Letter #8, 2019: Tomorrow

Acasă > Ştiri > Arhivă Ştiri

Google Translate

Timp stanga: 0,13s...

Ştiri şi Evenimente

Letter #8, 2019: Tomorrow

[2019-02-21]

[Engleză]

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

"You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." —Walker Percy, an American Catholic writer

Tomorrow

Tomorrow the long-awaited Vatican "summit" on the sexual abuse of children in the Church begins.

For four days, February 21, 22, 23 and 24, the heads of all the world's bishops' conferences will meet with Pope Francis, many cardinals and many Vatican officials to discuss this tragic corruption inside of the Church.

The Church and the world are watching to see how our Church, and Pope Francis, face this problem.

This meeting will be, in a sense, the "final act" of the 6th year of Pope Francis' pontificate (the 7th year of his papacy will begin in mid-March 2019 — Francis was elected on March 13, 2013, and he inaugurated his papacy six days later, on March 19, 2013).

====

These past few days have been filled with:

—preliminary decisions (the exemplary "de-frocking" of former archbishop and cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 88, now to be referred to simply as "Mr. McCarrick")

—preliminary scandalous books (Sodom: In the Closet of the Vatican, by French self-described homosexual activist Frederic Martel, a book that is in many ways a peculiar "curtain-raiser" for this week's meeting)

—preliminary Vatican and other press conferences to "set the agenda" and "manage expectations"

—preliminary interviews of victims about what they expect and hope for from the meeting

—preliminary denunciations from critics of Rome's decision to limit the discussion to the abuse of children, and to leave out of the proceedings the "other question" of an apparently very widespread acceptance, for decades, of active homosexuality in the Catholic priesthood.

=========

Perhaps the most striking aspect of these days has been a new willingness of Francis' critics to criticize him directly, openly, almost defiantly.

Most striking in this regard has been the new tone from German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller.

Mueller, a tall, physically imposing man — he seems to be the tallest of all of the cardinals — has up until recently been "meek and mild"... the soul of "sweet reason."

But just in recent days, Mueller has begun to speak with a new voice.

There is a new toughness in his talk, especially regarding the circle of advisors around Pope Francis. (You will be able to see this toughness in the interview with Mueller published below.)

This seems all the more significant since Mueller is arguably the cardinal among all of the cardinals who is intellectually closest to Emeritus Pope Benedict, 91 (Mueller is the general editor of Benedict's collected works — this means Benedict has put his entire life's work into Mueller's hands.)

Yet, Mueller is not alone.

Other critics of Pope Francis — including the German cardinal Walter Brandmueller and the American cardinal Raymond Burke — have begun to speak out with new vigor (Burke has just established a new website).

Mueller, Brandmueller, Burke, and others, have taken to criticizing "the circle around the Pope" for "misleading" the pontiff, and to calling on Francis to take decisive action to end the "confusion" they say is now widespread in the Church. (See text at end below)

All of this culminated today in a striking "silent protest" in Rome's Piazza San Silvestro (St. Silvester was Pope at the time of Constantine, in the early 300s) with 100 Catholics from around the world simply standing in silence to “break down the wall of silence created by the Church authorities.” (You can see a picture of the protest in the link to an article about it published below, Article #3)

So, here we are.

Three things seem important to keep in mind:

1) The abuse of children, an abomination, must be prevented, and, when not prevented, punished.

But the entire modern world, our entire post-Christian culture, this entire "deranged age," as novelist Walker Percy called it, is abusive toward the innocence of children, with its confusing messages, its almost limitless internet pornography, its flawed "sexual education" programs.

To help defend innocent children from abuse of all types requires a strong Christian presence and witness.

The weakening of the Church, the dismantling of the Church under secular pressures, would leave millions upon millions of children with less defense against such abuses.

The sins of men and women in the Church do not mean the message and "Good News" of the Church — of Christ — have failed or should be abandoned. On the contrary... the message is more important than ever.

2) The "world" and the "Prince" of this world have always sought to possess, control, condition or even to eliminate the Church (the great persecutions); today's conflicts risk breaking the unity of Catholics, diminishing the strength of the Church. This is a danger.

We must strive to retain our unity, and reaffirm it.

