You Couldn’t Make It up if You Tried

Israel Folau had his career destroyed. 'Israel’s sin? Reminding people in a private Instagram post about, well, sin.'

From the Catholic Weekly 

By James Parker 

Israel Folau, one of Australia’s greatest rugby players, had his contract terminated weeks before the 2019 Rugby World Cup.

Israel’s sin? Reminding people in a private Instagram post about, well, sin.

The Folau fallout is no small event. It is not another simple offering from the national news factory. No. It is something much deeper. And yes, sinister.

It is a most poignant warning to the Christian community, and above all to those in positions of church leadership.

Folau’s story highlights on the world stage the next era of a very different future being deliberately forced upon Australia that must be resisted at all costs. Why? Because lives both temporal and eternal are at risk.

How do I know this? Because I was present as a gay rights’ activist at conversations by leading gay strategists from the US and the UK that outlined over three decades ago what we are seeing transpire today.

The strategic goal was that men and women with same-sex attraction should infiltrate and take leadership within key areas of society with the purpose of using their positions to bring about homosuperiority. Yes, you read that correctly. Not homonormativity or mere equality, but homosuperiority.

These areas included the entertainment industry, mainstream media, education, politics, healthcare – especially psychology and psychiatry, the military, religion and finally sport.

There is no wonder that the fiercest battle is being waged today at the heart of one of our toughest team sports, rugby.

Homosuperiority was to be achieved by following the propaganda manifesto After The Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays In The 90s. Written by two Harvard graduates, neuropsychiatrist Marshall Kirk and public communications consultant Hunter Madsen, the manifesto has been followed meticulously, and is working exceedingly well.

Some of the manifesto’s key themes rise up consistently in the Folau debacle. Principle five of the eight laid down in After The Ball is entitled: portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers.

This principle encourages the use of propaganda. It states that “propaganda relies more upon emotional manipulation than upon logic, since its goal is, in fact, to bring about a change in the public’s feelings”.

It goes on to say that “propaganda can be unabashedly subjective and one-sided. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this.” Cue the entrance of Rugby Australia CEO, Raelene Castle.

It states that it is acceptable to call people “homophobic” or “homo haters” whenever they fail to wholly embrace homosexual views, opinions, or behaviour. Cue the entrance of Qantas CEO, Alan Joyce.

It requires that any speech which opposes homosexual behaviour should be banned as “a clear and present danger to public order”. Cue the entrance of Senator Penny Wong and the Labor Party’s fight to severely limit the freedom of religious schools and religious adult education institutions.

Principle five ends saying that “in time, we see no reason why more and more diversity should not be introduced into the projected image” citing “drag queens, bull dykes, and other exotic elements of the gay community”. Cue the entrance of Senator Louise Pratt renowned for saying “drag queen story time is a wonderful idea”.

What we are experiencing is calculated intolerance manifest by the self-appointed tolerance police whose mantra is #LoveWins.

These are the same people who never ceased to pressure Bill Shorten to appoint a new federal minister to legalise and enforce fifty plus grey shades of non-heterosexual expression should Bill’s stay in politics have been lengthened. Thankfully, it was, ahem, shortened.

Cast your mind briefly to Taiwan. Merely a few months ago, two thirds of this small yet significant Asian nation voted against the legalisation of same-sex marriage. No nation given the opportunity to vote has spoken more clearly. And yet again, politicians this past week blatantly ignored the wishes of their people and legalised same-sex marriage.

Australia’s own rainbow elite are well-financed. Their tentacles have infiltrated every major pillar of society, especially politics. They have global strategists behind their every step, and the backing of national corporations such as Qantas, Land Rover and the AFL.

We are led to believe that they are powerful, and even to be feared. We’re not talking about your average family member or friend who experiences same-sex attraction, who quietly works hard and struggles through life like everyone else. No. We are talking rather about an angry, factious minority that care merely about their own agenda of promoting all matters non-heterosexual.

The LGBTQI community need not be the slightest threat to Christianity and in reality they are not. Think about it. The Christian community might well challenge much of what activist rainbow warriors stand for.

However, where we are ostracised and demonised by them for our faith, we do the reverse and embrace others with open arms, inviting them to pursue holiness alongside us.

Folau’s greatest attempt at conversion has not been on the rugby pitch. It has, rather, been directly aimed at the hearts and minds of contemporary society. The most noble, worthy of conversions.

The church needs to wake up and follow his example. We are all sinners, and our sin prevents us from being united as one with God in his heavenly kingdom. This separation can at best be described as hell.

Israel Folau was right all along.

Pro-Choice Journalists Would Make Orwell Proud

How true! You may read Orwell's entire essay here. It is well worth your time.

