The Crisis in the Catholic Church Is a Crisis for Civilisation

I am reminded by this essay of something said, if I remember correctly, by Molnár Tamás (Thomas Molnar) in his 1969 book, The Counter Revolution. He said it would only be in eternity that we learned whether a greater blow was delivered to our civilisation by the loss of the Baltic Republics to the Evil Empire, or the loss of Latin in the Church.

One note. The author says that Stupich claimed to have been quoted out of context in his infamous and idiotic 'bigger agenda' interview. This was written before the release of the unedited video showing he was quoted completely in context.

From A Political Refugee From the Global Village

I was moved by a remark the polymath David Goldman, an observant Orthodox Jew, made on Facebook yesterday.

A note to my many Catholic friends: My prayers are with you in this most difficult time. The Catholic Church is the founding institution of the West and the godmother of all the European nations. Its distress weakens civilization.

I only now see what a great danger the Catholic Church and the world is in because of priests interfering with minors, and how very extensive the evil has been, after reading the report of the Pennsylvania Attorney General's grand jury investigation two weeks ago.

If you didn't read about it, the report alleges that 300 priests interfered with a thousand children over seventy years, in one American state alone. These terrible crimes were kept hidden for many years.

The report of the Royal Commission in Australia, published in December, contained things that are outside the remit of a secular body, like the advice that celibacy for priests should be optional, but much more importantly the absolutely devastating allegation that no fewer than 7% - 7%! - of Australian priests have been guilty of abusing minors. 

Can this really be true?

Catholics (I, at any rate) had imagined that the number of guilty men was a microscopic percentage of priests. I had read Andrew Brown (a careful Guardian journalist who describes himself as 'a very Protestant atheist') saying that the reason so many cases of Catholic priests had come to light was that the Catholic Church was more transparent than other institutions and that child abuse is widespread everywhere.

I no longer think this is convincing and hope it is not true.

Then there is this story, published this week, of nuns in Vermont killing children in the 1950s and 1960s.

Grand guignol, except it is true apparently.

Back in 1995 Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, caused a flurry in the press when he said that 

Christianity might diminish into a barely discernable presence

and might survive only in cysts resembling the kibbutzim of Israel.

The end of Christendom is happening at the same time as the meaning of the sexes, of sex and of marriage is being rethought from first principles and Europe becomes, with Pope Francis's ardent approval, increasingly Muslim.

This is the setting for the seemingly never-ending child abuse scandals.

David Goldman, in an article written in 2005 that repays reading, quoted George Weigel, John Paul II's biographer saying 

Europe, and especially Western Europe, is in the midst of a crisis of civilizational morale..The demographics are unmistakable: Europe is dying. The wasting disease that has beset this once greatest of civilizations is not physical, however. It is a disease in the realm of the human spirit ... Europe ... is boring itself to death. Europe's current demographic trend lines, coupled with the radicalization of Islam that seems to be a by-product of some Muslims' encounter with contemporary, secularized Europe, could eventually produce a 22nd-century, or even late-21st-century, Europe increasingly influenced by, and perhaps even dominated by, militant Islamic populations ... it is allowing radicalized 21st-century Muslims - who think of their forebears' military defeats at Poitiers in 732 ... as temporary reversals en route to Islam's final triumph in Europe - to imagine that the day of victory is not far off.

David Goldman went on in 2005 to say

From an institutional vantage point the Church appears weakened beyond repair. Not only the faith but also the faithful are at risk. I hold out no hope for today's Europeans.

My brilliant friend Bunny Sheffield said that people who do not believe in their religion are destined to be ruled by people who believe in theirs. This is much the conclusion of Douglas Murray in his devastating book 'The Strange Death of Europe'.

Now the terrible discoveries about paedophilia, pederasty and the way in which they were covered up have become entangled with what is obviously a well-planned attempt to undermine the present Pope and even force his resignation.

Archbishop Vigano alleged, in a move timed to spoil the Pope's visit to Ireland, that he informed the Pope of allegations of unspeakable crimes committed by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. According to the Archbishop, he told Pope Francis that when Pope Benedict XVI discovered the truth he ordered Cardinal McCarrick to leave the seminary where he was living, dedicate himself to penance and avoid public life. In fact, the Cardinal defied the Pope's orders. Despite being told this, Pope Francis nevertheless gave McCarrick an influential position in his circle.

Why did Benedict's attempt to isolate McCarrick (which sources close to the Pope Emeritus apparently confirm) not succeed? I suspect that if we knew we would know why Benedict abdicated.

The reason he gave, that he was too old to travel the world, did not make sense. Popes before Paul VI never left Italy and Paul VI only made nine forays abroad in his 15 year reign.

Archbishop Vigano's motives or his views on the present papacy do not matter - his allegations mean the Pope has lost his authority, unless he can explain his conduct. This he has refused to do.

The innumerable child abuse crimes are also entangled with the discovery that many senior clergymen, in the Vatican and around the world, are practising homosexuals - something that deeply shocks Catholics but no longer necessarily shocks non-Catholics - and the allegation, from conservatives, that most of the cases of paedophilia are in fact pederasty, which is to say sexual activity between homosexual men and adolescents.

That a large proportion of the cases which are spoken of as paedophilia are not paedophilia but pederasty is undoubtedly true.

I have seen it written that in 80% of cases of interference with minors the victims are boys who have reached puberty but I do not know of evidence for this. A priest friend referred me to the John Jay report back in 2004. Looking up that report, I found that in this case the largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.

But, of course, only roughly half the children in the age group 11 to 14 would have reached puberty.

The press rarely explains what is meant by sexual assault, a phrase that covers a multitude of sins, but the 2004 report went into detail. 

Priests allegedly committed acts which were classified into more than 20 categories. The most frequent acts allegedly committed were: touching over the victim’s clothing (52.6%), touching under the victim's clothes (44.9%), cleric performing oral sex (26%), victim disrobed (25.7%), and penile penetration or attempted penile penetration (22.4%). Many of the abusers were alleged to have committed multiple types of abuse against individual victims, and relatively few priests committed only the most minor acts. Of the 90% of the reported incidents for which we had specific offense details, 141 incidents, or one and one half percent, were reported that included only verbal abuse and/or the use of pornography.

What is to be done? The Pope's words in Ireland asking forgiveness for the Church now sound pretty disgusting. Are liberals or homosexuals to blame for these terrible crimes or are the old school conservative clergy?

I am not clear, but it is clear that the smoke of Satan is in the Church, as Pope Paul VI said all those years ago.

Archbishop Blaise Cupich of Chicago commented tellingly on the allegations by Archbishop Vigano: 

“The Pope has a bigger agenda. He’s got to get on with other things of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the Church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this. 

"Quite frankly, they also don’t like him because he’s a Latino.”

The Archbishop of Chicago later claimed to have been quoted out of context, but all quotations are out of context and his words deserve a lot of meditating on.

I am sure the Pope will not abdicate over this, though he might abdicate due to old age. In any case, he suddenly has little stature or authority any more, which would make his papacy pointless, were it not for his power to appoint liberal bishops and cardinals.