John Paul II Millstone

John Paul II Millstone

John Paul II Catholic Traditions

This email was originally sent to a priest for a dialogue. Written by a former seminarian who is now a lawyer, it was sent to me for posting in my blog. Every point he raises on these many Catholic traditions which John Paul II propagated is worth every Catholic's consideration and reflection. Unless we ask the right questions, we will never get the right answers.

Dear Father,

I am for the most part an inactive Catholic….altar boy…former seminarian…..educated professional…J.D. In another since, I am active…just not in the traditional non-thinking…mindless mind numbing way that the Church offers through its rigid theological practices manifested by ceremonial rites, like the Mass, H Eucharist, Benediction, Stations of the Cross, Baptism, Confirmation, and Conversion some of which are accompanied by Chrism all of which are peppered with invocations involving religious references incorporating adjectives like blessed, holy or sacred.

I thought perhaps I could dialogue with you to experience some measure of understanding to another point of view that is not premised upon…well….the scriptures…as if there is any literal validity to them anyway…given the times in which scripture was supposedly recorded, fact checked, preserved through the ages and the disparity existing in many of the accounts referring to the same subject matter…..the acknowledgement by scriptural historians of the real date of the actual compilation of many of the supposed gospels and the conceded revisions thereto by Church prelates over the centuries.

I would begin by asking, what of the poor souls who preceded the coming of Christ, who were without prophets, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, Eli, or Moses, tablets, an Ark of the Covenant, Christ and his disciples and uh, ….well, you know the rest…. Saved? Doomed? Forgiven? Redeemed? Or, are they getting there on frequent walker miles… earned troding lifetime through their individual vale of tears?

What are these BC souls stained with ‘original sin’ going to plead? “Honest Lord, I was not aware of you or that you were coming. I did not have Judaeo-Christian law. Besides, if I had been born a Jew and had access to prophets and your Church too, I might have had a chance; but as an Eurasian, well, er, uh, I never heard of these theological concepts which when followed ensure salvation”.

Don’t you just love the Catholic Church…..you do not just have original sin, you’re stained with it no matter when you entered the time line of humanity !

Recently Cardinal Francis George tapped the Rev. Bob Barron of St. Mary’s of the Lake to conduct “Mission Chicago 2006” to host a six part series of talks at various locations to revitalize the nation’s third largest Roman Catholic archdiocese which currently struggles with low Sunday mass attendance, continuing allegations of sexual abuse by priests and piercing questions about faith.

A religion staff reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Margaret Ramirez, reported that the assignment offered as an aid ( and I quote her here ) from the “straight-talking boss in the red skullcap, just one weapon: the power of the Gospels”.

To which I would reply rhetorically…the Gospels?.....indeed!

Ever wonder why the church is where it is today, both here and abroad, at the crossroads of insignificance and lost identity, struggling for relevance in a culture it once defined with its churches, excluding those not sold to pay for sex abuse settlements and judgments, in danger if not destined to become museums of Christianity, more likely to be visited by tourists with guidebooks than parishioners with prayer books?

The answer is because the church is run by conservative ignorant men whose intellectual thought processes gravitate to preserving the status quo of values which are more concerned with form than substance and which are deeply rooted in tradition, and whose leaders are motivated by an unwillingness to question past practices to determine if they comport with Christian concepts on the one hand or represent comfortable familiarity with the ignorance they represent and innate human reluctance to change on the other.

Ever question the practice of Cardinals, Bishops, kneeling before the Pope “kissing his ring”?

This is a church that hangs on to “trappings” of monarchy as Cardinals and Bishops genuflect before the Pope kneeling to kiss his ring like medieval Earls, Barons, Knights paying homage to their king, where the emphasis is more on form and appearance than on substance and where symbolism and religious pageantry pay lip service to religious sophistry.

If I see one more Cardinal, Bishop or priest genuflect and kneel before the Pope and “kiss the ring of the outstretched hand” of the Pontiff like some “courtier” paying homage to his king......I think I will throw up.

Ever wonder how church vestments and symbols of church power and leadership came into existence?….they certainly were not the product of Christ’s direction. Witness:

· The Humeral veil used in benediction, a cloth of rectangular shape 8 ft. long by 1½ ft. wide, edges of which are usually fringed, adorned with the name “Jesus” or a cross in the center, worn so to cover the back, shoulders and humerus bone of the arm—hence its name, with its two ends hanging down in front fastened across the breast with clasps or ribbons to prevent its falling from the shoulders as the celebrant raises the Monstrance containing the enlarged host representing the body of Christ held by hands beneath the humeral veil as if it were disrespectful to hold the Monstrance with “bare hands”…..and Muslims climb Mt. Arafat and throw stones at pillars symbolizing the devil celebrating the feast of Eid al-Adha commemorating Abraham’s supposed? willingness to sacrifice his son…and we are to bow our heads upon hearing the name Jesus and they recite, “peace be unto him” upon hearing the name of the world’s last self-proclaimed prophet from this ‘revelation rife’ area, longitude 31.71 N, latitude 35.10 W, the middle East.

· Bishop’s Crosier or shepherd staff some of which have been made or adorned with gold, silver or ivory, Pope’s ring, he bright colored liturgical garments of various shapes and sizes.

· Bishops Mitre hat

All of which neither Jesus or Christ ordained but which are entirely contrived by man, not unlike “neon signs” which all serve to adorn the “peacock” prelate. Necessary? A little bit of majesty maybe?...elevating a shepherd of sheep to....well a shepherd of a different flock? A Shepherd that wears a Mitre hat, an episcopal ornament for the head whose origin lies in Greek symbolism, that a high pontifical hat that swells outward but rising to a “peak” conveys importance...but is “dutifully removed while praying”...well, because when a man prays, he shall pray with “uncovered head” Corinthians, xi 4.

These accouterments adorn the peacock prelate who by the way who does not struggle like his flock on the journey traversing life’s path, navigating secular, moral and ethical dilemmas among which include birth control, education, employment and layoff, spousal relationship or abuse, commitment, finances, with income always being chased by never ending debt, and child rearing hardships to name but a few.

No, the Church has become and is centered more on tradition and ceremony, indeed more on pomp and circumstance than upon intrinsic values celebrating a divine belief. Did Peter or Christ need or use a mitre hat, a crosier staff, and colorful vestments? Did Peter kneel before Christ to kiss his hand? Indeed, just the opposite, with Christ supposedly washing the feet of his apostles.

Can you imagine a Bishop showing up without these accouterments and for once, being like just one of us, instead of “one of them” moving down life’s path in the long line of succession to St. Peter” hoping to receive his hundred fold as reward for a lifetime of service to the Lord? I suspect though He, already, surveying the pathetic landscape of Cardinals, Bishops and priests changed His mind and gave it all, the ‘hundred fold’ for every roman catholic cleric, to some obscure woman by the name of....uh...uh....oh yah, Mother Teresa!

Ever question the church’s stance on birth control?

Can you imagine the ignorance of a Church which maintains that artificial birth control, ie: some alternative form of contraception be it the pill, condom, IUD, spermicidal, or diaphragm is sinful while at the same time advocating birth control by a practice formerly known as “rhythm”, or the timing of the female fertility cycle, maintaining the latter is not.....when BOTH methods, “artificial vs. rhythm” depend upon intent not to conceive.

It is absolute sophistry to maintain that employing the practice of “rhythm” or abstinence, Natural Family Planning as it is known today, is or could in intellectual honesty, be considered “open to life” if the intent of employing either is to avoid conception....which it is.

How can anyone employing any method, including abstinence, hoping to avoid conception, be considered as being “open to life”.....except only by mistake or error in timing is conception possible...and this is being “open to life”?

I guess intellectual honesty comes in all forms....I once believed that there was a universal quality to it....as in one truth.......the church’s view has demonstrated that indeed for some, intellectual honesty is in the eye of the beholder.

Just for the science, in recognition of the concept of “free will”, can we agree that the initiation of conception is not in God’s hands....he is the facilitator....allowing humans “free will” in opting for artificial means or natural family planning methods, and upon the failure of the latter, he is there to “grant life” in response to “being open to life”, even if being “open to life” was a mistake by the participants…as in abstaining one day too early or one day too late… and that’s “open too life”….what sophistry!

You gotta love these Catholic theologians who “dream this stuff up” so some Pontiff can re-package it in two Latin words, like “Humanae Vitae” with the force of “infallibility”, whoa in an Encyclical no less.

Close your eyes for a moment and reflect...yep!, that’s Him ( the guy upstairs ) you see smiling in your mind’s eye amused at the circuitous route taken by the “faithful” to arrive at some measure of peace in following the “church’s teachings”, however misguided.

