Pope Considers a Response to Irish Situation

It will be fascinating to see what the Holy Father says in his upcoming pastoral letter to Ireland about this abuse case.

We can only note that given the last years of the apotheosis of corporate guilt and abeyance of personal sanctity and devotion that it should be hardly surprising that the Bishops look at their "vocations" in a more or less worldly sense.

When St. Thomas Becket came to Canterbury from France after his exile, he walked the 20 Miles to his Episcopal throne on the bare souls of his feet, and after he'd been dispatched by Henry's assassins and his retainers were preparing him for burial, they discovered his hair shirt and the marks on his body from the "discipline".

Given the Holy Father's emphasis on personal sanctity and Benedictine reform, it wouldn't surprise us indeed if he didn't expect his Bishops to make more clear, personally costly, and public, displays of personal penance on the part of Bishops. Many Catholics do not believe in the sanctity of their Bishops, but they're more than willing to expect the worst; what would be even more surprising indeed would be evidence of deep, personal holiness on the part of Ireland's Bishops, Priests and Religious, and a return to a severe but deeply human asceticism. People are moved by sincerity and if you put your heart on your sleeve, people will follow you anywhere. Indeed, they followed Robert the Bruce's heart all the way to Jerusalem.

Pope Benedict shares Irish "child abuse outrage"

Pope Benedict said he shared Irish outrage over a damning abuse report
The Pope shares the "outrage, betrayal and shame" felt by Irish people over a report that said clerical child abuse was covered-up, the Vatican has said.

In a statement, issued after Pope Benedict XVI met Irish Church leaders on Friday, the pope was said to be "disturbed and distressed".

A report found church leaders covered up child abuse in Dublin for decades.

He will write a pastoral letter to the Irish people about sexual abuse and the Vatican's response to the crisis.

"The Holy Father was deeply disturbed and distressed by its contents," the Vatican statement said.

"He wishes once more to express his profound regret at the actions of some members of the clergy who have betrayed their solemn promises to God, as well as the trust placed in them by the victims and their families, and by society at large."

The Pope summoned the Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, to Rome after the Vatican was criticised for failing to respond to the Murphy inquiry.

Homosexuals within Prevent the Church from Reacting to Moves to Oppose Homosexual Legistlation: Ireland

Homosexual marriage legistlation is a way to promote acceptance for homosexuals while their Episcopal enablers air their concerns about Global Warming and the press vents its synthetic rage on the "medieval secrecy" of the Church.

Tue 08 Dec, 2009


Despite being rocked by strikes, scandals and financial collapse, Ireland’s social transformation continues unabated. Thursday December 3 saw the latest rupture from the past as the Republic of Ireland became the latest country to begin the process of affording recognition to same-sex couples. Dáil Éireann, Ireland’s parliament, read and debated the Civil Partnership Bill 2009 introduced by Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern.

The Bill would, if passed, grant same-sex couples rights in relation to domestic violence, residential tenancies, succession, refugee law, pensions, medical care, access to state benefits and immigration.

Opposition to the Bill was muted. Minister Ahern has told his colleagues, Fianna Fáil lawmakers, concerned about the Civil Partnership Bill that he is ruling out a “freedom of conscience” amendment that would allow any organisations run people offended by homosexuality, such as Church halls and wedding photographers, to consider same-sex couples unmarried.

The Bill’s passage into law this month is virtually assured because of strong backing by opposition parties. However, reaction to the Bill from gay rights organisations has been mixed.

While many campaigners have welcomed the move, MarriagEquaility, a group that campaigns for full recognition of same-sex marriage, says the bill does not go far enough and promotes discrimination against gays and lesbians.

“Civil partnership without the option to marry sends a clear message out to the public that the government do not consider gay and lesbian relationships to be equal. Civil partnership, without a civil marriage option, promotes inequality and may contribute to homophobia,” said MarriagEquality director Moninne Griffith.


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The Forces of Liberalism Are Attacking the Church

John Allen writes in NCR on the Pope's "headaches" that Holy Father might need the aspirin of liberalism to remedy the old nationalist headaches of populists; is it Pat Buchanan he is thinking of as well as remote Lombards and Venetians? As we read this we thought about the comparison between populist Catholics, assuming our definition is the same as Allen's and that he means to actually slur conservative (read actual) Catholics as being synonymous with nationalists and fascists, many of whom never the less, echo Oriana Fellaci's instinctual but rationally formed concerns for European Civilization in relation to Islam. Interestingly, Allen correctly points out that many Italians in the North, particularly the more nationalistically and Catholic minded, perhaps echoing similar intellectual movements in France like the Action Française, cling strongly to their Catholic identity, yet do, as John Allen maintains, retain a certain degree of anti-clerical feeling. Well, in a sense, who can blame them and in another, one wishes for a higher motivation still, that they may realize after all that the globalists (Allen calls them "centralists") who are strongly represented in the Vatican are, if we are really honest with ourselves, liberals who favor stronger centralization, government control and diminution of the things that define the nation.

