A New Template for the U.S. Bishops

Representative Patrick Kennedy and Bishop Thomas Tobin

REJECTING CHURCH TEACHING
IS MORE THAN MERE "HUMAN WEAKNESS"
An Open Letter to Congressman Patrick Kennedy from Bishop Thomas Tobin

11/12/09

Dear Congressman Kennedy:

“The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” (Congressman Patrick Kennedy)

Since our recent correspondence has been rather public, I hope you don’t mind if I share a few reflections about your practice of the faith in this public forum. I usually wouldn’t do that – that is speak about someone’s faith in a public setting – but in our well-documented exchange of letters about health care and abortion, it has emerged as an issue. I also share these words publicly with the thought that they might be instructive to other Catholics, including those in prominent positions of leadership.

For the moment I’d like to set aside the discussion of health care reform, as important and relevant as it is, and focus on one statement contained in your letter of October 29, 2009, in which you write, “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” That sentence certainly caught my attention and deserves a public response, lest it go unchallenged and lead others to believe it’s true. And it raises an important question: What does it mean to be a Catholic?

“The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” Well, in fact, Congressman, in a way it does. Although I wouldn’t choose those particular words, when someone rejects the teachings of the Church, especially on a grave matter, a life-and-death issue like abortion, it certainly does diminish their ecclesial communion, their unity with the Church. This principle is based on the Sacred Scripture and Tradition of the Church and is made more explicit in recent documents.

For example, the “Code of Canon Law” says, “Lay persons are bound by an obligation and possess the right to acquire a knowledge of Christian doctrine adapted to their capacity and condition so that they can live in accord with that doctrine.” (Canon 229, #1)

The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” says this: “Mindful of Christ’s words to his apostles, ‘He who hears you, hears me,’ the faithful receive with docility the teaching and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.” (#87)

Or consider this statement of the Church: “It would be a mistake to confuse the proper autonomy exercised by Catholics in political life with the claim of a principle that prescinds from the moral and social teaching of the Church.” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2002)

There’s lots of canonical and theological verbiage there, Congressman, but what it means is that if you don’t accept the teachings of the Church your communion with the Church is flawed, or in your own words, makes you “less of a Catholic.”

But let’s get down to a more practical question; let’s approach it this way: What does it mean, really, to be a Catholic? After all, being a Catholic has to mean something, right?

Well, in simple terms – and here I refer only to those more visible, structural elements of Church membership – being a Catholic means that you’re part of a faith community that possesses a clearly defined authority and doctrine, obligations and expectations. It means that you believe and accept the teachings of the Church, especially on essential matters of faith and morals; that you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish; that you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly; that you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially.

Congressman, I’m not sure whether or not you fulfill the basic requirements of being a Catholic, so let me ask: Do you accept the teachings of the Church on essential matters of faith and morals, including our stance on abortion? Do you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish? Do you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly? Do you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially?

In your letter you say that you “embrace your faith.” Terrific. But if you don’t fulfill the basic requirements of membership, what is it exactly that makes you a Catholic? Your baptism as an infant? Your family ties? Your cultural heritage?

Your letter also says that your faith “acknowledges the existence of an imperfect humanity.” Absolutely true. But in confronting your rejection of the Church’s teaching, we’re not dealing just with “an imperfect humanity” – as we do when we wrestle with sins such as anger, pride, greed, impurity or dishonesty. We all struggle with those things, and often fail.

Your rejection of the Church’s teaching on abortion falls into a different category – it’s a deliberate and obstinate act of the will; a conscious decision that you’ve re-affirmed on many occasions. Sorry, you can’t chalk it up to an “imperfect humanity.” Your position is unacceptable to the Church and scandalous to many of our members. It absolutely diminishes your communion with the Church.

Congressman Kennedy, I write these words not to embarrass you or to judge the state of your conscience or soul. That’s ultimately between you and God. But your description of your relationship with the Church is now a matter of public record, and it needs to be challenged. I invite you, as your bishop and brother in Christ, to enter into a sincere process of discernment, conversion and repentance. It’s not too late for you to repair your relationship with the Church, redeem your public image, and emerge as an authentic “profile in courage,” especially by defending the sanctity of human life for all people, including unborn children. And if I can ever be of assistance as you travel the road of faith, I would be honored and happy to do so.

Sincerely yours,

Thomas J. Tobin

Bishop of Providence


AMEN!

Watching Out for Us

The Diocese of Savannah has issued a new set of directives for its priests to deal with the continuing threat of the H1N1 flu virus--the virus to end all viruses. You can read the directives here or enlarge the image below to read them.



The directive mirrors similar PC statments that have been issued by other dioceses, prohibiting the sign of peace handshake, holding hands during the Our Father (which we aren't supposed to do anyway), receiving Holy Communion under one species (which is all that is necessary since both the Body and Blood of Christ are present in the Host) and encouraging communicants to receive in the hand.

I credit Bishop Boland for having the good sense and fidelity to Canon Law not to prohibit Holy Communion on the tongue as many of his brother bishops have illicitly attempted to do--something they have no right to do.

However, as with any diocese issuing such directives, it must be asked, why is this really necessary? The H1N1 or "Swine Flu" virus is clearly an exaggerated health threat as the chart below demonstrates.



So now that we won't need all the extraordinary ministers holding chalices for Holy Communion, does this mean that there will only be eight women surrounding the altar after the consecration instead of the usual 16?

YOU CALL THIS DEMOCRACY?

Abortionist admits he's a killerAT LEAST HE ISN'T HIDING BEHIND THE WORD "CHOICE"

So You Think Fatima's Prophecies Are Fulfilled & Completed?THINK AGAIN

Gorbachev & Putin: The more things change, the more they stay the same

from The Devil's Final Battle
by Father Paul Kramer

Counting the Cost
"In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world." So the Mother of God promised at Fatima.

But something has gone wrong. The Fatima prophecies, fulfilled unerringly in every other respect, have not been fulfilled here. Did the Mother of God mislead us? Or is it, rather, certain men who have misled us?

On March 3, 2002, Time magazine reported that "a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, top federal officials feared a nuclear weapon obtained from the Russian arsenal was being smuggled into New York. The White House’s Counterterrorism Security Group, part of the National Security Council, was alerted to the danger through a report by an agent code-named DRAGONFIRE, according to the magazine, but New York officials and senior FBI officials were not informed in an effort to avoid panic."

Although the report later proved to be inaccurate, in Washington, D.C. a "shadow government" has been installed in underground bunkers, and nuclear detectors have been arrayed at key locations throughout the United States in anticipation of what the President and his advisors believe to be an inevitable, and far more deadly, attack by Islamic terrorists. As The Washington Post reported on March 3, 2002: "Alarmed by growing hints of al Qaeda’s progress toward obtaining a nuclear or radiological weapon, the Bush administration has deployed hundreds of sophisticated sensors since November to U.S. borders, overseas facilities and choke points around Washington. It has placed the Delta Force, the nation’s elite commando unit, on a new standby alert to seize control of nuclear materials that the sensors may detect."

Based on fallible human intelligence reports, political leaders show sufficient prudence to prepare for the worst, which they know is coming. But the Fatima revisionists in the Vatican apparatus, following the Sodano Party Line, tell us that we may safely disregard heavenly intelligence from an infallible source, which warns us of the annihilation of nations. Worse, they hide from the Church a vital portion of that heavenly intelligence report—the still-missing words of the Third Secret—while assuring us that everything has been revealed. And it seems that as the world hurtles towards disaster, there is no short supply of useful idiots in the Church, who are only too happy to parrot the Party Line while helpfully denouncing anyone who questions it.

Consider that as of this writing, it has been eighteen years since the supposed consecration of Russia on March 25, 1984—in a Vatican ceremony from which any mention of Russia was deliberately omitted. Over the past eighteen years there has been no triumph of the Immaculate Heart, and Russia has not converted. Quite the contrary, during the same period of time the Vatican apparatus has openly repudiated, as "outdated ecclesiology", any attempt to seek Catholic converts in Russia.

In Russia and throughout the world the abortion holocaust burns ever higher in the sight of God. There have been at least 600 million victims of the war on the unborn since the "consecration" of 1984, the blood of every victim crying out to Heaven for vengeance.

Yet it seems that not even the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, or the threat of worse to come, will deter the Vatican apparatus from its pursuit of the new "post-Fatima" orientation of the Church. Instead of the consecration of Russia, the Vatican staged another pan-religious prayer meeting: the World Day of Prayer for Peace at Assisi on January 24, 2002. Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, African animists, Buddhists, Shintoists, Confucians, Tenrikyoists and Zoroastrians were shuttled from the Vatican to Assisi in what L’Osservatore Romano called "a peace train." The "representatives of the world’s religions", including a witch doctor, all gave sermons on world peace from a large wooden pulpit set up in the lower plaza of the Basilica of Saint Francis. As part of the event, each non-Christian "religion" was given a room in the Sacred Convent of Saint Francis to perform pagan rituals and offer prayers for peace to various gods and spirits. At the end of the event, the "representatives of the world’s religions" placed little burning oil lamps on a table to symbolize their supposed commitment to interreligious brotherhood and world peace, and then went home.



Afterwards there was, of course, no peace. On the very next day the Israelis began bombing Palestinian targets, as the Arab-Israeli conflict continued to hurtle toward all-out war, while India tested a nuclear missile. Over the next few weeks, the Hindus and Muslims whose "representatives" had gone to Assisi to deposit their oil lamps on the table began slaughtering each other in western India; the death toll in just three days of riots was nearly 300.1

No peace in the world, and no peace in Russia. Rather, as Pope John Paul II said at Fatima in 1982, we are confronted with "almost apocalyptic menaces looming over the nations and mankind as a whole." This is the consequence of ignoring the warnings in the heavenly intelligence report conveyed to the world at Fatima.

And what of peace within the Church Herself? Here too the Virgin of Fatima gave us a warning. Here too it was disregarded by the men who tell us that the Third Secret of Fatima "belongs to the past." Today the corruption and collapse of the Church’s human element over the past forty years is erupting into full view for the entire world to chronicle daily and mock to scorn. This is happening because churchmen themselves have spurned the Message of Fatima, which gave us the means to know in advance and take measures to avoid the homosexual infiltration of the priesthood that is now raging out of control.

It has long been known that the majority of Catholics, the victims of decades of senseless liturgical and ecumenical "reforms", no longer possess a faith in the Holy Eucharist and no longer regard their Church as any different in essence from a Protestant denomination; nor do they feel obliged to follow the Church’s teaching on marriage and procreation. But in the year 2002 the Church would suffer another devastating blow to Her credibility.

As this book was being written, the press was exposing the massive pedophile scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston—where Cardinal Law had been hiding the activities of priestly predators for decades. Evidently in a panic over potential liability, diocese after diocese in North America has suddenly begun submitting lists of priests suspected of sexual abuse to law enforcement authorities—after years of hiding this information from the victims and their families and shifting the perpetrators from one place to another. The diocese-by-diocese review of priestly sexual abuse of little boys was provided in cover stories by Newsweek and National Review and in a host of stories in national and local newspapers. One can only imagine what lies beneath the tip of this iceberg.

The seminaries and convents of North America and Europe are practically empty or closed, except for those operated by small "traditionalist" orders (like the SSPX and the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter) which follow "the old ways". There are not nearly enough vocations to replace the older priests who are dying or retiring in the "mainstream" Church. And it is widely known that among the few men who do enter "mainstream" seminaries that adhere to the post-conciliar "reforms", a very large percentage is homosexual. Father Donald Cozzens, head of Saint Mary’s Seminary in Cleveland, Ohio, was only admitting what everyone can see when he observed in his book The Changing Face of the Catholic Priesthood that:

At issue at the beginning of the 21st century is the growing perception that the priesthood is, or is becoming, a gay profession … Heterosexual seminarians are made uncomfortable by the number of gays around them. … The straight seminarian feels out of place and may interpret his inner destabilization as a sign that he does not have a vocation for the priesthood. … The sexual contacts and romantic unions among gay seminarians create intense and complicated webs of intrigue and jealousy.

The plague of sexual abuse and perversion among the priesthood is hardly limited to North America. England, France and Spain have their own scandals involving homosexual and pedophile priests, and even a leading Polish Archbishop has been turned over to the Vatican by the fellow priests he has sexually extorted and abused. And in Africa, a vast scandal involving the sexual abuse of nuns by African priests has been reported in the world press and admitted by the Vatican. Vatican spokesman Father Bernardo Cervellera (director of Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news service) offered the outrageous defense that "the problem was limited to sub-Saharan Africa and related to negative cultural views there of women and of the value of celibacy ... These are not cases of ‘psychopathic’ violence against women, but instead a ‘cultural way of living’ that is common throughout the region …" The abuse of nuns by African priests is "a cultural way of living" in Africa! African priests simply don’t appreciate the "value" of celibacy! According to Reuters, the Vatican is "monitoring the situation … but no direct action has been taken."

No direct action by the Vatican against priests who sexually abuse nuns; but Father Nicholas Gruner has been declared "suspended" in the Congregation for the Clergy’s only public announcement concerning the "discipline" of any of the Church’s 260,000 diocesan priests in 2001—for the crime of spreading the authentic Fatima Message. Such are the Vatican’s priorities in the new orientation of the Catholic Church.

Although the Church’s new orientation is a disastrous failure in every respect, producing nothing but the bitterest of fruits, the members of the Vatican apparatus who hound Father Gruner persevere in their pursuit of ruinous novelties. So far as they are concerned, there will be no return to the "model" of the Church represented by the Message of Fatima. There will be no "embarrassing" public consecration of Russia. There will be no "outdated" conversion of Russia to the Catholic Faith. There will be no triumph of the Immaculate Heart, for this would be a setback to "ecumenical dialogue" with the Protestants and the Orthodox. And so Russia has not converted, and there is no peace in the world, and the Catholic Church remains in a state of near-chaos—no doubt as predicted in the Third Secret.

In Russia, after some forty years of feckless "ecumenical dialogue," the Russian Orthodox are fiercer than ever in their rejection of the papal primacy and their opposition to the Catholic Church. The Russian Orthodox hierarchy exploded in outrage when the Vatican announced in February 2002 that its "apostolic administrations" in Russia would be designated as dioceses. These would not even be dioceses in the traditional Catholic sense. There would, for example, be only an "Archdiocese of the Mother of God at Moscow"; and the Archbishop in charge of this structure will not be called the Archbishop of Moscow, lest the Vatican give offense to the Russian Orthodox Partriarch of Moscow, the ex-KGB agent, Alexy II.



After creation of the Catholic "dioceses", the anti-Catholic rage of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy—illicit heirs of Catholic parishes and Catholic believers stolen from the true Church at gunpoint by Josef Stalin—has become uncontainable. Cardinal Kasper’s visit to Moscow was cancelled in protest over the creation of the dioceses. In his written statement announcing the cancellation, Orthodox Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk, who was to lead the Russian Orthodox delegation in yet another round of futile "ecumenical" negotiations, angrily declared that "we have nothing to say to each other." A fitting conclusion to an enterprise that was worthless to begin with. On March 2, 2002, the Pope conducted a Saturday prayer service that was broadcast from the Vatican by satellite into Russia. The broadcast was totally blacked out by the same Russian television networks now under Vladimir Putin’s thumb. Only by shipping special equipment into the country (that was held up at customs until the last moment) could a few thousand Catholics see the Pope on television screens set up at Assumption Cathedral in Moscow. The BBC reported that "Patriarch Alexy of the Russian Orthodox Church said it (the satellite broadcast) was an ‘invasion of Russia’ and referred to the Polish occupation of Moscow in the early 17th Century. John-Paul is of Polish origin."4 After 40 years of Ostpolitik and "ecumenical dialogue", the Orthodox hierarchy will not even tolerate a video image of the Pope in Russia. This is the conversion of Russia promised by Our Lady of Fatima?

Trying to put a happy face on the debacle in Russia, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the new head of the "Archdiocese of the Mother of God at Moscow", claimed that "It’s all a misunderstanding." The Catholic Church has no intention of making converts among the Orthodox; no intention of seeking the conversion of Russia. After all, this was the same Archbishop Kondrusiewicz who had publicly declared in 1998 (as we have noted) that "The Second Vatican Council has declared that the Orthodox Church is our Sister Church and has the same means for salvation. So there is no reason to have a policy of proselytism." An Associated Press story on Kondrusiewicz’s reaction to Orthodox hostility noted that "Parishioners have come to Kondrusiewicz in tears recently, complaining that the indignant rhetoric by Orthodox leaders on national newscasts since Feb. 11 has made them afraid to practice their faith."5 While Orthodox prelates blast the Catholic Church on national newscasts, "ultranationalists have joined forces with the Russian Orthodox Church in criticizing the Catholic Church for its ‘proselytism’ [and] a parliamentary panel plans an investigation."

It is not as if the Orthodox prelates of Russia were defending a vibrant Church of their own. Nearly all of those who designate themselves Russian Orthodox do not practice their religion. The Economist notes that "Russia is suffering a crisis of faith. According to the magazine, 94% of Russians aged 18-29 do not go to church." The moral degeneration of Russian society we have already mentioned continues unabated: two abortions for every live birth (an average of five to six abortions for each Russian woman), rampant alcoholism and premature death from disease and violent crime, a burgeoning AIDS epidemic following the legalization of homosexuality by Boris Yeltsin, a flourishing child pornography industry, and so forth.

But the Catholic Church will not be allowed to fill the spiritual vacuum that Russian Orthodoxy cannot fill. Russia’s 1997 law on "freedom of conscience" continues to grant special legal status to Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, while forbidding Catholic "proselytism" and requiring registration of Catholic churches with local bureaucrats. The Catholic Church keeps such a low profile in Russia that the Moscow office from which Archbishop Kondrusiewicz conducts Church affairs is "tucked behind a military commandant’s office and bears no signs saying it houses the Catholic Church’s Russian leadership."


Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Moscow

As of the year 2002, Catholics remain a tiny, benighted minority in Russia. There are perhaps 500,000 nominal Catholics in a nation of 144 million people. The small percentage of Catholics who even go to Mass on Sunday (most of them in Siberia) is dependent almost entirely on non-Russian priests, who are allowed into Russia only with visitor’s visas that require a departure from the country every three months to seek renewal, which can be denied at any time and for any reason or for no reason at all. The very secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Russia, Father Stanislaw Opiela, was denied an entry visa three times without explanation: "I don’t think I’ll try again. It’s just not worth it," he said. "Maybe there will be some kind of protest."9 And then, in April of 2002, Bishop Jerzy Masur, assigned by the Vatican to administer to the vast (but sparsely populated) region of Siberia was expelled from Russia, his entry visa confiscated without explanation. Bishop Masur learned that he had been added to a secret "list" of those who are considered "undesirables" and will no longer be allowed to enter Russian territory.

All of these developments in Russia prompted Archbishop Kondrusiewicz to issue a formal protest on behalf of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia, entitled "Religious Liberty in Russia Is in Serious Danger." The protest declares:

Catholics in Russia ask themselves: What will happen next? Are the constitutional guarantees valid also for them, including liberty of conscience and of the right to have their own pastors, which comprises inviting them from abroad, not forgetting that for 81 years the Catholic Church was deprived of the right of forming and ordaining its own priests? Perhaps the State really considers Catholics second-class citizens? Are they (the State) returning to the times of persecution of the faith? … The expulsion of a Catholic bishop who has not violated any law, surpasses all imaginable limits of civilized relations between the State and the Church. … With grave worry, we express our decisive protest in respect to violation of the constitutional rights of Catholics.

In fact, by the end of 2002 the Pope’s own spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, declared that the actions against the Catholic Church by Russian authorities had reached the level of "an authentic persecution." So, while Cardinal Sodano and the followers of his Party Line insist that Russia was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart some 18 years ago and that the current state of affairs in Russia is the "miracle" of "conversion" brought about by this "consecration," both the leading Catholic prelate in Russia and the Pope’s personal spokesman publicly decry the persecution of the Church in Russia, and warn that religious liberty for Russian Catholics is in serious danger. The only word to describe this situation is insane.

It is even worse for the Catholic Church in the neighboring "former Soviet republics." In Romania, at least eleven Catholic parishes stolen by Stalin have been bulldozed to the ground rather than returned to their rightful owners after the "fall of communism" in 1990. In Belarus, Catholic World News Service reported on January 10, 2002 that there are "disturbing new indications of hostility to the Catholic Church" and that "the broadcasting of Sunday Mass on the state radio service has been canceled without warning." As CWN noted, "Belarus is officially a secular state … [I]ts authoritarian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, although he proclaims himself to be an atheist, nevertheless looks to the Orthodox Church for support in his policy of the 'integration’ of Belarus with Russia." The examples of persecution of the Catholic Church in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Romania, Transylvania and elsewhere in "the former Soviet Union" could be multiplied endlessly.

And where is Russian President Vladimir Putin in all of this? He has been busy reassembling the never-quite-dismantled elements of a Soviet-style dictatorship. As reported by the London Times online edition of January 12, 2002, "Russia’s last independent television station was closed yesterday, leaving the country’s entire broadcast media under Kremlin control"—the same broadcast media that have been denouncing the Catholic Church over the question of dioceses in Russia. As if by a prearranged schedule, the same thing is happening in the Ukraine. On December 21, 2001 WorldNetDaily reported that "The torch of liberty has grown dimmer in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine—as it has across most of the territory of the old USSR—with the government’s silencing of the last independent media outlet and the continuing controversy surrounding the murder of a popular outspoken journalist." There have been many murders and fatal "accidents" involving journalists since the "fall of communism."

In conjunction with his systematic takeover of the mass media under the guise of "debt collection" and "tax evasion", Putin has restored the Soviet national anthem, consolidated Kremlin control over Russian provinces and signed a military and diplomatic "friendship" treaty with Red China. Putin has even ordered the production of a commemorative calendar glorifying the Soviet era, Lubyanka Prison (capstone of the Soviet gulag) and the Soviet-era butcher Felix Dzerzhinsky, who founded the KGB, authorized the torture and execution of Catholic priests, and presided over Lenin’s liquidation of the Russian middle class. The calendar is for use in the offices of the KGB, which has been strategically renamed the FSB.

As if by magical coincidence, a national cult of Vladimir Putin is "spontaneously" emerging. As reported in the Electronic Telegraph of May 8, 2001:

[T]he cult of President Putin received new impetus yesterday when thousands of students celebrated the first anniversary of his inauguration under the Kremlin walls. The rally, where many wore T-shirts decorated with Mr. Putin’s face, plumbed new depths of grovelling to the former KGB colonel, who is already immortalized in children’s books, sculpture and obsequious coverage in the media. Speakers tried to outdo each other in their praise of the great leader. Their rhetoric yielded new insights into the thinking of Putin loyalists, who now dominate the bureaucracy, parliament and state broadcasting.

All of these developments were summed up by Yelena Bonner, widow of the Soviet dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov: "Under Putin, a new stage in the introduction of modernized Stalinism has begun. Authoritarianism is growing harsher, society is being militarized, the military budget is increasing." Bonner warned that "under the present government our country can expect, in the foreseeable future, destructive upheavals that could affect surrounding countries as well." She also drew clear parallels between "converted" Russia and Stalinist Russia: "about a third of the population worked for either nothing or symbolic wages during the Stalin era. In modern Russia two thirds of the population are on the verge of poverty. The health care system is worse today than it was in the Fifties. Stalin murdered about 20 million [actually more like 50 million] people, while in today’s Russia the population is falling by a million people a year."

As Russia embraces a modernized Stalinism, putting the lie to the claim that Russia has been "converting" since the 1984 consecration of the world, Cardinal Sodano continues his program of aligning the Catholic Church with the forces of the emerging New World Order. Catholic news organs reported with dismay that the Vatican Secretariat of State actively supports the newly created International Criminal Court (ICC), even to the extent of making a financial contribution to its coffers.13 Catholic commentators, joined by secular political commentators, have long warned that the ICC is a direct threat to the rights of sovereign nations and their peoples because it will assert jurisdiction to conduct politically motivated trials—from which there will be no appeal—of the citizens of any nation, based on an ever-expanding list of prosecutable "offenses". These trials would be conducted without any of the procedural safeguards on admission of evidence and the right to confront witnesses which are essential to due process of law.

Everywhere—in the Church, in Russia, in the world—the practitioners of Cardinal Sodano’s Party Line on Fatima see the evidence of its failure. Yet Sodano’s collaborators in the Vatican apparatus, and their Fatima revisionist dupes throughout the Church, continue to insist that Russia was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart 18 years ago, that recent events in Russia are "a miracle", that the Third Secret and the Message of Fatima as a whole "belong to the past" and need no longer concern us. Catholics like Father Gruner, who continue to point out the obvious, are being subjected to the equivalent of a Stalinist purge for their lack of fidelity to the Party Line. They are denounced as "disobedient", "schismatic", and their "loyalty to the Pope" is questioned, even though the Pope has never personally endorsed or imposed Sodano’s Party Line on Fatima but has rather given compelling indications of its utter falsity.

How does one count the cost of the insane conspiracy to do away with the prophecies of the Mother of God at Fatima? The cost in temporal suffering and harm to souls is already beyond all human calculation: the misery of the Russian people and the continuing State persecution of Russian Catholics; the holocaust of abortion in every nation; a rising tide of violence throughout the world; the loss of countless souls through destruction of their Catholic Faith and the corruption of the Catholic clergy now on display before the whole world. And yet all of this was undoubtedly predicted in that part of the Third Secret we have not been allowed to see; and all of it could have been avoided if the men who rule the Church today had followed, rather than despised, the Virgin of Fatima’s simple requests.

But what will be the cost in the coming days, if the course which the accused have set for the Church is not corrected soon? Our Lady of Fatima has already answered that question: wars and persecution of the Church, the martyrdom of Catholics, the suffering of the Holy Father, the annihilation of nations, the loss of millions more souls.

Those who have engineered the Church’s new orientation and imposed the Party Line on Fatima insist that we ignore these divine warnings, even though they were delivered by the Mother of God Herself and authenticated by a public miracle without precedent in human history. No, we cannot ignore the warnings. The time has come to declare that it is not the Message of Fatima, but the all-too-fallible human advice of these men that we must ignore. By their fruits ye shall know them, and the fruits of their policies and judgments are there for all to see: the Church is in the depths of Her worst crisis in 2,000 years, and the world is headed toward an apocalypse.

