“And so began one of the darkest decades in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church.”
Seriously? You need to read Gibbon. Holy cow. Or how about “The Bad Popes” by E. R. Chamberlin? How about Pope Urban VI who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured. (I’m quoting Wikpedia’s entry on the latter book). Or John Paul XII who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife? I can’t recall the Pope that Gibbon described (my set is boxed up – I’m moving) as facing charges of murder, rape and piracy. This guy is totally an under achiever on the darkness scale over the long term. I’ll buy since the twentieth century maybe.
I know. I said ‘one of’. It’s a different type of damage, one that threatens the survival of the Church. One of the greatest scholars in the college of cardinals believes that Francis is the worst pope for 1,000 years – but, before that there were worse. Interesting that he thinks Bergoglio is more dangerous than Borgia; I think he’s referring to disintegration of Catholic belief itself. One detail not in the piece is that Rupnik, protected by Francis, is accused of trying to force a woman to drink his semen out of a chalice.
Piggybacking here,
Cardinal Vigano has just written a letter decrying the current attempt to empty out a group of cloistered traditional nuns in Italy. The mother superior was spit out into the world, without support. Ordinary Catholics have been unable to contribute to her financial support through their bank account.
Young nuns are invited to stay as their convent is turned into a hostel for migrants. Not such a safe position, as they are innocent and young. Which can leave the Vatican to repossess the property, which could, in one swoop, make up for their 50 million dollar deficit,
This pope wants to support a “church of the poor,” while not supporting their religious mandate. Praying nuns (who also worked to support themselves) have an important place in praying for all sinners.
If you are interested, Vigano’s letter is out there.There are a wealth of ideas left out, here. You can here it read aloud on Return to Tradition on ewe toob, released 12/3/23.
Cor Orans is the document which raises the bar on the viability of contemplative convents (with increases the numbers of finally professed nuns – those who have taken vows for life – required for a convent to be considered viable and also lengthens the time a nun is required to be in preparation for those final vows) and then shuts convents down in a process that resembles asset stripping. I am surprised Damian Thompson hasn’t mention the Secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Archbishop Jose Rodriguez Carballo who has a very interesting background given he was head of the Franciscan Order through a period of questionable financial management. This is another one of the stories of this pontificate.
Cor Orans is the document which raises the bar on the viability of contemplative convents (with increases the numbers of finally professed nuns – those who have taken vows for life – required for a convent to be considered viable and also lengthens the time a nun is required to be in preparation for those final vows) and then shuts convents down in a process that resembles asset stripping. I am surprised Damian Thompson hasn’t mention the Secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Archbishop Jose Rodriguez Carballo who has a very interesting background given he was head of the Franciscan Order through a period of questionable financial management. This is another one of the stories of this pontificate.
. . .”more dangerous than Borgia . . .”
I know that traditionally the Borgia Pope was considered to be pretty bad. But anyone interested in an alternative version of history should read “The Borgias”, by G. J. Meyer. An interesting and well-researched counter to the traditional narrative.
When Jorje Mario Bergoglio pronounced his ACCEPTO upon his election by the College of Cardinals to be the Successor to St. Peter on 13 March 2013, did he have the proper INTENTION to faithfully fulfill his pontifical duties & responsibilities to defend The Deposit of Faith & to Promote the Propagation of the Catholic religion? His subsequent actions patently manifest that he did not, but rather to destroy the Catholic Church &, in short, introduce a new religion founded upon the ruins of the same Church. Therefore, his defect of intention is an impediment that renders his election compromised.
I think in the age of psychology and psychiatry, Therapeutic Man, as Philip Reiff termed him, isn’t an easy fit in the pews of a church. People want techniques for various kinds of self-improvement, they don’t want to sit there passively and get talked at. No matter how erudite it is. A smaller proportion of them want to do DIY ritual.
It would not surprise me to see the Catholic church go the way of the Church of England. They will be done in by sex, particularly homosexuality, and their inability to manage it within their own ranks, while simultaneously having a teaching that just doesn’t hold water because of what we know from psychology & psychiatry.
And this at a time when archaeology seems to be confirming enormous amounts of detail in the gospels.
You wonder if just about all of it will be confirmed, about the same time as the Church finally dies.
Read John Dominic Crossan’s “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography” and you will see that the gospels are largely ‘just-so’ stories fabricated long after Jesus died. The different writers put things in different order, for example, and the language abruptly changes after the crucifixion in one Gospel, signifying a different author. Anyone who takes them at face value is kidding themselves.
Read John Dominic Crossan’s “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography” and you will see that the gospels are largely ‘just-so’ stories fabricated long after Jesus died. The different writers put things in different order, for example, and the language abruptly changes after the crucifixion in one Gospel, signifying a different author. Anyone who takes them at face value is kidding themselves.
Piggybacking here,
Cardinal Vigano has just written a letter decrying the current attempt to empty out a group of cloistered traditional nuns in Italy. The mother superior was spit out into the world, without support. Ordinary Catholics have been unable to contribute to her financial support through their bank account.
Young nuns are invited to stay as their convent is turned into a hostel for migrants. Not such a safe position, as they are innocent and young. Which can leave the Vatican to repossess the property, which could, in one swoop, make up for their 50 million dollar deficit,
This pope wants to support a “church of the poor,” while not supporting their religious mandate. Praying nuns (who also worked to support themselves) have an important place in praying for all sinners.
If you are interested, Vigano’s letter is out there.There are a wealth of ideas left out, here. You can here it read aloud on Return to Tradition on ewe toob, released 12/3/23.
. . .”more dangerous than Borgia . . .”
I know that traditionally the Borgia Pope was considered to be pretty bad. But anyone interested in an alternative version of history should read “The Borgias”, by G. J. Meyer. An interesting and well-researched counter to the traditional narrative.
When Jorje Mario Bergoglio pronounced his ACCEPTO upon his election by the College of Cardinals to be the Successor to St. Peter on 13 March 2013, did he have the proper INTENTION to faithfully fulfill his pontifical duties & responsibilities to defend The Deposit of Faith & to Promote the Propagation of the Catholic religion? His subsequent actions patently manifest that he did not, but rather to destroy the Catholic Church &, in short, introduce a new religion founded upon the ruins of the same Church. Therefore, his defect of intention is an impediment that renders his election compromised.
I think in the age of psychology and psychiatry, Therapeutic Man, as Philip Reiff termed him, isn’t an easy fit in the pews of a church. People want techniques for various kinds of self-improvement, they don’t want to sit there passively and get talked at. No matter how erudite it is. A smaller proportion of them want to do DIY ritual.
It would not surprise me to see the Catholic church go the way of the Church of England. They will be done in by sex, particularly homosexuality, and their inability to manage it within their own ranks, while simultaneously having a teaching that just doesn’t hold water because of what we know from psychology & psychiatry.
And this at a time when archaeology seems to be confirming enormous amounts of detail in the gospels.
You wonder if just about all of it will be confirmed, about the same time as the Church finally dies.
Just as telling is this line: “…spiritual leader of more than a billion people.”
Usually, apologists for the Catholic church like to quote platitudes such as “there’s always going to be a few bad apples” or suchlike. We’ve read this type of thing before in Comments.
I’d simply ask how anyone with any claim to a spiritual life via Catholicism can stand by and allow themselves to be associated with the venal, politicised debauchery that passes for their leadership.
For the sake of your own self-respect, renounce the Church, renounce the Vatican and all who prey within it. Go and form an alternative, but please don’t condescend to the rest of us. You have no right to do so, complicit with the systemic abuse that passes for “holiness”.
I should add, that all the expected downvotes in the world won’t change that truth.
… renounce the Church, renounce the Vatican and all who prey within it. Go and form an alternative,
Look how well that turned out: the one–man–and–his–bible schtick of sola fides only served to dilute the universality of the Christian faith and solved nothing of the rot that ultimately affects all worldly institutions.
No, it is all to easy to throw up one’s hands and head for the hills, however deeply we have been betrayed from within our own community. For every one of these monsters, there are scores of good men and women who have devoted their lives to the service of God, the Church and Her communion the World over — a service very often extended to those of other faiths. To desert Her now would amount only to a further betrayal of our faith, the faith of our brethren and the sincere vocation of those good people who stand today in the firing line of such ridicule and contempt.
Far better to stay and have the resolution to fight for our Church — both the corruption within and without — and I would extend that challenge to all our institutions for I see nothing to be gained by allowing government, academia, the military, medicine, the sciences and that, most important of all of them, the family fall prey to the corrupt influence of ideologues, thieves and liars.
Might I suggest that there is something in the structure of a huge, massively change resistant, essentially male only organisation that also believes in the infallibility of its leader (a concept invented by men only in the latter haf of the nineteenth century) that makes the sort of “letting the side down” behaviour detailed in the article inevitable ?
If that is the case, the structural reform – probably starting out from smaller, less centralised organisations is surely the way forward.
I have no dog in this fight (not a member of any religious group).
Note: there’s another organisation with a self-proclaimed infallible leader who seems to also believe he’s on a mission from God (and has a corrupt Orthodox church backing him up) who’s not doing very well right now.
So there’s another one for the to do list – scrap the “our leader is infallible” nonsense.
Papal authority is meant to reinforce Catechesis and so help prevent us falling into error. Nothing this or any pope says is to be accepted as an infallible truth apart from statements made on matters of morals or faith ex cathedra, which is to say “from the seat [of Peter]”. It was precisely defined as dogma at the first Vatican Council in 1870:
We teach and define that it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable.
It is my opinion that the Church would be in far better condition if the current Pope were to exercise his authority in this respect. Modern popes have been pretty good at this until Francis — darling of progressivism as he is — who, being unable to make infallible statements in support of LGBTQWERTY or birth control and abortion issues (as a few for–instances) seems content to sit back and let the anomie of anything goes force change out of sheer indiscipline and dissension. Which is why so many Roman Catholics hold him in such utter contempt.
So what is being done? It’s not enough to just hold your noses at the current incumbent in the role, there’s a systemic issue here which has been outlined by Peter B.
If the congregation are simply content to wait for Francis to die or resign, the chances are the next one in line will do nothing either to stop the horrific abuse being perpetrated by the church leaders. Those who do nothing are complicit. You refer to a fight be waged. What fight is being put up against all this? How? The good works that you say are being carried out are being done so under the auspices of an utterly contemptible organisation.
I do not think that either of you or Peter B have outlined anything at all but the same–old, same–old “that’s not it, let’s dump it and do something else” which has not worked since the Reformation because neither “that” nor the “something else” ever works out as “it” for everyone.
The Church is the ordinary people who are in it and getting on with it every day.
Unfortunately, I do not have the spreadsheets categorically outlining their efforts to hand but if a struggle–session about systemic issues is what you are after, I suggest you try the Marxists down the hall. They love that nonsense.
I do not think that either of you or Peter B have outlined anything at all but the same–old, same–old “that’s not it, let’s dump it and do something else” which has not worked since the Reformation because neither “that” nor the “something else” ever works out as “it” for everyone.
The Church is the ordinary people who are in it and getting on with it every day.
Unfortunately, I do not have the spreadsheets categorically outlining their efforts to hand but if a struggle–session about systemic issues is what you are after, I suggest you try the Marxists down the hall. They love that nonsense.
It’s utter nonsense. The first infallible statement made by a pope was to declare that he could make infallible statements – if people can’t spot the problem with that then they’re blinder than blind.
So what is being done? It’s not enough to just hold your noses at the current incumbent in the role, there’s a systemic issue here which has been outlined by Peter B.
If the congregation are simply content to wait for Francis to die or resign, the chances are the next one in line will do nothing either to stop the horrific abuse being perpetrated by the church leaders. Those who do nothing are complicit. You refer to a fight be waged. What fight is being put up against all this? How? The good works that you say are being carried out are being done so under the auspices of an utterly contemptible organisation.
It’s utter nonsense. The first infallible statement made by a pope was to declare that he could make infallible statements – if people can’t spot the problem with that then they’re blinder than blind.
Both the Church and the American empire are being destroyed by their past and present leaders. What’s not to like about either of these developments?
Both institutions are empires, and rely upon the same terrorist tactics force the surrender of others to their respective orthodoxies. Both are built on the model of the Sicilian mafia: do what we say if you expect to be safe and secure. Beware the wrath of god and the sanctions he can wield.
Both are predicated upon time honored false information: gods that do not exist, places of eternal torment or bliss that do not exist, and values that are mouthed but rarely practiced.
Three cheers! As Diderot has said: Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
That the Church’s priests are all male is a point in its favor. It is naive to think that adding women will necessarily “improve” this or that organization. Your suggestion would lead to ruin for what ought to be obvious reasons.
If women are permitted to become priests, men will no longer see a reason to make the great sacrifices–different for men than for women–required to become a holy priest. We will attract a different sort of man–not the disciplined good shepherd who lays down his life for his flock, in masculine sacrifice. No, we will become overly concerned with “feelings” to the detriment of the flock. We will risk becoming a lesbian “social justice” church, like the Episcopalians.
Which is to say nothing of the fact that in the first place, God gives different roles to men and women; to authorize women priests would be to claim we know better than God.
I made no direct comment on whether it was right or wrong for the catholic church to be all male. Only on the fact that such a structure – in combination with the other points I noted – almost certainly leads to some of the problems we are seeing.
You appear to be stating that there is a risk of the church attracting the “wrong sort of man” (I paraphrase here) if women are allowed to join the management structure of the catholic church. Many would equally state that the catholic church is already successfully attracting many of the “wrong sort of man” – in many ways because it is an all male organisation. When you read about decades of child abuse and institutionalised cover ups (going right to the top of the organisation) it’s hard to eliminate that thought.
Though to clarify: specifically for positions requiring priesthood. Women are in fact allowed to join the management structure of the Church in certain capacities.
There is a lot of research into the ‘wrong sort of male’ and the sexual abuse scandals are the direct result of networks instituted in certain of the seminaries of exactly these men. And it is pretty accurately placed at between the 1960’s/70’s/80’s and finishing to some extent in the 1990’s. However, there are still scandals being revealed (the North American Seminary in Rome for example). The very fact that these are networks, that the scandals are men with men or men with young boys shows that your simplistic solution of ‘more women’ is laughable. There is a systemic problem here but it is the ‘problem that dare not speak its name’. I imagine that you would not be interested to read up on it (although more than ready to tell us how to fix it), but studies such as the John Jay Report, books such as ‘Goodbye, Good men’ are quite in-depth studies of the situation that arose as a result of the laxity accompanying the 1960’s. You might note the situation of the plummeting vocations that occurred as the direct result of the reluctance of men who had a genuine vocation and who would have made exemplary priests to join institutions with these oppressive hierarchies imposing progressive ‘ tolerance ’. The terms ‘rigid’ and ‘orthodox’ were used to exclude these good vocations and the solution put forward by those whose policies had resulted in a dearth of vocations was – women priests!
Though to clarify: specifically for positions requiring priesthood. Women are in fact allowed to join the management structure of the Church in certain capacities.
There is a lot of research into the ‘wrong sort of male’ and the sexual abuse scandals are the direct result of networks instituted in certain of the seminaries of exactly these men. And it is pretty accurately placed at between the 1960’s/70’s/80’s and finishing to some extent in the 1990’s. However, there are still scandals being revealed (the North American Seminary in Rome for example). The very fact that these are networks, that the scandals are men with men or men with young boys shows that your simplistic solution of ‘more women’ is laughable. There is a systemic problem here but it is the ‘problem that dare not speak its name’. I imagine that you would not be interested to read up on it (although more than ready to tell us how to fix it), but studies such as the John Jay Report, books such as ‘Goodbye, Good men’ are quite in-depth studies of the situation that arose as a result of the laxity accompanying the 1960’s. You might note the situation of the plummeting vocations that occurred as the direct result of the reluctance of men who had a genuine vocation and who would have made exemplary priests to join institutions with these oppressive hierarchies imposing progressive ‘ tolerance ’. The terms ‘rigid’ and ‘orthodox’ were used to exclude these good vocations and the solution put forward by those whose policies had resulted in a dearth of vocations was – women priests!
The reality of the abuse scandal and the devestation to the victims lives is truly unacceptable.
It is however, such a small minded argument to glibly accuse all Priests and clerics across the globe of failing their “flocks” and to say all “flocks” feel the same. Human history is filled with examples of bad apples spoiling it for the rest. Does your limited argument mean all teachers are equally abusers, all policemen in the Met are rapists and all journalists drunken sots with no morals? While everyone who works for the BBC invades personal freedoms ? Using your logic , Peter Sutcliffe who had curly hair means by default all northern men with curly hair are therefore mass rapists?
Try reading the lives of the saints or the martyrs, who freely and devotedly gave their lives for the faith and their sheep. There are 10s of thousands of examples of a Christian life lived through sacrifice for others, with billions of faithful attending Church in their search for Christ in a sick world.
The reality of the abuse scandal and the devestation to the victims lives is truly unacceptable.
It is however, such a small minded argument to glibly accuse all Priests and clerics across the globe of failing their “flocks” and to say all “flocks” feel the same. Human history is filled with examples of bad apples spoiling it for the rest. Does your limited argument mean all teachers are equally abusers, all policemen in the Met are rapists and all journalists drunken sots with no morals? While everyone who works for the BBC invades personal freedoms ? Using your logic , Peter Sutcliffe who had curly hair means by default all northern men with curly hair are therefore mass rapists?
Try reading the lives of the saints or the martyrs, who freely and devotedly gave their lives for the faith and their sheep. There are 10s of thousands of examples of a Christian life lived through sacrifice for others, with billions of faithful attending Church in their search for Christ in a sick world.
I made no direct comment on whether it was right or wrong for the catholic church to be all male. Only on the fact that such a structure – in combination with the other points I noted – almost certainly leads to some of the problems we are seeing.
You appear to be stating that there is a risk of the church attracting the “wrong sort of man” (I paraphrase here) if women are allowed to join the management structure of the catholic church. Many would equally state that the catholic church is already successfully attracting many of the “wrong sort of man” – in many ways because it is an all male organisation. When you read about decades of child abuse and institutionalised cover ups (going right to the top of the organisation) it’s hard to eliminate that thought.
I’m surprised by the downvotes on this. Seems very obviously true to me. Big status hierarchies always tend to spread at the limits and corruption at the top. It’s human nature. No balance without checks. A Pope has no checks. (Please, don’t say “God”).
You say that you are not a member of any religious group as though that gives you impartiality and entitles you to comment. Not being a member of a religious group is not an impartial position and it does not mean that you are free from bias – that is disingenuous or self-deluding. Your observations about what the Church needs are, with respect, betraying an overwhelming arrogance. First, you could never appreciate that the Catholic Church is not a corporation or a man-made institution. The very fact that you would scoff and sneer at this disentitles you to comment. It is a church that was founded by Christ Himself and is His living body in earth. This, you would also sneer at. The Catholic Church is not ‘essentially a male-only organisation’. I would advise you to, not only spend some time in Catholic institutions, but to analyse the modern position of women and compare the respect extended to women as a direct result of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the position of women in pagan societies. You might consider looking at female saints such as Catherine of Alexandria and Joan of Arc and ask whether these women would have been given a hearing in Puritan England. Infallibility was defined and articulated in the nineteenth century but has been applied since the time of St Peter (& by the way, you, by your sweeping dismissal, obviously do not understand what infallibility is). The pope is as much bound by infallibility as empowered. I assume that you measure the faults of the Catholic position on women by the predictable allegation that the Catholic Church does not have a female ‘priesthood’.
The Catholic Church is a hierarchical structure and it is 2,000 years old. It is not man-made and cannot reconfigure itself according to passing fashions as many recently-constructed religions can. We have male priests because the Church was formed by Christ as the ‘new Covenant’. The priesthood of the old covenant, the Jewish priesthood, was the Levitical priesthood. The Levites were priests who sacrificed in the Jewish Temple. Christ is the Sacrifice of the new covenant, and, as He predicted, the Jewish Temple was completely destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, with not one stone standing upon another. The Jewish faith was reconfigured over the next 400 years as a rabbinical religion whereby the synagogues formed the centre of the faith, as temple worship was impossible. The Catholic priest stands in the shoes of Christ, the high priest in the sacrifice that is in the place of the ancient Jewish temple. That long explanation about why we have male priests (instead of female MC’s) has been made necessary because you, who are not interested enough to study a faith you don’t believe in, nevertheless seem to feel qualified to comment on it, simply because it does not comply with an arbitrary standard you feel should be imposed on every institution.
There are many criticisms of Catholicism one can make-Damian Thompson has made cogent and constructive criticism in this article. However, if you feel a need to criticise the Catholic faith, I would request that you actually study it. You might start with the fact that some of the most brilliant people in the history of the world have been true faithful Catholics and perhaps, with a little humility, you might wonder if perhaps these brilliant minds might have recognised something there that you have not bothered to discover.
Papal authority is meant to reinforce Catechesis and so help prevent us falling into error. Nothing this or any pope says is to be accepted as an infallible truth apart from statements made on matters of morals or faith ex cathedra, which is to say “from the seat [of Peter]”. It was precisely defined as dogma at the first Vatican Council in 1870:
We teach and define that it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable.
It is my opinion that the Church would be in far better condition if the current Pope were to exercise his authority in this respect. Modern popes have been pretty good at this until Francis — darling of progressivism as he is — who, being unable to make infallible statements in support of LGBTQWERTY or birth control and abortion issues (as a few for–instances) seems content to sit back and let the anomie of anything goes force change out of sheer indiscipline and dissension. Which is why so many Roman Catholics hold him in such utter contempt.
