Theodore's World: Catholic Archives

December 30, 2019

Vatican tribunal overwhelmed by clergy sex abuse abuse cases

The Vatican office responsible for investigating clergy sex abuse cases says it is overwhelmed. The tribunal has long been a secretive branch of the Vatican.

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November 10, 2019

Scalfari: Pope Francis Denies Bodily Resurrection of Jesus

by Jules Gomes

Italian journalist doubles down on Francis' alleged denial of Jesus' divinity

ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - In a new series of troubling revelations, Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari has quoted Pope Francis as denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus in stating that the crucified Christ emerged from the tomb as a spirit rather than as a body.

In a front-page article in Tuesday's La Repubblica, Scalfari expands on his earlier quote from Pope Francis, where the Holy Father is interpreted as rejecting the divinity of Jesus while on earth, and dovetails that statement with Francis' alleged denial of Christ's bodily resurrection.

According to Scalfari, Pope Francis said, "He [Jesus] was a man until he was put in the sepulchre by the women who restored his corpse. That night in the sepulchre the man disappeared and from that cave came out in the form of a spirit that met the women and the Apostles, still preserving the shadow of the person, and then definitively disappeared."

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It is in this context Scalfari elaborates on his meeting with Pope Francis.

"I was personally responsible for speaking with Pope Francis in our first meeting four years ago, and His Holiness, who is very prepared in these matters," told him that "God, who is Unique to all the people of the whole world, decided on his incarnation to help humanity to believe in the hereafter and to behave appropriately in thinking and acting."

Then, Pope Francis reportedly told Scalfari: "That is, he is a man: true and total, and he shows it in the last week spent in Jerusalem, at the last supper, in the Garden of Gethsemane where he prays to God to exempt him from being crucified, but God does not answer him."

"Also on the cross he is a man who turns to what he calls the Father and almost reproaches him by saying: 'Father, Father, you have abandoned me,'" Francis reportedly said.

Italian social media has erupted in shock at the new revelations.

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continue reading full article click here

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October 25, 2019

Disgust, validation, hope: Survivors, Catholics react to report detailing 70 years of Colorado clergy sex abuse

Seeing Father George Weibel’s name printed in the newspaper Thursday brought Hazel Lorraine Kroehl back to the Broomfield swimming pool where 60 years earlier the priest abused her.

Emotions flooded Kroehl. Then old shame crept up, before being washed away with gratitude. Finally, the world knew the priest for who he was — a pedophile.

Then Kroehl, 72, burst into tears.

“This is the first time I’ve ever cried over it,” she said Thursday.

For Kroehl and other victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests, the release Wednesday of a damning report detailing 70 years of clergy abuse in Colorado dredged up memories of the men who abused them. But seeing the priests’ names and descriptions of their crimes also validated what happened to survivors many decades ago.

The report also caused pain and deep reflection for many in Colorado’s Catholic community. Each new detail can test a person’s faith, though many remain loyal to their church, despite its flaws.

“I think like a lot of Catholics it’s complicated,” said Katie Lacz, a lifelong Catholic and a program associate at the Women’s Ordination Conference. “We’re all faced in this situation with this question of staying or leaving and all the implications of that. How can you stay? And how can you leave?”
RELATED: Colorado Catholic Church sexual abuse investigation: Who are the 40 priests named in the report?

The 263-page report — spearheaded by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office — is the most in-depth accounting of clergy sex abuse in Colorado to date. Its author, former Colorado U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer, found that 43 priests here abused at least 166 children and that the church hierarchy worked for years to hide allegations from the public and created a culture where abuse went unreported.

Publishing the investigation has brought a flurry of new abuse reports to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, spokesman Lawrence Pacheco said Thursday.
Survivors

When the list of abusive priests published online, Juliane Honeywell Haburchak immediately scrolled through the list of names searching for the priest who abused her more than 40 years ago.

Over the decades, Haburchak had searched George Weibel’s name online to see if his abuse had been made public, to see what ever happened to the man that groped her and a friend in a Littleton church when she was about 12 years old. She never found anything except his obituary.

At the time of her abuse, Weibel was leading an evening class at Columbine Catholic Parish she had to attend so that she could take her first confession. During one of those classes, Weibel put his arms around the shoulders of her and a friend and groped their breasts, Haburchak said. He asked multiple times if the touch was painful.

“I just remember thinking ‘That’s not right,'” Haburchak said. “But I didn’t have words for it.”

She eventually told her mom, but her mom never reported it. She became a more anxious and fearful child but didn’t tell anybody else.

Haburchak later left her faith — being at church made her nervous. In her late 20s, Harburchak returned to the church — now St. Francis Cabrini Parish — to see if Weibel still worked there. She thought about confronting him. But she never made it past the church’s entryway.

Instead, she was met with a large painted portrait of the man who had abused her. Fear enveloped her. How could this man who abused her be seen with so much respect?

“I felt so horrible,” she said.

When Weibel’s name appeared in the investigative report Wednesday, Harburchak felt relieved to see his crimes come to light.

“It was just so validating,” she said.

Harburchak said that one of the worst things that Weibel’s abuse did to her was cause her to lose her faith for decades, though she later returned to Christianity.

“I felt like I left a part of myself out for years,” she said.

Sixteen years before Weibel met Harburchak at the old Columbine parish, the priest met Kroehl through her parents. The priest would offer to take Kroehl and her siblings to a local pool in Broomfield. The priest would play games with the kids and on multiple occasions over the summer of 1959, Weibel groped 10-year-old Kroehl’s breasts over her swimsuit, she said.

She told her mom and sister years later about what happened when Weibel offered to take her and her siblings to a local pool, but didn’t report it otherwise.

“I never, ever thought I needed to call someone about this because I didn’t think anybody would believe me,” Kroehl said. “He was a representative of God, right? He couldn’t do anything wrong, could he? I thought I must have done something wrong to make him do that.”

Kroehl remained Catholic for a number of years. She became a social worker and for years helped children in Boulder County. Seeing Weibel’s name printed in the report brought her back to those terrifying moments in the pool, but it was healing, she said.

“It’s a validation of feeling,” she said. “The fact that it did happen. It wasn’t something I imagined. I wasn’t nuts.”

For the broader Colorado Catholic community, the report has brought the realities of an international scandal to the same churches they attend and made it more personal.

Lifelong Catholic and former state Sen. Rob Hernandez said seeing the names of priests he knew as a child shook him. Even though Hernandez has known of allegations against priests for years, the report destroyed impressions of men he had seen as role models.

“It shattered my impression of them and it shook me to my Catholic core,” Hernandez said of the report. “To think that those in power in the hierarchy of the church who preach these vows and the 10 commandments knew this was going on and didn’t protect us. We were children.”

Growing up in the Pueblo diocese in the 1960s, he said he knew boys who had been victimized and priests who preyed. He watched as adults repeatedly failed to intervene. Although the pain caused him to question how a loving God could allow such horror, he remained steadfast in his faith.

“My faith is internally strong,” he said. “I’ve always had a personal relationship with God and my maker, and that hasn’t shattered.”

Lacz was also devastated by the report, she said.

“My initial reaction is both deep sadness and a lack of surprise at the same time,” she said. “And that lack of surprise itself makes me very sad.”

But Lacz said she couldn’t turn away from a faith that is a central part of her identity. Instead, she vows to fight from the inside and hopes to make it a better, safer place. She doubts her decision to stay in the church sometimes. There are hard days, like Wednesday and Thursday, she said.

“And yet I believe in a Holy Spirit that moves in difficult situations,” she said.

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October 24, 2019

Catholic priests in Colorado sexually abused at least 166 children in the past 70 years

Thu October 24, 2019

CNN)At least 166 children were abused by dozens of Catholic priests in Colorado since 1950, a report released Wednesday says.

The 263-page report details decades of misconduct and reveals how it took nearly 20 years for one diocese to discipline priests accused of sexually abusing children.

"This is a dark and painful history," Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser told reporters. "The culture going back decades was one where there was a reluctance to acknowledge and address wrongdoing."

The report was commissioned by the Colorado attorney general's office in agreement with the state's three dioceses to document sexual misconduct involving minors by priests.

For seven months, former US Attorney Bob Troyer reviewed more than 500 priest files and interviewed witnesses, victims, priests and law enforcement. In his findings, Troyer says most of the incidents took place in the 1960s and 1970s.

The most recent allegations were made in 1998 and involve a Denver priest who sexually abused four children, the report states.

Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila apologized to the victims in a video and a letter posted online.

"If any survivor wishes to meet with me personally, my door is open," Aquila said. "I have met with many survivors, and from these heart wrenching personal interactions, I know there are no words that I can say that will take away the pain.

"However, I want to be clear that on behalf of myself and the Church, I apologize for the pain and hurt that this abuse has caused. I am sorry about this horrible history -- but it is my promise to continue doing everything I can so it never happens again. My sincere hope is that this report provides some small measure of justice and healing."

A priest allegedly abused over 60 children

One of the priests named in the report, Father Harold Robert White, abused at least 63 children over 21 years.
White, who was described in the report as the "most prolific known clergy child sex abuser in Colorado history," served in six parishes from 1960 until he was removed from ministry in 1993.

"When he had sexually abused enough children at a parish that scandal threatened to erupt, the Denver Archdiocese moved him to a new one geographically distant enough that White was not known there," the report states.

White died in 2006. He was never placed on restricted ministry or sent for a psychiatric evaluation, and he never underwent an investigation, the report says.

Weiser said the report's findings won't result in a criminal investigation as they are not within the statute of limitations.

The report indicates that it's "impossible" to say with certainty that no child abuse has taken place in recent years due to the dioceses' poor record-keeping. But the priest files reviewed by Troyer do not show that any priest in active ministry has sexually abused children, the report said.

Authorities and diocese officials also announced a settlement fund for victims of clergy abuse. Both victims who have previously reported their abuse and those who make reports in the coming weeks can submit a request for compensation.

Weiser said authorities want to make sure those who have been hurt receive help, and that they can protect the community moving forward.

CNN's Sara Weisfeldt contributed to this report.

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October 23, 2019

Report: 166 children abused by 43 Catholic priests in Colorado over past 70 years

166 children abused by 43 Catholic priests in Colorado over past 70 years

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October 07, 2019

Catholic Church Continues to protect their Pedophile Priests

Without oversight, scores of accused priests commit crimes

SOURCE

Nearly 1,700 priests and other clergy members that the Roman Catholic Church considers credibly accused of child sexual abuse are living under the radar with little to no oversight from religious authorities or law enforcement, decades after the first wave of the church abuse scandal roiled U.S. dioceses, an Associated Press investigation has found.

These priests, deacons, monks and lay people now teach middle-school math. They counsel survivors of sexual assault. They work as nurses and volunteer at nonprofits aimed at helping at-risk kids. They live next to playgrounds and day care centers. They foster and care for children.

And in their time since leaving the church, dozens have committed crimes, including sexual assault and possessing child pornography, the AP’s analysis found.

A recent push by Roman Catholic dioceses across the U.S. to publish the names of those it considers to be credibly accused has opened a window into the daunting problem of how to monitor and track priests who often were never criminally charged and, in many cases, were removed from or left the church to live as private citizens.

Each diocese determines its own standard to deem a priest credibly accused, with the allegations ranging from inappropriate conversations and unwanted hugging to forced sodomy and rape.

Dioceses and religious orders so far have shared the names of more than 5,100 clergy members, with more than three-quarters of the names released just in the last year. The AP researched the nearly 2,000 who remain alive to determine where they have lived and worked — the largest-scale review to date of what happened to priests named as possible sexual abusers.

In addition to the almost 1,700 that the AP was able to identify as largely unsupervised, there were 76 people who could not be located. The remaining clergy members were found to be under some kind of supervision, with some in prison or overseen by church programs.

The review found hundreds of priests held positions of trust, many with access to children. More than 160 continued working or volunteering in churches, including dozens in Catholic dioceses overseas and some in other denominations. Roughly 190 obtained professional licenses to work in education, medicine, social work and counseling — including 76 who, as of August, still had valid credentials in those fields.

The research also turned up cases where the priests were once again able to prey upon victims.

After Roger Sinclair was removed by the Diocese of Greensburg in Pennsylvania in 2002 for allegedly abusing a teenage boy decades earlier, he ended up in Oregon. In 2017, he was arrested for repeatedly molesting a young developmentally disabled man and is now imprisoned for a crime that the lead investigator in the Oregon case says should have never been allowed to happen.

Like Sinclair, the majority of people listed as credibly accused were never criminally prosecuted for the abuse alleged when they were part of the church. That lack of criminal history has revealed a sizable gray area that state licensing boards and background check services are not designed to handle as former priests seek new employment, apply to be foster parents and live in communities unaware of their presence and their pasts.

It also has left dioceses struggling with how — or if — former employees should be tracked and monitored. While victims’ advocates have pushed for more oversight, church officials say what’s being requested extends beyond what they legally can do. And civil authorities like police departments or prosecutors say their purview is limited to people convicted of crimes.

That means the heavy lift of tracking former priests has fallen to citizen watchdogs and victims, whose complaints have fueled suspensions, removals and firings. But even then, loopholes in state laws allow many former clergy to keep their new jobs even when the history of allegations becomes public.

“Defrocked or not, we’ve long argued that bishops can’t recruit, hire, ordain, supervise, shield, transfer and protect predator priests, then suddenly oust them and claim to be powerless over their whereabouts and activities,” said David Clohessy, the former executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, who now heads the group’s St. Louis chapter.

“IT WAS SUPPOSED TO MAKE ABUSE HISTORY”

When the first big wave of the clergy abuse scandal hit Roman Catholic dioceses in the early 2000s, the U.S. bishops created the Dallas Charter, a baseline for sexual abuse reporting, training and other procedures to prevent child abuse. A handful of canon lawyers and experts at the time said every diocese should be transparent, name priests that had been accused of abuse and, in many cases, get rid of them.

Most dioceses decided against naming priests, however. And with the dioceses that did release lists in the next few years— some by choice, others due to lawsuit settlements or bankruptcy proceedings — abuse survivors complained about underreporting of priests, along with the omission of religious brothers they believed should be on those lists.
Full Coverage: The Reckoning

“The Dallas Charter was supposed to fix everything. It was supposed to make the abuse scandal history. But that didn’t happen,” said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who had tried to warn the bishops that abuse was widespread and that they should clean house.

After the charter was established in 2002, some critics say dioceses were more likely to simply defrock priests and return them to private citizenship.

Before 2018′s landmark Pennsylvania grand jury report, which named more than 300 predator priests accused of abusing more than 1,000 children in six dioceses, the official lists of credibly accused priests added up to fewer than 1,500 names nationwide. Now, within the span of a little more than a year, more than 100 dioceses and religious orders have come forward with thousands of names — but often little other information that can be used to alert the public.

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June 19, 2019

Abp. Viganò names DC National Shrine rector Msgr. Rossi as homosexual predator

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 18, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò revealed in a new interview that he received complaints, as papal nuncio, that Msgr. Walter Rossi, rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., had engaged in homosexual harassment and predation.

In an interview with Italian journalist Marco Tosatti, Viganò, a former apostolic nuncio to the United States, said, “Monsignor Rossi is, without a doubt, a member of the ‘gay mafia.’” Viganò, who accused Pope Francis of covering up sexual misdeeds of high-ranking prelates, went on to say, “I can say that, while I was a nuncio in the United States, I received the documentation that states that Msgr. Rossi had sexually molested male students at the Catholic University of America.” According to Viganò, “the Vatican, in particular Cardinal [Pietro] Parolin, is well aware of the situation of Msgr. Rossi, as is Cardinal [Donald] Wuerl.”

Viganò added, “I can finally testify that Rossi’s name was proposed for promotion to my predecessor, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who blocked his progress.” Viganò said, “These facts clearly show how the ‘gay mafia’ operates.”

George Neumayr of The American Spectator has reported that Catholic University of America alumni said Msgr. Rossi had “groomed” male students and even suggested having group sex. Neumayr cited an unidentified “archdiocesan source” who said Rossi rewarded men for submitting to him while persecuting those who did not. That source claimed that Rossi is a “gay sexual harasser” of students at CUA. Rossi is a member of the CUA board, as are Cardinals Timothy Dolan, Blase Cupich, and Daniel DiNardo, as well as several bishops.

Viganò noted that Msgr. Rossi has connections to Bishop Michael Bransfield, Rossi’s immediate predecessor at the basilica — who was suspended after evidence emerged of his sexual assaults on seminarians and misappropriation of millions of dollars for personal expenses — and then-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who chose Rossi to replace Bransfield. Bransfield was noted for giving sizeable monetary gifts to bishops and priests. Once revelations of his behavior were made public, many of those gifts were returned. Viganò told LifeSiteNews that a monetary gift he received from Bransfield was immediately turned over to a Church charity for African seminarians.

Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore is conducting an investigation into Bransfield. McCarrick is the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, D.C. whom Pope Francis laicized because of allegations of serial sexual abuse, including pedophilia.

“In fact, his successor as rector of the Basilica, Msgr. Walter Rossi, he was appointed there by McCarrick the same year that Bransfield was appointed bishop,” Viganò said.

In the face of push-back by some sectors of the Catholic Church, Viganò recently told the Washington Post:

Not only have my testimonies not been denied, but some of the facts they contain have been independently confirmed. To cite just two examples, the letter of [then-Archbishop Leonardo] Sandri to Father [Boniface] Ramsey [of New York] confirmed my assertion that Vatican officials knew of the McCarrick allegations as early as 2000, and Cardinal [Marc] Ouellet, in his open letter to me, confirmed that he told me in person and then put in writing the restrictions imposed by Pope Benedict on McCarrick.

Viganò, who is now in hiding, also told the Washington Post that homosexuality within the priesthood and bishops who engage in cover-ups continue to afflict the Church. He wrote, “[T]he ‘gay mafia’ among bishops is bound together not by shared sexual intimacy but by a shared interest in protecting and advancing one another professionally and sabotaging all efforts at reform.” Viganò also wrote, “It is not pedophiles but gay priests preying on post-pubertal boys who have bankrupted the U.S. dioceses.” He cited Fr. Paul Sullins of the Ruth Institute, who reported in “Is Catholic clergy sex abuse related to homosexual priests?” that the share of homosexual men admitted to the priesthood rose from “twice that of the general population in the 1950s to eight times the general population in the 1980s. This trend was strongly correlated with increasing child sex abuse.” Sullins also reported, “Estimates from these findings predict that, had the proportion of homosexual priests remained at the 1950s level, at least 12,000 fewer children, mostly boys, would have suffered abuse."

Given this “overwhelming evidence,” Viganò said it is “mindboggling” that homosexuality has not been addressed in recent Church documents, including the unprecedented February 2019 Vatican conference on sexual abuse. Vigano wrote, “Given the overwhelming evidence, it is mind-boggling that the word ‘homosexuality’ has not appeared once, in any of the recent official documents of the Holy See, including the two Synods on the Family, the one on Youth, and the recent Summit last February.”

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June 11, 2019

Argentina Criminally Charges Homosexual Bishop Close to Pope Francis

SALTA, Argentina

A homosexual bishop from Argentina undergoing a canonical trial has been criminally charged with sexually abusing seminarians.

The prosecutor's office in the Argentine province of Salta publicized the formal charge on Friday. Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta could be facing three to 10 years in prison for "aggravated continuous sexual abuse committed by a minister of a religious organization."

Prosecutor Mónica Viazzi charged Zanchetta last Thursday with sexual abuse aggravated by his religious authority.

Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta could be facing three to 10 years in prison for 'aggravated continuous sexual abuse committed by a minister of a religious organization.'Tweet

Zanchetta was scheduled to return to Rome last Friday but authorities confiscated his passport and banned him from leaving Argentina.

He has also been required to establish permanent residence in Argentina, be present at all hearings regarding his case and stay away from his victims and their families. Zanchetta would be taken into custody immediately for violating any of these requirements.

