Tag Archive for: Catholic Bishops

VIDEO: The Vortex — Gay Democratic Bishops

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Actual honesty would be refreshing.

TRANSCRIPT

It’s not really shocking that, in a political landscape dominated by identity politics, certain “types” would gravitate around one party or another, one candidate or another. It’s not really hard and fast — or a guarantee — but the Marxist media assures us it is the case, so it must be true. Remember, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.

So, buzzing around the Biden-Harris ticket are child-murderers; homosexual activists; climate-change fanatics; illegal-immigration, open-border enthusiasts; poorly catechized Catholics and so forth. You know — the Marxists. Trump, of course, has pretty much the other end of the spectrum: Patriots, pro-lifers, religious-minded and so forth. You know — actual Americans.

There is some crossover (but not much, particularly in the increasingly polarized society). But there’s another group that kind of gets to fly under the radar, but which really bears much closer scrutiny. That group is the U.S. bishops. And that body deserves much scrutiny because of the disproportionate influence they have over voters.

It’s not that the individual Catholic voter hangs on every word emanating from the U.S. hierarchy (thank God), but they have created an environment through decades of deceit, deception and distortion that gives the impression that the Catholic Church aligns better with the Democratic Party than Republicans.

But it doesn’t. Not even close. The Democratic Party platform supports outright intrinsic evils while also denying natural law. But there are bishops in the U.S. who are all down with that evil, and Church Militant thinks that those bishops should just come clean and stop hiding behind each other’s skirts.

We all know that a sizable number of clergy are homosexual. Even James Martin admits that. Heck, he even upbraided them and said they all need to come out of the closet and fess up. You’ll rarely hear this out of Church Militant’s mouth, but we agree with Martin. He should start with himself: Admit it or deny it, Father — come on.

But he is certainly not alone. How about Lexington, Kentucky bishop John Stowe. How about it Bishop? Are you a homosexual? We mean, why should you get to abuse your office to promote all kinds of moral filth, pretending you don’t have a dog in the fight. You house the anti-Catholic “Fortunate Families” outfit in your diocese, you speak at gay conferences like New Ways Ministry and you even share the stage with known homopredator clerics. But that sexual abuse is okay, right — because it’s all in “the family”?

Look, if you’re a big, ol’ queen, fine. We can use that as a jumping-off point to start talking about all this. But until you come clean, you can’t be taken seriously because you’re fundamentally dishonest and untrustworthy. And is there anything else that can be said more disgraceful of a successor of the Apostles?

So when you publish social media posts about how evil President Trump is, why should anyone listen? You haven’t shown your cards — and we suspect you may have two or three queens. Speaking of gay bishops, how about Joseph Bambera of Scranton, Pennsylvania who has had James Martin in the diocese so many times to promote sodomy that it raises questions about what’s really going on there.

Bambera is so effeminate that some of his own clergy call him “Bambi,” and Bambera has been outed previously by Church Militant as a registered Democrat. You know, a card-carrying member of the party that hacks up little children and sells their pieces for profits and also promotes gay sex like nobody’s business.

Giving Bambi the benefit of a doubt in presuming he doesn’t actually support the chopping up of little babies, whatever could be his reason for remaining in the party? While abortion is the religion of the Marxists, taxpayer-supported, non-stop, constitutionally protected gay sex is a really close second. So why would any bishop be a Democrat and throw his support behind child murderers and gay sex? To protect the spotted owl? Seriously? Come on!

These exact same questions can be asked of Cupich in Chicago, McElroy in San Diego, Tobin in Newark and in quite a number of other places, some of which might escape scrutiny the first time around. The question is simple: Are you gay? Yes or No? Given the current climate in the Church and the world, every single Catholic has a right to know that.

Long gone are the days when bishops could be trusted — many of them even admit that. Good. At least that’s a start. We won’t go into the reasons we can’t believe you or trust you; the list would need two eternities to be read aloud in its entirety. But a major reason you can’t be trusted is because so many of you are homosexuals in hiding, working to destroy the Church from within. And you need to say out loud, all of you (which I suspect is a pretty sizable number, if you are homosexual.

A simple “yes” or “no” would do. But of course, that will open up another set of questions for those of you who are gay. For example, how much do you let your sexual inclinations and attractions influence your politics, doctrine and well, frankly, your personal lives? It’s abominable, given your track record, that you think we don’t have a right to know this.