Ever wonder how is it that 3 times in 1500 years “the word of God” was revealed to men and ONLY men calling themselves either prophets or disciples and ONLY in this part of the world…the Middle East…hotbed of revelation! Couldn’t have had female prophets back then…they were either “pushing and bearing down” or when not in labor, busy carrying water in amphoras from the village well, preparing meals or ‘dancing with seven veils’ before some king.
The prophets: Abraham Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Samuel or Eli all men of Semitic ethnicity who received revelations compiled in the Jewish Torah...the word of God

Of course this was followed 2000 years ago by the appearance of Christ whom Muslims believe to be a prophet [ from an area since the earliest of recorded times, prophets abound ] whose life was memorialized biographically and whose words were supposedly written down for posterity by disciples ( all men ) and Gospel writers all of whom were men like Paul but also ethnic Semites resulting in the Christian Bible…again by men of antiquity….well after the fact, no doubt from their memory and from the memories of others interviewed for their recollections of Him, again without benefit of copier, laptop, fax, scanner, ‘live feed’ or after checking with ‘two fact sources’ to determine accuracy!

Lastly, this was followed by yet a third revelation to yet a 3rd male of Semitic lineage, Muhammad, again who came from the same vicinity, the Middle East…that ‘hotbed’ of divine revelations, only this time over a period of 22 years from 600 to 622 A.D resulting in…..da da the Koran, the Islamic Bible of sorts for Muslims, complete with references to the same Jewish personages of the Torah, Isaac and Abraham, the angel Gabriel and an account of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt and of course Jesus, another prophet according to Muslims.

Why the emphasis on male and Semitic? It should be obvious that in the male controlled environment, ONLY males claimed to have received revelation, the word of the Lord, but were more likely sharing the same story like “neighbors over the fence” prompting an astute observer to ask...was it revelation or repetition of similar events and stories circulating for centuries in the same locale, separated by just enough generations without a recorded history, that in each reappearance thereof......well, it is a new revelation...but in reality looking at the three....more like a sharing of the similar story among people of the same locale...controlled by the same ethnicity and gender….all Semitic and all male!

How could any revelation or gospel be even close to being accurate when only males received or wrote them from their perspective without benefit of phone, fax, copier, Fed Ex or crystal ball….only tablets handed out on a mountain top? If we are to believe otherwise, I guess women ought to begin tracing their lineage to determine from which rib of Adam they owe their existence.

Ever wonder why we Catholics celebrate the Assumption, the first of two in “recorded belief ”. The second? Muslims believe Muhammad was assumed at the Dome of the Rock. Wonder where they got that one?

As Catholics, we were infallibly instructed by Pius XII in 1949, only 4 short years after the ending of the greatest conflagration to beset modern man, WWII, that the Virgin Mary was Assumed into Heaven. An infallible belief if you will, not a fact…but who cares or should care?

Don’t you love Papal infallibility. Prior to election he is a mere mortal, and a conniving political one at that, “jockeying” for position in the College of Cardinals angling for that all important vote….then in the instant of political election, “presto” is invested with infallibility…rivaling Johnny Carson as Karnack the Magnificent, prompting astute observers to question whether Carson and some Popes share the same ancestral lineage.…love to have the Pope pick my lottery numbers though.

I know, infallibility comes with the office not with the man…yah sure, but which also leaves unexplained many of the Church’s infallible missteps along the way over the years.

Mary was and is referred to as Virgin because of the Church’s preoccupation with sex “as sinful”, not being able to tolerate that the mother of God could have been impregnated by Joseph at the behest of the “Holy(?) Spirit” where both Joseph and Mary would be the Blessed “Mother and Blessed Father”. Why does the Spirit have to be Holy? How about just the Divine Genie.

I mention that the Assumption was proclaimed by Pius XII in 1949, because the world endured a economic depression from 1929 to 1938 followed by a six year war ending in 1945…prompting one to ask, how the hell could the Church devote such resources, have supported the men, education, and research for that many years, to the esoteric topic of Assumption, when so much privation and genocide was in its midst?

If you are at all introspective, you have to ask yourself, is it really important to your salvation that the Blessed Mother was assumed? If she was the mother of the son of God, we would expect that she was ‘cut a break’, that she is no longer in the ground in either Jerusalem or Ephesus, depending upon what you believe, or never was in the ground ie: assumed into heaven upon the moment of death.

But….whether she got there ( heaven ) in a Lexus, a Mercedes, a Cadillac or by Assumption does not and will not mean a rat’s ass in terms of OUR salvation if we do not recognize the larger picture of the poor, the homeless, universal healthcare, and equitable distribution of resources, etc.

That is what salvation is about…not how the Blessed Mother got to Heaven…BUT for the Church to have spent the resources $$ for numerous educated priests for 20 plus years, to arrive at the conclusion of the Assumption which is only but an educated guess at best is a travesty in the prudent allocation of resources…when the $$ and human energy allocated to this inquiry could have been better spent on the poor.

Ever wonder why we observe the feast of the Circumcision, as it was formerly known, now Solemnity of Mary, as a holy day of obligation…..a rite of Jewish passage in removing the foreskin of the male which is now considered a “best medical practice”? How the hell is observance of this event going to bring anyone closer to salvation?

Do you think Christ would care if some little girl, seeking to make her first communion with her class, requested a host made of rice in lieu of a one made of wheat because she had celiac sprue disorder with its serious adverse health consequences involving an allergy to wheat with the inability to digest gluten contained in wheat?... problems which can include osteoporosis, tooth-enamel defects, nerve damage, internal hemorrhaging, organ disorders, and a greater likelihood of gastrointestinal cancer.

The request by Haley Waldman’s mother to the ignorant archbishop John Smith of Trenton New Jersey was denied in 2004 because rice is not wheat and only wheat could serve as the appropriate intermediary, the Bishop maintaining only unleavened wheat was use at the ‘last supper’. Can you believe it? What a jerk!

Maybe the bread was rye, barley, or some other ancient ‘pulse’ like spelt that He used, who knows? It wouldn’t be the first time Scripture says that He used barley loaves....“There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves , and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” (John 6:9)...”Therefore they gathered together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.” (John 6:13)

Were any of the Church’s current eminent thinkers and scholars there....the “all important last supper”? More importantly, who cares what He used? Christ wouldn’t! Only a male idiot like archbishop John Smith of Trenton New Jersey would!

As I pointed out earlier, the doctrine of “transubstantiation” ie: consecrated bread becoming the body of Christ, was not declared until the year 1215 by Pope Innocent III after the Fourth Lateran Council and until then the bread and the words were considered only to be symbolic of the request of Christ to do this in his memory. So much for the importance of what type of bread is the intermediary.

Ever wonder how the church can and does spend it resources without input from its stockholders? Cardinal Roger ‘the dodger’ Mahony just spent $200 Million in 2004 building the Cathedral of…you guessed it…“Our Lady” in Los Angeles , when a $5 million cathedral would have done just fine. Do you think Mahony accounts to Rome on finances?.....I doubt it! Don’t you think we ought to know as a Sunday contributors?......Where is it invested?…….Spent?....Are we to be dopes all our lives? Think Christ would have approved this expenditure?

Ever wonder why the priesthood attracts so many gays, weirdoes, pedophiles and psychological misfits instead of the best and the brightest?

The answer is: because of the very construct of the priesthood - being open to men and only men, it does not seek the best and the brightest but rather appeals to a sizeable segment of misfits among the male population who see in it an opportunity only too good to be true…like putting the fox in charge to guard the hen house…a ready made stable of ‘boys’ to prey upon.

Ever wonder how it is that the church could have known of the sex abuse scandal for so many years (15 yrs at least) and did nothing to stop it, allowing the abuse to continue with the result that there were thousands of more victims from abusing priests whose abuses were “covered up” by silence, hush transfers and the like?

James Bond, Thanks for sending this to me. Paris

John Paul II and Pius XII: Scandal versus growth

This article was written shortly after the death of John Paul II and it illustrates the state of the Catholic Church which he left behind especially marked by scandal and decline versus that which Pius XII left behind.

Pius XII and John Paul II

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43733
By Pat Buchanan
April 11, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Now that the mourning for John Paul II has ended and he has been laid to rest in St. Peter's, it is time to consider the state of the church he led for 27 years. For, despite his extraordinary life, his holiness and his critical role in bringing an end to communist rule in Eastern Europe, the condition of the church is grave.

Two years ago, Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis pulled together a slim book he titled "Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II." As that church council ended 40 years ago this year, what good fruit did it bear? Since 1965:

The number of Catholic priests has fallen from 58,000 to 45,000. By 2020, there will be 31,000 and half will be over 70.

In 1965, 1,575 new priests were ordained. In 2002, the number was 450. Some 3,000 parishes are today without priests.

Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians fell from 49,999 to 4,700, a decline of over 90 percent. Two-thirds of the seminaries open in 1965 have since closed their doors.

The number of Catholic nuns, 180,000 in 1965, has fallen by 60 percent. Their average age is now 68. The number of teaching nuns has fallen 94 percent since the close of Vatican II.

The number of young men studying to be Jesuits has fallen by 90 percent and of those studying to be Christian Brothers by 99 percent. The religious orders seem to be dying out in America.
Almost half the Catholic high schools open in 1965 have closed. There were 4.5 million students in Catholic schools in the mid-1960s. Today, there is about half that number.

Only 10 percent of lay religious teachers in 2002 accepted church teaching on contraception, 53 percent believed a Catholic woman could get an abortion and remain a good Catholic, 65 percent said Catholics have a right to divorce and remarry, and in a New York Times poll, 70 percent of Catholics ages 18 to 54 said they believed the Holy Eucharist was but a "symbolic reminder" of Jesus.

