PDFPrint

If anybody still wonders what the Catholic “Resistance” movement is meant to be doing, recent events in the United States make it more obvious than ever – it must keep the Faith! With the official publication last month by the State of Pennsylvania, USA, of an 800-page document proving beyond doubt the guilt of high-ranking Catholic churchmen in abominable crimes against the law of the land and the law of God, millions of Catholics will be tempted, and not only in the USA, to doubt the Faith and to quit the Church.

One reader of these “Comments” names three disturbing Internet links, and he writes:

“My heart is hurting. Jesus didn’t teach this. I am bitterly weeping. I am a hard-headed man and don’t cry often at all. I can’t take this. I’m sorry, but if this continues I will have to become Eastern Orthodox or I will absolutely lose my mind. I just can’t take this monstrosity any more. I am in physical pain because this is making my chest hurt. I’m going to lose my mind. All the prayers and Masses are in vain if this is still being done by those who partake in prayers and Masses. Our Lord is being turned upside down by these heretics! I can’t take it!”

Now sin happens, and sin will go on happening until world’s end, even among priests and bishops because God does not take away their free-will, and no wise lawmaker in Church or State trusts in mere legislation to abolish sin. The grace alone of Our Lord Jesus Christ can cleanse souls of sin (Rom. VII, 24, 25). That is why the State is basically powerless to heal the deepest human problems of priests, or families, or nations. It is obliged to do its best to protect its citizens, but all intelligent and honest statesmen recognise that the Catholic Church alone is fully possessed of the means to reach with healing into the depths of human souls. That is why they will favour the Church as best they can for the good of the State, and protect as best they can the reputation of bishops and priests, and leave the Church to deal with her own criminals, if they will. But if the Church refuses to deal with its criminals, then the State has to intervene.

What is so scandalous in the present plague of abuse by churchmen of adolescents and children is the extent of the abuse, the systematic cover-up of the abuse by high-ranking churchmen, and the height of the rank of some of them, reaching up to the very top of the Church. In fact the scandal has been known about in the USA for tens of years, and it is wholly impossible that it was not common knowledge in Rome also. For tens of years, however, a network of homosexuals has had immense power within the structure and hierarchy of the Church, to the point that they exert far-reaching control in Rome over the appointment of bishops, and in the dioceses over the choice of seminarians. It can be more and more difficult to become either bishop or priest without belonging in person to that network.

But what can possibly explain such a disaster among so many churchmen? The only proportionate explanation is the loss of faith let loose by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), following on which the great protector of the priest’s perseverance, his Breviary, and the purpose of his existence, the Mass, were both maimed and crippled ( Sacrosanctum Concilium, Chapters II and IV). Take away from any man the purpose of his existence, and he is bound to look elsewhere for satisfaction. At least one American commentator blames Satanism for the disaster, a sin directly attacking God and, as such, much graver than sins of the flesh. But men only turn to Satan when they have turned away, or been turned away, from God. Vatican II opened the door for seemingly the entire Church to turn away from God.

Kyrie eleison.