Of course we do. Faithful Catholics should be picketing your residences and chanceries demanding to know if you are homosexual. Much of the gay world supports the Democratic Party and brain-dead Biden. But you already know that, of course. You hate the religious air that surrounds the Republican Party, even if it is thin, questionable or even somewhat imagined.

You gay bishops hate God. You hate Scripture. James Martin even tweeted out that the Bible does say homosexuality is wrong and bad and all, but he added the Bible is wrong. Most importantly, you hate the Church. Admittedly, some of you have this love-hate relationship with the Church — you live with a tortured conscience, longing to have sex with men, maybe even actually doing so, but also knowing it’s wrong. And you are unable to come to terms with the inner conflict.

You need to resign. You need to get out now and save your soul. And if you need a little help, then call on the laity. You all may not like it but what the Era of Trump has caused is the great unmasking — pun intended. Everyone is now learning where everyone else stands on everything, and as a result, everyone is realigning themselves.

We think that all you bishops should join the party. Come out of the closet. Like you buddy Jimmy says, come screaming out and declare what you are. It’s probably safe to say that — while there would be a few surprises — most of you aren’t gonna shock any of us. We already know who you are by the way you direct your politics.

We know many of you ran deep into the closet in seminary and have made a pretty comfortable life for yourselves. Well, time’s up. Many of you are gay Democrats, which admittedly is kind of redundant. But regardless, your people need to start asking you. They need to go up to you after Mass (whether it’s in Detroit, New York, Washington, D.C. or Fort Worth, and flat out ask you, “Are you gay?”

If there was ever a time for total exposure in the Church, this is the time. What the faithful need to understand is a large number of these men are more gay than they are Catholic, and they are doing everything they can think of to get you to vote Democrat. It’s just helpful to know where a person stands. Nothing wrong with that, right your excellencies? A little actual honesty would be refreshing.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Vortex — A Great Realignment. And it’s a good thing.

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TRANSCRIPT

As you know, Church Militant is always helping you understand the connections between the culture and the Church, the crossover between both worlds. Those two worlds parallel each other in many ways — they’re practically mirrors. And, theologically, it makes sense. As Bp. Sheen used to say, the world is the theater of redemption: It’s where the great spiritual war rages.

So as we look out on all of this, we see something happening in each arena. There is a great realignment occurring, in the Church and in the culture. In many ways, the old labels, which used to categorize things neatly, no longer apply. Consider, for example, “conservative” and “liberal.” There’s so much confusion over those classifications — especially liberal — that no one really knows what they mean.

The old labels are so ineffective at describing the new realities that, oftentimes, you find adjectives popping up in front of them which pretty much redefine them. So the old word is used, but there is a totally different meaning behind the word.

For example, there aren’t just plain old Republicans anymore. But now there are actual Republicans and then there are RINO Republicans — Republicans in name only. Notice, to bring up the point of the crossover between culture and State, we also no longer have just Catholics, but “CINOs”: Catholics in name only.

And, of course, we have not just Catholics but “cafeteria Catholics.” All these adjectives are now necessary because the terms no longer mean what they used to mean. All of this redefining is going on because there is, underneath it all, a massive realignment going on — in the culture and the Church.

In the political world, Donald Trump has become the symbol of all that, not to mention also a precipitating cause. Tens of millions of Americans were beginning to sense a political shift, a new paradigm emerging where they, as individuals, no longer mattered.

They sensed correctly that the world they knew was being buried under a mountain of globalist Marxism. In the Church, faithful Catholics likewise sensed a major shift happening. They couldn’t put a finger on it, but they knew something was up, something was off.

So they began realigning themselves, leaving the Church of Nice and hunting out the actual Faith. It’s like a Catholic version of the Walkaway movement that is rippling through the Democratic Party — a movement of Democrats who have woken up and realized the party no longer represents them. And so they are walking away from it.

There is a huge ideological shift, an enormous immigration, a mass migration where people are seeking out like-minded individuals and associating themselves with them. It’s all over social media. It’s all over politics. It’s all over the Church. It’s all over the place.

People are choosing sides, and in that choosing up sides, some people are waking up and realizing that the folks they thought they had a lot in common with, they really didn’t. So they cut ties and are establishing new ones.