From  Catholic Answers 

By  Trent Horn 

In George Orwell’s novel 1984, one of the ways the dystopian, totalitarian state of Oceania controls its citizens is through the manipulation of language, particularly through the use of euphemisms that mask the government’s authoritarianism. This kind of language is now called “doublespeak,” and a description of it can be found in Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language, which was published three years before 1984:

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. . . . Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness. . . . if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.

Ironically, the version of Orwell’s essay I’m citing is hosted at the website of National Public Radio, which, along with other media outlets, is engaging in its own doublespeak when it comes to reporting on abortion. Mark Memmott, NPR’s supervising senior editor for Standards and Practices, recently published a reminder of “best practices” when it comes to reporting on abortion, given how much it’s been in the news lately. Here are some highlights that would make Orwell proud:

The term partial-birth is used by those opposed to the procedure; simply using the phrase so-called partial birth abortion is not sufficient without explaining who’s calling it that. Partial-birth is not a medical term and has no exact parallel in medical terminology.

If reporters can’t use common terms that express medical truths, then maybe NPR should change the title of its April 14th article “High Stress Drives Up Your Risk Of A Heart Attack. Here’s How To Chill Out” to ““High Stress Drives Up Your Risk Of Myocardial Infarction. Here’s How To Chill Out.” Partial-birth abortion fairly summarizes the essence of this procedure, especially when we compare it to how medical providers who favor its legality describe it. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the procedure ends with the “partial evacuation of the intracranial contents of a living fetus to effect vaginal delivery of a dead but otherwise intact fetus.”

In other words, the abortionist cuts a hole in the fetus’s skull and uses a vacuum to suck the brain out. He then delivers the child’s dead body, since without a brain the head is small enough to pass through the cervix. Sounds like a “partial birth” abortion to me. And though the procedure is widely believed to be illegal due to the Supreme Court’s 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart decision, there is virtually no oversight of abortion clinics, so it is difficult to know if these are still happening and, if so, how often.

NPR doesn’t use the term “abortion clinics.” We say instead, “medical or health clinics that perform abortions.” The point is to not to use abortion before the word clinic. The clinics perform other procedures and not just abortions.

Tell that to Warren Hern, whose website describes his work at “Boulder Abortion Clinic” and where the only services that are offered are first-, second-, and third-trimester abortions. NPR doesn’t use this roundabout language when describing fertility clinics, though I agree that “abortion clinic” should be avoided, if only because clinics are places where people are healed and not killed. “Abortion facility” would be a more appropriate term to use.

The term “unborn” implies that there is a baby inside a pregnant woman, not a fetus. Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses. Incorrectly calling a fetus a “baby” or “the unborn” is part of the strategy used by antiabortion groups to shift language/legality/public opinion.

This would be on par with a defender of infanticide saying, “The term ‘newborn’ implies that there is a baby in the NICU. Babies are not babies until they can recognize their parents. They’re neonates.” A “fetus” is just a human being at an early stage of development, such as an infant or toddler, and the word itself means “offspring” or “young one.”

The only people engaged in a cynical linguistic strategy are pro-choicers who use the term “fetus” to describe unwanted unborn humans. Wanted unborn children, on the other hand, are graced with the title of “baby.” Or at least, that seems to be the case when you read other NPR stories that describe concerns of pregnant women that “the baby won’t be born too soon” or how to “push the baby down the birth canal.” CNN is also guilty of this kind of subterfuge when it describes the “fetus” who is the focus of “heartbeat bills” that ban abortion but then, in articles published at the same time, reports of a murdered pregnant woman, “her unborn baby was cut out of her.”

Whether it’s on social media or in conversation, remember to ask for clarification when you are faced with this kind of doublespeak. For example, when someone talks about the “right to choose,” ask in response, “The right to choose what?” When he switches to abortion, ask him, “What do you mean by the word abortion? What does abortion exactly do?”

But no matter what you do, always get the conversation back to this single question: “What are the unborn?” If someone obstinately refers only to “fetuses” or “pregnancies,” ask him, “What is a fetus? What is the difference between a pregnant woman and a non-pregnant woman?”

In short, make the pro-choice advocate defend the indefensible: that it is morally appropriate to kill a developing human being just because he is unwanted, smaller, and more dependent than the rest of us.

Patriotism Is a 'Red-Flag for Racism'

In other words, if you are concerned with the invasion of Europe and the destruction of our Græco-Roman Catholic civilisation and culture, you are automatically a 'racist'!