Where three in four Catholics attended mass on Sunday in 1958, today one in four do.

All this happened during the papacies of Paul VI and John Paul II. Now let us look back to the 35 years previous to the end of Vatican II, from 1930-1965, where the dominant pope was Pius XII, the "Catholic Moment" in America.

In that period, the number of Catholics and priests in America doubled. The most visible prelate was not Cardinal Law, but Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, whose TV ratings bested those of Milton Berle, who cracked, "He has better writers than I do." Parochial schools and Catholic high schools could not be built fast enough to accommodate the baby boomers of Catholic parents.
Masses were full on Sundays, and there were long lines outside the confessionals on Saturday.

The papacy of Pius XII was a time of explosive growth in the church, while that of John Paul II coincided with Catholic scandal and decline. Was the Holy Father responsible for the latter? No, but it is regrettably true that the decline that began at the close of Vatican II continued unabated through the papacy of John Paul II. Conceding his sanctity and charisma, he was unable to stop it.

But what was the cause of it? Defenders of Vatican II say that blaming the council "reforms" they cherish for the decline in vocations and devotion is a classic case of the logical fallacy, "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc." After this, therefore, because of this.

Simply because a precipitous Catholic decline began with Vatican II does not mean Vatican II was the cause, they contend. Perhaps not. But there is no question but that – measuring what the council produced against what Catholics were promised – it was, in Jimmy Carter's phrase, "a limited success." Neither Paul VI nor John Paul II was able to arrest the spread of heresy, defections and disbelief that followed the Second Vatican Council.

While the church has maintained her numerical strength in America, this is due only to immigration. As one Chicago priest said, each week he buries a Lithuanian or Polish Catholic – and baptizes two Hispanic babies.

What happened to Catholicism is what happened to America. Both passed through a moral, social and cultural revolution that has altered the most basic beliefs of men and women. There has been a "transvaluation of all values." What was considered scandalous or immoral not long ago – promiscuity, abortion, homosexuality – is now considered progressive. It says everything about our age that, were a judicial nominee in America to echo the views of John Paul II on human life, the Democratic Senate would unanimously filibuster his nomination to death and denounce him as an extremist.

With much of the church having succumbed to the heresy of modernism, it needs an Athanasius. As good a man as the pope was, as great as were his achievements, as noble as was his witness for life, the Catholic Church still awaits that bishop.
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Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Now a political analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of seven books.

John Paul II & Cardinal Bernard Law: Cohorts in Crime

Cardinal Bernard Law is the first Cardinal to resign within the Catholic Church after being forced by the laity of Boston.

(Click on image to enlarge
...scroll down slowly to see next cartoon)
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/12/13/law.resigns/index.html

He acknowledged he knew full well one of the worst serial priest pedophile, John Geoghan, in history. http://www.boston.com/news/specials/geoghan/.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0416-25.htm

Boston Globe Launches a Rocket!"Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years"
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news/2002_01_06_Rezendes_ChurchAllowed.htm


http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/geoghan/
John Geoghan stands out as one of the worst serial molesters in the recent history of the Catholic Church in America. For three decades, Geoghan preyed on young boys in a half-dozen parishes in the Boston area while church leaders looked the other way. Despite his disturbing pattern of abusive behavior, Geoghan was transferred from parish to parish for years before the church finally defrocked him in 1998.

After a January 2002 report on Geoghan by the Globe Spotlight Team, the case became a catalyst for revelations of other clergy abuse and church coverups. Dozens of priests were accused of abuse by hundreds of alleged victims who filed lawsuits, forcing the archdiocese to release damaging documents that showed the church’s obsession with avoiding scandal and protecting its reputation.

In the Geoghan case alone, some 150 people eventually came forward, claiming they were fondled or raped by the priest. In February 2002, Geoghan was sentenced to nine to 10 years in state prison for molesting a 10-year-old boy at a pool in Waltham. Later, the Boston Archdiocese reached a $10 million settlement with 86 other alleged victims. More than a dozen civil suits are still pending.
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Why isn't Cardinal Law in jail as an accomplice of John Geoghan, one of the worst priest pedophilia? http://www.slate.com/?id=2075831 and http://www.vachss.com/help_text/reports/geoghan_law.html

After Law's resignation, rumors abound that he would quietly retire in a monastery. An officer of John Paul II Third Reich, not a chance would he keep his mouth shut. So John Paul II, eating of the fruit of the apple of the Garden of Eden, wanted to "become like God" together with Cardinal Law his cohort in the crime of cover-up of clergy abuse with him. http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2006/10/john-paul-ii-money-50-zloty-banknoteet.html So what did he do? He made Cardinal Law the Archpriest of the St. Mary Magiorre in Rome.

A picture speaks a thousand words.






Cardinal Bernard Law protects molesters rather than their victims













Cardinal Bernard Law endless denials before secular law










Cardinal Bernard Law cover-up of pedophile priests













Cardinal Bernard Law knew his pedophile priests within the Sacrament of Confession












Cardinal Bernard Law blames the victims of clergy abuse









See lawsuits against USA Bishop's Conference: http://www.andersonadvocates.com/

The John Paul II Mortal Sin: Clergy Abuse

The Sacrament and Seal of Confession cannot hide, erase or delete the 26 years pedophiliac papacy of John Paul II. As Pope or Head of the Mystical Body of Christ, he infested that body with the AIDS of his JPIIPP - John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army. While sitting on the powerful Chair of Peter, he used his "infallible" power to let his AIDS thrive - in secrecy - under his full knowledge and watch. John Paul II had his "open eyes wide shut". The lust of his clergy cohorts cannot compare to the lust of XXX adults in the pornography business.

A new webiste "Crusade against Clergy Abuse" reports John Paul II's pedophiliac papacy. It is dedicated to the memory of Dan andJames as well as the countless victims of clergy abuse....just like this weblog is dedicated to the 12,000 American victims of John Paul II's mortal sin - the Papal Sin that merits him the greatest millstone and therefore he does not deserve to be called a "saint" by American lips and in American soil.

http://www.crusadeagainstclergyabuse.com/index.html

Pope John Paul II was aware of the details of the sexual abuse problem at least from 1985. He was kept aware of the developing problem through the Vatican embassy in the U.S. as well as by direct information from other U.S. sources and sources in other countries. Neither Pope John Paul II nor any Vatican official made any public statements about clergy sexual abuse until June, 1993 when the pope directed a letter to the U.S. bishops. Between 1993 and 2004 he mentioned clergy sexual abuse 11 times in statements or sermons. Most of these utterances were within the context of other speeches or documents to bishops groups (from the U.S., Ireland and Oceania). The only statement devoted solely to clergy sexual abuse was his address t the U.S. cardinals on April 23, 2002. The other direct action the Vatican has taken has been the issuance of the 2001 norms which facilitate the laicization of priests who have been found guilty of sexual abuse. The Vatican has never issued a statement in support of victims nor has it issued any directives to bishops about the pastoral care of victims.

See also: John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2006/08/john-paul-ii-pedophile-priests-jpiipp.html

John Paul II: It's too late now to repent

This article speaks for itself and needs no introduction. It is about sex, birth control, homosexuality, wealth of the Vatican, liberation theology, John Paul II papacy, etc.

Counter punch http://www.counterpunch.org/dickinson04042005.html

And Jesus Said: "Call No Man Your Father"

It's Too Late Now for John Paul II to Repent

By MICHAEL DICKINSON

I have a bit of a fetish.

Whenever I come across a calendar where the month is wrong, at the barber, or in a bank or a school say it's June and the one on the wall still proclaims May I either inform them of their tardiness or get up and rectify the situation myself, turning the page and bringing us into the present, bang up to date. I don't know why, but it gives me a feeling of satisfaction.

So it was with great difficulty that I managed to suppress the urge to point out to Father Vinander that afternoon in 1979 as I bade farewell to him and the brothers of the Calcutta Missionaries of Charity, that the picture of Pope Paul V1 on the wall of his office was way out of date. Since his death there'd been another Pope John Paul the First, who only lasted 33 days before being found dead in his bed by a nun; and that he'd been replaced by the present incumbent, Polish John Paul the Second, the first non-Italian pope since 1542.

I resisted the temptation to point out the picture needed changing the deaths and takeovers had all been very sudden and I'm sure he'd catch up - but as I traveled back overland from India to England by bus I had time to ponder popes and their power over people born to obey them.

Somehow, luckily, after a lifetime of fear and thrall I had managed to free myself from the unquestioning obedience demanded by the Church, and gradually over the years since then, looking at it objectively, I've come to find it very questionable indeed.

It seems to me now that the Roman Catholic Church, the Holy See, contradicts the instructions of Jesus in very many instances.

According to Matthew, Jesus said "Call no man your father on earth", and yet you've got these men of the church swishing around in long skirts, all telling their 'flock' to address them as "father'.

Jesus also said "No one is good but one - God." And yet the Pope is called the 'Holy Father'--double whammy sin!

On prayer, Jesus said:

"And when ye pray thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are for they love to stand praying-- that they may be seen of men.

