Dante tried to teach us long ago that many clerics, including (the majority of?) popes, justly go to hell when they die. Those of you who enjoy reading this blog, no doubt, will agree with such divinely-established exclusivity. Nonetheless, what the bishops talk about at their annual meeting down there must be so intolerably dull that no sane human being would ever want to listen in. No doubt, it would involve mercy and social justice for ordained pedophiles justly accused of non-consensual sodomy with a minor. But what happens when chic, trendy, liberal, and (surprisingly-but-somehow-not-so-surprisingly) ignorant academics in the humanities end up in hell? Would their discussions ever be worth listening to? That question has inspired your favorite EF humorist to come out of retirement to relieve the tedium of our own time. In the midst of so much suffering, why not have a laugh in the spirit of Dante?
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As the damned academics assemble, they take in the newest book about Mary Queen of Scots. She is still an acceptable subject of discourse, because even if she was not biologically female (how could we know that for sure?), still she identified as a woman. Nonetheless, she was white, moneyed, and often empowered, so she will not be considered acceptable for discourse at next year’s conference. Naturally, straight white men were excluded three years ago, because the presence of any hetero, white, biological male who identifies as a man necessarily creates a hostile environment for anyone deserving of free healthcare under the Biden Administration.
In light of the book’s cover, a gay man (henceforth, Gay Academic 1, aka GA1) asks: If these ladies could talk, what would they say? Two other gay men join in on the conversation:
GA2: Redheads do it better.
GA1: But to clarify: What is it that redheads do better? And given the fact that we’re talking about two British ladies, shouldn’t you say ginger, not red?
GA2: I’m removing myself from this conversation. Given the gross racial/ethnic trichological insensitivities, I no longer feel safe. Caring for myself is not self-indulgent; it is self-preservation and an act of political warfare.
GA1: If you can’t engage in the discourse required by your position because of your emotional incontinence, you are not qualified for your job and ought to be fired. I don’t believe in your non-right not to do your job just because it requires that you learn to develop the emotional maturity required to live in the emotionally unsafe places of authentic discourse about the issues we are politically and ethically obligated to discuss, including trichology. Your remarks are culturally and linguistically insensitive, and hence colonial, and also probably racist.
GA3: As a ginger-adjacent-identifying queer person, I think my voice being left out of this discourse is part of the larger systemic issue of ginger-erasure. I hold neither of you accountable for having this conversation over me. These are inherited systems of power, after all. But I would like my voice to be heard, nonetheless. In this context, however, I do not feel at liberty to discuss what it is that gingers do better, but I would like to have that conversation separately, perhaps over cocktails.
An obese, gender-fluid Latinex overhears the conversation and adds his/her/h* two cents:
Why must you insist on perpetuating patriarchy? Putting words in the mouth of women who aren’t here to speak for themselves effectively renders them voiceless. Your presence at this conference is offensive, because you are male. OUT!
With that, conference security arrives to force the gay men away. To do what they can to dismantle white fragility and maleness, the conference organizers then decide that at next year’s conference, all biological males who identify as men (including gay men) will be excluded so as to create an inclusive, affirming, welcoming, and safe environment for all.
The Catholic faithful through the centuries have trusted their Bishops and Priests to use their donated hard earned money for the glory of God and His Church. Many Catholics who are faithful to the Church and Her Mission still give willingly and generously to the Bishop’s Appeal every year. However, disturbing trends in the Church at large and locally call us to step back and reflect on the good of the Bishop’s Annual Appeal.
Although the BAA claims to use it’s donated money for a great good, and in some part probably does, the pandemic lockdown of 2020 and recent news in the Diocese raises serious concerns.
(Rome) Who will succeed Cardinal Robert Sarah as Prefect of the Roman Congregation Divine Worship and the Sacraments? Two months after the Cardinal's retirement from Guinea, the question is still open. The candidates most frequently mentioned in Rome come from the Bugnini direction, which suggests that a scroll should be made backwards, back to the liturgical reform of 1969, the expiration date of which is so short that in the past 50 years several editions of the Roman Missal in vernacular have already been made as the translations were allegedly needed to keep it "contemporary" as the Avvenire, the daily newspaper of Italian Bishops' Conference , on December 4, 2020, said enthusiastically.
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On February 20, Cardinal Sarah was retired after a period of little more than five years by Pope Francis. The 75-year-old black African is in excellent health. Pope Francis had waited for his 75th birthday and the regular end of a term of office. The retirement took place in such a way that no impression could arise that it had been a punitive measure.