Both the Church and the American empire are being destroyed by their past and present leaders. What’s not to like about either of these developments?
Both institutions are empires, and rely upon the same terrorist tactics force the surrender of others to their respective orthodoxies. Both are built on the model of the Sicilian mafia: do what we say if you expect to be safe and secure. Beware the wrath of god and the sanctions he can wield.
Both are predicated upon time honored false information: gods that do not exist, places of eternal torment or bliss that do not exist, and values that are mouthed but rarely practiced.
Three cheers! As Diderot has said: Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
That the Church’s priests are all male is a point in its favor. It is naive to think that adding women will necessarily “improve” this or that organization. Your suggestion would lead to ruin for what ought to be obvious reasons.
If women are permitted to become priests, men will no longer see a reason to make the great sacrifices–different for men than for women–required to become a holy priest. We will attract a different sort of man–not the disciplined good shepherd who lays down his life for his flock, in masculine sacrifice. No, we will become overly concerned with “feelings” to the detriment of the flock. We will risk becoming a lesbian “social justice” church, like the Episcopalians.
Which is to say nothing of the fact that in the first place, God gives different roles to men and women; to authorize women priests would be to claim we know better than God.
I’m surprised by the downvotes on this. Seems very obviously true to me. Big status hierarchies always tend to spread at the limits and corruption at the top. It’s human nature. No balance without checks. A Pope has no checks. (Please, don’t say “God”).
You say that you are not a member of any religious group as though that gives you impartiality and entitles you to comment. Not being a member of a religious group is not an impartial position and it does not mean that you are free from bias – that is disingenuous or self-deluding. Your observations about what the Church needs are, with respect, betraying an overwhelming arrogance. First, you could never appreciate that the Catholic Church is not a corporation or a man-made institution. The very fact that you would scoff and sneer at this disentitles you to comment. It is a church that was founded by Christ Himself and is His living body in earth. This, you would also sneer at. The Catholic Church is not ‘essentially a male-only organisation’. I would advise you to, not only spend some time in Catholic institutions, but to analyse the modern position of women and compare the respect extended to women as a direct result of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the position of women in pagan societies. You might consider looking at female saints such as Catherine of Alexandria and Joan of Arc and ask whether these women would have been given a hearing in Puritan England. Infallibility was defined and articulated in the nineteenth century but has been applied since the time of St Peter (& by the way, you, by your sweeping dismissal, obviously do not understand what infallibility is). The pope is as much bound by infallibility as empowered. I assume that you measure the faults of the Catholic position on women by the predictable allegation that the Catholic Church does not have a female ‘priesthood’.
The Catholic Church is a hierarchical structure and it is 2,000 years old. It is not man-made and cannot reconfigure itself according to passing fashions as many recently-constructed religions can. We have male priests because the Church was formed by Christ as the ‘new Covenant’. The priesthood of the old covenant, the Jewish priesthood, was the Levitical priesthood. The Levites were priests who sacrificed in the Jewish Temple. Christ is the Sacrifice of the new covenant, and, as He predicted, the Jewish Temple was completely destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, with not one stone standing upon another. The Jewish faith was reconfigured over the next 400 years as a rabbinical religion whereby the synagogues formed the centre of the faith, as temple worship was impossible. The Catholic priest stands in the shoes of Christ, the high priest in the sacrifice that is in the place of the ancient Jewish temple. That long explanation about why we have male priests (instead of female MC’s) has been made necessary because you, who are not interested enough to study a faith you don’t believe in, nevertheless seem to feel qualified to comment on it, simply because it does not comply with an arbitrary standard you feel should be imposed on every institution.
There are many criticisms of Catholicism one can make-Damian Thompson has made cogent and constructive criticism in this article. However, if you feel a need to criticise the Catholic faith, I would request that you actually study it. You might start with the fact that some of the most brilliant people in the history of the world have been true faithful Catholics and perhaps, with a little humility, you might wonder if perhaps these brilliant minds might have recognised something there that you have not bothered to discover.
Might I suggest that there is something in the structure of a huge, massively change resistant, essentially male only organisation that also believes in the infallibility of its leader (a concept invented by men only in the latter haf of the nineteenth century) that makes the sort of “letting the side down” behaviour detailed in the article inevitable ?
If that is the case, the structural reform – probably starting out from smaller, less centralised organisations is surely the way forward.
I have no dog in this fight (not a member of any religious group).
Note: there’s another organisation with a self-proclaimed infallible leader who seems to also believe he’s on a mission from God (and has a corrupt Orthodox church backing him up) who’s not doing very well right now.
So there’s another one for the to do list – scrap the “our leader is infallible” nonsense.
Have an upvote.
I can’t understand how anyone familiar with the history of the Catholic Church could assert that its leadership has a great record of demonstrating “moral authority”. As other commentators here have said, the current failure to practice what they preach is not unique and is far from the historical low watermark.
Fair point. Moral authority hasn’t always been the CC’s strongpoint, the issue now is that its doctrinal authority is so muddied. The two should go hand in hand of course, but don’t.
The Church’s inspiration to countless people who willingly accept all manner of sacrifice is demonstration of its moral authority. It is not easy to live differently but Catholics everywhere continue to do it. Even if they disagree with our current Pope.
Pagans who preach the gospel of moral subjectivity with such “authority” are rarely to be found making such sacrifices. This is proof of pagan void of moral authority.
It relates by pointing out that regardless of the debate of whether and to what extent certain Church leaders have demonstrated moral authority, the Church itself, maintains moral authority, as evidenced by the actions of so many Catholics (imperfect themselves).
Pagans practice any religion other than Christianity, Judaism or Islam; or none. Maybe you’re a pagan, maybe not, I don’t know; but any morality other than that revealed by God–any “man-made” morality–is subjective in nature.
So perhaps it relates, or not, but in way case it is worthwhile at this time to reiterate the alternative to objective morality: anything is permissible, which takes hold to a far greater extent in society (is even praised) than in the Church leadership, where admittedly some have failed.
It relates by pointing out that regardless of the debate of whether and to what extent certain Church leaders have demonstrated moral authority, the Church itself, maintains moral authority, as evidenced by the actions of so many Catholics (imperfect themselves).
Pagans practice any religion other than Christianity, Judaism or Islam; or none. Maybe you’re a pagan, maybe not, I don’t know; but any morality other than that revealed by God–any “man-made” morality–is subjective in nature.
So perhaps it relates, or not, but in way case it is worthwhile at this time to reiterate the alternative to objective morality: anything is permissible, which takes hold to a far greater extent in society (is even praised) than in the Church leadership, where admittedly some have failed.
Fair point. Moral authority hasn’t always been the CC’s strongpoint, the issue now is that its doctrinal authority is so muddied. The two should go hand in hand of course, but don’t.
The Church’s inspiration to countless people who willingly accept all manner of sacrifice is demonstration of its moral authority. It is not easy to live differently but Catholics everywhere continue to do it. Even if they disagree with our current Pope.
Pagans who preach the gospel of moral subjectivity with such “authority” are rarely to be found making such sacrifices. This is proof of pagan void of moral authority.
Catholics believe Christ is the way, the truth and the life. Catholics follow him. Not the Popes, bishops and priests. Since the beginning some of them have been shockers.
Indeed given the knaves, wastrels, incompetents, abusers, murderers and the rest, supposed to be the Church’s servants, it’s amazing it’s lasted so long. One would think it would long since have collapsed like all the kingdoms, republics and organisations it’s seen in 2000 years.
Why is that, do you think?
I am saddened by Thompson’s list of the failures of Pope Francis and some cardinals. If true, they’re doing great damage and must be strongly called to task.
The Church does claim to be one for the Elect, but for sinners.
The statement that “Christ is the way, the truth and the life” is essentially meaningless dogma. It’s precisely this type of mind control that allows the Catholic Church to carry out the abuse, which failure to address by those who profess to be Catholics means they’re complicit.
What you refer to is Christianity. Catholicism is an organisation of choice.
I accept that.
It should also be accepted that the Catholic Church uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit its congregation.
Those who follow Christ out of a moral and/or spiritual imperative should distance themselves from the church. It may well be beyond reform from within, and certainly it’s accumulated riches are an abomination to it’s supposed ministry. It’s that which corrupts, along with power over other people.
“The Catholic Church uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit its congregation”
This seems to imply that all its laity are merely passive pew sitters, unthinking, stupid or gullible.
If so, you need to provide evidence of that. And who uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit laity. And what they say.
The Church is a church of sinners. It has been since the beginning. It will be in need of reform until the end of time.
As to the Church’s wealth: some of it was made to God’s glory, some to share and some – shamefully- misspent. There are currently issues that must be addressed.
BTW, the Catholic Church is the largest provider of non-governmental health care in the world..CAFOD, the English & Welsh Catholic development agency, supports world wide projects, regardless of religion and culture.
Your concept of “sinners” is unsupportable in the context of children and even adults being exploited to gratify the sexual desires of those who – with astonishing hypocrisy – seek to tell others how their sex lives should be conducted.
On a par with Asian Muslim grooming gangs, in fact.
No amount of theological rhetoric or expiation through other aspects of the church can overcome that basic principle. It’s rotten to its very foundations. I fully appreciate you don’t want to hear this – but i’m not the one trying to use nefarious concepts such as “sinners” to excuse horrendous abuse.
I make and have made absolutely no excuse for child abuse. Both as a parishioner and professionally I’ve come across abusers. I found them sickening and their crimes revolting.
It’s for them to expiate their crimes.
Not other people.
(You say “Asian” Muslim gangs. Courteously, precise language is important in these matters. I’m sure you don’t mean, say, Turkey and Indonesia, both Asian countries with Muslim majority populations.)
The Catholic Church has been subjected to sexual scandals as you are very quick to point out and as Damian Thompson’s article demonstrates. As the article shows, these sexual abuses have been, and cannot persist, unless enabled from the top. As we are aware, there have been hierarchies by which abuses are covered up and which enable further abuse. And these hierarchies are obviously present in the Vatican and enabled by the highest authority. That is, we are faced with a pope who enables and covers up and who (unlike Benedict, who did act), is safe from exposure by any of the main stream media. That fact, of itself, should raise some questions in your mind and alert you to the fact that the issue is not as simplistic as you paint it.
The fact that they are networks and distinguishable from mere transgressors is significant because of the political nature of the people who are abusing, not only the vulnerable but also the institutions. That is, if a priest has an affair with a parishioner, that is an individual scandal. However, where there are networks and alliances, that is corrupting the institution itself. The Catholic Church is the world’s biggest charity and one of the world’s biggest educators. It established the first schools and universities and has been doing education and charity for many hundreds of years. These are high-trust environments. They are therefore targets for those who seek to abuse the trust that is integral to the benefit being dispensed and its efficacy. It is the vast network of charity and schools that gives rise to the prevalence of high statistics in abuse. I might point out that the high statistics are in comparison to other church or charitable institutions simply by reason of the fact that Catholic participation is so much higher and that the Catholic religion is the biggest in the world. However, institutional abuse is absolutely dwarfed in comparison to the incidence in the broader secular community.
Nevertheless, the abuse of trust by the exploitation by these networks is appalling and corrosive on any number of levels, and was enabled because of the trust engendered to priests, a trust which had been earned by the hundreds of years of good holy men who used their priesthood to be genuine fathers to their flock. And, as soon as this trust is abused, it naturally exists no more.
You seem to have contempt for Catholics as being, unlike you, not intelligent enough to think for themselves. I would actually submit that the existence of the Catholic faith as a thorn in the side of persecutors from the time of Henry VIII to Stalin, is precisely because the Catholic faith enables individual responsibility and discernment- in other words, not susceptible to totalitarian manipulation, and therefore, always a nuisance. We are, right at this very moment, a nuisance, not only to the totalitarian agenda being currently imposed by the material world, but to our own pope.
The horror in general society and the main stream media in regard to the sexual abuse scandals is accompanied by a major push in the mainstream of society of a sexualisation of children and a cover-up of the fact that the abuse scandals in the church were and are almost exclusively homosexual. This is accompanied universally by promotion of the homosexual agenda- with no accountability for the existence of any victims or the correlation between the two. The other hypocrisy is the complete ignoring of sexual abuse in the general community, an ignoring which would require honesty about societal attitudes to sexual ‘freedoms’ which are imputed to be victim free. The recent discovery by the me too movement that promiscuous sexual predation has consequences points to the aspect where the Church ‘telling us how our sex lives should be conducted’ (ie., forego promiscuity – chastity within a trusting environment such as, old fashioned marriage) may have some semblance of reality to it.
Sexual abuse in the general community and in sectarian institutions absolutely dwarfs statistically any abuses in the institutions of the Church. It seems that the outrage against the Church, when voiced by those who use it simply as a club, is one of hypocrisy. You do not look at the value of the institutions and the damage done by these predatory people in transgressing the rules of the Church and the institution but, instead, seize upon the fact that it has occurred as evidence that the institution itself is wrong or should not exist. You look at people who have completely transgressed the rules of the Church and turn around and blame the Church. We Catholics have to address this issue and it is one that can only be addressed by honest discussion and by honest analysis of who the perpetrators are and how they have been enabled. Damian Thompson sets this out brilliantly and it is time that these events should be discussed openly and frankly. However, I am amazed at the readiness of Protestant or atheist commenters to tell the Catholic population how to run their Church or to be outright bigoted and rude in their comments regarding Catholics or the church. So far, you have advised us as to our priests and our sexual philosophy. I would respectfully advise you to confine your advice to your areas of expertise in the absence of studying the Catholic faith. That is, it is not as if there is no abuse in the secular world. Perhaps advise secular institutions on how they should be run. I would also advise you to reflect on whether you would make such disparaging comments in regard to any other religion.
I make and have made absolutely no excuse for child abuse. Both as a parishioner and professionally I’ve come across abusers. I found them sickening and their crimes revolting.
It’s for them to expiate their crimes.
Not other people.
(You say “Asian” Muslim gangs. Courteously, precise language is important in these matters. I’m sure you don’t mean, say, Turkey and Indonesia, both Asian countries with Muslim majority populations.)
The Catholic Church has been subjected to sexual scandals as you are very quick to point out and as Damian Thompson’s article demonstrates. As the article shows, these sexual abuses have been, and cannot persist, unless enabled from the top. As we are aware, there have been hierarchies by which abuses are covered up and which enable further abuse. And these hierarchies are obviously present in the Vatican and enabled by the highest authority. That is, we are faced with a pope who enables and covers up and who (unlike Benedict, who did act), is safe from exposure by any of the main stream media. That fact, of itself, should raise some questions in your mind and alert you to the fact that the issue is not as simplistic as you paint it.
The fact that they are networks and distinguishable from mere transgressors is significant because of the political nature of the people who are abusing, not only the vulnerable but also the institutions. That is, if a priest has an affair with a parishioner, that is an individual scandal. However, where there are networks and alliances, that is corrupting the institution itself. The Catholic Church is the world’s biggest charity and one of the world’s biggest educators. It established the first schools and universities and has been doing education and charity for many hundreds of years. These are high-trust environments. They are therefore targets for those who seek to abuse the trust that is integral to the benefit being dispensed and its efficacy. It is the vast network of charity and schools that gives rise to the prevalence of high statistics in abuse. I might point out that the high statistics are in comparison to other church or charitable institutions simply by reason of the fact that Catholic participation is so much higher and that the Catholic religion is the biggest in the world. However, institutional abuse is absolutely dwarfed in comparison to the incidence in the broader secular community.
Nevertheless, the abuse of trust by the exploitation by these networks is appalling and corrosive on any number of levels, and was enabled because of the trust engendered to priests, a trust which had been earned by the hundreds of years of good holy men who used their priesthood to be genuine fathers to their flock. And, as soon as this trust is abused, it naturally exists no more.
You seem to have contempt for Catholics as being, unlike you, not intelligent enough to think for themselves. I would actually submit that the existence of the Catholic faith as a thorn in the side of persecutors from the time of Henry VIII to Stalin, is precisely because the Catholic faith enables individual responsibility and discernment- in other words, not susceptible to totalitarian manipulation, and therefore, always a nuisance. We are, right at this very moment, a nuisance, not only to the totalitarian agenda being currently imposed by the material world, but to our own pope.
The horror in general society and the main stream media in regard to the sexual abuse scandals is accompanied by a major push in the mainstream of society of a sexualisation of children and a cover-up of the fact that the abuse scandals in the church were and are almost exclusively homosexual. This is accompanied universally by promotion of the homosexual agenda- with no accountability for the existence of any victims or the correlation between the two. The other hypocrisy is the complete ignoring of sexual abuse in the general community, an ignoring which would require honesty about societal attitudes to sexual ‘freedoms’ which are imputed to be victim free. The recent discovery by the me too movement that promiscuous sexual predation has consequences points to the aspect where the Church ‘telling us how our sex lives should be conducted’ (ie., forego promiscuity – chastity within a trusting environment such as, old fashioned marriage) may have some semblance of reality to it.
Sexual abuse in the general community and in sectarian institutions absolutely dwarfs statistically any abuses in the institutions of the Church. It seems that the outrage against the Church, when voiced by those who use it simply as a club, is one of hypocrisy. You do not look at the value of the institutions and the damage done by these predatory people in transgressing the rules of the Church and the institution but, instead, seize upon the fact that it has occurred as evidence that the institution itself is wrong or should not exist. You look at people who have completely transgressed the rules of the Church and turn around and blame the Church. We Catholics have to address this issue and it is one that can only be addressed by honest discussion and by honest analysis of who the perpetrators are and how they have been enabled. Damian Thompson sets this out brilliantly and it is time that these events should be discussed openly and frankly. However, I am amazed at the readiness of Protestant or atheist commenters to tell the Catholic population how to run their Church or to be outright bigoted and rude in their comments regarding Catholics or the church. So far, you have advised us as to our priests and our sexual philosophy. I would respectfully advise you to confine your advice to your areas of expertise in the absence of studying the Catholic faith. That is, it is not as if there is no abuse in the secular world. Perhaps advise secular institutions on how they should be run. I would also advise you to reflect on whether you would make such disparaging comments in regard to any other religion.
Your concept of “sinners” is unsupportable in the context of children and even adults being exploited to gratify the sexual desires of those who – with astonishing hypocrisy – seek to tell others how their sex lives should be conducted.
On a par with Asian Muslim grooming gangs, in fact.
No amount of theological rhetoric or expiation through other aspects of the church can overcome that basic principle. It’s rotten to its very foundations. I fully appreciate you don’t want to hear this – but i’m not the one trying to use nefarious concepts such as “sinners” to excuse horrendous abuse.
It seems to me it was all worth it for the creation of beautiful art in the form of architecture and painting and music to inspire awe and reverence of the power of God. All required much financial investment. To me sitting in a beautiful church and listening to a wonderful church choir stirs my soul. I also love plain churches but they simply don’t have the same effect and the west would be the poorer without it.
“The Catholic Church uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit its congregation”
This seems to imply that all its laity are merely passive pew sitters, unthinking, stupid or gullible.
If so, you need to provide evidence of that. And who uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit laity. And what they say.
The Church is a church of sinners. It has been since the beginning. It will be in need of reform until the end of time.
As to the Church’s wealth: some of it was made to God’s glory, some to share and some – shamefully- misspent. There are currently issues that must be addressed.
BTW, the Catholic Church is the largest provider of non-governmental health care in the world..CAFOD, the English & Welsh Catholic development agency, supports world wide projects, regardless of religion and culture.
It seems to me it was all worth it for the creation of beautiful art in the form of architecture and painting and music to inspire awe and reverence of the power of God. All required much financial investment. To me sitting in a beautiful church and listening to a wonderful church choir stirs my soul. I also love plain churches but they simply don’t have the same effect and the west would be the poorer without it.
I accept that.
It should also be accepted that the Catholic Church uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit its congregation.
Those who follow Christ out of a moral and/or spiritual imperative should distance themselves from the church. It may well be beyond reform from within, and certainly it’s accumulated riches are an abomination to it’s supposed ministry. It’s that which corrupts, along with power over other people.
The problems and confusion come from conflating the ideas of church and religion. To many people, church is part of the local community, not to be confused with having deep religious beliefs. It is the officials of the church who cause the problems discussed herein.
A completely different problem comes with religions.
The statement that “Christ is the way, the truth and the life” is essentially meaningless dogma. It’s precisely this type of mind control that allows the Catholic Church to carry out the abuse, which failure to address by those who profess to be Catholics means they’re complicit.
What you refer to is Christianity. Catholicism is an organisation of choice.
The problems and confusion come from conflating the ideas of church and religion. To many people, church is part of the local community, not to be confused with having deep religious beliefs. It is the officials of the church who cause the problems discussed herein.
A completely different problem comes with religions.
You haven’t a clue about Catholics, Steve. We’re not too bothered about religion. Seriously. Very few Catholics in Ireland believe in most of their church’s teaching, and that has been the position from the 1970s. English Catholics, by contrast, are very sincere. They take it all seriously, bless ’em. We have low expectations from people in authority. No normal Catholic cares enough to go off forming a new religion. If the papacy disintegrated tomorrow, nobody would care too much. We’d still run our wee local church, largely because it is one of the few cross-generational, democratic public spaces left. What we believe, or don’t believe, is secondary.
I can only assume that the people who downvoted you are not catholics, or are converts (worse!) or are just clueless. Speaking as a recovering catholic (we used to call them ‘lapsed’ but the analogy with alcoholics seems more apt) the majority within the fold seem to me to be quite happy to be part of the tribe, but unwilling to consider the dogma they are supposed to subscribe to. Transubstantiation? Virgin birth? Papal infallibility? Much safer not to look too closely.
