination. The questions raised deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence. Without those answers, innocent men may be tainted by false accusation and the guilty may be left to repeat sins of the past."
​

But I also add that many laity in the Church will continue to suffer also, not only the victims and their families but many others. We don't have to look too far to find proof of this especially those in Chile who recently lost their physical Church, their parish, due to the mishandling of this crisis

I think that Archbishop Vigano was smart to call for Pope Francis' resignation assuming that all he has stated is true. Imho the message that he is sending to the pope is if you continue to cover for these predators you are as bad as they are and now is the time to stand up and be counted. I think that he has more evidence and he is waiting to see what happens next.

PS- I noticed today on the President Trump thread the mention of October being a critical month and Sg commented about the Miracle of the Sun occurring on October 13th. I want to remind everyone that the first alleged message of Our Lady of Garabandal was given on October 18th, 1961 and I believe that some of St. Bosco's prophecies may be pointing to this October also. I don't know what it all means but I do think that we should have our lamps filled.

*http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/01/19/in-chile-pope-met-by-protests-threats-burned-churches.html

Edited to add:

Sg, This is the nail on the head and I think that some of the statements that we have heard recently are proof that many clergy believe this to be the case, that "it's not illegal" in the USA. I am referring to statements which attempt to blame the victim. In some cases, there may have been consent but in other cases it appears that they were forced into consenting or worse.

 

Regardless of consent, the focus of this is being shifted as it always is on to a few men abusing children rather than the elephant in the room which is sodomy and hedonism in our Church being practiced by no small number of men within it and it in turn being actively embraced and promoted in places such as the WMOF and soon to be the upcoming Youth meeting. Never mind the after effects of such endeavors such as we have seen in the homilies of priests emboldened after such encouragement.
Meanwhile the Pope who has ultimate authority in taking steps to answer for and deal with such pollution has surrounded himself by those who perpetuate it's acceptance and in spite of the fact that he refuses to speak the message is quite clear and very deafening. Pollution of the worlds oceans is of the utmost urgency.

Is it no wonder that the charity of many will grow cold. God have Mercy on us.

 

I can't understand this kind of thinking by priests - I mean, priests take the vow of celibacy. How can they be trusted and respected as shepherds if they carry on like that?

 

Well, I was just reading tomorrow's mass readings.
The first 2 lines from the First Reading just affirmed the above post. No coincidence.

First reading
1 Corinthians 4:1-5

People must think of us as Christ’s servants, stewards entrusted with the mysteries of God. What is expected of stewards is that each one should be found worthy of his trust.

 

I don't think that the Church will ever recognize the problem as resulting from homosexuality. However, I do see the possibility of the Church using these scandals to push their own modern agenda, i.e. allowing for married priests and female priests--with the mindset that this would reduce the incidence sexual abuse.

 

Which we know for a fact has not made one bit of difference in the Anglican Church.

 

Yes, but I'm not so sure that they'd let a "silly thing" like truth get in the way of their agenda!

 

Carol, thanks for posting Cardinal DiNardo’s statement. I hadn’t seen it before. I agree with him.

 

Yes, the problem is sodomy and hedonism in Christ's Church, and the response of the Vicar of Christ is that sins of the flesh are a minor matter. Amoris Laetitia was all about the Church recognising "sins of the flesh" as no big deal in wider society, paving the way for wider society to regard the same sins as no big deal within the priesthood. That Bishop promoted by Pope Francis to be his eyes and ears in the Vatican Bank was caught in a lift with an 18 year old male prostitute. I wonder whether "who am I to judge" would have been accepted so readily by the sodomy promoting journalists had the prostitute been an 18 year old girl.

Sleazebag clergymen use the excuse that sex with a man or woman doesn't break their vow of celibacy because celibacy means remaining unmarried, therefore, they can have ongoing sexual relations with men or women and remain priests in good standing. They don't take a vow of chastity because chastity is required of all catholics and ordination doesn't give clergymen an exemption. Evidently, Pope Francis doesn't rate chastity as something worth observing. All these hedonistic clergymen hide behind civil laws about the age of consent, conveniently ignoring the ongoing sexualisation of children in society which inevitably will lead to a lowering of the age of consent. How long before the Vicar of Christ is responding with "who am I to judge" when one of his favourite clerics is caught in a lift with a 17, 16 or 15 year old boy? As soon as the civil law changes, I reckon. God's law doesn't matter to people who don't believe in God, only pretend to believe in God, or believe that God can't be God without us.