We have made our case as best we can; we have discharged our duty of conscience before the Church and the bar of history. Now, we submit, a duty descends upon you, the reader. We ask you to consider the evidence we have presented and render your verdict—a verdict that good cause exists to ask that the highest authority in the Church judge and correct the actions of these men, repairing the damage they have done and thus doing justice to the Church and the world.

But while we wait for justice to be rendered, we must do whatever is in our power to protect ourselves, our loved ones, our fellow Catholics, and the world at large from further harm.

This means, first of all, that we must reject the false counsel of those in authority who have tried to replace the words of the Mother of God with their own words, and Heaven’s plan for peace with their own plan. We have seen the ruinous results of their fallible human wisdom, which they continue to try to impose upon the Church against the evidence of our senses, the dictates of our reason and the very words of the Mother of God Herself. With all due respect to their offices in the Church, we must say of these men that insofar as the Message of Fatima and its implications for the Church and the world are concerned, they have forfeited their own credibility. We should no longer follow them.

As we have seen in Cardinal Newman’s apt description of the Arian crisis, the present crisis in the Church would not be the first time in Her history that the laity were left to carry on the Faith without the help of the upper hierarchy or even most bishops, relying instead on their own sensus catholicus and a few good priests and prelates who did not succumb to the reigning confusion. During the Arian crisis nearly the entire hierarchy lost sight of something as fundamental as the divinity of Christ, and the laity, for the safety of their own souls, had to cease following those in authority for at least 40 years. It is manifest that a comparable situation has arisen today. Can anyone looking objectively at the present condition of the Church seriously deny that She is undergoing a crisis of faith and discipline no less severe than that in the time of Arius?

In Reform of the Roman Liturgy, the renowned liturgist Msgr. Klaus Gamber, lamenting the ecclesial destruction caused by the liturgical "reforms" of Pope Paul VI, observed as follows:

Great is the confusion! Who can still see clearly in this darkness? Where in our Church are the leaders who can show us the right path? Where are the bishops courageous enough to cut out the cancerous growth of the modernist theology that has implanted itself and is festering within the celebration of the most sacred mysteries, before the cancer spreads and causes even greater damage? What we need today is a new Athanasius, a new Basil, bishops like those who in the Fourth Century courageously fought against the Arian heresy when almost the whole of Christendom had succumbed to the heresy.

Until such leadership emerges in the Church, until the current crisis has ended and things are set right again, we must educate ourselves and others about the Faith, defending it as best we can. In our time, this task requires that we also defend the Message of Fatima; for as Saint Thomas teaches, in every age God sends prophets, not to give a new doctrine, but to remind the faithful of what they must do to save their souls. The great prophet of our age is Our Lady of Fatima. As Sister Lucy herself said in the famous interview with Father Fuentes in 1957:

Father, the Most Holy Virgin is very sad because no one has paid any attention to Her Message, neither the good nor the bad. The good continue on their way, but without giving any importance to Her Message. …

Tell them Father, that many times, the Most Holy Virgin told my cousins Francisco and Jacinta, as well as myself, that many nations will disappear from the face of the earth. She said that Russia will be the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the whole world if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that poor nation.

The conversion of Russia has not been obtained. Anyone with any sense can recognize this. That being the case, the annihilation of nations is surely coming, unless the men who govern the Church change course, abandon their destructive novelties, and simply do what the Mother of God requested at Fatima. We simply can no longer risk relying on the advice of those who are determined to ignore the true signs of the times; the signs of a gathering apocalypse foretold by the Virgin at Fatima. Imploring the grace of God, we will have to advance the cause of true peace in the world without the help of our own superiors, so many of whom have been blinded in their pursuit of a new and alien vision of the Church.

In this undertaking we must gather together under the mantle of Our Lady of Fatima, praying incessantly for Her intercession in this time of great confusion, and never forgetting Her unbreakable promises to the Church and the world.

Our Lady of Fatima, Pray for Us!

Worth Driving To

Find out more here.

ST. JOHN EUDES SAID IT

"The most evident mark of God's anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clergy who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds. Instead of nourishing those committed to their care, they rend and devour them brutally. Instead of leading their people to God, they drag Christian souls into hell in their train. Instead of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, they are its innocuous poison and its murky darkness...."


One Catholic took these words to heart and created a fascinating new website.

Click here to see it.





________________________________________________________

Meet Sister Butch and the Gang

Maybe he really IS a uniter!

Now that we're ALL unemployed!

Pro-Lifers Get Warm Welcomeat Office of "Catholic" Nancy Pelosi

One of those arrested was Father Norman Weslin, the same elderly priest who was brutally manhandled and arrested by police when Obama was honored at Notre Dame. The police in this video show him slightly more consideration (but not much).

May God have mercy on our nation and those "Catholics" who enabled this horror by voting for pro-abortion politicians.

May God have mercy on those bishops who minced words about electing Obama (and other pro-aborts) and ignored their duty to defend life.

May God have mercy on us.

ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DEVIL?IF SO, YOU'VE GOT IT BACKWARDS

An American exorcist says that the Devil is afraid of you (provided you are in a state of grace).

Get the story HERE!

Truth Should Not Be Tampered With(How to Recognize EnemiesWithin The Church)

from The Devil's Final Battle
by Father Paul Kramer

The Disastrous Effects
of Tampering With Infallible Definitions
History likewise provides us with a prime example of what can happen to the Church when even one dogma is contradicted on a wide scale. The heresy of Arianism caused catastrophic confusion in the Church from 336 A.D. to 381 A.D. Arianism was condemned in 325 A.D.; and yet in 336, it arose again. Beginning around 336, the heresy eventually claimed about 90% of the bishops before it was finally defeated about fifty years later. In the resulting confusion and loss of faith, even the great St. Athanasius was “excommunicated” by the Pope in 357. By 381 Arianism had been defeated by the First Council of Constantinople. However, it was still in full bloom for some time between 360 and 380. The results were utterly devastating to the Church.

The Arian crisis has more to teach us about the probable contents of the missing text of the Third Secret. One reason the Arians were able to succeed for a time, was that they “successfully” attacked a dogma that had been solemnly and infallibly defined at the Council of Nicea in 325—that Christ is God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; begotten not made,consubstantial with the Father. This solemn and infallible definition is in the Credo of the Council of Nicea, which we say every Sunday at Mass.

The Arians overturned the definition by getting many of the “faithful” to argue for replacing it with a false definition that was not infallible. In 336 they replaced the Greek word Homoousion with another wordHomoiousion. The word Homoousion basically means “consubstantial” with the Father. For God the Son to be consubstantial with the Father, the Son must not only be God but the same one God as the Father, so that the substance of the Father is the substance of the Son, even though the Person of the Father is not the Person of the Son. Thus, there are three Persons in one God—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—but there is only one God, with one substance, in three Persons. That is the mystery of the Trinity. The new word Homoiousion, however, means “of similar substance” to the Father. Thus, the critical phrase in the dogma— “consubstantial with the Father”—was changed to “of similar substance with the Father” or “like the Father.”

Thus the Arians brought about mass confusion in the Church by adding one letter to the word Homoousion to create a new word with a new meaning:Homoiousion. They attacked a solemn definition, claiming that their new definition would be better than the solemn definition. But, of course, the new definition could not be better than the solemn definition, because the solemn definition of the Council of Nicea was infallible.

By adding one letter to one word, the Arians got rid of an infallible definition. This opened the way for the Arians and the semi-Arians, leading to actual warfare. People were martyred, persecuted, driven out into the desert, driven into exile over this one change to one infallible dogma. St. Athanasius was driven into exile five different times by the Synod of Egypt (and spent at least 17 years in exile as a result.) But he was right and the heretical bishops of that Synod were all wrong.

Infallible Definitions Are Higher
than Any Learning or Rank in the Church
Why did Athanasius know he was right? Because he clung to the infallible definition, no matter what everyone else said. Not all the learning in the world, nor all the rank of office, can substitute for the truth of one infallibly defined Catholic teaching. Even the simplest member of the faithful, clinging to an infallible definition, will know more than the most “learned” theologian who denies or undermines the definition. That is the whole purpose of the Church's infallibly defined teaching—to make us independent of the mere opinions of men, however learned, however high their rank.

Now, in 325 the solemn definition of the Council of Nicea was infallible, but many people then did not fully realize that solemn definitions of the Faith were infallible. That is, at this time in Church history the Church had not yet issued the solemn definition teaching that the definitions of Faith are infallible. But in 1870, the First Vatican Council solemnly and infallibly defined the infallibility of the Church's solemn definitions. Now we know, infallibly, that solemn definitions are infallible. Once again: they cannot fail— ever.

The Infallible Definitions
Are Under Attack in Our Time
In our day, therefore, there is no excuse for being taken in by heresy and giving up the defense of solemn definitions. But that is precisely what is happening today, just as in the time of Arius. Churchmen are judging things in light of the Second Vatican Council instead of judging the Second Vatican Council in light of the infallible definitions. They have forgotten that the infallible definitions, not Vatican II, are the unchanging standard by which one measures every doctrine, just as a 36-inch yardstick is the unchanging standard for measuring a yard. One does not suddenly decide that the new standard for measuring a yard is a 35-inch stick. Likewise, the Church cannot suddenly decide that Vatican II is the new yardstick of the Faith.

And so we arrive again, after a more detailed examination, at the crux of the Third Secret. This is why it begins with Our Lady's reference to the dogma of the Faith. This is why Sister Lucy said the Third Secret would be “much clearer” after 1960. And here it must be noted that we are clearly living in the midst of the period of calamity the Third Secret predicts. How do we know this? Because the Virgin has told us that the Secret would “be clearer” as of 1960 and She has also told us that in the end Her Immaculate Heart will triumph. Since the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart is obviously not yet upon us, we must be living in the interim period between 1960 and that final Triumph—that is, the period encompassed by the prophecy of the Third Secret.



Now what we have seen since the Second Vatican Council is, again, an attack—a very subtle, indirect attack—on the solemn definitions of the Church. We have had a so-called pastoral council that refused to speak with solemn definitions and—in the view of some—actually went against certain solemn definitions. But the Council, as we have seen, wished to be “pastoral”, to avoid solemn definitions, to avoid condemnations of error, as Pope John XXIII declared in his opening speech.

Well, what is wrong with that? What is wrong is that by the subtle mistake of refusing to make solemn definitions, the door is opened for a Council to use language that could undermine existing solemn definitions—exactly this trick was used by the Arians in the Fourth Century in order to bring about confusion in the Church. And they almost succeeded in overcoming the whole Church.

This same process has been occurring again since the opening of the Second Vatican Council. But the faithful have a remedy for the problem: Vatican II is not authoritative to the extent it did not exercise its supreme Magisterium, its power to define doctrine and its power to anathematize error. Since it did not exercise this authority, everything taught by Vatican II that had not been taught infallibly before Vatican II has to be examined in light of the infallible dogmatic definitions and teachings of the Catholic Church.

However, that is not what is happening today. What is happening today is people are redefining “the faith” in light of Vatican II. It is surely this process that Our Lady of Fatima speaks about when, going right to the heart of the matter, She says that the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved in Portugal—but clearly lost in many other places—telling Sister Lucy that this warning must be made known by 1960, by which time the Council had been announced.



This conclusion is confirmed by the Pope's sermons at Fatima in 1982 and 2000. In 1982 the Pope said that the bases of our salvation were being undermined. And in 2000, in his sermon during the beatification of Blessed Jacinta and Blessed Francisco, Pope John Paul II warned us about the dangers to our salvation today by telling us that “The Message of Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the ‘dragon’ whose ‘tail swept down a third of the stars of Heaven, and dragged them to the earth’ (Apoc. 12:4).” (referring to priests, bishops and religious who have abandoned the dogma of the faith in favor of a "new Church") Again, where do we find this in the revealed parts of the Fatima Message? Nowhere. It must, therefore, be in the Third Secret. The Pope is telling us that the Third Secret concerns dangers to the Faith and that one-third of the Catholic clergy are involved.

The Attack is From Within the Church
Now we will focus on yet another particular of the Third Secret's essence. The Pope also pointed out that the attack on the Catholic Faith is coming from within. He said in 1982: “Can the Mother with all the force of the love that She fosters in the Holy Spirit and who desires everyone's salvation, can She remain silent when She sees the very bases of Her children's salvation undermined?” The word undermine implies a weakening of the foundation of our salvation from within. An external enemy of the Church attacks from without, an infiltrator from within. In the latter case, the attack is not expected and everyone's guard is down; the attacker is viewed as a “friend.”

So we have Pope John Paul II telling us that the Catholic Faith is being undermined from within (May 13, 1982: “the very bases of Her children's salvation undermined”) by the Catholic clergy (May 13, 2000: “one-third of the stars of Heaven”).

We conclude this point by noting that there is another source from which we can glean this aspect of the Third Secret. In 1963 the German publication Neues Europa revealed what was purported to be part of the Third Secret: that Cardinal would oppose Cardinal, bishop oppose bishop. We know that when asked whether the Neues Europa account should be published, Cardinal Ottaviani, who also had read the Third Secret—who had a very dry personality and was pretty much indifferent to most apparitions—exclaimed very emphatically: “Publish 10,000 copies! Publish 20,000 copies! Publish 30,000 copies!”


Cardinal Ottaviani

Then we have the testimony of the late Father Malachi Martin that the message of Garabandal contains the Third Secret or parts of the Third Secret. Father Martin, who knew the Third Secret because he had read it himself, and who also read the message of Garabandal, said that because the Vatican chose not to release the Third Secret in 1960, Our Lady had appeared at Garabandal in 1961 in order to disclose the Third Secret. What is in the Garabandal message? The Garabandal message says, among other things: “many Cardinals, bishops, and priests are on the road to hell and ‘dragging’ many more souls with them”. Notice yet again the concept of dragging souls down into hell. The same terminology appears in Sister Lucy's remark to Father Fuentes that “The devil knows that religious and priests who fall away from their beautiful vocation drag numerous souls to hell,” and in the Pope's sermon on May 13, 2000, which refers to the scene in the Book of the Apocalypse in which the tail of the dragon drags one-third of the stars (consecrated souls) from Heaven.

While the Garabandal apparitions are not formally approved, the Bishop with jurisdiction over Garabandal—that is, the Bishop of Santander—said that nothing in the message was contrary to the Catholic Faith.

The Attack Includes Bad Practices
As Well As Bad Doctrine
Here it must be noted that whether a member of the clergy (or the laity) is good or bad is not determined solely by whether he verbally upholds or does not uphold the Faith. Besides comparing the teaching (i.e. the words) of a priest, a bishop, a Cardinal or the Pope to the infallible teaching of the Magisterium, one needs to see if the person is also upholding the orthodox practices of the Catholic Church by his words (written and spoken), by his actions and by the Christian conduct of his life. One needs to know if the person (priest, bishop, Cardinal or Pope) is engaging in heteropraxi— practices contrary to the Faith—such as disrespect for the Blessed Sacrament.

The Faith can be attacked by actions done in either an obvious or a subtle manner. Our actions must support our words. We uphold the Faith by upholding the doctrines in our thoughts, words, and writings and also by upholding the pious practices of the Church that support our adherence to the Faith. By introducing novel practices into the local parish (or the local diocese or the local ecclesiastical province, or even into the Universal Church as Catholic Doctors have written it is possible to happen) that give the impression that the defined Faith is not to be believed, one scandalizes the little ones and even some learned souls by this heteropraxis.

For example, we know by the solemn definitions of the Council of Trent that God guarantees to us that the consecrated Host is indeed His Real Presence—that is, the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, together with His Soul and Divinity. Now, the Protestant rebels wanted to deny this article of the Faith and they wanted to influence others to do the same. So they reintroduced the practice of Communion in the hand (it had been originally introduced as a widespread practice by the Arian heretics of the Fourth Century to deny that Jesus is God). By this symbolic action, their denial would be clear to all.

Heteropraxis has been used in our day by the enemies of the Church to scandalize many Catholics into losing their Faith in the Real Presence. That is why the abuse of Communion in the hand was forbidden by the universal law of the Church for many centuries and is still forbidden by the law of the Church to this day. The recent indult [i.e. permission] to go against the letter of the law is only allowed if this practice does not lead to the lessening of the Faith in the Real Presence and does not lead to less respect for the Real Presence. But it always does, as we can see from our own everyday experience with this form of heteropraxis.

The practices which uphold orthodox doctrine, on the other hand, are referred to as orthopraxis (i.e. orthodox Catholic practices). These include: genuflecting in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, distributing/receiving Communion on the tongue, maintaining the tabernacle with the Blessed Sacrament as the primary focus of attention (and worship) in the center of the sanctuary; and the solemn behavior of the clergy within the sanctuary, showing due reverence to the Presence of God in the Blessed Sacrament. These examples of orthopraxis (orthodox actions upholding the Faith) testify to the truth of the dogma that the Blessed Sacrament is the Real Presence of God—the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread—as well as the proper respect of man to God.

Examples of heteropraxis against the dogma of the Real Presence include Communion in the hand. This form of heteropraxis conveys the erroneous message to the faithful that the Blessed Sacrament is just not that important, that It is just bread, and promotes the heresy that It is not the Real Presence of God—the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread. Another example of heteropraxis in this area is the permanent removal of the tabernacle with the Blessed Sacrament from the sanctuary to a side room or broom closet, so that the primary focus of attention (and worship) in the sanctuary becomes the chair of the “celebrant” or “Presider” over the “assembly”. The message is subtly given, and received, that the person sitting in the chair is more important than the Blessed Sacrament. And since the “Presider” (or president of the “assembly”) represents the people, then subtly the message is given that God is less important than the people.



These examples remind us yet again of the words of Pope Pius XII, quoted earlier:

Suppose, dear friend, that Communism [one of “the errors of Russia” mentioned in the Message of Fatima] was only the most visible of the instruments of subversion to be used against the Church and the traditions of Divine Revelation ... I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. ... A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God ... In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them, like Mary Magdalene weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, “where have they taken Him?”

From Pope Pius XII's words, it seems then that these above-mentioned forms of heteropraxis against the Blessed Sacrament were explicitly mentioned in the Third Secret of Fatima, because while Pope Pius XII relates them to the Fatima Message, they are not mentioned in any part of the Message that has been published. That is why they must be mentioned in the Third Secret—that is, the part that is not yet published. Pope Pius XII clearly says that it is Our Lady of Fatima who warns us against “the suicide of altering the Faith in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul.” Therefore, the Third Secret warns us about both false doctrine and heteropraxis as attacks upon “the dogma of the Faith.”

The Attack Includes the
Moral Corruption of the Clergy Which We Now Witness
As we see today, with the eruption of a massive, worldwide scandal involving the sexual misconduct of members of the priesthood, there is a third line of attack on the Church during this time of great crisis: the moral corruption of many consecrated souls. The tail of the dragon sweeps souls from the heavens—down from their consecrated state—not only through heterodoxy and heteropraxis, but also through immorality. Let us recall the statements of Sister Lucy to Father Fuentes:

The devil wishes to take possession of consecrated souls. He tries to corrupt them in order to lull to sleep the souls of lay people and thereby lead them to final impenitence.

That which afflicts the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Heart of Jesus is the fall of religious and priestly souls. The devil knows that religious and priests who fall away from their beautiful vocation drag numerous souls to hell.

Today we see widespread corruption among the Catholic clergy which is now being manifested in sexual scandals of an unspeakable nature in dioceses throughout North America, Europe and Africa. The tail of the dragon has dragged many members of the clergy down into the rankest forms of immorality.



As a result, the credibility of the many priests who do honor their vows and keep the faith is being destroyed, along with the very credibility of the Church as an institution. Even if there is good doctrine and good practice, the benefits of these often are negated when moral corruption undermines the credibility of the Church.

Who Is Responsible?
Now the question arises: But who is identified in the Third Secret as being responsible for the undermining of the Faith through heterodoxy, heteropraxis and the moral corruption and fall of consecrated souls? First of all, it is members of the Vatican apparatus itself. We note again the revelation of Cardinal Ciappi, Pope John Paul II's official papal theologian, that “In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.” Thus, the responsibility lies first and foremost with men in the Vatican. In this, we see the fulfillment not only of the Third Secret, but also the warning of Pope St. Pius X in his 1907 encyclical Pascendi, wherein he writes: “The partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church's open enemies; but ... in Her very bosom, and are the more mischievous the less they keep in the open.” These enemies are lay people and priests “thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church”, and who put themselves forward “as reformers of the Church”.

St. Pius X insists:

“The Church has no greater enemies. For they put into operation their designs for Her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of Her is more intimate.”

“They seize upon professorships in the seminaries and universities, and gradually make of them chairs of pestilence.”

“It is time to tear away the mask from these people and to show them to the Church such as they are.”

But then it will be asked: “How do we know which of the clergy are part of the one-third of the stars alluded to by Pope John Paul II; how do we know who the partisans of error are?” The answer again lies in what has been infallibly defined. Those who uphold the Faith, who hold fast to the doctrine of Jesus, are friends. (Apoc. 12:17) Those who do not are foes. As Our Lord said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” (Mt. 7:16) One can tell whom to trust by whether they are upholding the Catholic Faith as defined by the solemn definitions. Another sign is that they are living their Catholic Faith as well.

In conclusion, when Pope Paul VI lamented in 1967 that “the smoke of Satan has entered the Church” and in 1973 that “the opening to the world has become a veritable invasion of the Church by worldly thinking” he was only confirming the contents of the Third Secret; so was Pope John Paul II in his more veiled statements in 1982 and 2000. The first two parts of the Great Secret of Fatima warn of the spread of Russia's errors throughout the world. The Third Secret, in its full contents, is surely a warning that those errors will infiltrate the Church Herself, and especially taking hold through the “opening to the world” at Vatican II. The infiltration of the Catholic Church by Masonic, Communist, neo-modernist and homosexual elements is seen in the ruinous results of their activities and the loss of faith among Catholics in the pew.

To those who scoff at the claim that such a disaster has befallen the Church in our time, we can only say that they are blind, and that they have ignored the Church's own history, which shows that something very similar has happened before. We alluded earlier to Cardinal Newman's description of the state of the Church during the Arian heresy. A more extended quotation from that description, found in his book On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, suffices to prove that the state of affairs in the Church today is not without precedent:

The body of bishops failed in their confession of the Faith. … They spoke variously, one against another; there was nothing, after Nicea, of firm, unvarying, consistent testimony, for nearly sixty years. There were untrustworthy Councils, unfaithful bishops; there was weakness, fear of consequences, misguidance, delusion, hallucination, endless, hopeless, extending into nearly every corner of the Catholic Church. The comparatively few who remained faithful were discredited and driven into exile; the rest were either deceivers or deceived.

The point of Cardinal Newman's book was that it was the laity, clinging to the defined dogma of the Faith along with a few good bishops such as Saint Athanasius, who kept the Faith alive during the Arian crisis. So it is today.

But one of the great differences between the Arian crisis and the current crisis in the Church is that the Virgin Mary not only gave us a warning many years in advance of the current crisis, but also the means to avoid it by following Her requests at Fatima. To have deprived the Church of the warning contained in the Third Secret, to have covered up the prophecy of apostasy that implicates the very men who have imposed a ruinous new orientation upon the Church and allowed Her to be invaded by the enemy, to have thus prevented the faithful from understanding the cause of it all and arming themselves against it, is another key element of the great and terrible crime in question here.

IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT:
The "Conversion" of Russia?
You Call This "Conversion"?

Tossing Our TreasureorEven Papal Infallibility Has Its Limits

from The Devil's Final Battle
by Fr. Paul Kramer

The Greatest Threat of All:
The Loss of Catholic Dogma
When Mother Angelica stated on national television on May 16, 2001 that she believes “we didn't get the whole thing” [i.e., the whole Third Secret] because “I think it's scary,” she was surely correct. There is nothing more frightening than the danger of a widespread loss of Faith in the Church, especially when the danger emanates “from the top” as Cardinal Ciappi, the Pope's own personal theologian, said concerning the Third Secret. The result of this danger, if it is not averted, will be the eternal damnation of millions of souls. And who knows how many have been lost already for lack of the Third Secret's salutary warnings and advice?

The vision published on June 26, however, simply does not express anything that frightening. The vision, in fact, expresses nothing so terrible that the Vatican would have kept it under lock and key for forty years. Indeed, Cardinal Ratzinger would have us believe that the Third Secret, as represented by the vision alone, contains “no great surprises”. That is because the surprises follow the still-hidden conclusion of the phrase “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc”—again, the very phrase the Cardinal's “commentary” has removed from the integral text of Our Lady's words in Sister Lucy's Fourth Memoir.

Now, when the Pope spoke of “the very bases of our salvation undermined” in his Fatima sermon in 1982, he certainly meant the undermining of the Catholic Faith. We know this from the constant teaching of the Catholic Church. For example, the Athanasian Creed says: “Whoever wishes to be saved must before all else adhere to the Catholic faith. He must preserve this faith whole and inviolate; otherwise he shall most certainly perish in eternity.” The foundation of our salvation is belonging to the Catholic Church and holding on to our Catholic Faith whole and inviolate. The loss of this foundation must be what the Third Secret concerns. Every witness says so, Pope John Paul II says so, and the telltale phrase “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc.” also says so.

As Our Lord warned us: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his own eternal soul?” If a person loses his soul for the new orientation of the Church, the New World Order, the One World Religion, or the promise of peace and prosperity in the world, it profits him nothing, for he will burn in hell for all eternity. For this reason alone, the Third Secret is vitally important to us. It could not be any more important, because it concerns the salvation of our own individual souls. It also concerns the salvation of the souls of the Pope, Cardinals, bishops, priests, and indeed of every living person. Thus, the Third Secret concerns every man, woman and child on the face of the earth, and particularly Catholics.

We recall again that in 1984 Cardinal Ratzinger admitted that if the Secret was not published “at least for now” it was to “avoid confusing religious prophecy with sensationalism”—a far cry from his claim today that, according to Sodano's Party Line, the Third Secret culminated in 1981 with the failed assassination attempt. Further, the Third Secret is a prophecy that began to be realized in 1960, which Sister Lucy said was the year by which the prophecy will be “much clearer” (mais claro). As Frère Michel points out, a prophecy that starts to be realized obviously becomes much clearer. The prophecy, therefore, started to be realized at least by 1960. It is, therefore, a prophecy that tells us about our time. It is a loving warning from Our Lady, and also advice on how to respond to the clear and present danger in the Church.