But then I suppose that many people in most clubs, tribes, religions and political parties are fellow travellers rather than true believers.
I always used to smile when someone was described as ‘having a simple faith’. That usually means they are both thick and gullible : often nice people, of course, but never the sharpest knives in the box.
Church and religion are not the same things. You can be a regular churchgoer without being especially religious. Churches help in the community but religions don’t. Maybe this is the problem people have with ideas in non-Christian countries where the ideas of church and religion not separable.
I can only assume that the people who downvoted you are not catholics, or are converts (worse!) or are just clueless. Speaking as a recovering catholic (we used to call them ‘lapsed’ but the analogy with alcoholics seems more apt) the majority within the fold seem to me to be quite happy to be part of the tribe, but unwilling to consider the dogma they are supposed to subscribe to. Transubstantiation? Virgin birth? Papal infallibility? Much safer not to look too closely.
But then I suppose that many people in most clubs, tribes, religions and political parties are fellow travellers rather than true believers.
I always used to smile when someone was described as ‘having a simple faith’. That usually means they are both thick and gullible : often nice people, of course, but never the sharpest knives in the box.
Church and religion are not the same things. You can be a regular churchgoer without being especially religious. Churches help in the community but religions don’t. Maybe this is the problem people have with ideas in non-Christian countries where the ideas of church and religion not separable.
As we have seen with all the splintered denominations that are watered down into meaningless mush, imho you should stay and fight for the soul of the church. He won’t last forever.
… renounce the Church, renounce the Vatican and all who prey within it. Go and form an alternative,
Look how well that turned out: the one–man–and–his–bible schtick of sola fides only served to dilute the universality of the Christian faith and solved nothing of the rot that ultimately affects all worldly institutions.
No, it is all to easy to throw up one’s hands and head for the hills, however deeply we have been betrayed from within our own community. For every one of these monsters, there are scores of good men and women who have devoted their lives to the service of God, the Church and Her communion the World over — a service very often extended to those of other faiths. To desert Her now would amount only to a further betrayal of our faith, the faith of our brethren and the sincere vocation of those good people who stand today in the firing line of such ridicule and contempt.
Far better to stay and have the resolution to fight for our Church — both the corruption within and without — and I would extend that challenge to all our institutions for I see nothing to be gained by allowing government, academia, the military, medicine, the sciences and that, most important of all of them, the family fall prey to the corrupt influence of ideologues, thieves and liars.
Have an upvote.
I can’t understand how anyone familiar with the history of the Catholic Church could assert that its leadership has a great record of demonstrating “moral authority”. As other commentators here have said, the current failure to practice what they preach is not unique and is far from the historical low watermark.
Catholics believe Christ is the way, the truth and the life. Catholics follow him. Not the Popes, bishops and priests. Since the beginning some of them have been shockers.
Indeed given the knaves, wastrels, incompetents, abusers, murderers and the rest, supposed to be the Church’s servants, it’s amazing it’s lasted so long. One would think it would long since have collapsed like all the kingdoms, republics and organisations it’s seen in 2000 years.
Why is that, do you think?
I am saddened by Thompson’s list of the failures of Pope Francis and some cardinals. If true, they’re doing great damage and must be strongly called to task.
The Church does claim to be one for the Elect, but for sinners.
You haven’t a clue about Catholics, Steve. We’re not too bothered about religion. Seriously. Very few Catholics in Ireland believe in most of their church’s teaching, and that has been the position from the 1970s. English Catholics, by contrast, are very sincere. They take it all seriously, bless ’em. We have low expectations from people in authority. No normal Catholic cares enough to go off forming a new religion. If the papacy disintegrated tomorrow, nobody would care too much. We’d still run our wee local church, largely because it is one of the few cross-generational, democratic public spaces left. What we believe, or don’t believe, is secondary.
As we have seen with all the splintered denominations that are watered down into meaningless mush, imho you should stay and fight for the soul of the church. He won’t last forever.
The Church, the future pope wrote in 1956, is until the Last Judgment both the Church of Christ and the Church of the Antichrist: “The Antichrist belongs to the Church, grows in it and with it up to the great separation, which will be introduced by the ultimate revelation.”
Which was not by any means complacency on the part of young Ratzinger. By questioning the Church, as Agamben put it “Benedict XVI, who was at the head of the oldest existing institution in the West, called into question the meaning and legitimacy of all institutions”.
Ray Mullan, thank you. Giorgio Agamben was also spot on w.r.t. Covid:
The first thing that the wave of panic that has paralyzed the country obviously shows is that our society no longer believes in anything but bare life
Apropos yours above, the following quote from Jung comes to mind:
‘God is not the summum bonum (supreme good) (Jung 1958:93), but instead, quoting the theologian Meister Eckhart, ‘alone in his Godhead […] not in a state of bliss, but must be born in the human soul’ where God’s antinomy that ‘tears him asunder into opposites and delivers him over to seemingly insoluble conflict’ (ibid. 156) must be resolved.’
References:
Agamben, G. (2020). ‘Clarifications’ translated by Adam Kotsko in An und für sich, available online.
Jung, C.G. (1958). Answer to Job. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Ray Mullan, thank you. Giorgio Agamben was also spot on w.r.t. Covid:
The first thing that the wave of panic that has paralyzed the country obviously shows is that our society no longer believes in anything but bare life
Apropos yours above, the following quote from Jung comes to mind:
‘God is not the summum bonum (supreme good) (Jung 1958:93), but instead, quoting the theologian Meister Eckhart, ‘alone in his Godhead […] not in a state of bliss, but must be born in the human soul’ where God’s antinomy that ‘tears him asunder into opposites and delivers him over to seemingly insoluble conflict’ (ibid. 156) must be resolved.’
References:
Agamben, G. (2020). ‘Clarifications’ translated by Adam Kotsko in An und für sich, available online.
Jung, C.G. (1958). Answer to Job. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
But the difference between ‘this time’ and previous revelations is that the murky deeds are made public much more swiftly and to a more independent audience.
I don’t doubt there are ‘bad apples’ and that other organisations that cover up reprehensible acts… but that is a PR argument and not the principled response expected of the RC Church.
There have been a number of articles in the USA recently which state that the Catholic Church has lost more followers than any other religion in recent years; Latinos have been migrating to evangelical Protestant sects. People are tired of the corruption & sex scandals in the Catholic organization that has been occurring for decades with no correction.
I know. I said ‘one of’. It’s a different type of damage, one that threatens the survival of the Church. One of the greatest scholars in the college of cardinals believes that Francis is the worst pope for 1,000 years – but, before that there were worse. Interesting that he thinks Bergoglio is more dangerous than Borgia; I think he’s referring to disintegration of Catholic belief itself. One detail not in the piece is that Rupnik, protected by Francis, is accused of trying to force a woman to drink his semen out of a chalice.
Just as telling is this line: “…spiritual leader of more than a billion people.”
Usually, apologists for the Catholic church like to quote platitudes such as “there’s always going to be a few bad apples” or suchlike. We’ve read this type of thing before in Comments.
I’d simply ask how anyone with any claim to a spiritual life via Catholicism can stand by and allow themselves to be associated with the venal, politicised debauchery that passes for their leadership.
For the sake of your own self-respect, renounce the Church, renounce the Vatican and all who prey within it. Go and form an alternative, but please don’t condescend to the rest of us. You have no right to do so, complicit with the systemic abuse that passes for “holiness”.
I should add, that all the expected downvotes in the world won’t change that truth.
The Church, the future pope wrote in 1956, is until the Last Judgment both the Church of Christ and the Church of the Antichrist: “The Antichrist belongs to the Church, grows in it and with it up to the great separation, which will be introduced by the ultimate revelation.”
Which was not by any means complacency on the part of young Ratzinger. By questioning the Church, as Agamben put it “Benedict XVI, who was at the head of the oldest existing institution in the West, called into question the meaning and legitimacy of all institutions”.
But the difference between ‘this time’ and previous revelations is that the murky deeds are made public much more swiftly and to a more independent audience.
I don’t doubt there are ‘bad apples’ and that other organisations that cover up reprehensible acts… but that is a PR argument and not the principled response expected of the RC Church.
There have been a number of articles in the USA recently which state that the Catholic Church has lost more followers than any other religion in recent years; Latinos have been migrating to evangelical Protestant sects. People are tired of the corruption & sex scandals in the Catholic organization that has been occurring for decades with no correction.
Last edited 11 months ago by Cathy Carron
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago
“And so began one of the darkest decades in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church.”
Seriously? You need to read Gibbon. Holy cow. Or how about “The Bad Popes” by E. R. Chamberlin? How about Pope Urban VI who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured. (I’m quoting Wikpedia’s entry on the latter book). Or John Paul XII who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife? I can’t recall the Pope that Gibbon described (my set is boxed up – I’m moving) as facing charges of murder, rape and piracy. This guy is totally an under achiever on the darkness scale over the long term. I’ll buy since the twentieth century maybe.
Last edited 1 year ago by Jeff Cunningham
Sharon Overy
1 year ago
Not being Catholic myself, I’d be grateful if somebody could please explain the reason for the Pope’s banning of the Latin Mass. I don’t understand his objection/disapproval.
Actually, it seems to be a far more vehement impulse of his, beyond ‘disapproval’ and maybe into the realms of disgust, repulsion, or even hatred.
I presume it’s a doctrinal/theological ‘problem’ rather than simply the language used.
The traditional mass isn’t the only thing Traditionalists are into, there is, and has been since Vatican 2, a force pushing the Church in a new direction. The traditional movement has been resisting this push and the Latin Mass is the symbol and core of that movement.
It doesn’t seem to be. The argument always was ‘we need to have mass in the vernacular because otherwise the young people will not come to mass’, and ‘the use of an archaic language which nobody understands means that people won’t understand what they are professing’. So, now that the young people _want_ the latin mass, the old argument is shown to be no longer true (if it ever was). So it is appears that internal politics is all (most of all?) it _was_ and _is_ about. Getting rid of the latin mass was the symbol of the (then) new and reform-progressive wing of Catholicism. Now the progressive wing is the party in power, and reform (aside from liturgical reform) seems as much needed as ever, continuing to ban the latin mass is a way to enforce obedience, and to punish those who aren’t in favour. And insisting on one’s right to say mass in whatever language you choose is a way to indicate that you aren’t willing to be obedient — about this and (presumably) about turning a blind eye to other things. But is is hard to know for sure because the whole organisation is so secretive, indeed relentlessly opposed to transparency.
Part of the truth, at any rate. The corner of the world I know best though has an alignment between those priests who want marriage for priests and latin for masses. So it is not as simple as ‘tradition’ vs ‘modernity’.
Part of the truth, at any rate. The corner of the world I know best though has an alignment between those priests who want marriage for priests and latin for masses. So it is not as simple as ‘tradition’ vs ‘modernity’.
Strictly speaking the Latin language is not the issue; it’s the ritual of the Mass used prior to 1969 when the current missal was proclaimed, allowing for use of the vernacular in addition to Latin (though the celebration of Mass in Latin in the new missal is not frequent). Since then, the traditional Latin Mass has become an ideological flashpoint in the Catholic Church.
It’s the age old division between progress (moving with the times) and tradition (passing on what is valuable). Ideally you’d have a nice balance between the two, but that isn’t the case.
The traditional mass isn’t the only thing Traditionalists are into, there is, and has been since Vatican 2, a force pushing the Church in a new direction. The traditional movement has been resisting this push and the Latin Mass is the symbol and core of that movement.
It doesn’t seem to be. The argument always was ‘we need to have mass in the vernacular because otherwise the young people will not come to mass’, and ‘the use of an archaic language which nobody understands means that people won’t understand what they are professing’. So, now that the young people _want_ the latin mass, the old argument is shown to be no longer true (if it ever was). So it is appears that internal politics is all (most of all?) it _was_ and _is_ about. Getting rid of the latin mass was the symbol of the (then) new and reform-progressive wing of Catholicism. Now the progressive wing is the party in power, and reform (aside from liturgical reform) seems as much needed as ever, continuing to ban the latin mass is a way to enforce obedience, and to punish those who aren’t in favour. And insisting on one’s right to say mass in whatever language you choose is a way to indicate that you aren’t willing to be obedient — about this and (presumably) about turning a blind eye to other things. But is is hard to know for sure because the whole organisation is so secretive, indeed relentlessly opposed to transparency.
Strictly speaking the Latin language is not the issue; it’s the ritual of the Mass used prior to 1969 when the current missal was proclaimed, allowing for use of the vernacular in addition to Latin (though the celebration of Mass in Latin in the new missal is not frequent). Since then, the traditional Latin Mass has become an ideological flashpoint in the Catholic Church.
It’s the age old division between progress (moving with the times) and tradition (passing on what is valuable). Ideally you’d have a nice balance between the two, but that isn’t the case.
In any case it must be said, the Latin Mass endures. You might be able to find one near you if you’re curious.
Sharon Overy
1 year ago
Not being Catholic myself, I’d be grateful if somebody could please explain the reason for the Pope’s banning of the Latin Mass. I don’t understand his objection/disapproval.
Actually, it seems to be a far more vehement impulse of his, beyond ‘disapproval’ and maybe into the realms of disgust, repulsion, or even hatred.
I presume it’s a doctrinal/theological ‘problem’ rather than simply the language used.
Michael McElwee
1 year ago
A distinction must be made between an evil person and systemic evil, or between private evil and public evil. “Evil as a policy.” That is what distinguishes Francis. He embraces the idea that “everything is permitted.” He rejects out of hand the idea of sin or crime. He is, that is, a “liberal” in the literal sense of the word. God save us!
It’s notable that he’s despised by English and American Catholics. Neither English nor American Catholicises are typical for the world’s Catholics. Too rich.
I can say from experience that animosity towards Pope Francis is by no means confined to English and American Catholics. I have witnessed it among many national groups.
I can say from experience that animosity towards Pope Francis is by no means confined to English and American Catholics. I have witnessed it among many national groups.
It’s notable that he’s despised by English and American Catholics. Neither English nor American Catholicises are typical for the world’s Catholics. Too rich.
Michael McElwee
1 year ago
A distinction must be made between an evil person and systemic evil, or between private evil and public evil. “Evil as a policy.” That is what distinguishes Francis. He embraces the idea that “everything is permitted.” He rejects out of hand the idea of sin or crime. He is, that is, a “liberal” in the literal sense of the word. God save us!
Emily Riedel
1 year ago
Interesting read, I had no idea the catholic church was failing so fast
It’s been failing since the start. Dreadful leaders, riven with disagreement, great scandals and wrongs.
I wonder why it’s staggered on for 2000 years while so many kingdoms, republics and empires have failed.
I can’t imagine why its founder still believes in it.
But then he believes in me.
That is of course one of the proofs of its sanctity, that no other institution could have survived its own worst efforts over so long a period. It was I think Napoleon who boasted that he could destroy the Catholic Church to which Cardinal Consalvi replied that he wouldn’t succeed where the clergy had been trying for over a thouand years.
That is of course one of the proofs of its sanctity, that no other institution could have survived its own worst efforts over so long a period. It was I think Napoleon who boasted that he could destroy the Catholic Church to which Cardinal Consalvi replied that he wouldn’t succeed where the clergy had been trying for over a thouand years.
It’s been failing since the start. Dreadful leaders, riven with disagreement, great scandals and wrongs.
I wonder why it’s staggered on for 2000 years while so many kingdoms, republics and empires have failed.
I can’t imagine why its founder still believes in it.
But then he believes in me.
Emily Riedel
1 year ago
Interesting read, I had no idea the catholic church was failing so fast
John Cartledge
1 year ago
Early Christians are said to have celebrated Mass in catacombs and basements to evade detection by their persecutors. That penultimate paragraph… history is definitely rhyming on this one.
John Cartledge
1 year ago
Early Christians are said to have celebrated Mass in catacombs and basements to evade detection by their persecutors. That penultimate paragraph… history is definitely rhyming on this one.
Jonathan Weil
1 year ago
Surprised that this doesn’t include his grotesque position on the war in Ukraine.
Interestingly, the leader of the Church in The Ukraine, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Schevchuk, is the only person in the hierarchy who has publicly faced Francis down in the 10 years under review.
He has consistently over the last 12 months told Francis what is acceptable to his flock and what is not in Vatican pronouncements and postures vis a vis both Putin and Russia.
And Francis has ‘meekly’ toed the line given to him.
Intriguingly, SS knows Francis of old since he, SS, was previously an auxiliary bishop in the Greek Catholic Church from January 2009 onwards, based in Buenos Aires when Francis was still ruling the roost there.
As for the rest of the hierarchy, a handful of US bishops and one from the Netherlands apart…..
Interestingly, the leader of the Church in The Ukraine, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Schevchuk, is the only person in the hierarchy who has publicly faced Francis down in the 10 years under review.
He has consistently over the last 12 months told Francis what is acceptable to his flock and what is not in Vatican pronouncements and postures vis a vis both Putin and Russia.
And Francis has ‘meekly’ toed the line given to him.
Intriguingly, SS knows Francis of old since he, SS, was previously an auxiliary bishop in the Greek Catholic Church from January 2009 onwards, based in Buenos Aires when Francis was still ruling the roost there.
As for the rest of the hierarchy, a handful of US bishops and one from the Netherlands apart…..
Last edited 1 year ago by Frank E Mattimoe
Jonathan Weil
1 year ago
Surprised that this doesn’t include his grotesque position on the war in Ukraine.
Dumetrius
1 year ago
The Beijing Pact occurred because China bought Grindr and downloaded & ‘de-anonymised’ the data, including something like 28 ‘pings’ coming from cardinals’ apartments in Vatican City.
Last edited 1 year ago by Dumetrius
Dumetrius
1 year ago
The Beijing Pact occurred because China bought Grindr and downloaded & ‘de-anonymised’ the data, including something like 28 ‘pings’ coming from cardinals’ apartments in Vatican City.
Last edited 1 year ago by Dumetrius
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
“The papacy, being the most harmful of all secret societies, ought to be abolished.”.
Has anything really changed since Garibaldi* said that more than a century ago?
“The papacy, being the most harmful of all secret societies, ought to be abolished.”.
Has anything really changed since Garibaldi* said that more than a century ago?
Benedict, Francis… Two faces of the same coin. The massive sexual abuse of minors by catholic clergy was spotlighted for the first time by the Boston Globe in 2002. In 2012 in Belgium, after the Vangheluwe scandal (bishop who abused two of his own nephews) of 2010, the Catholic institution invited presumed victims to come forward. 418 complaints were filed. Most of the abuse had taken place 30 years earlier. At the time, 89% of victims were under 18 and 21% under 10. This was just the tip of the iceberg. In the late 90s, a Catholic priest was accused of sexual abuse on minors in the Congo. He was simply transferred back to Belgium, where he continued. Interesting nugget: The Belgian Catholic Church has a very official price list – ranging from €2,000 to € 25,000 – for making financial agreements with victims. The Catholic Church is rotten, from top to bottom, and has been for decades.
Danielle Treille
1 year ago
Benedict, Francis… Two faces of the same coin. The massive sexual abuse of minors by catholic clergy was spotlighted for the first time by the Boston Globe in 2002. In 2012 in Belgium, after the Vangheluwe scandal (bishop who abused two of his own nephews) of 2010, the Catholic institution invited presumed victims to come forward. 418 complaints were filed. Most of the abuse had taken place 30 years earlier. At the time, 89% of victims were under 18 and 21% under 10. This was just the tip of the iceberg. In the late 90s, a Catholic priest was accused of sexual abuse on minors in the Congo. He was simply transferred back to Belgium, where he continued. Interesting nugget: The Belgian Catholic Church has a very official price list – ranging from €2,000 to € 25,000 – for making financial agreements with victims. The Catholic Church is rotten, from top to bottom, and has been for decades.
Jason Highley
1 year ago
I wish all of you would come home to the Reformation. Sola gracie, sola fide, sola scriptura.
Jason Highley
1 year ago
I wish all of you would come home to the Reformation. Sola gracie, sola fide, sola scriptura.
Arkadian X
1 year ago
Can’t say if what Damian is saying is 100% accurate or not, but that chip must really weigh on his shoulder.
Arkadian X
1 year ago
Can’t say if what Damian is saying is 100% accurate or not, but that chip must really weigh on his shoulder.
Simon Bonini
1 year ago
I enjoyed this piece. I am not a Catholic.
This pope & his senior clerics seem much the same as the prior ones when it comes to sexual abuse scandals. Protecting the Church and its officials is first wrapped in the excuse of Christian forgiveness.
As for the rest of it, the modernisation issues seem the same as all other Abrahamic religions have suffered through the millennia. Texts written 2,000 years ago have some fine concepts for life but a lot of odd rules and views that no longer appeal or make sense in modern societies. The writer seems to be a traditionalist or in other terms a fundamentalist/originalist. My view as a secularist is the traditional route will shrink the church further – no abortion, no contraception, no sex before marriage, Latin, no women, homosexuality is wrong. All deeply unappealing and silly.
Last edited 1 year ago by Simon Bonini
Simon Bonini
1 year ago
I enjoyed this piece. I am not a Catholic.
This pope & his senior clerics seem much the same as the prior ones when it comes to sexual abuse scandals. Protecting the Church and its officials is first wrapped in the excuse of Christian forgiveness.