In May, Pope Francis told Mexico's Televisa that he had received the results of a preliminary investigation into Bp. Gustavo Zanchetta and ordered the case be canonically tried by a Vatican tribunal, marking a notably different direction in dealing with Zanchetta.

In September 2015, Chancellor Secretary Luis Amancio Díaz discovered pornographic pictures on Zanchetta's phone. The pictures included gay porn involving young men and images of Zanchetta showing his genitalia and sexually gratifying himself. Using WhatsApp, the pictures were shared with third parties.

Three of Zanchetta's vicar generals and two monsignors filed a formal complaint a year later with Swiss Archbishop Paul Emile Tscherrig, the papal nuncio to Argentina.

Those reports stated that Zanchetta would "watch seminarians in their rooms at night with a flashlight, ask for massages, go into their rooms and sit on their beds, encourage them to drink alcoholic beverages, and had certain preferences for those who were more graceful [looking]."

The Vatican had been denying that the Pope had any knowledge of this as late as January, stating that they only learned of the allegations in 2018; however, Fr. Juan José Manzano, Zanchetta's former vicar general, has contradicted this denial by telling the AP that he reported Zanchetta to the Vatican in 2015 and 2017.

"In 2015, we just sent a 'digital support' with selfie photos of the previous bishop [Zanchetta] in obscene or out of place behavior that seemed inappropriate and dangerous," Manzano said. "It was an alarm that we made to the Holy See via some friendly bishops."

"The nunciature didn't intervene directly," he continued, "but the Holy Father summoned Zanchetta and he justified himself saying that his cellphone had been hacked, and that there were people who were out to damage the image of the Pope."

Zanchetta would 'watch seminarians in their rooms at night with a flashlight, ask for massages, go into their rooms and sit on their beds, encourage them to drink alcoholic beverages, and had certain preferences for those who were more graceful [looking].'Tweet

Church Militant covered this papal cover-up in January, and Michael Voris discussed it when covering the summit on clerical sex abuse in February.

After Zanchetta met Francis in 2015, the Pope permitted Zanchetta to continue as bishop of Orán for another two years. Then, in 2017, as mainstream media began covering the story, Zanchetta suddenly resigned as the bishop of Orán, disappearing for months.

He reappeared in Rome as an "assessor" — a position Francis seems to have invented — for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), the Vatican office that oversees millions of dollars in Church real estate.

While many faithful Catholics think the hierarchy from the very top cannot be trusted to police themselves on clerical sex abuse (and other matters), secular law enforcement stepping in to handle the policing in Argentina, the United States and elsewhere is on the rise.

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June 07, 2019

George Soros Praises Pope Francis

(Rome) The left oligarch George Soros praises Pope Francis. The multi-billionaire, w
international network for influencing politics and public opinion, showed his satisfaction with the ruling Pope on Twitter. In the past there were already direct connections. Above all, the bond is an amazingly similar agenda.

George Soros, though a currency speculator, is among the most influential people in the world. This is because he uses his billions of assets to influence politics and public opinion directly, and internationally. For this purpose, he built up an organizational network, which in turn finances and directs a network of NGOs. At the heart of the network is the endowment of the Open Society Foundations. The control center is ultimately Soros himself. This allows him to a more rapid setting of the agenda in parliaments, governments, political parties or organizations. Soros is the first, truly global, political body that basically consists of only his person and money. He buys the desired opinion.

Soros also sponsors of Pope Francis

Since Pope Francis was elected, his influence reaches into the Vatican, which was previously closed to him. Unlike his predecessors, Francis shows, though the pope of the "option for the poor" has little fear of contacting major oligarchs. It is unclear to what extent Pope Francis is aware of the influence of Soros. One should, however, have no illusions in this regard.

During the Pope's visit to the United States in September 2015, Soros was one of the main sponsors of the Pope's journey. With 650,000 dollars, he financed the visit to the left US President Barack Obama, whose successor Donald Trump Francis avoids on the other hand. One of the "highlights" of the visit to the US was the encounter with an aberrosexual student of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his partner. It came to a scandal because the then Apostolic Nuncio in the US, Msgr. Carlo Maria Viganò, at the request of the US bishops also invited the county official Kim Davis in the Nunciature, who engaged a conscientious objection to the legalization of "gay marriage” and was even jailed for it. Her presence, which at first was hushed up and then denied by the Vatican, disrupted the papal idyll of rapprochement with Obama and the left-liberal mainstream.

The Soros financing became known later, as in the course of the presidential election campaign in 2016 corresponding evidence was revealed significantly on WikiLeaks. The contact with Soros came about through the Honduran cardinal and Pope confidant, Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, who is also accused of having a criticized affinity for money elsewhere in Honduras.

Soros Donations: $ 650,000 for Pope's Visit 2015 in the US.

There has never been a personal meeting between Pope Francis and George Soros. This should be due mainly to political wisdom. When it came to a meeting with Bill Gates, another major oligarch who is also sociopolitically active and like Soros, is himself one of the main sponsors of abortion and aberrosexualization, there was a rebellion of African bishops, so that the private audience was canceled again.

Great harmony of the agendas of Soros and Francis

Many Catholics observe with astonishment and horror the substantive agreement on numerous topics between the course, which Pope Francis of the Catholic Church decreed and the political agenda of
George Soros. This applies above all to unrestricted mass migration, climate hysteria and antinatalism. Francis is the most important global voice for a "right" to unrestricted migration and the associated dissolution of state borders and state sovereignty. He is next to Greta Thirnberg the most influential, moral voice for the increasingly hysterical climate story of an allegedly man-made climate change and the delusion that man can direct the climate by governmental influence. After all, it is Francis who largely neutralized the Church in terms of abortion and contraception. While the Pope and the Church, among his predecessors, were the most important voice for a culture of life that actively resisted at all levels of the culture of death, Francis did not formally change the course, but reduced it to a minimum, so that the Church offered no real opposition to the Neo-Malthusians and their abortion agenda, but also the Homo-Agenda at the highest level (see also: Pope rewards Homosexual Activism and Abortion).

The balance is sobering. Even though there was no meeting between Bergoglio and Soros, there is a fundamental harmony with central themes of the Soros agenda.

A shocking example of this is Pope Francis’ praise for former EU Commissioner Emma Bonino. Bonino has been one of the most radical abortion, euthanasia, drug liberalization and, more recently, mass migration lobbyists since the 1970s. She sits on the board of the Open Society Foundations and is one of the closest confidants of George Soros. Faithful Catholics were horrified, but Pope Francis praised Bonino as “very great.”

George Soros recently confirmed his closeness to Bergoglio recently by praise for the Catholic Church leader, albeit for a supposedly "unsuspicious" reason. The praise still speaks for itself.

Soros praise for the pope

Pope Francis apologized during his visit to Romania last Sunday on behalf of the Catholic Church to the Roma, a Gypsy people (from Greek ἀτσίγγανος, atsínganos), for their "historically bad treatment". Romania and Moldova which is also part of the Romanian-speaking region, together with Bulgaria, Macedonia and Slovakia have the world's highest Gypsy population. The Danube Principality Wallachia, now part of Romania, has belonged since the late Middle Ages to the core settlement area, since it became from 1395 an Ottoman dependency, which lasted until 1878. The appearance of Gypsies in Europe took place parallel to the military advance of the Ottomans in the Balkans.

Exact information about their numerical strength does not exist. Over the past hundred years, however, their share of the population of Romania and Moldova and those neighboring countries is likely to have increased tenfold due to favorable conditions.

On June 3, George Soros was pleased with the Pope’s apology on Twitter:

"Pope Francis sent an important message when he asked for forgiveness for the discrimination, marginalization and maltreatment of the Roma."

Already last April 8, Soros called the Roma "the most discriminated and oppressed minority in Europe,” he wrote:

"I've made it my mission to help them."

Soros’ Open Society Foundation describes itself as the world's "largest private donor of Roma affairs". The Foundation estimates the number of Roma in Europe in a video in which Soros himself appears at 12 million. This number was mentioned in 2011 by the Council of Europe, but is no more certain than other information. In the 1980s, as today, numerous various estimates were mentioned, but only in the order of 1.9 to 5.6 million.

Soros Foundation Holding on its commitment to Roma in Europe.

The Soros commitment to Roma and Sinti can only be speculated. In the context of his migration agenda, it is noticeable that the Gypsies from India, as the European name was, until political correctness began to take on the role of language police, historically show a marked demarcation from neighboring peoples and a strongly nomadic character. These elements show themselves to be in common with the Jews, and they are the only two not truly settled peoples of Europe. Soros is a Jew, though it does not matter in concrete terms, whether he is a believer or not, because it is not a question of religion.

Mass migration through dissolution of state borders and state sovereignty equates to the attempt by Soros and others to take up these specific identities and to impose them on the European peoples and the states and legal systems that they have formed throughout history.

Wild Thing's comment..........

There is no greater damnation of Bergoglio than the endorsement of that evil, festering troll. Soros. ANY endorsement by SorozNazi is like a personal kiss from Satan.

Posted by Wild Thing at 05:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 06, 2019

Heretic Pope Francis changes Lord's Prayer: ... changes 'lead us not into temptation' ...

Pope Francis changes Lord's Prayer: ... changes 'lead us not into temptation' ...

Pope Francis changes Lord's Prayer: Head of Catholic church changes 'lead us not into temptation' line after saying it implies that God can lead followers astray

* Pope Francis has altered the Lord's prayer to shift responsibility onto Satan
* Says new version clarifies that God does not lead his children into temptation
* Officials say that the update means the prayer's intended message is heard

Pope Francis has changed the Lord's Prayer after criticising the English translation for implying that God - not Satan - leads people into temptation.

Francis approved an alteration the line 'lead us not into temptation' which now reads 'do not let us fall into temptation', which is closer to the French translation.

Speaking about the change back in 2017, Francis said: 'It's Satan who leads us into temptation, that's his department.'

The pontiff continued: 'I am the one who falls. It's not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen.

A father doesn't do that, a father helps you to get up immediately.'

The change comes after 16 years of research by Biblical scholars, and corrects what they believe was an error when the prayer was translated.

It is thought that Jesus originally spoke the prayer in Aramaic, before it was translated into Greek and other languages.

The English version of the prayer is derived from the Greek translation.

The Greek word in question, eisenenkes, is found in the original New Testament in Matthew 6:13.

Francis also approved changes to The Gloria from 'Peace on earth to people of good will' to 'Peace on Earth to people beloved by God.'

During the General Assembly of the Episcopal Conference of Italy, President Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti announced the approval of a third edition of the Messale Romano in May, 'in the wake of the liturgical reform.'

The Bible has been edited many times over the years as errors were discovered with translating the ancient work.

Perhaps the most infamous version, Robert Barker’s King James Bible, published in 1611, omitted a key word from the seventh commandment.

In that edition the commandment read 'thou shalt commit adultery'. The correct version is, of course, 'thou shalt not commit adultery'.

Wild Thing's comment..........

It is clear now that he is a heretic and false prophet.

No it is very clear and people need to understand this that the Holy Spirit (Who of course is God) led Jesus into the desert to undergo temptation by the devil. And Jesus is our Way.

God’s purpose with temptation is not to lead us to sin, but to strengthen us through our resisting temptation.
Nonetheless we pray not to be led into temptation .

Pope thinks he’s a better prayer composer than Jesus. It s “The Lord’s Prayer,” and not his to change. This arrogant putz should be removed from “office” and excommunicated along with the “cardinals” who voted for him. I guess it was that “fake white smoke” that did it.

Aramaic was a hodgepodge of languages adapted to allow dozens of dialects to have a simple language to convey simple things. It was not a written language.

The predominant written languages of the region were Greek, Hebrew, Roman Latin.

The Lord’s Prayer was written in Greek.

The word ‘do’ in the phrase ‘do not lead us’ is from the Old English and is more in the way of saying ‘make it’, ‘make it so’, or somehow act. The phrase ‘do not’ may connote ‘make it so that it is not’.

The King James Bible is the definitive translation as a work that spanned generations with detailed investigations by hundreds of the very best of Greek and Hebrew translation scholars. No expense was spared. The history of the KJB is enriching in itself. Many do not know that James VI of Scotland who became James I of England was immensely intelligent and wise. He lamented that he would have preferred to have been a scholar than king. He ordered and ensured that every word of the project was thoroughly researched including sending and receiving scholars to and from Greece, the Holy Lands, Asia Minor, everywhere the history required thorough research and investigation.

The Greek word eisphérō means "to bring" thus a literal translation would be "bring us not into temptation". The word "lead" would clearly be an acceptable alternative in translating into English, as it means the same thing in this context. The Pope is changing scripture into what he wants it to say rather than what it says.

Posted by Wild Thing at 05:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 24, 2019

Are Catholic beliefs and practices biblical?

Question: "Are Catholic beliefs and practices biblical?"

Answer: The issue concerning any church and its practices should be “Is this biblical?” If a teaching is Biblical (taken in context), it should be embraced. If it is not, it should be rejected. God is more interested in whether a church is doing His will and obeying His Word than whether it can trace a line of succession back to Jesus’ apostles. Jesus was very concerned about abandoning the Word of God to follow the traditions of men (Mark 7:7). Traditions are not inherently invalid…there are some good and valuable traditions. Again, the issue must be whether a doctrine, practice, or tradition is Biblical. How then does the Roman Catholic Church compare with the teachings of the Word of God?

Salvation: The Roman Catholic Church teaches that salvation is by baptismal regeneration and is maintained through the Catholic sacraments unless a willful act of sin is committed that breaks the state of sanctifying grace. The Bible teaches that we are saved by grace which is received through simple faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), and that good works are the result of a change of the heart wrought in salvation (Ephesians 2:10; 2 Corinthians 5:17) and the fruit of that new life in Christ (John 15).

Assurance of salvation: The Roman Catholic Church teaches that salvation cannot be guaranteed or assured. 1 John 5:13 states that the letter of 1 John was written for the purpose of assuring believers of the CERTAINTY of their salvation.

Good Works: The Roman Catholic Church states that Christians are saved by meritorious works (beginning with baptism) and that salvation is maintained by good works (receiving the sacraments, confession of sin to a priest, etc.) The Bible states that Christians are saved by grace through faith, totally apart from works (Titus 3:5; Ephesians 2:8-9; Galatians 3:10-11; Romans 3:19-24).

Baptism:In the New Testament baptism is ALWAYS practiced AFTER saving faith in Christ. Baptism is not the means of salvation; it is faith in the Gospel that saves (1 Corinthians 1:14-18; Romans 10:13-17). The Roman Catholic Church teaches baptismal regeneration of infants, a practice never found in Scripture. The only possible hint of infant baptism in the Bible that the Roman Catholic Church can point to is that the whole household of the Philippian jailer was baptized in Acts 16:33. However, the context nowhere mentions infants. Acts 16:31 declares that salvation is by faith. Paul spoke to all of the household in verse 32, and the whole household believed (verse 34). This passage only supports the baptism of those who have already believed, not of infants.

Prayer: The Roman Catholic Church teaches Catholics to not only pray to God, but also to petition Mary and the saints for their prayers. Contrary to this, we are taught in Scripture to only pray to God (Matthew 6:9; Luke 18:1-7).

Priesthood: The Roman Catholic Church teaches that there is a distinction between the clergy and the “lay people,” whereas the New Testament teaches the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9).

Sacraments: The Roman Catholic Church teaches that a believer is infused with grace upon reception of the sacraments. Such teaching is nowhere found in Scripture.

Confession: The Roman Catholic Church teaches that unless a believer is hindered, the only way to receive the forgiveness of sins is by confessing them to a priest. Contrary to this, Scripture teaches that confession of sins is to be made to God (1 John 1:9).

Mary: The Roman Catholic Church teaches, among other things, that Mary is the Queen of Heaven, a perpetual virgin, and the co-redemptress who ascended into heaven. In Scripture, she is portrayed as an obedient, believing servant of God, who became the mother of Jesus. None of the other attributes mentioned by the Roman Catholic Church have any basis in the Bible. The idea of Mary being the co-redemptress and another mediator between God and man is not only extra-biblical (found only outside of Scripture), but is also unbiblical (contrary to Scripture). Acts 4:12 declares that Jesus is the only redeemer. 1 Timothy 2:5 proclaims that Jesus is the only mediator between God and men.

Many other examples could be given. These issues alone clearly identify the Catholic Church as being unbiblical. Every Christian denomination has traditions and practices that are not explicitly based on Scripture. That is why Scripture must be the standard of Christian faith and practice. The Word of God is always true and reliable. The same cannot be said of church tradition. Our guideline is to be: “What does Scripture say?” (Romans 4:3; Galatians 4:30; Acts 17:11). 2 Timothy 3:16-17 declares, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Posted by Wild Thing at 08:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 23, 2019

Detective Fired After Catching Predator....Blowback for exposing a popular priest

SAGINAW, Mich.

Saginaw county's most highly decorated police officer, with more than 35 years of experience and 50 letters of commendation in his file, was abruptly fired in the wake of his investigation that put Saginaw's popular priest Fr. Robert DeLand in jail.

Cradle Catholic Detective Brian Berg, who spearheaded the four-month covert operation leading to DeLand's arrest and conviction, is now unemployed ever since he was unexpectedly fired last October by Saginaw's police chief, Dennis Green.

Berg sat down with Church Militant to explain what happened the morning of Oct. 17.

"I was called in out of the blue. ... The chief said, 'I want to see you,'" recounts Berg. The chief, according to Berg, then curtly told him, "You're done. You're fired."

"I asked why," recalls Berg, and the chief's response was simply, "We're told we don't have to give you a reason."

While investigating DeLand, Berg was getting pressured by his superiors to drop the case. But Berg told Church Militant he never let DeLand's popularity or internal resistance from within his department derail his investigation.

Asked about the pressure that arises from having members inside the police force being friends with the popular priests like DeLand, Berg said, "That's very prevalent in a small community. But in my 35 years, I've tried to never let that influence me. Because at the end of the day, I look in the mirror and [ask] did I do the right thing."

The conspiracy of silence among members inside and outside the Church is even more prevalent within small communities, Berg noted.

"There is a mindset especially in smaller communities where, uh, 'keep it quiet; let's just make it go away,'" he said.

Getting blackballed is common when some won't look the other way. He then recounted what happened when he tried to get a job with another law enforcement department.

"I interviewed recently for a police chief job and I didn't get it when I revealed what happened," he said.

Speaking of his recent firing following the DeLand case, Berg said, "But I told them exactly what happened. If you want to hire a police chief that's going to look the other way, I'm not your guy."

A detective should not be expected to look the other way.

In a written statement issued shortly after his firing last October, Berg clarified that he wouldn't be complicit in covering up any crime, including clerical sex abuse:

As a proud Christian and dedicated police officer of 35 years, with 50 Letters of Commendation during my career, I will never be deterred from doing the right thing, regardless of the costs associated with doing what is right.

A detective should not be expected to look the other way, be labeled too effective, or be told the township does not like media attention. The recent high-profile cases Tittabawassee Township has experienced is not something I personally sought out. However, when presented with such crimes I will always investigate the cases thoroughly and bring the criminals to justice.

I laud the Saginaw County Prosecutor's Office for their hard work and courage to handle such a high-profile case as the Father DeLand case. Many other prosecutor's offices would simply have covered it up.

Berg is not alone. Retired police officers from Buffalo, New York recently confirmed to media that they were directed by superiors to not arrest Catholic priests involved in sexual misconduct. They were told instead to hand such priests over to the Buffalo diocese for special treatment.

Former vice squad detective Martin Harrington revealed, "The department's unwritten policy was that Catholic priests did not get arrested."

"I never had any experience with priests who molested children," he continued. "I never heard of any priests molesting children. But we had priests we caught with pornography or masturbating in the city parks, and our orders were to turn them over to the Buffalo diocese."

"The diocese would deal with them," he said, "but they would not be arrested."

Church Militant reported on the tragic case of Buffalo's priest Fr. Joseph Moreno, who was murdered in 2012 while trying to blow the whistle on the conspiracy of silence between Church officials, law enforcement, corrupt judges and even politicians.

Moreno's sister, Susan Moreno, told Church Militant that a few days before her brother's death, he was going to unveil the homosexual corruption in Bp. Richard Malone's Buffalo diocese.

Susan Moreno related, "My brother told me Tuesday, after the meeting with Bp. Malone, that he was going to blow the whistle on the abuse, the homosexuality activity that was happening in the diocese of Buffalo, as well as other corruption that he saw at St. Lawrence and at St. Jude."
The details of Moreno's faked suicide indicate a cover-up involving local law enforcement.

Pennsylvania was another area showing collusion between local law enforcement and corrupt Church officials in covering up clerical sex abuse. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro noted this collusion when introducing his now-famous Pennsylvania grand jury report.

The report showed a "failure of law enforcement," said Shapiro.

Former Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham said part of the problem involved Catholic policemen.

"It was a different time," she said. "You didn't remonstrate with the guy who's giving you absolution."

Posted by Wild Thing at 01:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Homosexual Predator Catholic Priest in Action

Fr. Robert DeLand: "To discover that you have some gay tendencies is a fine thing, because then you don’t have to be so confused."

A predator priest in action.

Fr. Robert DeLand: "I love you so much. I mean what I say, I love you so much."

The voice of Father Robert DeLand, now in prison, caught on tape grooming a victim for sex abuse.

Fr. Robert DeLand: "We're gonna get you drunk and you're gonna cry. Does that sound good?"

The victim, a 17-year-old male, secretly capturing audio of his encounters with the high-ranking Saginaw Michigan priest, who targeted the boy when he was grieving the death of his friend to suicide.

Fr. Robert DeLand: "What do we call each other? Well, I mean, it's more than a friendship. Something so deep, so good."

It was these secret audio recordings that led DeLand to plead no contest in March of this year to multiple counts of sexual assault.

Fr. Robert DeLand: "I plead no contest, your honor."

Going to trial would've meant making the audio public — something he did not want. But Church Militant filed a FOIA request, obtaining the recordings.

Fr. Robert DeLand: "And so if you're gay, you're gay. Bring home a boyfriend, I'm gonna love him just like I love you."

They're a damning indictment, showing the grooming tactics of a homosexual predator.

Fr. Robert DeLand: "If you're gay, I don't care. And I have a feeling that there's some gayness in there."

The undercover sting was spearheaded by Detective Brian Berg of Tittabawassee Township. Audio shows the priest offering the boy cigarettes, alcohol and the drug ecstasy.The boy pretended to be confused about his sexuality, and from then on DeLand’s conversations revolved non-stop around gay sex ...

Fr. Robert DeLand: "Would you see yourself doing anal sex or would you see yourself sucking? I think we've arrived at the moment when it's time to find that out."

... even telling the boy to watch gay porn, touch himself and then call the priest the next day.

Fr. Robert DeLand: "Do it again and see what it feels like again. And then I'm going to talk to you later, so I'm gonna ask you how that felt."

The four-month covert operation culminating in his attempt to sexually assault the victim, who fled the priest's condo ...

Victim (after escaping the condo): "So weird. I'm starting to shake. ... Yeah, he kept rubbing my a** and my hand. ... He started rubbing my hand on top of my crotch."

... leading to the priest's immediate arrest in February 2018.

Since then the local prosecutor has launched a criminal investigation into the diocese of Saginaw, after he was flooded with tips on other predator priests.

DeLand, now serving 2–15 years in a Michigan prison, may be just the first among multiple clergy in Saginaw to be found guilty of abuse.

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Phony Christian and Nutcase Pope Francis: Church Must Learn to Abandon Old ‘Traditions’

Pope Francis: Church Must Learn to Abandon Old ‘Traditions’

It is a mistake for the Church to try to hold onto old traditions or to have clear answers for everything, Pope Francis said Thursday.

Jesus intentionally omitted telling his disciples many things so that the Church would learn to renounce the desire for clarity and order, the pope told participants in the 21st general assembly of Caritas Internationalis, the Church’s global charitable outreach.

When pagans first embraced the Christian faith, the question arose as to if they would have to abide by all the precepts of the Jewish law, something Jesus never spoke of, the pope noted.

By not always giving “clear rules” that would quickly resolve issues, Jesus was protecting the Church from the temptation of “efficientism,” Francis said, which is the desire for the Church to have everything under control, avoiding surprises, with its agenda always in order.

This is not the way the Lord acts, he continued. He does not send answers from heaven. “He sends the Holy Spirit.”

“Jesus does not want the church to be a perfect model, satisfied with its own organization and able to defend its good name,” he said. “Jesus did not live like this, but on a journey, without fearing the upheavals of life.”

Francis famously refused to answer four cardinals who presented him with five questions or “dubia” to clarify certain purportedly unclear teachings in his 2016 teaching letter, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love).

In 2017, the former doctrinal chief of the U.S. Bishops Conference (USCCB) wrote a powerful letter to the pope, criticizing his “intentionally ambiguous” teaching, derision of conservatives, and resistance to constructive criticism.

The Capuchin priest, Father Thomas Weinandy, whom Pope Francis himself named to the Vatican’s International Theological Commission in 2014, listed five points that illustrate the “chronic confusion” that seems to characterize the Francis pontificate, namely, intentional ambiguity, disdain for doctrine, the naming of heterodox bishops, sowing division in the Church, and vindictiveness in the face of criticism.

The Pope’s guidance “at times seems intentionally ambiguous,” the theologian stated, leaving the faithful confused and spiritually adrift. “To teach with such a seemingly intentional lack of clarity inevitably risks sinning against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth,” the priest said.

While the pope accuses his critics of making doctrine into an ideology, “it is precisely Christian doctrine that frees people from worldly ideologies and assures that they are actually preaching and teaching the authentic, life-giving Gospel,” Weinandy said.

Other observers have attributed the Pope’s habitual vagueness to his training in the Jesuit order.

“For those unfamiliar with Jesuits,” wrote Dominic Lynch in The Federalist, “vague and porous doctrine is almost their raison d’être. Indeed, it is so baked into the order that finding a conservative Jesuit is more difficult than finding a liberal in West Texas.”

Wild Thing's comment........

This Pope is such a phony Christian and this pope is a babbling idiot.

God is not the author of confusion. God is one of reason and a sound mind.

“...so that the Church would learn to renounce the desire for clarity and order...” from the idiot Pope.

EXCUSE ME?

Let all things be done decently and in order. from the Bible...1 Corinthians 14:40

God is not the author of confusion”—1 Corinthians 14:33

Posted by Wild Thing at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 11, 2019

The Socialist Pope Francis Urges Youth to Hear the ‘Anguished Plea of the Earth’

Pope Urges Youth to Hear the ‘Anguished Plea of the Earth’

Pope Francis has told young economists and entrepreneurs that the world needs a different kind of economy, “one that cares for the environment and does not despoil it.”

In a letter to young business people for an upcoming event titled “Economy of Francesco,” named for Saint Francis of Assisi, the pope declared that “the safeguarding of the environment cannot be divorced from ensuring justice for the poor and finding answers to the structural problems of the global economy.”

“We need to correct models of growth incapable of guaranteeing respect for the environment,” he said.

Saint Francis is a worthy model to follow, the pope said, because he is “the outstanding example of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology.”

Jesus told Saint Francis of Assisi to go “repair my house,” the pope recalled. The Lord’s command increasingly “concerns the environment, which urgently demands a sound economy and a sustainable development that can heal its wounds and assure us of a worthy future,” he said.

The pope went on to insist that each person is called “to rethink his or her mental and moral priorities, to bring them into greater conformity with God’s commandments and the demands of the common good.”

This call especially concerns young people, he said, because their desire for a better future makes them a prophetic sign, “pointing towards an economy attentive to the person and to the environment.”

“Please, do not leave it to others to be protagonists of change. You are the ones who hold the future! Through you, the future enters into the world. I ask you also to be protagonists of this transformation… I ask you to build the future, to work for a better world,” he said.

In his letter, released by the Vatican on Saturday, the pope urged young people to “cultivate together the dream of a new humanism” that goes beyond religion to engage all people, whether or not they believe in God.

What the world needs, Francis proposed, is “a common ‘covenant,’ a process of global change. One in which not only believers but all men and women of good will, beyond differences of creed and nationality, can participate, inspired by an ideal of fraternity attentive above all to the poor and excluded.”

Wild Thing's comment.......

Francis twists both the Bible and the writings of saints to advance his wicked agenda.

When socialists and humanists quote the Bible, they take statements out of context for a political advantage. They put them in a worldly context whereas Jesus always spoke from a spiritual one.

Posted by Wild Thing at 02:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Two steps forward and one step back won’t cleanse the Catholic Church

THE ESSENTIAL problem that gave rise to decades of clergy sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church was that bishops, whose authority over their domains is all but absolute, were too often complicit in enabling pedophile priests, covering up their crimes, and looking the other way as countless young victims were raped, molested, harassed and left scarred for life. Now Pope Francis, grappling with successive waves of scandals and revelations, has decreed elaborate new policies and procedures designed to beat back a scourge that has partly defined his papacy.

Unfortunately, as with so much the pope has said and done to contain the crisis, the laws he handed down, saying that sexual abuse must “never happen again,” are half-measures. The laws outline procedures mandating that priests and nuns report suspected abuse and coverup to their superiors, provide protections for whistleblowers, accelerate investigations and require that victims be informed of investigative outcomes if they desire.

However, even as he reshaped church law, the pope left its most fundamental features intact — bishops remain in charge, policing themselves and the church, and procedures for removing and punishing them remain uncertain. That was a bitter disappointment to victims of clerical sexual abuse, and it is likely to disappoint many of the church’s faithful, already disillusioned by a scandal that exploded nearly two decades ago.

The new protocols are not toothless — among other things, they apply retroactively, meaning priests and nuns will be expected to report old cases of abuse. And in announcing them Thursday, Francis acknowledged the suffering of victims and years of failure by his two predecessors to come to terms with the crisis. The church, he said, “must continue to learn from the bitter lessons of the past.”

Yet one of those lessons — that the absence of full accountability, including to civil authorities, has deepened and prolonged the blight of abuse — seems to have gone unheeded. There will be no ironclad requirement that church authorities alert police and prosecutors when allegations of abuse arise. And while bishops in the largest church jurisdictions will be empowered to look into allegations of coverup and other wrongdoing against bishops in nearby, smaller dioceses, it strains credulity to assume that investigations carried out within the confines of those fraternities will be reliably rigorous and impartial. After all, one defining characteristic of the scandal has been the church’s demonstrated inability to police and punish its own.

The Vatican maintains that mandating reporting to civilian authorities would imperil Catholics in some countries where they already face oppression. In fact, the pope could have made exceptions for those countries while imposing tough protocols elsewhere.

Pope Francis sits astride a vast realm and bureaucracy; one gets the impression of a man engaged in a struggle to balance competing constituencies and interests. On the issue of sexual abuse, however, which has sapped the church’s moral authority and left uncountable victims in its wake, politics as usual does not suffice.

Posted by Wild Thing at 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pope Francis Signs Document Protecting “Consensual” Clerical Sodomy

by Chris Ferrara

Yes, the title of this column is provocative, to say the least, but that is what is really going on with the just-signed Apostolic Letter “Vos Estis Lux Mundi” (VELM). VELM lays down requirements for reporting “crimes of sexual abuse” committed by clerics, which “offend Our Lord, cause physical, psychological and spiritual damage to the victims and harm the community of the faithful.” But VELM is just another layer of bureaucratic procedure that ignores the underlying rot of the widespread homosexual infiltration of the clergy.

We know this as soon as we read the description of the prohibited “delicts against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue”:

“… forcing someone, by violence or threat or through abuse of authority, to perform or submit to sexual acts…

“… performing sexual acts with a minor or a vulnerable person;

“… production, exhibition, possession or distribution, including by electronic means, of child pornography, as well as by the recruitment of or inducement of a minor or a vulnerable person to participate in pornographic exhibitions…”

The term “vulnerable person” is defined as “any person in a state of infirmity, physical or mental deficiency, or deprivation of personal liberty which, in fact, even occasionally, limits their ability to understand or to want or otherwise resist the offence…”. Notice how even the term “vulnerable person” is limited to cases of physical or mental deficiency or coercion. Apparently, “vulnerable person” does not include legal adults who are persuaded to engage in sexual acts by clerics who convince them there is nothing wrong with such conduct.

So, to sum up: VELM does absolutely nothing to address (1) “consensual” acts of sodomy involving clerics and their willing partners in one of the sins that cry out to Heaven for retribution; (2) the “production, exhibition, possession or distribution” of adult (versus child) pornography, or (3) consensual adult participation in pornographic exhibitions.

That is, the entire “gay subculture” and its practices among the clergy are left untouched so long as they do not manifest themselves in criminal offences against minors or the coercion of “vulnerable” adult partners in sodomy. Otherwise, VELM exhibits no concern about sexual “delicts against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue.”

Clearly, therefore, Francis sees no need to remedy the homosexual corruption of the priesthood. He does not even intimate that “consensual” sodomy involving clerics is also an evil that “offend[s] Our Lord, caus[ing] physical, psychological and spiritual damage to the victims and… the community of the faithful.” In fact, the carefully limited definitions in VELM implicitly treat sodomy between “consenting adults” in the clergy as something that is not even to be reported, much less punished. We see at work here a kind of positivism in ecclesiastical law: whatever is not prohibited is permitted. Indeed, in this case what is permitted is not even worthy of mention.

What a mockery, then, are VELM’s pious declarations that “Our Lord Jesus Christ calls every believer to be a shining example of virtue, integrity and holiness” and that “a continuous and profound conversion of hearts is needed… so that personal sanctity and moral commitment can contribute to promoting the full credibility of the Gospel message and the effectiveness of the Church’s mission.”

Here as elsewhere it is evident that not only has “the Great Reformer” reformed nothing, he has actually made the corrupt ecclesial status quo worse, as Henry Sire (aka Marcantonio Colonna) documents beyond reasonable doubt in his “The Dictator Pope.” VELM is just another sign of a radically dysfunctional papacy that represents what has to be the terminal phase of the ecclesial crisis the Church has endured since Vatican II.

But it is precisely at such points in Church history that Providence opens the way to restoration — in this case with the heavenly assistance of the Virgin Mother of God.

Posted by Wild Thing at 12:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 10, 2019

Abp. Wilton Gregory has track record of trying to evade justice

Uncovering the Cover-Up

In spite of holding himself forth as a champion of victims, Abp. Wilton Gregory's track record reveals instead lack of transparency and obfuscation, and Catholics are waiting to see what Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr will uncover in his newly launched investigation of both the Atlanta and Savannah dioceses.

Observers suggest Carr is likely to unearth many long-buried abuse cases, particularly in Atlanta, where Gregory is wrapping up a 14-year stint as archbishop, before moving on to head the Washington, D.C. archdiocese.

According to the narrative Gregory and his allies have constructed over the past two decades, the archbishop is a strong victims' advocate dedicated to stamping out clerical sex abuse. But a closer look at his record reveals a different story.

In 2004, Gregory, then bishop of Belleville, Illinois, was held in contempt of court for refusing to release records related to a sex abuse case involving a retired priest.

In 2004, Bp. Gregory was held in contempt of court for refusing to release records related to a sex abuse case.

As archbishop of Atlanta, for years Gregory refused requests by victims' advocacy groups to release the names of credibly accused clergy.

Last November he relented, issuing a list of 15 predator priests. But the timing of the release — in the wake of the Theodore McCarrick scandal — was not lost on victims or their advocates, many of whom denounced Gregory's move as a cynical attempt at self-preservation, designed to deflect attention from his close relationship with McCarrick.

Another red flag: Abp. Gregory's list identified only 15 predator priests. Two days after the Atlanta clergy were named, Savannah Bp. Gregory Hartmayer identified 16 predator priests from his southern Georgia diocese.

This prompted a still-unanswered question: How could the diocese of Savannah, home to just 85,000 Catholics, have more predators than the archdiocese of Atlanta, home to 1.2 million Catholics?

Gregory's critics point to other blots on his record. In 2015, victims' advocacy group SNAP published the names of six predator priests who had victimized minors in other states and spent time in Atlanta. Though allegations against the men attracted media coverage in other states, in Georgia, they remained under the radar.

If the archbishop was truly concerned about clerical sex abuse victims, it was asked, why didn't he publicize the men's identities? Each was either credibly accused of or had admitted to sexual abuse of minors. Identifying them could have encouraged any Atlanta victims to step forward to claim justice.

In December, abuse victim "Phillip Doe" filed suit against Gregory and the Atlanta archdiocese, claiming they have "conspired, continue to conspire, and have actively engaged in efforts to" conceal clerical sex abuse.

In spring 2018, Abp. Gregory successfully undermined the Hidden Predators' Act, a Georgia bill that would have extended the statute of limitations from age 23 to 38 and allowed victims to sue their alleged abusers as well as institutions that enabled the abuse.

To many, Gregory's lobbying — occurring just three months before the McCarrick revelations broke — was the final proof that the archbishop doesn't fight for clerical sex abuse victims, as he claims, but against them.

Posted by Wild Thing at 07:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More BS from the POPE....Pope Francis issues law requiring clergy, religious to report sex abuse

Pope’s New Norms on Sex Abuse Leave Power in Hands of Bishops. The pope's new motu proprio on sex abuse allows the bishops to investigate themselves, cutting laity out of any investigation and failing to direct clergy to report abuse to secular authorities.

Pope Francis issues law requiring clergy, religious to report sex abuse

ROME, May 10, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis on Thursday issued an apostolic letter that requires all priests and other religious to report to their superiors any credible accusations of clerical sexual abuse and cover-ups.

The Pope’s motu proprio is titled “You are the Light of the World” (Vos estis lux mundi), which is taken from the Gospel of Matthew and makes mandated reporters of the more than 415,000 priests and more than 700,000 religious women around the world. The document requires them to inform Church authorities when they become aware or have “well-founded motives to believe” that a member of the clergy or a female religious has sexually abused a minor or possessed child pornography, or when a superior has covered up any such crimes. It does not require that they report allegations to civil authorities.

The new law further provides whistleblower protections for those reporting on sexual abuse while also requiring dioceses to put systems into place by June 2020 to receive confidential allegations. Another key point in the new document is that it provides procedures for pursuing investigations when the accused is a bishop, cardinal, or religious superior. In the past, victims and accusers have complained that investigations against the hierarchy have languished, as was the case with the now disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

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Wild Thing's comment........

This changes nothing, and in fact protects offenders.

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April 23, 2019

Pope Francis’ record on Communism is dangerously ambiguous

The Church has condemned Communism unequivocally, but Pope Francis has been dangerously ambiguous in his remarks and acts related to this dangerous ideology.

Today, on Episode 6 of The John-Henry Westen Show, I talk about Pope Francis’ record on Communism and why it is such a stark departure from the Church’s authentic teaching.

The John-Henry Westen Show appears every Tuesday. It is a short weekly commentary on the most important news developments in the Church and culture. We are beginning with a series laying out the hard evidence for our concerns with Pope Francis.

Here are the topics we’ve covered to date:

In Episode 1, I explained why it is hard, but essential that we are willing to raise concerns about Pope Francis. Doing so is an act of charity to both the Pope and the Church.

In Episode 2, I discussed the Pope's harmful ambiguity on the question of cohabitation before marriage.

In Episode 3, I point out that the Pope has caused grave confusion about homosexual relationships.

In Episode 4, I showed you the incomprehensible case of the Pope’s praise for abortionist turned abortion-pushing politician Emma Bonino.

And in Episode 5 last week, I discussed the Pope’s disturbing support for Cardinal Godfried Danneels, a prelate who was caught covering up sex abuse.

The John-Henry Westen Show is available by video on the show’s YouTube channel, and right here on my LifeSite blog.

Transcript: What’s up with Pope Francis and Communism?

Remembering that it’s out of a loving concern for Pope Francis that we expose the truth, let’s begin with a short prayer. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Everybody my age and older will remember Pope St. John Paul II’s famous visit to Nicaragua in 1983 where he publicly chastised communist priest Ernesto Cardenal who was into Liberation Theology and involved in the revolutionary Sandinista government that was restricting the Church.

In February this year, without any sign of public repentance on the part of Ernesto Cardenal, Pope Francis lifted a 1984 canonical sanction imposed by Pope St. John Paul.

As recently as 2015, Cardenal praised Pope Francis while condemning both Popes Benedict and John Paul II. In an interview with El Pais, he said: “The two popes prior to Francis were disastrous popes, who made the church retreat by centuries.”

Here are photographs of the bishop who visited Cardenal in hospital and the copy of the papal nuncio announcing the lifting of sanctions against Cardenal. It reads in part: "The Holy Father has benevolently granted the absolution of all the canonical censures imposed on the Reverend Father Ernesto Cardenal,...”

It’s a dangerous thing for the soul of Cardenal who’s health is failing at 94 years of age since he’s now receiving a possibly false sense of security about being reconciled with the Church without any repentance. And if, God willing, he’s repented privately, it’s a danger for the Church since the Pope’s actions are causing grave confusion.

Pope Francis’ record of confusion around communism is much more elaborate than the Cardenal case alone.

Headlines in newspapers around the world have reported the Pope’s controversial statements about Communism.

In July 2014, the Pope said “Communists are closet Christians.”

In October 2014, he said “there are those who think that the Pope is [a] communist.”

In a November 2016 interview with La Republicca (a Marxist-leaning newspaper in Italy), the Pope said “Communists think like Christians.”

In a book-length interview, called Politics and Society: Pope Francis Speaks with Dominique Wolton, Pope Francis revealed that a Communist woman had a great impact on his political thinking. “She taught me to think about political reality,” he says of Esther Ballestrino De Careaga. “I owe so much to this woman.”

Francis brought up Bellastrino when author Dominique Wolton asked him about women who were a major influence in his life. “She was communist,” Francis readily admitted, adding “she gave me books, all Communist.”

But what was likely the most visually disturbing element of the Pope-created confusion around communism was his acceptance of a hammer and sickle crucifix from Bolivian President Evo Morales. The sight caused great pain to many Catholics in Latin America who have suffered under communist rule.

While some suggested that the Pope disdained the communist crucifix when he received it, in an interview on the plane as he flew home, the Pope said he was not offended by it.

The hammer and sickle emblem was born in the brutal Russian Revolution.

To comprehend the gravity of the confusion generated by this flirtation with communism we must appreciate the Church’s teaching against communism. Our Lady of Fatima warned in 1917 that Russia would spread its errors throughout the world. The Fatima visionary Sr. Lucia herself called communism “the greatest heresy to appear at any time in the world,” which was “carrying its errors to the ends of the earth.”

The 95 million death toll from Communist regimes outstrips even the horrific 30 million death toll from the Nazis.

Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Divini Redemptoris on atheistic communism calls it a “satanic scourge” which “conceals in itself a false messianic idea.”

And Pope Pius’s instruction on communism shows how far our own nations have come in adopting communism without even knowing it.

Communists hold the principle of absolute equality, rejecting all hierarchy and divinely-constituted authority, including the authority of parents.

Such a doctrine logically makes of marriage and the family a purely artificial and civil institution … the notion of an indissoluble marriage-tie is scouted.

Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man.

Finally, the right of education is denied to parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community, in whose name and by whose mandate alone parents may exercise this right.

Communism is by its nature anti-religious. It considers religion as "the opiate of the people" because the principles of religion which speak of a life beyond the grave dissuade the proletariat from the dream of a Soviet paradise which is of this world.

You see from the Church’s teachings against communism how far our own societies have gone down the communist path.

And while Popes John Paul II and Benedict also visited Cuba, there was never a hint of praising the revolution. At the Vatican under Pope Francis however there was more than a hint. The official website of Vatican News published on January 1, 2019 an article in recognition of the 60th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. The Vatican News article, in Spanish, was titled “Cuba celebrates 60th year of the Revolution.” It read,

“The historic anniversary was celebrated with an official ceremony in which the former chief of state and Communist Party leader Raul Castro participated in addition to current President Miguel Díaz-Canel." It was penned by María Cecilia Mutual.

On January 2 the Cuban National Circus was performing for Pope Francis at the Vatican, where jugglers, contortionists, and clowns performed. Speaking in Italian, Francis said, “I want to say hello and thank the artists from the Cuban circus.”

The following day the Vatican News article disappeared from the Vatican website after Cuban media began to comment on its peculiarity. Panam Post, for example, noted that the revolution compelled at least one-sixth of Cuba’s people to escape the island at the risk of their lives. CubaNet observed of the Vatican’s report: “The text does not mention the enrichment of the Castro leadership at the expense of the Cuban people and neglects to mention, curiously, the regime’s murderous persecution of Catholics.”

Following the revolution in 1959, scores of Catholic activists were tortured and lost their lives in Cuban prisons. Some cried out “Long live Christ the king!” before firing squads killed them. In addition, Catholic seminaries and other religious institutions were seized by the Marxist government.

In all of this show regarding communism you’ll notice I haven’t yet mentioned the scandalous Vatican deal with the communist Chinese government. And it’s because it’s so big, it’s another story...

Remembering our motto Caritas in Veritate, the truth in love, let us pray together for Pope Francis to end the confusion he has sown. Let us be confident in Christ and His control over His Church recognizing that in allowing us to suffer through this agony of faith, He permits His Body the Church to suffer with Him our Head. It is a joy, it is an honor, and privilege to be a Catholic, to love this One, True Faith and to strive to give your life to it.

For LifeSiteNews I’m John-Henry Westen. Remember to subscribe to the email list for this show and May God bless you.

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April 05, 2019

Pope appoints pro-LGBT Wilton Gregory to Archdiocese of Washington

The Vatican announced today that Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta will be the successor of embattled Cardinal Donald Wuerl to lead the Archdiocese of Washington D.C., one of the most prominent sees in the United States.

Numerous faithful Catholic laity are outraged over the appointment of Gregory. The Archbishop has a history of showing support for homosexuality, contrary to Catholic teaching, along with other unorthodox positions.

The group “Catholic Laity for Orthodox Bishops and Reform” had urged the Holy See to “seek out a worthy candidate who is without ties to Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Mr. Theodore McCarrick, or Donald Cardinal Wuerl.”

“The Archdiocese of Washington needs a worthy shepherd with a proven record of teaching and practicing the fullness of the Catholic Faith. We need a robust leader for Catholicism, with the Heart of Christ, focused on the Gospel message, not liberal politics,” the group said earlier this week when rumors of Gregory’s appointment surfaced.

In a press release today, the group said that it “continues to ask for a worthy shepherd who will be a robust teacher of the Catholic Faith and defender of Catholic morals.”

“We also continue to seek for the laity better communication with the hierarchy and the Holy See. We are ready to work with Archbishop Gregory to achieve these goals,” it stated.

Archbishop Gregory said he was grateful to the Pope for the appointment.

“I am deeply grateful to Pope Francis for this appointment to serve the Archdiocese of Washington and to work with all of the members of this faith community," he said. "I look forward to encountering and listening to the people of this local Church as we address the issues that face us and continue to grow in the Love of Christ that sustains us."

Gregory’s support for the LGBT agenda is of public record. As head of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, Gregory has displayed an uncritical willingness to accept LGBT ideology. His actions include:

• Personally inviting pro-gay Vatican adviser Fr. James Martin to give a speech titled “Showing Welcome and Respect in Our Parishes to LGBT Catholics” at both St. Thomas More Parish and at Atlanta’s Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

• Permitting the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Atlanta, GA) to act as a center for LGBT events, including LGBT potluck socials and participating in the city’s Pride Parade.

• Appointing a pro-gay priest who heads a gay-affirming parish to be diocesan spiritual director for victims of sexual abuse by clergy.

• Allowing since 2014 the pro-homosexual and pro-transgenderism “Catholic” group, Fortunate and Faithful Families, to hold retreats in his Atlanta Chancery, while personally saying Mass for the group.

Gregory’s actions also reveal a lack of orthodoxy to Catholic teaching in other areas. These include:

• Giving the keynote address in 2017 at the Association of United States Catholic Priests (AUSCP) conference. The group backs the ordination of women to the priesthood and is open to the idea of the Church approving the use of contraception.

• Signaling an openness to allow divorced and “remarried” Catholics to receive communion contrary to perennial Catholic teaching. He was one of two featured speakers at a gathering of liberal theologians and 15 bishops at Boston College in October 2017. The event, “Understanding Amoris Laetitia,” was hosted by progressive Cardinal Cupich. Gregory appeared to endorse communion for divorced and remarried Catholics when he said Amoris Laetitia “challenges the church and its pastors to move beyond thinking that everything is black and white, so that we sometimes close off the way of grace and growth.”

• Misrepresenting — along with now defrocked former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Gregory — the contents of a letter from Cardinal Ratzinger, then the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which counseled American prelates to deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion during the 2004 presidential campaign season. They instead paraphrased the letter, telling their brother bishops that they should exercise their own judgment regarding pro-abortion politicos. The U.S. bishops ended up voting 183-6 to leave the decision up to each diocese.

Archbishop Gregory has served in various important roles in the United States. In 2001, he was elected president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and was vice president under Bishop Joseph Fiorenza for three years thereafter. He joined other bishops in drafting and implementing the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” the so-called Dallas Charter in response to the sexual abuse crisis. In 2006, he was inducted into the Martin Luther King Board of Preachers at Morehouse College, Atlanta.

Catholic laity are already signing a petition to Pope Francis asking that he stop the appointment.

“Faithful and orthodox American Catholics oppose this appointment and call on the Holy Father to directly intervene to stop this from going forward,” states the petition launched by LifeSiteNews.

“Knowingly installing a man who flagrantly departs from Catholic moral teaching to Washington, D.C., suggests that the Vatican doesn't seem to care about listening to church-going American Catholics,” it adds.

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April 03, 2019

US bishops’ anti-poverty charity gave $60,000 to pro-gay Marxist group last year

The 2017–2018 Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) grants list shows that the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC) received $60,000, bringing the total this organization has received to $290,000 since 2005.

In 2012, the Reform CCHD Now coalition alerted the US bishops to serious problems with NWBCCC including homosexual activism and the promotion of Marxism. Monsignor Kevin Sullivan of the Archdiocese of New York responded in writing by indicating that this grantee was previously reviewed and would not receive further grants from the CCHD. He wrote:

After the most recent review of their CCHD grant request, prior to your letter, the NWBCCC was not recommended for funding, and will not be receiving money from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

Just two years later, during the 2014–2015 grants cycle, NWBCCC would again receive funding from the CCHD. Toward the end of 2014, we reported how the NWBCCC's agitation tactics resulted in the deaths of two police officers. In 2016, despite its continued promotion of Marxism and blatant homosexual activism, NWBCCC received yet another grant from the CCHD. And even though we proved NWBCCC's gravely immoral activism in a new report, the CCHD responded by INCREASING the amount of funding for this vile organization to $60,000 per funding cycle.

Yes, that is correct — this anti-cop, pro-Marxist and homosexualist organization is now receiving $60,000 per year from the US Bishops through the CCHD program.

All told, since 2005, the NWBCCC has received $325,000 in nine different grants from the CCHD. And the problems with this grantee continue. NWBCCC's recent activity shows not only the continued promotion of homosexuality, it also shows that NWBCCC is promoting abortion through its membership in the Campaign for New York Health coalition.

Promotion of Homosexuality

One of NWBCCC's official programs is a youth organization called Sistas and Brothas United(SBU). Previous reports noted the blatant promotion of homosexual activism to youth through this program, and sadly this is an ongoing problem.

The signs of homosexual activism are readily apparent at NWBCCC's own website, especially where it describes SBU as offering a safe place "for youth in middle and high school to address the various forms of systemic oppression they encounter in our communities, including racism, homophobia, sexism, and ageism."

The description of SBU later continues a focus on youth homosexuality, stating that another component of their work is dismantling the school to prison pipeline for LGBTQ students among others.

The SBU program's Facebook page, however, makes it abundantly clear that this program is still promoting homosexual activism to kids as one of its major components.

SBU praises the homosexual activism of one of its youth advocates

SBU promotion of so-called "trans" rights

If this wasn't bad enough, in January 2018, SBU promoted Grand Street Settlement's job "opportunity" for children as young as 13. Grand Street Settlement is a homosexual youth activism group. This job posting was for Grand Street Settlements "youth led Gender and Sexuality Social Advocacy and Training Programs; Gender Exploration Movement and Project Speak Out Loud."

NWBCCC is a member of a Pro-Abortion Coalition

NWBCCC's 2018 annual report mentions that as part of its push for socialized healthcare NWBCCC joined the Campaign for New York Health Coalition.

The problem here is that the Campaign for New York Health (CFNYH) is adamant that government funded abortion and contraception MUST be part of universal health care.

CFNYH's website states this under the euphemism of "reproductive health" and more clearly in a poster created for Facebook that states socialized healthcare would "significantly improve women's health by mandating coverage of all essential reproductive care and all LGBTQ health care. It would take away financial barriers to preventative care and cover all forms of contraception."

Finally, CFNYH signed on to the "NY People's Platform" that explicitly states "Comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion, is a fundamental component of every person's health, bodily autonomy, privacy and equality." [emphasis added]

The CCHD grant agreement clearly states in section A. 5. "Grantee agrees that it will not knowingly participate in any coalition that has as part of its organizational purpose or agenda the promotion of actions in conflict with fundamental Catholic moral or social teaching."

Clearly NWBCCC is not currently nor was it ever worthy of receiving the hard-earned money of faithful Catholics in the pews. What is absolutely infuriating in this particular case is that despite repeated warnings to the CCHD, and a claim from the Archdiocese of New York that NWBCCC "will not be receiving money from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development" — the CCHD actually INCREASED its funding to this horrible organization. This shows that the entire "Review and Renewal" CCHD claimed to have undertaken in 2010 was a farce and a smokescreen. It is time to end the CCHD NOW.

Posted by Wild Thing at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 01, 2019

Pope Francis refuses to meet Italian minister because of tough stand on immigration

Pope Francis refuses to meet with Italy’s Minister of the Interior because of his uncompromising stance against illegal immigration, according to anonymous sources reported by multiple Italian publications.

According to the Italian publications Il Giorno and Il Mio Giornale, sources claim that the pope has repeatedly refused attempts by Matteo Salvini to schedule a private audience with him, and that Salvini has been told the refusal is due to his strong policy of prohibiting migrants from entering through the nation’s ports.

Reporting on the content of the Il Giorno article, the publication Libero Quotidiano stated, “According to Il Giorno, Francis is not in principle against agreeing to a conversation with Salvini, which he knows could give rise to an Instragram opportunity given Salvini’s enthusiasm for social media. The response that has been given to the minister is that a meeting could not occur if Salvini continues in his tough position regarding migrants.”

Salvini is the leader of the League, a party that historically has been associated with a separatist movement within Italy but has now been rebranded as a nationalist party opposing free immigration to Italy. The League currently is in a governing coalition with the Five Star Movement, and Salvini’s strong stance against permitting migrants to enter the country through seaports has made him the most popular politician in Italy.

Francis’ refusal to meet with Salvini is in marked contrast to his repeated association with individuals and groups that oppose Catholic doctrine on life and family values, particularly its condemnation of the killing of the unborn as a mortal sin.

The pontiff has had two private meetings with the infamous Italian abortionist and radical leftist politician Emma Bonino, who boasts she has personally killed unborn children in illegal abortion clinics and continues to defend the practice of abortion. Francis has also praised her publicly as a “forgotten great” because of her work with refugees, comparing her to famous historical figures such as Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman.

Last September, Francis gave a private audience to “Bono” (Paul David Hewson), an openly pro-abortion Irish rock star. Bono later stated that two discussed the “wild beast that is capitalism” as well as the sex abuse crisis.

Under Francis’ administration, many well-known advocates of abortion and population control have been invited to speak at the Vatican, including Paul Ehrlich, the father of the population control movement; John Bongaarts, vice president of the pro-abortion Population Council; pro-abortion U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon; and pro-abortion UN advisor Jeffrey Sachs.

The pope’s radical support for free immigration into Europe was indicated again recently when L’Osservatore Romano published a story on a ship hijacked by migrants in which the headline appeared to justify the hijacker’s actions, calling them “necessary.”

Pope Francis has repeatedly condemned attempts to stem the tide of Muslim immigration into Europe, even at the expense of national security. In 2017, after millions of mostly Muslim immigrants had poured into Europe, Francis declared that the “principle of the centrality of the human person ... obliges us always to prioritize personal safety over national security,” and called for “broader options for migrants and refugees to enter destination countries safely and legally.”

Wild Thing's comment............

This idiot moron Pope is a total socialist.

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Pope Francis schmoozing with the muzzies Again and Bashing Christians with lies

Pope Raps Religious [Including Christian] Fundamentalists During In-Flight Press Conference

Pope Francis argued that Christianity as well as Islam is troubled by fundamentalists, during an exchange with reporters on his return flight from Morocco.

Asked about the trip to Morocco that he had just concluded, the Pope said that it was part of an effort to encourage dialogue between Christianity and Islam: “a beautiful flower of coexistence that promises to bear fruit.” The Pontiff went on to compliment his hosts for their open attitude toward religious dialogue, saying that “in Morocco there is freedom of worship, there is religious liberty, there’s liberty of belonging to a religious creed.”

Morocco’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and the Christians who constitute less than 1% of the country’s population—nearly all of them foreigners—are allowed to worship freely. But native Christian face heavy social pressure and some government harassment, and the country’s law forbid efforts to convert Muslims. During his stay Pope Francis implicitly acknowledged that policy, saying: “The Church grows not through proselytism but by attraction.”

The Pontiff recognized that some Islamic countries place greater restrictions on religious freedom, but suggested that further dialogue could alleviate tensions. The said that Islamic attitudes could change, and remarked that in Christianity, too, there are some people who resist an open attitude. “In every religion there is always a fundamentalist group that does not want to go ahead and lives on bitter memories, on the struggles of the past, looking for more war and also sowing fear,” he said. Pope Francis said that Muslims will “grow in conscience” to accept religious freedom, and argued that, by a similar process, the Catholic Church has come to condemn capital punishment:

So, we understand, for example, that today we in the Church have removed the death penalty from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Three hundred years ago, heretics were burned alive. Because the Church has grown in moral conscience, respect for the person, and freedom of worship. We too must continue to grow. There are people, Catholics, who do not accept what the Second Vatican Council said about freedom of worship, freedom of conscience. There are people who don’t accept it. Catholics. Also we have this problem. But, the Muslim brothers also grow in conscience.

During the in-flight interview the Pope repeated his call for acceptance of migrants, saying that “the builders of walls, whether made of barbed wire that cuts with knives or bricks, will become prisoners of the walls they make.”

Wild Things comment.......

“Pope said that it was part of an effort to encourage dialogue between Christianity and Islam: “a beautiful flower of coexistence that promises to bear fruit.”

I did not think anybody could be this stupid. The Pope is intentionally ignoring facts on Islam. They are the one “religion” that doesn’t want to coexist with any other religion. How is that 99% of the citizens of many Islamic countries are muslim? Because they force conversion of any other religion or kill anybody who doesn’t want to convert. “You shall know them by their fruits”=evil.

He’s nuts. Islam teaches to kill your enemies. Christianity teaches to love your enemies.

Posted by Wild Thing at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Chicago Archdiocese using Catholic cemetery funds to cover sex abuse costs

The Archdiocese of Chicago is using proceeds from its cemetery system to help pay down its sizable settlement debt from clergy sexual abuse, a new report says.

The Chicago archdiocese currently owes roughly $200 million from sex abuse settlements and other related costs, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, and for years it has used loans or sold property to meet those costs.

But the archdiocese, led by Cardinal Blase Cupich, has been redirecting some $8 million a year from its cemetery system to pay the sex abuse–related debt down, and the rerouting of funds has been conducted without being disclosed to the public, the report said.

The information came from a source with knowledge of Archdiocese of Chicago operations, it said.

The news outlet had reported in February that the archdiocese owes more than $200 million, mostly connected to sex abuse claims, and could be looking at another $100 million or more in costs from pending and forthcoming sexual misconduct proceedings.

Neither Cupich nor the archdiocese’s chief operating officer, Betsy Bohlen, would comment for the article, but spokeswoman Paula Waters said in a statement that investment earnings on cemetery assets are used to help fund annual debt payments.

“These investment earnings are over and above what is needed for the proper care of our cemeteries,” Waters’s statement said. “We take all of our obligations seriously and discharge them responsibly.”

Waters declined to answer questions about the archdiocese’s debt and whether the archdiocese had not been completely transparent in failing to disclose this rerouting of revenue before now. She said it’s not accurate to describe the funds as “diverted from cemeteries,” since the cemeteries “are fully and amply funded.”

“It is excess earnings,” Waters said.

Archdiocesan leaders also declined to say whether that money came from Catholics purchasing burial plots.

“Operating support (for the cemetery system) is derived primarily from the sale of easements providing for graves, crypts and burial services, and from investment earnings,” according to the archdiocese’s latest public financial statement.

That statement also showed that the Archdiocese of Chicago cemetery system had more than $600 million in investments in 2017.

The archdiocese is one of the largest landholders in the Chicago area, the Sun-Times report said, and its 45 Catholic cemeteries are a significant part of those holdings.

The archdiocese’s “cemeteries sales and services” made around $52.5 million in revenue in 2017, an increase of some $2 million over the previous year, the financial records show, and cemetery expenses that year were recorded at $53.6 million. There was also $18.3 million in undeveloped cemetery land recorded that year.

Waters had said previously that the archdiocese uses “the proceeds from asset sales and borrowings to pay abuse claims. We use interim borrowings to meet obligations in advance of receiving sale proceeds.”

Cupich, appointed in 2014 by Pope Francis to lead Chicago and elevated to cardinal by the pope in 2016, was also tapped by Francis to help organize the pope’s February summit on clerical sex abuse.

At a Vatican press conference in the days leading up to the February abuse gathering, Cupich had conceded that more than 80 percent of the clergy sex abuse victims have been male teenagers but denied a causal connection between clerical abuse and actively homosexual clerics.

Cupich had also said previously that homosexuality is not a significant contributing factor in the sex abuse crisis, even though the data indicate otherwise.

He derided former U.S. apostolic nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s testimony from last August on the cover-up of abuse by ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick as just a “rabbit hole” distracting the Church.

In response to Viganò’s testimony, Cupich suggested that critics of Pope Francis — Viganò and his supporters — are bigots who “don’t like him because he’s a Latino.”

The cardinal said Francis has a “bigger agenda” than the issue of abuse cover-up raised in the Viganò testimony and needs to “get on with other things of talking about the environment and protecting migrants[.]”

He defended the Vatican putting the U.S. bishops off from voting on measures to address abuse cover-up at their Fall General Assembly in Baltimore last November in lieu of Francis’s February abuse summit — the summit criticized for producing statements in place of action and for being limited to minors when the McCarrick scandal had brought rampant abuse of seminarians to light.

Cupich stated from the floor of the U.S. bishops’ Baltimore meeting that sexual offenses against minors versus adults should be regarded separately, “because in some of the cases with adults ... involving clerics, it could be consensual sex.”

Posted by Wild Thing at 09:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 31, 2019

Pope in Morocco Contradict Jesus as He warns Catholics off converting others

Pope in Morocco warns Catholics off converting others

Pope Francis on Sunday warned Catholics in Morocco against trying to convert others to boost their small numbers, during a rare visit by a pontiff to the North African country.

Speaking in Rabat's cathedral on his second day in the Moroccan capital, Francis insisted trying to convert people to one's own belief "always leads to an impasse".

"Please, no proselytism!" he told an audience of around 400, who greeted the pope's arrival by ululating and applauding, while hundreds more gathered outside the cathedral.

Wild Thing's comment.........

Un-fricking-believable

The false pope blasphemes again. Christ Commanded us to spread the faith.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:19-20

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation."
—Mark 16:15

Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples.
—Psalm 96:3

So, the pope thinks he can over rule Jesus and nullify the great commission.

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Pope Francis says homosexual tendencies are ‘not a sin’

Pope Francis smiles during a meeting with Catholic priests and other Christian representatives in the cathedral of the capital, Rabat, Morocco, Sunday, March 31, 2019.

Pope Francis says homosexual tendencies are ‘not a sin’

Pope Francis has said that homosexual tendencies “are not a sin,” while encouraging parents who begin “seeing rare things” in their children to “please, consult, and go to a professional,” because “it could be that he [or she] is not homosexual.”

Asked about his famous soundbite “Who am I to judge?”, the pope said, “Tendencies are not sin. If you have a tendency to anger, it’s not a sin. Now, if you are angry and hurt people, the sin is there.”

“Sin is acting, of thought, word and deed, with freedom,” Francis said.

Asked by Spanish journalist Jordi Evole if he thinks it’s a “rarity” for parents to have a homosexual child, the pope answered that “in theory, no.”

“But I’m talking about a person who is developing, and parents start to see strange things … Please consult, and go to a professional, and there you will see what it is and may not be homosexual, that is due to something else,” he said.

Francis also said that in his opinion, it’s usually challenging for a family to have a homosexual child, as they can be “scandalized by something they don’t understand, something out of the ordinary … I’m not making a judgement of value, I’m doing a phenomenological analysis,” he said.

The pope’s words came in response to a question about comments he made last summer, when he said parents who detect their children have homosexual behaviors should take them to a psychiatrist.

Wild Thing's comment.........

Forget that this idiot is a Pope a so called leader of his church head of his church, I know of no Christian that would say this about sin. God speaks very clearly about sin in the Bible Those that continue to stay in the Catholic church should t last pray for their Pope to get closer to God and read the Bible.

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March 30, 2019

Pro-LGBT Abp. Wilton Gregory may be new archbishop of Washington, Vatican hints

Pope Francis is expected to appoint Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta to serve as the next Archbishop of Washington, multiple sources have independently reported to CNA. Gregory would become the seventh Archbishop of Washington, succeeding Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

Pro-LGBT Abp. Wilton Gregory may be new archbishop of Washington, Vatican hints

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 29, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — The Holy See has indicated that pro-LGBT Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta may be appointed as the next head of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., sparking controversy among some Catholic conservatives.

An official announcement could come as early as next week, although Vatican sources have hedged their bets, suggesting to the Catholic News Agency (CNA) that his appointment is “subject to change.”

Gregory will succeed Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who stepped down in the aftermath of last year’s Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report on clergy sexual abuse when it appeared he was continuing a pattern of obfuscation and cover-up.

One Catholic lay group expressed grave “reservations” about about the appointment of Archbishop Gregory as archbishop of Washington.

“We urge the Holy See to seek out a worthy candidate who is without ties to Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Mr. Theodore McCarrick, or Donald Cardinal Wuerl,” Catholic Laity for Orthodox Bishops and Reform stated in a press release.

“Archbishop Gregory was a protégé of Cardinal Bernardin in Chicago, where he first became an auxiliary bishop. Cardinal Bernardin left a legacy of dilution of Catholic teaching and subversion of the fight to protect unborn babies and their mothers,” the group added.

The group said the Archdiocese of Washington has already suffered enough “through nearly 20 years of failed leadership.”

“First, under a Cardinal Archbishop who has finally been expelled from the clerical state for his predation on minors and adults under his jurisdiction, then under a Cardinal Archbishop who last October had to plead with Pope Francis to accept his resignation because of his failure to protect minors from priests who were sexual predators and his prevarications and evasions regarding his predecessor in Washington,” the group stated.

Pope Francis has taken his time naming a successor to Wuerl, presumably because of the strategic importance of the national capital archdiocese, which entails interaction with powerful high-profile politicians, pundits, lobbyists, and others.

Gregory is no stranger to Washington, having served as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) from 2001 to 2004.

It was during his tenure as USCCB head that clerical sexual abuse first rocked the Catholic Church in the U.S., resulting in the Dallas Charter, which, while providing guidelines for dealing with abusive priests, left abusive prelates unchecked.

Along with now defrocked former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Gregory misrepresented the contents of a letter from Cardinal Ratzinger, then the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which counseled American prelates to deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion during the 2004 presidential campaign season. They instead paraphrased the letter, telling their brother bishops that they should exercise their own judgment regarding pro-abortion politicos. The U.S. bishops ended up voting 183-6 to leave the decision up to each diocese.

More recently, as head of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, Gregory has displayed an uncritical willingness to accept LGBT ideology in defiance of the Church’s Magisterium.

Last year, Gregory personally invited pro-gay Vatican adviser Fr. James Martin to give a speech titled “Showing Welcome and Respect in Our Parishes to LGBT Catholics” at both St. Thomas More Parish and at Atlanta’s Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

“During a 2017 visit to Washington, Archbishop Wilton Gregory, the reported next Archbishop of Washington, mentioned his support for James Martin, SJ’s Building a Bridge,” noted one Twitter user. “He called Fr. Martin a wonderful Jesuit and called the book a wonderful book.”

Gregory has permitted the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to act as a center for LGBT events, including LGBT potluck socials and participating in the city’s Pride Parade. Since 2014, he has also allowed the pro-homosexual and pro-transgenderism “Catholic” group, Fortunate and Faithful Families, to hold retreats in his Atlanta Chancery, while personally saying Mass for the group.

The shrine’s pastor, who has shown himself to be at home operating within Atlanta’s gay subculture, was chosen by Archbishop Gregory to serve as a spiritual director for victims of sex abuse for the archdiocese.

In 2017, Archbishop Gregory gave the keynote address at the Association of United States Catholic Priests (AUSCP) conference. The group backs the ordination of women to the diaconate and is open to the idea of the Church approving the use of contraception.

Archbishop Gregory has proven to be an avid supporter of Amoris Laetitia, signaling a willingness to allow divorced and “remarried” Catholics to receive communion.

As news of Archbishop Gregory’s pending appointment to head the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. seeped into the public square, some took to Twitter to criticise the pope’s choice.

“The reported appointment of Archbishop Wilton Gregory to Washington will be widely welcomed (especially in the media),” said Damian Thompson, editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald. “Let's hope he’s an outstanding success. But it’s worth noting that Rome is sending a clear message to conservative US Catholics. Read their tweets.”

“Unshocking pick,” declared Catholic commentator and author Patrick Coffin. “According to the late Dr. Richard Sipe (who rejected Catholic teaching on homosexuality, mind) the proposed Wuerl replacement is strongly presumed to be homosexual. Who am I to judge?”

Wild Thing's comment.............

What totally sick church nd it seems no attempt is being mde to follow the Bible on what God has said about all of this.

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March 29, 2019

Pope Francis set to give ‘historic speech’ involving ‘persons of same sex’, leaked letter claims

March 29, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis will meet on April 5 with several LGBT advocates about the matter of the decriminalization of homosexuality where he will then give a “historic speech … relevant to the subject matter,” according to several sources who have a leaked letter about the event to back up their claim.

French sociologist and book author Dr. Frédéric Martel, who is an open homosexual, reported about the event on his website, referencing a letter of invitation to the event that was addressed to an LGBT activist. LifeSiteNews obtained a copy of the letter.

The letter – dated March 4 and signed by Professor Raúl Zaffaroni and Dr. Leonardo Raznovich – is an invitation in the name of a Coordinating Committee of a research project regarding "criminalisation of sexual relations between persons of same sex in the Caribbean."

It asks the individual addressee (a pro-LGBT activist at the U.N.) to join a “private audience with His Holiness Pope Francis to be held on 5 April 2019 at the Vatican City at 12.00 noon.”

During that audience, the letter states, “the Chair of the Coordinating Committee, Professor Raúl Zaffaroni, Justice of the Inter American Court of Human Rights, will present to His Holiness the Pope the preliminary results of the research.”

Then the letter says that “Professor Zaffaroni's words will be followed by a historical speech by His Holiness relevant to the subject matter.”

LifeSiteNews reached out to the two signers of the letter of invitation, asking them for further information, but has not yet heard back from either of them. LifeSiteNews also reached out to the Vatican Press Office, asking for a confirmation of this private papal audience, but did not yet hear back.

Martel – a defender of the LGBT agenda – has several sources who confirmed to him the upcoming meeting.

This Committee of a research project regarding the criminalization of sexual relations between persons of same sex in the Caribbean region is a project of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, the International Bar Association – a bar association of international legal practitioners, as well as of ILANDU, the United Nations' Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders. All three organizations appear on the letterhead of the leaked letter.

One of the two signatories of the letter, Dr. Raznovich has more information on this project – and its aim of decriminalizing homosexual relationships – in his own personal biography as posted on the website of the Canterbury Christ Church University:

In January 2016, Dr. Raznovich was appointed as Education Officer of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Law Committee of the International Bar Association for the biennium 2016-2017. He is currently an Honorary Visiting Senior Research Fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK and, in such capacity, is undertaking a research project in the Caribbean, the objective of which is to force the remaining ten countries in the Caribbean Region to decriminalise sodomy.

Raznovich's strategy is to perform a comprehensive critical analysis of the on-going criminalisation of homosexuality in the 10 jurisdictions in the Caribbean and to assess the social impact of these mechanisms on the health of LGTBI persons and society at large. The Inter American Institute of Human Rights is the main host of the research in the region. The cost of conducting the fieldwork, analysing the data and preparing the report is to be met by funds that Dr. Raznovich secured from the International Bar Association and the ILANUD. The project has formally started in May 2017 and its completion it is envisage for April 2019."

According to Dr. Martel, Michael Kirby, a former Australian Supreme Court Justice who is living in a civil union with another man, will also be present among the several high-ranking participants of that papal audience. However, another invitee, Edwin Cameron, who is “close to Mandela and a member of the South African High Court, has declined to accept the invitation,” because he fears there will be a lack of concrete steps coming out of this audience.

Zaffaroni is a former judge of Argentina's Supreme Court and a retired law professor at the University of Buenos Aires, and he thus knows Pope Francis from his time in Argentina. Martel calls Zaffaroni “a friend of Pope Francis.” Zaffaroni is a long-standing supporter of the decriminalization of homosexual relationships and he also opposes the criminalization of abortion. Pope Francis, when still the archbishop of Buenos Aires, once invited Zaffaroni, in 2010, to participate as a speaker at a diocesan event on children and youth, something that caused indignation among Catholics at the time.

According to Martel, the April 5 meeting will provide the “pretext” for Pope Francis to speak on the question of the decriminalization of homosexuality. Several sources have told Martel that while Pope Francis cannot “express public support for civil [same-sex] unions” he might, nevertheless, speak up “in favor of a decriminalization of homosexuality.”

This information as given here, says Martel, has been “confirmed to me by several LBGT world leaders who also have been invited to this reunion in a letter (of which I have a copy), from different countries of Africa, North America, and South America.”

However, several sources in Rome have told the French author that they “remain skeptical about a possible evolution of Francis in this matter [of homosexuality].” One source, a Jesuit from Rome, cautioned Martel that this meeting on April 5 is “not officially a conference of the Vatican” and that “there are serious doubts that the Pope will make a major announcement on that occasion.”

Dr. Martel adds that Pope Francis will already make some comments on the matter of homosexuality in a new Spanish interview that will be aired this coming Sunday.

Thus, it will be seen whether or not Pope Francis will deliver a “historic speech.”

Pope Francis recently met with a pro-homosexual Catholic group, posing with them for photos. The group, “LGBT+ Catholics Westminster”, as been appointed by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, to provide pastoral care for homosexuals and to promote the normalization of homosexuality within the Catholic Church and seeks to “rid Church and society of systemic, institutional homophobia.”

Giving some background history on the Vatican's position concerning the decriminalization of homosexuality, Martel said that “the Vatican has led, for more than forty years, a worldwide battle against the decriminalization of homosexuality, with the help of all its networks and nunciatures.” In December of 2008 during Pope Benedict XVI's rule, said the French book author, “the Vatican had militated in favor of the upholding of the criminalization of homosexual relations.” Martel says that, at that time, the Vatican developed a “sophisticated” argument according to which “nobody is in favor of the penalization of homosexuality or of its criminalization,” but that those existing texts on human rights are already “sufficient.”

A Reuters report of December 2008 confirms that Vatican's stand at the time, saying that “Gay rights groups and newspaper editorials on Tuesday condemned the Vatican for its decision to oppose a proposed U.N. resolution calling on governments worldwide to de-criminalize homosexuality.” The Catholic Church was, together with the U.S., among those countries rejecting this non-binding declaration seeking to decriminalize homosexuality at the U.N.

According to Martel, the Vatican diplomats “fought against the expressions 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity', which, according to their own view, have no juridical standing in international law. Moreover, to recognize these expressions could lead to a legitimization of polygamy or of sexual abuse, according to those diplomatic cables that Dr. Martel has been able to read.

Furthermore, the French author names three nuncios who are dominant among those who fought this battle against the decriminalization of homosexuality at the U.N.: Archbishop Silvano Tomasi in Geneva, Cardinal Renato Martino and then Archbishop Celestino Migliore before the United Nations in New York. “Pope Benedict XVI, his Secretary of State Cardinal [Tarcisio] Bertone, and then the future Cardinal [Dominique] Mamberti, have been very active concerning this topic.”

“To the general surprise,” said Martel, when it came to the final vote, “the Vatican voted 'no' to the U.N. Declaration on the decriminalization of homosexuality.” Even though it could have abstained from voting (with China or Turkey),” the author added, “the Vatican supported a violently homophobic counter-declaration carried out by Syria, Iran, and even Saudi Arabia.”

In conclusion – and in light of the Vatican's history of dealing with this topic – Dr. Martel said that “Should Pope Francis defend the decriminalization of homosexuality in the Vatican on April 5, it would mark thus a change of a major line of policy concerning the gay question, profoundly breaking with the pontificates of Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedic XVI.”

Dr. Martel has just recently published his book, In the Closet of the Vatican, in which he claims that there is a vast presence of homosexual men among the Catholic priesthood, especially in the Vatican. In one chapter, he presented, as true, the moral corruption that is taking place in the Diocese of Havana, Cuba; and likewise in another chapter, he describes a plan of Pope Francis and his collaborators slowly to change the Church's moral teaching. He also essentially confirmed the report of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò that Pope Francis knew of then-Cardinal McCarrick's own homosexual relationships.

While he clearly has a bias against the more conservative prelates who try to defend the Church's traditional moral teaching – which can be seen in his recurrent innuendoes against them – Dr. Martel nonetheless provides much information since, through his own pro-LGBT stance, he has received many candid reports and open doors in the Vatican over the course of the past four years.

Wild Thing's comment........

Does the Pope read the Bible?

Pedophilia among priests is wrong but all other "homosexual events" have his blessing?? That's nuts. How can Catholics tolerate a man like this? ! his man who calls himself pope is walking away from Christ .

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December 11, 2018

Nut Case Socialist Pope Francis considering change to the Lord's Prayer

Pope Francis considering change to the Lord's Prayer

He needs to read the last page of the Bible . Do not change the word of God . Maybe he needs to study the original language so he can understand Gods word . Pope Francis is a disgrace!

Posted by Wild Thing at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 23, 2018

O’Malley left off Pope’s organizing committee for abuse prevention summit

During an interview in the rectory at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley discusses the failure of Catholic Church leadership to reform in the wake of the Boston sexual abuse scandal in 2002.