Now, some people find this upsetting. They bemoan the division, they lament the lack of unity. Frankly, that’s a stupid response. There can be unity only if it’s a unity around truth. In fact, this entire realignment is about the truth.  Some waking up to it, others wanting to destroy it.

But truth is the cause. When truth is present, there are only two responses. It is either embraced or raged against. The Marxist Left, up until the arrival of Donald Trump, was able to keep the truth of its agenda under wraps, to conceal the truth.

But now, it’s all out there. Nothing is hidden. And people are making choices. And that’s a good thing. Even on the side of evil, it’s good to know who’s who. For Catholics and other Christian denominations — remember, this is how things will be at the end of the world. Truth will cause one great, final realignment — and it will be final.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Abuse Summit: It’s Only the Beginning

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Robert Royal: People are happy that McCarrick has finally been defrocked, but now we need to deal with other abusers and enablers. 

February is not high tourist season in Rome. Skies are gray and temperatures low. St. Peter’s Square is relatively empty. But journalists filled the nearby Press Office earlier this week – more, according to one veteran, than since the death of St. John Paul II –because of the summit on the sex abuse crisis, which begins this evening with meetings between abuse survivors and participants, and continues Thursday through Saturday with formal sessions, parts of which will be streamed on the Vatican website. A video of the opening press briefing with remarks by Cardinal Cupich, Archbishop Scicluna, and other key figures is available by clicking here.

To be frank, it’s hard to say why so many journalists are here since no one, including Church spokesmen, expects that anything very dramatic will happen over the next few days – at least not in the formal sessions. What happens outside and around them, however, may be a different matter.

When the summit was announced last September, partly because of papal missteps in handling abuse cases in Chile, it seemed that the Church was going to take some large steps forward. There have been many smaller steps for years in many places around the world, everything from easier reporting mechanisms to better human formation in seminaries to the unprecedented laicization last weekend of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Expectations ran high, not least because the Holy Father asked the American bishops, during their annual November meeting, not to vote on ways to hold bishops accountable – whether they are abusers themselves, like McCarrick, or covered up abuse by people under their authority. They were told to wait until a uniform approach could be developed in February when many of the presidents of bishops’ conferences and heads of religious orders would gather together in Rome.

But Vatican spokesmen have more recently been encouraging people to lower expectations; and the focus this week is quite different: “The Protection of Minors in the Church.” That, of course, is a worthy goal. In many parts of the Catholic world, rules are in place, but there hasn’t been serious follow through. If the next few days bring proven practices to new places, that will be all to the good.

But it’s also much less than we were hoping for. And in America, we’ve already come a long way towards responding to the part of the abuse crisis that involves priests. We have been expecting – and had been told – that the next phase would be figuring out how to hold bishops accountable. That’s been a continuing problem, not only in America, but in Chile, Honduras, Australia, Europe, the pope’s own Argentina, and the Vatican itself.

People are happy that McCarrick has been expelled from the priesthood, for example, but they want to know how it was possible for a man widely rumored to be an abuser to have moved up in the hierarchy and eventually become cardinal-archbishop of the capital of the most powerful nation on earth. Three popes and dozens of Vatican officials are now part of the story. Pope Francis has promised an investigation into the files. It’s almost a year later and we’ve heard nothing of that, not even whether there’s an active inquiry underway.


Pope Francis by Will Oliver/EPA-EFE

Meanwhile, a new book, which will be officially released Thursday, the first day of the summit here in Rome, claims that 80 percent of the upper echelons of the Vatican are gay. Some remain celibate, others act out in various ways, but they form what, in local parlance, is called “the Parish,” a network of people who either cover for one another or, given their own inclinations, look the other way.

Or at least that’s what Frederic Martel, the author, says. Martel is a gay activist in France and his motives in publishing this book at this particular moment are suspect – as are some of his wilder claims. But he seems to have conducted thousands of interviews with various figures from high-placed Cardinals to Swiss Guards, and quotes some by name.

The excerpts that have appeared so far raise as many questions as they answer. But the whole matter of the gay presence in the Church and its role as an enabler – which the summit organizers are avoiding, indeed are denying is a factor – will not go away.

Martel says (and there’s no reason to doubt it since there have been no denials forthcoming) that his access to the Vatican was facilitated by Msgr. Battista Ricca, who is Director of the Papal Residence (i.e., Casa Santa Marta) and an official with the Vatican Bank. Ricca was widely known to have had a boyfriend or two when he was a Vatican diplomat in Uruguay. And he was caught in an elevator with a boy prostitute.