As for the rest of it, the modernisation issues seem the same as all other Abrahamic religions have suffered through the millennia. Texts written 2,000 years ago have some fine concepts for life but a lot of odd rules and views that no longer appeal or make sense in modern societies. The writer seems to be a traditionalist or in other terms a fundamentalist/originalist. My view as a secularist is the traditional route will shrink the church further – no abortion, no contraception, no sex before marriage, Latin, no women, homosexuality is wrong. All deeply unappealing and silly.
Last edited 1 year ago by Simon Bonini
David Giles
1 year ago
“Faithful priests”? Really Damian. Up here in Liverpool these “faithful” priests refuse to concelebrate at the Mass.of Chrism with Archbishop McMahon because it is in the vernacular, refuse to concelebrate with Amy other diocesan priest in the vernacular. And their cult, sorry parishioners, insist they are in communion with me and that I, irony of ironies, should educate myself by attending the Latin Mass.
It’s not it; it’s them. Don’t get me wrong, I find the neo-catechumens equally intolerable. If the LYS is the traditional Church holding to the faith though, then the faith is lost!
Here in the US many bishops have gone on record as never having received the fabled questionnaire about the Latin Mass. most of the priests who say it are also pastors of regular parishes with several English Masses as well, our inner city parish has two Latin Masses and two English ones each weekend as well as two of each during the week. The Latin Masses are better attended. The money from the traditional families goes to support a parish that would otherwise be in financial straits. Many Latin masses are held in similar inner city churches, both because their architecture better suits it and they need the financial support. Our families are fully integrated into the parish life, and their is no weird holier than thou vibe between the Masses. If it works better for us to attend one of the English Masses we can do so with the knowledge that it will be equally reverent. It was the vulgarity of many vernacular liturgies that turned people away and toward the Latin Mass rather than any magical thinking about turning back the clock.
Here in the US many bishops have gone on record as never having received the fabled questionnaire about the Latin Mass. most of the priests who say it are also pastors of regular parishes with several English Masses as well, our inner city parish has two Latin Masses and two English ones each weekend as well as two of each during the week. The Latin Masses are better attended. The money from the traditional families goes to support a parish that would otherwise be in financial straits. Many Latin masses are held in similar inner city churches, both because their architecture better suits it and they need the financial support. Our families are fully integrated into the parish life, and their is no weird holier than thou vibe between the Masses. If it works better for us to attend one of the English Masses we can do so with the knowledge that it will be equally reverent. It was the vulgarity of many vernacular liturgies that turned people away and toward the Latin Mass rather than any magical thinking about turning back the clock.
David Giles
1 year ago
“Faithful priests”? Really Damian. Up here in Liverpool these “faithful” priests refuse to concelebrate at the Mass.of Chrism with Archbishop McMahon because it is in the vernacular, refuse to concelebrate with Amy other diocesan priest in the vernacular. And their cult, sorry parishioners, insist they are in communion with me and that I, irony of ironies, should educate myself by attending the Latin Mass.
It’s not it; it’s them. Don’t get me wrong, I find the neo-catechumens equally intolerable. If the LYS is the traditional Church holding to the faith though, then the faith is lost!
j watson
1 year ago
The Author forgets – the conclave is directed by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit moves within and guides God’s Pope. Maybe your God is therefore moving in mysterious ways?
So if this is your thing be aware the danger of only following the traits you prefer.
The Author forgets – the conclave is directed by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit moves within and guides God’s Pope. Maybe your God is therefore moving in mysterious ways?
So if this is your thing be aware the danger of only following the traits you prefer.
Billy Bob
1 year ago
You could just list all the Catholic Priests who aren’t nonces….would make for a very short article though.
Nah, it’s not my problem. I’m not stupid enough to leave my kids in the care of a group of people who time and again have been found to be hiding child abusers in their midst.
I’ve also got better things to do on a Sunday than listen to an organisation that’s richer than Croesus guilt trip me into giving them money under the guise of helping the poor.
Nah, it’s not my problem. I’m not stupid enough to leave my kids in the care of a group of people who time and again have been found to be hiding child abusers in their midst.
I’ve also got better things to do on a Sunday than listen to an organisation that’s richer than Croesus guilt trip me into giving them money under the guise of helping the poor.
St Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle clearly has a few, according to the reports of their ‘lockdown sex parties’.
Billy Bob
1 year ago
You could just list all the Catholic Priests who aren’t nonces….would make for a very short article though.
Gerald Gleeson
1 year ago
Fortunately, there is a different story to be told, or at least considered, in relation to this unhappy list of criticisms. Francis preaches mercy, and puts it into action; like Jesus, he’s not afraid to reach out to sinners. He tolerates a ‘messy church’ (unlike his predecessors who would have silenced their critics), I suspect because he knows there is no point in directing people not to say or even think what may be contrary to church teaching. Of course the German church has gone too far – but it will be pulled into line by the whole Church in Synod. The problem with the Tridentine mass is that – as the vast majority of bishops around the world told Francis – it has become divisive. The unity of the Roman rite a la Trent, requires one ordinary form of the mass (which can be celebrated in Latin if that’s appropriate). Yes, there are puzzles about what and how much Francis has actually known about what is going on, or has gone on, in relation to various financial and abuse cases. That’s a question for whoever is at the head of large bureaucracies the world over. More generally, the problem fundamentally is that some people, including Mr Thompson, just don’t like the Vatican II reforms that Francis is seeking to implement. If both Francis’ critics on the right and his supporters on the left actually sought to follow his lead in renewing the Church, our situation would be very different.
Thanks for giving us the different story Gerald. I don’t know if you’re right, but I note that none of the downvoters are coming up with a counter-argument
Oh come on! That’s intellectually and spiritually bankrupt. Child abuse can be tolerated so that… what? So that these people can keep their lifestyles by exercising mind control?
Here’s one: Yes, Francis reaches out to sinners, and by doing so he is Christ-like, but he seldom if ever says “sin no more.” Christ knew that human desire is at war with human reason. He also knew that desire ungoverned by reason is hell. Francis appears intent on taking desire’s side in this fight. It really is hard to imagine anything less Christ-like. Francis has embraced modernity. That is not the job of the Roman Pontif.
Oh come on! That’s intellectually and spiritually bankrupt. Child abuse can be tolerated so that… what? So that these people can keep their lifestyles by exercising mind control?
Here’s one: Yes, Francis reaches out to sinners, and by doing so he is Christ-like, but he seldom if ever says “sin no more.” Christ knew that human desire is at war with human reason. He also knew that desire ungoverned by reason is hell. Francis appears intent on taking desire’s side in this fight. It really is hard to imagine anything less Christ-like. Francis has embraced modernity. That is not the job of the Roman Pontif.
Again, I don’t know how accurate what you say is, but it is refreshing to read a different viewpoint from Damian’s.
Really do NOT understand the downvotes.
Your ‘different story’ is full of holes. There are indeed ‘puzzles’ about what Francis knew about the predatory and corrupt activities of various churchmen, but the biggest puzzle is why, in case after case, he refused to act on information he was certainly given, and even protected or promoted clerics whose guilt was not in doubt. You claim that the vast majority of the bishops told Francis that the Tridentine Mass had become divisive. Yet the survey on which this claim was based has never been made public, and the majority of bishops outside the Anglosphere didn’t have priests celebrating the old Mass. What does seem clear is that many of them regarded Traditionis Custodes as a centralising attack on their authority, and now that the bully Arthur Roche is forcing them to report what progress they’ve made in suppressing traditional worship they are even less well disposed towards it. The Mass has existed in various Western forms since before Trent – for example, the Ambrosian and Dominican Rites. If Francis were really tolerant of a ‘messy church’, why would he tear up Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter teaching that the older form of the Roman Rite is a valid alternative to the post-Vatican II form (but not the norm)? Incidentally, I don’t have a problem with the Second Vatican Council and haven’t attended a Tridentine Mass, with the exception of one weekday funeral, for five years. I do have a problem with the fantasy that the ‘Synod on Synodality’, whose consultations involved about one per cent of the global laity, represents anything other than a self-selecting faction in the Church.
The Synod on Synodality was open to the entire Catholic laity and Pope Francis was anxious that there should be the widest possible involvement. All Catholic dioceses in the world were asked to submit a contribution open to all members of the laity. Pope Francis even encouraged former Catholics to make a contribution. He extended the lay phase of the Synod, as he felt there was insufficient input from young people. I myself was involved in drafting a report (as could any lay Catholic) from an international group of ex-members of a Catholic movement – Focolare – which was seen by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, along with other similar movements, as the future of the Catholic Church. Our report, backed by numerous testimonies, shows that this is a cult-like organisation responsible for sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults (deliberately concealed), mind-control, extreme personality cult of the founder, the demand that all members should ‘have no personality’, arranged marriages, modern slavery, hidden teachings, enforced separation from family and friends, and decades of pastoral care which broke safeguards of the individual required by canon law. This report was published in full last month in Italy as part of the book La Chiesa Violenta (The Violent Church), Federico Tulli, Left Ed., 2023. The ‘new Catholic movements’ are one of the many forms of abuse which occurred, or in this case were recklessly encouraged by, the two popes who preceded Francis, abuses which he has been compelled to deal with. Take a look at John Paul and Benedict/Cardinal Ratzinger’s records on covering up abuse of minors. An important aspect of the Synod on Synodality is tackling abuse in the Church, which was the motivation behind the report I was involved in because I was a victim/survivor. Mr Thompson’s suggestion that there was a self-selecting faction is untrue as anyone can see from simple research into the Synod on Synodality. Dioceses such as Liverpool in the UK made a major effort in responding to the Synod. There was a cursory response from dioceses where the bishop was uncomfortable with the fearful prospect of handing over any authority to the laity – they were the only self-selecting faction involved.
The claims that the survey revealed concerns in the part of the bishops were exposed as false by Diane Mantegna. That allegation of ‘divisiveness’ was a nod to Catholics that they could demonise and attack their fellow Catholics. It was a political ruse to justify banning the Catholic Mass to Catholics who simply wanted to attend Mass. Even stronger evidence to this fact is that Cardinal Roche has had to force the bishops to cede their pastoral autonomy (derived from the Apostles by the way and not from Francis), in order to ban the liturgy that has been the centre of the Catholic faith for the whole of her history. Hmmm, could this be the real problem they have with the Latin Mass, I wonder?
The Synod on Synodality was open to the entire Catholic laity and Pope Francis was anxious that there should be the widest possible involvement. All Catholic dioceses in the world were asked to submit a contribution open to all members of the laity. Pope Francis even encouraged former Catholics to make a contribution. He extended the lay phase of the Synod, as he felt there was insufficient input from young people. I myself was involved in drafting a report (as could any lay Catholic) from an international group of ex-members of a Catholic movement – Focolare – which was seen by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, along with other similar movements, as the future of the Catholic Church. Our report, backed by numerous testimonies, shows that this is a cult-like organisation responsible for sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults (deliberately concealed), mind-control, extreme personality cult of the founder, the demand that all members should ‘have no personality’, arranged marriages, modern slavery, hidden teachings, enforced separation from family and friends, and decades of pastoral care which broke safeguards of the individual required by canon law. This report was published in full last month in Italy as part of the book La Chiesa Violenta (The Violent Church), Federico Tulli, Left Ed., 2023. The ‘new Catholic movements’ are one of the many forms of abuse which occurred, or in this case were recklessly encouraged by, the two popes who preceded Francis, abuses which he has been compelled to deal with. Take a look at John Paul and Benedict/Cardinal Ratzinger’s records on covering up abuse of minors. An important aspect of the Synod on Synodality is tackling abuse in the Church, which was the motivation behind the report I was involved in because I was a victim/survivor. Mr Thompson’s suggestion that there was a self-selecting faction is untrue as anyone can see from simple research into the Synod on Synodality. Dioceses such as Liverpool in the UK made a major effort in responding to the Synod. There was a cursory response from dioceses where the bishop was uncomfortable with the fearful prospect of handing over any authority to the laity – they were the only self-selecting faction involved.
The claims that the survey revealed concerns in the part of the bishops were exposed as false by Diane Mantegna. That allegation of ‘divisiveness’ was a nod to Catholics that they could demonise and attack their fellow Catholics. It was a political ruse to justify banning the Catholic Mass to Catholics who simply wanted to attend Mass. Even stronger evidence to this fact is that Cardinal Roche has had to force the bishops to cede their pastoral autonomy (derived from the Apostles by the way and not from Francis), in order to ban the liturgy that has been the centre of the Catholic faith for the whole of her history. Hmmm, could this be the real problem they have with the Latin Mass, I wonder?
There is a narrative about Francis and mercy, but I didn’t see it in action when there were a couple of Franciscan nuns tossed out of their convent in Amalfi while the Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik was treated with kid gloves. As egregious as the bureaucratised German church has been (and they are not uniformly representative of German Catholicism), they are not unique. If anything the Belgian Church has gone further and both Cardinals McElroy (San Diego) and Hoellerich (Luxembourg) have pushed the boat out, so I am looking forward to what the whole Church in Synod does about this. In regard to the so-called Tridentine Mass, the Council of Trent did not impose a universal liturgy on the Latin Catholic Church – it only held up the Roman Missal as a model, and allowed Mozarabic, Ambrosian, Dominican, Carmelite and other rites and uses continue, while the Roman Rite could be celebrated in Greek, Old Church Slavonic and other languages ( I am talking here about the Roman Mass, not the Eastern Divine Liturgy). Uniformity is very much an arrangement which follows the Second Vatican Council and if the traditional Latin Mass is ideologised, part of the reason for this is that it has been treated with contempt by the management classes within the Church.
If “unity” requires only one form, why did the Church openly depart from that form in 1965? The Church created disunity by departing for its own 2,000 year old form. And then insists on only one form. We must “unite” behind the new. It’s enough to make a school child laugh.
It was pretty much set by AD 5th century by Gelasius. It has been the Mass throughout the history of the Church and Pope Pius V in Quo Primum drew upon its Apostolic origins to reaffirm the liturgy in the face of the Protestant doctrines which had been examined by the Council of Trent in an 18 year study and which were declared ‘anathema.’
It was pretty much set by AD 5th century by Gelasius. It has been the Mass throughout the history of the Church and Pope Pius V in Quo Primum drew upon its Apostolic origins to reaffirm the liturgy in the face of the Protestant doctrines which had been examined by the Council of Trent in an 18 year study and which were declared ‘anathema.’
What ‘Vatican II reforms ‘ are you speaking of precisely? Where exactly, are the reforms that were articulated in Vatican ii rejected by Catholic people attending the Catholic Latin Mass? Please direct to the documents and explain how attending the Latin Mass is rejecting anything in any document that was agreed upon by the Magesterium in Vatican ii. And while you are about it, please show precisely how the Novus Ordo Mass was mandated by the Magesterium in Vatican ii.
You/he are not doing anything unique. The situation will follow the episcopal church which will probably cease to exist within 50. They have espoused this same rhetoric since the 90’s. It will take longer but it will be inevitable as the cc becomes irrelevant because you’ll end up standing for nothing except moral relativism.
Thanks for giving us the different story Gerald. I don’t know if you’re right, but I note that none of the downvoters are coming up with a counter-argument
Again, I don’t know how accurate what you say is, but it is refreshing to read a different viewpoint from Damian’s.
Really do NOT understand the downvotes.
Your ‘different story’ is full of holes. There are indeed ‘puzzles’ about what Francis knew about the predatory and corrupt activities of various churchmen, but the biggest puzzle is why, in case after case, he refused to act on information he was certainly given, and even protected or promoted clerics whose guilt was not in doubt. You claim that the vast majority of the bishops told Francis that the Tridentine Mass had become divisive. Yet the survey on which this claim was based has never been made public, and the majority of bishops outside the Anglosphere didn’t have priests celebrating the old Mass. What does seem clear is that many of them regarded Traditionis Custodes as a centralising attack on their authority, and now that the bully Arthur Roche is forcing them to report what progress they’ve made in suppressing traditional worship they are even less well disposed towards it. The Mass has existed in various Western forms since before Trent – for example, the Ambrosian and Dominican Rites. If Francis were really tolerant of a ‘messy church’, why would he tear up Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter teaching that the older form of the Roman Rite is a valid alternative to the post-Vatican II form (but not the norm)? Incidentally, I don’t have a problem with the Second Vatican Council and haven’t attended a Tridentine Mass, with the exception of one weekday funeral, for five years. I do have a problem with the fantasy that the ‘Synod on Synodality’, whose consultations involved about one per cent of the global laity, represents anything other than a self-selecting faction in the Church.
There is a narrative about Francis and mercy, but I didn’t see it in action when there were a couple of Franciscan nuns tossed out of their convent in Amalfi while the Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik was treated with kid gloves. As egregious as the bureaucratised German church has been (and they are not uniformly representative of German Catholicism), they are not unique. If anything the Belgian Church has gone further and both Cardinals McElroy (San Diego) and Hoellerich (Luxembourg) have pushed the boat out, so I am looking forward to what the whole Church in Synod does about this. In regard to the so-called Tridentine Mass, the Council of Trent did not impose a universal liturgy on the Latin Catholic Church – it only held up the Roman Missal as a model, and allowed Mozarabic, Ambrosian, Dominican, Carmelite and other rites and uses continue, while the Roman Rite could be celebrated in Greek, Old Church Slavonic and other languages ( I am talking here about the Roman Mass, not the Eastern Divine Liturgy). Uniformity is very much an arrangement which follows the Second Vatican Council and if the traditional Latin Mass is ideologised, part of the reason for this is that it has been treated with contempt by the management classes within the Church.
If “unity” requires only one form, why did the Church openly depart from that form in 1965? The Church created disunity by departing for its own 2,000 year old form. And then insists on only one form. We must “unite” behind the new. It’s enough to make a school child laugh.
What ‘Vatican II reforms ‘ are you speaking of precisely? Where exactly, are the reforms that were articulated in Vatican ii rejected by Catholic people attending the Catholic Latin Mass? Please direct to the documents and explain how attending the Latin Mass is rejecting anything in any document that was agreed upon by the Magesterium in Vatican ii. And while you are about it, please show precisely how the Novus Ordo Mass was mandated by the Magesterium in Vatican ii.
You/he are not doing anything unique. The situation will follow the episcopal church which will probably cease to exist within 50. They have espoused this same rhetoric since the 90’s. It will take longer but it will be inevitable as the cc becomes irrelevant because you’ll end up standing for nothing except moral relativism.
Gerald Gleeson
1 year ago
Fortunately, there is a different story to be told, or at least considered, in relation to this unhappy list of criticisms. Francis preaches mercy, and puts it into action; like Jesus, he’s not afraid to reach out to sinners. He tolerates a ‘messy church’ (unlike his predecessors who would have silenced their critics), I suspect because he knows there is no point in directing people not to say or even think what may be contrary to church teaching. Of course the German church has gone too far – but it will be pulled into line by the whole Church in Synod. The problem with the Tridentine mass is that – as the vast majority of bishops around the world told Francis – it has become divisive. The unity of the Roman rite a la Trent, requires one ordinary form of the mass (which can be celebrated in Latin if that’s appropriate). Yes, there are puzzles about what and how much Francis has actually known about what is going on, or has gone on, in relation to various financial and abuse cases. That’s a question for whoever is at the head of large bureaucracies the world over. More generally, the problem fundamentally is that some people, including Mr Thompson, just don’t like the Vatican II reforms that Francis is seeking to implement. If both Francis’ critics on the right and his supporters on the left actually sought to follow his lead in renewing the Church, our situation would be very different.
“And so began one of the darkest decades in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church.”
Seriously? You need to read Gibbon. Holy cow. Or how about “The Bad Popes” by E. R. Chamberlin? How about Pope Urban VI who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured. (I’m quoting Wikpedia’s entry on the latter book). Or John Paul XII who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife? I can’t recall the Pope that Gibbon described (my set is boxed up – I’m moving) as facing charges of murder, rape and piracy. This guy is totally an under achiever on the darkness scale over the long term. I’ll buy since the twentieth century maybe.
I know. I said ‘one of’. It’s a different type of damage, one that threatens the survival of the Church. One of the greatest scholars in the college of cardinals believes that Francis is the worst pope for 1,000 years – but, before that there were worse. Interesting that he thinks Bergoglio is more dangerous than Borgia; I think he’s referring to disintegration of Catholic belief itself. One detail not in the piece is that Rupnik, protected by Francis, is accused of trying to force a woman to drink his semen out of a chalice.
Piggybacking here,
Cardinal Vigano has just written a letter decrying the current attempt to empty out a group of cloistered traditional nuns in Italy. The mother superior was spit out into the world, without support. Ordinary Catholics have been unable to contribute to her financial support through their bank account.
Young nuns are invited to stay as their convent is turned into a hostel for migrants. Not such a safe position, as they are innocent and young. Which can leave the Vatican to repossess the property, which could, in one swoop, make up for their 50 million dollar deficit,
This pope wants to support a “church of the poor,” while not supporting their religious mandate. Praying nuns (who also worked to support themselves) have an important place in praying for all sinners.
If you are interested, Vigano’s letter is out there.There are a wealth of ideas left out, here. You can here it read aloud on Return to Tradition on ewe toob, released 12/3/23.
Cor Orans is the document which raises the bar on the viability of contemplative convents (with increases the numbers of finally professed nuns – those who have taken vows for life – required for a convent to be considered viable and also lengthens the time a nun is required to be in preparation for those final vows) and then shuts convents down in a process that resembles asset stripping. I am surprised Damian Thompson hasn’t mention the Secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Archbishop Jose Rodriguez Carballo who has a very interesting background given he was head of the Franciscan Order through a period of questionable financial management. This is another one of the stories of this pontificate.