From the Daily Mail

By Henry Martin 

Patriotism is a 'red-flag for racism': Army officers are warned soldiers calling themselves 'patriots' or who make 'inaccurate generalisations about the Left' could be right-wing extremists in their ranks

• A guide to help British Army officers spot extreme right-wingers was leaked 
• The leaflet is titled 'Extreme Right Wing (XRW) Indicators & Warnings'
• Signs to look for include describing oneself as a 'patriot', seeing opponents as 'traitors' and 'referring to political correctness as some left-wing plot' 
• An MoD spokesperson confirmed the leaflet is genuine and added: 'The card does not suggest that all patriots are extremists'

A guide to help high-ranking British officers spot right-wing extremists in their ranks has been leaked - and the signs include people calling themselves 'patriots' and making 'inaccurate generalisations about the Left'. 

The leaflet, made in 2017, is titled 'Extreme Right Wing (XRW) Indicators & Warnings' - and advises senior army staff to look out for people who 'use the term Islamofacism' [sic] and call people who challenge their 'XRW' views 'indoctrinated'.  

The document, which an MoD spokesperson confirmed to MailOnline is genuine, was leaked online, sparking threads on several social media platforms such as Reddit. 

The document, which an MoD spokesperson confirmed to MailOnline is genuine, was leaked online, sparking threads on several social media platforms

Other criteria the leaflet says are an indicator of 'XRW' beliefs include describing multicultural cities as 'lost', adding '-istan' to British place names, having tattoos with 'overt and covert XRW iconography' and viewing opponents as 'traitors'. 

Speaking of an 'impending racial conflict or "race war"' and making generalisations about Muslims and Jews are also warning signs, the leaflet states.  

Officers are told to look out for individuals who discuss the creation of 'white only communities' and 'become increasingly angry at perceived injustices or threats to so called national identity'.

An MoD spokesperson told MailOnline the card was produced in late 2017, following the arrest of four soldiers who were accused of alignment with National Action. 

It is not known whether similar literature has been produced on how to spot left-wing extremists or Islamists.  

Last year British army veteran Corporal Mikko Vehvilainen, 34, was convicted of being a member of neo-Nazi terror group National Action and jailed for eight years.

The Royal Anglian Regiment soldier was kicked out of the Army after his arrest in September 2017, along with another soldier as he tried to form an underground network and stockpiled weapons. 

The Army's most senior soldier, Sergeant Major Glenn Haughton, had previously posted a social media video which said: 'If you're a serving soldier or a would-be soldier, and you hold these intolerant and extremist views, as far as I'm concerned, there is no place for you in the British Army - so get out.' 

The leaflet was designed to 'educate Chains of Command on the indicators and warnings of personnel who may harbour extremist views', and was said to highlight 'several indicators and warnings, the demonstration of a significant number of which could be associated with someone with extreme right-wing views'.     

An MoD spokesperson told MailOnline: 'The values of our armed forces and the nation they serve are totally incompatible with extremist views. 

'We have robust measures in place to ensure those exhibiting these views are not permitted to serve.'  

The spokesperson added: 'Exhibiting one or two of these in no way suggests someone is an extremist, and the card does not suggest that all patriots are extremists.

'Through the Government’s counter terrorism and counter extremism strategies (PREVENT) the MOD takes a comprehensive approach to tackling all forms of extremism and terrorism.'

Earlier this month The Ferret reported that the UK's armed forces were being trained how to spot signs of radicalisation, and a freedom of information request revealed that between January 1, 2017 and January 1, 2019, there were 6,613 new records added to a service police database called REDCAPS. 

The MoD added that 'the armed forces are working alongside Prevent teams within the Home Office and police to provide units with regional points of contact who are there to take the lead and provide advice,' the outlet reported. 

Extreme right-wing indicators and warnings, according to the army 

When spotting people who have 'extreme right-wing (XRW) views', army officers are told to look for people who: 

• Describe themselves as 'Patriots'
• Add 'istan' to British place names
• Describe multicultural towns as 'lost'
• Have tattoos with overt and covert XRW iconography
• Look at opponents as 'Traitors'
• Use the term 'Islamofascism'
• Discuss the creation of 'white only' communities
• Become increasingly angry at perceived injustices or threats to so called 'National Identity'
• Refer to individuals ready to challenge their XRW views as being 'indoctrinated'
• Make generalisations about Muslims and Jews
• Claim that immigration is the root of injustices against vulnerable people (e.g. old age pensioners, veterans)
• Involve colleagues in closed social media groups
• Refer to Political Correctness as some left wing or communist plot
• Make inaccurate generalisations about 'the Left' or Government
• Threaten violence when losing an argument, although claiming that XRW groups protest peacefully
• Actively seek out impressionable individuals to indoctrinate or recruit
• Use blatantly untruthful or incorrect references to immigrants, Judaism or Islam
• Talk of an impending racial conflict or 'Race War'
• Claim that it is acceptable to abuse Jews or Muslims as Judaism or Islam are not 'races'
• Have extreme XRW group stickers or badges on clothing and personal items

Pitronella Fredrika Peterson, R+I+P

Grandma, holding me.