Now let us look more closely at the essence of the Third Secret. As Cardinal Ratzinger admitted 18 years ago—again, before Cardinal Sodano issued the Party Line on Fatima—the Third Secret concerns, first of all, the dangers to the Faith. St. John tells us what it is that overcomes the world: he says it is our faith. Therefore, in order for the world to overcome the Church, it first has to overcome our faith as Catholics.

The Third Secret's essence then concerns the world's attempt to overcome our Catholic Faith. As we have demonstrated abundantly in the previous chapters, the forces of the world have conducted a major assault on the Catholic Faith since 1960. There is simply no question about this, based on the overwhelming evidence which we have only outlined here.

Still more particularly, the Secret concerns the dogma of the Faith. Our Lady of Fatima spoke about the dogma of the Faith always being preserved in Portugal, not simply “the Faith.” Why did Our Lady focus on Catholic dogma? Clearly, She did so because the Secret is a prophecy that Catholic dogma, specifically, would be the target of those who would attack the Church from within and without. As Our Lord Himself warned us in Sacred Scripture: “For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall show signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect” (Mk. 13:22). As the Arian crisis demonstrates, these false prophets can include even priests and bishops. We can cite here Cardinal Newman's famous description of that time in Church history: “The comparatively few who remained faithful were discredited and driven into exile; the rest were either deceivers or deceived.” In such times of crisis, Catholics must adhere to the dogmas of the Faith.

What is dogma? Dogma is what has been infallibly defined by the Church. Dogma is what Catholics must believe in order to be Catholic. The dogmas of the Faith are what is contained in the solemn, infallible definitions of the Magisterium—namely, the Pope alone, speaking in a way that clearly binds the Universal Church to believe in what he is pronouncing, or an ecumenical council of all the Catholic bishops presided over by the Pope which issues such binding pronouncements, or those things taught by the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium of the Church.

What is meant by the infallible definition of dogma? The word infallible means “cannot fail”. Therefore, the definitions of the Faith, solemnly defined by the Church, cannot fail. We know what the Faith is, what the dogmas of the Faith are, by means of the infallible definitions. If we believe and hold fast to these infallible definitions, then we cannot be deceived in those matters so defined.

How do we know that a matter has been defined infallibly as an article of the Catholic faith? We know it from the manner in which the teaching is presented.

Four Sources of Infallible Teaching
There are four principal ways Church teaching is presented to us infallibly:

First, through the promulgation of creeds by the Popes and ecumenical councils, which provide a summary of what Catholics must believe in order to be Catholic.

Second, by means of solemn definitions containing such phrases as “We declare, pronounce and define,” or some similar formula indicating that the Pope or the Pope together with an ecumenical council clearly intend to bind the Church to believe in the teaching. Such definitions are usually accompanied by anathemas (condemnations) of those who would in any way deny the defined teaching.

Third, the definitions of the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium, meaning the constant teaching of the Church in an “ordinary” manner, always and everywhere, even if the teaching is never solemnly defined by such words as “We declare, pronounce and define...” (One example of this is the Church's constant teaching, throughout Her history, that contraception and abortion are gravely immoral.)

Fourth, there are definitive judgements of the Pope, usually condemned propositions, which are those propositions a Catholic is forbidde to believe. When a Pope, or a Pope and council together, solemnly condemn a proposition, we can know infallibly that it is contrary to the Catholic Faith.

Now, for the most part, this assault (on the Magisterium ) has been rather indirect. The infallible definition is usually not directly denied, but rather undermined through criticism or “revision.” The innovators in the Church are not so stupid as simply to declare that an infallible Church teaching is wrong. And, in their supposed “enlightenment” these innovators may actually think they are “deepening” or “developing” Catholic teaching for the good of the Church—again, we are not judging their subjective motivations. But the effect of what they do is obvious: the undermining of the infallibly defined teachings of the Magisterium.

Another example of this undermining is the attack on the dogma that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation. The Tridentine creed, quoted in full above, states: “I shall most constantly hold and profess this true Catholic faith, outside which no one can be saved …” In Chapter 6 we show how, over and over again, the Magisterium has solemnly defined the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Yet today, the dogma is denied and undermined by an “ecumenism” which declares that neither the Protestant heretics nor the Orthodox schismatics need return to the Catholic Church, because this is “outdated ecclesiology." And in many places today, the dogma is directly denied, and in other places it is not directly denied but in practice it collapses from insidious, repeated, indirect attacks and, as a result, it is no longer believed and followed in those places.



It is undeniable that since Vatican II a host of novel notions has been passed off in the Church as “development” of Catholic doctrine, even though these novelties at least implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) contradict and undermine the infallible definitions. The idea, for example, that the Council document Gaudium et Spes is a “countersyllabus” that counters the solemn condemnations of Blessed Pope Pius IX undermines the whole integrity of the infallible Magisterium. Such talk is an assault on the very credibility of the teaching office of the Church, and is thus, in the end, an assault on Catholic dogma itself.

There Cannot be
a “New Understanding” of Catholic Dogma
This post-conciliar attack on dogma through undermining and implicit contradiction cannot be justified as a “development” or “new insight” into dogma. As the First Vatican Council solemnly taught: “For, the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that they might disclose new doctrine, but that by His help they might guard sacredly the revelation transmitted through the Apostles and the deposit of faith, and might faithfully set it forth.”

Further, as Vatican I taught, there cannot be any “new understanding” of what the Church has already infallibly defined:

[T]hat understanding of its sacred dogmas must be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church has once declared; and there must never be a recession [moving away] from that meaning under the specious name of a deeper understanding.

Thus, it is a matter of Catholic Faith that we believe that no new doctrine has been revealed by God since the death of the last Apostle, Saint Joh and that no new understanding of doctrine has arisen because of Vatican II or otherwise.

Therefore, this “new” doctrine or “counter”-doctrine we have heard so much about since Vatican II can only be pseudo-doctrine. This pseudo-doctrine is being taught very subtly. When pseudo-doctrine contradicts doctrines that have been infallibly defined, then Catholics must cling to the infallible doctrines and reject the “new” doctrines.

The dogma of the Faith cannot fail, but novelties can fail us. Men can fail; lay people can fail; priests can fail; bishops can fail; Cardinals can fail; and even the Pope can fail in matters which do not involve his charism of infallibility, as history has shown us with more than one Pope who taught or appeared to teach some novelty.

For example, Pope Honorius was posthumously condemned by the Third Council of Constantinople in 680 A.D. for aiding and abetting heresy, and that condemnation was approved by Pope Leo II and repeated by later Popes. As another example, Pope John XXII, back in the 14th Century (1333 A.D.), gave sermons (but not solemn definitions) in which he insisted that the blessed departed do not enjoy the Beatific Vision until the day of General Judgment. For this he was denounced and corrected by theologians, and he finally retracted his heretical opinion on his deathbed.

In the case of Pope John XXII, knowledgeable Catholics (in this case theologians) knew that John XXII was wrong in his teaching about the Particular Judgment. They knew that something was wrong with Pope John XXII's teaching because it contradicted what the Church had always believed, even if there had not yet been an infallible definition. Catholics who knew their faith in the 14th Century did not simply say: “Oh, the Pope has given a sermon, therefore we must change our belief.” Looking at the Church's constant teaching that the blessed departed enjoy the Beatific Vision immediately after Purgatory, the theologians knew Pope John XXII was wrong, and they told him so.

As it turned out, the immediacy of the Beatific Vision was solemnly and infallibly defined by Pope John XXII's successor in 1336. This placed the matter beyond all further dispute—which is precisely why an infallible definition was needed. The same is true with every other matter infallibly defined by the Church. We can, and must, rely on these infallible definitions with absolute certainty, rejecting all opinions to the contrary—even if contrary opinions were to come from a Cardinal or even a Pope.

There are other examples of Popes failing. Even the first Pope, St. Peter, failed, as shown in Sacred Scripture—not by what he said but by the example he gave. Saint Peter refused to sit at table with Gentile converts, in Antioch about 50 A.D. By shunning these converts he gave the false impression that the First Council of Jerusalem was wrong in its infallible teaching that the Mosaic ceremonial law, including the prohibition against Jews eating with “unclean” Gentiles, was not binding on the Catholic Church. This was the incident for which St. Paul rebuked St. Peter to his face in public. (Gal. 2:11)

Another example is Pope Liberius in 357 A.D. (or thereabouts), who failed by signing a Creed which the Arians proposed to him, leaving out any reference to the Son being consubstantial with the Father. He did this after two years in exile and under the threat of death. And he also failed (under duress while in exile) by wrongly condemning and excommunicating—in reality, only giving the appearance of excommunicating—St. Athanasius, who was defending the Faith in this matter. Pope Liberius, the first Pope not to be proclaimed a saint by the Church, was wrong because Athanasius was teaching the Catholic doctrine—the true doctrine, the infallible doctrine—taught infallibly by the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. It was that infallible definition, not the defective teaching of Pope Liberius, that had to be followed in that case.

From these examples in Church history we learn that everything proposed to us for our belief must be judged by those definitions. And so if a Cardinal, a bishop, a priest, a layman or even the Pope teaches us some novelty that is contrary to any definition of the Faith, we can know that the teaching is wrong and that it must be rejected for the salvation of our immortal souls. Yes, even the Pope can fail, and he does fail if he expresses an opinion that is contrary to a solemn, infallible definition of the Catholic Church. This does not mean the Church fails when this happens, but only that the Pope has made a mistake without imposing it on the whole Church. And, of course, if even the Pope can make a mistake in teaching some novelty, then certainly Cardinals, bishops and priests can make mistakes in their teaching and opinions.

And so, when Our Lady speaks about the “dogma of the Faith”, She indicates to us that the danger to the Faith—and to “the life of the Christian and therefore (the life) of the world”, to recall Cardinal Ratzinger's admission—will arise when solemn dogmatic definitions of the Catholic Faith are contradicted or undermined; for it is these definitions which are the very foundation of the Catholic Faith, and therefore the foundation of our salvation, to recall the Pope's 1982 sermon at Fatima.

To the objection that mere priests, or mere lay people, cannot disagree with high-ranking prelates like Cardinal Ratzinger, or even (in the kind of extraordinary case for which we have just given examples) the Pope, one must reply: That is why the Church has infallible definitions. It is by measuring any given teaching against solemn, infallible definitions that one can know that a teaching is true or false—not by what rank in the clergy a person has. As St. Paul taught: “But though we, or an angel from Heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.” (Gal. 1:8) The faithful are to regard even an Apostle as anathema—accursed, cut off from the Church, worthy of hellfire—if he contradicts the infallible teaching of the Church. That is why theologians were able to correct Pope John XXII in his erroneous teaching from the pulpit; and it is why Catholics today can tell right from wrong teaching, even if they have a rank lower than the prelate who is committing the error.

A prime historical example of this is found in the case of a lawyer named Eusebius, who pointed out that Nestorius, a high-ranking Archbishop in Constantinople, the highest ranking prelate after the Pope, was wrong when he denied that Mary is the Mother of God. Eusebius stood up in his pew on Christmas Day, during Mass, and denounced Nestorius for preaching heresy. Yet all the “high-ranking” priests and bishops had remained silent in the face of Nestorius' heresy. Thus, a mere layman was right and all the rest of them were in error. The Council of Ephesus was called to hear the matter, and it was solemnly and infallibly defined that Mary is the Mother of God. And since Nestorius refused to recant, he was deposed and declared a heretic. Nestorius was excommunicated!

To summarize, truth is not a matter of numbers or rank; truth is a matter of what Christ and God have revealed in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, what has been solemnly defined by the Catholic Church, and what the Catholic Church has always taught—taught always, not just since 1965!

Let me add....
While the author of this book blames the current Holy Father for the suppression of the 3rd Secret of Fatima--and such may be the case--none of us can know all the reasons that it has not been formally revealed yet.

However, it should be pointed out that in the current discussions between representatives of the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X, the Holy Father is permitting an open discussion of what many perceive as the flaws and unclear statements from certain Vatican II documents. The press continually attempts to paint this as the pope "getting those traditionalists back in line", but seem to ignore that it is very possible that the Holy Father is using this opportunity to close the loopholes and time bombs of Vatican II's flawed documents--not to condemn the Council itself, but to correct it. This could very well be his master stroke of bringing the misinterpretation of Vatican II into conformity with his Hermeneutic of Reform, ending the 40 years of rupture that have all but destroyed the very identity of the Catholic Church. The pope and his lieutenants have said that Vatican II can only be interpreted in light of all the previous teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church. It appears that the Holy Father is quietly making sure that correcting this problem will be his legacy.

MORE SOON

R.I.P.

Is The 3rd Secret of FatimaThe Punishment of Kumbayachurch?

from The Devil's Final Battle
by Father Paul Kramer

If, as seems to be the case—and as millions of responsible Catholics believe—there is more to the Third Secret than an obscure vision of the “Bishop dressed in White” with no explanation by Our Lady of Fatima of how it is to be interpreted, then in what would the missing part of the Secret consist? We have already suggested an answer. In this chapter, we develop the answer in some detail.

Every Witness Agrees
The testimony of every single witness who has spoken on the question points to only one conclusion: the missing part of the Third Secret of Fatima foretells a catastrophic loss of faith and discipline in the human element of the Church—that is, in short, a great apostasy.



Pope Pius XII
I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. …

Fr. Joseph Schweigl
I cannot reveal anything of what I learned at Fatima concerning the Third Secret, but I can say that it has two parts: one concerns the Pope; the other logically (although I must say nothing) would have to be the continuation of the words: ‘In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.’

Father Fuentes
On December 26, 1957, with an imprimatur and the approbation of the Bishop of Fatima, Father Fuentes published the following revelations by Sister Lucy concerning the Third Secret:

Father, the Most Holy Virgin is very sad because no one has paid any attention to Her message, neither the good nor the bad. The good continue on their way but without giving any importance to Her message. The bad, not seeing the punishment of God falling upon them, continue their life of sin without even caring about the message. But believe me, Father, God will chastise the world and this will be in a terrible manner. The punishment from Heaven is imminent.

Father, how much time is there before 1960 arrives? It will be very sad for everyone, not one person will rejoice at all if beforehand the world does not pray and do penance. I am not able to give any other details because it is still a secret. ...

This is the Third part of the Messsage of Our Lady which will remain Secret until 1960.

Tell them, Father, that many times, the most Holy Virgin told my cousins Francisco and Jacinta, as well as myself, that many nations will disappear from the face of the earth. She said that Russia will be the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the world if we do not obtain beforehand the conversion of that poor nation.

Father, the devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin. And the devil knows what it is that most offends God and which in a short space of time will gain for him the greatest number of souls. Thus, the devil does everything to overcome souls consecrated to God, because in this way, the devil will succeed in leaving souls of the faithful abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily will he seize them.

That which afflicts the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Heart of Jesus is the fall of religious and priestly souls. The devil knows that religious and priests who fall away from their beautiful vocation drag numerous souls to hell. … The devil wishes to take possession of consecrated souls. He tries to corrupt them in order to lull to sleep the souls of laypeople and thereby lead them to final impenitence.

Father Alonso
Before his death in 1981, Father Joaquin Alonso, who for sixteen years was the official archivist of Fatima, testified as follows:

t is therefore completely probable that the text makes concrete references to the crisis of faith within the Church and to the negligence of the pastors themselves [and the] internal struggles in the very bosom of the Church and of grave pastoral negligence of the upper hierarchy.1

In the period preceding the great triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, terrible things are to happen. These form the content of the third part of the Secret. What are they? If ‘in Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved,’ ... it can be clearly deduced from this that in other parts of the Church these dogmas are going to become obscure or even lost altogether.

Does the unpublished text speak of concrete circumstances? It is very possible that it speaks not only of a real crisis of the faith in the Church during this in-between period, but like the secret of La Salette, for example, there are more concrete references to the internal struggles of Catholics or to the fall of priests and religious. Perhaps it even refers to the failures of the upper hierarchy of the Church. For that matter, none of this is foreign to other communications Sister Lucy has had on this subject.

Cardinal Ratzinger
According to the judgment of the Popes, it would add nothing to what a Christian must know from Revelation: a radical call to conversion, the absolute seriousness of history, the dangers threatening the faith and life of the Christian, and therefore the world. And also the importance of the last times. … If it is not published—at least for the moment—it is to avoid confusing religious prophecy with sensationalism. But the things contained in this Third Secret correspond to what is announced in Scripture and are confirmed by many other Marian apparitions, beginning with the Fatima apparitions themselves in their known contents. (11 November 1984)

Bishop Amaral

Its content concerns only our faith. To identify the Secret with catastrophic announcements or with a nuclear holocaust is to deform the meaning of the message. The loss of faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that faith is continually diminishing in Europe.

It is important to note that, as part of the general attempt to conceal and suppress the truth about Fatima, Bishop Amaral was pressured to withdraw his remarks shortly after they were made. But then, ten years later, and now safely retired, the bishop casually reaffirmed his testimony in a public interview in 1995, adding a crucial bit of evidence: “Before I asserted in Vienna (in 1984) that the Third Secret concerned only our Faith and the loss of Faith I had consulted Sister Lucy and first obtained her approval.” Thus, Sister Lucy herself indirectly confirmed, yet again, that the true and complete Third Secret of Fatima predicts apostasy in the Church.

Cardinal Oddi
It [the Third Secret] has nothing to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against the apostasy in the Church.

Cardinal Ciappi
To these witnesses we must add the testimony of two others. The first is Cardinal Mario Luigi Ciappi, who was nothing less than Pope John Paul II's own personal papal theologian. In a personal communication to a Professor Baumgartner in Salzburg, Cardinal Ciappi revealed that:

In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.

Father Valinho
Then there is Father Jose dos Santos Valinho, who is Sister Lucy's own nephew. In a book by Renzo and Roberto Allegri entitled Reportage su Fatima [Milan 2000], published—providentially enough—very shortly before the disclosure of the Third Secret vision and the publication of TMF by Ratzinger/Bertone, Father Valinho expressed the view that the Third Secret predicts apostasy in the Church.

In short, every single witness on the issue—even Cardinal Ratzinger in 1984—has testified to the same effect: the contents of the Third Secret of Fatima pertain to a crisis of faith in the Catholic Church, an apostasy, with grave consequences for the whole world. Not a single witness has ever denied that this is what the Third Secret portends. Nor has Sister Lucy ever corrected any of these testimonies, even though throughout her life she has not hesitated to correct those who misrepresented the contents of the Message of Fatima.
____________

So, not only is every witness, from the future Pope Pius XII in the 1930s through Sister Lucy's own nephew in the year 2000, unanimous on this point, but the reigning Pope adds his own voice to theirs: the Third Secret foretells a widespread loss of faith and fall from grace among the Catholic clergy of various ranks.


Sister Lucia Dos Santos

Now, the first two parts of the Secret of Fatima say absolutely nothing about apostasy in the Church. Likewise, the visional portion of the Third Secret, concerning the “Bishop dressed in White”, says absolutely nothing about an apostasy. If every witness says that the Third Secret speaks of apostasy in the Church, yet those portions of the Message of Fatima revealed to date, including the vision of “a Bishop dressed in White”, say nothing about it, the inescapable conclusion is that some portion of the Third Secret has been withheld. What does this portion actually say?

The logical place to begin is with the telltale phrase that the Vatican apparatus has been at great pains to demote and obscure as if it were a mere footnote to the Message of Fatima: “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc.” This phrase is the only evident reference to a coming apostasy in the published portions of the Message (although we hasten to add, that even without this phrase, it would still be clear from all the evidence that the Third Secret relates to an apostasy in the Church). Here, and only here, the revealed portion of the integral Message of Fatima touches upon the question of the dogmas of the Faith, and how they will be preserved in Portugal.

What would be the point of Our Lady mentioning the preservation of dogma in Portugal if not to warn us that dogma was not going to be preserved elsewhere in the Church? And, as we have earlier suggested, the “elsewhere” is undoubtedly described in the words comprised within Sister Lucy's “etc.”

Given that the vision published on June 26, 2000 contains no further words of Our Lady, it can only be concluded that the missing words of Our Lady are found in the “sound track”, as it were, of the Third Secret, in which Our Lady would explain the vision. The vision, it would seem, is the end result of this catastrophic loss of faith: The Pope and remaining hierarchy are being hunted down and killed outside the half-ruined city of Rome, perhaps (we can only speculate since the words of Our Lady are missing) after a nuclear holocaust.

This, indeed, fits perfectly with Cardinal Ratzinger's admission in 1984 that the Third Secret relates to “dangers to the faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore of the world.” On the figurative level, the corpses surrounding the Pope as he walks haltingly toward the hill where he is executed by soldiers would represent the victims of apostasy, and the half-ruined city the condition of the Church during this time of apostasy.

MORE SOON

DOGMA

St. Pius V
"I firmly hold that there is a purgatory, and that the souls detained there are helped by the prayers of the faithful. I likewise hold that the saints reigning together with Christ should be honored and invoked, that they offer prayers to God on our behalf, and that their relics should be venerated. I firmly assert that images of Christ, of the Mother of God ever Virgin, and of the other saints should be owned and kept, and that due honor and veneration should be given to them. I affirm that the power of indulgences was left in the keeping of the Church by Christ, and that the use of indulgences is very beneficial to Christians."
-Excerpt, Profession of Faith, Council of Trent

DOGMA:
The Church's Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these.
=from The Catechism of the Catholic Church

What is dogma?
Dogma is what has been infallibly defined by the Church. Dogma is what Catholics must believe in order to be Catholic. The dogmas of the Faith are what is contained in the solemn, infallible definitions of the Magisterium—namely, the Pope alone, speaking in a way that clearly binds the Universal Church to believe in what he is pronouncing, or an ecumenical council of all the Catholic bishops presided over by the Pope which issues such binding pronouncements, or those things taught by the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium of the Church.
-Fr. Paul Kramer
The Devil's Final Battle

on All Souls Day12 STEPS TO AVOID PURGATORY

from The Friends of the Poor Souls Blog

1. In every prayer you say, every Mass you hear, every Communion you receive, every good work you perform have the express intention of imploring God to grant you a holy and happy death and no Purgatory. Surely God will hear a prayer said with such confidence and perseverance.

2. Always wish to do God’s will. It is in every sense the best for you. When you do or seek anything that is not God’s will, you are sure to suffer. Say, therefore, fervently each time you recite the Our Father: Thy will be done.

3. Accept all the sufferings, sorrows, pains and disappointments of life, be they great or small, ill health, loss of goods, the death of your dear ones, heat or cold, rain or sunshine as coming from God. Bear them calmly and patiently for love of Him and in penance for your sins. Of course, one may use all his efforts to ward off trouble and pain, but when one cannot avoid it let him bear it patiently. Impatience and revolt make sufferings vastly greater and more difficult to bear.

4. The greatest act in Christ’s life was His Passion. As He had a Passion so each one of us has a Passion. Our Passion consists in the sufferings and labors of every day. Therefore, let us do our work, accept its disappointments and hardships and bear our pains in union with the Passion of Christ. We gain more merit by a little pain than by years of pleasure.

5. Forgive all injuries and offences for in proportion, as we forgive others, God forgives us. Go to confession. This sacrament does more than “just” rid us of our sins; it gives us a tremendous increase in sanctifying grace. It wins for us a higher place in Heaven, with increased union with God. Each time we go to confession, we are preserved from many dangers and misfortunes which might otherwise have befallen us. A devout confession helps us to hear the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, and to hear and follow the advice of our guardian angels.

6. Avoid mortal sins, deliberate venial sins and break off bad habits. Then it will be relatively easy to satisfy God’s justice for sins of frailty. Above all avoid sins against charity and chastity in thought, word and deed for these sins are the reason why many souls are detained in Purgatory for a long time.

7. If afraid of doing too much work, do many little things, acts of kindness and charity, give the alms you can, don’t grumble or complain when things are not as you please, don’t complain of others, never refuse to do a favor for others when possible. These and such acts are a splendid penance.

8. Do all in your power for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Pray for them constantly, get others to do so, join the Friends of the Poor Souls and ask all those you know to do likewise. The Holy Souls will repay you most generously.

9. There is no more powerful way of obtaining from God a most holy and happy death than by weekly confession, daily Mass and daily communion. Masses may be arranged after or before someone’s death to expedite their time in Purgatory.

10. A daily visit to the Blessed Sacrament – if only for three or four minutes – is an easy way of obtaining the same grace. Kneel in the presence of Jesus with eyes fixed on the Tabernacle or Monstrance, sure that He is looking at you, then repeat little prayers like these: My Jesus, Mercy. My Jesus, have pity on me a sinner. My Jesus, I love you. My Jesus, give me a happy death.

11. Enroll in and wear the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. “Whosoever dies clothed in this scapular shall not suffer eternal fire.” This is the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Promise, made July 16, 1251 to St. Simon Stock. The Sabbatine Privilege is Mary’s promise to release from Purgatory soon after death all those who: 1) wear the brown scapular 2) observe chastity according to their state in life and 3) say the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary every day. To be eligible for this scapular promise, one must be enrolled in the Family of Carmel. This is a simple ceremony which takes only a moment and may be done by any Carmelite or duly authorized priest. Mary’s motherhood is not limited to Catholics. It is extended to all men. Many miracles of conversion have been wrought in favor of non-Catholics who have practiced the scapular devotion.

12. Use holy water. Holy water is a sacramental that remits venial sin. Because of the blessing attached to it, Holy Church strongly encourages its use upon her children especially when danger threatens such as fire, storms, sickness and other calamities. Every Catholic home should have a supply of holy water. Keep your soul beautifully pure in God’s sight by making the Sign of the Cross carefully while saying: “By this holy water and by Thy Precious Blood, wash away all my sins and the sins of the Poor Souls in Purgatory, O Lord”.

on All Saints DayA SaintNot Yet Canonized

Pius XII's War Efforts Seen On Rediscovered Films
by Jesus Colina
ZENIT

ROME, OCT. 29, 2009 - The aid Pope Pius XII offered during World War II on behalf of all victims, regardless of their religion, is documented on newly rediscovered films.

The films were discovered in the Cineteca Nazionale Italiana, in a rather deteriorated state.

The most surprising find is the film "War on War," produced in 1948 by the Italian company "Orbis," directed by Giorgio Simonelli and Romolo Marcellini, who also directed "Pastor Angelicus" of 1942.

The Cineteca contacted the Vatican, which sent its delegate Claudia di Giovanni to see the find.

Di Giovanni recounted her excitement when she received the invitation; she gave her testimony at the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, which Benedict XVI closed today.