The real issue then, John Allen's posturing notwithstanding, is the brain tumor of modernism. Pain is a good thing. If populists are causing the Holy Father a "headache" it must only be nature reminding him that something is wrong, and that reforms are needed to restore the heart of Europe to its everlasting Christian youth.

There are some evil men like John Allen's masters behind the furor in the Sex Abuse Scandal in the developing world. Of course, the liberals behind all of this aren't making us aware of the absolute deprivation of the poor in places like South Africa and Rhodesia whose regimes they lobbied for vociferously for more than a decade. They're much more concerned in getting some headway against the Irish Church and robbing its money by using the abuse scandal as a reason. They're already in the process of absconding with some 166 Million from the Christian Brothers, and they've used a convenience of accounting in San Francisco to finagle another 14.4 Million.

No doubt, lusting after the Church's millions, the Irish Republican Government and Gordon Brown's Labor Government have, like the Martians in HG Well's sci-fi novel, feasted their covetous eyes on the property of the Catholic Church after their failed social programs have failed to yield heaven on earth and left hell instead.


Ironically, men of their type had more to do with the scandal than does the Catholic Church itself. These liberals will blame "secrecy", but the real issue is the liberalism, and this media event was manufactured by them to whip up anger against Ireland's oldest and wisest institution by forces no one, not least of all those who are angered by this, understand.

Abuse takes place in government (and private schools) at a much greater rate than they have in Catholic schools, but there's a difference. First of all, the Government isn't interested in creating another shortfall, other religious denominations don't have any money, at least not compared to Catholicism and besides, the Church teaches a lot of things that many Europeans despise and let's face it, put a damper on living in the sleek world of tomorrow without guilt and all that medieval stuff.

The Church is easily demonized and it's wealthy. It sounds like a recipe for nationalization of assets to us.

Pope, President, Archbishop to discuss abuse scandal in Dublin.

Protest in Dublin, by 10 people with VOTF, another self-interested organization that will harp on pre-ordained issues which actually have nothing to do with the problem. They will insist that "secrecy" and "medievalism" are the problems when the real problem is something they themselves embody: liberalism. It really is indicated by the fact that VOTF wants to "change the structure of the Church."

Hopefully the Church strikes back against this non-sense by pointing out the liberals in their midst, as they have with Senator Patrick Kennedy. We need to do the same with the Bishops whose mismanagement gave the pretext to the government in the first place.

PITTSBURGH -- Catholics from the Pittsburgh area teamed up with the Washington DC group Insurrecta Nex to protest at the office of Sen. Bob Casey.

The Friday protest was to ask Bishop David Zubik and all U.S. bishops to deny Communion to senators who vote for health care reform covering abortion.

“If you vote for this bill, there’s child killing in it, then you will not be able to receive Holy Communion,” said one protester. “We’re tired of the treachery and the cowardice of so-called Catholic politicians who rebel against the teachings of Christ.”

Zubik responded in a statement that said, “The Church … has the responsibility to protect the sacredness of the Eucharist from any abuse, inclusive of politicizing Communion. If a time came where I must engage any individual for any reason in regard to reception of the Eucharist, that would be solely between myself as pastor and that person as a member of my flock.”

Zubik went on to say it would not be debated publicly.

Link to article....

Irish Theologian Calls for Irish Bishops' Resignation

In addition to the opportunistic, traitorous as a Scythian and very liberal Archbishop Martin of Dublin, a different and much more credible voice speaks out asking for the Mitres of named Irish Bishops, in contrast to the Peace and Justice Bishop of Dublin, he speaks about the spiritual dimension of this outrage and the malfeasance of the Bishops who aided and abetted it.

A prominent Irish theologian who is former student of Pope Benedict’s has called on those Irish bishops who are named in the Murphy report on clerical abuse in the Dublin diocese “to resign immediately from their current pastoral positions”.

Dr Vincent Twomey, who is professor emeritus of moral theology at Maynooth, writes in a letter published in today’s Irish Times that “at the very least, it would seem, all were guilty of negligence – some, such as Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick, whose behaviour was described as ‘inexcusable’, more than others."

He adds, "But all were deemed guilty of inaction, of failing to listen to their conscience, as Mary Raftery put it on radio and television.”

Speaking to The Universe today, Dr Twomey said that the spiritual damage that had been done to the victims by the priests who abused them, and the damage done by the apparent inaction of the bishops, was "now being exacerbated by the bishops' failure to stand down and take repsonsibility".