Today is the Feast of St Petronilla. My Grandmother Weismiller was baptised Pitronella Frederika Peterson in 1876. Thus, today was her Name Day. When she emigrated at the age of 11, she took an 'American' name, Nelly, based on the 'nella' of her Christian name.

She often worried that Nelly wasn't her 'legal' name , but she made sure that she'd be buried under it! In 1919, when she finally could afford a grave stone for my Grandfather  (+1916), she had it engraved 'Maximilian Weismiller, 1863-1916. And, below that, Nelly, His Wife , 1876- ----. We laid her there in 1973.

Happy Name Day, Grandma, and Rest in Peace.

Figueiredo Report the First of Many to Come?

The truth will always come out in the end!

From the National Catholic Register

By Fr Raymond J. de Souza

COMMENTARY: Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo’s release of information on Theodore McCarrick suggests what a new era of whistleblowing might look like in the Church.

Eleven months after the first revelations about the now-laicized Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a papal interview with a Mexican journalist and revelations from a former secretary have added to what we know, underscoring the importance of the documents that the Vatican is still reviewing in preparation for a public report.

The developments also suggest what a new culture of whistleblowing might look like in the Church after the publication of the Holy Father’s new sexual-abuse norms, Vos Estis Lux Mundi.

In response to a question from the Mexican journalist about the allegations of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Pope Francis emphatically denied that he knew anything about McCarrick’s scandalous behavior before last summer. That comports with a statementreleased in October 2018 by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who stated that he had never spoken to Pope Francis about McCarrick and the various efforts his office had made to restrict his public ministry and travels.

Archbishop Viganò claimed in August 2018 to have told the Holy Father personally about McCarrick in a private meeting in June 2013. In the new interview, Pope Francis says that he does not remember whether Archbishop Viganò told him about the former cardinal or not.

Whatever the Holy Father may or may not have known, excerpts of correspondence published Tuesday by Mgsr. Anthony Figueiredo seem to indicate that the broad outline of what Archbishop Viganò claimed about McCarrick is true.

Msgr. Figueiredo served as McCarrick’s secretary soon after his ordination — by McCarrick himself — in 1994-95. Msgr. Figueiredo then spent most of the next 25 years in Rome and acted as McCarrick’s assistant in Rome, especially after the former cardinal’s retirement in 2006. Msgr. Figueiredo also served as a senior contributor to EWTN News’ Vatican Bureau in 2017 and 2018, until he was arrested on drunken-driving charges in the United Kingdom in October 2018.

According to Msgr. Figueiredo’s materials, Cardinal McCarrick was told in 2008 by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, then the prefect for bishops, to move out of the seminary where he lived in retirement, not to travel to Rome, and not to accept any speaking engagements, public appearances or travel without prior approval from Cardinal Re.

It would be shocking if such extraordinary measures against a cardinal were taken without the approval of Pope Benedict XVI. The monsignor’s materials do not explicitly indicate what Benedict’s role was and what decisions he personally took.

Msgr. Figueiredo released his “report” online, quoting from correspondence from McCarrick that describe a letter from Cardinal Re in 2008 with the restrictions and that McCarrick discussed those restrictions with Archbishop Donald Wuerl, his successor as the archbishop of Washington.

The materials were reviewed by CBS and the Catholic news outlet Crux for authenticity, but the original documents themselves were not made public, though Msgr. Figueiredo suggests that he may do so in the future.

The materials appear to clarify several important points:

• Cardinal McCarrick acknowledged the practice of sharing his bed with seminarians at his beach house in a letter to the secretary of state. This was a familial, and not sexual, arrangement, McCarrick insisted, and no minors were involved. He stopped the practice after 2002. (In 2008, McCarrick’s sexual contact with minors, dating back decades and involving the sacrament of confession, was not known. It was for those canonical crimes that he was laicized in January 2019.)
• In 2008, Cardinal Re wrote to McCarrick to impose restrictions upon him. These were not the results of canonical discipline, but were arrived at more informally. Nevertheless, for a cardinal to be told not to travel, appear in public or come to Rome is highly unusual.
• Archbishop Wuerl was notified by McCarrick of the letter and assisted in finding a new place for McCarrick to live.
• Cardinal Wuerl maintained all last year that he knew nothing about McCarrick’s misbehavior. In January 2019, when it was revealed that Cardinal Wuerl himself had reported allegations about McCarrick to Rome in 2004, Wuerl said that he had forgotten about that. It may be that Cardinal Wuerl also forgot about the 2008 letter from Cardinal Re and his role in carrying it out.
• McCarrick did not abide by the restrictions. He continued to travel in subsequent years, including to Rome, and to appear in public. It is apparent that whatever decisions were taken by Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Re regarding McCarrick, neither of them, nor any other officials in the Roman Curia, nor the two apostolic nuncios to the United States — Archbishop Pietro Sambi until 2011 and Archbishop Viganò afterward — enforced the measures.
• After the election of Pope Francis in 2013, McCarrick’s travels on behalf of the Church increased, including trips to China. McCarrick wrote to Pope Francis to update him on this work.