3) Pope Francis has often spoke of the modern danger of "ideological colonization"; that is, of the pervasive, almost irresistible power of post-Christian and anti-Christian "ideologies" which propagate an ambiguous, de-sacralizing vision of man and are antagonistic to and derisive of the traditional Christian teaching that men and women are made "in the image and likeness of God." The deep source of our dignity...

So Pope Francis has encouraged us to stand strong against such ideologies. He has been in this courageous and in many ways exemplary.

Therefore, what seems to be needed now is a clear, entirely unambiguous re-statement of these traditional beliefs — what we believe is the nature and destiny of men and women ("what a man is and what he should do," to use Percy's language) — and this by Francis himself, to overcome the doubts and divisions that threaten his papacy, and the Church.

====

Below are four articles:

(1) A recent Cardinal Mueller interview, in which he speaks in his new "tough" tone

(2) A February 16 Catholic News Agency article by American writer Ed Condon wrapping up the McCarrick case — and noting several open questions that need answering, including the question of... money

(3) An article by Italian Catholic Prof. Roberto de Mattei about the "silent protest" in Rome today

(4) An article about the 500-page book Sodom: In the Closet of the Vatican, written by Italian journalist Maria Antonietta CalabrĂ˛

(5) The appeal to the attendees at this week's meeting released today by Cardinals Burke and Brandmueller

=====

(1) Vatican’s former doctrine chief: Pope is ‘surrounded’ by people who don’t know much theology

By Maike Hickson

February 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – In a new interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Cardinal Gerhard Müller stated that Pope Francis allows himself to be “dependent” upon his counselors who have “base motives.”

He also said that when he was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), he had “the statistically perfect overview” over the clerical sexual abuse cases, pointing out that “far more than 80% of the victims of sexual abuse under 18 were young men in puberty or post-puberty.”

Furthermore, Cardinal Müller responded to the recent harsh criticism coming from Cardinal Walter Kasper over his Manifesto of Faith, calling the criticism a “commissioned work.”

Speaking to Walter Mayr of Der Spiegel (16 February edition), Cardinal Müller criticized Pope Francis, his pontificate, and especially his leadership and personnel policy. When Mayr said to Müller that “you do not only criticize the papal teaching, but also the leadership of the Vatican,” and asked, “what goes wrong?”

Cardinal Müller responded: “For example the arbitrary handling of personnel. There is no dismissal protection, no staff council. One can be dismissed here, without receiving any reasons, as it happened with three of my employees [at the CDF]. I also told the Pope that I find this impossible.”

Further commenting on the Pope, Müller added: “Unfortunately, he is surrounded by people who have little understanding of theology and of the Church's social teaching, but who do not wish to abandon the century-old mentality of a courtier.”

Further commenting on these courtiers, whom he called “courtesans,” the German cardinal added that they “take every [papal] word, every comment made in passing – even if it be issued in an interview – as sacrosanct. As if God Himself had spoken.”

Here, Cardinal Müller made it clear that “that, which the Pope says as a private person, has not the slightest thing to do with infallibility in questions of the Faith.” Anybody who questions something the pope did or said is the “accused” by the courtesans of “plotting against the Pope.”

Müller added that “persons with the highest achievements for the Church” are not spared from such accusations. “This is how one polarizes, instead of contributing to the unity in the truth,” he said.

The German prelate made it clear that when Pope Francis speaks about “this or that event in the world, it has just the same value as the judgment of any citizen who expresses his opinion.” “In worldly matters,” he added, “reticence would be desired.” The Church's authority is needed there, he explained, “where it is about the moral dimension in politics, economy, and environmental questions.”

When asked why he was dismissed as the prefect of the CDF in 2017, Cardinal Müller responded that there were people in the circles around the Pope – “among others some Argentine counselors” – “who had launched for quite some time, resentments against the Congregation for the Faith and against me as the Prefect. After all, one knew what I stood for, and that Pope Benedict XVI had appointed me.”

Here, Cardinal Müller was likely referring to Archbishop Manuel Fernandez who, already in 2015, publicly criticized Cardinal Müller (see here a report on the controversy between these two prelates).