In the films, which in certain scenes also present a cinematographic history, "extraordinary images of World War II can be seen, [images that are] particularly harsh, but highly effective in underlining the tragedy of the conflict," explained di Giovanni.

Projected, "with the background of the war, are the words and work of Pius XII in aid of all victims, with images of the soup kitchens created by the Pope, and the residence of Castel Gandolfo open to refugees," she added.

The spectator can see how the Pope converted the great halls of the Apostolic Palace into dormitories for refugee women and children.

There are also images of St. Peter's Square and of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, where, at the instruction of the Pope, soup kitchens were created to feed the population going through the penury of war.

Catholicism's answer

"The film is particularly important as it represents Catholicism's attempt to communicate through cinematographic art its 'no' to the war," di Giovanni contended. "The film was practically unable to be distributed in the post-war period, but it is an essential testimony of Pope Pius XII's commitment to peace.

"A restoration of the film was presented at the Venice Film Festival last September, impressing both critics and the public, with a narrative style inspired in neo-realism -- simple but effective -- which does not hide the horror, but represents it in all its more than explicit reality, above all if we consider that it is a 1948 film."

The Vatican Film Archive collaborated with the Cineteca Nazionale Italiana in the restoration of the film and now has a copy to show in non-commercial circumstances.

However, these are not the only audiovisual testimonies that recount Pius XII's aid to the needy, including Jewish victims of the war.

Di Giovanni explained that the Vatican Film Archive recently received 70 films that document the activity of the Pontifical Work of Assistance (PWA), created by Pius XII to help the victims of World War II.

This aid organization was established in 1944 with the name Pontifical Commission of Assistance to Refugees. Later it was called PWA and offered its services until 1970, helping the poor, the sick, prisoners and victims of natural disasters.

The Vatican Film Archive will now conduct a study on these films and ensure their preservation.



Let us all pray that the cause for beatification and canonization of Pope Pius Xll gathers even more momentum now that these latest findings regarding the rediscovered films are being made public. There are numerous testimonies that already have been public that prove Pope Pius Xll played a major role in saving over 80% of Italy's Jewish population during the Second World War by putting the word out to Italy's Catholic religious communities to help out which they certainly did. Salt and Light Television in Canada made a wonderful documentary about this remarkable and totally misunderstood wartime Pontiff.
-Frank Ruffolo

DON'T FORGET MONDAY!

The mere refusal to believe in Purgatory does not make it go away.

The existence of Purgatory is a dogma of the Catholic faith. If one calls themselves Catholic, they are obliged to believe in Purgatory.

And it is not a place you would want to visit.

So why do we let our friends and loved ones languish there?

ITS A NICE FIRST STEP,BUT IT IGNORES ANOTHER PROBLEM

It's very nice that the uber-bureaucracy at the USCCB is demanding that bulletin inserts go into every parish bulletin urging Catholics to oppose any government healthcare "reform" that includes abortion.

Yes, it's very nice.

However, it hardly begins to deal with a bigger problem.

Catholics need to oppose any kind of "public option" or inevitable government takeover of health services.

There is too much overwhelming evidence that any such system will only result in mediocre health services, long waits, delayed treatments and increased mortality rates.

THAT TOO IS IMMORAL.

(and let's not forget the higher tax burden such a system would create--pay more, get less).

If the USCCB had done this last November instead of issuing their "Faithful Citizenship" gobbledygook, they wouldn't be facing this problem.

They knew what Obama was and they helped him get elected. Which is why I'm suspicious of this sudden attack of moral concern.

When Bishops Use Their Power To Do Good

Bishop Robert Brom at abortion clinic rosary vigil
On October 22, Bishop Robert Brom of San Diego surprised many pro-lifers by joining them at a rosary vigil in front of an abortion clinic in San Marcos, California. When the few bishops who do this come out to join the prayer teams, they always insure a good turnout. In this case, more than 200 people showed up on a weekday to pray.

Here are Bishop Brom's remarks:

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, creator of all things, we thank you for the gift of life and above all for the gift of your Son, Jesus, who came that we might have life in its fullness.

Lord, God, look upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women, girls and boys, who are victims of abuse and violence, of the sick and elderly who die as a result of indifference or out of misguided mercy.

Grant that we who believe in You as the origin and destiny of our lives may proclaim the Gospel of life to the people of our time with honesty and love, and with energy always renewed by the outpouring of Your Spirit.

May we have the courage to bear witness to it resolutely in order to build, together with all people of good will, a civilization of truth and love, of justice and peace.

We conclude our prayer in the words Jesus gave us.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

My Friends:

I am here this morning not only to pray together as we just have, but also to express appreciation to all from this area, including many young people, who have been participating in the 40 Days for Life Campaign. Special appreciation, of course, is due to (the Coordinating Committee).

You are among the many who are attempting to evangelize the cultures of which you are a part in defense of human life by proclaiming the gospel of life. Ordering temporal affairs according to the plan of God is the vocation of the laity which flows from baptism and confirmation, but, unfortunately, is too often forgotten. You, however, have taken this responsibility seriously, as have, for example, Helpers of God's Precious Infants, and people from parish-based groups who bring prayer and outreach to sites like this.

Calvary is extended to every time and place where there is human suffering and death. This is especially true where innocent human life is unjustly taken.

On Calvary there were: spectators - bystanders, who stood at a distance from the horror of what was taking place; the perpetrators of the crime and those who cooperated or sided with them. Not to be forgotten are those who fled, many of whom later had a conversion of mind and heart. But of particular note are those who remained - mournful and prayerful with Jesus.

When Calvary is extended to a place like this there will be, as on Golgotha, the bystanders, as well as the perpetrators and those who cooperate with them, some of whom may not even grasp the seriousness of their wrongdoing or its destructive effects on society. However, there must always be those who do not flee, but remain with Jesus, in his suffering, showing compassion for him present in the flesh of unborn human beings, publicly mourning the unjust taking of human life and prayerfully committed to replacing a culture of death with a culture of life.

Thank you for your prayers and abiding commitment.

And many thanks to Bishop Brom.


If every bishop in the United States would do this at least once a month, abortion would end.

(And I would add that this is far more effective than bulletin inserts and bureaucracies).

The USCCB Is Buying ItARE YOU?

From Fighting ModernismTo Apologizing for the Faith

Douglas Hyde

from The Devil's Final Battle
by Father Paul Kramer
It must be noted that in their striving toward these goals the Masons were the kin of the Communists, who were plotting alongside them for the overthrow of both Church and State. As Pope Leo XIII observed in Humanum Genus (1884), his monumental encyclical on the threat posed by the Masonic societies: "Yea, this change and overthrow is deliberately planned and put forward by many associations of communists and socialists; and to their undertakings the sect of Freemasons is not hostile, but greatly favors their designs, and holds in common with them their chief opinions."

As we have since learned from numerous independent witnesses, Communist infiltration of the Church began as early as the 1930s. Lenin himself (the very founder of Russian Communism) declared in the 1920’s that he would infiltrate the Catholic Church, particularly the Vatican. The historical evidence on this score was recently summarized in the venerable periodical Christian Order:

Ex-Communist and celebrated convert Douglas Hyde revealed long ago that in the 1930s the Communist leadership issued a worldwide directive about infiltrating the Catholic Church. While in the early 1950s, Mrs. Bella Dodd was also providing detailed explanations of the Communist subversion of the Church. Speaking as a former high ranking official of the American Communist Party, Mrs. Dodd said: "In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within." The idea was for these men to be ordained and progress to positions of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops. A dozen years before Vatican II she stated that: "Right now they are in the highest places in the Church"—where they were working to bring about change in order to weaken the Church’s effectiveness against Communism. She also said that these changes would be so drastic that "you will not recognize the Catholic Church."

Bella Dodd

As Christian Order points out, the existence of a Communist conspiracy to infiltrate the Church has been confirmed abundantly not only by former Communists Dodd and Hyde, but also by Soviet defectors:

Ex-KGB officer Anatoliy Golitsyn, who defected in 1961 and in 1984 forecast with 94% accuracy all the astonishing developments in the Communist Bloc since that time, confirmed several years ago that this "penetration of the Catholic and other churches is part of the Party’s ‘general line’ [i.e. unchanged policy] in the struggle against religion." In fact, hundreds of files smuggled into the West by former KGB archivist Vassili Mitrokhin and published in 1999 tell a similar tale, about the KGB cultivating the closest possible relationships with ‘progressive’ Catholics and financing their activities. One of the leftist organs identified was the small Italian Catholic press agency Adista, which for decades has promoted every imaginable post-conciliar cause or "reform" and whose Director was named in The Mitrokhin Archive as a paid KGB agent.

Mrs. Dodd, who converted to the Faith shortly before her death, was legal counsel to the Communist Party of the United States. She gave voluminous testimony on Communist infiltration of Church and state before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the 1950s. As if to atone for her role in subverting the Church, Dodd delivered a series of lectures at Fordham University and elsewhere during the years leading up to Vatican II. Christian Order recounts the testimony of a monk who attended one of those lectures in the early 1950s:

I listened to that woman for four hours and she had my hair standing on end. Everything she said has been fulfilled to the letter. You would think she was the world’s greatest prophet, but she was no prophet. She was merely exposing the step-by-step battle plan of Communist subversion of the Catholic Church. She explained that of all the world’s religions, the Catholic Church was the only one feared by the Communists, for it was its only effective opponent. The whole idea was to destroy, not the institution of the Church, but rather the Faith of the people, and even use the institution of the Church, if possible, to destroy the Faith through the promotion of a pseudo-religion: something that resembled Catholicism but was not the real thing. Once the Faith was destroyed, she explained that there would be a guilt complex introduced into the Church. … to label the ‘Church of the past’ as being oppressive, authoritarian, full of prejudices, arrogant in claiming to be the sole possessor of truth, and responsible for the divisions of religious bodies throughout the centuries. This would be necessary in order to shame Church leaders into an ‘openness to the world, and to a ?more flexible attitude toward all religions and philosophies. The Communists would then exploit this openness in order to undermine the Church.

Anatoliy Golitsyn

Now, if the enemies of the Church were to succeed in their plans, which we have just outlined, we would see these things happening in the Church:

• First, there would be, as Roca predicted, an upheaval at an ecumenical council of such magnitude that the entire world would realize that the Catholic Church had undergone a revolution in line with modern ideas. It would be clear to all that an "updating" of the Church had taken place.
• Second, a new "theology" would be introduced that would tend to contradict previous teachings.
• Third, the Freemasons and Communists themselves would voice their cockle-doodle of triumph, believing that the Catholic Church had finally "seen the light" on such points as pluralism, the secular state, equality of religions, and whatever other compromises had been achieved.
• Fourth, as the result of this subversion, the new orientation of the Church would come to take precedence over the very dogmas and traditions of the Church in Her teaching and practice—including the Message of Fatima, which would have to be "revised" or buried to accommodate the new orientation.

It now remains for us to demonstrate the extent to which this design for subversion of the Church has come to pass, and how it has given rise to the motive for the grave crime committed: the attempt to nullify the authentic Message of Fatima. By this crime the accused have left the Church and the world exposed to the gravest possible dangers, including the annihilation of various nations and the loss of millions of souls. Truly, this is a crime not only against the Church but against humanity.

ANOTHER REASON TO GIVE TO THE BISHOP'S ANNUAL APPEAL

Wayland Brown & Bishop Boland

DIOCESE TO PAY $4 MILLION FOR ABUSE
SETTLEMENT WITH ALLEGED VICTIM
IS SECOND-LARGEST INDIVIDUAL SUM IN PRIEST SCANDAL

By Dana Felty
The Savannah Morning News

The Catholic Diocese of Savannah has agreed to pay more than $4 million to the alleged victim of an abusive former priest in order to avoid going to trial.

The Diocese released a statement Wednesday afternoon announcing the $4.24 million agreement reached with former St. James Catholic School student Allan Ranta Jr.

Ranta had filed a complaint in a Jasper County, S.C., civil court stating he was molested from 1978 to 1983, starting when he was 10 years old, by former priest Wayland Y. Brown.

Ranta claimed former Savannah Bishop Raymond Lessard and other diocesan officials knew Brown posed a danger to children but failed to take action.

Brown, 66, was convicted in 2003 of sexually abusing two Maryland boys, ages 12 and 13, in 1974. He was released from prison in April 2008 after serving half of his sentence and now is listed on the Maryland Sex Offender Registry as living in Baltimore.

Ranta's attorney, Larry Richter, described the settlement as "giant" but appropriate considering the type of abuse involved and the degree to which he says diocesan officials ignored warning signs.

Richter said the settlement doesn't include $200,000 already paid to Ranta for medical treatment relating to the alleged abuse.

In the diocese's written statement, Savannah Bishop J. Kevin Boland apologized.
(Bishop Lessard is still alive. Why didn't HE apologize? It happened under HIS watch.)

"I am sorry for all the pain and suffering experienced by Mr. Ranta, and my prayers go out not only to him, but to all victims of child sexual abuse that each may find the healing they seek," Boland said in the statement posted on the diocese's Web site.


Bishop Lessard

Richter described Boland's apology as "insufficient."

"We call on Bishop (J.) Kevin Boland and all bishops to identify publicly known abuser priests," Richter said. "We repeatedly called on (the Charleston) diocese to do it. Of course it didn't. And we've called repeatedly on the Diocese of Savannah to make such identifications, and that hasn't happened either."

Based in Mount Pleasant, S.C., Richter won a $12 million class-action settlement against the Catholic Diocese of Charleston in 2007.

The settlement with Ranta releases the Savannah diocese, Lessard and Boland as parties to the lawsuit. Ranta will continue his civil case against Brown, Richter said. A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 7.

Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul, Minn., attorney who has represented hundreds of victims across the U.S. for 25 years, said the Savannah diocese's settlement represents the second largest payout to an individual in the history of the priest sex abuse scandal.

"It demonstrates that the liability and the legal responsibility of the Diocese of Savannah and its officials was extraordinarily aggravated," Anderson said.

The largest individual payout to date came in 2001, when two California dioceses agreed to pay $5.2 million to Ryan DiMaria, a man who claimed he had been sexually abused as a teenager by a priest at a church high school.

Victim advocates said the settlement is bittersweet.

"For every individual survivor, a settlement does in fact represent a hard-earned, long overdue validation and closure," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

"In the larger context, though, every settlement also represents a victory for bishops who want to continue to hide the truth. There's no denying that more cover-up by the hierarchy is exposed when cases go to trial."

The Savannah diocese says since 2002 it has provided "safe environment training" to volunteers and staff who work with children and has hired an independent auditing agency to review practices relating to the protection of children. (Why must lay volunteers and staff jump through this hoop of humiliation, when, most of the time, it is the priests who are the abusers?)

Until Wednesday, the diocese had paid about $400,000 for various types of treatments for victims of sexual abuse, said spokeswoman Barbara King.

MORE

Ann Brentwood, Southeast Director for SNAP (Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests) offered this comment:

"The amount of this settlement is likely indicative of the amount of indisputable evidence in the perpetrators file. This remains about accountability and the public's right to know. The settlement nearing the trial date demonstrates the same pattern used all over the United States.

"As they seek justice, the trauma to these victims by Diocesan attorneys is meant to wear them down, wait until the last minute to offer a settlement in the hope they will give up and go away, and never to admit guilt. These cases often take years and the toll on victims should never have to be endured.

"When will the hierarchy of the church get that this is why we continue to ask for the transparency they promised. As we have continuously stated, leaders must name all the criminal priests, their location, and their status. Until they do the struggle will continue.

"We continue to ask victims of all perpetrators to come forward and seek healing and justice so that we can insure children are protected and that all these molesters are identified and known."

Set-Up for Subversion

Blessed Pius IX
from The Devil's Final Battle
by Father Paul Kramer

The Rise of Liberal Catholicism
As we have noted, the goal of Freemasonry was not to destroy the Church, which the Masons knew was impossible, but to neutralize and instrumentalize the Church—that is, to make the human element of the Church into an instrument for the advance of Freemasonic goals, by inducing the Church’s members to embrace liberal ideas. A liberalized hierarchy would readily lend itself to the work of establishing the Masonic ideal of a new world order (novus ordo seclorum)—a false pan-religious "brotherhood" in which the Church abandons Her claim to be the sole ark of salvation and ceases Her opposition to the forces of the world. The first stage of this process was manifested in the 19th Century, by which time society had become increasingly permeated with the liberal principles of the French Revolution. Even in the mid-1800s this program was already causing great detriment to the Catholic Faith and the Catholic State. The supposedly "kinder and gentler" notions of pluralism, religious indifferentism, a democracy which believes all authority comes from the people, false notions of liberty, interfaith gatherings, separation of Church and State and other novelties were gripping the minds of post-enlightenment Europe, infecting statesmen and churchmen alike.

The Condemnation of Liberal Catholicism
The Popes of the 19th and early 20th Centuries waged war against these dangerous trends in full battle-dress. With a presence of mind rooted in the uncompromised certitude of Faith, these Popes were not taken in. They knew that evil principles, no matter how honorable they may appear, cannot bear good fruit, and that these were evil principles at their worst, since they were rooted not only in heresy, but apostasy. Like commanding generals who recognize the duty to hold their ground at all cost, these Popes aimed powerful cannons at the errors of the modern world and fired incessantly. The encyclicals were their cannonballs and they never missed their target.



The most devastating blast came in the form of Blessed Pope Pius IX’s monumentalSyllabus of Errors, which he appended to his encyclical Quanta Cura (1864). When the smoke cleared, all involved in the battle were in no doubt as to who was on what side. The line of demarcation had been drawn clearly. In the Syllabus, Blessed Pius IX condemned the principal errors of the modern world, not because they were modern, but because these new ideas were rooted in pantheistic naturalism and, therefore, were incompatible with Catholic doctrine, as well as being destructive to society.

Yet the 19th Century saw a new breed of Catholic who sought a utopian compromise between the two. These men looked for what they believed to be "good" in the principles of 1789 and tried to introduce them into the Church. Many clergymen, infected by the spirit of the age, were caught up in a net that had been "cast into the sacristies and into the seminaries" by Freemasonry. These men came to be known as liberal Catholics. Blessed Pope Pius IX regarded them with absolute horror. He said these "liberal Catholics" were the "worst enemies of the Church". In a letter to the French deputation headed by the Bishop of Nevers on June 18, 1871, Blessed Pius IX declared:

That which I fear is not the Commune of Paris—no—that which I fear is Liberal Catholicism ... I have said so more than forty times, and I repeat it to you now, through the love that I bear you. The real scourge of France is Liberal Catholicism, which endeavors to unite two principles as repugnant to each other as fire and water.

The Rise of Modernism
Yet in spite of this, the numbers of liberal Catholics steadily increased. The crisis reached a peak around the turn of the century when the liberalism of 1789 that had been "blowin’ in the wind" swirled into the tornado of modernism. Father Vincent Miceli identified this heresy as such by describing modernism’s "trinity of parents". He wrote: "Its religious ancestor is the Protestant Reformation … its philosophical parent is the Enlightenment … its political pedigree comes from the French Revolution."

What is meant by "modernism"? Modernism is nothing more or less than a synthesis or combination of all the errors of Liberal Catholicism into a comprehensive philosophical and theological system whose effect is to undermine the integrity of the entire Catholic faith. While a complete examination of the vast modernist system of thought is far beyond the scope of this book, it suffices for our purposes to say that, by various subtle errors, the modernist denies or undermines the divinity and divine revelation of Christ, the founding of the one true Church by Him, and the absolute immutability of Catholic doctrine (which the modernist claims can "evolve" according to changing circumstances). The modernist also embraces and promotes the liberal notions of "free speech," "freedom of conscience," and the error of religious indifferentism, which holds that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy because they all arise from a so-called "religious sense" in man—an error which, of course, implicitly denies the reality of Original Sin by suggesting that all men can be truly religious and can find salvation in the various religions they invent without need of Baptism, Faith and the sacraments of the Catholic Church.

Saint Pius X Puts Down the Modernist Revolt
Pope St. Pius X, who ascended to the Papal throne in 1903, recognized modernism as a most deadly plague that must be arrested. St. Pius X waged war on modernism by systematically isolating, defining and condemning its many erroneous propositions. In particular, St. Pius X issued a monumental encyclical against modernism (Pascendi) and a Syllabus of modernist errors (Lamentabili). In his encyclical Pascendi this great Pope wrote: "There is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt." In the same encyclical he called modernism "the synthesis of all heresies," declaring that the most important obligation of the Pope is to insure the purity and integrity of Catholic doctrine, and that if he did nothing, then he would have failed in his essential duty.




But Pope St. Pius X did not stop there. A few years after Pascendi, recognizing that the Modernists had to be crushed before they rose up and caused havoc in the Church, this sainted Pope issued his letter Sacrorum antistitum, which mandated the Anti-Modernist Oath to be sworn by all priests and teachers. He oversaw the purging of modernists from the seminaries and universities and excommunicated the stubborn and unrepentant. St. Pius X knew that nothing less than the very nature of the Church was under attack by the modernists, who in their audacity were now acting openly for the overthrow of Catholic Dogma and Tradition:

[T]he gravity of the evil is daily growing and must be checked at any cost. We are no longer dealing, as at the beginning, with opponents ‘in sheep’s clothing’, but with open and bare-faced enemies in our very household, who, having made a pact with the chief foes of the Church [i.e. Freemasons, Liberals, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, etc.], are bent on overthrowing the Faith … They want to renovate it as if it were consumed by old age, increase it and adapt it to worldly tastes, progress and comforts, as if it were opposed not just to the frivolity of a few, but to the good of society. … There will never be enough vigilance and firmness on the part of those entrusted with the faithful safekeeping of the sacred deposit of evangelical doctrine and ecclesiastical tradition, in order to oppose these onslaughts against it.

St. Pius X effectively halted the spread of modernism in his day. It is reported, however, that when he was congratulated for eradicating this grave error, Pope St. Pius X immediately responded that despite all his efforts, he had not succeeded in killing this beast, but had only driven it underground. He warned that if Church leaders were not vigilant, it would return in the future more virulent than ever. As we are about to see, St. Pius X’s prediction has come true—with a vengeance.

Modernism Begins to Rise Again
A little-known drama that unfolded during the reign of Pope Pius XI demonstrates that the underground current of Modernist thought was alive and well in the immediate post-St. Pius X period.

Father Raymond Dulac relates that at the secret consistory of May 23, 1923, Pope Pius XI questioned the thirty Cardinals of the Curia on the timeliness of summoning an ecumenical council. In attendance were illustrious prelates such as Merry del Val, De Lai, Gasparri, Boggiani and Billot. The Cardinals advised against it. Cardinal Billot warned, "The existence of profound differences in the midst of the episcopacy itself cannot be concealed ... [They] run the risk of giving place to discussions that will be prolonged indefinitely."


Popes Pius XI and Pius XII

Boggiani recalled the modernist theories from which, he said, a part of the clergy and of the bishops are not exempt. "This mentality can incline certain Fathers to present motions, to introduce methods incompatible with Catholic traditions."

Billot was even more precise. He expressed his fear of seeing the council "maneuvered" by "the worst enemies of the Church, the Modernists, who are already getting ready, as certain indications show, to bring forth the revolution in the Church, a new 1789."

Masonic Predictions of a Modernist
Breakthrough at an Ecumenical Council
In discouraging the idea of a Council for such reasons, these Cardinals showed themselves more apt at recognizing the "signs of the times" than all the post-Vatican II theologians combined. Yet their caution may have been rooted in something deeper. They may also have been haunted by the writings of the infamous illuminé, the excommunicated Canon Roca (1830-1893) who preached revolution and Church "reform", and who predicted in amazingly precise detail the subversion of the Church that would be brought about by a Council.

In Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, Bishop Graber quotes Roca’s prediction of a "newly illuminated church" which would be influenced by the "socialism of Jesus". In the mid-19th Century, Roca predicted that "The new church, which might not be able to retain anything of Scholastic doctrine and the original form of the former Church, will nevertheless receive consecration and canonical jurisdiction from Rome." Roca also, amazingly enough, predicted the liturgical "reform" after Vatican II: "[T]he divine cult in the form directed by the liturgy, ceremonial, ritual and regulations of the Roman Church will shortly undergo a transformation at an ecumenical councilwhich will restore to it the venerable simplicity of the golden age of the Apostles in accordance with the dictates of conscience and modern civilization."

Roca foretold that through this council will come "a perfect accord between the ideals of modern civilization and the ideal of Christ and His Gospel. This will be the consecration of the New Social Order and the solemn baptism of modern civilization." In other words, this council would usher in the triumph of the Masonic plan for subversion of the Church. Roca also spoke of the future of the Papacy. He wrote "There is a sacrifice in the offing which represents a solemn act of expiation ... The Papacy will fall; it will die under the hallowed knife which the fathers of the last council will forge. The papal caesar is a host [victim] crowned for the sacrifice." Roca enthusiastically predicted nothing short of a "new religion, new dogma, new ritual, new priesthood." He called the new priests "progressists" and speaks of the "suppression" of the soutane [cassock] and the "marriage of priests."

Pointing to the writings of the French heresiarch, Abbé Melinge (who used the pseudonym Dr. Alta), Bishop Graber warned of a revolutionary program of "the replacement of the Roman faith by a ‘pluri-confessional’ pontificate, able to adapt to a polyvalent ecumenism, such as we are seeing established today in the intercelebration of priests and Protestant pastors." (Melinge was referring to certain renegade priests; today, however, the Pope himself conducts joint services, including Vespers, with Protestant "bishops.")

Chilling echos of Roca, Melinge and the Alta Vendita are to be found in the words of the Rosicrucian, Dr. Rudolph Steiner who declared in 1910 "We need a council and a Pope to proclaim it."

MORE SOON ABOUT THE COUNCIL AND COMMUNISM...
STAY TUNED

Pathetic Blaspheming "Entertainment"

Braden Chapman, the drag queen who performs this "show", has been at it for three years now. His fourth season, this year will include 10 shows in six cities, many of which, fall on holy day’s such as Sunday, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the Feast of St. Juan Diego, and Our Lady of Guadalupe–all during Advent.