Msgr. Figueiredo’s materials also confirm what Cardinal Ouellet said last October. The prefect for the Congregation for Bishops was very specific, stating that the archives of the congregation contained no record of any direct papal decision by either Pope Benedict or Pope Francis regarding McCarrick. He did acknowledge letters from Cardinal Re and from himself to the nuncios in Washington about McCarrick.

The Vatican announced in October 2018 that a review of all such documents was underway. The key 2008 letter from Cardinal Re has now been acknowledged by multiple sources. The results of the Vatican investigation ought now to make that public, as well as responses from McCarrick and, presumably, Cardinal Wuerl.

Whether the Vatican report — as promised last October — is ever produced and what it contains will be a test of Vatican transparency on the McCarrick matter.

Beyond that, however, Msgr. Figueiredo’s materials provide a glimpse of what a new era of whistleblowing might look like in the Church. The legislation Vos Estis comes into effect June 1, but the mandatory reporting that it requires — of sexual abuse of minors, of abuse of power and abuse of office for sexual purposes — is aimed at changing a clerical culture.

Vos Estis requires that all clerics report what they know, or have good reason to suspect, about abuse of minors, abuse of office and abuse of power. Importantly, it mandates reporting of the offenses themselves, as well as negligent behavior by superiors in dealing with allegations or attempts at cover-up.

“My actions in releasing this report at this time are encouraged by the Holy Father’s motu proprio Vos Estis Lux Mundi,” writes Msgr. Figueiredo, which is “based on the overriding principle that it is imperative to place in the public domain, at the right time and prudently, information that has yet to come to light and impacts directly on allegations of criminal activity, the restrictions imposed on my now-laicized former archbishop, and who knew what and when.”

The Pope’s document seems to have been drafted with the McCarrick case very much in mind. It would now make illegal the nonreporting of what “everybody knew” about McCarrick. In fact, not everybody knew, but some people did and chose to keep quiet, foremost of all the seminarians who were subject to what Vos Estis speaks of as an abuse of power. While the document does not apply to laymen — which seminarians, strictly speaking, are — it would apply to deacons. If the norms of Vos Estis Lux Mundi had been in place when McCarrick was archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, upon ordination as deacons, Newark seminarians — now clerics — would have been obliged to report their archbishop to the nuncio or to the Holy See.

Msgr. Figueiredo was ordained by McCarrick and chose the 25th anniversary of his ordination (May 28, 1994) to release his report. Is what we see from Msgr. Figueiredo now, after the fact, something of what we can expect to take place in real time under the requirements of Vos Estis Lux Mundi?

It would appear to be so, and recall that Vos Estis makes clear that anyone who makes such reports cannot be told to keep them confidential; sharing them with the media cannot be prohibited or punished.

The Figueiredo Report, unique as it deals with the high-profile case of now-Mr. McCarrick, may just be the first of many to come.

Father Raymond J. de Souza is the editor in chief of Convivium magazine.

“Uncle Ted” and Me… …and Several Matters of Considerably More Importance.

Mr Weigel is indeed “a rather potted plant neocon kind of guy.” He is an Americanist heretic and a thoroughgoing neo-con, but that in no way detracts from his analysis of the Pervert.

From  Catholic World Report 

By George Weigel

The dossier of correspondence between Theodore McCarrick and various officials of the Holy See, including Pope Francis, recently released by Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo, sheds light down the dark alleys of McCarrick’s career, highlighting his relentless self-promotion, even in retirement; his sycophancy with many superiors; his interference in Vatican diplomacy; and his brazen defiance of the orders of Pope Benedict XVI that he cease and desist from public activity. These are matters of considerable gravity, far more so than the cameo appearance I make in the letters.

In order to set the historical record straight, however, and to draw some salient lessons for this Catholic moment from my personal experience of McCarrick’s mendacity, I offer the following.

On my possible nomination by President Trump as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See

My friends at the Crux website report the following in a staff-written article dated May 28:

In a January 27, 2017, letter to [Pope] Francis, McCarrick mentions rumors that the Trump administration might be considering naming George Weigel, a noted Catholic commentator and biographer of St. Pope John Paul II, to the ambassador’s role.