Cor Orans is the document which raises the bar on the viability of contemplative convents (with increases the numbers of finally professed nuns – those who have taken vows for life – required for a convent to be considered viable and also lengthens the time a nun is required to be in preparation for those final vows) and then shuts convents down in a process that resembles asset stripping. I am surprised Damian Thompson hasn’t mention the Secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Archbishop Jose Rodriguez Carballo who has a very interesting background given he was head of the Franciscan Order through a period of questionable financial management. This is another one of the stories of this pontificate.
. . .”more dangerous than Borgia . . .”
I know that traditionally the Borgia Pope was considered to be pretty bad. But anyone interested in an alternative version of history should read “The Borgias”, by G. J. Meyer. An interesting and well-researched counter to the traditional narrative.
When Jorje Mario Bergoglio pronounced his ACCEPTO upon his election by the College of Cardinals to be the Successor to St. Peter on 13 March 2013, did he have the proper INTENTION to faithfully fulfill his pontifical duties & responsibilities to defend The Deposit of Faith & to Promote the Propagation of the Catholic religion? His subsequent actions patently manifest that he did not, but rather to destroy the Catholic Church &, in short, introduce a new religion founded upon the ruins of the same Church. Therefore, his defect of intention is an impediment that renders his election compromised.
I think in the age of psychology and psychiatry, Therapeutic Man, as Philip Reiff termed him, isn’t an easy fit in the pews of a church. People want techniques for various kinds of self-improvement, they don’t want to sit there passively and get talked at. No matter how erudite it is. A smaller proportion of them want to do DIY ritual.
It would not surprise me to see the Catholic church go the way of the Church of England. They will be done in by sex, particularly homosexuality, and their inability to manage it within their own ranks, while simultaneously having a teaching that just doesn’t hold water because of what we know from psychology & psychiatry.
And this at a time when archaeology seems to be confirming enormous amounts of detail in the gospels.
You wonder if just about all of it will be confirmed, about the same time as the Church finally dies.
Since the gospels disagree with each other on most things, it’s unlikely archeology is confirming much at all in the gospels.
The Gospels do not “disagree with each other on most things.” They present recognisable portraits of the same person from different perspectives.
Read John Dominic Crossan’s “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography” and you will see that the gospels are largely ‘just-so’ stories fabricated long after Jesus died. The different writers put things in different order, for example, and the language abruptly changes after the crucifixion in one Gospel, signifying a different author. Anyone who takes them at face value is kidding themselves.
Read John Dominic Crossan’s “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography” and you will see that the gospels are largely ‘just-so’ stories fabricated long after Jesus died. The different writers put things in different order, for example, and the language abruptly changes after the crucifixion in one Gospel, signifying a different author. Anyone who takes them at face value is kidding themselves.
The Gospels do not “disagree with each other on most things.” They present recognisable portraits of the same person from different perspectives.
Since the gospels disagree with each other on most things, it’s unlikely archeology is confirming much at all in the gospels.
The Church of Rome is a humanly created institution, run by the antiChrist* – how can anyone be surprised at the evil that it does?
*He even gives himself that title……
Upvoted just for coming BTL and debating with commenters. If only all writers had such fortitude.
Piggybacking here,
Cardinal Vigano has just written a letter decrying the current attempt to empty out a group of cloistered traditional nuns in Italy. The mother superior was spit out into the world, without support. Ordinary Catholics have been unable to contribute to her financial support through their bank account.
Young nuns are invited to stay as their convent is turned into a hostel for migrants. Not such a safe position, as they are innocent and young. Which can leave the Vatican to repossess the property, which could, in one swoop, make up for their 50 million dollar deficit,
This pope wants to support a “church of the poor,” while not supporting their religious mandate. Praying nuns (who also worked to support themselves) have an important place in praying for all sinners.
If you are interested, Vigano’s letter is out there.There are a wealth of ideas left out, here. You can here it read aloud on Return to Tradition on ewe toob, released 12/3/23.
. . .”more dangerous than Borgia . . .”
I know that traditionally the Borgia Pope was considered to be pretty bad. But anyone interested in an alternative version of history should read “The Borgias”, by G. J. Meyer. An interesting and well-researched counter to the traditional narrative.
When Jorje Mario Bergoglio pronounced his ACCEPTO upon his election by the College of Cardinals to be the Successor to St. Peter on 13 March 2013, did he have the proper INTENTION to faithfully fulfill his pontifical duties & responsibilities to defend The Deposit of Faith & to Promote the Propagation of the Catholic religion? His subsequent actions patently manifest that he did not, but rather to destroy the Catholic Church &, in short, introduce a new religion founded upon the ruins of the same Church. Therefore, his defect of intention is an impediment that renders his election compromised.
I think in the age of psychology and psychiatry, Therapeutic Man, as Philip Reiff termed him, isn’t an easy fit in the pews of a church. People want techniques for various kinds of self-improvement, they don’t want to sit there passively and get talked at. No matter how erudite it is. A smaller proportion of them want to do DIY ritual.
It would not surprise me to see the Catholic church go the way of the Church of England. They will be done in by sex, particularly homosexuality, and their inability to manage it within their own ranks, while simultaneously having a teaching that just doesn’t hold water because of what we know from psychology & psychiatry.
And this at a time when archaeology seems to be confirming enormous amounts of detail in the gospels.
You wonder if just about all of it will be confirmed, about the same time as the Church finally dies.
The Church of Rome is a humanly created institution, run by the antiChrist* – how can anyone be surprised at the evil that it does?
*He even gives himself that title……
Upvoted just for coming BTL and debating with commenters. If only all writers had such fortitude.
Just as telling is this line:
“…spiritual leader of more than a billion people.”
Usually, apologists for the Catholic church like to quote platitudes such as “there’s always going to be a few bad apples” or suchlike. We’ve read this type of thing before in Comments.
I’d simply ask how anyone with any claim to a spiritual life via Catholicism can stand by and allow themselves to be associated with the venal, politicised debauchery that passes for their leadership.
For the sake of your own self-respect, renounce the Church, renounce the Vatican and all who prey within it. Go and form an alternative, but please don’t condescend to the rest of us. You have no right to do so, complicit with the systemic abuse that passes for “holiness”.
I should add, that all the expected downvotes in the world won’t change that truth.
Look how well that turned out: the one–man–and–his–bible schtick of sola fides only served to dilute the universality of the Christian faith and solved nothing of the rot that ultimately affects all worldly institutions.
No, it is all to easy to throw up one’s hands and head for the hills, however deeply we have been betrayed from within our own community. For every one of these monsters, there are scores of good men and women who have devoted their lives to the service of God, the Church and Her communion the World over — a service very often extended to those of other faiths. To desert Her now would amount only to a further betrayal of our faith, the faith of our brethren and the sincere vocation of those good people who stand today in the firing line of such ridicule and contempt.
Far better to stay and have the resolution to fight for our Church — both the corruption within and without — and I would extend that challenge to all our institutions for I see nothing to be gained by allowing government, academia, the military, medicine, the sciences and that, most important of all of them, the family fall prey to the corrupt influence of ideologues, thieves and liars.
Might I suggest that there is something in the structure of a huge, massively change resistant, essentially male only organisation that also believes in the infallibility of its leader (a concept invented by men only in the latter haf of the nineteenth century) that makes the sort of “letting the side down” behaviour detailed in the article inevitable ?
If that is the case, the structural reform – probably starting out from smaller, less centralised organisations is surely the way forward.
I have no dog in this fight (not a member of any religious group).
Note: there’s another organisation with a self-proclaimed infallible leader who seems to also believe he’s on a mission from God (and has a corrupt Orthodox church backing him up) who’s not doing very well right now.
So there’s another one for the to do list – scrap the “our leader is infallible” nonsense.
Papal authority is meant to reinforce Catechesis and so help prevent us falling into error. Nothing this or any pope says is to be accepted as an infallible truth apart from statements made on matters of morals or faith ex cathedra, which is to say “from the seat [of Peter]”. It was precisely defined as dogma at the first Vatican Council in 1870:
Put simply, the Pope is only infallible when stating a set point of Catholic teaching. We don’t hear ex cathedra statements from him gabbing with journalists at the back of a ’plane or cussing in front of seminarians. These are opinions.
It is my opinion that the Church would be in far better condition if the current Pope were to exercise his authority in this respect. Modern popes have been pretty good at this until Francis — darling of progressivism as he is — who, being unable to make infallible statements in support of LGBTQWERTY or birth control and abortion issues (as a few for–instances) seems content to sit back and let the anomie of anything goes force change out of sheer indiscipline and dissension. Which is why so many Roman Catholics hold him in such utter contempt.
So what is being done? It’s not enough to just hold your noses at the current incumbent in the role, there’s a systemic issue here which has been outlined by Peter B.
If the congregation are simply content to wait for Francis to die or resign, the chances are the next one in line will do nothing either to stop the horrific abuse being perpetrated by the church leaders. Those who do nothing are complicit. You refer to a fight be waged. What fight is being put up against all this? How? The good works that you say are being carried out are being done so under the auspices of an utterly contemptible organisation.
I do not think that either of you or Peter B have outlined anything at all but the same–old, same–old “that’s not it, let’s dump it and do something else” which has not worked since the Reformation because neither “that” nor the “something else” ever works out as “it” for everyone.
The Church is the ordinary people who are in it and getting on with it every day.
Unfortunately, I do not have the spreadsheets categorically outlining their efforts to hand but if a struggle–session about systemic issues is what you are after, I suggest you try the Marxists down the hall. They love that nonsense.
I do not think that either of you or Peter B have outlined anything at all but the same–old, same–old “that’s not it, let’s dump it and do something else” which has not worked since the Reformation because neither “that” nor the “something else” ever works out as “it” for everyone.
The Church is the ordinary people who are in it and getting on with it every day.
Unfortunately, I do not have the spreadsheets categorically outlining their efforts to hand but if a struggle–session about systemic issues is what you are after, I suggest you try the Marxists down the hall. They love that nonsense.
It’s utter nonsense. The first infallible statement made by a pope was to declare that he could make infallible statements – if people can’t spot the problem with that then they’re blinder than blind.
So what is being done? It’s not enough to just hold your noses at the current incumbent in the role, there’s a systemic issue here which has been outlined by Peter B.
If the congregation are simply content to wait for Francis to die or resign, the chances are the next one in line will do nothing either to stop the horrific abuse being perpetrated by the church leaders. Those who do nothing are complicit. You refer to a fight be waged. What fight is being put up against all this? How? The good works that you say are being carried out are being done so under the auspices of an utterly contemptible organisation.
It’s utter nonsense. The first infallible statement made by a pope was to declare that he could make infallible statements – if people can’t spot the problem with that then they’re blinder than blind.
Both the Church and the American empire are being destroyed by their past and present leaders. What’s not to like about either of these developments?
Both institutions are empires, and rely upon the same terrorist tactics force the surrender of others to their respective orthodoxies. Both are built on the model of the Sicilian mafia: do what we say if you expect to be safe and secure. Beware the wrath of god and the sanctions he can wield.
Both are predicated upon time honored false information: gods that do not exist, places of eternal torment or bliss that do not exist, and values that are mouthed but rarely practiced.
Three cheers! As Diderot has said: Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Did you forget the Russian empire there ? That’ll be the first domino to fall.
You’ve shared with us progressive orthodoxy: “The midwife of History is violence.”
If America is so patently evil, where on the evil scale would you place Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea?
Equally evil, in different ways. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Equal.
Equally evil, in different ways. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Equal.
Did you forget the Russian empire there ? That’ll be the first domino to fall.
You’ve shared with us progressive orthodoxy: “The midwife of History is violence.”
If America is so patently evil, where on the evil scale would you place Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea?
That the Church’s priests are all male is a point in its favor. It is naive to think that adding women will necessarily “improve” this or that organization. Your suggestion would lead to ruin for what ought to be obvious reasons.
If women are permitted to become priests, men will no longer see a reason to make the great sacrifices–different for men than for women–required to become a holy priest. We will attract a different sort of man–not the disciplined good shepherd who lays down his life for his flock, in masculine sacrifice. No, we will become overly concerned with “feelings” to the detriment of the flock. We will risk becoming a lesbian “social justice” church, like the Episcopalians.
Which is to say nothing of the fact that in the first place, God gives different roles to men and women; to authorize women priests would be to claim we know better than God.
The Pope is not “self-proclaimed infallible.”
I made no direct comment on whether it was right or wrong for the catholic church to be all male. Only on the fact that such a structure – in combination with the other points I noted – almost certainly leads to some of the problems we are seeing.
You appear to be stating that there is a risk of the church attracting the “wrong sort of man” (I paraphrase here) if women are allowed to join the management structure of the catholic church. Many would equally state that the catholic church is already successfully attracting many of the “wrong sort of man” – in many ways because it is an all male organisation. When you read about decades of child abuse and institutionalised cover ups (going right to the top of the organisation) it’s hard to eliminate that thought.
Correct, that is indeed what I am saying.
Though to clarify: specifically for positions requiring priesthood. Women are in fact allowed to join the management structure of the Church in certain capacities.
There is a lot of research into the ‘wrong sort of male’ and the sexual abuse scandals are the direct result of networks instituted in certain of the seminaries of exactly these men. And it is pretty accurately placed at between the 1960’s/70’s/80’s and finishing to some extent in the 1990’s. However, there are still scandals being revealed (the North American Seminary in Rome for example). The very fact that these are networks, that the scandals are men with men or men with young boys shows that your simplistic solution of ‘more women’ is laughable. There is a systemic problem here but it is the ‘problem that dare not speak its name’. I imagine that you would not be interested to read up on it (although more than ready to tell us how to fix it), but studies such as the John Jay Report, books such as ‘Goodbye, Good men’ are quite in-depth studies of the situation that arose as a result of the laxity accompanying the 1960’s. You might note the situation of the plummeting vocations that occurred as the direct result of the reluctance of men who had a genuine vocation and who would have made exemplary priests to join institutions with these oppressive hierarchies imposing progressive ‘ tolerance ’. The terms ‘rigid’ and ‘orthodox’ were used to exclude these good vocations and the solution put forward by those whose policies had resulted in a dearth of vocations was – women priests!
6 of one 1/2 dozen of the other…
Correct, that is indeed what I am saying.
Though to clarify: specifically for positions requiring priesthood. Women are in fact allowed to join the management structure of the Church in certain capacities.
There is a lot of research into the ‘wrong sort of male’ and the sexual abuse scandals are the direct result of networks instituted in certain of the seminaries of exactly these men. And it is pretty accurately placed at between the 1960’s/70’s/80’s and finishing to some extent in the 1990’s. However, there are still scandals being revealed (the North American Seminary in Rome for example). The very fact that these are networks, that the scandals are men with men or men with young boys shows that your simplistic solution of ‘more women’ is laughable. There is a systemic problem here but it is the ‘problem that dare not speak its name’. I imagine that you would not be interested to read up on it (although more than ready to tell us how to fix it), but studies such as the John Jay Report, books such as ‘Goodbye, Good men’ are quite in-depth studies of the situation that arose as a result of the laxity accompanying the 1960’s. You might note the situation of the plummeting vocations that occurred as the direct result of the reluctance of men who had a genuine vocation and who would have made exemplary priests to join institutions with these oppressive hierarchies imposing progressive ‘ tolerance ’. The terms ‘rigid’ and ‘orthodox’ were used to exclude these good vocations and the solution put forward by those whose policies had resulted in a dearth of vocations was – women priests!
6 of one 1/2 dozen of the other…
Hear hear – esp re all the ‘feelings’ crap
yes your church is certainly famous for its “disciplined good shepherds”. But perhaps the abused sheep feel differently.
The reality of the abuse scandal and the devestation to the victims lives is truly unacceptable.
It is however, such a small minded argument to glibly accuse all Priests and clerics across the globe of failing their “flocks” and to say all “flocks” feel the same. Human history is filled with examples of bad apples spoiling it for the rest. Does your limited argument mean all teachers are equally abusers, all policemen in the Met are rapists and all journalists drunken sots with no morals? While everyone who works for the BBC invades personal freedoms ? Using your logic , Peter Sutcliffe who had curly hair means by default all northern men with curly hair are therefore mass rapists?
Try reading the lives of the saints or the martyrs, who freely and devotedly gave their lives for the faith and their sheep. There are 10s of thousands of examples of a Christian life lived through sacrifice for others, with billions of faithful attending Church in their search for Christ in a sick world.
The reality of the abuse scandal and the devestation to the victims lives is truly unacceptable.
It is however, such a small minded argument to glibly accuse all Priests and clerics across the globe of failing their “flocks” and to say all “flocks” feel the same. Human history is filled with examples of bad apples spoiling it for the rest. Does your limited argument mean all teachers are equally abusers, all policemen in the Met are rapists and all journalists drunken sots with no morals? While everyone who works for the BBC invades personal freedoms ? Using your logic , Peter Sutcliffe who had curly hair means by default all northern men with curly hair are therefore mass rapists?
Try reading the lives of the saints or the martyrs, who freely and devotedly gave their lives for the faith and their sheep. There are 10s of thousands of examples of a Christian life lived through sacrifice for others, with billions of faithful attending Church in their search for Christ in a sick world.
As an orthodox Anglican who is disgusted and anguished by what happened with my denom, I wish I could vote this comment a thousand times up.
I made no direct comment on whether it was right or wrong for the catholic church to be all male. Only on the fact that such a structure – in combination with the other points I noted – almost certainly leads to some of the problems we are seeing.
You appear to be stating that there is a risk of the church attracting the “wrong sort of man” (I paraphrase here) if women are allowed to join the management structure of the catholic church. Many would equally state that the catholic church is already successfully attracting many of the “wrong sort of man” – in many ways because it is an all male organisation. When you read about decades of child abuse and institutionalised cover ups (going right to the top of the organisation) it’s hard to eliminate that thought.
Hear hear – esp re all the ‘feelings’ crap
yes your church is certainly famous for its “disciplined good shepherds”. But perhaps the abused sheep feel differently.
As an orthodox Anglican who is disgusted and anguished by what happened with my denom, I wish I could vote this comment a thousand times up.
I’m surprised by the downvotes on this. Seems very obviously true to me. Big status hierarchies always tend to spread at the limits and corruption at the top. It’s human nature. No balance without checks. A Pope has no checks. (Please, don’t say “God”).
You say that you are not a member of any religious group as though that gives you impartiality and entitles you to comment. Not being a member of a religious group is not an impartial position and it does not mean that you are free from bias – that is disingenuous or self-deluding. Your observations about what the Church needs are, with respect, betraying an overwhelming arrogance. First, you could never appreciate that the Catholic Church is not a corporation or a man-made institution. The very fact that you would scoff and sneer at this disentitles you to comment. It is a church that was founded by Christ Himself and is His living body in earth. This, you would also sneer at. The Catholic Church is not ‘essentially a male-only organisation’. I would advise you to, not only spend some time in Catholic institutions, but to analyse the modern position of women and compare the respect extended to women as a direct result of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the position of women in pagan societies. You might consider looking at female saints such as Catherine of Alexandria and Joan of Arc and ask whether these women would have been given a hearing in Puritan England. Infallibility was defined and articulated in the nineteenth century but has been applied since the time of St Peter (& by the way, you, by your sweeping dismissal, obviously do not understand what infallibility is). The pope is as much bound by infallibility as empowered. I assume that you measure the faults of the Catholic position on women by the predictable allegation that the Catholic Church does not have a female ‘priesthood’.
The Catholic Church is a hierarchical structure and it is 2,000 years old. It is not man-made and cannot reconfigure itself according to passing fashions as many recently-constructed religions can. We have male priests because the Church was formed by Christ as the ‘new Covenant’. The priesthood of the old covenant, the Jewish priesthood, was the Levitical priesthood. The Levites were priests who sacrificed in the Jewish Temple. Christ is the Sacrifice of the new covenant, and, as He predicted, the Jewish Temple was completely destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, with not one stone standing upon another. The Jewish faith was reconfigured over the next 400 years as a rabbinical religion whereby the synagogues formed the centre of the faith, as temple worship was impossible. The Catholic priest stands in the shoes of Christ, the high priest in the sacrifice that is in the place of the ancient Jewish temple. That long explanation about why we have male priests (instead of female MC’s) has been made necessary because you, who are not interested enough to study a faith you don’t believe in, nevertheless seem to feel qualified to comment on it, simply because it does not comply with an arbitrary standard you feel should be imposed on every institution.
There are many criticisms of Catholicism one can make-Damian Thompson has made cogent and constructive criticism in this article. However, if you feel a need to criticise the Catholic faith, I would request that you actually study it. You might start with the fact that some of the most brilliant people in the history of the world have been true faithful Catholics and perhaps, with a little humility, you might wonder if perhaps these brilliant minds might have recognised something there that you have not bothered to discover.
Papal authority is meant to reinforce Catechesis and so help prevent us falling into error. Nothing this or any pope says is to be accepted as an infallible truth apart from statements made on matters of morals or faith ex cathedra, which is to say “from the seat [of Peter]”. It was precisely defined as dogma at the first Vatican Council in 1870:
Put simply, the Pope is only infallible when stating a set point of Catholic teaching. We don’t hear ex cathedra statements from him gabbing with journalists at the back of a ’plane or cussing in front of seminarians. These are opinions.
It is my opinion that the Church would be in far better condition if the current Pope were to exercise his authority in this respect. Modern popes have been pretty good at this until Francis — darling of progressivism as he is — who, being unable to make infallible statements in support of LGBTQWERTY or birth control and abortion issues (as a few for–instances) seems content to sit back and let the anomie of anything goes force change out of sheer indiscipline and dissension. Which is why so many Roman Catholics hold him in such utter contempt.
