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From Under The Rubble
October 21, 2015
Cancer in the Curia
by Christopher Manion
fitzgerald griffin foundation
FRONT ROYAL, VA — So Pope Francis met with Kim Davis* and her husband — both cradle Catholics, by the way — and the Left went bananas.
The petulant New York Times featured her mug shot. Outraged major media followed suit.
After all, she’s a cultural criminal.
The Vatican lobby’s outrage was not far behind. Suddenly videos of a smiling Francis meeting with a gay couple emerged. “He wanted a hug,” they said.
Many Catholics conclude that they are authorized to disagree with the Church’s magisterial teachings on sex, marriage, and the family.
Confused? Well, our beloved bishops are as confused as we are. Too intimidated since Vatican II to preach the tough truths of the faith, they have fled to the comfortable realm of partisan politics. Their support for the Left on welfare, amnesty and race brought them billions in taxpayer funding, but it has tied their hands in the Church’s confrontation with the most pro-abortion, anti-Catholic administration in history.
This descent of the hierarchy into divisive political squabbles has spawned an unfortunate cognate; today, many Catholics who feel free to disagree with their bishops on politics conclude that they are also authorized to disagree as well with the Church’s magisterial teachings on sex, marriage, and the family.
Many bishops have unwittingly encouraged this error; unfortunately, some of them have actually bought into it.
And that explains the current infighting among the bishops themselves.
In Rome, a small yet brazen band of dissident prelates wants to make sex — any kind of sex — a Sacrament.
They would have been called heretics in another age, but after Vatican II that venerable brand name was retired.
Today, “Jesus made me this way” is their battle cry.
Their attack began with the publication of Humanae Vitae in 1968. Critics of the Church's timeless teaching advocated contraception then, as they champion sodomy now.
“Put off sodomy, fornication, and iniquity,” Saint Paul tells us – “turn around and put on the garment of Christ!”
“Put off sodomy, fornication, and iniquity,” Saint Paul tells us — “turn around and put on the garment of Christ!”
Their reply? “No, thanks!” For them, the garment of Christ is a straitjacket.
Instead liberation from sin, they want liberation from truth.
Like a cancer, the error that has infected many in the hierarchy now infects the popular culture as well.
We can be grateful, at least, that the cards are now face-up on the table. The issue isn’t an empty abstraction — “equality,” or “liberty,” or “rights” — it never has been.
The issue is sodomy.
Hey, Do We Really Have To Talk About This?
Yes we do.
Start with the abuse and cover-up scandals. Even the bishops’ most strident defender admits that most of the crimes were committed by homosexual rapists, not “pedophiles.”
By definition, they were sodomites.
So far, Pope Francis has been careful not to harp on the stark truths stated in the catechism, although he has clearly defended them.
For several decades, homosexuals ran rampant in Catholic seminaries. So many were ordained that Bishop Wilton Gregory, President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference (USCCB) at the time, lamented that “it is an ongoing struggle to make sure the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men.”
Twenty years ago, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, already aware of the clerical abuse and coverup scandals, ordered Washington, D.C. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to tell the American hierarchy to stop ordaining homosexuals.
Instead of obeying, McCarrick buried the directive.
Finally, the Vatican publicly forbade the ordination of homosexuals in 2005 — three years after America’s abuse scandals broke into the public eye. In response, Cdl. McCarrick defiantly announced that he would continue to ignore it.
Celebrating the fait accompli, the Washington Post cited a Catholic source who gloated that “everybody knows today that half our clergy are gay.”
Perhaps that’s why McCarrick’s successor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, has gone out of his way to placate Washington gay lobby — which is, after all, more powerful by far than the Vatican’s.
Speaking of which, the Gay Media Mafia executed a carefully-planned operation to sabotage the Synod on the Family as it prepared to open in Rome. Father Krzyztof Charamsa pirouetted before a gaggle of papal paparazzi to proclaim his status as an active sodomite, introducing his “partner” and demanding that the Church rewrite the Bible and the Catechism, as well as its fundamental moral theology.
Of course, Fr. Charamsa’s had once been hired to teach that same theology in Rome, and to defend it as a functionary in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). But he now reveals that he has only contempt for it all, branding the CDF as “the heart of homophobia in the Catholic Church, a homophobia exaggerated and paranoid.”
"I dedicate my coming out to the countless homosexual priests who do not have the strength to come out of the closet," the suffering victim prated.
Clearly most Catholic clergy that do assess a “homosexual tendency” are celibate. They have no interest in responding to Fr. Charamsa’s insulting “call to arms.”
But we have to face facts: There is a war going on — a “Battle for the American Church,” as Msgr. George Kelly wrote forty years ago.
And now that battle has gone worldwide.
“Tell the truth and divide the people,” a religious leader trumpeted years ago. But so far, Francis has been careful not to harp on the stark truths stated in the catechism, although he has clearly defended them.
But the people are already divided. And they look to our bishops and the Vatican and even the Holy Father and wonder, “whose side are they on?”
If the rules Francis has put in place regarding abuse and cover-ups had been in place when the scandals broke out in 2002, over 100 bishops and several cardinals would have been removed from office.
This is not a happy time for the American Church. After all, if the rules Francis has put in place regarding abuse and cover-ups had been in place when the scandals broke out in 2002, over 100 bishops and several cardinals would have been removed from office. Many would have gone to jail.
Instead, they remained in office and many contributed to, some even encouraging, the chaos that prospers today.
The Synod currently meeting in Rome is not a peace conference; today the Vatican is a war zone. Pope Benedict retired because he could not muster the energy to lead the good guys into battle.
Pope Francis knows the enemy — he has already condemned members of the “Gay Lobby” and the Mafia.
Well, he has excommunicated the Mafiosi. What will he do with the gays?
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*Kim Davis is the County Clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, who was jailed when she would not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
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From Under the Rubble is copyright © 2015 by Christopher Manion. All rights reserved.
Christopher Manion served as a staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years. He has taught in the departments of politics, religion, and international relations at Boston University, the Catholic University of America, and Christendom College.
See a complete biographical sketch.
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