The theologian underlines in his letter to the Irish Times that “the longer they delay in doing so, the greater the damage they will do to all faithful Catholics, and in particular to the survivors of abuse who are still paying the price for the sins of their priests and bishops”.

Dr Twomey is a member of the Pope Benedict’s Schülerkreis, an annual conference of the Pope’s graduate students who meet the pontiff every year to discuss theological issues.

In his letter, Dr Twomey writes that his “instinct is to defend the Church from unfounded attacks. But the revelations of the Murphy report are something else."

He adds, "The actions, or rather for the most part, the inactions of the bishops named there are simply indefensible.”

Yesterday, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin called on bishops and priests criticised in the Murphy report into the handling of clerical sexual abuse in his diocese between 1975 and 2004 to admit their mistakes and resign.

Five serving bishops who were auxiliary bishops in Dublin over the period of time investigated by Judge Yvonne Murphy’s Commission were criticised in the report, which was published last Thursday.

In what was seen as a response to a statement made by Bishop Donal Murray at the weekend saying his decision about whether to stay on as a bishop would be guided by the faithful of Limerick where he now serves, Archbishop Martin said he would be writing to all the auxiliary bishops who served in Dublin and who are named in the Dublin diocesan report to say that their responses to the report were a matter for the Catholics of the Archdiocese.

Dr Martin said he would need to be confident his priests could stand over their statements.

He added that what they did and did not do failed people in Dublin and they owed them a response. Everyone should stand up and take responsibility for what they did, he said.

Bishop Murray was an auxiliary bishop of the Dublin Diocese from 1982 to 1996.

Pressure has mounted on Bishop Murray to resign after the report branded his failure to investigate complaints against Fr Tom Naughton when later allegations were made as “inexcusable”.

Link to original...

And in a related story, we have another who should resign to a very austere Monastery (if there are any left) who is guilty of the same inaction and indifference as the Irish Bishops, Cardinal Egan. At least he's out of the game and can't do any more damage.

Communist Agitprop

From the same old foes:

OPINION: AFTER THE first wave of revelations over a decade ago, the sexual abuse of children by the clergy was explained away by the Roman Catholic Church by the bad apple theory – that these isolated “sexual acts” were transgressions by a minority of weak priests. In the wake of the Dublin diocesan report, that explanation has been amplified to include institutional failures of decision-making in dealing with offenders and victims, and a culture of secrecy and cover-up, writes MAUREEN GAFFNEY

But tidying up corporate governance and instituting a more transparent culture is not going to resolve the scandal of clerical sexual abuse. That will require the church to face up to a much more profound problem – the church’s own teaching on sexuality.

Consider the list of issues the church has failed to deal with credibly since the 1960s: premarital and extramarital sex; remarriage; contraception; divorce; homosexuality; the role of women in ministry and women’s ordination; and the celibacy of the clergy. All have to do with sexuality.

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And the same old "friends"


Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said he is not happy with the response of bishops to Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.

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Archbishop of Dublin cries crocodile tears and portrays himself as the good guy, here.

Dublin's Archbishop Silent on Catholic Teaching

Standing firm and joining in the maelstrom of criticism against the Church for the deeds of some of its shepherds who do not accept Catholic teaching, the Archbishop of Dublin, who's unlikely ever to make Cardinal, points an accusing finger at the Vatican, religious orders in Ireland and the Archbishop of Westminster. He is more capable of blaming everything else but the real cause. For if he accuses the Vatican of remaining silent on sex abuse, his silence on the truths the Catholic faith and the obligations of Catholic ministers points to some unsavory associations of his own that link him more closely to the pereptrators of these crimes than it does with the Church he claims to support.

In an earlier interview recorded on Off The Record, he ineptly, if deliberately, fumbles the ball in support of Catholic teaching about homosexuality:

Interviewer: You can say yes or no to my question: do you think that people -- homosexual people -- who engage in homosexual sexual relations are engaged in an intrinsic moral evil?

Archbishop: I would not make a judgment, again, on ... on ... on ... on ... on individual people. I have no idea.

Following the sports analogy, he seems to have made an assist more recently, since he became the Arcbishop of Dublin in 2004, for government prosecutors who have lain greedy eyes on the possessions of the Church; he's done this while being viewed by the liberal press, whose causes of globalism, "climate change" and social justice, he embraces and supports.

But this recent, irresponsible public statement by his auxilliary Bishop puts him at a war footing with the hierarchy:

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The Vatican’s failure to cooperate with a panel investigating the sexual abuse of children by priests in Ireland is “very regrettable,” said an auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop of Dublin, Eamonn Walsh.