It was in response to a reporter’s question about his past on the plane returning from World Youth Day in 2013 that Pope Francis famously remarked, ““If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

But it’s partly the pope’s judgment in such matters that has raised further questions. Not only the bishop he wrongly defended in Chile, but even recent appointments like that of Gustavo Zanchetta – a bishop accused of abusing seminarians in Argentina and a friend of the pope’s – to a specially created post at one of the Vatican financial institutions. He had to be removed while investigations are going on.

And then there’s the recent naming of Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell to the position of camerlengo, the official who declares the pope officially dead and then runs the Vatican, with limited powers, during the interregnum, the period between the death of one pope and the election of another.

Farrell lived for six years in the same residence with then-Cardinal McCarrick and claimed – to widespread skepticism – that he had no knowledge of, had never even heard rumors about, McCarrick’s outrages. It’s curious that the pope would pick a potentially questionable figure for such a sensitive post.

All of this suggests that what goes on in the synod hall this week is the merest beginning to what will continue to be a large and troubling process. More on all that in coming days.

COLUMN BY

Robert Royal

Robert Royal

Dr. Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press. The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is now available in paperback from Encounter Books.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column with images is republished with permission. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own. The featured image is by Pixabay.

U.S. Catholic bishops complicit in Muslim persecution of Christians

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Recently I was interviewed about the persecution by Catholic bishops of Catholic priests who enunciate unpopular truths about Islam.

“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

“Islamic Expert: US Bishops Complicit in Muslim Persecution of Christians,” by Anita Carey, ChurchMilitant.com, May 8, 2017:

DETROIT (ChurchMiltant.com) – A prominent Islamic expert is comparing the bishops’ silence on terrorism to sex abuse cover-up. Robert Spencer, an Islamic terror expert and author of 16 books on Islam, released an editorial Sunday excoriating the U.S. bishops’ actions to punish clergy and schoolteachers who speak out against Islam, including Spencer himself.

“The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops moves actively and swiftly to silence and demonize voices that tell the truth about the Muslim persecution of Christians,” Spencer noted, naming various bishops who’ve refused him, as well as other Muslim critics, a platform in their dioceses.

“You can reject every element of the Nicene Creed and everything the Church teaches, and still the U.S. Catholic Bishops will consider you a Catholic in good standing,” he continued. “But if you believe that Islam is not a religion of peace, you have no place in the U.S. Catholic Church.”

Church Militant spoke with Spencer on his thoughts regarding the reasons why the U.S. bishops are so reluctant to speak out against the evil of Islam.

CM: At what point do you think the bishops started to pander to a politically correct agenda?

RS: This is an outgrowth of the confusion that overtook the Church in the wake of Vatican II, and the popular but erroneous idea among liberal Catholics that the Church had discarded its tradition and dogmas and essentially embraced the leftist agenda. This idea took root in earnest in the 1960s, but began germinating long before that.

CM: Knowing the historical conflicts between Islam and Christianity, why would the bishops be so quick and severe toward those who are informing the laity? Why would they want the laity ignorant?

RS: This mystifies me, but my best assessment is that this is an outgrowth of the spirit of Vatican II, which called upon Muslims and Christians to set aside ancient antagonisms and find common ground. There is a general assumption among the bishops that just as Christianity has changed since the time of the Crusades, so also has Islam, and dialog will iron out any remaining differences.

In reality, this is an unfounded assumption, as Islamic teaching has not changed, and still contains an imperative to wage war against Christians and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law. I would expect that most bishops, however, would dismiss the idea that Islamic teaching contains such an imperative as an “Orientalist” and “Islamophobic” false claim. They, however, are the ones who are ignorant.

CM: What do you think the bishops’ problem is with your talks and position on Islam?

RS: I’m told that Bp. Nicholas Samra believes that I am “spreading hate,” and since I was a member of his diocese, he himself told me that many bishops had approached him at the USCCB conference telling him that he had to “do something” about me. They apparently believe that I am harming the dialog they are conducting with Muslims, and they apparently also think that this dialog is producing results, even though Muslim persecution of Christians has increased exponentially since it began.

For my part, I reject the charge that I am spreading hate, and challenge Samra or any other bishop to quote a single hateful statement from my work. I am exposing facts that many would prefer to keep concealed; the “hate” charge is simply an attempt to make people of good will turn against my work.