Both the Church and the American empire are being destroyed by their past and present leaders. What’s not to like about either of these developments?
Both institutions are empires, and rely upon the same terrorist tactics force the surrender of others to their respective orthodoxies. Both are built on the model of the Sicilian mafia: do what we say if you expect to be safe and secure. Beware the wrath of god and the sanctions he can wield.
Both are predicated upon time honored false information: gods that do not exist, places of eternal torment or bliss that do not exist, and values that are mouthed but rarely practiced.
Three cheers! As Diderot has said: Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
That the Church’s priests are all male is a point in its favor. It is naive to think that adding women will necessarily “improve” this or that organization. Your suggestion would lead to ruin for what ought to be obvious reasons.
If women are permitted to become priests, men will no longer see a reason to make the great sacrifices–different for men than for women–required to become a holy priest. We will attract a different sort of man–not the disciplined good shepherd who lays down his life for his flock, in masculine sacrifice. No, we will become overly concerned with “feelings” to the detriment of the flock. We will risk becoming a lesbian “social justice” church, like the Episcopalians.
Which is to say nothing of the fact that in the first place, God gives different roles to men and women; to authorize women priests would be to claim we know better than God.
The Pope is not “self-proclaimed infallible.”
I’m surprised by the downvotes on this. Seems very obviously true to me. Big status hierarchies always tend to spread at the limits and corruption at the top. It’s human nature. No balance without checks. A Pope has no checks. (Please, don’t say “God”).
You say that you are not a member of any religious group as though that gives you impartiality and entitles you to comment. Not being a member of a religious group is not an impartial position and it does not mean that you are free from bias – that is disingenuous or self-deluding. Your observations about what the Church needs are, with respect, betraying an overwhelming arrogance. First, you could never appreciate that the Catholic Church is not a corporation or a man-made institution. The very fact that you would scoff and sneer at this disentitles you to comment. It is a church that was founded by Christ Himself and is His living body in earth. This, you would also sneer at. The Catholic Church is not ‘essentially a male-only organisation’. I would advise you to, not only spend some time in Catholic institutions, but to analyse the modern position of women and compare the respect extended to women as a direct result of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the position of women in pagan societies. You might consider looking at female saints such as Catherine of Alexandria and Joan of Arc and ask whether these women would have been given a hearing in Puritan England. Infallibility was defined and articulated in the nineteenth century but has been applied since the time of St Peter (& by the way, you, by your sweeping dismissal, obviously do not understand what infallibility is). The pope is as much bound by infallibility as empowered. I assume that you measure the faults of the Catholic position on women by the predictable allegation that the Catholic Church does not have a female ‘priesthood’.
The Catholic Church is a hierarchical structure and it is 2,000 years old. It is not man-made and cannot reconfigure itself according to passing fashions as many recently-constructed religions can. We have male priests because the Church was formed by Christ as the ‘new Covenant’. The priesthood of the old covenant, the Jewish priesthood, was the Levitical priesthood. The Levites were priests who sacrificed in the Jewish Temple. Christ is the Sacrifice of the new covenant, and, as He predicted, the Jewish Temple was completely destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, with not one stone standing upon another. The Jewish faith was reconfigured over the next 400 years as a rabbinical religion whereby the synagogues formed the centre of the faith, as temple worship was impossible. The Catholic priest stands in the shoes of Christ, the high priest in the sacrifice that is in the place of the ancient Jewish temple. That long explanation about why we have male priests (instead of female MC’s) has been made necessary because you, who are not interested enough to study a faith you don’t believe in, nevertheless seem to feel qualified to comment on it, simply because it does not comply with an arbitrary standard you feel should be imposed on every institution.
There are many criticisms of Catholicism one can make-Damian Thompson has made cogent and constructive criticism in this article. However, if you feel a need to criticise the Catholic faith, I would request that you actually study it. You might start with the fact that some of the most brilliant people in the history of the world have been true faithful Catholics and perhaps, with a little humility, you might wonder if perhaps these brilliant minds might have recognised something there that you have not bothered to discover.
Might I suggest that there is something in the structure of a huge, massively change resistant, essentially male only organisation that also believes in the infallibility of its leader (a concept invented by men only in the latter haf of the nineteenth century) that makes the sort of “letting the side down” behaviour detailed in the article inevitable ?
If that is the case, the structural reform – probably starting out from smaller, less centralised organisations is surely the way forward.
I have no dog in this fight (not a member of any religious group).
Note: there’s another organisation with a self-proclaimed infallible leader who seems to also believe he’s on a mission from God (and has a corrupt Orthodox church backing him up) who’s not doing very well right now.
So there’s another one for the to do list – scrap the “our leader is infallible” nonsense.
Have an upvote.
I can’t understand how anyone familiar with the history of the Catholic Church could assert that its leadership has a great record of demonstrating “moral authority”. As other commentators here have said, the current failure to practice what they preach is not unique and is far from the historical low watermark.
Fair point. Moral authority hasn’t always been the CC’s strongpoint, the issue now is that its doctrinal authority is so muddied. The two should go hand in hand of course, but don’t.
The Church’s inspiration to countless people who willingly accept all manner of sacrifice is demonstration of its moral authority. It is not easy to live differently but Catholics everywhere continue to do it. Even if they disagree with our current Pope.
Pagans who preach the gospel of moral subjectivity with such “authority” are rarely to be found making such sacrifices. This is proof of pagan void of moral authority.
Who are these “pagans” ? Who said anything about “moral subjectivity” ? I just don’t see how your comment relates to mine.
It relates by pointing out that regardless of the debate of whether and to what extent certain Church leaders have demonstrated moral authority, the Church itself, maintains moral authority, as evidenced by the actions of so many Catholics (imperfect themselves).
Pagans practice any religion other than Christianity, Judaism or Islam; or none. Maybe you’re a pagan, maybe not, I don’t know; but any morality other than that revealed by God–any “man-made” morality–is subjective in nature.
So perhaps it relates, or not, but in way case it is worthwhile at this time to reiterate the alternative to objective morality: anything is permissible, which takes hold to a far greater extent in society (is even praised) than in the Church leadership, where admittedly some have failed.
It relates by pointing out that regardless of the debate of whether and to what extent certain Church leaders have demonstrated moral authority, the Church itself, maintains moral authority, as evidenced by the actions of so many Catholics (imperfect themselves).
Pagans practice any religion other than Christianity, Judaism or Islam; or none. Maybe you’re a pagan, maybe not, I don’t know; but any morality other than that revealed by God–any “man-made” morality–is subjective in nature.
So perhaps it relates, or not, but in way case it is worthwhile at this time to reiterate the alternative to objective morality: anything is permissible, which takes hold to a far greater extent in society (is even praised) than in the Church leadership, where admittedly some have failed.
Who are these “pagans” ? Who said anything about “moral subjectivity” ? I just don’t see how your comment relates to mine.
Fair point. Moral authority hasn’t always been the CC’s strongpoint, the issue now is that its doctrinal authority is so muddied. The two should go hand in hand of course, but don’t.
The Church’s inspiration to countless people who willingly accept all manner of sacrifice is demonstration of its moral authority. It is not easy to live differently but Catholics everywhere continue to do it. Even if they disagree with our current Pope.
Pagans who preach the gospel of moral subjectivity with such “authority” are rarely to be found making such sacrifices. This is proof of pagan void of moral authority.
Catholics believe Christ is the way, the truth and the life. Catholics follow him. Not the Popes, bishops and priests. Since the beginning some of them have been shockers.
Indeed given the knaves, wastrels, incompetents, abusers, murderers and the rest, supposed to be the Church’s servants, it’s amazing it’s lasted so long. One would think it would long since have collapsed like all the kingdoms, republics and organisations it’s seen in 2000 years.
Why is that, do you think?
I am saddened by Thompson’s list of the failures of Pope Francis and some cardinals. If true, they’re doing great damage and must be strongly called to task.
The Church does claim to be one for the Elect, but for sinners.
The statement that “Christ is the way, the truth and the life” is essentially meaningless dogma. It’s precisely this type of mind control that allows the Catholic Church to carry out the abuse, which failure to address by those who profess to be Catholics means they’re complicit.
What you refer to is Christianity. Catholicism is an organisation of choice.
I used Christ’s words describing himself as the way, the truth and the life.
You disagree with that which you are free to do.
There is nothing in his teachings that allows abuse. Indeed, he very strongly condemns it.
I said that any abusers must be strongly called to task.
As you say, one can choose Catholicism or not.
I accept that.
It should also be accepted that the Catholic Church uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit its congregation.
Those who follow Christ out of a moral and/or spiritual imperative should distance themselves from the church. It may well be beyond reform from within, and certainly it’s accumulated riches are an abomination to it’s supposed ministry. It’s that which corrupts, along with power over other people.
“The Catholic Church uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit its congregation”
This seems to imply that all its laity are merely passive pew sitters, unthinking, stupid or gullible.
If so, you need to provide evidence of that. And who uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit laity. And what they say.
The Church is a church of sinners. It has been since the beginning. It will be in need of reform until the end of time.
As to the Church’s wealth: some of it was made to God’s glory, some to share and some – shamefully- misspent. There are currently issues that must be addressed.
BTW, the Catholic Church is the largest provider of non-governmental health care in the world..CAFOD, the English & Welsh Catholic development agency, supports world wide projects, regardless of religion and culture.
Your concept of “sinners” is unsupportable in the context of children and even adults being exploited to gratify the sexual desires of those who – with astonishing hypocrisy – seek to tell others how their sex lives should be conducted.
On a par with Asian Muslim grooming gangs, in fact.
No amount of theological rhetoric or expiation through other aspects of the church can overcome that basic principle. It’s rotten to its very foundations. I fully appreciate you don’t want to hear this – but i’m not the one trying to use nefarious concepts such as “sinners” to excuse horrendous abuse.
I make and have made absolutely no excuse for child abuse. Both as a parishioner and professionally I’ve come across abusers. I found them sickening and their crimes revolting.
It’s for them to expiate their crimes.
Not other people.
(You say “Asian” Muslim gangs. Courteously, precise language is important in these matters. I’m sure you don’t mean, say, Turkey and Indonesia, both Asian countries with Muslim majority populations.)
The Catholic Church has been subjected to sexual scandals as you are very quick to point out and as Damian Thompson’s article demonstrates. As the article shows, these sexual abuses have been, and cannot persist, unless enabled from the top. As we are aware, there have been hierarchies by which abuses are covered up and which enable further abuse. And these hierarchies are obviously present in the Vatican and enabled by the highest authority. That is, we are faced with a pope who enables and covers up and who (unlike Benedict, who did act), is safe from exposure by any of the main stream media. That fact, of itself, should raise some questions in your mind and alert you to the fact that the issue is not as simplistic as you paint it.
The fact that they are networks and distinguishable from mere transgressors is significant because of the political nature of the people who are abusing, not only the vulnerable but also the institutions. That is, if a priest has an affair with a parishioner, that is an individual scandal. However, where there are networks and alliances, that is corrupting the institution itself. The Catholic Church is the world’s biggest charity and one of the world’s biggest educators. It established the first schools and universities and has been doing education and charity for many hundreds of years. These are high-trust environments. They are therefore targets for those who seek to abuse the trust that is integral to the benefit being dispensed and its efficacy. It is the vast network of charity and schools that gives rise to the prevalence of high statistics in abuse. I might point out that the high statistics are in comparison to other church or charitable institutions simply by reason of the fact that Catholic participation is so much higher and that the Catholic religion is the biggest in the world. However, institutional abuse is absolutely dwarfed in comparison to the incidence in the broader secular community.
Nevertheless, the abuse of trust by the exploitation by these networks is appalling and corrosive on any number of levels, and was enabled because of the trust engendered to priests, a trust which had been earned by the hundreds of years of good holy men who used their priesthood to be genuine fathers to their flock. And, as soon as this trust is abused, it naturally exists no more.
You seem to have contempt for Catholics as being, unlike you, not intelligent enough to think for themselves. I would actually submit that the existence of the Catholic faith as a thorn in the side of persecutors from the time of Henry VIII to Stalin, is precisely because the Catholic faith enables individual responsibility and discernment- in other words, not susceptible to totalitarian manipulation, and therefore, always a nuisance. We are, right at this very moment, a nuisance, not only to the totalitarian agenda being currently imposed by the material world, but to our own pope.
The horror in general society and the main stream media in regard to the sexual abuse scandals is accompanied by a major push in the mainstream of society of a sexualisation of children and a cover-up of the fact that the abuse scandals in the church were and are almost exclusively homosexual. This is accompanied universally by promotion of the homosexual agenda- with no accountability for the existence of any victims or the correlation between the two. The other hypocrisy is the complete ignoring of sexual abuse in the general community, an ignoring which would require honesty about societal attitudes to sexual ‘freedoms’ which are imputed to be victim free. The recent discovery by the me too movement that promiscuous sexual predation has consequences points to the aspect where the Church ‘telling us how our sex lives should be conducted’ (ie., forego promiscuity – chastity within a trusting environment such as, old fashioned marriage) may have some semblance of reality to it.
Sexual abuse in the general community and in sectarian institutions absolutely dwarfs statistically any abuses in the institutions of the Church. It seems that the outrage against the Church, when voiced by those who use it simply as a club, is one of hypocrisy. You do not look at the value of the institutions and the damage done by these predatory people in transgressing the rules of the Church and the institution but, instead, seize upon the fact that it has occurred as evidence that the institution itself is wrong or should not exist. You look at people who have completely transgressed the rules of the Church and turn around and blame the Church. We Catholics have to address this issue and it is one that can only be addressed by honest discussion and by honest analysis of who the perpetrators are and how they have been enabled. Damian Thompson sets this out brilliantly and it is time that these events should be discussed openly and frankly. However, I am amazed at the readiness of Protestant or atheist commenters to tell the Catholic population how to run their Church or to be outright bigoted and rude in their comments regarding Catholics or the church. So far, you have advised us as to our priests and our sexual philosophy. I would respectfully advise you to confine your advice to your areas of expertise in the absence of studying the Catholic faith. That is, it is not as if there is no abuse in the secular world. Perhaps advise secular institutions on how they should be run. I would also advise you to reflect on whether you would make such disparaging comments in regard to any other religion.
I make and have made absolutely no excuse for child abuse. Both as a parishioner and professionally I’ve come across abusers. I found them sickening and their crimes revolting.
It’s for them to expiate their crimes.
Not other people.
(You say “Asian” Muslim gangs. Courteously, precise language is important in these matters. I’m sure you don’t mean, say, Turkey and Indonesia, both Asian countries with Muslim majority populations.)
The Catholic Church has been subjected to sexual scandals as you are very quick to point out and as Damian Thompson’s article demonstrates. As the article shows, these sexual abuses have been, and cannot persist, unless enabled from the top. As we are aware, there have been hierarchies by which abuses are covered up and which enable further abuse. And these hierarchies are obviously present in the Vatican and enabled by the highest authority. That is, we are faced with a pope who enables and covers up and who (unlike Benedict, who did act), is safe from exposure by any of the main stream media. That fact, of itself, should raise some questions in your mind and alert you to the fact that the issue is not as simplistic as you paint it.
The fact that they are networks and distinguishable from mere transgressors is significant because of the political nature of the people who are abusing, not only the vulnerable but also the institutions. That is, if a priest has an affair with a parishioner, that is an individual scandal. However, where there are networks and alliances, that is corrupting the institution itself. The Catholic Church is the world’s biggest charity and one of the world’s biggest educators. It established the first schools and universities and has been doing education and charity for many hundreds of years. These are high-trust environments. They are therefore targets for those who seek to abuse the trust that is integral to the benefit being dispensed and its efficacy. It is the vast network of charity and schools that gives rise to the prevalence of high statistics in abuse. I might point out that the high statistics are in comparison to other church or charitable institutions simply by reason of the fact that Catholic participation is so much higher and that the Catholic religion is the biggest in the world. However, institutional abuse is absolutely dwarfed in comparison to the incidence in the broader secular community.
Nevertheless, the abuse of trust by the exploitation by these networks is appalling and corrosive on any number of levels, and was enabled because of the trust engendered to priests, a trust which had been earned by the hundreds of years of good holy men who used their priesthood to be genuine fathers to their flock. And, as soon as this trust is abused, it naturally exists no more.
You seem to have contempt for Catholics as being, unlike you, not intelligent enough to think for themselves. I would actually submit that the existence of the Catholic faith as a thorn in the side of persecutors from the time of Henry VIII to Stalin, is precisely because the Catholic faith enables individual responsibility and discernment- in other words, not susceptible to totalitarian manipulation, and therefore, always a nuisance. We are, right at this very moment, a nuisance, not only to the totalitarian agenda being currently imposed by the material world, but to our own pope.
The horror in general society and the main stream media in regard to the sexual abuse scandals is accompanied by a major push in the mainstream of society of a sexualisation of children and a cover-up of the fact that the abuse scandals in the church were and are almost exclusively homosexual. This is accompanied universally by promotion of the homosexual agenda- with no accountability for the existence of any victims or the correlation between the two. The other hypocrisy is the complete ignoring of sexual abuse in the general community, an ignoring which would require honesty about societal attitudes to sexual ‘freedoms’ which are imputed to be victim free. The recent discovery by the me too movement that promiscuous sexual predation has consequences points to the aspect where the Church ‘telling us how our sex lives should be conducted’ (ie., forego promiscuity – chastity within a trusting environment such as, old fashioned marriage) may have some semblance of reality to it.
Sexual abuse in the general community and in sectarian institutions absolutely dwarfs statistically any abuses in the institutions of the Church. It seems that the outrage against the Church, when voiced by those who use it simply as a club, is one of hypocrisy. You do not look at the value of the institutions and the damage done by these predatory people in transgressing the rules of the Church and the institution but, instead, seize upon the fact that it has occurred as evidence that the institution itself is wrong or should not exist. You look at people who have completely transgressed the rules of the Church and turn around and blame the Church. We Catholics have to address this issue and it is one that can only be addressed by honest discussion and by honest analysis of who the perpetrators are and how they have been enabled. Damian Thompson sets this out brilliantly and it is time that these events should be discussed openly and frankly. However, I am amazed at the readiness of Protestant or atheist commenters to tell the Catholic population how to run their Church or to be outright bigoted and rude in their comments regarding Catholics or the church. So far, you have advised us as to our priests and our sexual philosophy. I would respectfully advise you to confine your advice to your areas of expertise in the absence of studying the Catholic faith. That is, it is not as if there is no abuse in the secular world. Perhaps advise secular institutions on how they should be run. I would also advise you to reflect on whether you would make such disparaging comments in regard to any other religion.
Your concept of “sinners” is unsupportable in the context of children and even adults being exploited to gratify the sexual desires of those who – with astonishing hypocrisy – seek to tell others how their sex lives should be conducted.
On a par with Asian Muslim grooming gangs, in fact.
No amount of theological rhetoric or expiation through other aspects of the church can overcome that basic principle. It’s rotten to its very foundations. I fully appreciate you don’t want to hear this – but i’m not the one trying to use nefarious concepts such as “sinners” to excuse horrendous abuse.
It seems to me it was all worth it for the creation of beautiful art in the form of architecture and painting and music to inspire awe and reverence of the power of God. All required much financial investment. To me sitting in a beautiful church and listening to a wonderful church choir stirs my soul. I also love plain churches but they simply don’t have the same effect and the west would be the poorer without it.
“The Catholic Church uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit its congregation”
This seems to imply that all its laity are merely passive pew sitters, unthinking, stupid or gullible.
If so, you need to provide evidence of that. And who uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit laity. And what they say.
The Church is a church of sinners. It has been since the beginning. It will be in need of reform until the end of time.
As to the Church’s wealth: some of it was made to God’s glory, some to share and some – shamefully- misspent. There are currently issues that must be addressed.
BTW, the Catholic Church is the largest provider of non-governmental health care in the world..CAFOD, the English & Welsh Catholic development agency, supports world wide projects, regardless of religion and culture.
It seems to me it was all worth it for the creation of beautiful art in the form of architecture and painting and music to inspire awe and reverence of the power of God. All required much financial investment. To me sitting in a beautiful church and listening to a wonderful church choir stirs my soul. I also love plain churches but they simply don’t have the same effect and the west would be the poorer without it.
I accept that.
It should also be accepted that the Catholic Church uses Christ’s words to manipulate and exploit its congregation.
Those who follow Christ out of a moral and/or spiritual imperative should distance themselves from the church. It may well be beyond reform from within, and certainly it’s accumulated riches are an abomination to it’s supposed ministry. It’s that which corrupts, along with power over other people.
I used Christ’s words describing himself as the way, the truth and the life.
You disagree with that which you are free to do.
There is nothing in his teachings that allows abuse. Indeed, he very strongly condemns it.
I said that any abusers must be strongly called to task.
As you say, one can choose Catholicism or not.
The problems and confusion come from conflating the ideas of church and religion. To many people, church is part of the local community, not to be confused with having deep religious beliefs. It is the officials of the church who cause the problems discussed herein.
A completely different problem comes with religions.
The statement that “Christ is the way, the truth and the life” is essentially meaningless dogma. It’s precisely this type of mind control that allows the Catholic Church to carry out the abuse, which failure to address by those who profess to be Catholics means they’re complicit.
What you refer to is Christianity. Catholicism is an organisation of choice.