But when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and shut thy door, and pray to thy Father which is in secret--" and "But when you pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking--"

But the Church with its elaborate Masses and chanted repetitious litanies goes against this simple advice of the Master.

Again, he says: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth-- but lay up for yourselves treasures in n heaven For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. - Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

And yet the Vatican has billions of dollars in solid gold in its coffers, mostly stored in bullion with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank; the rest in bank accounts in London and Zurich, Switzerland.
With all of its assets added together, the Church possesses more riches in real estate, property, stocks and shares than any other single institution, corporation, bank, government or state, making the Pope, the official ruler of this vast reserve, the richest man in modern history.

The U.N. World Food Summit estimates $150 billion a year could significantly eradicate world hunger.

Instead of making proclamations on such "issues" such as the sanctity of marriage and so-called family values, the pope and his church should regain the true Christian mission of charity. Imagine the sweeping effect to cure hunger and sickness around the world of a Church founded on genuine goodwill, not human hypocrisy.

But it's too late now for Pope John Paul 2, who has finally shuffled off his mortal coil. So, while the media is at its sickening feeding-frenzy orgy of eulogies and sycophancy, let's have a brief look of our own at some of the ideas of the dead old billionaire and (very likely) those of his successor on the Vatican throne.

Just a little peek, because if we got into the whole nitty-gritty of the wherefores of the Roman Church it could go on for screeds. So let's confine ourselves to a subject that's close to their hearts - SEX.

(Actually, they're not fond of it at all, but you know what I mean!)

Let's start with an innocent wank -

The Catholic Church condemns masturbation. Catholic teaching is that sexual activity is intended for conception, thus masturbation is an immoral sexual practice because it does not permit conception. In addition, the Catholic Church teaches that masturbation breeds lust and selfishness, which takes one further from God.

Pope Paul wrote: " - masturbation is an intrinsically and seriously disordered act...the deliberate use of the sexual faculty outside normal conjugal relations essentially contradicts the finality of the faculty. For it lacks the sexual relationship called for by the moral order, namely the relationship which realizes 'the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love.' All deliberate exercise of sexuality must be reserved to this regular relationship."

How about a fuck?

In 1996 Pope John Paul said that artificial birth control was ruining people's moral sense by giving a false idea of sexual freedom. He attacked 'unbridled hedonism' which was slowly creating 'an eclipse of values'. The Roman Catholic Church considers artificial birth control and abortion an objectively grave or "mortal" sin (that is to say it causes the "death" of the soul by depriving it of the life of grace, when it is committed with full knowledge and full consent).

To the Vatican Institute of Bioethics he said: "Worrisome consequences have been produced in the sexual sphere of life by a false sense of freedom provided by contraception, which is both an incentive and a tool. He criticized public health campaigns that promote contraception.
"Unbridled hedonism and a distain for life is at the heart of the modern world's moral quandary. The 'Gospel of Life' must be maintained by educating children to recognize their vocation as carriers of life, in responsible collaboration with the creator."

"This teaching must be considered to be definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity, it is contrary to the good of the transmission of life (procreation aspect of marriage), and it is contrary to the mutual giving of the spouses (union aspect of marriage). It hurts true love and denies God's sovereign role in the transmission of human life"
"Even for people infected with AIDS or for those who want to use condoms to prevent AIDS," said John Paul 11 at the International Congress of Moral Theologians in Rome in 1988, "the Church's moral doctrine allows no exceptions."

Carlo Caffarra, the pope's spokesman for marriage and family issues, added that if an AIDS - infected husband couldn't manage to maintain "total abstinence" for the rest of his life, then it was better to infect his wife than to use a condom, "because the preservation of spiritual goods, such as the sacrament of marriage, is to be preferred to the good of life."

I'm feeling a little queer--

From Pope John Paul's 1986 "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons"-

"Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed to those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not."

Catholic Catechism: #2357 (in part) Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of great depravity, tradition has always declared that "Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered". They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complimentary. Under no circumstances can they be approved....#2359: Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection."

So there you have it.

Pope John Paul believed that it was contrary to God's law for anyone - Catholic or otherwise - to engage in birth control, abortion, homosexuality, in-vitro fertilization, masturbation, artificial insemination or sterilization. Intercourse between married partners, with no barrier to pregnancy and childbirth, was the only permissible sexual act in his eyes.
And you go to hell if you believe otherwise.

This was also the man who condemned 'liberation theology' - the belief that the church had a moral obligation to engage politically in the struggle for economic and political justice for the poor.

The man who declared: "The church cannot approve of this idea of Christ as a political figure, a revolutionary."

One who declared that the Church "has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that all the faithful are definitively bound by this judgment."

A man who believed that he had been saved by the "special protection" of the Blessed Virgin Mary when shot by a Turkish gunman in St Peter's Square. "One hand fired," he said, "and another hand guided the bullet."

And he who had that bullet set into the crown of Mary at the Portuguese shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, and donated the bloodied bandage to the Polish shrine of Our Lady of Jasna Gora.
A real Lady's man...

During his long reign within the church, Pope John Paul the second dominated the hierarchy, appointing like-minded conservatives to important offices and quelling liberal dissent - so don't hold your breath waiting for the result when the white smoke rises. More of the same is expected.

It's over 25 years since I bade goodbye to 'Father' Vinander and the brothers at the Missionaries of Charity's 'Institute for Sick and Dying Destitutes' in Calcutta. I'm sure he eventually got round to updating the picture on the wall, and that now the portrait of a healthy-looking Pope John Paul 2 beams down.

But this time, despite my fetish for keeping things up to date, I would that the portrait, once removed, be not replaced by another...

April 4, 2005

MICHAEL DICKINSON is a writer and artist who works as an English teacher in Istanbul, Turkey. He designed the cover art for two CounterPunch books, Serpents in the Garden and Dime's Worth of Difference, as well as Grand Theft Pentagon, forthcoming from Common Courage Press. He can be contacted through his website of collage pictures at http://carnival_of_chaos.tripod.com/

John Paul II "Culture of Death": With Blood in His Hands

http://www.counterpunch.org/eagleton04062005.html

"The Greatest Disaster for the Church Since Darwin"

The Pope With Blood on His Hands

By TERRY EAGLETON
London, England

John Paul II became Pope in 1978, just as the emancipatory 60s were declining into the long political night of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. As the economic downturn of the early 70s began to bite, the western world made a decisive shift to the right, and the transformation of an obscure Polish bishop from Karol Wojtyla to John Paul II was part of this wider transition.

The Catholic church had lived through its own brand of flower power in the 60s, known as the Second Vatican Council; and the time was now ripe to rein in leftist monks, clap-happy nuns and Latin American Catholic Marxists. All of this had been set in train by a pope - John XIII - whom the Catholic conservatives regarded as at best wacky and at worst a Soviet agent.

What was needed for this task was someone well-trained in the techniques of the cold war. As a prelate from Poland, Wojtyla hailed from what was probably the most reactionary national outpost of the Catholic church, full of maudlin Mary-worship, nationalist fervour and ferocious anti-communism. Years of dealing with the Polish communists had turned him and his fellow Polish bishops into consummate political operators. In fact, it turned the Polish church into a set-up that was, at times, not easy to distinguish from the Stalinist bureaucracy. Both institutions were closed, dogmatic, censorious and hierarchical, awash with myth and personality cults. It was just that, like many alter egos, they also happened to be deadly enemies, locked in lethal combat over the soul of the Polish people.

Aware of how little they had won from dialogue with the Polish regime, the bishops were ill-inclined to bend a Rowan-Williams-like ear to both sides of the theological conflict that was raging within the universal church. On a visit to the Vatican before he became Pope, the authoritarian Wojtyla was horrified at the sight of bickering theologians. This was not the way they did things in Warsaw. The conservative wing of the Vatican, which had detested the Vatican Council from the outset and done its utmost to derail it, thus looked to the Poles for salvation. When the throne of Peter fell empty, the conservatives managed to swallow their aversion to a non-Italian pontiff and elected one for the first time since 1522.

Once ensconced in power, John Paul II set about rolling back the liberal achievements of Vatican 2. Prominent liberal theologians were summoned to his throne for a dressing down. One of his prime aims was to restore to papal hands the power that had been decentralised to the local churches. In the early church, laymen and women elected their own bishops. Vatican 2 didn't go as far as that, but it insisted on the doctrine of collegiality - that the Pope was not to be seen as capo di tutti capi, but as first among equals.

John Paul, however, acknowledged equality with nobody. From his early years as a priest, he was notable for his exorbitant belief in his own spiritual and intellectual powers. Graham Greene once dreamed of a newspaper headline reading "John Paul canonises Jesus Christ". Bishops were summoned to Rome to be given their orders, not for fraternal consultation. Loopy far-right mystics and Francoists were honoured, and Latin American political liberationists bawled out.

The Pope's authority was so unassailable that the head of a Spanish seminary managed to convince his students that he had the Pope's personal permission to masturbate them.

The result of centring all power in Rome was an infantilisation of the local churches. Clergy found themselves incapable of taking initiatives without nervous glances over their shoulders at the Holy Office. It was at just this point, when the local churches were least capable of handling a crisis maturely, that the child sex abuse scandal broke. John Paul's response was to reward an American cardinal who had assiduously covered up the outrage with a plush posting in Rome.