“There were rumors here in Washington that the new U.S. government had submitted a request for an agrement for a new U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See,” McCarrick wrote, using the formal French term in international diplomacy for an understanding between two parties.

“One of the names that was mentioned was that of George Weigel,” McCarrick wrote. “A prominent Catholic voice in the United States and one of the biographers of St. John Paul II. He is very much a leader of the ultra-conservative wing of the Catholic Church in the United States and has been publicly critical of Your Holiness in the past,” he wrote.

“Many of us American bishops would have great concerns about his being named to such a position in which he would have an official voice, in opposition to your teaching,” McCarrick told the pope.

“I would be happy to discuss this with you and also with the high officials of the Curia,” he wrote.

It seems likely that McCarrick picked up this driblet of fake news from an article in the English edition of La Stampa’s “Vatican Insider,” at the tail end of which British journalist Christopher Lamb suggested that, under about-to-be-inaugurated President Donald Trump, I was a “wild card” candidate for the U.S. ambassadorship to the Holy See (along with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill O’Reilly, no less). Having had cordial exchanges with Mr. Lamb prior to this, I sent him this e-mail on January 13, 2017:

Dear Christopher: I could have saved you some trouble with this [article] if you’d called or e-mailed. Not only am I not a “wild card” possibility for the U.S. ambassadorship to the Holy See, I’m not even in the pack. I’m not interested in the job and wouldn’t accept it if offered, as there are better ways for me to serve the country. Moreover, the very idea of such an offer is rather beyond the realm of the plausible, given my public opposition to Mr. Trump’s nomination and the position I took publicly during the election.

Feel free to get in touch in the future. It’s always good to speak with you. GW

A few hours later, Mr. Lamb replied:

Dear George: You are right – I should have contacted you, but I thought you were an obvious possible candidate given your standing as one of the most prominent Catholic commentators in the U.S….also, I’m not sure previous criticism of the president-elect precludes being considered….anyway, let’s keep in touch. Best – Chris

Mr. Lamb’s sense of Mr. Trump’s magnanimity towards critics surely erred on the side of charity here. It was simply not in the cards for the new president to offer anything, save perhaps a tweet-smack, to someone who had begun his post- election column in these terms: “The good news is, she lost. The bad news is, he won.” But was Theodore McCarrick so out of touch with Washington reality that he imagined me a plausible candidate for the Holy See embassy? That seems unlikely – although perhaps not impossible, given the narrow band of (left-wing) “information” and conversation within which McCarrick typically operated. Still, it seems far more likely that he saw in this squib of a story an opportunity to trash me with Pope Francis (with whom I had already met twice in private audience, at the Holy Father’s invitation), and to sow further seeds of disinformation about the state of Catholicism in the United States.

There is more, though. McCarrick’s January 2017 letter not only took fake news seriously, for whatever purpose. McCarrick also lied about my being “publicly critical” of Pope Francis, and about my alleged intention to use an official U.S government post to criticize the Pope’s governance and teaching.

To the first: While I had questioned aspects of Pope Francis’s activity between his election in 2013 and early 2017, those questions were always raised in the respectful terms I believe appropriate for anyone with a sense of churchmanship. Moreover, I had never criticized the Pope personally and had in fact written a new foreword to the 2014 paperback edition of my Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21^st-Century Church, in which I praised Francis’s apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium. Had I been such a publicly prominent papal critic, I doubt that my private audiences in 2013 and 2014 would have occurred. And if the Pope invited back a known public critic for a third private audience in late 2017 – an audience that was conducted in entirely cordial terms – one can only wonder why.

To the second: I have been privileged to know every U.S. ambassador to the Holy See since the post was established by President Reagan and the Congress in 1984, and I have worked with several of them on various matters. In each of these interactions, and in conversations I had in early 2017 with two serious candidates for the Holy See ambassadorship, I stressed the imperative of the U.S. embassy (whose relationship to the Holy See is of a diplomatic, state-to-[micro]state character) rigorously refraining from any involvement in internal Church affairs – which would most certainly include an absolute proscription on public criticism of the Pope by the ambassador. Having insisted on this for over thirty years, is it likely that I would have taken a different path under different circumstances? If the suggestion that I would was not a lie, then it was certainly a calumny.