The problems and confusion come from conflating the ideas of church and religion. To many people, church is part of the local community, not to be confused with having deep religious beliefs. It is the officials of the church who cause the problems discussed herein.
A completely different problem comes with religions.
You haven’t a clue about Catholics, Steve. We’re not too bothered about religion. Seriously. Very few Catholics in Ireland believe in most of their church’s teaching, and that has been the position from the 1970s. English Catholics, by contrast, are very sincere. They take it all seriously, bless ’em. We have low expectations from people in authority. No normal Catholic cares enough to go off forming a new religion. If the papacy disintegrated tomorrow, nobody would care too much. We’d still run our wee local church, largely because it is one of the few cross-generational, democratic public spaces left. What we believe, or don’t believe, is secondary.
I can only assume that the people who downvoted you are not catholics, or are converts (worse!) or are just clueless. Speaking as a recovering catholic (we used to call them ‘lapsed’ but the analogy with alcoholics seems more apt) the majority within the fold seem to me to be quite happy to be part of the tribe, but unwilling to consider the dogma they are supposed to subscribe to. Transubstantiation? Virgin birth? Papal infallibility? Much safer not to look too closely.
But then I suppose that many people in most clubs, tribes, religions and political parties are fellow travellers rather than true believers.
I always used to smile when someone was described as ‘having a simple faith’. That usually means they are both thick and gullible : often nice people, of course, but never the sharpest knives in the box.
Church and religion are not the same things. You can be a regular churchgoer without being especially religious. Churches help in the community but religions don’t. Maybe this is the problem people have with ideas in non-Christian countries where the ideas of church and religion not separable.
I can only assume that the people who downvoted you are not catholics, or are converts (worse!) or are just clueless. Speaking as a recovering catholic (we used to call them ‘lapsed’ but the analogy with alcoholics seems more apt) the majority within the fold seem to me to be quite happy to be part of the tribe, but unwilling to consider the dogma they are supposed to subscribe to. Transubstantiation? Virgin birth? Papal infallibility? Much safer not to look too closely.
But then I suppose that many people in most clubs, tribes, religions and political parties are fellow travellers rather than true believers.
I always used to smile when someone was described as ‘having a simple faith’. That usually means they are both thick and gullible : often nice people, of course, but never the sharpest knives in the box.
Church and religion are not the same things. You can be a regular churchgoer without being especially religious. Churches help in the community but religions don’t. Maybe this is the problem people have with ideas in non-Christian countries where the ideas of church and religion not separable.
The pre-emptive strike against downvotes is a nice touch, but meaningless.
Thank you for speaking what is obviously true.
As we have seen with all the splintered denominations that are watered down into meaningless mush, imho you should stay and fight for the soul of the church. He won’t last forever.
Look how well that turned out: the one–man–and–his–bible schtick of sola fides only served to dilute the universality of the Christian faith and solved nothing of the rot that ultimately affects all worldly institutions.
No, it is all to easy to throw up one’s hands and head for the hills, however deeply we have been betrayed from within our own community. For every one of these monsters, there are scores of good men and women who have devoted their lives to the service of God, the Church and Her communion the World over — a service very often extended to those of other faiths. To desert Her now would amount only to a further betrayal of our faith, the faith of our brethren and the sincere vocation of those good people who stand today in the firing line of such ridicule and contempt.
Far better to stay and have the resolution to fight for our Church — both the corruption within and without — and I would extend that challenge to all our institutions for I see nothing to be gained by allowing government, academia, the military, medicine, the sciences and that, most important of all of them, the family fall prey to the corrupt influence of ideologues, thieves and liars.
Have an upvote.
I can’t understand how anyone familiar with the history of the Catholic Church could assert that its leadership has a great record of demonstrating “moral authority”. As other commentators here have said, the current failure to practice what they preach is not unique and is far from the historical low watermark.
Catholics believe Christ is the way, the truth and the life. Catholics follow him. Not the Popes, bishops and priests. Since the beginning some of them have been shockers.
Indeed given the knaves, wastrels, incompetents, abusers, murderers and the rest, supposed to be the Church’s servants, it’s amazing it’s lasted so long. One would think it would long since have collapsed like all the kingdoms, republics and organisations it’s seen in 2000 years.
Why is that, do you think?
I am saddened by Thompson’s list of the failures of Pope Francis and some cardinals. If true, they’re doing great damage and must be strongly called to task.
The Church does claim to be one for the Elect, but for sinners.
You haven’t a clue about Catholics, Steve. We’re not too bothered about religion. Seriously. Very few Catholics in Ireland believe in most of their church’s teaching, and that has been the position from the 1970s. English Catholics, by contrast, are very sincere. They take it all seriously, bless ’em. We have low expectations from people in authority. No normal Catholic cares enough to go off forming a new religion. If the papacy disintegrated tomorrow, nobody would care too much. We’d still run our wee local church, largely because it is one of the few cross-generational, democratic public spaces left. What we believe, or don’t believe, is secondary.
The pre-emptive strike against downvotes is a nice touch, but meaningless.
Thank you for speaking what is obviously true.
As we have seen with all the splintered denominations that are watered down into meaningless mush, imho you should stay and fight for the soul of the church. He won’t last forever.
There was no John Paul XII but I take your point.
Writing on the death of Benedict XVI, Giorgio Agamben reminds us of the late Pope’s own words on darkness within the Church (translation by Thomas Fazi):
Which was not by any means complacency on the part of young Ratzinger. By questioning the Church, as Agamben put it “Benedict XVI, who was at the head of the oldest existing institution in the West, called into question the meaning and legitimacy of all institutions”.
Ray Mullan, thank you. Giorgio Agamben was also spot on w.r.t. Covid:
Apropos yours above, the following quote from Jung comes to mind:
References:
Agamben, G. (2020). ‘Clarifications’ translated by Adam Kotsko in An und für sich, available online.
Jung, C.G. (1958). Answer to Job. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Yet “fear” is now a justification for so many obviously self-interested “pandemic” measures: “We were afraid, like anyone would be!”
As if Christ and the prophets haven’t already sufficiently dealt with the subject of fear.
Yet “fear” is now a justification for so many obviously self-interested “pandemic” measures: “We were afraid, like anyone would be!”
As if Christ and the prophets haven’t already sufficiently dealt with the subject of fear.
Ray Mullan, thank you. Giorgio Agamben was also spot on w.r.t. Covid:
Apropos yours above, the following quote from Jung comes to mind:
References:
Agamben, G. (2020). ‘Clarifications’ translated by Adam Kotsko in An und für sich, available online.
Jung, C.G. (1958). Answer to Job. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
But the difference between ‘this time’ and previous revelations is that the murky deeds are made public much more swiftly and to a more independent audience.
I don’t doubt there are ‘bad apples’ and that other organisations that cover up reprehensible acts… but that is a PR argument and not the principled response expected of the RC Church.
I think you mean Pope John XII, since there were only 2 John Pauls. I do agree with your points about the evil Popes, though.
There have been a number of articles in the USA recently which state that the Catholic Church has lost more followers than any other religion in recent years; Latinos have been migrating to evangelical Protestant sects. People are tired of the corruption & sex scandals in the Catholic organization that has been occurring for decades with no correction.
I know. I said ‘one of’. It’s a different type of damage, one that threatens the survival of the Church. One of the greatest scholars in the college of cardinals believes that Francis is the worst pope for 1,000 years – but, before that there were worse. Interesting that he thinks Bergoglio is more dangerous than Borgia; I think he’s referring to disintegration of Catholic belief itself. One detail not in the piece is that Rupnik, protected by Francis, is accused of trying to force a woman to drink his semen out of a chalice.
Just as telling is this line:
“…spiritual leader of more than a billion people.”
Usually, apologists for the Catholic church like to quote platitudes such as “there’s always going to be a few bad apples” or suchlike. We’ve read this type of thing before in Comments.
I’d simply ask how anyone with any claim to a spiritual life via Catholicism can stand by and allow themselves to be associated with the venal, politicised debauchery that passes for their leadership.
For the sake of your own self-respect, renounce the Church, renounce the Vatican and all who prey within it. Go and form an alternative, but please don’t condescend to the rest of us. You have no right to do so, complicit with the systemic abuse that passes for “holiness”.
I should add, that all the expected downvotes in the world won’t change that truth.
There was no John Paul XII but I take your point.
Writing on the death of Benedict XVI, Giorgio Agamben reminds us of the late Pope’s own words on darkness within the Church (translation by Thomas Fazi):
Which was not by any means complacency on the part of young Ratzinger. By questioning the Church, as Agamben put it “Benedict XVI, who was at the head of the oldest existing institution in the West, called into question the meaning and legitimacy of all institutions”.
But the difference between ‘this time’ and previous revelations is that the murky deeds are made public much more swiftly and to a more independent audience.
I don’t doubt there are ‘bad apples’ and that other organisations that cover up reprehensible acts… but that is a PR argument and not the principled response expected of the RC Church.
I think you mean Pope John XII, since there were only 2 John Pauls. I do agree with your points about the evil Popes, though.
There have been a number of articles in the USA recently which state that the Catholic Church has lost more followers than any other religion in recent years; Latinos have been migrating to evangelical Protestant sects. People are tired of the corruption & sex scandals in the Catholic organization that has been occurring for decades with no correction.
“And so began one of the darkest decades in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church.”
Seriously? You need to read Gibbon. Holy cow. Or how about “The Bad Popes” by E. R. Chamberlin? How about Pope Urban VI who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured. (I’m quoting Wikpedia’s entry on the latter book). Or John Paul XII who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife? I can’t recall the Pope that Gibbon described (my set is boxed up – I’m moving) as facing charges of murder, rape and piracy. This guy is totally an under achiever on the darkness scale over the long term. I’ll buy since the twentieth century maybe.
Not being Catholic myself, I’d be grateful if somebody could please explain the reason for the Pope’s banning of the Latin Mass. I don’t understand his objection/disapproval.
Actually, it seems to be a far more vehement impulse of his, beyond ‘disapproval’ and maybe into the realms of disgust, repulsion, or even hatred.
I presume it’s a doctrinal/theological ‘problem’ rather than simply the language used.
The traditional mass isn’t the only thing Traditionalists are into, there is, and has been since Vatican 2, a force pushing the Church in a new direction. The traditional movement has been resisting this push and the Latin Mass is the symbol and core of that movement.
It doesn’t seem to be. The argument always was ‘we need to have mass in the vernacular because otherwise the young people will not come to mass’, and ‘the use of an archaic language which nobody understands means that people won’t understand what they are professing’. So, now that the young people _want_ the latin mass, the old argument is shown to be no longer true (if it ever was). So it is appears that internal politics is all (most of all?) it _was_ and _is_ about. Getting rid of the latin mass was the symbol of the (then) new and reform-progressive wing of Catholicism. Now the progressive wing is the party in power, and reform (aside from liturgical reform) seems as much needed as ever, continuing to ban the latin mass is a way to enforce obedience, and to punish those who aren’t in favour. And insisting on one’s right to say mass in whatever language you choose is a way to indicate that you aren’t willing to be obedient — about this and (presumably) about turning a blind eye to other things. But is is hard to know for sure because the whole organisation is so secretive, indeed relentlessly opposed to transparency.
Well that was the spin at the time but I think Odon has the truth of it
Part of the truth, at any rate. The corner of the world I know best though has an alignment between those priests who want marriage for priests and latin for masses. So it is not as simple as ‘tradition’ vs ‘modernity’.
Part of the truth, at any rate. The corner of the world I know best though has an alignment between those priests who want marriage for priests and latin for masses. So it is not as simple as ‘tradition’ vs ‘modernity’.
Well that was the spin at the time but I think Odon has the truth of it
Strictly speaking the Latin language is not the issue; it’s the ritual of the Mass used prior to 1969 when the current missal was proclaimed, allowing for use of the vernacular in addition to Latin (though the celebration of Mass in Latin in the new missal is not frequent). Since then, the traditional Latin Mass has become an ideological flashpoint in the Catholic Church.
It’s the age old division between progress (moving with the times) and tradition (passing on what is valuable). Ideally you’d have a nice balance between the two, but that isn’t the case.
In any case it must be said, the Latin Mass endures. You might be able to find one near you if you’re curious.
The traditional mass isn’t the only thing Traditionalists are into, there is, and has been since Vatican 2, a force pushing the Church in a new direction. The traditional movement has been resisting this push and the Latin Mass is the symbol and core of that movement.
It doesn’t seem to be. The argument always was ‘we need to have mass in the vernacular because otherwise the young people will not come to mass’, and ‘the use of an archaic language which nobody understands means that people won’t understand what they are professing’. So, now that the young people _want_ the latin mass, the old argument is shown to be no longer true (if it ever was). So it is appears that internal politics is all (most of all?) it _was_ and _is_ about. Getting rid of the latin mass was the symbol of the (then) new and reform-progressive wing of Catholicism. Now the progressive wing is the party in power, and reform (aside from liturgical reform) seems as much needed as ever, continuing to ban the latin mass is a way to enforce obedience, and to punish those who aren’t in favour. And insisting on one’s right to say mass in whatever language you choose is a way to indicate that you aren’t willing to be obedient — about this and (presumably) about turning a blind eye to other things. But is is hard to know for sure because the whole organisation is so secretive, indeed relentlessly opposed to transparency.
Strictly speaking the Latin language is not the issue; it’s the ritual of the Mass used prior to 1969 when the current missal was proclaimed, allowing for use of the vernacular in addition to Latin (though the celebration of Mass in Latin in the new missal is not frequent). Since then, the traditional Latin Mass has become an ideological flashpoint in the Catholic Church.
It’s the age old division between progress (moving with the times) and tradition (passing on what is valuable). Ideally you’d have a nice balance between the two, but that isn’t the case.
In any case it must be said, the Latin Mass endures. You might be able to find one near you if you’re curious.
Not being Catholic myself, I’d be grateful if somebody could please explain the reason for the Pope’s banning of the Latin Mass. I don’t understand his objection/disapproval.
Actually, it seems to be a far more vehement impulse of his, beyond ‘disapproval’ and maybe into the realms of disgust, repulsion, or even hatred.
I presume it’s a doctrinal/theological ‘problem’ rather than simply the language used.
A distinction must be made between an evil person and systemic evil, or between private evil and public evil. “Evil as a policy.” That is what distinguishes Francis. He embraces the idea that “everything is permitted.” He rejects out of hand the idea of sin or crime. He is, that is, a “liberal” in the literal sense of the word. God save us!
It’s notable that he’s despised by English and American Catholics. Neither English nor American Catholicises are typical for the world’s Catholics. Too rich.
I can say from experience that animosity towards Pope Francis is by no means confined to English and American Catholics. I have witnessed it among many national groups.
I now get this image of rich, ornate churches in the jungle, surrounded by people who are desperately poor.
I can say from experience that animosity towards Pope Francis is by no means confined to English and American Catholics. I have witnessed it among many national groups.
I now get this image of rich, ornate churches in the jungle, surrounded by people who are desperately poor.
It’s notable that he’s despised by English and American Catholics. Neither English nor American Catholicises are typical for the world’s Catholics. Too rich.
A distinction must be made between an evil person and systemic evil, or between private evil and public evil. “Evil as a policy.” That is what distinguishes Francis. He embraces the idea that “everything is permitted.” He rejects out of hand the idea of sin or crime. He is, that is, a “liberal” in the literal sense of the word. God save us!
Interesting read, I had no idea the catholic church was failing so fast
It’s been failing since the start. Dreadful leaders, riven with disagreement, great scandals and wrongs.
I wonder why it’s staggered on for 2000 years while so many kingdoms, republics and empires have failed.
I can’t imagine why its founder still believes in it.
But then he believes in me.
That is of course one of the proofs of its sanctity, that no other institution could have survived its own worst efforts over so long a period. It was I think Napoleon who boasted that he could destroy the Catholic Church to which Cardinal Consalvi replied that he wouldn’t succeed where the clergy had been trying for over a thouand years.
Indeed.
Indeed.
Well said.
“The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
That is of course one of the proofs of its sanctity, that no other institution could have survived its own worst efforts over so long a period. It was I think Napoleon who boasted that he could destroy the Catholic Church to which Cardinal Consalvi replied that he wouldn’t succeed where the clergy had been trying for over a thouand years.
Well said.
“The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
It’s been failing since the start. Dreadful leaders, riven with disagreement, great scandals and wrongs.
I wonder why it’s staggered on for 2000 years while so many kingdoms, republics and empires have failed.
I can’t imagine why its founder still believes in it.
But then he believes in me.
Interesting read, I had no idea the catholic church was failing so fast
Early Christians are said to have celebrated Mass in catacombs and basements to evade detection by their persecutors. That penultimate paragraph… history is definitely rhyming on this one.
Early Christians are said to have celebrated Mass in catacombs and basements to evade detection by their persecutors. That penultimate paragraph… history is definitely rhyming on this one.
Surprised that this doesn’t include his grotesque position on the war in Ukraine.
Interestingly, the leader of the Church in The Ukraine, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Schevchuk, is the only person in the hierarchy who has publicly faced Francis down in the 10 years under review.
He has consistently over the last 12 months told Francis what is acceptable to his flock and what is not in Vatican pronouncements and postures vis a vis both Putin and Russia.
And Francis has ‘meekly’ toed the line given to him.
Intriguingly, SS knows Francis of old since he, SS, was previously an auxiliary bishop in the Greek Catholic Church from January 2009 onwards, based in Buenos Aires when Francis was still ruling the roost there.
As for the rest of the hierarchy, a handful of US bishops and one from the Netherlands apart…..
Interestingly, the leader of the Church in The Ukraine, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Schevchuk, is the only person in the hierarchy who has publicly faced Francis down in the 10 years under review.
He has consistently over the last 12 months told Francis what is acceptable to his flock and what is not in Vatican pronouncements and postures vis a vis both Putin and Russia.
And Francis has ‘meekly’ toed the line given to him.
Intriguingly, SS knows Francis of old since he, SS, was previously an auxiliary bishop in the Greek Catholic Church from January 2009 onwards, based in Buenos Aires when Francis was still ruling the roost there.
As for the rest of the hierarchy, a handful of US bishops and one from the Netherlands apart…..
Surprised that this doesn’t include his grotesque position on the war in Ukraine.
The Beijing Pact occurred because China bought Grindr and downloaded & ‘de-anonymised’ the data, including something like 28 ‘pings’ coming from cardinals’ apartments in Vatican City.
The Beijing Pact occurred because China bought Grindr and downloaded & ‘de-anonymised’ the data, including something like 28 ‘pings’ coming from cardinals’ apartments in Vatican City.
“The papacy, being the most harmful of all secret societies, ought to be abolished.”.
Has anything really changed since Garibaldi* said that more than a century ago?
(*Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1807-1882.)
Of course Freemasons are very impartial judges of the Church
Wasn’t Calvi a FM? And isn’t there a Vatican Lodge?
There is not supposed to be. Catholics are not supposed to join Masonry.
Try:- Propaganda Due or P2 to its friends.
Try:- Propaganda Due or P2 to its friends.
There is not supposed to be. Catholics are not supposed to join Masonry.
Wasn’t Calvi a FM? And isn’t there a Vatican Lodge?
He would say that, wouldn’t he?
Yes indeed, the ‘standard’ response.
Yes indeed, the ‘standard’ response.
Of course Freemasons are very impartial judges of the Church
He would say that, wouldn’t he?
“The papacy, being the most harmful of all secret societies, ought to be abolished.”.
Has anything really changed since Garibaldi* said that more than a century ago?
(*Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1807-1882.)
Need for sub-editing/proofreading on this piece!
Need for sub-editing/proofreading on this piece!
There have been far worse Popes.
Not in my lifetime
Not in my lifetime
There have been far worse Popes.
Benedict, Francis… Two faces of the same coin. The massive sexual abuse of minors by catholic clergy was spotlighted for the first time by the Boston Globe in 2002. In 2012 in Belgium, after the Vangheluwe scandal (bishop who abused two of his own nephews) of 2010, the Catholic institution invited presumed victims to come forward. 418 complaints were filed. Most of the abuse had taken place 30 years earlier. At the time, 89% of victims were under 18 and 21% under 10. This was just the tip of the iceberg. In the late 90s, a Catholic priest was accused of sexual abuse on minors in the Congo. He was simply transferred back to Belgium, where he continued. Interesting nugget: The Belgian Catholic Church has a very official price list – ranging from €2,000 to € 25,000 – for making financial agreements with victims. The Catholic Church is rotten, from top to bottom, and has been for decades.
Benedict, Francis… Two faces of the same coin. The massive sexual abuse of minors by catholic clergy was spotlighted for the first time by the Boston Globe in 2002. In 2012 in Belgium, after the Vangheluwe scandal (bishop who abused two of his own nephews) of 2010, the Catholic institution invited presumed victims to come forward. 418 complaints were filed. Most of the abuse had taken place 30 years earlier. At the time, 89% of victims were under 18 and 21% under 10. This was just the tip of the iceberg. In the late 90s, a Catholic priest was accused of sexual abuse on minors in the Congo. He was simply transferred back to Belgium, where he continued. Interesting nugget: The Belgian Catholic Church has a very official price list – ranging from €2,000 to € 25,000 – for making financial agreements with victims. The Catholic Church is rotten, from top to bottom, and has been for decades.
I wish all of you would come home to the Reformation. Sola gracie, sola fide, sola scriptura.
I wish all of you would come home to the Reformation. Sola gracie, sola fide, sola scriptura.
Can’t say if what Damian is saying is 100% accurate or not, but that chip must really weigh on his shoulder.