The greatest crime of his papacy, however, was neither his part in this cover up nor his neanderthal attitude to women. It was the grotesque irony by which the Vatican condemned - as a "culture of death" - condoms, which might have saved countless Catholics in the developing world from an agonising Aids death. The Pope goes to his eternal reward with those deaths on his hands. He was one of the greatest disasters for the Christian church since Charles Darwin.

April 6, 2005

Terry Eagleton is the author of The Illusions of Post-Modernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.

John Paul II and Opus Dei

http://www.counterpunch.org/navarro04082005.html

Opus Dei and John Paul II

A Profoundly Rightwing Pope

By VICENTE NAVARRO
Baltimore, Maryland

The predominant perception of John Paul II, as extensively reproduced in most of the Western media, is that he was very conservative ("traditional" is the term widely used) in religious subjects but progressive in social matters, as evidenced by his defense of the poor and his concern for human and social rights. His key ideological role in the demise of the Soviet Union is put forward as further proof of his commitment to liberty and democracy. John Paul's support for the Polish trade union Solidarnosc, his numerous speeches in support of the poor and of those left behind by capitalism or globalization, and his frequent calls for human solidarity ­ not to mention his opposition to the invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces ­ all are presented as examples of his progressiveness in the social arena.

In this perception of Pope John Paul II, some critical elements are forgotten. Let's detail them. He was groomed for the Papacy, long before he was elected Pope, by the ultra-right-wing sect Opus Dei. This secret organization was founded by Monsignor Escrivá, a Spanish priest who was formerly a private confessor to General Franco, organizing spiritual meetings for the Spanish fascist leadership. Opus Dei chose John Paul as the candidate for Pope very early in his career, when he was bishop of Krakow. His conservatism and anti-communism were very attractive to this sect.

John Paul traveled extensively at that time on trips organized and funded by Opus Dei, developing a very close working relationship with the sect. Opus Dei was the organization that developed the strategy to make him the Pope, assisted by the bishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger; the U.S. cardinals close to Opus Dei, Joseph Krol and Patrick Cody; and a cardinal then close to Opus Dei, Cardinal Franz König from Vienna (who later distanced himself from Opus Dei and from the Pope). The center of operations for this campaign was Villa Tevere, the Opus Dei headquarters in Rome.

Immediately after his election as Pope, John Paul designated Opus Dei as a special order directly accountable to him, not to the bishops. He surrounded himself with members of the order, the most visible being Navarro-Valls, an Opus Dei journalist who had worked for Abc, an ultra-conservative Spanish paper that had been supportive of the Franco regime. Navarro-Valls is well-known for selecting journalists to cover the Pope's international visits who would report on them favorably. He constantly vetoed critical voices, such as that of Domenico del Rio of the Italian paper La Repubblica.

The Pope later named another Opus Dei member, Angelo Sodano, as Secretary of State of the Vatican. Sodano had been the Vatican's ambassador in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, becoming a close friend and advisor to the dictator. He was responsible for the Pope's visit to the Pinochet dictatorship in 1987. During this visit, the Pope never called publicly for liberty or democracy in Chile. By contrast, when John Paul visited Cuba he was publicly critical of the Cuban regime. But he remained silent when he visited Pinochet. Later, when Pinochet was detained in London (awaiting extradition to Spain at the request of the Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzon), the Vatican, under Sodano's influence, asked the British Government to let Pinochet return to Chile. This same Sodano had referred to liberation theologian Leonardo Boff ­ one of the most popular priests in Latin America ­ as "a traitor to the Church, the Judas of Christ." Under Pope John Paul II, the founder of Opus Dei was made a saint just twenty seven years after his death (one of the fastest such processes ever). Meanwhile, Pope John XXIII and Bishop Romero, assassinated in El Salvadore because of his support for the poor of that country, have been waiting in line for sainthood for a much longer time.

Opus Dei and its Pope were profoundly hostile to liberation theology. John Paul condemned it at the II Latin American Conference, presided over by Opus Dei member Monsignor Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, Secretary General and later president of that Conference. John Paul also was displeased with the Jesuits who had become increasingly concerned about identification of the Church with the strong oligarchical regimes of Latin America. He changed the leadership of the order, appointing very conservative priests as its new leadership. As reported by the ex-Jesuit Luis de Sebastian in the Spanish Daily El Periodico (5 April 2005), the Pope received periodical reports from U.S. CIA Director William Casey (a Roman Catholic) on the "distressing" Jesuit movements in Latin America.

John Paul's speeches on the poor were highly generic and sanctimonious, humanistic in character, without ever touching on the cause of poverty. As the Brazilian Bishop Helder Camara once said, "When I called for the role of the Church to be with the poor, I am called a saint; when I'm asked to do something about the causes of poverty, I am called a communist."

John Paul was profoundly political, always on the side of the powerful in Latin America and in Spain. He never touched on the political causes of poverty, he marginalized and ostracized the mass religious movements in Latin America that called for major social reforms in favor of the poor, and (with Cardinal Ratzinger, the guardian of the Church orthodoxy) he condemned such movements, ordering their leading figures ­ Gustavo Gutierrez, Leonardo Boff, Jon Sobrino, and others ­ to remain silent. Bishop Romero wrote in his personal notes that, when he denounced the brutal repression carried out by the fascist dictatorship in El Salvador, the Pope reprimanded him for not being sufficiently balanced in his criticisms of the Salvadorian dictatorship, whom John Paul referred to as the legitimate government of El Salvador.

In Spain, John Paul was political to an extreme. He was openly supportive of the post-Francoist party, the Popular Party (whose founder is Fraga Iribarne, ex-Minister of the Interior of the Franco fascist regime) and just a few months before his death he gave a speech against the Zapatero government that was actually written by the pro­Popular Party leadership of the Spanish Church. Although he opposed the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of the Iraqi population, he never condemned the Franco regime (which the Spanish Church supported), nor did he ever condemn the bombing of Spain's civilian population by the Franco Air Force, with the help of German Nazi bombers. When he was asked to condemn the bombing of Spanish cities by the Church-supported fascist forces of Spain, he declined to do so.

Rather than pushing a social agenda worldwide, Pope John Paul II became a major obstacle to such an agenda by making conservative issues (anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-homosexuality, and others) rather than social ones the center of political debate. The evolution of the U.S. political debate among Catholics is an example of this. In the past, Catholics in the U.S. voted Democrat more than Republican, but this is no longer the case. In the 2004 presidential election, more Catholics voted for Bush (52%) than for Kerry (47%), and they indicated that the primary reason they supported Bush was the "values" issue.

Based on all this evidence, it is remarkable that John Paul II, Opus Dei's Pope, can be considered a progressive icon.

April 8, 2005

Vicente Navarro is Professor of Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University, USA and Pompeu Fabra University, Spain. Navarro contributed an essay on Salvidor Dali's fascist ties for CounterPunch's collection on art, culture and politics: Serpents in the Garden. He can be reached at: navarro@counterpunch.org

John Paul II Cardinal Egan is GAY! Cardinal Spellman was notoriously GAY!

There are Catholic slogans going around: The John Paul II Generation. The John Paul II priests. The John Paul II Rosary. The John Paul II Youth (from WYD World Youth Day).

We add: The John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army. http://jp2army.blogspot.com/
The John Paul II Gay Cardinals and Gay Bishops. http://jp2m.blogspot.com/


Lawsuit says New York's Cardinal is gay!

You know what's fun? Conspiracy theories involving the Catholic Church. You know what's even more fun? Conspiracy theories involving the Catholic Church and secret homosexuality. You know what's even more fun than that? When the conspiracy theories involving the Catholic Church and secret homosexuality start showing up in official, public court documents. All this means that this week's Village Voice will be lots of fun, as it includes Kristen Lombardi's report on a New Jersey priest who's suing 10 Catholic institutions and individuals, including New York's Cardinal Edward Egan, over, to quote Lombardi, "a pattern of 'retaliation and harassment' that began after Hoatson alleged a cover-up of clergy abuse in New York and started helping victims."

But that's not the fun part. This is:

Halfway through the 44-page complaint, the priest-turned-advocate drops a bomb on the cardinal: He alleges that Egan is "actively homosexual," and that he has "personal knowledge of this." His suit names two other top Catholic clerics in the region as actively gay Albany bishop Howard Hubbard and Newark archbishop John Myers.It's often been said that all Manhattan men are at least a little bit gay. If true, this would certainly prove it.

Fun!

http://gawker.com/news/catholic-church/village-voice-lawsuit-says-new-yorks-cardinal-is-gay-153316.php

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Outing Cardinal Egan

A priest's lawsuit alleges the Catholic Church is hiding pedophile clergy—and offers a stunning reason why

by Kristen Lombardi
February 7th, 2006 11:40 AM

"It's time the church confronts this dysfunction," says Father Bob Hoatson.