Cardinal Sarah was the only head of the Dicasteries to have an open exchange of blows with Pope Francis. In 2016 it was about the celebration of Mass ad orientem. The call to all priests to celebrate e
astwards again, as the church had done up to the Bugnini reform of 1969/1970, is still in the room. Since Francis contradicted his prefect personally and twice, it could not develop the desired effect, although it did find an echo .
The cardinal dared a second, indirect confrontation with Francis at the beginning of 2020, when he opposed a softening of the priestly celibacy and the sacrament of Holy Orders with the book " From the depths of the heart" and Benedict XVI. had as an ally.
Short sent after the retirement Francis a apostolic visitor to the Got-tes-service-kon-gre-ga-ti-on .
"This is a particularly derogatory measure Cardinal Sarah, whose management should be reviewed," said Riposte catho-li-que .
After all, Cardinal Sarah is true in the coming conclave as a possible father-bi-le .
Candidate 1: Bishop Claudio Maniago
For Visitor Francis Bishop Claudio Maniago appointed by Castellaneta, without so far from the Vatican se-Pres-amt something was introduced to it. The former auxiliary bishop of Florence was appointed to the bishopric by Francis in 2014. Msgr. Maniago is "one of the most active members of the Italian pressure group that the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum and, privileges' of the Ecclesia Dei world demands a maximum reduction," said Riposte catho-li-que . In this way he apparently “qualified” himself in 2015 for the office of Chairman of the Liturgy Commission of the Italian Bishops' Conferences and in 2016 for membership in theGot-tes-service-kon-gre-ga-ti-on .
Bishop Claudio Maniago
Maniago stayed at the congregation for three days before Easter, as CNA reported, and had talks with the staff. It was about the daily work and views on the liturgy. Other sources suggest that the bishop should review the current staff and their attitudes.
CNA reported yesterday, citing Vatican sources, that the structure and functions of the Congregation would be retained but one point would be added. In the profile, the “liturgical sensitivity emanating from the Second Vatican Council” should be explicitly mentioned, which means the controversial liturgical reform by Msgr. Annibale Bugnini from 1969/1970.
It is not known whether and when Bishop Maniago reported to the Pope. To an official audience he was loud day-bul-le-tin not yet received the Vatican press office. Nevertheless, the timetable seems to be already in place. According to CNA sources, the appointment of the new Prefect of the intended Got-tes-service-kon-gre-ga-ti-on done yet "before the Feast of the Ascension," which will be celebrated on 13 May.
Since his posting as a visitor, Msgr. Maniago has been on everyone's lips as the potential successor to Cardinal Sarah. Since then, the concern of traditional circles has also increased.
Candidate 2: Bishop Vittorio Viola
The second name mentioned in Rome also points in the same direction. To be precise, it has been passed around longer than that of Monsignor Maniago. It is Monsignor Vittorio Viola, Bishop of Tortona. He holds a doctorate in liturgy and is a professor at the Roman Benedictine University of Sant'Anselmo . Like Maniago, Viola was appointed to the episcopate by Pope Francis in 2014. Previously, the Franciscan Guardian of the Franciscan Convent at the Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli in Assisi, the most important monastery of the Franciscan Order. Francis met him on his first visit to Assisi in 2013. At that time Viola was also the diocesan Caritas director.
Bishop Vittorio Viola
He was ordained a priest in 1993 from Bishop Luca Brandolini of Sora-Aquino-Pontecorvo, who was a close collaborator of Annibale Bugnini. Katholisches.info wrote on May 11, 2020:
“Brandolini, now 87 years old, was a student and collaborator of Msgr. Annibale Bugnini, the creator of the Novus Ordo . Bugnini's bishop's ring, who died in 1982, was worn from 1987 by his student Brandolini, who in turn passed it on to his protégé Viola in 2014. "
In November 2012, Katholisches.info had the article Francis of Assisi instead of Annibale Bugnini - Benedict XVI. urges bishops liturgy Respek-tie-ren published that all the essential elements addressed, which now appear to play a role. At that time, Monsignor Domenico Sorrentino was Bishop of Assisi, and he is still today. The liturgist Sorrentino was appointed secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship in 2003 , the office that Annibale Bugnini once held. Pope Benedict XVI replaced him a few months after his election by the current Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, who had a liturgical sensitivity that was closer to Benedict.
Sorrentino was expelled from Rome as Bishop of Assisi. There he introduced the Franciscan Father Vittorio Viola to the newly elected Pope Francis in October 2013. The Italian bishop-kon-fe-rence , however, called Sorrentino, after he became bishop of Assisi, in the Lit-for-energy-kom-mis-si-on what an affront to Benedict XVI. equaled. He had removed him from the Congregation for Divine Worship because Sorrentino, contrary to Benedict's intention, had successfully thwarted the issue of the Missal of Pius V and the recovery of the traditional form of the Roman rite at the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist of 2005.
