A still very serious problem in the Catholic Church that needs to be dealt with
by Steve Jalsevac
www.lifesitenews.com/blog/a-still-very-serious-problem-in-the-catholic-church-that-needs-to-be-dealt
Why do we report so much about Catholic Church developments?
What is a significant factor causing the current weakness in the Church’s moral and spiritual leadership?
Much of the world looks to the Catholic Church, the largest religious denomination in the world, to provide leadership in the struggle to defend innocent human life increasingly endangered by an advancing culture of death. They also look to the Church to provide strong leadership to defend the natural family from a dictatorial and vicious movement to force acceptance of alternative sexual lifestyles.
That is why LifeSiteNews reports so much on Catholic news developments. But there are serious problems that remain unresolved in the Church before it can once again be the force for social and other good that it has been at various times in the past.
Before I continue from here let me emphasize that there are more good priests being formed and ordained and courageous and faithful bishops being selected in the Church today. This has been in large part due to the cleaning up of many seminaries and much greater attention being giving in Rome to the appointment of faithful bishops.
Not all the appointments are good for sure, but the batting average of solid bishops being appointed seems to have gone way up. Many dramatic changes for good in the US conference of Catholic Bishops are also worth praising, as are many other trends.
Pope Benedict has taken many actions to decrease the influence of the powerful distorters of the Second Vatican Council who have ravaged and weakened the Church in so many ways.
But serious problems remain. Some have been partially dealt with since the explosion of the sex abuse scandals, but the work needed to eliminate this cancer within the Church is far from finished.
The cancer I’m referring to is the presence within the Church of numerous active homosexuals among the clergy at all levels, within many of the orders and among the laity in many Catholic institutions. It also includes a rebellious acceptance of homosexuality by many non-homosexual Catholics in positions of influence within the Church. This has been and still is a much greater problem than the vast majority of Catholics realize.
LifeSiteNews recognized this very difficult to discuss reality long ago. It is ugly, disturbing and not something that most people want to hear about. It involves tales of infiltration, seduction, rape, and other abuses, rampant use of porn, sordid encounters, frequent blackmail and brutal reprisals against whistle-blower seminarians and priests and intimidation of bishops. It is nasty stuff, not for the faint of heart and holds the potential to threaten faith.
The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus also wrote about this sordid situation in the Church. He was blunt that homosexuality among the clergy was a grave problem that was in many ways being ignored and not being acted upon as it should. He wrote a series of articles in First Things in 2002 (Part I www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/scandal-time-12 , Part II www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/scandal-time-continued-43 , Part III www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/scandal-time-iii-43 ) documenting some of the shameful lack of action by the bishops to acknowledge and rid the Church of this crippling sickness within the clerical ranks. He saw it as the primary cause of the sex abuses.
Several thoroughly documented and lengthy books have been written over the past few decades about the ugly scandal, perhaps one of the worst, if not the worst in Church history, beginning with Fr. Enrique T. Rueda’s 1982 massive book, The Homosexual Network. These books all include reams of documented evidence and interviews and naming of names and places and specific incidents.
They were written in the main by courageous and faithful Catholics who experienced all their work being deliberately ignored and not appreciated by Church authorities. They were also subjected to vicious personal attacks on their character and credibility, the same as many victims of clergy sex abuse experienced when they told Church authorizes about their abusers. These authors suffered for their fidelity.
The books that these whistle blowers wrote are excruciatingly difficult to read. I have a few in my office. I have tried, but I can’t read most of them. I did manage to get through Goodbye, Good Men by Michael Rose. Even for me, most of these books are too disturbing, such as Sacrilege by Leon Podles. And yet, I don’t doubt the validity of much, if not all that is revealed in them and other documents that have been sent to us by persons determined to publicly expose terrible things that Church authorities have refused to deal with.
LifeSiteNews began a Feature Page on the Clergy sexual abuse scandals in 2002. After 2 years of continuously adding updates to the pages in the section we stopped the updating. There was just too much.
To emphasize again, there have been many positive changes in recent years, but as Michael Voris of Church Militant TV relates in a recent broadcast, the influence of networks of homosexual clergy within the Church is still very strong. They are still an obstacle to strengthening of the Church for the great spiritual and cultural war which is building.
As often as an ordinary or hierarch has at least probable knowledge of a reserved delict, after he has carried out the preliminary investigation he is to indicate it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which unless it calls the case to itself because of special circumstances of things, after transmitting appropriate norms, orders the ordinary or hierarch to proceed ahead through his own tribunal. The right of appealing against a sentence of the first instance, whether on the part of the party or the party’s legal representative, or on the part of the promoter of justice, solely remains valid only to the supreme tribunal of this congregation.
It must be noted that the criminal action on delicts reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is extinguished by a prescription of 10 years.(11) The prescription runs according to the universal and common law;(12) however, in the delict perpetrated with a minor by a cleric, the prescription begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age.
In tribunals established by ordinaries or hierarchs, the functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests. When the trial in the tribunal is finished in any fashion, all the acts of the case are to be transmitted ex officio as soon as possible to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
All tribunals of the Latin church and the Eastern Catholic churches are bound to observe the canons on delicts and penalties, and also on the penal process of both codes respectively, together with the special norms which are transmitted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for an individual case and which are to be executed entirely.
Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret.
Through this letter, sent by mandate of the supreme pontiff to all the bishops of the Catholic Church, to superiors general of clerical religious institutes of pontifical right and clerical societies of apostolic life of pontifical right, and to other interested ordinaries and hierarchs, it is hoped not only that more grave delicts will be entirely avoided, but especially that ordinaries and hierarchs have solicitous pastoral care to look after the holiness of the clergy and the faithful even through necessary sanctions.
Rome, from the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, May 18, 2001.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
Prefect
As a subscriber to the theory that this infiltration was not merely “cultural” but rather political and ideological in nature, it seems necessary to identify who caused it, their mode of operation and the names, date and roles of those who ran the network.
We can ascribe high probability to the Soviet Union as one source and I think the usual gang of suspects in other quarters may directly or indirectly have participated, as well.
And, oh, by the way, in a normal world it would be the Vatican itself that is supposed to take care of this. Of course, ummmm….
“Bella Dodd, call for you on line 99. Bella Dodd?”
Point being: The enemy’s fixeroo has been in place for over 50 years. This ain’t goin’ away anytime soon.
Before I continue from here let me emphasize that there are more good priests being formed and ordained and courageous and faithful bishops being selected in the Church today. This has been in large part due to the cleaning up of many seminaries and much greater attention being giving in Rome to the appointment of faithful bishops.
Come on, Steve. Expose the elephant in the room; it’s due in large part to a new pope. However, he’s a pope who is fixin to canonize his predecessor. Vicious circle.