O’Malley left off Pope’s organizing committee for abuse prevention summit

Boston Globe

Nov. 23,2018

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis named the Vatican’s top sex abuse investigator and a close U.S. ally to an organizing committee for a February abuse prevention summit that has grown even more high stakes after the Holy See blocked U.S. bishops from taking action to address the scandal.

Abuse survivors and women working at the Vatican will also contribute to the preparatory committee. Notably absent from the lineup announced Friday was Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who heads the pope’s sex abuse advisory commission, though one of his members, the Rev. Hans Zollner, is the point-person for the group.

In addition to Zollner, the committee includes Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, for a decade the Vatican’s sex crimes prosecutor, Francis appointee Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich and Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias, a member of Francis’ key cardinal adviser group.

Francis summoned leaders of the world’s 130 bishops’ conferences to the Vatican Feb. 21-24 after the abuse scandal erupted again in his native South America and the U.S. and he himself botched the case of a Chilean bishop implicated in cover-up.

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Why Catholic bishops are terrified of investigations

November 22, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The Pennsylvania Grand Jury report into clerical sex abuse in the Catholic Church and the Australian Royal Commission on child sex-abuse have an English equivalent in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which is currently taking evidence from witnesses, in public hearings.

Bishops and religious superiors publicly humiliated by these bodies have, of course, brought it upon themselves. Certainly, the degree of humiliation in each case does not necessarily correspond exactly with the degree of guilt, but the ones in the dock tend to make an admission of failure the keynote of their opening statements.

Despite all this, it is difficult to discern any real change of direction in episcopal policies and attitudes. The cases which remain hidden, and above all the clerics with credible allegations hanging over them still in active ministry, poison dioceses and religious communities. It is easy, though painful, to imagine the effect on the morale of seminarians and priests aware of the allegations against former Cardinal McCarrick, to see him honored and invited around the country year after year. But while the secular power is dragging information out of bishops about one case after another, bishops still seem to have no appetite to review old cases, to ensure that widely-suspected abusers are not still swanning around the diocese.

This is not to say that anyone in the Church should be regarded as guilty until proven innocent, and indeed there are far too many cases of priests thrown under the bus by their bishops because it seemed the easy way out.

In fact, the tendency to condemn priests when allegations become public, and to protect priests when allegations are made only in private, are two sides of the same coin. In both cases, what bishops have wanted to avoid is an investigation.

This fact is reinforced when we read about the times when there have been internal investigations, ordered by the Holy See, into American seminaries and into American religious sisters: these are discussed at length in Michael Rose’s Goodbye Good Men and Anne Carey’s Sisters in Crisis. Initial high hopes were dashed when one investigation after another were turned into white-washes. The senior bishops and officials involved did not have the will to rock the boat: or, as they put it to disappointed whistle-blowers, to conduct a ‘witch-hunt’.

Why not? Not because these investigators, and bishops declining to investigate, thought that nothing bad was happening. No, it was precisely because they had a fair idea of how bad things are, that they did not want a real investigation. They were frightened of opening a can of worms.

In some cases, decision-makers were personally involved in wrongdoing. In other cases, it is sometimes suggested, they were being black-mailed, explicitly or implicitly. I would suggest, however, that this is another motive, which would apply even to those who had little to fear personally: simply that a real house-cleaning exercise would implicate so many people, in such seriously bad things, that the overall effect on the Church’s standing, and even its ability to function, would be catastrophic.

Even a serious investigation into one specific case would have a tendency to spread the blame to an unacceptably large number of people. Other allegations in the file would have to be noted; the people who turned a blind eye to it, and the people who put in a good word for the abuser, would be revealed; and if a few more cases were investigated in this way, the pattern of cover-up would begin to emerge. Start pulling on one thread in the network of mutually-supporting abusers and complicit superiors, and the whole fabric of the diocese or community would begin to unravel.

Today’s bishops are not responsible for the beginnings of this problem: they are responsible for allowing it to continue, and to strike deeper and deeper roots into the Church. They have known since they were bishops, from the files and from the victims, what they probably knew from hearsay before, that many dioceses are powder-kegs of wrongdoing. They don’t want anyone to light a match.

They are in a situation in which things are so bad that they cannot do anything to make things better. That, at least, is how things may seem to them. In reality, as secular prosecutors are beginning to point out to them, they had various moral and legal duties, to protect children, to report crimes, and to administer property belonging to the Church for proper charitable purposes, which they repeatedly failed to fulfil. Their fear of the bad consequences of doing the right thing is no justification or defense either legally or morally.

And now that light is creeping into this abyss of evil, as was bound to happen eventually, all the bad consequences they hoped avoid will now happen anyway, all the worse for the delay, and the continuing reluctance of bishops to do the right thing.

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November 22, 2018

President Trump, First Lady Melania, Barron Arrive for Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago

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November 04, 2018

Is God Your Father Or Is It the Roman Catholic Pope?

Written by Keith Green

According to the scriptures, there is only one person who deserves the title of “Holy Father” and he is sitting on a throne in Heaven, not on a throne over in the Vatican. Peter is often referred to as the “first Pope” of the Roman Catholic church, but when you study the scriptures you will find that Peter was just another Christian who refused and disdained the praise which came from man. If Peter were to walk through St Peter’s Square, and visit the Vatican in Rome he would be appalled by all of the gaudy idolatry and man-made traditions of the Catholic church. If you study the scriptures you can get the true picture of Peter fairly easily. In the book of Acts Peter rebuked a man who fell down on the floor to worship him, because he knew that he was merely a redeemed sinner, who was saved by the mercy and grace of God:

And as Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him, and fell down at his feet, and WORSHIPPED HIM. But Peter took him up, saying, STAND UP; I myself also am a man. (Acts 10:25-26)

Peter would NOT put up with such idolatry, and he let that man Cornelius know right away. Fast forward to modern times, and you will see people bowing down like little puppy dogs before the Catholic Popes, kissing their rings, and paying homage to them wherever they may go. This is actually something that has been going on for centuries. The Catholic Popes, including the current Pope Francis, are often referred to as the “Holy Father” or “His Holiness” when the true Christian knows that those titles are reserved only for God himself. The apostle Peter walked side by side with the Lord Jesus Christ, so he would have have heard, and known the instruction which the Lord gave addressing any man as Father!

And call NO MAN your FATHER upon the earth: for ONE is your FATHER, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for ONE is your MASTER, even CHRIST. (Matthew 23:9-10)

Roman Catholics are taught to address their local parish priest as “Father” from the time they are a small child. They will continue to address their Catholic priests as Father until the day they die, unless of course they get saved, and are delivered out from that deceptive system. This whole idea of multitudes of people bowing their knee to a man, and calling him “Holy Father” or “His Holiness” is demonic in origin, and rotten to the very core. People by the millions have been ensnared over the centuries, because they are worshiping and following a man, and not the Lord. Not only that but “Protestant” pastors and ministry leaders have also addressed the Pope as the “Holy Father” and basically telling Jesus that HIS words mean nothing to them! You must also be aware of the possibility that there are Roman Catholic “plants” throughout the worldwide Christian church.

The word DEIFY is defined as “to make a god out of, to glorify as of supreme worth” and that is exactly what is done regarding the Roman Catholic Popes.

Cornelius was a humble man, and at the Lord’s request Peter (through a vision) was sent to instruct him. When Peter arrived at the place where Cornelius and his friends were gathered, Cornelius threw himself down on the floor to worship him, and Peter rebuked him because he knew that in and of himself he was nothing but a hell deserving sinner like the rest of us. Peter knew his place and he knew that the Lord was using him as a simple vessel to bring the truth of the gospel to Cornelius and his friends. Peter was a Jewish man who knew that he was purchased and redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and you can rest assured that Peter would bring that message to Cornelius and his friends. Here is a passage from the Bible from one of Peter’s letters

And if ye call on the FATHER, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: Forasmuch as ye know that ye were NOT REDEEMED with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received BY TRADITION from your fathers; But with the precious BLOOD of CHRIST, as of a LAMB without blemish and without spot: (1 Peter 1:17-19)

Peter knew that it was the blood, the blood, and nothing but the blood, that redeemed his wretched soul from a fiery hell, and that is the message that Cornelius and friends needed to hear. Peter knew that there was a connection between the Jewish passover sacrifice of an unblemished male lamb, and the perfect sacrifice of the unblemished (sinless) Lamb of God, which speaks of Jesus Christ. Peter knew full well that this man Cornelius needed to be corrected quickly, lest that type of thinking would get deep into his spiritual system. Trust me folks, I am a former Roman Catholic, and I have been REDEEMED and JUSTIFIED by the BLOOD of Jesus Christ. It is time to forsake the man-made traditions of the Roman Catholic church for the sake of your OWN soul, and for the sake of YOUR loved ones. Jesus Christ paid the price in FULL, and you do not have to have your sins JUSTIFIED at the Roman Catholic Mass! I have been SAVED since 1989, and the Lord Jesus Christ has never let me down! Call upon the Lord from YOUR own heart, and in your own way. You do not have to be fancy with the Lord because he truly does LOVE you. He will SAVE you right now! Yes, right now! Do not put it off!

“For when we were yet without strength, in due time CHRIST died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his LOVE toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, CHRIST died for us. Much more then, being now JUSTIFIED BY HIS BLOOD, we shall be SAVED from WRATH through HIM.” Romans 5:6-9

“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the LORD shall be SAVED.” Romans 10:13

Jesus Christ who has REDEEMED us by his BLOOD, and he will flood your soul with his peace AFTER you have been truly SAVED!. You do not have to worry about going to Purgatory either, because that place never existed in the first place. Trust me now, you can go directly to the Lord for salvation, without any other mediator but Jesus Christ!

“For there is one God, and ONE MEDIATOR between God and men, the man CHRIST JESUS;” 1Timothy 2:5

It is either Heaven or hell, with nothing in between! If a person has been truly born again of the Spirit, they are fully aware that they have received the mercy of God, and have been snatched from the highway to Hell by the grace of God. Any person who has been born again of the Spirit, also realizes that CHRIST, and Him alone, will always get ALL of the glory. That is the reason why Peter stopped this man from paying any homage to him. There is not one person on this earth who can be called HOLY outside of JESUS CHRIST and do not ever forget that. We are all on the same level ground, with no exceptions. It is true that the Lord will use people in different capacities, such as teachers, evangelists, preachers and other things, but that does not make them any “holier” than others. Do not ever forget that. The true Christian understands that their true Holy father is in heaven above (Matthew 23:9-10), and they know that by the Holy Spirit that dwells in them.

The SPIRIT itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we ARE the CHILDREN OF GOD: And IF CHILDREN, then HEIRS; HEIRS of GOD, and JOINT-HEIRS with CHRIST; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also GLORIFIED TOGETHER. (Romans 8:16-17)

The true Christian knows that every person on planet earth is as lost as can be without salvation in Jesus Christ and that would include every Roman Catholic Pope. You have a choice to be a child of the TRUE “Holy Father,” and eternal God in HEAVEN, or to be a child of the earthly Roman Catholic Pope, who masquerades as the “Holy Father” on earth! Countless millions of Roman Catholic people are still subject to the man-made traditions of Rome, the Magisterium (Catholic teaching office) with the Pope at the head of it all. If you take a look in the book of Revelation you will see where an angel from Heaven absolutely refuse to be worshiped, after the apostle John fell down before him.

And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou DO IT NOT: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the TESTIMONY OF JESUS: WORSHIP GOD: for the TESTIMONY OF JESUS is the spirit of prophecy. (Revelation 19:10)

Then saith he unto me, See thou DO IT NOT: for I am thy fellowservant, and of THY BRETHREN the prophets, and of them which KEEP THE SAYINGS of this book: WORSHIP GOD. And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. (Revelation 22:9-10)

Keep those passages of scripture in mind, as you recall the centuries of praise and homage being paid to Roman Catholic Popes over the centuries. It is plain and simple idolatry when a person gives worship to any person [including angels] except the true and living God. We can see how the apostle John simply wanted to pay respect to this angel, whom he knew lived in the very presence of God, but the angel knew better than to receive worship from anyone. He knew that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” and it was the Lord who sent him to minister to John in the first place!

The current Pope Francis was in the USA in the Fall of 2015, and as expected, there was the usual pandering, and bowing down to the Pope when he arrived. The Pope also visited Mexico and paid homage to the IDOL of “Our Lady of Guadalupe” in February of 2016. While he was there he visited the city of Chiapas, Mexico, the very same place where true born again Christians were tossed into jail, after they had their property confiscated and REFUSED to convert to Roman Catholicism! As expected the “anointed” preachers of America said absolutely nothing about this. The Pope did not do anything to help the true Christians either! The Bible has a term for ALL of them, and Jesus Christ my redeemer called them “ravening wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

“Beware of FALSE PROPHETS, which come to you in SHEEP’S CLOTHING, but inwardly they are RAVENING WOLVES.” Matthew 7:15

The wolves can be found preaching in pulpits all over America, and the rest of the world too. They will attempt to convince you that the Pope is a true Christian, and the Roman Catholic church is just another Christian denomination. Do not listen to them folks, because they are not telling you the truth. I told the story before of how my wife Cathy and I met a Christian lady in church one day and had a nice conversation with her. She knew that we were ex-Catholics, and we happened to meet her again in the same spot almost a year later. She told us that she joined a Charismatic Catholic prayer group. I looked her straight in the eye and I told her to be careful, because they would have her praying the rosary before long. The woman looked at me and said “I feel sick, they already have me praying the rosary” The Catholic “rosary” is a set of beads, which represent different prayers. The majority of those beads represent “Hail Mary” prayers (50) and the Catholics repeat them over and over and over again! I attended Charismatic Catholic “Healing Masses” for almost three years, and the Charismatics still believe all of the doctrines of Rome, or they could not remain a true Roman Catholic! Folks, you are going to have to make a decision sooner or later whether you are going to listen and follow your deceived and compromising Pastor or whether you are going to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and his word! I hope that you make the right choice. You can expect to be slandered, and misrepresented but praise the Lord, because you are on solid ground with Jesus Christ!

What does all of this pandering to the Roman Catholic Popes have to do with the TRUE gospel of Jesus Christ? Absolutely NOTHING! I can remember waiting for the arrival of Pope Paul VI at Kennedy Airport in October of 1965. The Catholic school class went there early in the morning, and I was right in the front along the roadway, with thousands of others, as the Papal limousine with the bubble back window passed by. It lasted no more than a few seconds, and I saw the the little white cap on the Pope’s head as he rode away. Thousands of the deceived, (including myself), waited to catch a glimpse of the “Holy Father.” Why? Because all of us were taught to believe that the Pope was the “Vicar of Christ” on Earth,” from the time that we were little children. I am so grateful that I know the real Holy Father in Heaven now. I am so grateful that I am no longer deceived and on my way to Hell as I was all those years ago. It is good to remember where you came from, and I will never forget that for sure. Here is actual quote from Jesus Christ my redeemer:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that WHOSOEVER believeth in him should not perish, but have EVERLASTING LIFE. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be SAVED. He that believeth on him is NOT condemned: but he that believeth NOT is condemned ALREADY, because he hath NOT believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that LIGHT is come into the world, and men LOVED DARKNESS rather than LIGHT, because THEIR DEEDS were evil. For every one that doeth evil HATETH THE LIGHT, neither cometh to the LIGHT, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth TRUTH cometh to the LIGHT, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” John 3:16-21

“Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I AM the LIGHT of the world: he that followeth me shall NOT walk in DARKNESS, but shall have the LIGHT of life.” John 8:12

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Socialist Pope Francis Expresses Support For Migrant Caravan, Praises Their 'Need To Pile Up'

Pope Francis Expresses Support For Migrant Caravan, Praises Their 'Need To Pile Up'

As the midterm elections loom several days away, Pope Francis has expressed his support for the 14,000 people in the migrant caravan headed for the United States southern border.

According to Vatican documents, Pope Francis expressed his support for the caravan on Monday while addressing the participants of the XV General Chapter of the Congregation of the Missionaries of San Carlo.

Much of the [Pope’s] speech focused on the virtue of welcoming the stranger and how nations need to foster this virtue or risk their own demise.

“It’s easier to welcome a stranger than to be welcomed, and you have to do both,” said Pope Francis. “You must teach, help welcome the stranger, and give all the possibilities to the nations that have everything or enough to use these four words that you have said. How to welcome a foreigner.”

Pope Francis noted how he was such a stranger with his family in Argentina, which he held up as an example. “Argentina has this experience of welcoming because there was work and it was also needed. And Argentina — for my experience — is a cocktail of migratory waves,” he said.

Such a policy, Pope Francis says, is a social good because migrants “build a country.”

“Migrants build a country; how they built Europe,” Pope Francis said. “Because Europe was not born this way, Europe has been made by many waves of migration over the centuries.”

Should a nation reject migrants out of its own “well-being,” Pope Francis said that would be “suicidal,” noting Europe’s demographic winter which is the result of a secularized continent that largely rejects Church teaching on sexuality.

He later held up the “caravan traveling from Honduras to the United States’ as an example of migrants moving together in a “community.” He does not acknowledge that such a migratory wave reduces individuals into a crowd, making it difficult for government agencies to properly vet the people flowing into the country. It’s as if the sight of a person moving as just another member in a faceless crowd rather than a divine individual is something beautiful to behold.

As of now, the caravan that began in Honduras has swollen to 14,000 people, some of whom are gang members and criminals.

Chrissie aka Wild Thing's comment.........

This man is an idiot and a socialist. So, this Pope does not believe in Bible or God. He does not respect laws, authority or God’s Word.

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October 30, 2018

Polish film The Clergy sparks hundreds of allegations of abuse in Catholic Church

Based on real events, Kler has broken box office records and divided Catholic country

A film depicting Polish clerics as corrupt, drunken fornicators and paedophiles is smashing box office records in Poland, sparking controversy and encouraging hundreds of people to come forward with allegations of recent and historical abuse.

The film broke Polish box officer records on its opening weekend , and has been seen by almost 3 million people since its release at the end of September.

Movie About Church Sexual Abuse Is a Contentious Hit in Poland

New York Times

“Clergy”a new movie by the director Wojciech Smarzowski...is a smash hit in Poland. It opened on Sept. 28, and more than 1.7 million people saw it during its first week. That is a huge figure for a country of 38 million.

A cinema in Zabrze, a city in the south of the country, showed the movie up to 24 times a day to meet demand...On Sept. 21, it was shown at the Gdynia Film Festival, and received an 11-minute ovation.

It starts with three priests drinking vodka until they can barely speak. One then drives drunk to a parishioner’s apartment and mumbles his way through the giving of last rites.

The picture of Poland’s priesthood only goes downhill from there. The priests steal money from their congregations, spy on each other, and exploit their connections with politicians, journalists and the police.

But much of “Clergy” focuses on one issue: Clerical child abuse, which the movie says the church covered up. In one scene, it incorporates accounts from real people who say they were abused.

This may not sound like the plot for a blockbuster movie — let alone one that features a heavy dose of comedy — but “Clergy” is a smash hit in Poland. It opened on Sept. 28, and more than 1.7 million people saw it during its first week, according to Kino Swiat, the movie’s distributor. That is a huge figure for a country of 38 million.

A cinema in Zabrze, a city in the south of the country, showed the movie up to 24 times a day to meet demand, the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported.

The film’s popularity is something of a surprise, given that Poland is a predominantly Roman Catholic country, with nearly 40 percent of the population attending a weekly Mass. The governing right-wing Law and Justice party promotes an image of Poland based on Christian values, and some of its members have attacked the film.

Jacek Kurski, a former member of Parliament for the Law and Justice party who is now the chairman of the state television company Telewizja Polska, called “Clergy” a “provocative, trashy movie” in an interview with the broadcaster. He added that it was “just another attack on the Catholic Church, brutal and untrue.”