The Liturgical Commission of the Italian bishop-kon-fe-ence has for decades been a solid domain of Bugnini school. The liturgy commission of the Bishops' Conferences for the country in more concrete impact than the Got-tes-service-kon-gre-ga-ti-on . Maniago, Viola and Sorrentino sit together on the currently seven-member Italian commission. Bugnini's student Brandolini, who ordained Viola as a priest and gave him Bugnini's bishop's ring, also belonged to her. You know each other. So it is not surprising that Sorrentino and Maniago were jointly appointed members of the Congregation for Divine Worship by Pope Francis in autumn 2016 .
Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino
The third Italian edition of was presided over by Msgr. Maniago and with the help of Msgr. Viola and Msgr. Sorrentino Missal Roma num published. It contains the changed Our Father requested by Francis and does not contain that of Benedict XVI. arranged correction of the wall-lung-wor-te per mul-tisas “for many” instead of the Bugnini translation “for all”. In the eyes of progressive church circles, both Bishop Maniago and Bishop Viola have recommended themselves for higher offices. Bishop Viola was indeed being discussed as the new Archbishop of Genoa. However, Francis chose Viola's Franciscan confrere from another branch of the order, the former General Minister of the Minorite Order Marco Tasca.
The new Italian missal was introduced by most dioceses on the first Sunday of Advent in 2020. Its use has been mandatory since Easter 2021.
Addendum
For the sake of completeness, a third candidate should not be left unmentioned, although his name is currently less heard: The Spanish Jesuit Juan Antonio Martínez Camino SJ is also named as a potential Sarah successor. The auxiliary bishop of Madrid received his doctorate from the German Jesuit University Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt am Main. As prefect of the Got-tes-service-kon-gre-ga-ti-on , so it is said he was the "gravedigger" of the Motu proprio Summorum Pon-ti-fi-cum .
Everything seems to indicate "an attack on 'Summorum Pontificum' and the Usus antiquior in general", said Monika Rheinschmitt from Pro Missa Tridentina at the end of February.
Text: Giuseppe di Nar- image: Avvenire / CEI / Diocese of Sora / Roman Catholic Diocese of Tortona (screenshots)
Edit: expect dramatic rise in street crime while the police stand back and watch. The once proud nation of America is being transformed into another African cleptocracy.
The rare conviction of a police officer came in a city on edge from the recent killing of another Black man, Daunte Wright, by a police officer in the suburb of Brooklyn Center.
Countless local news outlets across the country have been reporting school closures due to teachers and staff having adverse reactions to the second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
In what seems to a widespread phenomenon that we don’t see after any other vaccine, teachers across the country are calling out sick due to reactions from both the Pfizer and Moderna MRNAvaccine, as well as the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson.
[Washington Times ] The Anti-Defamation League has called for Fox News to fire prime-time opinion hostTucker Carlsonbecause he defended a white-supremacist theory that says whites are being “replaced” by people of color.
In a letter to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on Friday, the head of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, said Carlson’s “rhetoric was not just a dog whistle to racists - it was a bullhorn.”
The civil rights group listed numerous instances Carlson has used anti-immigrant language. Those include saying immigration makes the U.S. “poorer and dirtier” and questioning whether white supremacy is real. Greenblatt said that “given his long record of race-baiting, we believe it is time for Carlson to go.”
Gay activist Juan Carlos Cruz defends Pope Francis against "fanatics" at the Roman Curia.
(Rome) Juan Carlos Cruz, aberrosexual and recently named member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Children, was an interviewed in a piece which appeared in Sunday's edition of the Chilean daily newspaper La Tercera. In it he says that he had received a call on the day of his appointment, March 20, from Pope Francis, where in the same newspaper, he criticized the recent Responsum by the Congregation for the Faith in which the Congregation affirmed that the Church is unable to bless aberrosexual unions. But that's not all.
The chronological sequence suggests that on March 20th in Santa Marta a strategy was sought to absorb the surging criticism of the internal and external gay lobby. The strongly worded column by Juan Carlos Cruz, who was already a weekend guest of Pope Francis at the Vatican in April of 2018, appears to have directed attention to this journalists and since then, led the internationally known gay activists to be appointed to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Children.
Cruz confirmed in the interview published yesterday, to have spoken to Francis in the phone call on March 20 about the document by the CDF. The Pope gave him to understand that he does not share the contents of the Responsum. According to Cruz, this is credible for him, since this statement by the Pope coincides with what he had already told him about homosexuality in 2018.
The Pope "is very hurt by what happened"
In the past two weeks, Bergoglians had spread the thesis that Francis had been betrayed. There were two versions of the Responsum, one of which was "inclusive" and was presented to the Pope "so that he agreed to the publication of the above-mentioned Responsum ad dubium". A stricter version was then published, according to this conspiracy theory.
"He's very hurt by what happened," said Cruz.
Indeed, the Chilean proves to be an instrument of a counter-strategy by supporting this thesis and making it public. As a victim of abuse and a homo activist - the inconsistency that he was the victim of aberrosexual abuse is usually not mentioned - Cruz enjoys special credit in many media and, as has already been shown in the past, he has access to the major international press agencies. Cruz stressed that Francis will try in the future, to become more apparent in distancing himself from the document of the Congregation for the Faith and "somehow carry out a repair."
The claim that Francis was betrayed by his Faithful Prefect and Friar Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer SJ is completely beyond reality. Already in the past a papal double strategy was shown on other topics, to represent the Church doctrine and at the same time its opposite and sometimes to do both so vaguely that nothing is really comprehensible, but through media reinforcement, the overall impression arises of an intended turning away from and changing of Church Doctrine. That is the real message to the ecclesiastical and secular public: indirect, implicit, intangible, but everyone knows or suspects what the Pope wants.
Francis is known for his tendency to say what the interlocutor would like to hear. To see this as a polite weakness is not enough. On closer inspection, this "courtesy" turns out to be a targeted strategy. Nor is it an expression of a fatal “neutrality”, but a plan. From this it follows that Francis also takes contradicting positions at the expense of credibility, albeit in doses and as far as possible not directly tangible, by making a statement promptly and in parallel, also its opposite, but the thrust is always and unquestionably modernist.
"You have to understand this in the context of the Vatican, the fanaticism of some"
The most important statements of the Cruz interview in full:
La Tercera: What was your first reaction when you heard about the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith document on homosexual couples because it does not match the position taken by the Pope?
Juan Carlos Cruz: It was like a cracked bell. I saw this and wondered what happened there? This is not what I heard directly from Pope Francis, this is not the Pope I know. It hurt, of course. But as I explain in my column, if anyone knows the Vatican, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and its approach here and there, I immediately thought of the Prefect of the Faith, because they are experts at it. I do not want to generalize because there are spectacular people working at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but there are some prefects who are very powerful, with a strong clericalism and rigorous fanaticism, who consider the Pope to be liberal. Remember what the Pope told me, what he said in the course of his history, also in Buenos Aires. I don't want it to look like I'm apologizing for Pope Francis for being ultimately responsible, but that has to be understood in the context of the Vatican, the fanaticism of some. I know, because I discussed it with the Pope, that he is very hurt by what happened.
La Tercera: Did you speak to the Pope after seeing the document?
Juan Carlos Cruz: Yes, I have spoken to the Pope, I do not want to tell anything confidential, but I know that the Pope is very hurt by this, although he is ultimately responsible for it. I have a feeling that somehow he will fix this situation.
La Tercera: Then what was the reason why this document was finally published? Didn't he see it?
Juan Carlos Cruz: I don't know the details, but I know he didn't sign it. Nevertheless, the so-called Responsum, for which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is responsible, was published. That does not excuse the Pope, because he is responsible for everything. The Pope I know is not a Pope who relates to the LGBT community in this way, quite the contrary.
La Tercera: This topic triggered reactions not only from the base of the Catholic Church, but also from the hierarchy. The Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn also made statements that were viewed as criticizing the document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Do you see that this can become a symbolic problem of a rupture within the Catholic Church?
Juan Carlos Cruz: I think that there are very extreme positions in the Church, as we also see in politics, a lot of fanaticism at times, and I am glad that there is a Pope like Pope Francis who is a man who does not play with adjectives. But that's the contradiction that this creates in me when I see this wonderful man on the one hand and seeing these things happen on the other. I have a feeling that there will be a fix somehow.
With the surprising appointment of Cruz to the Pontifical Child Protection Commission, Pope Francis not only sends a signal to the gay lobby and homophile circles in and outside the Church, but also made his former critic, one thinks of the Pope's visit to Chile in January 2018, into an official Apologist. Cruz has been defending Francis since his weekend in the Vatican in 2018. This reflects Pope Francis' stance on homosexuality, but again only indirectly. When a gay activist like Juan Carlos Cruz defends Francis and his stance on homosexuality so euphorically, it cannot be assumed that Francis teaches and defends the Church's teaching on homosexuality. Cruz said in May 2018 that Francis had said to him. "God made you gay"
Text: Giuseppe Nardi image: La Tercera (screenshot)