Can’t say if what Damian is saying is 100% accurate or not, but that chip must really weigh on his shoulder.
I enjoyed this piece. I am not a Catholic.
This pope & his senior clerics seem much the same as the prior ones when it comes to sexual abuse scandals. Protecting the Church and its officials is first wrapped in the excuse of Christian forgiveness.
As for the rest of it, the modernisation issues seem the same as all other Abrahamic religions have suffered through the millennia. Texts written 2,000 years ago have some fine concepts for life but a lot of odd rules and views that no longer appeal or make sense in modern societies. The writer seems to be a traditionalist or in other terms a fundamentalist/originalist. My view as a secularist is the traditional route will shrink the church further – no abortion, no contraception, no sex before marriage, Latin, no women, homosexuality is wrong. All deeply unappealing and silly.
I enjoyed this piece. I am not a Catholic.
This pope & his senior clerics seem much the same as the prior ones when it comes to sexual abuse scandals. Protecting the Church and its officials is first wrapped in the excuse of Christian forgiveness.
As for the rest of it, the modernisation issues seem the same as all other Abrahamic religions have suffered through the millennia. Texts written 2,000 years ago have some fine concepts for life but a lot of odd rules and views that no longer appeal or make sense in modern societies. The writer seems to be a traditionalist or in other terms a fundamentalist/originalist. My view as a secularist is the traditional route will shrink the church further – no abortion, no contraception, no sex before marriage, Latin, no women, homosexuality is wrong. All deeply unappealing and silly.
“Faithful priests”? Really Damian. Up here in Liverpool these “faithful” priests refuse to concelebrate at the Mass.of Chrism with Archbishop McMahon because it is in the vernacular, refuse to concelebrate with Amy other diocesan priest in the vernacular. And their cult, sorry parishioners, insist they are in communion with me and that I, irony of ironies, should educate myself by attending the Latin Mass.
It’s not it; it’s them. Don’t get me wrong, I find the neo-catechumens equally intolerable. If the LYS is the traditional Church holding to the faith though, then the faith is lost!
Here in the US many bishops have gone on record as never having received the fabled questionnaire about the Latin Mass. most of the priests who say it are also pastors of regular parishes with several English Masses as well, our inner city parish has two Latin Masses and two English ones each weekend as well as two of each during the week. The Latin Masses are better attended. The money from the traditional families goes to support a parish that would otherwise be in financial straits. Many Latin masses are held in similar inner city churches, both because their architecture better suits it and they need the financial support. Our families are fully integrated into the parish life, and their is no weird holier than thou vibe between the Masses. If it works better for us to attend one of the English Masses we can do so with the knowledge that it will be equally reverent. It was the vulgarity of many vernacular liturgies that turned people away and toward the Latin Mass rather than any magical thinking about turning back the clock.
Here in the US many bishops have gone on record as never having received the fabled questionnaire about the Latin Mass. most of the priests who say it are also pastors of regular parishes with several English Masses as well, our inner city parish has two Latin Masses and two English ones each weekend as well as two of each during the week. The Latin Masses are better attended. The money from the traditional families goes to support a parish that would otherwise be in financial straits. Many Latin masses are held in similar inner city churches, both because their architecture better suits it and they need the financial support. Our families are fully integrated into the parish life, and their is no weird holier than thou vibe between the Masses. If it works better for us to attend one of the English Masses we can do so with the knowledge that it will be equally reverent. It was the vulgarity of many vernacular liturgies that turned people away and toward the Latin Mass rather than any magical thinking about turning back the clock.
“Faithful priests”? Really Damian. Up here in Liverpool these “faithful” priests refuse to concelebrate at the Mass.of Chrism with Archbishop McMahon because it is in the vernacular, refuse to concelebrate with Amy other diocesan priest in the vernacular. And their cult, sorry parishioners, insist they are in communion with me and that I, irony of ironies, should educate myself by attending the Latin Mass.
It’s not it; it’s them. Don’t get me wrong, I find the neo-catechumens equally intolerable. If the LYS is the traditional Church holding to the faith though, then the faith is lost!
The Author forgets – the conclave is directed by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit moves within and guides God’s Pope. Maybe your God is therefore moving in mysterious ways?
So if this is your thing be aware the danger of only following the traits you prefer.
“Man made God, NOT God made man”*.
(*GG.)
Dark matter
Dark matter
“Man made God, NOT God made man”*.
(*GG.)
The Author forgets – the conclave is directed by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit moves within and guides God’s Pope. Maybe your God is therefore moving in mysterious ways?
So if this is your thing be aware the danger of only following the traits you prefer.
You could just list all the Catholic Priests who aren’t nonces….would make for a very short article though.
Yawn.
Presumably you have a list of all the priests who are. Where did you get it from? Courteously, I’d like to know.
Nah, it’s not my problem. I’m not stupid enough to leave my kids in the care of a group of people who time and again have been found to be hiding child abusers in their midst.
I’ve also got better things to do on a Sunday than listen to an organisation that’s richer than Croesus guilt trip me into giving them money under the guise of helping the poor.
Nah, it’s not my problem. I’m not stupid enough to leave my kids in the care of a group of people who time and again have been found to be hiding child abusers in their midst.
I’ve also got better things to do on a Sunday than listen to an organisation that’s richer than Croesus guilt trip me into giving them money under the guise of helping the poor.
St Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle clearly has a few, according to the reports of their ‘lockdown sex parties’.
Totally discredited: https://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2023/03/northern-cross.html
Totally discredited: https://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2023/03/northern-cross.html
Yawn.
Presumably you have a list of all the priests who are. Where did you get it from? Courteously, I’d like to know.
St Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle clearly has a few, according to the reports of their ‘lockdown sex parties’.
You could just list all the Catholic Priests who aren’t nonces….would make for a very short article though.
Fortunately, there is a different story to be told, or at least considered, in relation to this unhappy list of criticisms. Francis preaches mercy, and puts it into action; like Jesus, he’s not afraid to reach out to sinners. He tolerates a ‘messy church’ (unlike his predecessors who would have silenced their critics), I suspect because he knows there is no point in directing people not to say or even think what may be contrary to church teaching. Of course the German church has gone too far – but it will be pulled into line by the whole Church in Synod. The problem with the Tridentine mass is that – as the vast majority of bishops around the world told Francis – it has become divisive. The unity of the Roman rite a la Trent, requires one ordinary form of the mass (which can be celebrated in Latin if that’s appropriate). Yes, there are puzzles about what and how much Francis has actually known about what is going on, or has gone on, in relation to various financial and abuse cases. That’s a question for whoever is at the head of large bureaucracies the world over. More generally, the problem fundamentally is that some people, including Mr Thompson, just don’t like the Vatican II reforms that Francis is seeking to implement. If both Francis’ critics on the right and his supporters on the left actually sought to follow his lead in renewing the Church, our situation would be very different.
Thanks for giving us the different story Gerald. I don’t know if you’re right, but I note that none of the downvoters are coming up with a counter-argument
Oh come on! That’s intellectually and spiritually bankrupt. Child abuse can be tolerated so that… what? So that these people can keep their lifestyles by exercising mind control?
A curious response. Neither I nor Gerald G said anything about child abuse
Damian Thompson did.
Damian Thompson did.
A curious response. Neither I nor Gerald G said anything about child abuse
Here’s one: Yes, Francis reaches out to sinners, and by doing so he is Christ-like, but he seldom if ever says “sin no more.” Christ knew that human desire is at war with human reason. He also knew that desire ungoverned by reason is hell. Francis appears intent on taking desire’s side in this fight. It really is hard to imagine anything less Christ-like. Francis has embraced modernity. That is not the job of the Roman Pontif.
Oh come on! That’s intellectually and spiritually bankrupt. Child abuse can be tolerated so that… what? So that these people can keep their lifestyles by exercising mind control?
Here’s one: Yes, Francis reaches out to sinners, and by doing so he is Christ-like, but he seldom if ever says “sin no more.” Christ knew that human desire is at war with human reason. He also knew that desire ungoverned by reason is hell. Francis appears intent on taking desire’s side in this fight. It really is hard to imagine anything less Christ-like. Francis has embraced modernity. That is not the job of the Roman Pontif.
Again, I don’t know how accurate what you say is, but it is refreshing to read a different viewpoint from Damian’s.
Really do NOT understand the downvotes.
Your ‘different story’ is full of holes. There are indeed ‘puzzles’ about what Francis knew about the predatory and corrupt activities of various churchmen, but the biggest puzzle is why, in case after case, he refused to act on information he was certainly given, and even protected or promoted clerics whose guilt was not in doubt. You claim that the vast majority of the bishops told Francis that the Tridentine Mass had become divisive. Yet the survey on which this claim was based has never been made public, and the majority of bishops outside the Anglosphere didn’t have priests celebrating the old Mass. What does seem clear is that many of them regarded Traditionis Custodes as a centralising attack on their authority, and now that the bully Arthur Roche is forcing them to report what progress they’ve made in suppressing traditional worship they are even less well disposed towards it. The Mass has existed in various Western forms since before Trent – for example, the Ambrosian and Dominican Rites. If Francis were really tolerant of a ‘messy church’, why would he tear up Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter teaching that the older form of the Roman Rite is a valid alternative to the post-Vatican II form (but not the norm)? Incidentally, I don’t have a problem with the Second Vatican Council and haven’t attended a Tridentine Mass, with the exception of one weekday funeral, for five years. I do have a problem with the fantasy that the ‘Synod on Synodality’, whose consultations involved about one per cent of the global laity, represents anything other than a self-selecting faction in the Church.
The Synod on Synodality was open to the entire Catholic laity and Pope Francis was anxious that there should be the widest possible involvement. All Catholic dioceses in the world were asked to submit a contribution open to all members of the laity. Pope Francis even encouraged former Catholics to make a contribution. He extended the lay phase of the Synod, as he felt there was insufficient input from young people. I myself was involved in drafting a report (as could any lay Catholic) from an international group of ex-members of a Catholic movement – Focolare – which was seen by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, along with other similar movements, as the future of the Catholic Church. Our report, backed by numerous testimonies, shows that this is a cult-like organisation responsible for sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults (deliberately concealed), mind-control, extreme personality cult of the founder, the demand that all members should ‘have no personality’, arranged marriages, modern slavery, hidden teachings, enforced separation from family and friends, and decades of pastoral care which broke safeguards of the individual required by canon law. This report was published in full last month in Italy as part of the book La Chiesa Violenta (The Violent Church), Federico Tulli, Left Ed., 2023. The ‘new Catholic movements’ are one of the many forms of abuse which occurred, or in this case were recklessly encouraged by, the two popes who preceded Francis, abuses which he has been compelled to deal with. Take a look at John Paul and Benedict/Cardinal Ratzinger’s records on covering up abuse of minors. An important aspect of the Synod on Synodality is tackling abuse in the Church, which was the motivation behind the report I was involved in because I was a victim/survivor. Mr Thompson’s suggestion that there was a self-selecting faction is untrue as anyone can see from simple research into the Synod on Synodality. Dioceses such as Liverpool in the UK made a major effort in responding to the Synod. There was a cursory response from dioceses where the bishop was uncomfortable with the fearful prospect of handing over any authority to the laity – they were the only self-selecting faction involved.
The claims that the survey revealed concerns in the part of the bishops were exposed as false by Diane Mantegna. That allegation of ‘divisiveness’ was a nod to Catholics that they could demonise and attack their fellow Catholics. It was a political ruse to justify banning the Catholic Mass to Catholics who simply wanted to attend Mass. Even stronger evidence to this fact is that Cardinal Roche has had to force the bishops to cede their pastoral autonomy (derived from the Apostles by the way and not from Francis), in order to ban the liturgy that has been the centre of the Catholic faith for the whole of her history. Hmmm, could this be the real problem they have with the Latin Mass, I wonder?
The Synod on Synodality was open to the entire Catholic laity and Pope Francis was anxious that there should be the widest possible involvement. All Catholic dioceses in the world were asked to submit a contribution open to all members of the laity. Pope Francis even encouraged former Catholics to make a contribution. He extended the lay phase of the Synod, as he felt there was insufficient input from young people. I myself was involved in drafting a report (as could any lay Catholic) from an international group of ex-members of a Catholic movement – Focolare – which was seen by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, along with other similar movements, as the future of the Catholic Church. Our report, backed by numerous testimonies, shows that this is a cult-like organisation responsible for sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults (deliberately concealed), mind-control, extreme personality cult of the founder, the demand that all members should ‘have no personality’, arranged marriages, modern slavery, hidden teachings, enforced separation from family and friends, and decades of pastoral care which broke safeguards of the individual required by canon law. This report was published in full last month in Italy as part of the book La Chiesa Violenta (The Violent Church), Federico Tulli, Left Ed., 2023. The ‘new Catholic movements’ are one of the many forms of abuse which occurred, or in this case were recklessly encouraged by, the two popes who preceded Francis, abuses which he has been compelled to deal with. Take a look at John Paul and Benedict/Cardinal Ratzinger’s records on covering up abuse of minors. An important aspect of the Synod on Synodality is tackling abuse in the Church, which was the motivation behind the report I was involved in because I was a victim/survivor. Mr Thompson’s suggestion that there was a self-selecting faction is untrue as anyone can see from simple research into the Synod on Synodality. Dioceses such as Liverpool in the UK made a major effort in responding to the Synod. There was a cursory response from dioceses where the bishop was uncomfortable with the fearful prospect of handing over any authority to the laity – they were the only self-selecting faction involved.
The claims that the survey revealed concerns in the part of the bishops were exposed as false by Diane Mantegna. That allegation of ‘divisiveness’ was a nod to Catholics that they could demonise and attack their fellow Catholics. It was a political ruse to justify banning the Catholic Mass to Catholics who simply wanted to attend Mass. Even stronger evidence to this fact is that Cardinal Roche has had to force the bishops to cede their pastoral autonomy (derived from the Apostles by the way and not from Francis), in order to ban the liturgy that has been the centre of the Catholic faith for the whole of her history. Hmmm, could this be the real problem they have with the Latin Mass, I wonder?
There is a narrative about Francis and mercy, but I didn’t see it in action when there were a couple of Franciscan nuns tossed out of their convent in Amalfi while the Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik was treated with kid gloves. As egregious as the bureaucratised German church has been (and they are not uniformly representative of German Catholicism), they are not unique. If anything the Belgian Church has gone further and both Cardinals McElroy (San Diego) and Hoellerich (Luxembourg) have pushed the boat out, so I am looking forward to what the whole Church in Synod does about this. In regard to the so-called Tridentine Mass, the Council of Trent did not impose a universal liturgy on the Latin Catholic Church – it only held up the Roman Missal as a model, and allowed Mozarabic, Ambrosian, Dominican, Carmelite and other rites and uses continue, while the Roman Rite could be celebrated in Greek, Old Church Slavonic and other languages ( I am talking here about the Roman Mass, not the Eastern Divine Liturgy). Uniformity is very much an arrangement which follows the Second Vatican Council and if the traditional Latin Mass is ideologised, part of the reason for this is that it has been treated with contempt by the management classes within the Church.
If “unity” requires only one form, why did the Church openly depart from that form in 1965? The Church created disunity by departing for its own 2,000 year old form. And then insists on only one form. We must “unite” behind the new. It’s enough to make a school child laugh.
Do you seriously believe that the Tridentine form of the Mass is 2,000 years old?
No. My point was that those who change old traditions are the last ones who should strike an anti-change pose.
Well, the central canon can be well attested to back to the 700s and earlier. Will 1300 years old do?
It was pretty much set by AD 5th century by Gelasius. It has been the Mass throughout the history of the Church and Pope Pius V in Quo Primum drew upon its Apostolic origins to reaffirm the liturgy in the face of the Protestant doctrines which had been examined by the Council of Trent in an 18 year study and which were declared ‘anathema.’
No. My point was that those who change old traditions are the last ones who should strike an anti-change pose.
Well, the central canon can be well attested to back to the 700s and earlier. Will 1300 years old do?
It was pretty much set by AD 5th century by Gelasius. It has been the Mass throughout the history of the Church and Pope Pius V in Quo Primum drew upon its Apostolic origins to reaffirm the liturgy in the face of the Protestant doctrines which had been examined by the Council of Trent in an 18 year study and which were declared ‘anathema.’
Do you seriously believe that the Tridentine form of the Mass is 2,000 years old?
What ‘Vatican II reforms ‘ are you speaking of precisely? Where exactly, are the reforms that were articulated in Vatican ii rejected by Catholic people attending the Catholic Latin Mass? Please direct to the documents and explain how attending the Latin Mass is rejecting anything in any document that was agreed upon by the Magesterium in Vatican ii. And while you are about it, please show precisely how the Novus Ordo Mass was mandated by the Magesterium in Vatican ii.
You are right. Vatican II was hijacked.
You are right. Vatican II was hijacked.
You/he are not doing anything unique. The situation will follow the episcopal church which will probably cease to exist within 50. They have espoused this same rhetoric since the 90’s. It will take longer but it will be inevitable as the cc becomes irrelevant because you’ll end up standing for nothing except moral relativism.
Thanks for giving us the different story Gerald. I don’t know if you’re right, but I note that none of the downvoters are coming up with a counter-argument
Again, I don’t know how accurate what you say is, but it is refreshing to read a different viewpoint from Damian’s.
Really do NOT understand the downvotes.
Your ‘different story’ is full of holes. There are indeed ‘puzzles’ about what Francis knew about the predatory and corrupt activities of various churchmen, but the biggest puzzle is why, in case after case, he refused to act on information he was certainly given, and even protected or promoted clerics whose guilt was not in doubt. You claim that the vast majority of the bishops told Francis that the Tridentine Mass had become divisive. Yet the survey on which this claim was based has never been made public, and the majority of bishops outside the Anglosphere didn’t have priests celebrating the old Mass. What does seem clear is that many of them regarded Traditionis Custodes as a centralising attack on their authority, and now that the bully Arthur Roche is forcing them to report what progress they’ve made in suppressing traditional worship they are even less well disposed towards it. The Mass has existed in various Western forms since before Trent – for example, the Ambrosian and Dominican Rites. If Francis were really tolerant of a ‘messy church’, why would he tear up Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter teaching that the older form of the Roman Rite is a valid alternative to the post-Vatican II form (but not the norm)? Incidentally, I don’t have a problem with the Second Vatican Council and haven’t attended a Tridentine Mass, with the exception of one weekday funeral, for five years. I do have a problem with the fantasy that the ‘Synod on Synodality’, whose consultations involved about one per cent of the global laity, represents anything other than a self-selecting faction in the Church.
There is a narrative about Francis and mercy, but I didn’t see it in action when there were a couple of Franciscan nuns tossed out of their convent in Amalfi while the Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik was treated with kid gloves. As egregious as the bureaucratised German church has been (and they are not uniformly representative of German Catholicism), they are not unique. If anything the Belgian Church has gone further and both Cardinals McElroy (San Diego) and Hoellerich (Luxembourg) have pushed the boat out, so I am looking forward to what the whole Church in Synod does about this. In regard to the so-called Tridentine Mass, the Council of Trent did not impose a universal liturgy on the Latin Catholic Church – it only held up the Roman Missal as a model, and allowed Mozarabic, Ambrosian, Dominican, Carmelite and other rites and uses continue, while the Roman Rite could be celebrated in Greek, Old Church Slavonic and other languages ( I am talking here about the Roman Mass, not the Eastern Divine Liturgy). Uniformity is very much an arrangement which follows the Second Vatican Council and if the traditional Latin Mass is ideologised, part of the reason for this is that it has been treated with contempt by the management classes within the Church.
If “unity” requires only one form, why did the Church openly depart from that form in 1965? The Church created disunity by departing for its own 2,000 year old form. And then insists on only one form. We must “unite” behind the new. It’s enough to make a school child laugh.
What ‘Vatican II reforms ‘ are you speaking of precisely? Where exactly, are the reforms that were articulated in Vatican ii rejected by Catholic people attending the Catholic Latin Mass? Please direct to the documents and explain how attending the Latin Mass is rejecting anything in any document that was agreed upon by the Magesterium in Vatican ii. And while you are about it, please show precisely how the Novus Ordo Mass was mandated by the Magesterium in Vatican ii.
You/he are not doing anything unique. The situation will follow the episcopal church which will probably cease to exist within 50. They have espoused this same rhetoric since the 90’s. It will take longer but it will be inevitable as the cc becomes irrelevant because you’ll end up standing for nothing except moral relativism.
Fortunately, there is a different story to be told, or at least considered, in relation to this unhappy list of criticisms. Francis preaches mercy, and puts it into action; like Jesus, he’s not afraid to reach out to sinners. He tolerates a ‘messy church’ (unlike his predecessors who would have silenced their critics), I suspect because he knows there is no point in directing people not to say or even think what may be contrary to church teaching. Of course the German church has gone too far – but it will be pulled into line by the whole Church in Synod. The problem with the Tridentine mass is that – as the vast majority of bishops around the world told Francis – it has become divisive. The unity of the Roman rite a la Trent, requires one ordinary form of the mass (which can be celebrated in Latin if that’s appropriate). Yes, there are puzzles about what and how much Francis has actually known about what is going on, or has gone on, in relation to various financial and abuse cases. That’s a question for whoever is at the head of large bureaucracies the world over. More generally, the problem fundamentally is that some people, including Mr Thompson, just don’t like the Vatican II reforms that Francis is seeking to implement. If both Francis’ critics on the right and his supporters on the left actually sought to follow his lead in renewing the Church, our situation would be very different.