Acts of Reparation to the Virgin Mary
(Words of the Prayer from Raccolta:)
O blessed Virgin, Mother of God, look down in mercy from Heaven, where thou art enthroned as Queen, upon me, a miserable sinner, thine unworthy servant. Although I know full well my own unworthiness, yet in order to atone for the offenses that are done to thee by impious and blasphemous tongues, from the depths of my heart I praise and extol thee as the purest, the fairest, the holiest creature of all God’s handiwork. I bless thy holy Name, I praise thine exalted privilege of being truly Mother of God, ever Virgin, conceived without stain of sin, Co-Redemptrix of the human race. I bless the Eternal Father who chose thee in an especial way for His daughter; I bless the Word Incarnate who took upon Himself our nature in thy bosom and so made thee His Mother; I bless the Holy Spirit who took thee as His bride. All honor, praise and thanksgiving to the ever-blessed Trinity who predestined thee and loved thee so exceedingly from all eternity as to exalt thee above all creatures to the most sublime heights. O Virgin, holy and merciful, obtain for all who offend thee the grace of repentance, and graciously accept this poor act of homage from me thy servant, obtaining likewise for me from thy Divine Son the pardon and remission of all my sins. Amen.

Reparation for blasphemy against the Blessed Virgin Mary
(Words of the Prayer from Raccolta:)
Most glorious Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, turn thine eyes in pity upon us, miserable sinners; we are sore afflicted by the many evils that surround us in this life, but especially do we feel our hearts break within us upon hearing the dreadful insults and blasphemies uttered against thee, O Virgin Immaculate. O how these impious sayings offend the infinite Majesty of God and of His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ! How they provoke His indignation and give us cause to fear the terrible effects of His vengeance! Would that the sacrifice of our lives might avail to put an end to such outrages and blasphemies; were it so, how gladly we should make it, for we desire, O most holy Mother, to love thee and to honor thee with all our hearts, since this is the will of God. And just because we love thee, we will do all that is in our power to make thee honored and loved by all men. In the meantime do thou, our merciful Mother, the supreme comforter of the afflicted, accept this our act of reparation which we offer thee for ourselves and for all our families, as well as for all who impiously blaspheme thee, not knowing what they say. Do thou obtain for them from Almighty God the grace of conversion, and thus render more manifest and more glorious thy kindness, thy power and thy great mercy. May they join with us in proclaiming thee blessed among women, the Immaculate Virgin and most compassionate Mother of God.

Hail Mary three times.

Read more about it here.

It CAN HappenIt HAS HappenedAnd WE FELL FOR IT

from The Devil's Final Battle
by Father Paul Kramer

As we charged in the Introduction, the motive in this case arises from the recognition by the accused that the Message of Fatima, understood in a traditional Catholic sense, cannot be reconciled with decisions they have taken since the Second Vatican Council to change the entire orientation of the Catholic Church. That is, the Message stands in the way of their effort to do precisely what the future Pope Pius XII foresaw in his moment of supernatural clarity: to remake the Church into an institution oriented toward the world. The currently raging scandal in the Catholic priesthood is only one symptom of this ruinous effort to "update" the Catholic Church. Another way of putting it is that the current condition of the Catholic Church is the result of an unprecedented invasion of the Church by liberalism. We recall once again those prophetic words of Msgr. Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII), uttered in the light of the Message of Fatima:

I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. … I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past.

A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, "Where have they taken Him?"

In the Introduction we also noted that this great change of orientation in the Church—in "Her liturgy, Her theology, Her soul", as the future Pope Pius XII put it—was the long-cherished goal of the organized forces that have been plotting against the Church for centuries; the same forces that were at work in Portugal in 1917, but were repelled by the Consecration of that nation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1931.

On this point, one cannot fail to consider the infamous Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, a Masonic document that mapped out an entire plan for the infiltration and corruption of the Catholic Church in the 20th Century.1 While it has become fashionable since the Second Vatican Council to scoff at the existence of such a conspiracy, it must be noted that the secret papers of the Alta Vendita (an Italian secret society), including the Permanent Instruction, fell into the hands of Pope Gregory XVI. The Permanent Instruction was published at the request of Blessed Pope Pius IX by Cardinal Cretineau-Joly in his work The Roman Church and Revolution. With his brief of approbation of February 25, 1861 (addressed to the author) Pope Pius IX guaranteed the authenticity of the Permanent Instruction and the other Masonic papers, but he did not allow anyone to divulge the true names of the members of the Alta Vendita implicated in the documents. Pope Leo XIII had likewise requested their publication. Both Popes acted, no doubt, in order to prevent such a tragedy from taking place. These great Pontiffs knew that such a calamity was far from impossible. (Pope Pius XII also knew it, as we can see from his prophetic remarks while he was still Vatican Secretary of State.)

The strategy advanced in the Permanent Instruction to achieve this aim is astonishing in its audacity and cunning. From the start, the document tells of a process that will take decades to accomplish. Those who drew up the document knew that they would not see its fulfillment. They were inaugurating a work that would be carried on by succeeding generations of the initiated. The Permanent Instruction says, "In our ranks the soldier dies and the struggle goes on."

The Instruction called for the dissemination of liberal ideas and axioms throughout society and within the institutions of the Catholic Church so that laity, seminarians, clerics and prelates would, over the years, gradually be imbued with progressive principles. In time, this new mentality would be so pervasive that priests would be ordained, bishops consecrated, and Cardinals nominated whose thinking was in step with the modern thought rooted in the "Principles of 1789" (i.e. the principles of Freemasonry which inspired the French Revolution)—namely, pluralism, the equality of all religions, separation of Church and State, unbridled freedom of speech, and so forth.

Eventually, a Pope would be elected from these ranks who would lead the Church on the path of "enlightenment and renewal". It must be stressed that it was not their aim to place a Freemason on the Chair of Peter. Their goal was to effect an environment that would eventually produce a Pope and a hierarchy won over to the ideas of liberal Catholicism, all the while believing themselves to be faithful Catholics.

These liberalized Catholic leaders, then, would no longer oppose the modern ideas of the revolution (as had been the consistent practice of the Popes from 1789 until 1958, who unanimously condemned these liberal principles), but would amalgamate or "baptize" them into the Church. The end result would be a Catholic clergy and laity marching under the banner of the "enlightenment", all the while thinking they are marching under the banner of the Apostolic keys.

Lest there be any claim that we have mischaracterized the Permanent Instruction, we now quote from it at considerable length. What follows is not the entire Instruction, but the section that is most pertinent to our proof. The document reads:

The Pope, whoever he is, will never come to the secret societies; it is up to the secret societies to take the first step toward the Church, with the aim of conquering both of them.

The task that we are going to undertake is not the work of a day, or of a month, or of a year; it may last several years, perhaps a century; but in our ranks the soldier dies and the struggle goes on.

We do not intend to win the Popes to our cause, to make them neophytes of our principles, propagators of our ideas. That would be a ridiculous dream; and if events turn out in some way, if Cardinals or prelates, for example, of their own free will or by surprise, should enter into a part of our secrets, this is not at all an incentive for desiring their elevation to the See of Peter. That elevation would ruin us. Ambition alone would have led them to apostasy, the requirements of power would force them to sacrifice us. What we must ask for, what we should look for and wait for, as the Jews wait for the Messiah, is a Pope according to our needs ...

With that we shall march more securely towards the assault on the Church than with the pamphlets of our brethren in France and even the gold of England. Do you want to know the reason for this? It is that with this, in order to shatter the high rock on which God has built His Church, we no longer need Hannibalian vinegar, or need gunpowder, or even need our arms. We have the little finger of the successor of Peter engaged in the ploy, and this little finger is as good, for this crusade, as all the Urban II’s and all the Saint Bernards in Christendom.

We have no doubt that we will arrive at this supreme end of our efforts. But when? But how? The unknown is not yet revealed. Nevertheless, as nothing should turn us aside from the plan drawn up, and on the contrary everything should tend to this, as if as early as tomorrow success were going to crown the work that is barely sketched, we wish, in this instruction, which will remain secret for the mere initiates, to give the officials in charge of the supreme Vente some advice that they should instill in all the brethren, in the form of instruction or of a memorandum ...

Now then, to assure ourselves a Pope of the required dimensions, it is a question first of shaping him ... for this Pope, a generation worthy of the reign we are dreaming of. Leave old people and those of a mature age aside; go to the youth, and if it is possible, even to the children ... You will contrive for yourselves, at little cost, a reputation as good Catholics and pure patriots.

This reputation will put access to our doctrines into the midst of the young clergy, as well as deeply into the monasteries. In a few years, by the force of things, this young clergy will have overrun all the functions; they will form the sovereign’s council, they will be called to choose a Pontiff who should reign. And this Pontiff, like most of his contemporaries, will be necessarily more or less imbued with the Italian and humanitarian principles that we are going to begin to put into circulation. It is a small grain of black mustard that we are entrusting to the ground; but the sunshine of justice will develop it up to the highest power, and you will see one day what a rich harvest this small seed will produce.

In the path that we are laying out for our brethren, there are found great obstacles to conquer, difficulties of more than one kind to master. They will triumph over them by experience and by clearsightedness; but the goal is so splendid that it is important to put all the sails to the wind in order to reach it. You want to revolutionize Italy, look for the Pope whose portrait we have just drawn. You wish to establish the reign of the chosen ones on the throne of the prostitute of Babylon, let the Clergy march under your standard, always believing that they are marching under the banner of the apostolic keys. You intend to make the last vestige of tyrants and the oppressors disappear; lay your snares like Simon Bar-Jona; lay them in the sacristies, the seminaries, and the monasteries rather than at the bottom of the sea: and if you do not hurry, we promise you a catch more miraculous than his. The fisher of fish became the fisher of men; you will bring friends around the apostolic Chair. You will have preached a revolution in tiara and in cope, marching with the cross and the banner, a revolution that will need to be only a little bit urged on to set fire to the four corners of the world.

MORE SOON

THEY SAID IT

'We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population...'
-Margaret Sanger
Founder, Planned Parenthood
Excerpt from letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 1939


'Our advantages flow from the new birth and adoption into the household of God, not from the eminence of our race; our dignity arises from the praise of our truth, not of our blood.'
-Leo XIII
In Plurimis
(On the Abolition of Slavery)
1888

PLEASE, PLEASEPRAY FOR THE SOUL OF THIS BISHOP

Retired Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann

One of America's worst bishops, Patrick Ziemann, the retired bishop of Santa Rosa California, died last week. His latter days are a case study in sexual manipulation and the abuse of power and how being "connected" can minimize the consequences of abusing that power.

G. Patrick Ziemann dies at 68; embattled former Roman Catholic bishop of Santa Rosa diocese
He resigned his post after another priest filed a lawsuit accusing Ziemann of sexual misconduct.
by Duke Helfand
The Los Angeles Times
October 23, 2009

G. Patrick Ziemann, the former Roman Catholic bishop of Santa Rosa who resigned in 1999 amid sexual and financial scandals, has died. He was 68.

Ziemann died Thursday of pancreatic cancer at a monastery in Arizona, said his brother, Joe.

The bishop gave up his post at the Diocese of Santa Rosa after a priest filed a lawsuit alleging that Ziemann had coerced him into a two-year sexual relationship in exchange for keeping silent about the priest's admitted theft of money from a Ukiah parish.

Ziemann publicly acknowledged his affair with Father Jorge Hume Salas after the lawsuit was filed but said the relationship was consensual.

The Santa Rosa Police Department and the Sonoma County district attorney's office investigated Salas' allegations of sexual coercion, bolstered by a secret tape-recording of Ziemann apologizing to the priest.

Authorities declined to file criminal charges, however, questioning Salas' credibility. Their investigation showed that Salas had been expelled from several seminaries and posed as a priest before he was ordained.

The Santa Rosa diocese agreed to a $535,000 settlement with Salas, who has since left the priesthood and returned to his native Costa Rica.

Church leaders, meanwhile, found Ziemann had squandered $16 million in diocese money -- the result of poor oversight, bad investments and overspending, diocese officials said.

The shortfall forced the diocese to lay off about a third of its staff and cut funding for religious education, youth ministry and other programs, angering many local Catholics who had contributed money, the officials said.

Diocese leaders said Ziemann did not personally benefit from his financial decisions.

Ziemann later apologized for the turmoil. In a letter read on his behalf at services throughout the diocese after his resignation, he wrote: "I acknowledge with deep regret my responsibility for the current state of affairs, about which you are justly angry. I cannot express to you enough the deep remorse and repentance I feel for letting you down."

Ziemann's legacy continues to reverberate across the diocese of 150,000, the diocese's spokeswoman said.

"It undermined . . . trust in the church," said Deirdre Frontczak, the spokeswoman and professor of business communications at Santa Clara University. "Many people stopped going to church [and] still have never come back."

Still, Frontczak and others said they hoped Ziemann would also be remembered as an inspiring, if flawed, leader. To many, he was simply "Bishop Pat," known for his charisma, spirituality and an ability to motivate young people.

One close friend said the experiences that ended Ziemann's seven-year tenure in Santa Rosa changed him. "He is the first one to say, 'I violated my vows,' " said Joe Piasta II, the bishop's onetime attorney who visited him in Arizona shortly before his death. "The whole crisis made him very human."

Ziemann grew up in Pasadena, the third of eight children born into a devout family. His grandfather, Joseph Scott, was a well-known defense attorney, and his father, J. Howard Ziemann, was a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge and dean of Loyola Law School. Two of his uncles were diocesan priests in the Los Angeles area; he was named after them -- George Patrick.

Ziemann seemed destined for the priesthood at an early age, said his brother, Joe.

"I don't think there was ever a doubt where Pat was headed," Joe Ziemann said. "He always seemed to fit right in with the priesthood."

Ziemann was ordained in 1967 in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where he worked as a parish priest, high school teacher and dean and vice rector at Our Lady Queen of Angels high school seminary in the San Fernando Valley. He was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Los Angeles archdiocese in 1987 and named bishop of Santa Rosa five years later.

Ziemann's family did not speak publicly about his troubles at the time, but Joe Ziemann lamented recently that the problems had come to define his brother's legacy.

"We knew Pat long before the '99 incident or whatever it was," he said. "There are just too many years before and after when so much good was done. We'll let the judgment of that take place on the other side of the veil."

Even as Ziemann began life anew in 2000 at Holy Trinity Monastery in Arizona, however, he faced fresh allegations of alleged misconduct related to his time in the Los Angeles archdiocese.

He was named in two lawsuits that accused him of molesting three boys. The archdiocese settled the claims for $2.8 million, according to plaintiffs' attorneys. Ziemann adamantly denied the charges, said his former attorney. A Los Angeles archdiocese spokesman declined to comment on the litigation.

At the monastery near Tucson, Ziemann prayed in the chapel, although he did not lead Mass. And he worked in the kitchen. The monastery's superior, Father Henri Capdeville, said he never asked Ziemann about his past but instead tried to provide a sanctuary for the bishop to deepen his spirituality.

"I know he did some wrong in Santa Rosa," Capdeville said. "But he did his time at the monastery. He did some reparations for the harms he did in the best way he could."

In addition to his brother Joe, Ziemann is survived by four brothers and a sister.

MORE ON BISHOP ZIEMANN
the man who almost became the Bishop of San Diego

BISHOP BAD BOY
by Ron Russell
The San Francisco Weekly
Bishop Accountability
Santa Rosa's charismatic Catholic bishop got busted shaking down a priest for sex. But he had friends in high places—and they served him well.

AFTER HE WAS CAUGHT EXPLOITING a subordinate priest for sex, G. Patrick Ziemann could have been consigned to a life of ignominy upon stepping down as the Roman Catholic bishop of Santa Rosa in 1999. And after he left the sprawling diocese that stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border $16 million in debt following his seven years there, at least a few angry Catholics believe he walked away with far too little punishment. But life after the fall has turned out to be relatively sweet for the charismatic and once wildly popular religious leader known to many as Bishop Pat, despite his notoriety as one of the American church's highest-ranking bad boys.



Residing in comfortable, if not luxurious, exile at a monastery in the Arizona desert that doubles as a tourist destination, Ziemann, 61, is fit, tanned, and in good spirits. A fixture on the artsy party circuit in nearby Tucson, he's even spotted occasionally at a karaoke bar. Although his clerical privileges are restricted while he undergoes "spiritual rehabilitation," church officials haven't ruled out the possibility that the disgraced bishop may someday get a crack at heading another diocese.

And neither has he.

"It's whatever the Lord wills," he tells SF Weekly in the first newspaper interview he has granted in the nearly four years since being engulfed in scandal. "Whatever the Lord has in mind for me, I'm willing to accept."

That this fallen star among U.S. Catholic leaders—even one who claims to pray four hours a day, as Ziemann does—entertains the possibility of a career comeback is itself revealing. After all, it was only a few years ago that he forced a young priest to wear a beeper so that he could summon him for trysts in cars, hotel rooms, and even the Santa Rosa Diocese office. (Once, police reports reveal, Ziemann had the cleric orally copulate him on the eve of their joint celebration of a special Sunday Mass.) Then again, as his kid-glove treatment since being banished from Santa Rosa suggests, Ziemann may know too much to be jettisoned. Even now, more than a year after priestly sex abuse burst into the headlines—first in Boston and then across the nation—the former leader of 140,000 Northern California Catholics looms as a tantalizing figure in the unraveling scandal afflicting the church.

He has been protected by and remains intimately connected with three influential fellow hierarchs, including San Francisco Archbishop William J. Levada. It was Levada who presided over Ziemann's skipping away from Santa Rosa with criminal impunity after church officials refused to fully cooperate with authorities. Ziemann's mentor and chief patron is Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, whose problems with pedophile priests rival the scandal-plagued Boston archdiocese's. The other member of the troika is Manuel Moreno, who until his surprise resignation this month for health reasons, was bishop of Tucson, Ariz., and in whose diocese Ziemann was given refuge at the Holy Trinity Monastery near the legendary gunslinging town of Tombstone. Moreno has a long and tawdry record in covering up for pedophile priests.



Ziemann's ties to the trio, and their bonds to each other, go back four decades to St. John's Seminary College, on a secluded Southern California hilltop overlooking the Ventura County coastline. The men overlapped as students there in the late 1950s and early '60s. Ziemann arrived in 1963, the year after Mahony, the group's superstar, graduated. But his and Mahony's paths have intersected at St. John's social events and elsewhere since at least the mid-1960s. After Mahony became archbishop of Los Angeles in 1985 (Pope John Paul II elevated him to cardinal in 1991), Ziemann's stock soared.

After naming him to oversee a junior seminary for high school boys, Mahony appointed Ziemann auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles in 1987. Church sources say the cardinal was instrumental in securing the Vatican's 1992 appointment of Ziemann to head the Santa Rosa Diocese. The sources say Mahony also had a hand in Levada's coming from Portland, Ore., to become archbishop of San Francisco in 1995, following former Archbishop John Quinn's decision to step down for health reasons. Thus Levada (St. John's class of '58) became Ziemann's ostensible boss.

At a time when someone else might have tossed him to the wolves, Levada lauded Ziemann to the bitter end in Santa Rosa. The day Ziemann resigned, shortly after a lurid audiotape surfaced exposing the bishop's illicit relationship with the priest, Levada extolled his friend as someone who had done much to help the diocese. It didn't seem to matter that, right up until the revelation of the bishop's tape-recorded apology to Father Jorge Hume Salas for forcing him to engage in sex, Ziemann's personal attorney proclaimed him to be "a very holy man" and the bishop steadfastly denied any misconduct. "It was like a testimonial send-off for his bishop who had just finished disgracing himself in the worst way imaginable," recalls Don Hoard, a Petaluma advocate for sex-abuse victims, referring to Levada's verbal backslapping. "It was surreal."

As archbishop, Levada stepped in to run the Santa Rosa Diocese for nearly a year until a new bishop could be installed. During that time, Levada's underlings dragged their feet and discouraged police and prosecutors from pursuing possible criminal charges against Ziemann and his former top lieutenant, Monsignor Thomas J. Keys, in the wake of a colossal financial scandal, the full extent of which has yet to be disclosed. This, after diocesan lawyers worked vigorously to discredit Hume, whom Ziemann began shaking down for sex not long after ordaining him. It was on Levada's watch that the diocese paid Hume $535,000 to settle a civil lawsuit against Ziemann, while swearing him to secrecy. But the archbishop's involvement didn't end with Ziemann's departure.

Despite initial denials by Levada's spokesmen, the archbishop has occupied a prime position of oversight regarding Ziemann's spiritual rehabilitation. From the time Ziemann arrived in Arizona after several months of sex counseling at a church-sponsored treatment center on the East Coast, Levada has presided over a five-member committee (which also includes the Vatican's ambassador to the United States) intended to provide his friend with spiritual help—and presumably to determine his fitness for any future clerical role.

Levada declined to be interviewed for this article. A spokesman said the archbishop feels he has already sufficiently addressed Ziemann and related issues.

If Ziemann has Levada at least partly to thank for his prosecution-free exit from Santa Rosa, he may be uniquely positioned to return favors—especially those extended by his chief benefactor, L.A.'s powerful Cardinal Mahony. Indeed, court documents and interviews with abuse victims as well as current and former priests suggest a pattern of Ziemann being made aware of sex-abuse allegations lodged against priests during the many years he served the L.A. Archdiocese that were unheeded and subsequently covered up. Some of these relate to the period before Mahony became archbishop, while others occurred during the time Ziemann served the cardinal as auxiliary bishop.

Plaintiff's attorneys and others agree that Ziemann could become a legal millstone around Mahony's neck and at least a major embarrassment for Levada and Moreno should he be compelled to testify in a civil or criminal proceeding. In recent weeks, Mahony's vicar for clergy and the vicar's three predecessors have testified before a grand jury in Ventura County, the first top officials from the nation's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese to be subpoenaed. L.A. County prosecutors have filed criminal charges against six of Mahony's priests, and law enforcement sources say as many as a dozen others could be arrested in coming months.

"[Ziemann's] being [at the monastery] is sort of like having him in a witness protection program," says A.W. Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and former Benedictine monk who has written extensively about clergy sex abuse. "From the standpoint of church leaders, I'm sure they think of him as better off out of sight and out of mind."

Such a conclusion may be more than speculation. Ziemann enjoys top-drawer legal representation in Donald Steier, a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer whose clients include several accused priests with close ties to Mahony. Steier's involvement is all the more intriguing since Ziemann contends he is broke, his Santa Rosa troubles are presumed resolved, and no criminal charges are pending against him.

But that could change.

At least two men have come forward to claim that Ziemann molested them as altar boys in the L.A. suburb of Huntington Park during his first assignment as a priest in the late '60s. The bishop denies the charges. But the accusations of one of the men, a 47-year-old Oregon resident who says Ziemann paid him for sex for nearly two decades, are likely to open old wounds in Santa Rosa.

That's because the accuser (who spoke to SF Weekly on condition that he be identified only by his first name, Richard) contends that although he and the bishop stopped having sex in 1986, Ziemann continued to give him money until shortly before stepping down from his Santa Rosa post. If that's true, the source of the money could draw the ire of those still upset that Levada didn't provide a full accounting of how millions of church dollars were squandered, and who insist that the archbishop was more interested in quelling scandal than pursuing justice. Richard is suing Ziemann and the church for alleged sexual abuse, and L.A. police investigators recently interviewed the Oregon man in what may be a harbinger of more serious trouble. Richard says that Ziemann paid him "several thousands of dollars" while he was Santa Rosa's bishop, and that some of the money was drawn on an account called the "Saint George Fund." If so, Ziemann may be guilty at least of impish humor.

The initial "G" in his name stands for George.

_________

SISTER JANE KELLY was suspicious of Ziemann from the first time she met him.

A month after he was installed as bishop, Ziemann went to Ukiah to make a request of the nun, popular for her work on behalf of the poor. He had brought Hume, a Costa Rica native, to the diocese as a priest candidate and wanted Kelly to help him learn the fundamentals of parish life. Hume, then 35, barely spoke English. But Ziemann didn't seem to care. He put Hume on the fast track. In 1993, after only 15 months as a deacon, Hume was ordained as a priest and assigned to Ukiah's St. Mary of the Angels parish as an understudy to the much older pastor, Father Hans Ruygt.

Long before Hume's ordination, Kelly had sized him up as a con artist. (A police investigation later revealed that he had been kicked out of seminaries in Honduras, Mexico, and the United States, and had been accused of passing himself off as a priest to collect money in Costa Rica and New Jersey.) Before long, there were hints of trouble.


Archbishop William J. Levada gets an earful from whistle-blower Sister Jane Kelly in 1999.

Parishioners in Ukiah's Hispanic community grumbled to Kelly that the priest was hitting them up for extra cash to perform baptisms and weddings. There were rumors, never substantiated, of inappropriate behavior with young men. But it wasn't until 1996, after it was discovered that someone was systematically stealing money from the parish, that the nun's suspicions—expressed to Ziemann before and after Hume's ordination—were validated.

The thefts were a mystery, since they continued even after Ukiah police, with the consent of Father Ruygt, set up secret surveillance cameras inside the church. Unknown to the cops, the trusting senior priest had told Hume about the cameras, considering it unthinkable that his fellow cleric could be guilty. His attitude changed on a Sunday in which missing funds were traced to Hume's afternoon Mass. That night Ruygt told a police detective that Hume was removing sealed bank bags from the church safe, taking out cash, and putting back the remainder in freshly sealed bags.

It turned out that Ruygt had talked to the cop despite a phone call from Ziemann instructing him not to cooperate. Then the bishop got on the phone with Fred Keplinger, Ukiah's police chief and a lifelong Roman Catholic, and persuaded him to send his detective away without arresting Hume. (The young priest had admitted taking money, but said he used it to benefit the poor in his native country, although he couldn't produce receipts to substantiate that.)

"It was the most embarrassing mistake of my professional career," says Keplinger, now retired. "I felt very close to Bishop Ziemann and had a lot of respect for him. He confirmed all three of my children." Keplinger says he should have listened to his wife, who was immediately suspicious of Ziemann's motives. "That night she told me, 'You know, you're the most naive police chief in America.'"

Already indebted to Ziemann for his priesthood, Hume now had the bishop to thank for keeping him out of jail. Ziemann sent him to a Santa Rosa therapist and later transferred him to St. Michael's Community, a St. Louis treatment center run by the Servants of the Paraclete, a religious order devoted to helping priests with emotional and psychosexual disorders.

If Ziemann had deliberately tried to maneuver Hume into a vulnerable position, he couldn't have done a better job. And the bishop soon began collecting his payback. Hume told police his first sexual encounter with Ziemann occurred in June 1996, shortly before he left for St. Louis. It allegedly took place at the bishop's residence after Ziemann asked him to come there to pick up his airline ticket.

Hume's account, as related in police reports, was that he told Ziemann he was depressed and began to cry. The bishop embraced him and began kissing him on his face and neck, Hume said. Later, at Ziemann's insistence, the men orally copulated each other.