A spokesman for the Polish Bishops’ Conference, the central organ of the church in the country, declined to comment.

“Clergy” stirred controversy in Poland even before it opened. On Sept. 21, it was shown at the Gdynia Film Festival, and received an 11-minute ovation. That made it a front-runner for one of the festival’s prizes, awarded to the movie that receives the longest applause. But the award was canceled soon afterward, leading newspapers to speculate that organizers had panicked about potentially having to give “Clergy” victory. The organizers denied that suggestion in a statement, saying the applause for other films in the festival had been interrupted, making it impossible to decide the prize fairly.

Mr. Smarzowski, the director, said in an email that he decided to make “Clergy” after being overwhelmed by the church’s power in Poland. “The church is present in our offices, on the street, and pushes us home and to bed,” he said. The church’s failure to deal with child abuse — “hiding pedophiles in their cassocks and transferring them from parish to parish” — also needed discussion, he said.

“This movie is addressed to Catholics,” he added. “I hope that after leaving the cinema, they will realize they are co-responsible for what they see on screen.”

The success of “Clergy” is even more unexpected given the reactions to recent productions at Polish theaters. In 2017, Catholics and right-wing groups protested regularly outside the Powszechny Theater in Warsaw, where “The Curse,” directed by the Croatian director Oliver Frljic, was being performed. In one of the iconoclastic play’s scenes, a woman performs fellatio on a sex toy attached to a statue of Pope John Paul II, who is an idol in Poland.

Actors in “The Curse” said they received threats. Foul-smelling butyric acid, sometimes used in stink bombs, was poured inside the theater, forcing it to shut for a month. Days after its premiere, prosecutors opened an investigation into whether anyone had committed blasphemy. (No one has been charged.) After the Polish theater festival Dialog tried to stage the play last October, promised funding was withdrawn.

Problems have continued for the Powszechny Theater. On Sept. 23, it was due to perform “The Curse” on tour in Slupsk, in northern Poland, but the venue was subjected to another butyric acid attack. The play had to be moved to a basketball court.
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Pawel Lysak, the Powszechny’s co-director, said in a telephone interview that cultural censorship was a growing problem in Poland, but, he added, “Clergy” showed that the church’s history of child abuse could at least be discussed. “Now is a completely different time from when we did ‘The Curse,’ ” he said. “A year ago, the bishops did not talk at all about pedophilia. Now they do every week. It’s a very good time for ‘Clergy.’ ”

Pope Francis’ recent moves on clerical sexual abuse, including meeting victims during a trip to Ireland, focused many in Poland on the issue, Mr. Lysak added. Events in Poland may also have helped. On Oct. 2, an appeals court in the western city of Poznan ruled that a Roman Catholic order should pay damages to a woman who was sexually abused when she was 13. And next month, the Polish church will publish a long-anticipated report on child abuse.

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October 28, 2018

BLASPHEMY!!!....Vatican News Styles Pope as “Successor of Christ”

Vatican News Styles Pope as “Successor of Christ”

VaticanNews slightly confused: Is Pope Francis the successor of Peter and the representative of Christ on earth or even the "successor of Christ"?

(Rome) The Vatican's news portal, active since December 2017, VaticanNews, has repeatedly described Pope Francis as the "successor of Christ".

VaticanNews spokespersons can make a “Freudian" slip. Is such a lapse underlying that which VaticanNews has repeatedly undermined?

The fact is that Vatican News, the Holy See's news agency, falsely referred to Pope Francis not as the successor to Peter or vicar of Christ on earth, but as the "successor of Christ," a name previously unknown to the Church and theologically meaning hyperpapism.

The article published on Tuesday about the papal celebrations in the coming three months of November-January ended in its first version with the note:

"[...] on Sunday, January 13, on the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord, the successor of Christ will celebrate Holy Mass and the baptism for children in the Sistine Chapel at 9:30."

After some Catholic media were amazed at the titulation, the passage in "Successor of Peter (see Lumen Gentium, 23)" was corrected.

However, this was not the first incident of its kind. Last August 29, VaticanNews published an article about Pope Francis' journey to Ireland. The headline read: "Catechesis of the Pope: The families, joy for the world, radiate the love of Christ". It read:

"In the Procathedral of Dublin, the successor of Christ declared ..."

Chrissie aka Wild Thing's comment........

When a king has a successor, that king is no longer king; his successor is. To declare that Christ has a successor is to worship the anti-Christ. Any Pope who calls himself the "successor" (not "vicar", but "successor) of Christ is anti-Christ.

This is outright heresy.

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Federal Government Tells Catholic Bishops Not to Destroy Sex Abuse Documents

New York Times

The Department of Justice has sent a sweeping request to every Roman Catholic diocese in the United States not to destroy documents related to the handling of child sexual abuse, a sign that the federal investigation into the church could grow far more extensive.

Catholic bishops have been asked by the federal government to retain their files on a broad array of internal matters, including sexual abuse investigations, and the transfer of priests across state or international borders, or to treatment centers. The request includes documents contained in “secret archives” — the confidential files that are kept by each diocese.

News reports last week revealed that the Justice Department had opened an investigation into all eight Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania, and the diocese of Buffalo in New York. This marked the first time the federal government had undertaken an investigation of the church’s handling of abusive priests, a scandal that surfaced in the United States in the mid-1980s.

But this request to preserve files, first disclosed by Whispers in the Loggia, a site that closely follows the Catholic hierarchy, suggests that federal investigators are throwing a very wide net. The abuse scandal, long fueled by the shocking details in the church’s own personnel documents, may now grow like an uncontrolled wildfire.

“Every diocese should assume that it is potentially under investigation,” said Marci A. Hamilton, a law professor and founder of CHILD USA, a think tank at the University of Pennsylvania that studies child sexual abuse and prevention. “Given the crisscrossing paths of priests sent from one diocese to another across the United States, I can understand why someone in Washington would say, ‘O.K., everybody needs to hold onto their evidence right now because we’re just starting to sketch out where the pedophiles have been sent by the hierarchy.’”

Abuse victims have despaired for years that the church in the United States would never be called to fully account for the perpetrators and the people they violated. There have been government-run inquiries in countries like Australia and Ireland, but the federal government in the United States has been reluctant to intervene, until now. The letter from the United States attorney suggested only the potential of a broader investigation, but abuse victims greeted it as a turning point nevertheless.

“It’s going to bring tears to my eyes just thinking about it,” said Tim Lennon, president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “It’s hopefully the beginning of a process of long-awaited justice. For survivors, it’s been a long road to bring those who have harmed children and the vulnerable to justice.”

The request to the bishops was contained in a seven-page letter and set of instructions from United States Attorney William M. McSwain, of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and sent to the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. The letter, dated Oct. 9, asked that Cardinal DiNardo “immediately transmit copies” to all dioceses in the United States. The bishops conference then sent it to the dioceses on Oct. 23.

Mr. McSwain said in his letter that at this point there was “no need” for the bishops to produce any documents “solely on account of this letter.” He said that the letter was only a request that the church entities “not destroy, discard, dispose of, delete, or alter any of the described documents.” But he started his letter by saying that his office was “investigating possible violations of federal law.”

The general counsel of the bishops’ conference, Anthony R. Picarello Jr., warned in a cover letter to the bishops that the request was “very broad.” Mr. Picarello wrote that the bishops conference had taken steps to preserve its documents, and advised the dioceses to do the same. But he said he had told the United States attorney that the bishops’ conference “lacks the authority” to make sure that the dioceses retain their documents.

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Picarello said, “We have transmitted the U.S. Attorney’s letter at his request and in the spirit of cooperation with law enforcement.” His office said he was unavailable for a telephone interview.

Mr. Lennon said that two groups advocating for survivors first asked the federal government for an investigation in 2003. He said that survivors asked again in 2014 and in August of this year, after a Pennsylvania grand jury released a report that found more than 300 priests had abused over 1,000 children in a 70-year period.

Since then, attorneys general in at least a dozen states have opened investigations into whether their local dioceses engaged in cover-ups of priests and other church employees who sexually abused minors. The District of Columbia and Virginia announced investigations this past week.

Many dioceses have already said they will cooperate with local prosecutors, and they are likely to take the same stance in relation to the request to preserve their documents.

“We’re doing that anyway,” said Penny Wiegert, director of communications and publications for the Diocese of Rockford, in Illinois, “because we’re cooperating with our own Illinois state attorney, and we have our own documentation retention protocol anyway.”

But in the past, several dioceses have been accused of destroying files on abusive priests, according to BishopAccountability.org, a research and advocacy group. Some church employees, including priests, nuns and lay people, have been responsible for blowing the whistle when documents were discarded or shredded, noted David Clohessy, a founder of the survivors network.

He said on Friday, “We applaud this move and hope it prevents the destruction of incriminating records that could lead to the prosecution of clerics who commit or conceal horrific child sex crimes.”

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Pope Decries ‘Persecution’ of Catholic Church Through Accusations

Remarks, at the end of a gathering of bishops, are unlikely to mollify critics in wake of sex-abuse scandals

The Wall Street Journal

ROME—Pope Francis told a gathering of bishops from around the world that the Catholic Church is being persecuted through accusations—an apparent allusion to clerical sex-abuse scandals that have undermined the credibility of the papacy and church hierarchy over the course of this year.

Addressing the closing session of a synod of bishops at the Vatican on Saturday, the pope repeated warnings he has made in recent weeks against the “Great Accuser,” or the devil, who “in this moment is accusing us strongly, and this accusation becomes persecution,” and who seeks to “soil the church.”

“This is the moment to defend our mother” the church, said the pope, in remarks unlikely to mollify critics who say he has failed to recognize the hierarchy’s responsibility for the abuse crisis. “The accuser is attacking our mother through us, and no one touches our mother.”

The gathering of more than 250 bishops was dedicated to the topic of youth, exploring how the church can better engage young Catholics and help them find roles in the church, whether as priests, nuns or lay members.

A published agenda for the meeting made only passing reference to sex abuse, but after months of scandals in the U.S., Latin America and Australia—and the claim by a former Vatican diplomat that Pope Francis himself had ignored sexual misconduct by a U.S. cardinal—the subject inevitably loomed over the proceedings.

Bishops frequently addressed clerical sex abuse during the first week of the monthlong synod, Archbishop Eamon Martin of Ireland told reporters on Friday.

The 60-page final document, released late Saturday, devoted two paragraphs to the subject of abuse, calling for “rigorous measures of prevention,” starting with the selection and education of clergy and other church employees. Quoting Pope Francis, the document lays much of the blame for sex abuse on “clericalism,” or an excessive deference to the church’s hierarchy.

The final document is “frankly inadequate and disappointing on the abuse matter,” Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, a member of the council that organized the synod, said in an email. “There’s very little sense of heartfelt apology in the text.”

The archbishop, who had previously called on the pope to cancel the gathering because of the sex-abuse crisis, said Saturday that “church leaders outside the United States and a few other countries dealing with the problem clearly don’t understand its scope and gravity.”

Some bishops from the developing world objected that their peers from western countries were overemphasizing sex abuse at the synod, according to Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, who helped draft the final document, which touches on topics ranging from migration to the internet and their impact on the lives of young Catholics.

“To be fair to the synod, you can’t say (sex abuse is) the number-one thing,” Cardinal Gracias, who is also a top adviser to Pope Francis, told the Catholic website Crux. “The statement should answer the needs of the United States, Ireland, Australia, but not just them.”

The pope has called another international meeting of bishops to discuss clerical sex abuse for four days in February.

Chrissie aka Wild Thing's comment..........

I hope somebody is keeping score of all the abusers Francis has been and is still protecting, and even promoting to high positions. It’s a long list. God certainly is.

For the Pope and their church to be saying these things against the accusers is pure evil of them. Disgusting. This Pope should be ashamed of himself.

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October 23, 2018

Catholic Church Sex Abuse Review Is Ordered by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan

The New York Times

September 20, 2018

Seeking to restore the trust of New York Catholics shaken by recent revelations of abuse, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan announced on Thursday that he had appointed a former federal judge to review how the Archdiocese of New York handles cases of sexual abuse of minors and sexual harassment of adults.

The review, led by Barbara S. Jones, a former judge in Federal District Court in Manhattan, will primarily focus on whether the archdiocese is following the protocols to protect minors from abuse that were approved by the nation’s bishops in 2002. Tackling a type of misconduct that was not addressed by the 2002 reforms, she will also examine whether current workplace policies are sufficient to prevent the sexual harassment of adults and other abuses of power in churches and seminaries.

Cardinal Dolan said in a Thursday news conference that Catholics in the archdiocese had come to him repeatedly over the summer distraught over the litany of sex abuse revelations that seem to make daily headlines, including the lurid accusations against Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, who was removed from ministry in June following a substantiated allegation of sex abuse of a minor in New York, and the explosive grand jury report into clergy sex abuse in Pennsylvania released in August.

“I need your help if I am going to respond to my people’s plea for accountability, transparency and action,” Cardinal Dolan told Ms. Jones at the news conference. “I look forward to receiving your recommendations and your insights and I pledge that I will take them all with utmost seriousness.”

Ms. Jones, 71, who will hold the title of special counsel and independent reviewer at the archdiocese, said she had been promised full access to personnel and other case files and will report directly to Cardinal Dolan. While producing a report for the public is not part of her initial mandate, Cardinal Dolan said that if he does not follow her recommendations, she should “hold my feet to the fire” and “report back to my people.”

Two weeks ago, the attorney general of New York State announced a civil investigation into how all the Catholic dioceses in the state have handled sex abuse allegations over decades. Several states have opened similar probes following the revelations of sex abuse and cover-up in the Pennsylvania grand jury report.

The timing of Cardinal Dolan’s announcement left some skeptical that he was simply trying to get out in front of that investigation: officials have already issued subpoenas to the dioceses for all files relating to sexual abuse.

“I think that the Cardinal’s move is basically a P.R. move that was made under duress,” said Michael Reck, a lawyer who represents clergy abuse victims in cases against the diocese. “This is the type of thing that could have and should have been done years ago.”

Shaun Dougherty, a New York representative for SNAP, an advocacy group for survivors of clergy sex abuse, said that if Cardinal Dolan truly wanted transparency, he would stop lobbying the state legislature against the passage of the Child Victims Act, which would lift the statute of limitations for sex abuse cases and allow lawsuits against the church for abuse that took place decades ago.

“Today is just another distraction from the bigger picture,” he said. “The Roman Catholic hierarchy is fully aware that we have just merely scratched the surface into the extent of the cover-up of child sexual assault, and they are desperate to get this lid back on the bottle.”

Ms. Jones, who was a federal judge until 2012 and is now a partner at Bracewell, just finished an assignment as the court-appointed special master identifying which items were subject to attorney-client privilege among the millions seized in raids on President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

She was an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan and chief assistant to Robert M. Morgenthau, the former Manhattan district attorney, before she was appointed to the bench in 1995 by President Bill Clinton. As a federal prosecutor, she served as chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force Unit. At Bracewell, she specializes on compliance issues and internal investigations.

She said Thursday that she began an initial review of church policies 10 days ago and found a “robust infrastructure” in place to handle allegations. She will now examine if those protocols are being followed. For the most part, abuses that took place before 2002 will not be part of her review.

“I approach this important assignment with an open mind and an understanding of the scope and scale of the issues that challenge the archdiocese,” she said.

The archdiocese is already engaged in an effort to settle claims with sex abuse victims, provided they agree to forgo further legal action. Over the last two years, its Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, led by the mediator Kenneth Feinberg, has awarded settlements to 295 people abused by diocesan priests over decades, costing the diocese $59.75 million.

Cardinal Dolan has not published a comprehensive list of all priests who have been credibly accused of abuse on the archdiocesan website, as other dioceses have done in a move toward transparency.
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“I, for one, don’t exactly see why we should, because the names are already out there,” he said Thursday, adding that the archdiocese has released all the names of abusive priests over the years one by one. Victims groups, however, have disputed that all the names have been made public.

Cardinal Dolan said that he would be open to publishing a list of accused priests if Ms. Jones recommended doing so among her other suggestions. Ms. Jones, who will be paid by the diocese for her work, said that it was too soon for a timeline for when the review would be completed.

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This is SHAMEFUL! Watch As Pope Francis Says Jesus Was A 'Failure On The Cross'

Pope Francis "preached" a message in NYC where he declared that Jesus Christ was a 'failure on the cross'. The reaction from his all-Catholic audience? They burst into excited applause, watch and see for yourself.

Hosted on Fotki

Wild Thing aka Chrissie comment..............

Are you serious!!! And the people clapped!! THE CROSS WAS NOT A FAILURE IT WAS A VICTORY FOR ALL HUMANITY! JESUS DIED SO WE COULD LIVE! Jesus fulfilled the plan of redeeming humanity perfectly how is that a failure! Jesus is Victorious!! The cross is a symbol of victory for what Jesus did for us!

The Scripture says in ( 1 Corinthians 15:57) But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! That man needs to get off the stage and read the Bible!!!! And he's suppose to be a Christian leader! I wouldn't let him lead me across the street!!! Totally Shameful!

The Pope is FALSE prophet the Jesus I know won the greatest VICTORY in history on the cross...Shame on you!!!

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October 22, 2018

Want to leave the Catholic Church? Officially, you can’t

Want to leave the Catholic Church? Officially, you can’t.

The Washington Post

By Dan Waidelich
October 22, 2018

Mary Combs remembers her last Mass. It was about 15 years ago, when sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in Boston, her hometown, was global news. She sat looking at the collection basket, imagining the money paying off victims. She never went back.

“Now there’s this Pennsylvania scandal,” Combs said. “Hundreds of priests abusing thousands of parishioners and a coverup that went all the way to the Vatican — again.”

Combs, a retired speech therapist in Winchester, Va., now attends Grace Lutheran Church. The Pennsylvania stories broke her heart, but she was comforted knowing she was done with Catholicism.

Then a friend brought up a startling possibility. Technically, she might still be counted by the Catholic Church as a member.

Combs researched her status, which led her to the office of the Rev. Thomas Ferguson, vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Va. After five weeks of trying to talk to the vicar general, she got a one-sentence response from Ferguson through a staffer, saying it was impossible to defect from the Catholic Church. (The Diocese of Arlington declined to discuss this subject with The Washington Post.)

Combs had struck on a frustrating piece of church bureaucracy: According to Catholic theology, there are no former Catholics.

That means I am technically Catholic, too, as I was baptized, per family tradition. But I am an atheist. I stopped considering myself affiliated with the Catholic Church long ago.

Recently, I too tried to formally split from the church. Between the Pennsylvania grand jury investigation and much of Catholic America’s apparent comfort with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, I wanted nothing to do with it.

I was as stunned as Combs when I found out there was no way to disaffiliate.

“The claim that underlies all of this, a claim most Christian denominations share, is that baptism, once given, can’t be taken back,” said Patrick Hornbeck, chair of theology at Fordham University, a Catholic school. “When a person is baptized, the person always remains, in some way, shape or form, related to the Catholic Church.”

Formal acts of defection were introduced in the 1983 Code of Canon Law to solve a regulatory issue in some Catholic marriages. Unintentionally, that allowed defection for any reason. Pope Benedict XVI closed the loophole in 2010.

In theory, the act appended one’s baptismal record to show that the person no longer recognized church authority. But diocesan responses were inconsistent. Some honored defections, while others considered requests case by case or not at all, Hornbeck said.

Other separations exist. The church can excommunicate a member, a remedial denial of sacraments or church participation to encourage repentance for some wrong. “Notorious acts of defection” are significant public renunciations of church authority, including openly switching faiths or denominations. But neither appends the all-important baptismal record.

When voluntary defection was an option, grass-roots movements sprang up to encourage it. One website, CountMeOut.ie, launched in 2009 in response to the government of Ireland’s Ryan Report on church abuse. Visitors could simply download a Declaration of Defection form, fill in their details and send it to the relevant bishop.