Father Bob Hoatson Says Closeted Catholic Leaders Can't Protect Abuse Victims—And He's Naming Names

Related:

Who Would Take a Case Like This? Someone Mad as Hell, That's Who
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0606,lombardi,72097,6.html


Who knows whether Cardinal Edward Egan is sleeping soundly these days. But as head of the New York archdiocese—as the top Roman Catholic prelate in the state—he'd have every reason to be restless after the recent advent of a little-noticed lawsuit.
The suit, now pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, was filed on December 13 by Bob Hoatson—a 53-year-old New Jersey priest considered a stalwart ally among survivors of sexual abuse by clergy. Hoatson, the now-suspended chaplain for Catholic Charities in Newark, is suing Egan and nine other Catholic officials and institutions, claiming a pattern of "retaliation and harassment" that began after Hoatson alleged a cover-up of clergy abuse in New York and started helping victims.

But that's not all his lawsuit claims. Halfway through the 44-page complaint, the priest-turned-advocate drops a bomb on the cardinal: He alleges that Egan is "actively homosexual," and that he has "personal knowledge of this." His suit names two other top Catholic clerics in the region as actively gay—Albany bishop Howard Hubbard and Newark archbishop John Myers.

It's not that Hoatson has a problem with, as the suit puts it, "consensual, adult private sexual behavior by these defendants."

No, what Hoatson claims is that, as leaders of a church requiring celibacy and condemning homosexuality, actively gay bishops are too afraid of being exposed themselves to turn in pedophile priests. The bishops' closeted homosexuality, as the lawsuit states, "has compromised defendants' ability to supervise and control predators, and has served as a reason for the retaliation."

Hoatson realizes what he's up against. "I stopped and I thought long and hard about these allegations," he says. "It's time the church confronts this dysfunction. I couldn't do this outside of filing a lawsuit. The only thing the church responds to is negative publicity or a lawsuit. If I kept trying to do this within the system, I would be gone."

The full article here: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0606,lombardi,72095,6.html


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Cardinal Egan Targets Gay Marriage

The Roman Catholic Church is, naturally, opposed to gay marriage - even though no proposals would require them to perform such marriages in their churches. They believe that their opposition to homosexuality generally means that society as a whole should deny gays the same civil rights that are accorded to heterosexuals.
New York Newsday reports on statements made by Cardinal Edward Egan and others:

"Marriage is not just a government issue," said Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, a lead spokesman in Tuesday's annual lobbying day at the Capitol by the Catholic Conference of New York. ... Egan told about 1,000 worshippers in the homily to a mass at a convention center near the Capitol that "you want to champion the rights of the family." He called marriage the "most basic, essential and sacred component of society." DiMarzio said, "I believe in the separation of church and state. I don't believe in the separation of religion and society. There's a big difference," DiMarzio said. "I think that religious institutions have been upholding the family, supporting the family as part of our society, certainly." I wonder how DiMarzio manage to get his position? He doesn't seem to understand that marriage licenses are issued by the state, not by "society" - thus, if those licenses are restricted based upon religious standards, then there is no separation of church and state. If he actually believes in separating church and state, then he cannot in all honesty believe that his religion or anyone else's religion should be used to determine how the state structures the requirements for marriage.

Then again, maybe DiMario's position and Egan's position wasn't actually arrived at "in all honesty." To be quite frank, I doubt their commitment to keeping church and state separate; on the contrary, I think that they would have Catholic beliefs and standards be imposed on everyone, regardless of whether they are Catholic or even Christian. That comes with the belief that one is absolutely correct - and inability to tolerate the presence of people living their lives by different standards and beliefs.

I don't personally care if Catholic philosophy and theology excludes the possibility of gay marriage within a Catholic context - but I do care when Catholic leaders start trying to force that context on the state and the rest of society. Not everyone chooses to live their lives by Catholicism and they shouldn't be forced to anyway.

http://atheism.about.com/b/a/071682.htm

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Cardinal Spellman was GAY! Notoriously Gay!

A Monsignor's Closet
Monsignor Eugene Clark, Rector of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York - who blames gays in the priesthood for the sex abuse scandal - resigns after he was exposed in a scandalous affair with his secretary 30 years younger...

by Michelangelo Signorile

When last we heard from the rector at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Monsignor Eugene Clark, it was April of 2002, when he made headlines amid the priest sexual abuse scandal, practically calling for a new Spanish Inquisition, this time directed solely at homosexuals.

Standing in one Sunday for the befuddled and hiding Cardinal Egan – under attack for having ignored abusive priests – Clark, rector at what is arguably the seat of the Catholic Church in America, ranted that homosexuality is a "disorder" and said it was a "grave mistake" to allow gays into the priesthood, blaming them for the sex abuse scandal. Clark has long upheld the Vatican belief that homosexuals – and the liberals who support them – are bringing down society, and, of course, want to destroy the institution of marriage. He also attacked those who are critical of celibacy.

Now here is Monsignor Clark, three years later, at the age of 79, exposed last week as engaging in an adulterous affair with a married women 30 years younger, proving that the greatest threat to marriage is in fact pompous, hypocritical, heterosexual men who can’t keep their dicks to themselves even as they become octogenarians.

There is a God!

"The next time somebody gets a lecture from a priest on the necessity of sexual restraint, their first reaction might be one of cynicism,” commented the Church’s own pitbull, William Donohue of the Catholic League, perhaps the first time I’ve ever agreed with him on anything. But in fact, many people have been reacting to the Vatican with cynicism for a long time, and certainly since the abuse scandal. This is just more wood on the fire, sadly confirming that they’ve learned not a damn thing.

Clark resigned last week, even though he denied the charge – which came from the husband of his secretary, Laura DeFilippo, filed in divorce papers – claiming he and the woman had a platonic relationship. But there are apparently videotapes of Clark and his gal pal going to a motel in the Hamptons and staying for five hours, each coming out in a new set of clothes. Clark is either pioneering an innovative new form of confession – driving 90 miles from the cramped church confessional to a beach motel in a swank resort area, for five hours of confession that involves a change of attire as penance – or they were screwing big time.

Adultery, however, wasn’t the only deception in gay-basher Clark’s closet. As I wrote in a column back in 2002 when he launched his antigay tirade, Clark dutifully worked as secretary for – and covered up for -- one of the most notorious, powerful and sexually voracious homosexuals in the American Catholic Church’s history: the politically connected Francis Cardinal Spellman, known as "Franny" to assorted Broadway chorus boys and others, who was New York’s cardinal from 1939 until his death in 1967. (The piece I wrote – “Cardinal Spellman’s Dark Legacy” – is included in my new collection of articles, Hitting Hard.)

Spellman, as I wrote, was the epitome of the self-loathing, closeted, evil queen, working with his good friend, the closeted gay McCarthy henchman Roy Cohn, to undermine liberalism in America during the 1950s’ communist and homosexual witch hunts. He, in many ways, is almost single-handedly responsible for ushering in the American Catholic church’s more punitive, authoritarian stances and reactions to the sexual revolution, feminism and gay rights.

Gore Vidal has long alluded to Spellman’s, homosexuality, once commenting that, "the serious crimes of Spellman were not sexual,” implying of course that the most serious crime was the arrogant and reckless hypocrisy, just as in the case of Monsignor Clark, who was Spellman’s right-hand man during the years he was getting some on the side, obviously teaching Clark a thing or two.

The original bound galleys of former Wall Street Journal reporter John Cooney’s Spellman biography, The American Pope -- published in 1984 by Times Books, which was then owned by The New York Times Company -- included four pages on Spellman’s homosexuality. (In a hideous example of the church’s power and The New York Times’ fears in those days, these pages were removed, the details of which are recounted in the piece in Hitting Hard). Cooney had included interviews with several notable individuals who knew Spellman as gay. Among Cooney’s interview subjects was C.A. Tripp, the noted researcher affiliated with Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey of the Institute for Sex Research – and author of the controversial book published last year, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, which brought forth evidence of the former president’s homosexual relationships.

Tripp died in May of 2003. In a telephone interview I conducted with him a year before his death, Tripp told me that his information about Spellman came from a Broadway dancer in the show One Touch of Venus who had a relationship with Spellman back in the 1940s; the prelate would have his limousine pick up the dancer several nights a week and bring him back to his place. Tripp told me that when the dancer once asked Spellman how he could get away with this, Spellman answered, "Who would believe that?" The anecdote is also recounted in John Loughery’s history of gay life in the 20th century, The Other Side of Silence.

"In New York’s clerical circles, Spellman’s sex life was a source of profound embarrassment and shame to many priests," Cooney had written in the original manuscript of his book. The archdiocese exploded after it got wind of the information, and became determined to stop it from being published. None other than the current gay-basher Monsignor Clark, in an interview with the Times, called the assertions "preposterous," commenting that "if you had any idea of [Spellman’s] New England background" you’d realize these were "foolish" charges.

That ridiculous explanation is consistent with Clark’s current claims that there was nothing out of the ordinary about his going with a woman to a beach motel for five hours and a change of clothes. The woman’s husband, Philip DeFilippo, told the press his wife “frequently” spent weekends with Monsignor Clark at his beach house in Amagansett on the South Fork of Long Island, and sometimes even brought the couples two kids with her – allegedly exposing them to an adulterous affair even as he’s railing against child abuse!