“Someone was obviously not content with my position – that is to say, we are not to place ourselves in contradiction to Holy Scripture and to essential statements of the Church's Tradition, but, rather, we are to serve them,” Müller stated. When asked whether the Pope is a heretic, the cardinal responded: “No. This Pope is orthodox.” “But,” he added, “it is his task to unify the Church in the truth, and it would be dangerous if he gave into the temptation to play that group that vaunts its progressivism against the rest of the Church.”

Further criticizing the Pope’s style of governance, Müller stated that “it also cannot be that the Universal Church is being led according to the rules of the Jesuit Order. The Pope – in this case, Pope Francis – is not to the Church that what a Jesuit General Superior is to his provincials or to individual priests.” Further explaining his thought, the cardinal said that everybody is formed by one's own life experience, but that such experience can be “a little bit one-sided.” To counter this one-sidedness, he added, one would need various counselors, for example from “the College of Cardinals and the theologians and bishops of the world.”

Asked whether Pope Francis has made himself too dependent upon his counselors, Cardinal Müller responded: “He makes himself dependent upon informers [“Zuträger”] and their often base motives, when he allows himself to be involved in personnel decisions concerning employees, all of whom he cannot know personally. Those three [employees] from my Congregation – who were very competent, especially in questions of sexual abuse – were fired without speaking one word with them.” He asked: “What does this do to young people who did not commit any fault and who always served the Church and the Pope loyally?”

Asked about his recent Manifesto of Faith and whether this is not a “late vengeance” against the Pope, Cardinal Müller answered: “True Catholics only wish a successful pontificate, also of Pope Francis, and they support him in every respect. For that, one has to put aside personal things.”

When speaking about the upcoming 21-24 February Sexual Abuse Summit in Rome, Cardinal Müller once more pointed to the homosexual factor in the clerical sex abuse crisis that he said is being ignored.

“In the Congregation for the Faith, we had the statistically perfect overview. Far more than 80% of the victims of sexual abuse under 18 years of age were young men in puberty or post-puberty. But at the upcoming Abuse Summit starting Thursday, these data are not to play any role, which is unreasonable,” he said. He made it once more clear that a priest “who cannot control himself, is not fit for the priesthood.”

For Cardinal Müller, Cardinal Kasper's recent critique of his Manifesto of Faith and his comparing Müller with Martin Luther, as LifeSiteNews reported, is a “commissioned work,” in which ecclesial power politics was victorious over theology.”

“Kasper calls the foundations of the Catholic Faith, which have been presented in the Catechism of our Church by Pope John Paul II, as 'half-truths'; thereby, he [Kasper] gives us a riddle that he alone can solve, perhaps because he saw that his sovereignty of interpretation concerning Pope Francis challenged, according to the motto: 'This is my Pope.'” Further commenting on his own Manifesto of Faith, Müller made it clear that “my text nearly exclusively made out of quotes from the Creed, Holy Scripture, and the Catholic Catechism.”

Kasper “insinuates that I identify the Antichrist with the Pope. To attribute this to me, only shows that he has read my Manifesto of Faith with the wrong set of glasses.” Müller called Kasper's claim “the greatest ecumenical joke of the century.” Müller added that he agrees with Luther on one point, namely, that “in principle, and also today, the truth of the Gospels should have priority in the Church over power and politics.”

========

(2) Analysis: After McCarrick sex abuse verdict, money and power questions remain

By Ed Condon (CNA)

Vatican City, Feb 16, 2019 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Holy See announced Saturday the conviction of Theodore McCarrick on charges of the sexual abuse of minors and adults — aggravated by the abuse of power — and solicitation in the confessional. The administrative penal process imposed a penalty of laicization.

A special congresso of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith imposed the Jan. 11 decision. It was appealed to the Feria IV, the regular meeting of the CDF’s full episcopal membership, who rejected the appeal on Feb. 13. No further appeal is possible.

The final disposition of McCarrick’s case marks the end of a luciferian fall from grace by a man once seen as the leader of the Catholic Church in the United States, and one of the most influential cardinals world-wide.

To go from membership in the college of cardinals in June to being expelled from the clergy altogether in February is unprecedented.

While the intervening months have seemed interminable for many Catholics in the pews, as accusations mounted and details of abuse emerged, the canonical process which declared McCarrick guilty proceeded at lightning speed by Vatican standards.

Now that the McCarrick verdict is announced, just in time for the pope’s looming summit on sexual abuse, many of the former archbishop’s former colleagues are hoping he will exit the news along with the clerical state.

But McCarrick’s laicization answers few of the questions raised by his case, the most pressing of which is how a man with an obviously scandalous track record was able to rise so high in ecclesiastical responsibility.

Since the first allegation against McCarrick was made public in June, a number of accounts have emerged apparently showing that Rome was aware of McCarrick’s behavior, or at least his proclivities, for years.

Former apostolic nuncio to Washington, Cardinal Agostino Cacciavillan, has said that he first heard accounts of McCarrick’s misbehavior in 1994.

Fr. Boniface Ramsey raised the issue of McCarrick’s misconduct with seminarians at the now infamous beach house to Cacciavillan’s successor in 2001, receiving a tacit receipt of the allegations — together with a request for any related information about a Newark priest — from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State in 2006.

In January, CNA broke the news that McCarrick’s eventual successor in Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, had delivered a similar accusation about McCarrick, seminarians, and the New Jersey beach house, to the nuncio in 2004.

During this decade, McCarrick rose seemingly unchecked to become archbishop of the American capital see, a cardinal, and a wielder of enormous diplomatic influence, both within the Church and in the wider world.

Despite repeated calls from across the Church in the United States, and a rather qualified response from Rome, any serious account of how and by whom McCarrick was shielded for so long seems unlikely — at best.

Lurking behind the headlines of sex abuse remains the perennial question concerning murky Vatican affairs: what about the money?

McCarrick’s reputation as a cardinal with ready access to money was undisputed during his time in office, and is believed by many to have tipped the balance in favor of his laicization instead of a life of prayer and penance.

Ordinarily concerns about laicizing a cleric often center on their ability to provide for themselves if they are either infirm or of advanced age - McCarrick is 88.

Sources close to the former cardinal have previously told CNA that while McCarrick declined to draw a salary or a pension from any of the three dioceses he led, he does have access to a private income, unconnected to the Church.

One source close to McCarrick described him as “not without resources,” and that McCarrick received an income from annuities purchased over several years.

The size and sources of McCarrick’s private means remain unclear, especially if, as those close to him claim, he previously declined a salary or pension as a bishop.

Other unanswered questions about McCarrick’s finances concern the Archbishop’s Fund, a charitable fund under his personal control from 2001 until June of last year. CNA has confirmed that McCarrick was able to arrange for other institutions with which he was affiliated to give hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for his “works of charity and other miscellaneous expenses.”

McCarrick gave over control of the fund to the Archdiocese of Washington during June 2018.

While the archdiocese told CNA in August last year that the fund was audited annually and that “no irregularities were ever noticed,” it would not confirm the balance of the fund at the time McCarrick turned over control, how much money had passed through the fund over the years, or where it had gone.

McCarrick was known for both his institutional charitable support and also for more personal acts of generosity.

In September 2018, a former curial official, a cardinal, recalled McCarrick’s habit of doling out large sums, in cash, to senior officials in Rome.

“When he would visit Rome, Cardinal McCarrick was well-known for handing out envelopes of money to different bishops and cardinals around the curia to thank them for their work,” the cardinal told CNA.

“Where these ‘honoraria’ came from or what they were for, exactly, was never clear — but many accepted them anyway.”

Tracking the flow and effects of money in Rome has eluded generations of reforming efforts. Pope Francis began his reign by showing serious signs of reforming intent, setting up the Council for the Economy and the Prefecture for the Economy. But despite early efforts, attempts at financial transparency have met with numerous setbacks, and significant internal resistance.

Meanwhile, in his seismic “testimony” released in August last year, former papal nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano said that McCarrick’s rise was opposed by at least some senior curial figures, including Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re as head of the Congregation for Bishops. But no clear account has emerged of who championed McCarrick’s cause, or if they may have benefited from his largesse.

Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

Contor Accesări: 1002, Ultimul acces: 2025-03-23 03:47:44

Timp total: 0,14s...

[]:1