“The original goal was to use the church’s own mechanism as a means of protest against it,” said Cormac Flynn, who co-founded the site with friends Grainne O’Sullivan and Paul Dunbar.

More than 12,000 forms were downloaded before Benedict nullified defections a year later and the site shuttered. Nearly 10 years later, the founders remember it as important activism for an Ireland still reevaluating its relationship with the church, Flynn said.

“Our contribution was a small one, but I do look back on that time with some pride that we added something to the national debate,” he said.

CountMeOut did not track how many downloads actually became defections. In fact, there is no churchwide record of defections, according to Mark Gray, who tracks church statistics at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown.

When Hornbeck surveyed U.S. dioceses, he found that the numbers of defection requests varied, ranging from zero to 650. Dioceses averaged about 25 defection requests over the 27-year span that they were allowed.

Far more people consider themselves “former Catholics” without formally defecting. In 2008, the Pew Research Center found that about one-third of those raised Catholic were no longer practicing, meaning about 10 percent of Americans are former Catholics. Instead of defecting, the vast majority simply stop attending Mass.

That was good enough for Combs for years, but now that she knows she’s still considered Catholic, she’s angry. She wonders whether she can join some class-action defection lawsuit. Dismissing someone who is unhappy to be tied to your organization’s criminal history just seems stunningly arrogant, she said. “How many others are dealing with this?” she asked. “If people heard they were ‘still Catholic,’ how many of them would be outraged?”

Combs and I are two. The true number could potentially be in the millions.

But if church theology does not recognize them, the law might not help. In the United States, religious organizations have the right to define their membership. Individuals also have the right to exit a religion for any reason. And in between those principles is a huge gray area, said Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

So Catholics can pursue another faith or none, but the church can still consider them Catholic, provided it does not infringe on their rights.

“The courts won’t intervene when something has to do with the church rules,” Hill said. “They will avoid anything that requires them to make a judgment about an essentially religious issue.”

Avowed defectors of any faith might have legal standing if their former religious institution made damaging statements on their behalf, although courts might be wary of setting precedent, Hill said.

Still, Combs said formal defection would bring her peace of mind.

“It’s about my own integrity,” she said. “I truly believe they institutionalized child abuse. I just don’t want my name, my soul, my self to be in any way affiliated with them.”

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October 03, 2018

Fox News host urges Catholics to call for Pope’s resignation amid Viganò revelations

NEW YORK, August 27, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A leading conservative news host has called for Pope Francis to resign and expressed support for the Vatican whistleblower who says the pontiff knowingly made sexual predator and now ex-Cardinal McCarrick his trusted advisor.

Laura Ingraham, host of both “The Ingraham Angle” and “The Ingraham Show,” posted a message on Twitter yesterday saying that Pope Francis’s remarks in Ireland about clerical sexual abuse were insufficient.

“Too little, too late from Pope Francis in Ireland,” she tweeted “I stand with Archbishop Carlo Vigano. Time for the laity to demand a new Shepherd.”

Too little, too late from Pope Francis in Ireland—I stand with Archbishop Carlo Vigano. Time for the laity to demand a new Shepherd. https://t.co/1fyTI6mTix
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) August 26, 2018

Ingraham’s comment was superimposed over a BBC News report that Pope Francis had asked for “firm and decisive” action to “secure truth and justice” for clerical sex abuse victims during his visit to the shrine at Knock in Ireland.

Former Papal Nuncio to the United States Archbishop Carlo Viganò released a letter August 22 detailing how Pope Francis returned then-Cardinal McCarrick to a prominent role in the Church after Pope Benedict had him sidelined. The letter was published by LifeSiteNews on Saturday.

Ingraham also tweeted several passages from Viganò’s statement and concluded that he had done the Church a service.

“Archbishop Vigano has done right by the Catholic flock and the victims of this evil predation committed, tolerated and hidden by the Church hierarchy,” she wrote

According to Viganò, McCarrick was forbidden to exercise a public ministry after reports of his active homosexuality reached Pope Benedict. Soon after Francis was elected, however, McCarrick was promoted to a position of influence as Francis’ counsellor in American Church affairs. Viganò stated that Pope Francis asked him what he thought of Cardinal McCarrick, and the Nuncio had apprised him of McCarrick’s stained reputation.

The retired archbishop went onto say that Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington D.C. is lying when he says he didn’t know of McCarricks’ sexual predation.

“His recent statements that he knew nothing about it, even though at first he cunningly referred to compensation for the two victims, are absolutely laughable,” he wrote. “The Cardinal lies shamelessly and prevails upon his Chancellor, Monsignor Antonicelli, to lie as well.”

Cardinal Wuerl has denied Vigano’s allegation.

Viganò also alleges that McCarrick, with Cardinals Maradiaga and Wuerl, orchestrated the promotions of Blase Cupich, now Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, and Joseph Tobin, now Cardinal Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey. He stated also, however, that Pope Francis had told him at their first meeting that American bishops “must not be ideologized”, neither “right-wing like the Archbishop of Philadelphia [Charles J. Chaput]” nor “left-wing...and when I say left-wing”--the Pope apparently explained-- “I mean homosexual.”

Carol Maria Viganò was appointed the Vatican’s Secretary General by Pope Benedict in 2009 but demoted after letters he wrote to the pontiff describing Vatican corruption were published during the 2012 Vatileaks Scandal. He was banished to the USA to serve as Apostolic Nuncio. Viganò submitted his resignation on his 75th birthday, as is the custom for bishops, in 2016, and it was immediately accepted by Pope Francis.

Ingraham is herself a Roman Catholic laywoman and described her conversion to the faith in her book Power to the People. She has appeared as a frequent guest on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).

A former official in the Nunciate, Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, and Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas are among others who have expressed support for Archbishop Viganò.

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After recent revelations, U.S. Catholics give Francis low marks on handling of sex abuse scandal

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After recent revelations, U.S. Catholics give Francis low marks on handling of sex abuse scandal

The long-simmering Catholic Church sex abuse scandal has been back in the headlines in recent months, beginning with widespread allegations in June against Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., who resigned from the College of Cardinals. Soon after came revelations from a Pennsylvania grand jury report that more than 300 priests are accused of sexually abusing minors over the past 70 years. Most recently, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò stunned the world when he released a letter charging that Pope Francis and other senior church officials knew about at least some of the abuses and did nothing.

The accusations have coincided with a drop in the share of U.S. Catholics who approve of the way the pope is handling the abuse crisis. Just three-in-ten American Catholics (31%) now say the pontiff is doing a “good” (18%) or “excellent” (13%) job of addressing the sex abuse scandal, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center. This is much lower than the 54% who gave Francis good or excellent marks in February 2014 (almost a year after he became pope), and the 45% who did so at the beginning of 2018. Meanwhile, 62% of American Catholics now say the pontiff is doing only a “fair” or “poor” job of handling the scandal.

The decline in the pope’s standing on the sex abuse issue cuts across age and gender lines. In addition, Catholics who attend Mass regularly are not significantly more likely to rate the pope positively on this issue (34%) than those who do not (30%).

The new survey also found a decline in American Catholics’ overall approval of Pope Francis. Between January and September of this year, the share of Catholics who express a favorable view of the Pope has dropped from 84% to 72%.

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October 01, 2018

Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says

Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says

The New York Times

Bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania covered up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years, persuading victims not to report the abuse and law enforcement not to investigate it, according to a searing report issued by a grand jury on Tuesday.

The report, which covered six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses and found more than 1,000 identifiable victims, is the broadest examination yet by a government agency in the United States of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The report said there are likely thousands more victims whose records were lost or who were too afraid to come forward.

It catalogs horrific instances of abuse: a priest who raped a young girl in the hospital after she had her tonsils out; a victim tied up and whipped with leather straps by a priest; and another priest who was allowed to stay in ministry after impregnating a young girl and arranging for her to have an abortion.

The sexual abuse scandal has shaken the Catholic Church for more than 15 years, ever since explosive allegations emerged out of Boston in 2002. But even after paying billions of dollars in settlements and adding new prevention programs, the church has been dogged by a scandal that is now reaching its highest ranks. The Pennsylvania report comes soon after the resignation of Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, who is accused of sexually abusing young priests and seminarians, as well as minors.

“Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability,” the grand jury wrote. “Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades.”

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Abuse allegations have been leveled at the Catholic Church for decades

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Abuse allegations have been leveled at the Catholic Church for decades

CNN

A Pennsylvania grand jury released a report in August 2018 detailing decades of alleged sexual abuses by priests and cover-ups by bishops.

The report said internal documents from six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania -- some held in a secret archive to which only the bishop had a key -- showed that more than 300 "predator priests" have been credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 child victims.

Pope Francis issued an unusually blunt letter six days after the report's release, acknowledging "with shame and repentance" the Catholic Church's failure to act, writing "we showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them."
The letter directly referred to the Pennsylvania report, which "detailed the experiences of at least 1,000 survivors, victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests over a period of approximately 70 years."

Looking ahead, the pontiff said the church was working on a "zero tolerance" policy on abuse and coverups. He added, "If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history."

USA, 2018

In July 2018, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 88, who once led the Archdiocese of Washington and was a force in American politics, after a decades-old allegation of sexual abuse of a teenage altar boy forced the Vatican to remove him from public ministry.

A month earlier, McCarrick issued a statement saying he was shocked by the allegations: "While I have absolutely no recollection of this reported abuse, and believe in my innocence, I am sorry for the pain the person who brought the charges has gone through, as well as for the scandal such charges cause our people."

McCarrick was also accused three times of sexual misconduct with adults "decades ago" while he served as a bishop in Metuchen and Newark, New Jersey, the current bishops of those cities said in June. Two of those allegations resulted in settlements, the bishops said.

The Vatican said Pope Francis had ordered McCarrick to "a life of prayer and penance until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial."

Chile, 2018

Pope Francis called the country's bishops to Rome in May after he received a 2,300-page report detailing sexual abuses by priests in Chile.

The report alleged that for decades, church officials in Chile had known about cases of sexual abuse and led a massive cover up, even destroying records.

Seven years earlier, the Vatican had found Chilean priest Father Fernando Karadima guilty of child sex abuse.
In January, while visiting Chile, Francis defended a Chilean bishop accused of concealing the abuse, saying he had been "slandered."

But after Vatican investigators said church officials in Chile had helped cover up multiple cases of sexual abuse by the clergy, the Pope apologized.

After the 3-day emergency summit at the Vatican in May to discuss the sex abuse scandal, all 34 of Chile's active and retired bishops offered the Pope their resignations.

In June, the Vatican said Pope Francis was sending investigators back to Chile.

In August, police arrested one former priest over the alleged abuse of seven minors. Prosecutors say there are 158 people including bishops, priests and lay people under investigation.

Australia, 2018

Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide was found guilty in May of concealing the abuse of altar boys in the 1970s by pedophile priest James Fletcher.

Wilson was the highest-ranking Catholic official ever to be convicted of covering up sex abuse.

In July he said that he intended to appeal the ruling under the "due process of law" and would resign if his appeal was unsuccessful.

The next week the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had accepted Wilson's resignation.

Australia, 2017

Cardinal George Pell, one of the most senior members of the Catholic Church, was charged with multiple historical sexual assault offenses in his home country of Australia, police said in June.

Pell serves as a top adviser to Pope Francis and heads the Vatican's secretariat for the economy. In 2013, he was named one of eight cardinals tasked with investigating ways to reform the church. He is the most senior member of the Catholic Church in Australia but has been placed on leave from the Vatican while the allegations are investigated.

Pell said he's innocent and maintains that the charges -- relating to claims of sexual abuse spanning three decades -- are false.

In May 2018, a magistrate ordered him to stand trial and he entered a formal plea of not guilty.

In a statement, the Vatican said: "The Holy See has taken note of the decision issued by judicial authorities in Australia regarding His Eminence Cardinal George Pell. Last year, the Holy Father granted Cardinal Pell a leave of absence so he could defend himself from the accusations. The leave of absence is still in place."

A 2017 commission found that 7% of Australian priests were accused of abusing children between 1950 and 2015.
Dominican Republic, 2014

Jozef Wesolowski died in 2015 before he went to trial.

Jozef Wesolowski, a former Vatican ambassador to the Dominican Republic was found guilty of sexual abuse of minors by a Vatican tribunal and defrocked in 2014. He was accused of sexual abuse of minors and possession of child pornography during his time as papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic. Italy's Corriere della Sera reported that Wesolowski's laptop contained more than 100,000 files with pornographic images and videos.

Wesolowski was the highest-ranking Catholic official arrested for alleged sexual abuse of minors. He died in 2015, before he could be put on trial.

The Netherlands, 2011

Thousands of children suffered from sexual abuse in the Dutch Roman Catholic Church over more than six decades, and about 800 "possible perpetrators" have been identified, according to an independent Commission of Inquiry, issued in 2011.

The commission said it received 1,795 reports of church-related sex abuse of minors and the "reports contained information about possible perpetrators."

Multiple countries, 2010

Pope Benedict and the sex abuse scandal

Pope Benedict and the sex abuse scandal 02:30

Allegations of sexual abuse spread across a half dozen countries -- including Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Brazil, home of the world's largest Catholic population.

Revelations about church abuse included the Munich, Germany, archdiocese where Pope Benedict XVI once served as archbishop.

Under the Pope's tenure as archbishop in the early 1980s, the Munich archdiocese ignored warnings to keep a molesting priest away from children, said the doctor, Werner Huth, who issued those warnings.

Huth demanded the priest, Rev. Peter Hullermann, never be allowed to interact with children again. Instead, the church allowed the priest to return to work and to deal with children. Hullermann was convicted of abusing minors in 1986. Pope Benedict had left the Munich archdiocese for a new post in 1982.

Ireland, 2009

A bombshell report commissioned by the Irish government concluded that the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up clerical child abuse.

The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation's 720-page report said that it has "no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up" from January 1975 to May 2004, the time covered by the report. The commission had been set up in 2006 to look into allegations of child sexual abuse made against clergy in the Irish capital.

The report named 11 priests who had pleaded guilty to or were convicted of sexual assaults on children. Of the other 35, it gave pseudonyms to 33 of them and redacted the names of two.

USA, 2004

Children accused more than 4,000 priests of sexual abuse between 1950 and 2002, according to a report compiled by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The report, based on church records, found that 6,700 of the 11,000 allegations were investigated and substantiated, and another 1,000 were unsubstantiated. The remaining 3,300 were not investigated because the priests involved had died by the time the allegation was made.

USA, 2002

Former priest John Geoghan became a central figure in the clergy sexual abuse crisis in Boston, along with Cardinal Bernard Law, who admitted receiving a letter in 1984 outlining allegations of child molestation against Geoghan. Law assigned Geoghan to another parish despite the allegations.

From 1962 to 1995, Geoghan sexually abused approximately 130 people, mostly grammar school boys, according to victims. Over the years, church officials ordered him to get treatment or transferred him to other parishes, but kept him on as a priest. The Boston Globe coverage on sexual abuse by clergy brought the issue to the forefront. The story was later adapted into the award-winning movie "Spotlight."

Geoghan was found guilty of molesting a boy in a swimming pool and sentenced to prison in 2002. A year later, he died after an attack by another inmate at the state prison.

Law resigned as archbishop of Boston in 2002.

In 2004, Archbishop Sean O'Malley issued a statement saying that 815 people had made claims of sex abuse of a minor by a priest and 150 people had made claims against a deacon, non-incardinated, or religious order priest between 1950 and 2003.

In 2011, O'Malley published the names of 159 clerics accused of sexual assault over that time period. The names of an additional 91 clerics who had been accused were not included for reasons including their deaths before the completion of inquiries when they had not been publicly accused.

Austria, 1998

Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër of Vienna was forced to give up all his duties amid allegations he molested young boys. A statement by Groer asked for forgiveness but made no admission of guilt, reported the BBC.

USA, 1985

Father Thomas Doyle warned of sexual abuse by clergy in a report given at the US conference of bishops. It was ignored.

Gilbert Gauthe in Louisiana became the first to gain national attention in a case of a priest accused of sexual abuse. In 1985, he admitted to abusing 37 boys and pleaded guilty to 34 criminal counts, reported the New York Times. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but released after 10 years.

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Theodore's World

The PC Free Zone Gazette is American first and Conservative second. It is never anti-American!

December 30, 2019

Vatican tribunal overwhelmed by clergy sex abuse abuse cases

November 10, 2019

Scalfari: Pope Francis Denies Bodily Resurrection of Jesus

October 25, 2019

Disgust, validation, hope: Survivors, Catholics react to report detailing 70 years of Colorado clergy sex abuse

October 24, 2019

Catholic priests in Colorado sexually abused at least 166 children in the past 70 years

October 23, 2019

Report: 166 children abused by 43 Catholic priests in Colorado over past 70 years

October 07, 2019

Catholic Church Continues to protect their Pedophile Priests

June 19, 2019

Abp. Viganò names DC National Shrine rector Msgr. Rossi as homosexual predator

June 11, 2019

Argentina Criminally Charges Homosexual Bishop Close to Pope Francis

June 07, 2019

George Soros Praises Pope Francis

June 06, 2019

Heretic Pope Francis changes Lord's Prayer: ... changes 'lead us not into temptation' ...

May 24, 2019

Are Catholic beliefs and practices biblical?

May 23, 2019

Detective Fired After Catching Predator....Blowback for exposing a popular priest

Homosexual Predator Catholic Priest in Action

Phony Christian and Nutcase Pope Francis: Church Must Learn to Abandon Old ‘Traditions’

May 11, 2019

The Socialist Pope Francis Urges Youth to Hear the ‘Anguished Plea of the Earth’

Two steps forward and one step back won’t cleanse the Catholic Church

Pope Francis Signs Document Protecting “Consensual” Clerical Sodomy

May 10, 2019

Abp. Wilton Gregory has track record of trying to evade justice

More BS from the POPE....Pope Francis issues law requiring clergy, religious to report sex abuse

April 23, 2019

Pope Francis’ record on Communism is dangerously ambiguous

April 05, 2019

Pope appoints pro-LGBT Wilton Gregory to Archdiocese of Washington

April 03, 2019

US bishops’ anti-poverty charity gave $60,000 to pro-gay Marxist group last year

April 01, 2019

Pope Francis refuses to meet Italian minister because of tough stand on immigration

Pope Francis schmoozing with the muzzies Again and Bashing Christians with lies

Chicago Archdiocese using Catholic cemetery funds to cover sex abuse costs

March 31, 2019

Pope in Morocco Contradict Jesus as He warns Catholics off converting others

Pope Francis says homosexual tendencies are ‘not a sin’

March 30, 2019

Pro-LGBT Abp. Wilton Gregory may be new archbishop of Washington, Vatican hints

March 29, 2019

Pope Francis set to give ‘historic speech’ involving ‘persons of same sex’, leaked letter claims

December 11, 2018

Nut Case Socialist Pope Francis considering change to the Lord's Prayer

November 23, 2018

O’Malley left off Pope’s organizing committee for abuse prevention summit

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November 22, 2018

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November 04, 2018

Is God Your Father Or Is It the Roman Catholic Pope?

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October 30, 2018

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October 28, 2018

BLASPHEMY!!!....Vatican News Styles Pope as “Successor of Christ”

Federal Government Tells Catholic Bishops Not to Destroy Sex Abuse Documents

Pope Decries ‘Persecution’ of Catholic Church Through Accusations

October 23, 2018

Catholic Church Sex Abuse Review Is Ordered by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan

This is SHAMEFUL! Watch As Pope Francis Says Jesus Was A 'Failure On The Cross'

October 22, 2018

Want to leave the Catholic Church? Officially, you can’t

October 03, 2018

Fox News host urges Catholics to call for Pope’s resignation amid Viganò revelations

After recent revelations, U.S. Catholics give Francis low marks on handling of sex abuse scandal

October 01, 2018

Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says

Abuse allegations have been leveled at the Catholic Church for decades

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