Ziemann did more than merely call St. Louis regularly to check on Hume's progress. In July, toward the end of the priest's treatment, he flew there and was met at the airport by Hume and a chauffeur from St. Michael's who took him to a hotel. Once there, Ziemann sent the chauffeur away and insisted that Hume come up to his room since the men had a lot to talk about.

Hume alleges that Ziemann undressed him, had sex with him, and after taking him out to dinner, slipped a wad of bills into his pants pocket and told him to buy something nice for himself. The priest also alleges that Ziemann had sex with him the following day in a private room at the treatment center, minutes after an all-important evaluation to determine his fitness to return to California. Once back in Santa Rosa, he began wearing the beeper on Ziemann's orders. Hume told police that the bishop demanded sex once or twice a week for two years.

Eventually, Ziemann found Hume to be a liability and tried to get rid of him. Hume's conduct, including being seen at a Napa pizza parlor with a young man in his lap, fueled more rumors. First, Ziemann tried to send him back to Costa Rica. He then offered to send him somewhere in the United States for a college education—at church expense.

Angered at being cut loose, Hume turned to the authorities. But there was little enthusiasm on the part of either Santa Rosa police or the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office for going after a sitting bishop accused of extorting one of his priests for sex when the accuser had been under criminal suspicion.

Then Hume dropped a bombshell. In 1999 he sued Ziemann, accusing the bishop of sexual assault. The same day the suit was filed, Ziemann resigned even as he vehemently denied the accusations.


San Francisco Archbishop (now Cardinal) William J. Levada (now Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) helped Ziemann skip away from Santa Rosa with criminal impunity.

The bishop's spin doctors went into action. He was portrayed as stepping down for the good of the diocese, and his lawyers—pointing to a $10 million settlement demand by Hume's attorney, Irma Cordova, during secret negotiations aimed at keeping the matter out of the courts—pictured the bishop as a hero willing to sacrifice his lofty position to protect the diocese from an extortionist. Cordova insists the sum demanded of the diocese "was merely to get their attention" after months of fruitless negotiations in which diocesan lawyers didn't appear to take her client seriously.

At one point, she says, Hume was summoned for an audience with Levada at the San Francisco chancery office. The half-hour session was strained from the outset after she showed up with her client and insisted on being present. "[Levada's] entire theme was to intimidate Jorge, to threaten his career as a priest if he persisted," says Cordova. "It was clear they were working on him from both ends, on the civil side with one set of lawyers who were trying to get rid of his complaint, and on the canonical side, knowing that he was desperate to retain his [priestly] faculties."

Even as he stepped down, Ziemann received an unusually generous show of support from his friend the archbishop. Levada told the press that he joined "friends throughout California and beyond in thanking [Ziemann] for the energy and gifts he has shared far and wide. Our prayers and good wishes go with him."

But diocesan operatives had underestimated Hume. Despite Levada's alleged effort to intimidate him, he was not defrocked. And on his lawyer's advice, he had worn a hidden microphone and captured several lurid conversations with Ziemann. He also preserved several articles of clothing allegedly stained with the bishop's semen.

In one recording, a transcript of which was obtained by SF Weekly, Ziemann repeatedly apologizes for forcing the priest to have sex with him, even while attempting to persuade him to accept a transfer to avoid a possible criminal investigation. "I'm afraid the police are looking at you, OK?" he says. "All they need is another complaint and they'll move."

In broken English, Hume tells Ziemann he has heard his apologies before. "All the time [you say], 'This the last time, the last time, the last time.' Never it came the last time. All the time I came with you to have sex and sex and sex and sex. It's not good for me, not good for me ... all the times when I had to sleep with you." Ziemann responds: "I know, it's been my fault. And I'm sorry for that. Because I don't think you wanted to do that."

The priest says the bishop has given him two venereal infections.

Ziemann: "Two what?"

Hume: "Venereal infection."

Ziemann: "Confession?"

Hume: "No, no, venereal ... infection into my organs."

Ziemann: "Oh, really?"

Hume: "Oh really, yeah, two."

Ziemann: "From me?"

Hume: "Yeah."

Ziemann: "I didn't know that. I'm sorry to hear that."

_________

WHILE DISASTROUS, THE SEX scandal may have been easier for Levada to contend with than the financial mess Ziemann left behind.

Rank-and-file Catholics who weren't necessarily interested in the details of their bishop's sex life still wanted to know about what happened to the money they donated. Those who pushed for full disclosure and who say that's what Levada promised were disappointed.

"I found [Levada] to be worse than Ziemann, because in my view he out-and-out lied to us," says Mary Shea, a college instructor from Napa who is among those still waiting for an accounting. In a fruitless effort to get answers from the archbishop, she joined a group of protesters who staged candlelight vigils whenever Levada appeared in the diocese in the months following Ziemann's departure.

In Ukiah, Sister Kelly also viewed the aftermath of Ziemann's tenure with suspicion and disappointment. At one of the parish meetings, a local news photographer captured the finger-pointing nun dressing down Archbishop Levada for his failure to come clean. "It was very disappointing for the whole mess to have occurred in the first place, without compounding it by trying to cover things up," she says.



Less than enthusiastic reviews greeted the archbishop's first public appearance after the resignation, in which he delivered a homily at St. Eugene's Cathedral in Santa Rosa the month after Ziemann's departure. Referring to Ziemann as "our brother and your former shepherd," Levada expressed sorrow and compassion for his friend and urged the faithful not to let the sex scandal distract them. "It was more than a little too convenient," says Hoard, the children's advocate. "People wanted answers, and all Levada wanted to do was preach 'forgive and forget.'"

The archbishop sounded a similar note in Ukiah during a special visit to Hume's old church. There, during a closed-door meeting with 90 priests that lasted two hours, Levada disclosed that the diocese was broke and $16 million in debt. Afterward, he gave a condensed version to reporters waiting outside. Among other things, he said, the diocese had overspent on its programs, frittered away money in poor investments, and—intriguingly—paid out $5.3 million to settle sex-abuse claims against some of its priests. To restore fiscal order, he announced a combination of budget cuts and loans from both banks and other dioceses (Mahony's L.A. Archdiocese was good for $1 million).

But Levada's numbers left some skeptical. The Santa Rosa chancery had been inundated with claims from abuse victims based on years of letting wayward clerics run amok. Michael Meadows, a Walnut Creek attorney, heard the $5.3 million figure and was surprised. His clients alone had received nearly $4 million in settlements from the diocese stemming from the antics of just one priest, Father Gary Timmons, who had been harbored by two of Ziemann's predecessors.

Had Levada chosen to open the diocese's books, there would have been plenty to explain, starting with Monsignor Keys, whom the archbishop had initially retained as the diocese's vicar-general and chief finance officer. After an internal audit revealed the diocese to be penniless, Keys resigned both posts. But he was hardly without portfolio. He remained pastor of the diocese's most affluent parish, Star of the Valley, in the community of Oakmont.

More important, Levada left Keys in place as president and chief executive officer of the National Scrip Center, the position that had made him a power behind three successive bishops, including Ziemann.

The largest operation of its kind in the United States, NSC facilitates the sale of scrip—gift certificates and coupons from department stores and other retailers—that has become immensely popular as a source of income for nonprofit entities such as schools and churches. NSC essentially buys scrip at a discount and sells it for a slightly higher price to participating nonprofits, which in turn generate revenue by selling it to customers at face value.

NSC's 260-plus merchant partners are a who's who of American commerce, including Home Depot, JCPenney, and Macy's. It claims to have helped nonprofit organizations raise more than $180 million in the past 15 years. Using $25,000 in seed money from the Santa Rosa Diocese, the Scrip Center was conceived in 1987 as a way for the Petaluma parish to save a financially troubled high school. In the early days it was run from a rectory with a few women filling orders by hand. It now occupies a sprawling office building in a corporate park next to Santa Rosa's regional airport. Over the years its assets have grown into the many millions of dollars, and NSC is widely perceived to be a cash cow for the diocese.

Since it's a private corporation, NSC's financial dealings have long been enmeshed in secrecy, as have those of the diocese, which as a religious entity also is not subject to public scrutiny. In 1998, when the Scrip Center bought out its largest competitor, the diocese provided the $5.1 million loan guarantee for the purchase. Historically, the bishop of Santa Rosa (as well as Levada, after stepping in for Ziemann) has served as the Scrip Center's chairman, appointing its board of directors. That changed in 2001, when, in the aftermath of the financial scandal, the diocese severed its relationship with the corporation. NSC also forgave a $2.1 million debt owed by the diocese, the circumstances of which were never explained.

Even now, NSC's board is made up of people with long-standing ties to the diocese. Such ties, and the secrecy surrounding the relationship between the diocese and the Scrip Center, have long fueled speculation, never proven, that the diocese used NSC to bankroll secret payments to victims of priestly sex abuse, including the cost of therapy and other medical expenses, as a way of keeping such items off the diocese's books.

"The bottom line is that the diocese in the past has been able to use the Scrip Center any way it pleased and, because of the secrecy, no one really knows how," says Kelly, the nun.

During more than a decade in which the diocese and the Scrip Center were joined at the hip, the man who held the corporation's purse strings was its president and CEO, Keys, who is also widely credited with getting it off the ground. At the same time he ran NSC, Keys also controlled the diocese's money, serving not only as vicar-general but as finance director, giving him the kind of clout that some say approached even that of the bishops he served.


Chief Benefactor: Ziemann pal Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony.

"There's never been any doubt in my mind that Keys was the real player when it came to the money, not Ziemann," says Bob Coyle Jr., a Fresno businessman whose late father was a partner with Keys in developing the scrip idea. John van der Zee, author of a book about the Santa Rosa scandal called Agony in the Garden, agrees. "Ziemann is a very complex character, a man with great gifts and weaknesses," he says. "But as far as the money goes, I don't think he was paying attention to what was going on around him." Keys declined to be interviewed for this article, as did the Scrip Center's current CEO, David C. Carrithers.

A native of Ireland who came to the diocese in 1970 and quickly climbed the administrative ladder, Keys was the mastermind behind merging diocesan funds in a single account. It was this so-called "Consolidated Account," which critics say was tailor-made for commingling with funds from the Scrip Center, that collapsed under the weight of what the diocese's auditors say was unbridled (and apparently unmonitored) spending during the waning months of Ziemann's tenure. A few weeks before Levada went to Ukiah to meet with the assembled priests, auditors delivered some disturbing news: The account was empty.

If criminal acts were to blame, it was not for authorities to find out. As Levada conducted parish hall meetings around the diocese, his forget-and-move-on approach received an increasingly cool reception from Catholics angry that money they had donated for schools and parishes had vanished. Even his priests were agitated. Several dozen clerics signed a letter asking the archbishop "to tell our people the total story about what happened throughout [Ziemann's] administration," including "the role of the bishop, the vicar-general, the diocesan finance committee, the administrative staff and the scrip center in creating our present situation." But according to one of those priests, who spoke with SF Weekly on condition of anonymity, there was never a satisfying answer.

"The whole thing was swept under the rug," he says. "Eventually people go on with their lives and stop asking questions."

Among the curious were investigators from the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office. "It was, at the least, an atrocious example of malfeasance, worthy of a made-for-TV movie," recalls prosecutor Gary Medvigy. "But it would have taken a federal task force to figure out all the intricate financial dealings of the diocese. It was beyond the scope of what we could comfortably investigate locally." His former boss, Mike Mullens, who was DA at the time, says the manner in which a bishop's authority is structured within the church presents problems for investigators. "Within certain limits, a bishop can pretty much do anything he wants [with money]," Mullens says. "There's no fraud if you have the ability to use funds any way you wish." He was convinced that without the full cooperation of diocesan officials, he says, "we couldn't prove a case." Asked if he believes those officials leveled with him, he replies bluntly, "No."

One question that kept popping up during Levada's barnstorm of the diocese was who'd pay for future sex-abuse claims. The reassuring answer, provided by diocesan spokesmen, was that the diocese had procured insurance coverage for that through the Ordinary Mutual Insurance Co. But those officials didn't mention everything they knew about the insurer, even as they told Ziemann's former subjects that their money would no longer be doled out to make sex-abuse lawsuits go away.

Ordinary Mutual was incorporated in Vermont in 1987, the same year the Scrip Center came into existence. But it's a self-insurance program, and its members consist solely of Catholic churches in California, Arizona, and Idaho. According to reports on file with Vermont insurance officials, Ordinary Mutual and the Scrip Center had something else in common. From 1993 until the end of 1999—including when Levada hit the road to clean up after Ziemann—Ordinary Mutual's president was none other than Monsignor Thomas J. Keys.

_________

G. PATRICK ZIEMANN'S pedigree alone might have marked him for clerical stardom.

One of eight children in an old-money Pasadena family headed by a prominent Catholic lawyer, he grew up in a home where it wasn't extraordinary for an archbishop to be a dinner guest. His father, J. Howard Ziemann, was a graduate of Santa Clara University with a law degree from Georgetown. Active in Catholic affairs, he served on a variety of charitable boards and was appointed to the Superior Court bench.

Patrick's maternal grandfather—the writer, lawyer, and orator Joseph Scott—was one of the most prominent Catholic laymen in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. Scott was defense counsel, along with Clarence Darrow, during the famous 1911 trial in which two union-activist brothers were convicted of blowing up the Los Angeles Times building. A staunch Republican, he placed Herbert Hoover's name into nomination at the 1928 Republican National Convention. Ironically, considering his grandson's woes, he was a leading Catholic voice in railing against the immorality of the movie industry. His work on behalf of the church's Legion of Decency campaign in the 1930s led to Hollywood's adopting the precursor of today's movie ratings system.

But Patrick didn't rely on family connections to climb the ecclesiastical ladder. A "lifer" committed to pursuing the priesthood from an early age, he was bright, energetic, and ambitious, those who know him say. Like Mahony, he was marked for a fast rise while still at St. John's and, after graduating in 1967, was sent away for a secular degree before being assigned to full-time parish work.

Ziemann took a graduate degree in education at Mount St. Mary's College, in L.A.'s exclusive Brentwood, and obtained credentials as a secondary-school teacher. Fluent in Spanish, he was a logical choice to be sent to St. Matthias Parish in heavily Latino Huntington Park, east of downtown Los Angeles, in 1967, even as he completed his graduate studies.



It wasn't long after Ziemann arrived at the parish that Richard, his Oregon accuser, says the priest took him under his wing. Then 11, Richard was a gawky sixth-grader shooting hoops on the church playground when Ziemann, a regular participant in the games, entered his life.

"He became like a father figure to me," says Richard. "He was very charismatic, someone to look up to."

Although his parents weren't churchgoers, Richard says they insisted that he and his four siblings attend and were delighted when Ziemann chose him to be an altar boy. After a round of basketball, Ziemann invited the boy to the rectory, where they had their first sexual encounter, Richard says. "I was hot and sweaty, and he told me I could clean up in his room," he recalls. Ziemann came into the bathroom and fondled his genitals as he was taking a shower, Richard says.

Their encounters, he claims, soon escalated to masturbation and oral sex. Richard says he was "confused and naive" at the time. "He would tell me not to worry about it, that that's just the way things were and that everything would be fine." Richard recalls going to confession on Sundays, finding Ziemann behind the dark confessional screen, and awkwardly revealing his guilt over having sex with the priest. "He would tell me to say 10 'Our Fathers' and 10 'Hail Marys.'"

Richard says the trysts—accompanied by payments of usually $50 to $100—continued after Ziemann was assigned to Mater Dei High School in Orange County. Richard says Ziemann didn't stop calling him for sex after he began attending St. John Bosco High School in nearby Bellflower, where he became a standout basketball player. Richard says that over the years many of the two dozen or so sexual encounters he purports to have had with Ziemann occurred in the cleric's car after Ziemann arranged to meet him at some discreet location, often near the beach. Once, he says, Ziemann called to say he was coming to Huntington Park to perform a wedding, and the men met and had sex in a storage room at the parish hall.

Their meetings became fewer after Richard was married in 1977, he says. Divorced the following year, he moved to Oregon but still saw Ziemann on occasional trips to California, he says. Meanwhile, in 1985 Ziemann's mentor Mahony became archbishop of L.A. and Ziemann's career took an upward turn. Mahony appointed him vice rector and dean of students at Our Lady Queen of Angels, a junior seminary in the San Fernando Valley. Mahony elevated him to auxiliary bishop in 1987. Richard says Ziemann sent him an invitation to the formal installation ceremony held inside L.A.'s ornate old cathedral, but that although he made the trip to Los Angeles, he couldn't bring himself to attend the event.

"I just didn't feel comfortable going into a house of God under the circumstances," he says.

His last hookup with Ziemann, he says, came in 1986 at the junior seminary where Ziemann was dean, and where Richard had gone ostensibly so Ziemann could counsel him in advance of his second marriage, to a Catholic woman. During one of the days he was at the seminary, he says, he and Ziemann engaged in oral sex in an empty classroom after one of the counseling sessions. He says that later, despite further entreaties from Ziemann, he resolved not to have sex with the auxiliary bishop "because I wanted to be faithful to my wife." But he says he continued to correspond with Ziemann and to receive financial assistance from him well into Ziemann's tenure as bishop of Santa Rosa.

Disappointed after Ziemann failed to say hello while in Portland on church business in 1997, Richard says he called the bishop and let him know that he was anguished and in need of financial help. Ziemann, he says, responded with several checks totaling "more than $2,000." Richard says at least one of the checks bore the imprimatur of the "Saint George Fund," but that he never questioned its source, assuming that as bishop Ziemann had access to a variety of church funds.

Kelly Clark, Richard's Portland attorney, says his client's lawsuit is the result of his "trying to come to grips with what's happened to him." But Richard claims to hold no rancor toward the bishop. "I don't want anything bad for him," he says. "I just feel that he took advantage of me when I was young and naive. I was easy pickings for someone like him. I guess more than anything I want him to face up to what he did, be honest about it, and say he's sorry."

Meanwhile, abuse victims and their advocates say Ziemann also ignored complaints against other priests during the time he served as the L.A. Archdiocese's auxiliary bishop.

In one case, a former nun candidate, who says she told Mahony and Ziemann of being molested in childhood by a priest, charges that both men ignored her complaints. Erin Brady, who now lives in Oregon and works as a teacher, says she was stunned when Mahony transferred the accused priest from L.A. to Santa Rosa following Ziemann's appointment as bishop there.

In another instance, a man who claims he was molested by an L.A. priest while on a church retreat says his father—a church deacon and personal friend of Ziemann—reported the abuse directly to Ziemann, who assured him it would be dealt with. "Ziemann absolutely turned his back on us. Nothing ever happened," says Carlos Perez, the alleged victim.

Perhaps the most significant case involves a former St. John's seminarian who in 1979 turned to Ziemann for help in dealing with a priest instructor who was pressuring him and other students for sex. The seminarian also told Ziemann about a Catholic high school friend reportedly being molested by one of his teachers, Monsignor Michael Harris. Ziemann promised help, but didn't deliver.



Years later, after Harris was accused of molesting a student, Ryan DiMaria, at an Orange County high school where Harris was the popular principal, the seminarian's affidavit proved crucial to DiMaria's lawsuit against the archdiocese for having failed to rein in Harris. (As it turns out, Ziemann and Harris were friends.) In 2001, soon after Ziemann was deposed by DiMaria's lawyers and shortly before Mahony would have been forced to testify at the trial, the cardinal authorized a $5.2 million payment to DiMaria to settle the complaint—at the time the largest such settlement ever for a single victim in a Catholic sex-abuse case.

_________

ZIEMANN COULDN'T HAVE picked a more ideal spot to cool his heels than Holy Trinity Monastery in Arizona.

Far from the glare of media attention to which he had become unhappily accustomed, the bucolic Benedictine retreat is barely an hour's drive from the bright lights of Tucson. There, Ziemann's friend Moreno, 72, reigned as a powerful religious and civic mover-shaker. When he stepped down this month after disclosing that he suffers from Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer, Moreno was under pressure to divulge information in a number of pedo-priest cases.


Ziemann protector Manuel Moreno, who recently resigned as bishop of Tucson, Arizona

One of his more infamous former clerics, accused child molester Monsignor Robert Trupia, for years led young prospective seminarians from Tucson on so-called "come and see" weekends to his alma mater, St. John's, until banished from the seminary after getting caught having sex with a young man in the school's bell tower.

Moreno's decision to pack him off to Washington, D.C., to study canon law at Catholic University continues to generate embarrassment. Still on the Tucson Diocese payroll while living in Maryland, Trupia (who was arrested after allegedly molesting nine boys from Yuma but released because the time limit for pressing criminal charges had expired) has used his legal expertise to resist efforts to defrock him. (The diocese years ago paid more than $6 million to settle abuse claims against Trupia.) In February it was revealed that until 2001 he had spent seven years as a paid canon law consultant for the Diocese of Monterey in California. The disclosure prompted the resignation of Monterey's vicar-general, Monsignor Charles Fatooh, who hired Trupia and who owns the Maryland condo where he lives.

Last year, in the aftermath of the U.S. bishops' conference in Dallas, at which the assembled hierarchs seemed to compete with each other in their rush to show reformist tendencies, Moreno released a list of 15 of the Tucson Diocese's priestly bad boys, going back many years. Trupia was the headliner. But the list also was notable for who wasn't on it—a cleric who shall be identified here as Father B since no civil or criminal charge has ever been filed against him.



SF Weekly has learned that Father B was accused of molesting several children in the L.A. Archdiocese in the early 1980s, during the tenure of Mahony's predecessor and chief benefactor, the late Cardinal Timothy Manning. He was shuffled to Arizona and assigned by Moreno to a Tucson parish as an associate priest over the objections of the pastor. There, he allegedly molested again before being hustled out of town. Father B later left the priesthood and for a time was employed at a Toys "R" Us store in Southern California.

In a letter to Moreno last year describing an alleged incident involving Father B, a Tucson man says the priest abused him in a hot tub at a church rectory in the summer of 1984. The accuser, who declined to be interviewed, wrote that the priest began by rubbing his back and that after his hands "went down into my shorts," he apologized, saying they had slipped. "At some point then he had his penis out of the top of his shorts and was rubbing it against the small of my back at the top of my back side," the accuser wrote to Moreno. Lynne Cadigan, the attorney who represented the alleged victim, says no lawsuit was filed on his behalf because the alleged incident occurred so long ago that it is too late to seek damages under Arizona law.

Moreno declined numerous requests for interviews, and his spokesman stopped returning a reporter's phone calls after being asked about Moreno's role in harboring Father B. It's a role Moreno managed to keep secret, even as a deferential local press officially marked his stepping aside March 7 in favor of his successor, Gerald F. Kicanas. But the secret required tending.

As recently as Sept. 30, Moreno met privately with the letter writer—the son of a church deacon—and apologized. In a written summary of that meeting, the accuser says Moreno said he had accepted Father B into the Tucson Diocese as a favor to the archbishop of Los Angeles, presumably Cardinal Manning, without knowing that previous molestation accusations had been leveled against him there. However, church sources in Tucson, who spoke on condition of anonymity, dispute that, saying the pastor at the parish where Father B was assigned complained vigorously to Moreno at having to take on a priest with such a track record. At the September meeting, the accuser says, Moreno apologized three times. "When he was done he apologized again and I asked him, "For what are you apologizing?' I was interested in clearly understanding what he was sorry about. He said, "For the horrible things that happened to you.'"


Exile Oasis: The chapel at Arizona's Holy Trinity Monastery.


Against this backdrop, it isn't surprising that Moreno chooses not to discuss Ziemann, his exiled friend and fellow bishop. Even Moreno's spokesman, Fred Allison, professes not to know much about the monastery's star inhabitant. "I assume things are going well [with his spiritual rehabilitation]," Allison says. The monastery, which is open to the public, and rents small cabins to tourists and others, is a popular destination for Catholics seeking meditation and spiritual renewal. It is also a frequent stopover for young men contemplating a career in the priesthood.

Ziemann routinely conducted Mass in the compound's quaint adobe chapel until last year, when the Vatican got wind that he had violated the conditions of his stay by sometimes filling in for a parish priest in the nearby town of Sierra Vista. Ziemann even sponsored seminars there for couples planning to be married. Since then, the bishop is no longer allowed to conduct Mass even in the monastery chapel.

Ziemann's cottage—nestled unobtrusively among mesquite trees at the end of an unpaved lane and with panoramic views of distant mountains—is among the most secluded of the retreat's numerous dwellings. Last year, when a San Francisco TV station dispatched a reporter and camera person to the monastery, Ziemann summoned a driver, raced to a waiting car, and peeled away, leading the news team on a low-speed chase along back-country roads for more than an hour. The episode ended with the bishop's car circling back and disappearing into a garage near the monastery.

But, approached recently by an SF Weekly reporter on the grounds during a morning stroll, he makes no attempt to flee. Ziemann is cordial if unenthusiastic, much like someone who has just been asked to roll up his sleeve for a tetanus shot. But his voice betrays none of the indignity associated with a bishop who, temporarily at least, remains stripped of his clerical faculties.

"This place has been very good for me. I've never felt closer to the Lord in my life," he says, appearing relaxed in khakis and a wool shirt while puttering around the courtyard outside his cottage. Ziemann prays four hours a day, half of which he knocks off upon rising at 6 a.m. most days. He professes to pay little attention to the sex scandal afflicting the church, even as it pertains to him. He recently failed to meet a deadline to respond to a federal racketeering lawsuit against the Dioceses of Tucson and Harrisburg, Pa., in which he is named as a minor participant, explaining that he "turned all of that over to the [Tucson] Diocese for their lawyers to take care of. I don't have any money." (Allison insists that lawyers for the Tucson Diocese "absolutely" are not representing Ziemann in the suit, which claims that church officials refused to ordain a seminarian for blowing the whistle on sexually abusive clerics.)

Asked about Jorge Hume's allegations, the Santa Rosa financial scandal, and his relationships with Levada and Mahony, the bishop declines to answer, citing his attorney's advice. And how does someone who is broke acquire a powerhouse lawyer like Donald Steier? "I can't get into that," Ziemann says. Is the L.A. Archdiocese paying his legal expenses? "I can't comment on any of that." Does he still meet regularly with Archbishop Levada? "I can't talk about that." Does he still talk to his close friend Mahony? "I can't talk about him, either." Why? "It's just something that my counsel has asked me not to discuss."