Clark appears to be as arrogant and intoxicated with power as his self-loathing mentor. And I have no doubt the church will sweep this under the rug just as did Spellman’s hypocrisy. Let’s be glad, at least, that this one was brought down in his own lifetime and before he could do any more damage.
http://www.signorile.com/articles/nyp145.html

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Msgr. Clark was the personal secretary of Cardinal Spellman
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/nyregion/12rector.html

Free video of Msgr. Clark and his secretary http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8915027/

























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May 30, 2003 -- FORMER matinee idol Richard Chamberlain, who's now 69, feels the time is right to come out of the closet. "I'm not a romantic leading man anymore so I don't need to nurture that public image anymore," he says on Sunday's "Dateline
Ralph de Bricassart from the Thorn Birds! From priest to cardinal, and getting the very hot 26-year-old Rachel Ward when Richard was 49 (and old enough to be her father)

John Paul II Money: 50 Zloty banknote...et tu, Judas?

When the snake devil Satan tempted Eve to eat the apple of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil so that she will "become like God", he obviously could not forsee how much of that apple John Paul II would be chewing in the 20th century and still chewing even after his death in the 21st century. After all, his clone Benedict XVI is making sure John Paul II "become like God".

(See http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/ Pope Benedict XVI-Ratzinger: Clone of John Paul II)

Benedict XVI on his visit to Poland renamed its major Holy Mary Basilica's square into John Paul II's name.
http://620ktar.com/?nid=22&sid=192183
Meanwhile in Paris, the new John Paul II Square at the Basilica of Notre Dame in Paris was also being renamed amidst heavy protest, see
http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2006/09/protest-against-john-paul-ii-square-in.html

Judas for 33 pieces of silver delivered Jesus to be crucified.

Et tu, Brutus? Ceasar asked his best friend who delivered the last stab that killed him.

Thousands of altar boys, little boys and girls also ask today , "Et tu, Holy Father John Paul II, where were you when we needed you; in all your globe trotting, you never cared for us ONCE?"

John Paul II for 50 Zloty has delivered the little boys to his own JPIIPP John Paul II Pedophile Priests army who feasted in the Papal Altar of Sodomy

Et tu, Judas-Pope John Paul II of the 20th century?

See http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2006/08/john-paul-ii-altar-of-sodomy.html.

Those Polish sure love their famous pope, why not, he brought them fame and some fortune. And they are making sure that fortune is printed out in their pollack monies. They are making their native Pope their new Ceasar.

But they should leave him out of the USA. That Polish Pope totally neglected 12,000 American little boys, many altar boys, and let them be sodomized by his JPIIPP Army John Paul II Pedophile Priests army http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2006/08/john-paul-ii-pedophile-priests-jpiipp.html
therefore, as a Pollack-covering-up-pedophile-priests, JPII does not deserve to be called a "saint" by American lips and in American soil.

Satan must be green with envy against John Paul II. When did he, the "father of lies" ever have basilica squares named after him, medals and now money minted with his face on it, statues erected and miniature statues sold in churches worldwide like the "Holy Father"? John Paul II has bitten (worse than Eve) and continue to eat the entire apple orchard of Satan in the Garden of Eden.
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Here are reports on the John Paul II Money:
http://polishtoledo.blogspot.com/2006/10/pope-jpii-money.html

The next 50 Zloty banknote you put into your pocket may be Poland's new banknote depicting the late Polish-born Pope John Paul II.

The note, worth about $19, portrays the Pope on both sides and is going into circulation presently.

Poles are overwhelmingly Catholic and hold John Paul II, who died in April last year, in huge regard. Many credit him with inspiring Poles to challenge Communism and with helping to bring an end to the Cold War.

The National Bank of Poland did not say how many of the new notes would be released on October 16, which marks the 28th anniversary of John Paul II's election as head of the Catholic Church.
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News and photo: cathnews

John Paul II on the money in Poland

Poland's central bank yesterday released two commemorative banknotes bearing the image of John Paul II to mark the 28th anniversary of the late Pope's election.

The National Bank of Poland's special notes have a face value of 50 zlotys (around $A21), and sell for 90 zloty ($A38).

The front of the bills features an image of John Paul II holding his crucifix-topped staff against a background of the world map, symbolising the universal nature of his pontificate, Radio Polonia says.

The reverse side of the bill shows a moving episode from John Paul's inauguration when he embraced in a touching gesture cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the legendary Primate of the Millenium, the leader of the Catholic Church in the then still Communist Poland.

The water mark on the commemorative banknote has the official papal seal of John Paul II and is surrounded by names of all the countries he had visited during his eventful pontificate.

The design includes a quote from the late pontiff: "There would not be a Polish pope at the Holy See if not for your faith, not backing down when faced with prison and suffering, your heroic hope."

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Christ said: Render to Ceasar that which is Ceasar's and to God that which belongs to God.

John Paul II with the greatest millstone tied to his neck - and an apple in his mouth - has made himself God and Ceasar.

Paris Arrow

John Paul II the Pontiff in Winter

October 16 marks the 28 years paedophiliac-papacy of John Paul II whose consequences thrive in the continous unraveling of priest pedophilia worldwide. Here is a must-read book for anyone who wishes to understand who Pope John Paul II really was. I am qouting three book reviews (one in full in case it disappears from the face of the web!)

The Pontiff in Winter: Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of John Paul II
Book written by John Cornwell

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In The Pope In Winter: The Dark Face of John Paul II's Papacy
Cornwell Documents that JPII Left the Church Worse than He Found It

"Something is Rotten in the City of Rome"

JPII was one of the greatest deconstructors of the Roman Catholic Church in history. So, of course, Newchurch wants to make him a Saint. Not only a Saint, but a Sudden Saint. Not only a Sudden Saint, but a Great Saint. We've heard all this nonsense before, but now Newchurch wants to make him a Martyr Saint! The Great Martyr Saints of early Rome must be rising up from their graves, all eleven million of them, sword in hand, to cut down the interloper!Why so? Apparently, because Newchurch needs to "grease the track" for him, so that they get him in before the truth comes out. And it is easier to rush through a martyr-saint. Are you beginning to get the idea that "something is rotten in the city of Rome"?

Yes, the fix is in. Under the wisdom of Sixtus V in 1588, the already traditional meticulously careful process was canonized, with an aggressive opponent to ensure a scrupulous verdict, much as in an Anglo-American court. In 1984 JPII purported to turn "canonization" into a political game by abolishing the Advocatus Diaboli [Devil's Advocate] in the investigation of purported Saints. Was he laying the groundwork to squeak through his own dicey elevation? He wouldn't be the first Roman "emperor" to do so. In fact, in the early years of the Roman empire, when the Church was being established, the emperors looked to their deification by the Senate in order that they would not have to pay the price in Hades for their gross sins.

In this case, a watered-down church bureaucrat, now in typical Newchurch duplicitous fashion termed "Promoter of Justice," Giuseppe D'Alanzo, who is supposed to ensure that the negative side is heard, has revealed himself as biased toward JPII! It is as if a judge said before trial, "I'm already biased for the plaintiff, but let's go through the motions for form's sake"!

Yet some voices are daring to speak out against this phony process. Surprisingly, the sharpest is a liberalist, not a conservative. John Cornwell, who otherwise seems to have a defamatory fixation against Pius XII and an investigatory instinct in death of John Paul I, seems to have hit at least a few nails on the head vis à JPII vis in his recent The Pope in Winter: The Dark Face of John Paul II's Papacy (Viking UK, 2004). In the text Cornwell attempts to bolster his claim that JPII left the Catholic Church worse than he found it.

Cornwell catalogues JPII's production-line of dodgy saints and his total failure to deal with the Great Sex and Embezzlement Scandal that is bankrupting Newchurch, as well as covering it in shame and derision, from which it will not arise for decades when until the true Catholic Church is unquestionably restored. Cornwell documents that, time and again, JPII protected (and sometimes promoted) presbyters who should have been instantly defrocked, that his instinct has been not to seek Catholic justice, but to cover up.

http://www.traditio.com/comment/com0507.htm

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Commonweal Magazine

Reviewed by Luke Timothy Johnson

John Cornwell is best known for his controversial Hitler’s Pope (1999). As I prepared to review his assessment of John Paul II’s long papacy, my eye was caught by the back cover, which reported some evaluations of that earlier book. Saul Friedlander stated in the Los Angeles Times, “As Cornwell brilliantly demonstrates, Pius XII brought forth the authoritarianism and the centralization of his predecessors to their most extreme stage.” And James Carroll wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, “Instead of a portrait of a man worthy of sainthood, Cornwell lays out the story of a narcissistic, power-hungry manipulator.”My eye lingered on these blurbs because they so perfectly summarized not the earlier book on Pius XII, but this one on John Paul II.

Cornwell wants to show that the remarkable papacy of John Paul II, despite its impressive accomplishments, has dangerously weakened the church even as it has strengthened Vatican power. Writing as the aged pope visibly suffers the effects of Parkinson’s disease, Cornwell argues that John Paul had from the start offered authoritarian answers for questions, and that “his debility in his latter days has exposed the long-term consequences of his autocratic papal rule. He has become a living sermon of patience and fortitude, appealing to the sympathies of the entire world; but the billion-strong church has been run increasingly by his Polish secretary and a handful of aging reactionary cardinals.”