CM: If the bishops do start to speak out against Islam, will it make Christian persecution worse or start an all-out war? 

RS: In Islamic law, Christians must live in subservience and submission to Islamic law. If they speak out about their plight, it will get even worse for them, and their lives could be forfeit. Thus they generally adopt an attitude of publicly praising and siding with those who persecute them, so that it won’t get even worse for them. This is the attitude that the bishops now appear to have adopted as well: Samra himself told me that I shouldn’t speak out against Muslim persecution of Christians, as doing so would only make matters worse for Middle-Eastern Christians.

While I am aware of that possibility, at the same time to dissimulate about the nature and magnitude of that persecution only misleads Christians outside the Middle East into complacency. It also just validates and reinforces violent intimidation. It is incumbent upon the bishops as messengers of the truth to tell the whole truth about what is happening to the Christians of the Middle East, and to reject a submission to Islamic intimidation that would condemn our children and our children’s children to slavery. To accept that intimidation and lie or remain silent because of it is only to encourage more such intimidation. They could speak out while working to ensure that the United States and other powers do everything they can to protect the remaining Christians in the Middle East from further persecution.

CM: What can the faithful do to influence the bishops or fight back against the liberal media?

RS: Call them to tell the truth. When they issue statements about Islam that are dishonest and misleading, challenge them. I have been severely criticized for criticizing bishops. Many Catholics seem to think that to do so is disloyal to the Church. On the contrary, I believe that not to call out bishops when they are sinful and wrong is even more disloyal to the Church. It is the kind of thinking that led to the pedophilia scandals.

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Catholic bishops call for ‘complete decarbonization’ by 2050, silent on Muslim slaughter of Christians

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Complete decarbonization? You first, fellas. No more jetting to Rome to cause trouble for everyone by canonizing hard-Left Democratic Party policies. And let’s see you portly prelates start bicycling from parish to parish — no more driving for you, McManus. That wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.

While the bishops call for this destruction of the global economy, they continue to ignore a genuine and growing threat from the global jihad.  Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Ephrem Joseph III Younan recently appealed to the West “not to forget the Christians in the Middle East.” And he is not the only one. “Why, we ask the western world, why not raise one’s voice over so much ferocity and injustice?” asked Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI). The Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III has also said: “I do not understand why the world does not raise its voice against such acts of brutality.”

I do. It’s because the bishops in the West believe that the spurious and self-defeating “dialogue” they’re conducting requires them to be silent about Muslim persecution of Christians: “Talk about extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally might undercut the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims.” — Robert McManus, Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, February 8, 2013

That’s why bishops such as McManus, Kevin Farrell of Dallas, Jaime Soto of Sacramento and others move actively to silence and demonize voices that tell the truth about this persecution. Meanwhile, their “dialogue” hasn’t persuaded a single jihadi to lay down his arms. Nor has it prevented a single Christian from being murdered by Muslims in pursuit of that jihad. Nor has it kept a single church from destruction at the hands of those jihadis.

The Church could have and should have been a voice for a genuinely charitable response to the jihad threat, and a robust defense of the value of Judeo-Christian civilization. Instead, it parrots Leftist talking points about climate change.

“Global bishops call for ‘complete decarbonisation’ by 2050,” AFP, October 26, 2015:

Bishops launched a global appeal Monday for a break-through at upcoming Paris climate talks, including a “complete decarbonisation” of the world’s economy and more help for poor countries battling the effects of climate change.

The bishops said any agreement “should limit global temperature increases to avoid catastrophic climatic impacts, especially on the most vulnerable communities”.

From across five continents they called “not only for ‘drastic reduction in the emission of carbon dioxide and other toxic gasses’, but also for ending the fossil fuel era”.

The goal should be “complete decarbonisation by mid-century, in order to protect frontline communities suffering from the impacts of climate change, such as those in the Pacific Islands and in coastal regions”.

The November 30-December 11 conference in Paris will be the culmination of six years of work since the ill-fated 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, which failed to lock down significant agreements.

The bishops urged those taking part to “keep in mind not only the technical but particularly the ethical and moral dimensions of climate change” as laid out in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“Those responsible for climate change have responsibilities to assist the most vulnerable in adapting and managing loss and damage and to share the necessary technology and knowhow,” they said in a statement….

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