But when it comes to Richard, Ziemann loosens up. He insists that the claimed abuse "absolutely, positively didn't happen. I never did anything to abuse him. I've never abused anyone in my life. That's what makes it so hurtful." He dismisses as "totally bogus" the notion that he had a sexual relationship with Richard for nearly 20 years. "I never had sex with him. It never happened."

Ziemann doesn't offer an opinion as to why someone who knew him as a boy might feel comfortable enough to ask him for money decades later. But he nonetheless acknowledges giving Richard financial aid while heading the Santa Rosa Diocese. "I gave him money to help him out," Ziemann says, adding that he doesn't recall how much, where the money came from, or how often he supplied it. "I don't know if I gave him checks. I don't recall any 'Saint George Fund.' It could have been."

But then that's one more thing that Bishop Pat decides not to talk about.

A Pro-Life MessageOn LAW & ORDER?

As much as I used to enjoy this show, I quit watching because I got sick of the liberal propaganda.

Is NBC turning the corner? I doubt it, but this is truly astounding. The last words of dialogue are particularly poignant.

That's how many former Anglicans want to join the Catholic Church immediately.

Get the entire story here.


Grrrrrrrrr!

"PASTORAL DISASTER"?Bishop Trautman's Concerns Are40 Years Too Late

Bishop Donald "Dumb-It-Down" Trautman

Former USCCB "Liturgy Committee" Chairman Bishop Donald Trautman, is expressing his dismay at what he calls a "slavishly literal" translation of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal from Latin, which could lead to what he calls a "pastoral disaster".

Specifically:

“The vast majority of God’s people in the assembly are not familiar with words of the new missal like ‘ineffable,’ ‘consubstantial,’ ‘incarnate,’ ‘inviolate,’ ‘oblation,’ ‘ignominy,’ ‘precursor,’ ‘suffused’ and ‘unvanquished.’"

With all due respect to Bishop Trautman and his fellow Rupturistas, one must ask: Has he forgotten the three most basic tasks of a bishop? O.K., here's a reminder:

TEACH, GOVERN AND SANCTIFY

The first task, (for those of you who attended Catholic school after Vatican II) is TEACH.

If children can learn about Harry Potter and memorize the names of Pokemon characters, surely our bishops and priests can help us understand words like "ineffable" and "consubstantial". Anyone who has taken a high-school level Shakespeare course has surely come across words like "incarnate", "ignominy" and "unvanquished".

All of Trautman's late, liberal cohorts had no problem at all imposing the Novus Ordo Mass upon the Church in 1970. He and his liberal cohorts had no problem unlawfully forbidding the Traditional Latin Mass and marginalizing tradition-loving Catholics.

Below is a photo gallery of some REAL pastoral disasters. To the best of my knowledge, Trautman has never expressed concern over any of these liturgical abuses:

America's Longest RunningAuthorized & Revived Traditional Latin Mass

Holy Cross Mausoleum, San Diego

In 1988 Pope John Paul II showed the depth of his pastoral instincts by publishing his Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei, which clarified that the Traditional Latin Mass was still a lawful and valid way of offering the liturgy, however restricting its use, requiring the express consent of the local ordinary.

The very first diocese in the United States to permit a revived Latin Mass was Diocese of San Diego under Bishop Leo T. Maher. This permission was granted three years before the Motu Proprio in 1985. The TLM was offered at Holy Cross Mausoleum at 9 am on Sundays, with Confessions available before Mass. Contrary to popular assumption, the majority of congregants were not elderly people nostalgic for the "old ways" but young families and young singles. The Mass quickly became so popular that those in attendance were forced to stand in the wings of the mausoleum. Some came from as far away as Los Angeles.

In a way, the locale was strangely apropos. Just as in the early Church, the flame of faith alive by offering Mass in the catacombs amidst the bones of the martyrs, so here the unbroken tradition of the organically developed liturgy was kept alive amidst the remains of hundreds of faithful Catholics, many of whom never lived to suffer the horrors of imposed modernism and the liturgical fascism wrought by illicitly "outlawing" the ancient liturgy.

When Bishop Robert Brom took over the diocese in 1990, he kept the TLM in place and even came to officiate at a Confirmation ceremony. By the late 1990's the crowds had grown so large that he granted the request for a second Mass each Sunday. But the members of the Latin Mass community knew that they needed more. They needed a parish.


St. Anne Catholic Church

After 23 years of waiting, Bishop Brom generously granted the TLM community their request and gave them their own parish. On October 7, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, St. Anne Catholic Church on Sicard Street in Logan Heights became the official Latin Mass parish for the Diocese of San Diego.


St. Anne, interior

St. Anne is staffed by two priests from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, an order that ONLY uses the Traditional Latin Mass (and is also the fastest growing religious order in the Church). It is a vibrant parish, offering the TLM Mass twice every weekday and Low Mass three times each Sunday as well as a High Mass. They also regularly offer Solemn Exposition of the Eucharist as well as Benediction and is the new meeting place for San Diego's Padre Pio Devotion Group.



WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
None of this could have happened without the generous cooperation of Bishop Brom. He is a fair bishop and was quick to act after the publication of Summorum Pontificum and has worked hard to allow true liturgical diversity to flourish in his diocese. He is smart enough to know that the Traditional Latin Mass poses no threat to the integrity of his other parishes.

It is well-known that many bishops are oppsed to the TLM, in spite of the Holy Father's wish that it be revived. Is Bishop Brom a big fan of the Traditional Latin Mass? Probably not, but at least he's not hostile. If more bishops practiced his "live and let live" attitude toward traditionalists, they would be amazed at the goodwill they would quickly win from the very Catholics they imagine to be their "enemies".


Bishop Robert Brom


Many thanks to Bishop Brom. Thanks be to God.

Why mince words?THIS WOMAN IS EVIL

"Sister" Donna Quinn, O.P.
WHERE'S THE INQUISITION WHEN YOU NEED THEM?

Nun Volunteering as Abortion Clinic Escort in Illinois
by Kathleen Gilbert
Lifesite News

- A Dominican nun has been seen frequenting an abortion facility in Illinois recently - but not, as one might expect, to pray for an end to abortion or to counsel women seeking abortions, but to volunteer as a clinic escort.

Local pro-life activists say that they recognized the escort at the ACU Health Center as Sr. Donna Quinn, a nun outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, after seeing her photo in a Chicago Tribune article.

"I've called her sister several times, and she never responded," local pro-lifer John Bray told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN). "But it's her."

Amy Keane, a pro-life witness for 11 years, says Quinn has acted as escort for "six years, at least." Keane described one incident in which Quinn began shouting at the pro-lifers as they spoke to a woman about to enter the abortion facility.

"[Quinn] was so angry, and burst out very loudly so everyone could hear: 'Look at these men, telling these women what to do with their bodies!'" said Keane. "She was so angry, that it really took all of us aback." Keane says that the group was peaceful, and that the men present were not among those engaging the woman.

"For those of us who are Catholic, to have a member of a religious order so blatantly - it is so disheartening. It really is," said Keane. "She's participating actively in abortion. That is what is so disturbing for us."

Sr. Donna Quinn, OP, is renowned in the Chicago area as an advocate for legalized abortion and other liberal issues.

In 1974 she co-founded the organization Chicago Catholic Women, which lobbied the USCCB on a feminist platform before it dissolved in 2000. She is now a coordinator of the radically liberal National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN), which stands in opposition against the Catholic Church's position on abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and the male priesthood.



While LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) was unable to reach Sr. Quinn for comment, NCAN's Sr. Beth Rindler confirmed to LSN that Quinn is still a member of their group, which favors unrestricted legalized abortion and disagrees with the teaching that abortion is intrinsically evil. "We respect women, and believe that they make moral decision, and so we respect their decisions," Rindler explained.

In a 2002 address to the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School, Sr. Quinn described how she came to view the teachings of her Church as "immoral": "I used to say: 'This is my Church, and I will work to change it, because I love it,'" she said. "Then later I said, 'This church is immoral, and if I am to identify with it I'd better work to change it.' More recently, I am saying, 'All organized religions are immoral in their gender discriminations.'"

Quinn called gender discrimination "the root cause of evil in the Church, and thus in the world," and said she remained in the Dominican community simply for "the sisterhood."

Sr. Patricia Mulcahey, OP, Quinn's Prioress at the Sinsinawa Dominican community, said in an email response to LSN that the nun sees her volunteer activity as "accompanying women who are verbally abused by protestors. Her stance is that if the protestors were not abusive, she would not be there."

Though Sr. Mulcahey claimed that her sisters "support the teachings of the Catholic Church," she declined to comment on Quinn's public protest of Catholic Church teaching.

Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League says Quinn came in contact with his own office in 1982, when she and a group of other pro-aborts picketed his building on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

"She figures it's part of her religion to take these women in and protect them, and get them abortions," said Scheidler of Quinn's recent activity. "Something dreadful has happened to make a Catholic nun become an escort at an abortion clinic - that's the lowest form you can reach, where you escort a woman with a living child in her into a place to have the child killed, and to ruin that woman's soul."

"If I didn't even believe in the humanity of the child - which of course would be crazy - even if I didn't, I would fight abortion for the sake of the women," Scheidler added. "They miss that baby, and they can't get it back. They never can."

FROM THE CODE OF CANON LAW:
Canon 1398 provides that, "a person who procures a successful abortion incurs an automatic latae sententiae) excommunication." This means that at the very moment that the abortion is successfully accomplished, the woman and all formal conspirators are excommunicated.


To respectfully express concern, contact:

Sr. Patricia Mulcahey, OP
Prioress - Sinsinawa Dominicans
E-mail: Spatmul@aol.com


Francis Cardinal George
Office of the Archbishop
Archdiocese of Chicago
PO Box 1979
Chicago, IL. 60690-1979
(312) 534-8200
archbishop@archchicago.org

Imagine:FULLY CATHOLICFREE FROM LIBERAL INTERFERENCE

Bishop Bernard Fellay & Pope Benedict XVI

Catholic News Agency
In an interview with the Chilean daily, “El Mercurio,” the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, Bernard Fellay, acknowledged that the Vatican is considering the possibility of converting the Lefebvrist group into a personal prelature as part of the discussions aimed at bringing about reconciliation.

Fellay, who visited members of the SSPX movement in Chile, is one of four bishops whose excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI last January. Asked about the speculation that the Society of Pius X could be made into a personal prelature similar to Opus Dei, Fellay responded, “There is a lot of truth to that. I think the Vatican is moving towards that kind of canonical solution.”

He also noted that the controversy unleashed by Bishop Richard Williamson’s statements on the Nazi holocaust “was a well-planned attack, not against the Society, but directly against the person of Pope Benedict XVI, in order to tarnish his gesture.”

This Mass Is Your MassThis Mass Is My Mass

Monsignor Guido Pozzo
from an interview with Monsignor Guido Pozzo, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei:

Monsignor, a widespread restrictive interpretation of the motu proprio argues that the Papal provision is primarily if not exclusively, directed towards those groups and institutes that were already attached to the traditional form, and is not, by contrast, intended in any way to promote the extraordinary form. To this had already answered Card. Castrillón Hoyos, saying in London, in June 2008, that the Pope would actually like to have the 'Gregorian Rite' in all the parishes. What is your opinion?

The Motu Proprio is addressed to all the Catholic faithful who desire the extraordinary form of the Roman liturgy, not just to those who, prior to its promulgation, were attached to the ancient form of the Roman rite. Certainly it does intend to accomodate these latter and to heal old wounds, but the purpose of the document is also to allow the spreading of the extraordinary form, for the benefit of those who do not know it yet (for being too young to have had it experienced), or of those who rediscover with joy the Mass of their youth. The ever increasing spread of this liturgical treasure, the Church's patrimony, can bring many benefits, spiritual and vocational, also through the mutual enrichment between the two forms of the Roman rite.



SO
So, if your bishop or pastor is STILL refusing to accommodate your request for this Mass, you might ask him why he is defying the wishes of the Holy Father.



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Why Pope Benedict IsTHE POPE OF CHRISTIAN UNITY

• He clarified the rights of all Catholics to the full deposit of their faith and traditions

• He has ended the modern schism with the Society of St. Pius X

• He is clarifying the misinterpretations of Vatican II that have caused so much division in the Church

• He has brought us closer to our Sister Church, the Orthodox, than any other modern Pope

• He has opened wide the gates for Anglicans who are sick of modernism, moral rot and relativism, making it easier for them to join the One True Church

Read more about these overlooked accomplishments here.

The USCCB's Latest Target

I guess facts don't matter--it's all about perception.

It is a matter of record that Rush Limbaugh never made the ridiculous racist remarks attributed to him, but don't waste your breath with Obama's hip-pocket bureaucrats at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

With all the major crises facing America and the growing threat this administration is presenting to the free exercise of religion, the USCCB has turned its sights on Rush Limbaugh, singling him out in a request to the Federal Communications Commission to investigate "hate speech" on radio talk shows.

Perhaps we should just sigh as the USCCB intensifies its efforts to become insignificant and meaningless in the lives of Catholics and American society. But I think it is worth revisiting the question posed by the Catholic Media Coalition:

IS THE USCCB AN INTRINSIC EVIL?
There is a strong tradition in Catholic moral theology that evaluates the morality of acts according to a threefold test that looks at 1) the act itself, 2) the intent of the actor; and 3) the circumstances surrounding the act. All three must be good (or at least neutral) for the act to be morally licit. Traditionally, to say that something is "intrinsically" evil is to say it is evil at the level of the act. It is "objectively" wrong, regardless of the intent of the actor or the circumstances. Such acts can never be morally licit. This does not mean, however, that such acts are always greater evils than acts that are evil by intent or circumstance.

What are these Intrinsic Evils? According to the Church these are: 1) murder of unborn babies (abortion); 2) murder of the sick and disabled (euthanasia); 3) conception of human lives for the purpose of Fetal Stem Cell Research; 4) illicit and intrinsically disordered sexual licentiousness; and, 5) cloning of humans.

Actions of the USCCB
• the publication of the purposely defective Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship;
• the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD);
• the rejection of Canon 915;
• publication of Always our Children; and lastly,
• cinema reviews recommending movies with homosexual content.

(for the purposes of this post, we will only examine the first action)

To put it bluntly, this USCCB document has played a decisive role in empowering Catholic supporters of abortion by providing the escape clauses needed to convince Catholics they could vote for a pro-abortion candidate in good conscience. There are two major loopholes in the document. First, it states that Catholics are allowed to vote for a supporter of abortion rights so long as 1) the voter does not intend to support that position, or 2) there are offsetting "morally grave reasons." The document never explains what constitutes "morally grave reasons," leaving it to the reader to make his own determination which can be quite erroneous.

It is this writer's contention this clause was purposely inserted into the document by socially progressive bishops as a loophole. Common sense indicates the bishops had to have been aware this clause was a loophole to allow voting for pro-abortion politicians and not an accidental opening. Arguments that Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship needs to be taken as a whole to be understood do not hold water. The loophole was taken out of context repeatedly and published on the websites of the pro-abortion candidates. At a conference at Creighton University in June, John Carr, Executive Director of Social Development and World Peace for the USCCB, "stressed that the bishops' document does not shut the door on any candidate, not even one who supports abortion rights." The bishops were told this, and they still left the loophole intact as this was their original intent. Although several bishops have spoken out forcefully, saying the document is being abused, it was never changed or clarified by the USCCB.

Bishop Robert Vasa pointed out that voting for a pro-abortion candidate is never justified when the opponent is pro-life. Similarly, Bishops Kevin Vann and Kevin Farrell in a joint letter to their faithful insist there are no "'truly grave moral' or 'proportionate' reasons, singularly or combined, that could outweigh the millions of innocent human lives that are directly killed by legal abortion each year."

THAT'S WHAT THE CATHOLIC MEDIA COALITION SAYS
THIS IS WHAT I SAY:

Joining in this latest request by religious groups to target talk-radio is absurd and only makes it clear that the USCCB is counting on a dumbed-down populace and is more concerned with appearing politically correct than allowing bishops to do their jobs.

Rush Limbaugh is not Catholic. His personal life has certainly had its share of shortcomings. But it cannot be denied that morally, he is probably more supportive of most Catholic teachings and Catholic positions than the entire editorial board at U.S. Catholic or the National Catholic Reporter. This latest move only deepens the disconnect between the USCCB and reality.

conspiracy theory deptDID JESUS NAME THE ANTICRHIST?

The Book the Bishops' ConferencesDon't Want You to Read

California Catholic Daily
PART ONE

Leon Podles, whose essay on the integration of anger into the virtuous life we re-printed on this website on October 14, wrote the book Sacrilege, published in 2008 on Church sex abuse. The following is from the introduction to the book.

n 2002, after the Boston newspapers began printing the stories about abuse, I wrote a Touchstone article pointing out that celibacy was not the source of the abuse. The editors at Spence Publishing, which had done my first book, asked me to expand the article to a book….

I hesitated long about including explicit descriptions of the abuse. But the newspaper reports, which often use the word “fondling,” have misled the public which wonders why the victims can’t get over it and why the priests have to be punished so harshly. So I decided to include them. Spence Publishing refused to publish the book they had commissioned, because while they realized the descriptions of abuse were essential to the book, they could not bring themselves to publish them.

The descriptions of abuse, mostly taken from affidavits of victims, are deeply disturbing for the normal reader, and may be too much for someone who has himself or herself been abused, so I advise caution in reading the first two chapters in particular. But the reader should remember that the pain of reading about abuse is far less than the pain of experiencing abuse. It is painful to contemplate suffering, especially if we have been in any way complicit in it, if only by our failure to act…. But if we are willing to tolerate evils, we should not flinch from looking at those evils. Some may be inexcapable, but many are the results of laziness and complacency.


Bishop Thomas O'Brien, retired Bishop of Phoenix


PART TWO

Leon Podles’s book, Sacrilege gives a thorough and explicit account of the priestly pedophilia crisis that broke into the open in the U.S. 2002. The following are some of his observations about the actions of the U.S. bishops in the crisis.

“Most of the bishops were not directly involved in the abuse, but they tolerated it and covered it up. They are like those bishops described by Catherine of Siena: “They are afraid of offending and making enemies – and all this because of self-love. Sometimes it’s just that they would like to keep peace, and this, I tell you, is the worst cruelty one can inflict. If a sore is not cauterized or excised when necessary, but only ointment is applied, not only will it not heal, but I will infect the whole [body], often fatally….

“The Vatican is staffed by diplomats; after Paul VI reorganized the curia, all congregations report to the secretary of state. Diplomacy is therefore the preferred way of dealing with problems, even within the Church. Diplomats hate confrontation; they think that all difficulties can be smoothed over with words, or if they can’t be smoothed over, they can be ignored until they go away. The Vatican likes diplomatic types, conciliators, nonconfrontational types, team players, people who don’t make waves. The American episcopate is therefore staffed with them. Abusive priests know that their bishops are often cowards who want to avoid confrontation. Therefore abusers can play upon this weakness to get their way with children….

“The bishop sometimes doesn’t think homosexual activity with children is all that bad, not because he doesn’t have children, but because he does not have the normal male’s reaction and desire to protect boys from homosexual activity. A liberal bishop like Thomas O’Brien [Phoenix, Arizona] regarded such an attitude as ‘homophobia’ and tolerated sex between boys and priests….”



For more information on the book, click here.

...Speaking of Bishop O'BrienA Portrait of the Episcopal Status Quo

by Andrew Peyton Thomas
National Review

Depending on one's view of the world, the stunning fall of Thomas J. O'Brien, erstwhile Roman Catholic bishop of the diocese of Phoenix, was either an instance of divine justice meted out promptly on earth or a truly bizarre chain of events that precipitated his resignation and, now, conviction for felony hit-and-run. Beyond interpretation are the root and broader meaning of O'Brien's undoing. The same relativism O'Brien displayed in harboring pedophile priests for two decades governed his passions, and it was those passions that sealed his fate the night he struck a pedestrian with his vehicle and then fled. The self-service and atrocious judgment that marked O'Brien's actions as both man and bishop are perhaps the most striking example to date of the moral confusion that characterizes so many of the leaders implicated by the pedophile-priest scandal.

Convicted by a jury last Tuesday of leaving the scene of a fatal accident, O'Brien became the first Catholic bishop in recorded U.S. history to be found guilty of a felony. The case arose from an accident that occurred on the evening of June 14, 2003. O'Brien was driving home from a church function when an intoxicated pedestrian jaywalked in front of his vehicle. O'Brien's vehicle struck the victim, Jim Reed, with such force that Reed's body left an enormous crater in the right side of the windshield. Reed died at the scene. Had O'Brien stopped to render assistance, he almost certainly would not have faced any legal repercussions. But he did not. Instead, by his own account, O'Brien sped on home, ate some leftover pizza, and went to bed.

To be sure, O'Brien had a lot on his mind that night. Two weeks before, news had leaked that O'Brien had cut a deal with county prosecutors to avoid criminal prosecution for knowingly shuttling pedophile priests among different parishes under his authority. A flurry of lawsuits and a grand jury investigation turned up evidence that over the prior three decades (two-thirds of which were O'Brien's tenure), at least 50 priests, former priests, and church employees throughout the diocese had been accused of sexual misconduct with children. Just as shocking was O'Brien's own behavior. On more than one occasion, O'Brien personally scolded victims and witnesses for telling others of the molestation they or others had suffered. One priest went to O'Brien to relate that he suspected another priest of molesting a young man he had come to know. In a response that seemed to capture impeccably the collective mindset of liberal bishops across the country then excusing the child molesters in their employ, O'Brien exploded that the complaining priest should get beyond his obsession with "gay pedophile priests."

To avoid possible criminal charges for obstruction of justice, O'Brien signed an agreement with prosecutors that sacrificed the faithful's mammon for his own freedom. He consented to hiring an independent ombudsman at the diocese to handle sexual misconduct complaints. The diocese also agreed to pay out over $1 million toward victim compensation and reimbursement for the cost of the criminal investigation — money from hard-working church members suddenly dedicated to shielding O'Brien from prosecution.

On June 2, 2003, the Arizona Republic reported the accord in a front-page story beneath the banner headline, "Bishop O'Brien admits cover-up in sexual abuse cases." O'Brien, the paper reported, had admitted knowingly permitting priests accused of sexual misconduct to continue working with children. O'Brien also acknowledged transferring these predators throughout the diocese. This front-page embarrassment infuriated the prideful cleric, according to church insiders later quoted in the same paper. The next day, O'Brien denied having made any such admissions to prosecutors. By week's end, O'Brien's attorneys and the county's top prosecutor were publicly sparring over the precise meaning of the agreement. A largely unscathed O'Brien continued governing as bishop.

Yet the immunity from prosecution that O'Brien so coveted would be denied him by other means. Two weeks later, O'Brien was arrested for leaving the scene of his fatal collision with Jim Reed. The details that later emerged revealed a callousness on the part of O'Brien that explained abundantly why children in his diocese had fared so poorly on his watch. Despite a collision that must have "exploded like a thunderclap," in the later words of a prosecuting attorney, O'Brien never even hit his brakes. In the days that followed, O'Brien refused to answer half a dozen phone calls from friends. He ignored police officers who rang his doorbell. When a top diocese official told O'Brien that police were trying to question him (witnesses caught part of his license plate number, leading authorities to his doorstep), O'Brien never called police — and later claimed he did not know how to reach them. O'Brien also asked church staff to help make arrangements to have the windshield fixed.

When this double-whammy of a scandal — child-molesting priests plus a fatal hit-and-run — finally prompted Rome to call for his resignation as bishop, O'Brien cried for hours over his plight and his ignominy. Only after being reminded he would always carry the honorary title of bishop did he relent and step down.

During his trial in January 2004, O'Brien was in old form. He arrived for court every day wearing his clerical collar, and at one point ostentatiously held rosary beads in front of the jurors. After a parade of witnesses placed his car at the scene of the accident, O'Brien took the stand to explain his actions. On several occasions, he contradicted what he had told police in a recorded statement following the accident. He stuck with his story that he did not know he had hit a person (he said he thought it might have been a dog or rock). Prosecutors were not permitted to introduce into evidence the fact that O'Brien had previously committed a hit-and-run after a parking lot fender-bender.

How could somebody so self-serving and corrupt ascend to such a position of prominence in the largest church on earth? Surely the human condition is an important part of the answer. American evangelicals have their Jim Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggarts to remind them that pastoral office is no guarantee of sainthood, and that Catholics are not alone in their shame over the recent misconduct of some of their spiritual leaders.

But O'Brien also exemplified and perpetuated the moral relativism that has taken hold of so many of the other upper reaches of U.S. society, including many quarters of organized religion. O'Brien plainly equated accusations of pedophilia with gay bashing. As a result, he felt obliged to chastise the accusers: Their complaints, by his standards, were evidence of bigotry. This view was symptomatic of his broader disconnect with Catholic doctrine, a schism that rendered O'Brien's diocese one of the most liberal in the country. O'Brien's top lieutenants reflected this tilt. In 1999, the monsignor who served as O'Brien's top lobbyist at the legislature worked to torpedo a piece of anti-abortion legislation by convincing two Senate Democrats to withdraw their support of the bill unless the Republican leadership agreed to repeal welfare reform (this writer was witness to those machinations, which became well-known in the Arizona right-to-life community). The same monsignor was an open backer of liberal Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano — with O'Brien's tacit support.

Ironically, the same status and privilege that O'Brien clung to so strongly will now likely guarantee he goes to jail. A less-famous first-time offender would almost certainly be sentenced to probation. But with over 70 percent of Phoenix-area residents in a recent poll calling for jail time for the ex-bishop, O'Brien may soon have a chance to find out if incarceration is what the original advocates of prisons said it was: a place for lost souls to rediscover their Maker, and to reassess one's priorities before the sands of life are poured out.


UPDATE
Bishop O'Brien's attorneys managed to cut a deal requiring no jail time and community service.

Do you think you or I would get that kind sentence if we committed such a crime?

On a more positive note, he was replaced by a good bishop who is his polar opposite: Thomas J. Olmsted.

Going Over Their Heads

Dr. Robert Moynihan at Inside the Vatican has an interesting story about the Holy Father's surprise move to bring Anglicans into the fold. Especially interesting are these observations:

In London, Damian Thompson, a religion writer for the Telegraph Media Group, wrote an excellent article today on this papal decision, headlined: "New era begins as Benedict throws open gates of Rome to disaffected Anglicans."

"This is astonishing news," Thompson continues. "Pope Benedict XVI has created an entirely new Church structure for disaffected Anglicans that will allow them to worship together – using elements of Anglican liturgy – under the pastoral supervision of their own specially appointed bishop or senior priest...