Cornwell is a biographer in the classical tradition (think Plutarch’s Lives), less interested in the massive compilation of facts than in the making of a moral argument drawn from his subject’s character. And also like ancient biographers, he draws as freely from personal observation and court gossip as he does from the authorized sources. The book opens with a prologue (“John Paul the Great”) that recognizes how deserving of praise are this pope’s accomplishments, but adds an ominous, “and yet...”

The book closes with an epilogue that reverses the balance, so that the “and yet...” element in John Paul’s papacy becomes most important, if not as the final judgment of his complex character, certainly as a challenge to a deeply troubled church.Between these brackets, Cornwell divides his treatment into two parts: “Holy Theatre” follows John Paul from 1920 to 1999, tracing the astonishing progress of the man who at thirty-eight was the youngest bishop in Poland and at fifty-eight was the head of the Roman Catholic Church; “In Pursuit of the Millennium (2000-2004)” carries the story past 9/11 and into the Iraq war, focusing on “the winter” of this superman pontiff.

Cornwell writes with the energy and focus of a good journalist. Each of the thirty-five chapters is a sharply drawn vignette that moves quickly to the isolation of character traits and political implications. The result is a compulsively readable analysis of a person and a passionately argued plea for a less centralized church in the future.

Cornwell’s focus on the pope’s character begins in the first chapter, “Close Encounters,” which reports on his own and others’ impression of John Paul as experienced in person, an impression that combines a positive sense of warmth and modesty, combined with something more negative: a sense that the pope only sees and hears what he wants to see and hear.

The term “Holy Theatre” that Cornwell applies to the first part of his analysis is a way of framing this “dynamic paradox” or even “contradiction.” He argues that Karol Wojtyla had, from the beginning, a mystical sense of himself as an actor on history’s stage, but that, after long years at the pinnacle of power, this innate mysticism yielded to a more “vulgar and egocentric” understanding that supported “his own divinely ordained role as pope, and his extraordinary degree of certitude.”

Cornwell rapidly records John Paul’s accelerated progress from professor and pastor to bishop and cardinal and, finally, pontiff. He is most interested in tracing the manner in which the very qualities that lent the younger man such unusual charisma, could, after stunning success, turn into something close to a tragic flaw.

Cornwell considers the 1981 assassination attempt, together with John Paul’s subsequent application of the “Third Fatima Secret” to himself, as the point of turning from a sense of being guided by Providence to a conviction of being an indispensable instrument of Providence.After bringing the storyline to the point that all will agree presents the high point of John Paul’s success with regard to the larger world, namely the role he played in the liberation of Poland and the collapse of communism, Cornwell turns to less positive aspects of the pope’s exalted sense of historical mission inside the church: the political implications of his frenzied saint-making; the chilling effect on intellectual leadership of his efforts to control theologians; the alienating effect of his refusal to hear the voice of women within the church; the inadequacy of his teaching on sex.

Cornwell sees running through all of these efforts a lip service paid to an exalted ideal, accompanied by an ever-increasing resistance to pluralism and democracy, an ever-growing insistence on papal authority as the answer to every problem.The last part of the book makes for particularly painful reading. No one can rejoice at the spectacle of a man who is so palpably suffering from age and illness, so obviously unable to meet the demands of being a superman pontiff, yet still unwilling to cede anything of the extraordinary power he accumulated over the decades. Much of that power is the result of shaping the episcopacy according to his own image in terms of doctrine and morals. But it is also the result of the inability of bishops to exercise genuine authority where it is most needed. Years of conditioning, years of being treated, as Cardinal Joseph Bernadin was once reported as remarking, “like altar boys,” has hollowed out the episcopacy.

Cornwell’s final chapters pose the pointed question, “Who Runs the Church?”, as he spells out some of the more dismal manifestations of decline: the inattention to, and later inept handling of, the sexual-abuse scandals; the fostering of repressive right-wing movements within the church, even when the sinister aspects of their founders have been exposed; the confused state of what was once a crisp papal stance in matters of war and peace, oppression and freedom; the morally indefensible refusal to allow condoms as protection against AIDS; the stalled and frustrated conversation with Judaism; and the equally stalemated rapprochement with Orthodox Christianity.

Cornwell concludes that in order to respond to the great crises facing the church when he came to the papacy, John Paul II tried, like a superman, to do everything. But because he is, after all, “human, all too human,” even such a heroic effort has led to a troublesome legacy. He suggests that those electing the next pope need to resist the temptation to choose another “Karol the Great,” even if one is available. They need, instead, to choose “a bishop among brother bishops, a judge of final appeal presiding in charity over differences and divisions, and a human being who knows, despite his call to leadership, that he remains a pilgrim with all humanity.” Even those who may find Cornwell’s treatment of the ailing pope too harsh can usefully ponder his conclusions concerning the present state and perilous future of the church.

Commonweal Magazine http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1167

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America Magazine

Reviewed by Vincent T. O'Keefe, S.J.

Elegaic Portrait

There is no taboo restraining Cornwell as he spells out this parallel Catholic version, as he sees it and embraces it. At the center is his portrayal of Pope John Paul II as absolutist and authoritarian, a man of “epic self-centeredness,” a one-man show, the one pastor of both the universal and the local church. “Under John Paul the Catholic Church has become the voice of one man in a white robe pronouncing from the Roman pinnacle, rather than a conversation...between the Church universal and the Church local.... Exploiting modern broadcast communications to their fullest extent, his omnipresence and monopoly of the limelight have reduced within his Church all other authority, all other holiness (unless dead), all other comparisons, voices, images, talents, and virtues. The legislator, the single dispenser of blessings, beneficence, and wisdom—there has been no hidden corner of the Church where he was not present, heard, read, and where he was not absolute.”

In jarring contrast to the adulatory “John Paul the Great” of other authors, Cornwell portrays him as “Superman,” because “he has run the papacy as if he were a Superman. But a Superman has no place in a Church of communities that require to be fully themselves in the smallest groups; that flourish and gather strength from their own local resources as well as from the Roman center. Another Superman on the throne of St. Peter can only continue the tragic process of abdication of responsibility, maturity, and local discretion that we have witnessed in the Catholic Church this past quarter of a century.”

As his basis for this assessment, Cornwell treats the life of John Paul from 1920 to 1999 in Part One of his book, and then from the millennium in 2000 to 2004 in the second part. Against this background the author develops “John Paul’s Grand Design,” before concluding with an epilogue: “The Legacy of John Paul II.” His method is historical, and although he treats both the triumph and the conflict in the reign of John Paul II, his epilogue shows clearly that conflict wins out over triumph: “But what will be his [John Paul’s] lasting legacy for the Catholic Church?... Throughout the worldwide Church one finds everywhere vibrant Catholic communities: people working, and dying, for the faith; selfless ministers, sisters, and laity working for the sick and the poor; members of the faithful making the world a better place. The spirit of Vatican II is at work and cannot be quenched.”

After this brief summary of the “triumph,” Cornwell turns to the “conflict” in John Paul II’s reign and shows that for him this is the more telling dimension. “But there are countless millions of Catholics who have fallen away because they have become demoralized and excluded under John Paul II. His major and abiding legacy, I believe, is to be seen and felt in various forms of oppression and exclusion, trust in papal absolutism, and antagonistic divisions. Never have Catholics been so divided; never has there been so much contempt and aggression between Catholics. Never has the local Church suffered so much at the hands of the Vatican and papal center....”

Cornwell’s assessment of John Paul II, Karol the Great, gives way to Karol the Autocrat. The author’s language becomes harsh, exaggerated and sometimes flamboyant. Thus he writes of “countless millions” of Catholics driven away; never have Catholics been so divided; never has there been so much contempt and so on.

But Cornwell’s serious approach can be seen in his chapter on “The Sexual Abuse Scandal,” which provides a good analysis of this dreadful problem, its seriousness, and raises the question of the pope’s responsibility for the scandal. “Inevitably,” Cornwell writes, “the history of this period will note that the crisis erupted during John Paul’s watch, a period in which he presided over an increase in Rome’s authority and a decrease in diocesan authority. He should not escape censure for his failure to see the early signs of the crisis and to act appropriately. This past quarter century, the period of his pontificate, will be remembered above all for the priestly sexual abuse scandal and its far-reaching consequences.”

Cornwell finishes his work with a pertinent quotation from Cardinal Newman. Unfortunately, and this is a real flaw throughout his book, he gives no indication of the source for the quote: “John Henry Newman, the nineteenth-century Anglican convert, theologian, and cardinal, gave warning of the dangers of an autocratic, long–lived papacy. ‘It is anomaly,’ he wrote, ‘and bears no good fruit; he becomes a god, has no one to contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning it.’"

Excerpt from America Magazine
http://www.americamagazine.org/BookReview.cfm?textID=4093&articletypeid=31&issueID=525


http://www.wyandot.org/missions/inner.htm
October 19, 2006 Feast of St. John Brebeuf and Companions