The Catholic Spectrum

As to my being, by McCarrick’s account, “very much a leader of the ultra-conservative wing of the Catholic Church in the United States,” this has caused considerable angst among self-identified “traditional Catholics,” one of whom was pleased to describe me in a May 28 tweet as “a rather potted plant neocon kind of guy.” This and similar comments say rather more about soi-disant “traditional Catholics” than about me, however, as McCarrick’s caricature clarifies more about McCarrick than about the target of his deprecation. I defy any serious person to browse through my twenty-five books, or the thousands of my articles and columns, and find credible evidence of “ultra-conservatism.” Such charges only come from real ideologues. And therein lies another lesson from the McCarrick affair: in this instance, his mendacious and quite relentless campaign to define anyone to his starboard as a conservative nut.

For more than twenty years, McCarrick continually regaled audiences with his recollections of John Paul II’s entrance into Newark cathedral in October 1995, often telling his seminarians and priests that he wanted them to be just like the Pope on that occasion, “walking right down the center, touching both sides.” A review of the video indicates that John Paul II did do some handshaking of those who reached out to him; he also did a lot of blessing. (The two members of that congregation who really worked the crowd on their way out of the cathedral that evening were President and Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton, who shook far more hands than John Paul had done at his entrance – and the Clintons did their shtick while the Pope was immersed in prayer in the cathedral’s Blessed Sacrament Chapel.) This tall tale and its putative “lesson” were classic McCarrick, though, and two comments on them are in order.

First, McCarrick’s implicit suggestion that John Paul II was some kind of fifty-yard-line pontiff who straddled the key issues of Church and society during his pontificate doesn’t bear a moment’s serious scrutiny. The Pope who boldly challenged tyranny at the United Nations in 1979 and who played a pivotal role in the collapse of European communism was not a fifty-yard-line guy. (Unlike, I might note, those Vatican diplomats, often among McCarrick’s Roman interlocutors, who thought that the Cold War would end at some mythical “center” where a gradually liberalizing Warsaw Pact would meet an increasingly social-democratic West.) The Pope who wrote Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae was not a straddler. Nor was the Pope who commissioned the Catechism of the Catholic Church. To present him as such was, and is, a lie.

It was a lie, moreover, in service to another McCarrick falsehood: that he defined the sought-for “common ground” in U.S. Catholicism, mediating between those of his liberal friends who were in more of a rush than he was, and those awful conservatives (not to mention “ultra-conservatives”) whom he loathed, but with whom he pretended to be friendly. This game led McCarrick deeper and deeper into the slough of ecclesiastical despond during the latter years of John Paul II’s pontificate and the entirety of Benedict XVI’s, as he saw the liberal dominance of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops dismantled by a generation of bishops who took their lead from John Paul, Benedict, and their authoritative interpretation of Vatican II.

Like his mucking about in Vatican diplomacy, though, McCarrick’s fretting about the bishops’ conference continued long past his (forced) retirement. At the November 2010 meeting that eventually elected then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan as conference president over the liberal-establishment candidate, conference vice-president Bishop Gerald Kicanas, McCarrick buttonholed Dolan and, in his inimitable and gratingly avuncular way, demanded that “Timmy” not allow himself to be used by a “right-wing plot” to deny “Gerry” the conference presidency. So much for McCarrick’s vaunted moderation. (Which is further contradicted by a story the late Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, archbishop of Westminster, told me in late 2005. Over tea in the cardinal’s residence, Murphy-O’Connor asked me, “How’s Ted doing?” When I asked why he asked, the English cardinal replied, “Well, on the way out of the Sistina [i.e., right after the election of Benedict XVI], he said to me, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to explain this at home.’”)

Theodore McCarrick signed the 1967 Land O’ Lakes statement, which sought to divorce Catholic universities from the authority of the local bishop and the Church’s magisterium (an act that, unrepudiated, should have been a definitive black ball against his becoming a bishop). Theodore McCarrick was a left-liberal Democrat in his politics and, while no theologian, a Walter Kasper-like liberal Catholic in his ecclesiology. Did he ever defend, much less attempt to explicate, Humanae Vitae? As for the defining abortion issue, McCarrick was never regarded as a serious pro-life leader by serious pro-life leaders, and his advocacy of behalf of the unborn was typically wrapped in a seamless garment of other issues (not least when he presided over the burial of Senator Edward M. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery).

Theodore McCarrick fooled a lot of people over the course of his career. And the greatest of his false-flag operations was to successfully sell the notion that he was another fifty-yard-line guy, when in fact his feet were firmly planted on the ten-yard-line, just outside the goal line marking the field’s left end zone. That he was allowed to get away with this for so long is, I imagine, a source of regret to the more honest of his friends and colleagues on the Catholic Left, as it ought to be to the bishops who didn’t forcefully challenge the charade while it went on, year after tiresome year.

But however nonsensical it is, the notion that Theodore McCarrick was some sort of moderating centrist whose analysis of the condition of the Church in the United States was both correct and important has now leapt the Atlantic. And it is doing grave damage in Rome, and beyond.