"In theory, they can have their own married priests, parishes and bishops – and they will be free of liturgical interference by liberal Catholic bishops who are unsympathetic to their conservative stance. There is even the possibility that married Anglican laymen could be accepted for ordination on a case-by-case basis – a remarkable concession."

and this

How will this work out, practically, in England?

Anglicans will have to request their own “Personal Ordinariate."

This could have implications for another group that has suffered greatly to preserve tradition and holiness in the Church.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

























"Me too!"

Statement of the Primateof the Traditional Anglican Communion

thanks to Rorate Caeli

20th October 2009

I have spent this evening speaking to bishops, priests and lay people of the Traditional Anglican Communion in England, Africa, Australia, India, Canada, the United States and South America.

We are profoundly moved by the generosity of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. He offers in this Apostolic Constitution the means for “former Anglicans to enter into the fullness of communion with the Catholic Church”. He hopes that we can “find in this canonical structure the opportunity to preserve those Anglican traditions precious to us and consistent with the Catholic faith”. He then warmly states “we are happy that these men and women bring with them their particular contributions to our common life of faith”.

May I firstly state that this is an act of great goodness on the part of the Holy Father. He has dedicated his pontificate to the cause of unity. It more than matches the dreams we dared to include in our petition of two years ago. It more than matches our prayers. In those two years, we have become very conscious of the prayers of our friends in the Catholic Church. Perhaps their prayers dared to ask even more than ours.

While we await the full text of the Apostolic Constitution, we are also moved by the pastoral nature of the Notes issued today by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. My fellow bishops have indeed signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church and made a statement about the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, reflecting the words of Pope John Paul II in his letter “Ut Unum Sint”.

Other Anglican groups have indicated to the Holy See a similar desire and a similar acceptance of Catholic faith. As Cardinal Levada has indicated, this response to Anglican petitions is to be of a global character. It will now be for these groups to forge a close cooperation, even where they transcend the existing boundaries of the Anglican Communion.

Fortunately, the Statement issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury reflects the understanding that we have gained from him that he does not stand in our way, and understands the decisions that we have reached. Both his reaction and our petition are fruits of a century of prayer for Christian unity, a cause that many times must have seemed forlorn. We now express our gratitude to Archbishop Williams, and have regularly assured him of our prayers. The See of Augustine remains a focus of our pilgrim way, as it was in ages of faith in the past.

I have made a commitment to the Traditional Anglican Communion that the response of the Holy See will be taken to each of our National Synods. They have already endorsed our pathway. Now the Holy See challenges us to seek in the specific structures that are now available the “full, visible unity, especially Eucharistic communion”, for which we have long prayed and about which we have long dreamed. That process will begin at once.

In the Anglican Office of Morning Prayer, the great Hymn of Thanksgiving, the Te Deum, is part of the daily Order. It is with heartfelt thanks to Almighty God, the Lord and Source of all peace and unity, that the hymn is on our lips today. This is a moment of grace, perhaps even a moment of history, not because the past is undone, but because the past is transformed.
Archbishop John Hepworth
Primate

REAL Ecumenism Now a REALITY

"Welcome home my Anglican brothers and sisters!

According to Catholic doctrine, these Communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called “Churches” in the proper sense.
-Benedict XVI
Responses to some questions regarding certain aspects of the doctrine on the Church

The Council states that the Church of Christ "subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him..."

The Catholic Church, both in her praxis and in her solemn documents, holds that the communion of the particular Churches with the Church of Rome, and of their Bishops with the Bishop of Rome, is—in God's plan—an essential requisite of full and visible communion.
-John Paul II
Ut unum sint

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it.
-Pius XI
Mortalium Animos

If those about to come back to their most loving Mother (not yet fully known, or culpably abandoned) should perceive that their return involves, not indeed the shedding of their blood (at which price nevertheless the Church was bought by Jesus Christ), but some lesser trouble and labour, let them clearly understand that this burden has been laid on them not by the will of man but by the will and command of God. They may thus, by the help of heavenly grace, realize and feel the truth of the divine saying, "My yoke is sweet and my burden light" (Matt. xi., 30).

And for a like reason St. Augustine publicly attests that, "the primacy of the Apostolic chair always existed in the Roman Church" (Ep. xliii., n. 7); and he denies that anyone who dissents from the Roman faith can be a Catholic. "You are not to be looked upon as holding the true Catholic faith if you do not teach that the faith of Rome is to be held" (Sermo cxx., n. 13). So, too, St. Cyprian: "To be in communion with Cornelius is to be in communion with the Catholic Church" (Ep. lv., n. 1). In the same way Maximus the Abbot teaches that obedience to the Roman Pontiff is the proof of the true faith and of legitimate communion. Therefore if a man does not want to be, or to be called, a heretic, let him not strive to please this or that man...but let him hasten before all things to be in communion with the Roman See.

No one, therefore, unless in communion with Peter can share in his authority, since it is absurd to imagine that he who is outside can command in the Church. Wherefore Optatus of Milevis blamed the Donatists for this reason: "Against which ages (of hell) we read that Peter received the saving keys, that is to say, our prince, to whom it was said by Christ: `To thee will I give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the gates of Hell shall not conquer them.' Whence is it therefore that you strive to obtain for yourselves the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven-you who fight against the chair of Peter?" (Lib. ii., n. 4-5).

Let all those, therefore, who detest the wide-spread irreligion of our times, and acknowledge and confess Jesus Christ to be the Son of God and the Saviour of the human race, but who have wandered away from the Spouse, listen to Our voice. Let them not refuse to obey Our paternal charity. Those who acknowledge Christ must acknowledge Him wholly and entirely. "The Head and the body are Christ wholly and entirely. The Head is the only-begotten son of God, the body is His Church; the bridegroom and the bride, two in one flesh. All who dissent from the Scriptures concerning Christ, although they may be found in all places in which the Church is found, are not in the Church; and again all those who agree with the Scriptures concerning the Head, and do not communicate in the unity of the Church, are not in the Church" (S. Augustinus, Contra Donatistas Epistola, sive De Unit. Eccl., cap. iv., n. 7).
-Leo XIII
Satis cognitum

The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.
-Eugenius IV
Cantate Domino

We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.
-Bonficace VIII
Unam Sanctam

There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved.
-Innocent III
Fourth Lateran Council

FANTASTIC NEWS

Archbishop Burke and Cardinal Canizares Llovera:
Two men who think with the mind of the Church

It has just been announced that there are two new members of the Congregation for Bishops, the august body that plays such a strong role in the selection of bishops. They are Archbishop Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura and Antonio Cardinal Canizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments. Both men are stalwart supporters (and practitioners) of the Traditional Latin Mass and both men are uncompromising in their defense of orthodoxy.

Overall, Pope Benedict's episcopal appointments have been an improvement. With these two men on board, you can expect them to be even better (and this is a critical time for the Church to improve the quality of its bishops).

CCHD Countdown:THE FRAUDULENT COLLECTION ONTHE SUNDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING

If the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, then the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is far worse than the sum of its bishops.

On the Sunday before thanksgiving, you will be asked to give to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which is nothing more than the USCCB's sanitized front for moving money into the coffers of leftist organizations all over America, many of which openly oppose or defy Church teachings on the sanctity of human life, the dignity of the family, the correct and only form of marriage and the dignity of human work.

Here's a flyer from their promotional materials:


So are we to believe that this fashionably-dressed grandmother is living in a rat-infested tenement, eating dogfood and working the night shift in a sweatshop for minimum wage?

The USCCB has plenty of other contrived materials selling misery for your collection dollars, such as this image:



Is this carefully scripted photo essay of long faces (which cost thousands of dollars to shoot and produce) supposed to convince us of some all-pervasive misery that our special collection dollars will somehow alleviate?

Make no mistake. The models paid to appear in this slick ad are not going to benefit from your gullible giving to the CCHD. Even WITHOUT ACORN, the majority of CCHD dollars will be funneled to leftist organizations. Which ones you ask?
Just click here and take a look at their list.

But let's look again at the faces of the "poor oppressed" models in the above photo. Since the USCCB helped elect the most anti-Catholic pro-abortion president in American history, it has also helped perpetuate the very misery they purport to want to alleviate with your dollars (a goal that never happens).


"If I had learned more about abstinence instead of contraception, I wouldn't be a single-mother-college-drop-out."


"If I attended a school with real academic standards instead of self-esteem programs, I could get into college."


"If we didn't have to pay higher taxes for socialized medicine and hadn't lost our tax credits for children, I wouldn't have to work two jobs."


"If our colorblind state government would permit interracial adoptions, I wouldn't have to stay in foster care, but instead I'd have a real mom and dad."

Misery sells, even manufactured misery. The question is: Are you dumb enough to buy it?

This collection doesn't deserve one dime of your hard earned money. There are lots of REAL Catholic charities that need your help. Consider giving generously to them.

When Catholic Identity Mattered

Also 1941, Father Deimel was transferred and Father John J. Kennedy succeeded Deimel in the church’s and school operations. Father Kennedy became a very popular figure in Valdosta. A member of the church, Mrs. Anne Joseph, remembers him as a “nice, but strict man. He was small in stature, yet strict in his religious convictions”. One of Mrs. Joseph’s uncles passed on and due to her Uncle’s membership in the Freemasons, a secret society, Father Kennedy would not perform the last rites. Father Kennedy was vigorous orator and his sermons were always convincing and demonstrated his faith and knowledge of the Scriptures. The Knights of Columbus Chapter in Valdosta is named after Father Kennedy.

-excerpt
An Early History of St. John the Evangelist Church
by Miguel Tovar

TIME TO CLOSE DOWN THE SHOP

GET THOU BEHIND ME SPIRIT!

"The power of Christ compels you!"

Bishop Walker Nickless:
THE SPIRIT OF VATICAN II IS A DEMON TO BE EXORCISED!

By Tim Drake
The National Catholic Register

I first met Sioux City, Iowa Bishop Walker Nickless a month ago at the Serra International gathering in Omaha, Neb. Little did I know then that he was working on his bold first pastoral letter since his installation as bishop four years ago.

Ecclesia Semper Reformanda (The Church is Always in Need of Renewal), released yesterday, takes a look at the impact of the Second Vatican Council and sets forth a plan for the people of Sioux City and beyond. In many ways, it’s a pastoral letter unlike one we’ve yet seen.

Forty-four years after the close of the Council, Bishop Nickless says there are many questions that still need to be asked and answered.
“Have we understood the Council within the context of the entire history of the Church? Have we understood the documents well? Have we truly appropriated and implemented them? Is the current state of the Church what the Council intended? What went right? What went wrong? Where is the promised “New Pentecost”?

Quoting from Pope Benedict XVI’s address to the Roman Curia in December, 2005, Bishop Nickless draws attention to the two contrary hermeneutics that arose from the Council – one which caused confusion (‘a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture’), and the other which has borne fruit (‘hermeneutic of reform’).

“The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church,” said Pope Benedict.

Bishop Nickless says that these two rival interpretations have weakened the Church’s identity and mission.

The consequence, says Bishop Nickless, has been a sort of dualism – “an either/or mentality and insistence in various areas of the Church’s life: either fidelity to doctrine or social justice work, either Latin or English, either personal conscience or the authority of the Church, either chant or contemporary music, either tradition or progress, either liturgy or popular piety, either conservative or liberal, either Mass or Adoration, either the Magisterium or theologians, either ecumenism or evangelization, either rubrics or personalization, either the Baltimore Catechism or ‘experience,’”…

For a clear example of this type of dualistic thinking, read through America magazine’s “Confessions of a Modern Nun,” by Ilia Delio. There, quoting Dominican Timothy Radcliffe, Delio describes American nuns as being either Concilium Catholics or Communio Catholics.

“Members of the Leadership Conference embrace modernity and the work of the council as the Holy Spirit breathing new life in the church,” writes Delio. “They fall under what Father Radcliffe identifies as the Concilium group, who focus on the Incarnation as the central point of renewal. Members of the Conference of Major Superiors, by contrast, are Communio Catholics, who emphasize communion through proclamation of the faith, a clear Catholic identity and the centrality of the cross. Members of the Conference of Major Superiors, by contrast, are Communio Catholics, who emphasize communion through proclamation of the faith, a clear Catholic identity and the centrality of the cross. (Concilium and Communio are the names of two periodicals founded in the postconciliar era. The first stressed conciliar reforms; the second stressed the continuity of the council documents with the community of the faithful through past centuries.) Thus, one group focuses on doxology and adoration (Communio), the other on practice and experience (Concilium). One sees Christ as gathering people into community (Communio); the other sees Christ as traversing boundaries (Concilium). The C.M.S.W.R. recently held its eucharistic congress under the title “Sacrifice of Enduring Love,” while the L.C.W.R. continues to work on systemic change. The former sees religious life as divine espousal with Christ; the latter sees Christ in solidarity with the poor and justice for the oppressed.”

“There can be no split, however, between the Church and her faith before and after the Council,” writes Bishop Nickless. “We must stop speaking of the ‘Pre-Vatican II’ and ‘Post-Vatican II’ Church, and stop seeing various characteristics of the Church as ‘pre’ and ‘post’ Vatican II. Only the ‘hermeneutic of reform,’ he says, is valid and “has borne and is bearing fruit.”

“The ‘spirit of Vatican II’ must be found only in the letter of the documents themselves,” writes Bishop Nickless. “The so-called ‘spirit’ of the Council…is a ghost or demon that must be exorcised if we are to proceed with the Lord’s work.”

Bishop Nickless goes on to state that, “we have sometimes lost sight of who we are and what we believe, and therefore have little to offer the world that so desperately needs the Gospel.”
“Our urgent need at this time is to reclaim and strengthen our understanding of the deposit of faith,” writes Nickless. He adds that our mission is two-fold – both within the Church (ad intra) and to the world (ad extra). He then sets forth a plan for “reclaiming and strengthening our faith, identity and culture as Catholics.”

That plan includes the following:

1. A renewal of reverence, love, adoration and devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament within and outside of Mass, regular reception of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

2. Strengthening catechesis on every level, beginning with and focusing on adults, with Sacred Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church as the primary sources of formation.

3. The protection and building up of holy families.

4. Fostering a culture where young people can more readily respond to the radical calls of ministerial priesthood and the consecrated life.

5. Acknowledging and embracing the missionary character of the Catholic Faith and the vocation of all Catholics to be, not only disciples, but also apostles.

Above all, Bishop Nickless calls the faithful to “great acts of renunciation.”

“In order to strengthen our devotion to Christ in the Holy Eucharist and worship God rightly, we need to renounce any attachment to how we worship currently. To improve the spiritual depth of how we perform the Church’s liturgy, we will need to renounce attachment to worldly expectations and long-standing habits. To spend more time adoring Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, we need to renounce attachments to how we currently use our time,” he writes. “To deepen our intimate love for God in our hearts and heads, we need to renounce attachments to whatever is not God that is filling our hearts and heads. To live in more intentional and holy Catholic families, we need to renounce attachment to distractions, sins, and imperfections that harm our domestic churches. To accept the divine plan god has for each of us, we need to renounce attachment to our own plans. To change the world for Christ, we need to renounce attachment to how we want the world to be for ourselves.”

It’s a fantastic read. You’ll find the pastoral letter in its entirety here.

OBSERVATIONS
Take a good look at the photo of Bishop Nickless below. This is a young bishop and his leadership in returning us to actual Catholic thinking reflects the future of the Church.

Kumbayachurch is on life-support and the pope is pulling the plug.


Bishop Walker Nickless

A TIME OF GREAT HOPE

On Monday, October 26, the Vatican begins its talks with the Society of St. Pius X, the group founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefevre and who has preserved the Traditional Latin Mass through a period when the majority of priests and bishops demonized tradition--a period rebuked by the Holy Father in his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, by reminding us of a fact that was buried under liberal persecution: THE TRADITIONAL LATIN MASS WAS NEVER ABROGATED:

In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.

Even though the secular press and rupturista Catholic press tries to cast the story in doom and gloom, hoping the excommunications will be reinstated, today is a bright, hopeful time for the Catholic Church.

It would serve us well to consider this recent report from Inside the Vatican Magazine:

But we should keep in mind that a clarification of the actual intent of the Council Fathers when they drew up and approved the documents of Vatican II cannot in any case do harm to ecumenical dialogue: clarification of the truth of the Church's teaching must always be viewed as positive and freeing, and as helping to lead, in the long run, to authentic progrtess toward that Church unity desired and prayed for by Christ himself on the night before he died.

And that is why Benedict is allowing this dialogue: because he wants to clarify the true teaching of the Council, in the face of many erroneous claims, and after decades of real hope, yet hope marred by real confusion.

We should note that the bishops of the SSPX have been far more successful in attracting vocations than the marketing-minded bureaucrats of the Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops (and make no mistake: The USCCB DESPISES the SSPX). Instead of slick ad campaigns, they offer the uncompromising teachings and traditions of the Church. And even though the majority of modernist bishops opposed the move, the Holy Father lifted their excommunications. It cannot be ignored that instead of sending petitions to the Vatican or relying on PR stunts, the SSPX won the lifting of the excommunications through a rosary campaign. They have actually listened to the messages of Our Lady of Fatima.

Modernism has had its run. Its fruits are decay and weakness. Its promoters fear this pope precisely because they know he is the key to ending their dominance, and they are watching their control evaporate before their very eyes.

Let us all pray the rosary every day and make part of our intention the COMPLETE union of the Catholic Church.

THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESSAGAINST THY CHURCH'S TEACHINGS

THE ULTIMATE IN CHUTZPAH:
SUGGESTING THAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
ENDORSES HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE



Read more about this exercise in deception HERE.


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THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESSAGAINST THY NEIGHBOR

VIDEO EXPOSES THE LIE DU JOUR
CIRCULATING ABOUT RUSH LIMBAUGH

Bishops for higher taxes!And you studied Theology WHERE?

from Catholic Culture
The bishops of the State of Washington have announced their opposition to Initiative 1033, a ballot initiative that would limit the growth of state and local taxes to inflation and population growth.

“We recognize that many people find state and local taxes burdensome,” the bishops write. “Tax policy and government funding, however, must take into consideration the needs of those who rely on adequate public support for education, health care and other essential services. Initiative 1033 would establish an arbitrary formula for limiting taxes and spending without regard to the needs of others, and therefore, for us it does not meet the test of distributive justice.”

"DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE"?

Confused or Hypocritical?SAY WHAT YOU MEAN& MEAN WHAT YOU SAY

Bishop Michael Sheehan, Santa Fe

by Kenneth D. Whitehead
First Things

The public opposition of more than eighty Catholic bishops to the University of Notre Dame’s decision to honor pro-abortion President Barack Obama represented an unprecedented public expression of episcopal sentiment on a controversial moral issue. The bishops normally draw back—“prudently,” as they see it—from calling attention to themselves and to the Church. For so many of them to enter into the lists in this particular case surely suggests an enhanced understanding of the seriousness of the central moral issue of our time.

At the end of August, however, Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan of Santa Fe, New Mexico, gave a very different episcopal perspective in an interview with National Catholic Reporter. In discussing the outcry over the Notre Dame commencement, Sheehan worried that the Catholic Church in America risked “isolating itself from the rest of the country.” He judged the refusal to talk to a politician or to give him communion because of a difference on a single issue “counterproductive,” even “hysterical.”

Of course Sheehan did not clearly make the crucial distinction between merely “talking to a politician” and doing public honor to one. He instead “wondered aloud what was so bad about inviting Obama and giving him a degree.” By way of comparison he observe that the pope recently made President Sarkozy, who is “pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, and married invalidly to an actress” an honorary canon of St. John Lateran. The Vatican, he claimed, apparently did not have “quite as big a concern” about Notre Dame’s honoring Obama as the bishops who spoke out against it.

Asked by NCR if there were any other bishops who agreed with him, Archbishop Sheehan replied, “Of course. The majority.” This majority, he said, only remained on the sidelines so as not to start a public internecine fight.

Thus, if Sheehan is correct, a majority of the American Catholic bishops opposes the official policy that they themselves established in their June 2004 statement “Catholics in Political Life.” That document told the world that, “the Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors, or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” The protesting bishops based their opposition on this plain, unambiguous declaration.

But if, as Sheehan contends, a majority of the Catholic bishops in the United States actually disagrees with this policy, why did they vote for it in the first place? What sort of organization officially adopts a policy that most of its leaders reject? Such patent dishonesty seems rather more detrimental to the Church than “loud tactics.”

The archbishop thinks that opposition, even to a president as aggressively pro-abortion as Barack Obama, is to be deplored because it risks isolating Catholics from the rest of American society. But why should anyone think remaining in accord with a morally decadent society is somehow part of the Church’s mission? According to what principle is the Church supposed to lay aside her fundamental moral principles in order to conform to a society that has in so many respects long abandoned Judeo-Christian moral principles? Of course, the Church as a whole has not decided to “go along to get along” in this fashion. The only question is whether some bishops, as Sheehan’s statements suggest, are no longer in sync with the Church.

It is true that the American Catholic bishops have never been able to agree on a common policy on the question of refusing Holy Communion to pro-abortion public figures. The reason for this remains unclear. Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law plainly says that those “who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” Numerous Church documents have established that Catholic politicians who enable, support, or promote abortion are indeed guilty of “manifest grave sin,” and hence should not be admitted to Holy Communion.



More than that, the bishops have received specific orders from higher authority on this matter. When then Cardinal Ratzinger was still the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he sent a communication to Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, then archbishop of Washington, D.C., that explained how wayward Catholic public figures should be handled. Their pastor should first counsel them in person, explaining that they are objectively guilty of “manifest grave sin.” If they do not desist, they should be asked not to present themselves for Holy Communion. If they do present themselves for Holy Communion they must be denied.

As was widely reported at the time, Cardinal McCarrick, did not communicate this message from Rome in its entirety to his brother bishops. Some therefore think that many bishops do not know their duty. But, given the publicity that has surrounded the whole affair, this is impossible to credit; the bishops must know what they should be doing. Nor does resorting to the common argument that they should not “polticize the Eucharist” relieve them of their responsibility to enforce canon law.

Certainly the fact that the pope himself chose to honor Nicholas Sarkozy does not in any way excuse the American bishops. Perhaps the pope’s action was as mistaken as that of the disobedient bishops, but this can in no way negate the force of Canon 915 or even of Ratzinger’s own directive.

“Catholics in Public Life” and Ratzinger’s directive simply manifest the Church’s recognition of the seriousness of the American situation: More than fifty million babies have been killed by abortion since it was legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. This rivals and in some cases exceeds the death tolls inflicted by the Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, and Pol Pots of the twentieth century. Dozens of American Catholic episcopal statements have reiterated that abortion is in a class by itself, currently outweighing by far nearly all other public moral issues combined.

In his NCR interview, however, the archbishop effectively treats abortion as just one more issue. He brags that “we have gotten more done on the pro-life issue in New Mexico by talking to people that don’t agree with us on everything. We got Governor Richardson to sign off on the abolition of the death penalty in New Mexico, which he was in favor of.” Sheehan goes on to admit that the same Richardson is another one of those pro-abortion Catholic politicians, whom he has evidently not “counseled,” however. His reaction when the interviewer mentions Governor Richardson’s pro-abortion stance is to ask defiantly (and here I quote directly), “So?” An archbishop of the Catholic Church thinks the death penalty constitutes an evil on the same scale as the unlimited abortion license.

God forbid that such obtuse and callous moral equivalence should represent the views of the majority of the American Catholic bishops. Sheehan should be pointedly rebuked by the leadership of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for venturing into the public print with views so much at variance with the USCCB’s official position.

In the present climate in which a spade is so rarely called a spade, it is unfortunate that the old practice of fraternal correction has lapsed among the American Catholic bishops. True, only the bishop of Rome has authority over any other bishop, but it is a shame that nobody to whom Sheehan might be disposed to listen spoke to him about the scandal caused by his interview.

Maybe the bishops actually are (mostly) united about the moral gravity of the killing of the innocent, but as long as an assertion to the contrary stands uncorrected and unchallenged, it will be taken as more evidence that the American Catholic bishops are not “completely united and resolute in our teaching and defense of the unborn child”—in other words, that they do not necessarily really mean what they say.

Kenneth D. Whitehead is a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education and the translator of over twenty published books.

new Fatima film:It Opened TodayCAN WE BRING IT TO VALDOSTA?

Please let the people at the Georgia Theater Company know that you want to see this film NOW in Valdosta.

Email GTC by clicking here. Do it today.

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from CatholicVoteAction.org

CorruptionDecayLack of Leadership

tales from the genteel south...PHYSICIAN PUNCHES WOMAN IN FACESURPRISE: HE'S AN ABORTIONIST

Daniel McBrayer, M.D.

by Steve Ertelt
LifeSite News

A Georgia abortion practitioner displayed his pro-woman credentials Monday afternoon when he was arrested in a road rage incident that saw him punch a woman in the face. Sandy Springs police arrested Marietta-based abortion practitioner Daniel E. McBrayer, 58, after learning he assaulted a woman.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution indicated police conducted an investigation after a woman reported told police that McBrayer struck her.

After a traffic altercation, McBrayer reportedly left his vehicle and walked up to her car and struck her in the face.

Sandy Springs police Lt. Steve Rose told the newspaper that the woman, whose name was unreleased, was treated at a local hospital before heading home.

Rose indicated the abortion practitioner turned himself into police on Wednesday night and was booked on a simple battery charge at Doraville Jail. He was released after posting a $1,500 bond and awaits a date in court, which has not been set.

This isn't the first time McBrayer has been in trouble.

The Atlanta newspaper indicated McBrayer was disciplined by the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners in 2001 for doing second-trimester abortions at his office. Georgia law requires that any abortion after the first-trimester be done in a hospital so women who suffer from botched abortions can receive immediate medical care.

McBrayer eventually agreed to a consent order where he also admitted he had not proper filed certificates of abortions as Georgia law requires.

In that incident, he was fined $5,000 and had his medical license placed on probation for two years.


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Excerpts from modern version of the Hippocratic Oath:

I will apply dietic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art...

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.


Well come on--I mean you don't really expect anyone to KEEP their oath now, do you?

PROPHETIC WORDSFROM ARCHBISHOP SHEEN

"America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance: tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos.... The man who can make up his mind in an orderly way, as a man might make up his bed, is called a bigot: but a man who cannot make up his mind, any more than he can make up for lost time, is called tolerant and broad minded."