“I’m very disappointed with this failure to respond” to the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation, Walsh said in a telephone interview today. “I am surprised with the attitude, it is totally unnecessary. It doesn’t tally at all with the approach of the Holy Father,” he said, referring to Pope Benedict XVI.

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This type of talk, which he participates and allows, earns him the praise of dissident voices in the United States, at NCR.

Not only has the Pope received some passive rebuke from the Archbishop of Dublin, but also Archbishop Nichols who said that the "real heroes" were the priests who cam forward and admitted their wrong doing.

He also didn't fail to criticize the religious orders of Ireland either when he began his quest for transparency.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has taken control of the information and is a definitive beneficiary of public acclaim, at least from those liberals within the Church who are using this as a means of further transformation and alteration in its Doctrines.

But perhaps it would be better if he took up the advice of Enda Kenny asking Irish Bishops to resign?

The Irish Church is in Trouble: Blame Liberals

The furor is broiling and the Bishop of Limmerick is being criticized and so is the Catholic Church by association, but is he criticized for the right reasons and is he held accountable for the things he claims to represent? One of the sad things about this entire issue is that while wrongdoers are punished from time to time for their crimes, the finger of public opinion isn't pointed at the evils of heresy and the fact that all too many of these men are not true to their promise to be Catholic prelates, priests and religious; no, the public would rather point their fingers at the things they mistakenly view as the source of the problem. Damien Thompson has narrowed the problem down to the heresy of Jansenism and we'd point out that some of the Church's most liberal influences came from the Jansenists, particularly at the Council of Pistoia.

Liberalism notwithstanding, since heresy is a common problem, and an ancient one, the sex- abuse problem can be traced from that, and the issue of Clerical abuse is, like the heresy of Modernism, as old as the pyramids of Egypt. Although the crime itself against children is not new, the high level of conspiracy between liberal Bishops and liberal governments is of fairly recent vintage, and the most recent of all is the way that clerical abusers are punished. In olden times, they weren't just arrested, they were often given painful deaths, for as Christ said,

But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Yet the blame doesn't just stop there, governments, as in the times of Robespierre and Gilles de Rais,aren't blameless, in fact they aid and abet, as if they had a common interest in corrupting the youth. As the article in the Ireland Times mercifully mentions,

Ironically, the things the liberal abuse enablers in the Episcopacy, media experts and many government officials think will cure the Church are actually those same things that are generally embraced by the men who commit these crimes in the first place. No one talks about the abuse in governmental schools and compares it to the Church, much in the Church's favor.

No doubt, clerical pederasts and their Episcopal protectors are a cynical lot and men of this dark age. Secretly or openly, they often support the kinds of things which the Catholic Church has always opposed, or they support liberal causes which are in opposition to or at least are irrelevant to their mission in the first place, like the Irish Bishops Council's support for legislation addressing "Climate Change". In the meantime, while the public complains about the secrecy of the Church, its "outdated" rules and regulations, it is unwittingly gnawing and biting at the very thing that unequivocally condemns these personal sins in the first place, personal sins, frankly, that many liberals are unwilling to admit.

This was evident in the case of Roman Polanski who many liberals and media elites wanted to go on unpunished. It brings to mind that occasion, recounted by Simone de Beauvoir, when Sartre remitted Camus for having a mistress who'd collaborated with the Nazis, saying that all morality is collective, no doubt, he had his own Nazi collaboration in mind.

But never mind all that, no one's going to address the issue of personal sin, heresy and hypocrisy here, at least no one in the courts and the great majority of the victims, they've got their eyes on the wealth and spiritual power of the Church: the one they only dimly understand because they are materialists.

Link...

Christian Brothers Ordered to Pay 161m Euros

Rather than reorganizing or disbanding the order, the assets will be confiscated by the government. This is by far the most open admission of guilt on the part of a religious order that we've ever seen, unfortunately, the root problem of heterodoxy won't be addressed while the Church loses influence and property. Generally speaking, the Church has a better record in all of this than the Government, and things like this further push the Church out of Her role as the protector of the poor and the nursemaid of Christendom.

[BBC News] A Catholic religious order is to supply a 161m euros (£145m) package of measures as reparation for child abuse in Ireland.

The Christian Brothers said the decision had been taken in response to the Ryan report which revealed decades of abuse at religious institutions.

The report, published in May, laid out a picture of systematic abuse.

In a statement the order said its move followed its "shame and sorrow at the findings of the Ryan Report".

"We understand and regret that nothing we say or do can turn back the clock for those affected by abuse," the statement continued.

"Our fervent hope is that the initiatives now proposed will assist in the provision of support services to former residents of the institutions as well as the facilities, resources and scope to protect, cherish and educate present and future generations of children."

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