The false narrative of the moment

It was beginning to be evident at the Synod of 2015; it was becoming uncomfortably unmistakable at the Synod of 2018; and it was deployed in a sinister way at the abuse summit this past February: the notion that opposition to Pope Francis is the result of a cabal of hard-right, wealthy Americans who hate the Pope because of his criticisms of markets, capitalism, and restrictive immigration policies. This is utter nonsense, and those who have been hawking such shoddy goods do little justice to the putative intelligence of those they have been trying to persuade. But that this fairy tale is believed as dogma by many of the most influential personalities in the present pontificate is certain (recall Fr. Anthony Spadaro’s bizarre disquisition on American Catholicism in La Civiltà Cattolica). That these men have assiduously worked to convince leading churchmen around the world of it is certain, as I know from personal experience at the Synod in October 2018. And that they will try to deploy this fake story to shape the terms of the next conclave is equally certain.

Where any notion of “collegiality,” “synodality,” or simple honesty is to be found in this is unclear. But the new ultramontanists of the Catholic Left, who describe the range of Francis’s infallibility (or at least indefectibility) in terms that would make the hard ultramontanists at Vatican I blush, have found a supportive, parallel narrative in the notion of an “ultraconservative” American conspiracy to resist and undermine this Pope. Some will dismiss this by noting, correctly, that there has always been anti-Americanism in Rome. But this is different.

It is different because of its virulence and its tenacity. It is different because of its strategic purpose. And who introduced this new, more toxic anti-American storyline into the Vatican conversation – or, at the very least, softened up the ground for it, virtually from the moment Pope Francis was elected? Theodore McCarrick: now convicted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of sacrilege and child sexual abuse, and laicized for his ecclesiastical crimes.

One might think that this fact would cause at least a moment of reconsideration among defenders of the pontificate who have been trafficking in untruths about the Church in the United States, who have been sliming their perceived enemies for some five years now, and who have continued to do so in the wake of Msgr. Figueiredo’s revelations. But the calumnies and lies seem likely to continue. That, unfortunately, is how those who know they’re losing an argument usually behave – especially ideologues and those fearful of losing their grip on power.

Vatican II? No: THIS Is What a Real Spring Looks Like!

A Rogation Mass and Procession! A true sign of spring!

From Rorate Cæli

The Sure Signs of a Real Spring

We often get discouraged given the state of the Church today, especially with respect to the liturgical life of the Church.  We also tend to pay attention only to developments that cause us great concern about where the hierarchy is leading the Church.  But we must also take note of positive movements within the Church that are a signal of a True Springtime in the Church despite the dreariness of the current Roman Winter.

Last evening I was Deacon at a Solemn Mass in the Cathedral of my Diocese.  This Mass and other such Masses in the Traditional Roman Rite in the Cathedral Parish, which includes St Patrick’s parish church as well as the Cathedral of St. Augustine, is part of a genuine and real movement among the young priests of the Diocese to celebrate the Traditional Roman Rite, especially in its solemn form, whenever and wherever possible.

The young pastor of the Cathedral shows such a love for the Traditional Mass that he has been able to bring that Mass to the center of the Diocese, something that I could never have imagined even a year ago. And he is bringing more priests of the Diocese to come to know and love the Traditional Roman Mass.  I was ordained in that Cathedral many years ago.  It had been gutted and turned into a splendid example of post-Vatican II brutalism.  It was “restored” some years ago by an Opus Dei architect in a more traditional style, respecting the Victorian gothic architecture of the church building.  I have associated the Cathedral in my priesthood with Novus Ordo Masses that I had to attend through the years that saddened me deeply by the casual ars celebrandi and the sacro-pop music.  To be part of a Solemn Mass in that Cathedral last evening fills my heart with joy and hope.

To make things even better, the pastor decided to celebrate a Rogation Day Mass last evening.  The Rogation Days are mentioned in the General Instructions of the Roman Missal of the Novus Ordo, but there is no provision for their celebration.  The Mass was preceded by the Rogation Procession with the Litany and Prayers.   We did not “beat the bounds of the parish”, nor did we bless fields. But we processed around the parish grounds, including on a main street in Bridgeport.  Cars honked their horns, people stopped to watch.  Wonderful Christian witness and distinctively Catholic.  And an antidote to the vapidity of the liturgical life of the Church today.  And a harbinger of things to come, that not even the hierarchy can stop, for even they cannot stop us from believing that Beauty will save the world.

May God bless the young priests who are discovering the beauty and depth of the Traditional Roman Mass and who have the courage and joy to celebrate that Mass with all of its power and glory.

Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla