The Jesuits in China

It is a legendary tale spanning hundreds of years and this story from Catholic World Report tells a small part part of it.

An excerpt.

Dr. Amanda C. R. Clark is Associate Dean of Special Programs and Library Director at Whitworth University. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication & Information Sciences from the University of Alabama. Her academic work focuses on the history of architecture and art; she teaches courses on Western architecture, Chinese art, and artists books in China and the West.

Dr. Clark recently corresponded with Catholic World Report to discuss her new book, China’s Last Jesuit: Charles J. McCarthy and the End of the Mission in Catholic Shanghai (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)which tells the moving story of an American Jesuit missionary who was imprisoned by the Communist government for being an “ideological saboteur” in the 1950s.

CWR: There have been several books written about earlier Jesuit missionaries in China, such as Vincent Cronin’s biography Fr. Matteo Ricci, The Wise Man from the West: Matteo Ricci and His Mission to China, published by Ignatius Press. How does your book serve to tell us about Jesuits in the more recent past?

Dr. Amanda Clark: Matteo Ricci captures our imagination—he was a great linguist, a cultural ambassador, and a staunch Jesuit committed to bringing the Catholic faith to the world. Ricci seems to eclipse all other missionaries to China, but part of his great legacy includes all those missionaries who came after him, both Chinese and foreign, like Fr. Charles McCarthy.

Part of Ricci’s unique interaction with Chinese persons was his attention to cultural dialogue, becoming versed in their language, their literature and philosophy—in short, he learned to impress the socks off of people.  Jesuits like McCarthy followed in Ricci’s footsteps, taking seriously the task of getting to know their mission landscape and falling in love with a foreign culture. Also, while writing this book I had access to the private collection of materials held by the McCarthy family, and so I was able to include rare insights into the interpersonal dimension of Jesuit missions in the more recent past.

CWR: Why did you choose to entitle your book China’s Last Jesuit and how does the story of Fr. Charles McCarthy tell us more about the Jesuit mission in the twentieth century during China’s transition into a Communist country?

Clark: While Charles McCarthy was not the last Jesuit ever to enter and work in China, he was the last of the two American Jesuits to depart from the robust Shanghai mission, Zikawei. He was at the tail end of a mission enterprise that we saw growing under Matteo Ricci, so McCarthy’s placement in Jesuit history is astounding.

McCarthy’s location in Chinese history is also fascinating—he found himself in war-torn, twentieth-century China, first caught up in the Sino-Japanese war, then entangled in the crossfire of civil war and then the emergence of the People’s Republic of China. During these fraught political years his missionary work continued, even when under house arrest and imprisonment. McCarthy’s story provides readers with a first-hand account of what life was like in China during one of its most turbulent eras, and his story is especially informative regarding the state of Christianity during that time.

CWR: One key theme in your book is Fr. McCarthy’s enduring love for China’s culture and people. What inspired China’s authorities to arrest and detain someone known as a “friend of China”? You also discuss Chinese Catholics who were arrested in the 1950s; why were they arrested? And what was prison life like for the Chinese Catholics who were not, as Fr. McCarthy was, identified as “foreign imperialists” and “ideological saboteurs”?

Clark: The decade of the 1950s in China was a tumultuous time, full of ambition for China’s economic growth, and rife with political fluctuation and instability. McCarthy was in China to witness the Communist victory in 1949, so he understood well what was happening once Chairman Mao took leadership over the country. An era of suspicion fed on itself, and many Christians—foreign and native—were caught in the changing political winds often fueled by fear. China as a country had in the previous decades suffered under unequal treaties and colonial insertions, but now the tables were turned and foreign persons and foreign influences were being expelled. Being a foreigner or practicing a foreign religion—and one, like Catholicism, so closely tied to a powerful foreign leader, namely, the Pope—could put you in the light of suspicion.

In the 1950s the stakes were high. Protestants were able to embrace the Chinese Three Self movement, which centralized religious power, money, and influence safely at home within China, but for Catholics, like McCarthy, his confreres, and parishioners, their ties and allegiance to foreign magisterial control was not taken lightly by those in positions of power in China at that time. Chinese Catholics, too, were arrested for their affiliation with the Pope, who was viewed as a foreign imperialist.    

CWR: In your chapter entitled, “China in an Era of Change,” you describe Fr. McCarthy’s studies at Marquette University in journalism. How did his studies there influence his life as a missionary in China during the Japanese occupation and civil war between the Nationalists and Communists?

Clark: You’ve brought up the two sides of the coin. One the one side, Jesuits are the masters of being both an expert in a field or profession (we often think of higher education, but in this case it was journalism and reporting), and also of being an active missionary, as St. Ignatius envisioned his flock of soldier-heroes.

McCarthy’s skills as a journalist were put to work immediately in China, where he wrote a multitude of articles for journals both back home in America and within China itself. He produced a radio show in Shanghai that broadcast widely and was modeled on the then-popular American program, “The Catholic Hour,” with Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen. Like radio listeners in America, Shanghai’s Christians and non-Christians both tuned in to hear the sermons, news, and music that McCarthy broadcast across China’s airwaves.

When times turned to their most unstable, McCarthy published a small-run newsletter of information, written in Latin (which would be understood by missionaries, but not political authorities), which provided some of the last lines of widely-disseminated communication between Catholic leaders in China.  You can see why something like that might look like espionage to outside eyes, but from within that circle it makes perfect sense to wish to share news during a chaotic era.

The Horror Continues

As this story from the National Catholic Register reports.

An excerpt.

A priest working in the apostolic nunciature in Washington D.C. has been recalled to the Vatican after U.S. authorities cited possible violations of child pornography laws, the Vatican said Friday.

The Vatican declined to identify the diplomat nor disclose which nationality he belongs to, but confirmed he is a senior member of the Vatican embassy staff, and that he is now in Vatican City.

According to the Vatican’s Yearbook, three priest diplomats serve in the nunciature as counselors, in addition to the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Christoph Pierre, who has been ruled out.

In a statement released this afternoon, the Vatican said that after being notified by the U.S. authorities of the possible violations, the Holy See, “following the practice of sovereign states, recalled the priest in question.”

It added that having received such information from the United States government, the Secretariat of State passed this information to the Promoter of Justice of the Vatican Tribunal — the Vatican’s chief prosecutor.

It went on to say that the Promoter of Justice then “opened an investigation and has already commenced international collaboration to obtain elements relative to the case.”

The Vatican also stressed that in accordance with laws “applicable to all preliminary inquiries, the investigations carried out by the Promoter of Justice are subject to investigative confidentiality.”

The Associated Press reported that the State Department had asked the Vatican to lift the official’s diplomatic immunity on Aug. 21, but that request was denied.

It added that for the State Department to make such a request, its lawyers would have needed to convinced there was a reasonable cause for criminal prosecution.

Recalling Vatican envoys is not new: in 2013, Msgr. Jozef Wesolowski was ordered to leave as apostolic nuncio to the Dominican Republic after being accused of sexually abusing young boys on the Caribbean island. Two years later, while being held under house arrest in Vatican City, he was indicted for possession of child pornography.

The Vatican justified not sending Wesolowski back to the Dominican Republic for trial by submitting him first to a canonical court proceeding at the Vatican, and having him tried in the Vatican’s criminal court, which has jurisdiction over the Holy See’s diplomatic corps.

Wesolowski was laicized but died of natural causes before the criminal trial got underway.

Should the Vatican prosecutor conclude enough evidence justifies a trial, these are likely to be the criminal proceedings taken in this case.

The possession of child pornography is considered a “canonical crime” in the Church, and in 2010 Benedict XVI added it to the list of “most grave delicts,” meaning crimes, which are dealt with directly by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and can result in dismissal from the clerical state.

Patrick Buchanan

A very nice article from Remnant Newspaper about him and how his deep Catholic faith has affected his life in politics.

An excerpt.

Politico Magazine, in its May/June 2017 issue, featured a long essay by writer Tim Alberta about Pat Buchanan and his role in American politics and culture, and in particular, the role he has had in sustaining a vision of a more Christian nation, and what that means during the Trump Era. And Alberta highlights one very central element in Buchanan’s life: his strong Catholic faith. He and his wife, Shelley, are regular communicants at the Saint Mary Mother of God Church in Washington. His Catholic faith has influenced him throughout his seventy-eight years, beginning with his childhood as one of nine children in an archetypical Catholic family of the 1950s, through his experience in parochial school, and then at Georgetown University and at the Columbia School of Journalism, on into writing, serving two American presidents, and running for president three times.

He has recounted that active life in his autobiographical work, Right from the Beginning. In that volume (1988), Buchanan devotes a significant portion to his abiding faith and belief as a Catholic. That faith provided him—and continues to provide him—he relates, with “a code of morality, a code of conduct, a sure knowledge of right and wrong, a way of acknowledging personal guilt and of seeking out and attaining forgiveness and absolution.” Growing up, he continues, “We had a hierarchy of values; we knew where we were going and how to get there; even in childhood, we were not confused. We had certitude.” (pp. 77-78) And for Pat Buchanan, this was a unique grace that came to him and his family from Our Lord and membership in His Church. The radical changes that resulted from Vatican II, he believes, have been disastrous:

“‘The smoke of Hell has entered the vestibule of the Church.’ In the last quarter-century, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States has been utterly demystified—as a prelude to the establishment of an American Catholic Church. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as prescribed by the Council of Trent has been replaced by a communal meal celebrated in the vernacular. The Latin is gone; the Sacred Liturgy has been transformed; a banal English is the lingua franca of the American Church; many of the new churches look on the inside like assembly halls, college classrooms, or off-Broadway theaters. The Douay-Rheims version of the Old and New Testaments, a rival to the King James Bible in the majesty of its prose, has been re-written again and again by tin-eared clerics who never learned that language is the music of thought, that tone-deaf people ought not to re-write Mozart.” (p. 78)

Now, fifty-two years on since the end of the Council, we echo what Buchanan—his faith still strong—said in 1987: “We need another Council of Trent.” For younger millennials and those below the age of thirty, Buchanan’s name may not ring as familiar as it does to those a bit older and with longer memories. Yet his importance politically and, even more so, culturally during his fifty years in the public eye cannot be gainsaid. Over the years, Buchanan’s brisk prose and his ability to encapsulate concisely and pinpoint exactly the significant questions of the day have made him one of the country’s leading and most perceptive writers and thinkers.  His faith undergirds that ability; he understands that at the base of every political issue, there is a religious question, however remote. As Tim Alberta indicates, in a way Buchanan has been a kind of a combative precursor of Donald Trump, foreshadowing the advent of an agenda that arguably reflects the older beliefs, faith, and traditional morality of millions of citizens who have been marginalized by unelected managerial elites and the Washington and Wall Street establishment. That is, 2016 represented a kind of—perhaps unfocused—counter-revolution by the under-siege middle class, by the out-of-a-job Rust Belt workers, by underemployed and depressed agricultural folks, by those who see what is left of “Christian America” destroyed by a rampant and anti-Christian secularism, by those deeply affected by bad trade deals, and by those who simply want to reclaim an America that they believe once existed.

Old Confessionals

They isolated priest from penitent, ensuring privacy and safety for both; and, having become used to this format in the Latin Mass parish we attend, I can attest to its efficacy.

This article from the Remnant Newspaper is excellent in describing them.

An excerpt.

Several years ago, when it was becoming increasingly common for adults to allege childhood sexual abuse long past based upon so-called repressed memories, one of the most esteemed pastors of a local diocese was accused of sexual abuse of a child while hearing his confession. The attorney representing the alleged victim did much grandstanding in the media in preparation for the trial, only to have the case thrown out of court when it was determined that the abuse alleged to have occurred decades ago would have been physically impossible, since confessionals physically isolated priest and penitent back then.

The conventional confessional booth or box, in which the priest is physically isolated from the penitent, had its origin in the 60’s. Wait a minute, you may say, that can’t be right. Can anything good have come from the 60’s? Indeed, much good did come out of the 60’s following a Church Council–the 1560’s, that is. The Church Council was that of Trent, out of which divinely guided Council came a great number of dogmatic declarations occasioned by the Protestant revolt. Among the many positive fruits of this Council was the standardization of the manner in which confessions were heard, in a wooden confessional booth.

But four hundred years later another, quite different Council was convened and nearly all the fruit of this Council has proven to have been poisonous. Among the many reforms of the 1960’s, following in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, was the widespread abandonment of the conventional confessional booth in favor of reconciliation rooms in which the priest and penitent are physically situated together. So long to protection and privacy for penitents and protection for innocent priests accused of a crime as well! The abandonment of conventional confessionals was not the only bad fruit served up by V2 Modernists in the form and administration of the Sacrament of Penance.

Coming out of the 1960’s Modernist reformers produced a new Rite of Penance which expanded options for the Sacrament to three: Reconciliation of Individual Penitents; Reconciliation of Several Penitents; Reconciliation with General Absolution. Is anyone surprised that in many parishes soon after this many pastors all but abandoned individual confessions in favor of communal forms? It was not uncommon to see parish schedules that listed confessions as “Available by Appointment” rather than scheduled weekly prior to Masses. It was also common practice in many dioceses and parishes to offer General Absolution regularly as the ordinary form of the sacrament. This despite the instruction of the rite that explicitly states that General Absolution may only be used in danger of death or when there are such large numbers of penitents that a priest would be physically unable to hear individual confessions within a “reasonable period of time.”

Ah yes, a typical V2 ambiguous choice of words and a perfect Modernist loophole: reasonable period of time. But not all communal forms of the sacrament involve General Absolution. Some lazy pastors who do not want to hear confessions regularly and some well-meaning pastors who need the help of additional confessors use the second form of the rite, wherein there is a communal quasi-liturgical ritual followed by individual confessions, heard by any number of priests invited to hear the confessions of the faithful.

I used to make myself available to parishes for this second form of the sacrament, since it required individual confessions by the penitents. But no more do I do so, after a number of troubling experiences. In some cases the liturgical aspect of the ritual was overly long or poorly done. In other cases the number of penitents far exceeded the number of available priests and the confessions went into the twilight hours. I also had concerns about the lack of privacy for penitents, with public stations for confessions too closely spaced within a church. And there were priests who were clueless as to an appropriate limit of time to apportion for each confession, having ten minute confessions for each with hundreds of penitents waiting.

The final straw for these communal rites was when I was placed at the communion rail as confessor and a woman penitent was confessing only inches from my face. I listened to her confession with my head down and eyes closed in order to have some sense of decorum, only to be scolded by her for not looking her in the eyes while she was speaking. I assigned her a stiff penance and never returned to that church! I also stopped assisting other pastors in hearing the confessions of their parish children. Too many times I was burned by some spirit of V2 novelty perpetrated by the pastor or DRE. In one parish the children were instructed to finger paint their sins as pictures and then explain their pictures to the priest confessors, after which their pictures were displayed on a church wall. So much for the seal of confession! In another parish I heard the confessions of dozens of middle school age children and not a single one of them knew a single prayer which I could assign as a penance.

All I could tell them to do was to go talk to Jesus. But back now to our original concern about the V2 change from confessional booths to reconciliation rooms. Confessionals were mandated in times past, in part, to protect adult female penitents from the groping hands of predator priests; who could have imagined then that the greater concern one day would be to protect children and teens—mostly boys—from the predator behavior of homosexual priests? Not to say that there were no homosexual clerics in the past but certainly not nearly the high numbers of today. The effects of V2 changes have been catastrophic, to say the least. Take, for instance, the Catholic Church in Australia, which is facing intense scrutiny and intervention by civil authorities, occasioned by rampant clerical sex abuse of children. At stake is the seal of the confession itself and the manner in which the confessions of children are heard. Already the Australian bishops have directed that the confessions of children must be heard in an open setting in the full view of all participants, who are supervised by staff.

Guadalupe and America’s Founding

This article from the Catholic News Agency makes a good case for the centrality of Guadalupe in America’s aspirational heart.

An excerpt.

Santa Rosa, Calif., Aug 1, 2017 / 03:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The impact of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the Americas should encourage Christians in the U.S. to continue to evangelize, even when their country seems headed in the wrong direction, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles has said.

“Guadalupe is the true ‘founding event’ in American history. And that means it is the true founding event in the history of our country — and in the history of all the other countries in North and South America,” Archbishop Gomez said July 27. “We are all children of Guadalupe.”

“In God’s plan, this is one continent. It is meant to begin new civilization. A new world of faith,” he reflected.

“Our Lady did not appear only for the Mexican people. Her intentions were continental and universal,” the archbishop said. He cited the account based on St. Juan Diego’s testimony, in which Mary described herself as “truly your compassionate Mother; your Mother and the Mother to all who dwell in this land and to all other nations and peoples.”

The impact of Our Lady of Guadalupe was immense, he added. Within just a few years of the Marian apparition, millions had been baptized, and missionary efforts like St. Junipero Serra’s fanned out from Mexico.

“A great wave of holiness swept through the continents — raising up saints and heroes of the faith in every country,” Archbishop Gomez said.

He spoke at the Napa Institute Summer Conference in Napa, Calif., about 40 miles southeast of Santa Rosa. The conference aims to consider challenges facing Catholic leaders in contemporary America

“My simple point today is that each one of us is a part of that story — part of the great mission to America that began with the visitation of the Virgin of Guadalupe,” the archbishop continued.   “The Church in this country — and every one of us — has the responsibility to continue the task that the Virgin gave to St. Juan Diego. To ‘build a shrine’ with our lives. To build a society that glorifies God and is worthy of the dignity of the human person,” he said.

For the archbishop, Our Lady of Guadalupe can reach a “post-Christian” society and provides “a way to think about our Christian lives and mission in the years ahead.”

Recognizing a common “sense of urgency” about the direction of the country, he suggested, “it is like we all woke up to discover that American society is being progressively ‘de-Christianized’.”

For Archbishop Gomez, American institutions and national self-identity were meant to be shaped by “the vision and values of the gospel.” America promised a commitment to human dignity and freedom under the Creator.

At the same time, he granted, “there are too many ways our nation has never lived up to Christian values.” He named slavery, the mistreatment of native peoples, and ongoing injustices such as racism and abortion.

Even with past influence of Christianity, “all that is changing right now.”

“We face an aggressive, organized agenda by elite groups who want to eliminate the influence of Christianity from our society,” Archbishop Gomez said, noting that Christian beliefs are being labeled as hatred or intolerance. He pointed to lawsuits against Church institutions which believe what Christ  taught and which do not want to cooperate with “practices we find immoral or dehumanizing.”

“My friends, we do not have the luxury to choose the times we live in. These are hard times. There is no denying it,” he said. “But the saints remind us that all times in the Church are dangerous times.”

World Church Led by Men & Women

Absolutely what is needed, as this article from one of Pope Francis’ advisors in International La Croix describes.

An excerpt.

One of Pope Francis’ top advisors has called on the Western Church to admit a greater percentage of women to its upper echelons.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, who is a member of the pope’s Council of Cardinals (C9), made the appeal on June 22 at a mentoring program for women in his archdiocese.

“We would be mad not to use women’s talents. In fact, it would be downright foolish,” he told participants at the gathering, which was sponsored by Hildegardis Association. The Catholic group was founded in 1907 to prepare women for academic positions in the Church.

“We need a new image of what the Church is supposed to be – namely a world Church led by men and women from all cultures working together”, said the cardinal, who is also chairman of the Vatican’s Council for the Economy.

Marx said research has shown that workgroups achieve better results when they are made up of people from both sexes.

He admitted that he had not always realized how important it was to have women in leading positions in the Church. For instance, when he was Bishop of Trier (2001-2007) he considered it “inconceivable” for a woman to have a leading position in the diocesan administration.

But the cardinal pointed out that today eleven of Germany’s 27 dioceses and five of Austria’s ten dioceses have women in leading positions.

“And there is satisfaction all round,” he said.

Cardinal Marx said he is making the case before the C9 where he continues to advocates for increasing the percentage of women in executive positions. But he warned that achieving this would not be easy.

He said the fact that only men can be ordained as Catholic priests, is “certainly not helping the Church come across as a pioneer of equal rights”.

“But that does not mean only men rule the Church,” the cardinal insisted.

“That is precisely what the message must not be,” he said.

“And that is why I want to emphasize that positions of responsibility and executive positions in the Church that are open to lay people must be shared by both men and women,” he added.

Cardinal Marx said the Church must not only avoid giving the impressions that only men are in charge, but must also confront the fact that it has discriminated against women in the past. He said it’s not for him to judge what is happening in other cultures. “But one thing is certain. Things (here) will not remain as they are,” he predicted.

The cardinal stressed that, despite the fact that they are not being given any concessions, women should not let themselves be discouraged. He noted that the number of women in executive positions in German dioceses had risen from 13% in 2005 to 19.2% in 2015.

When a survey undertaken by the Germany’s bishops in 2013 showed that women were still under-represented in the upper echelons of the Catholic Church in the country, the Hildegardis Association promptly reacted.

“Experience has shown that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a larger number of qualified applications for executive jobs,” the group said.

Vatican Horror

Doesn’t get much more horrible than this, as reported by Life Site News.

An excerpt.

ROME, July 5, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — A high-ranking Vatican monsignor who is a secretary to one of Pope Francis’ closest collaborators was arrested by Vatican police after they caught him hosting a cocaine-fueled homosexual orgy in a building right next to St. Peter’s Basilica.

Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, 49, was caught by Vatican gendarmerie in a raid some two months ago that took place in the former Palace of the Holy Office.

While the top Vatican officials have been mute about the raid, Italian media broke the story last week after receiving inside information.

Vatican police allegedly caught the monsignor, whom Italian media called an “ardent supporter of Pope Francis,” after tenants in the building complained repeatedly about constant comings and goings of visitors to the building during all hours of the night. The building is currently being used by various high-ranking churchmen, including prefects, presidents, and secretaries to the Roman Curia.

Capozzi, who on his LinkedIn page calls himself an “expert in canon law and dogmatic theology,” managed to evade suspicion from Italian police by using a BMW luxury car with license plates of the Holy See, which made him practically immune to stops and searches. This privilege, usually reserved for high-ranking prelates, allowed the monsignor to transport cocaine for his frequent homosexual orgies without being stopped by the Italian police.

Italian news service Il Fato Quotidiano wrote that the building’s separate entrance into Vatican City from outside the Vatican walls made it “perfect” for clandestine activity.

“Its main entrance, in fact, opens out directly onto the piazza of the Holy Office that is already Italian territory and is outside of the control of the Swiss Guard and of the Gendarmerie. Anyone, by day and by night, can freely enter into the Vatican by this entry without undergoing any inspection and without, of course, being put on record. A perfect location to enjoy the privileges of extraterritoriality but without having to be subject either to the inspections of the Italian State or to those of Vatican City,” the news service wrote.

At the time of the arrest, Capozzi was allegedly so high on cocaine that he was hospitalized for detoxification for a short period in the Pius XI clinic in Rome. He is currently in an undisclosed convent in Italy undergoing a spiritual retreat, Italian media reported.

“One thinks one is dreaming: in the most deplorable of ways, the Rome of today seems to have fallen lower than the Rome of the Borgias,” reported Riposte Catholique.

Senior Vatican Official Charged With Sexual Abuse

The horrid scandal continues its ever upward ascent, as this story from the Wall Street Journal reports.

An excerpt.

MELBOURNE, Australia—Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis’ finance chief and one of the most senior officials in the Vatican, was charged Thursday with multiple counts of sexual abuse alleged to have occurred in Australia decades ago.

The 76-year-old is the highest-level Vatican official to face charges in the sexual-abuse scandals that have beset the Catholic Church in the past two decades. He will be required to appear at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on July 18, Shane Patton, deputy commissioner of Victoria state’s police force, said at a news conference.

Cardinal Pell told reporters in Rome on Thursday morning that he was “innocent of these charges” and would be returning to Australia to clear his name in court. He said Pope Francis, with whom he had discussed the matter a day earlier, had granted him a leave of absence for that purpose.

The Vatican spokesman, Greg Burke, said the Holy See noted with regret the charges against Cardinal Pell. Mr. Burke read a Vatican statement that praised the cardinal for efforts against sex abuse as a bishop in Australia, as well as his work at the Vatican, and said he had impressed the pope with his honesty.

Australia doesn’t have an extradition arrangement with the Vatican.

Details of the charges, which involve multiple complainants, weren’t disclosed.

Last year, Pope Francis told reporters that he wouldn’t comment on the Pell cases “until the justice system passes judgment,” adding, “Once it has spoken, then I will speak.”

The Vatican and other Catholic Church leaders have contended with scandals over clerical sex abuse since 2002, with a series of revelations in Boston, followed by another series in Europe in 2010.

Pope Francis instituted a Vatican commission on the problem, led by Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, in 2014, but the body’s work has been marked by controversy. One of the two sex-abuse survivors on the panel was forced to take a leave of absence last year after criticizing Pope Francis’ record on sex abuse, and the other survivor resigned this year in protest over Vatican inaction on the problem.

Last month, Pope Francis said the Vatican office in charge of disciplining priests accused of sex abuse was understaffed and that many cases were delayed because they had been piling up.

The charges against Cardinal Pell were announced as most of the world’s cardinals were gathered in Rome, the day after Pope Francis added five men to their number in a ceremony at the Vatican. The Vatican said the cardinal would no longer be participating in public liturgical events. The Vatican also said that Cardinal Pell’s office would carry out its institutional tasks in his absence.

Vatican II & Sexual Abuse

This article from the Catholic Herald UK makes a connection and it is one well worth examining.

An excerpt.

A priest has told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry that the reforms of the Second Vatican Council contributed to the Church’s “horrible mistakes” on abuse.

According to the Scottish Catholic Observer, Mgr Peter Smith, former chancellor of Glasgow archdiocese, said the Church accepted conventional wisdom of the 1970s that it was “better to repair the [abuser], to fix them or to redeem them”, than punish them. In that era priests accused of abuse could be sent for therapy rather than face criminal charges.

The Second Vatican Council, Mgr Smith said, “made a significant ­difference to the whole way that the Church proceeded … [It] asked us to proceed pastorally and [be more] caring for people”, rather than having an earlier “legalistic” approach.

“That pastoral care was exercised very strongly towards the priests who had been accused and perhaps less strongly towards those who had been on the receiving end of such a vicious thing,” he said.

Fatima, At the Center of the Church

I watched the wonderful video from Remnant TV filmed at the Fatima Center in Portugal and it also led me to the must read talk by Cardinal Burke about Fatima, from Life Site News.

An excerpt.

The Secret of Fatima and a New Evangelization

Editor’s note:The following address was given by His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke on 19 May 2017 at the fourth annual Rome Life Forum, which is organised by Voice of the Family.

May 23, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The final words of the Virgin Mother of the Redeemer recorded in the Gospels are the words she spoke to the wine stewards at the Wedding Feast of Cana who came to her in anguish over the lack of sufficient wine for the guests of the newlyweds. She responded to them and their situation of great distress by leading them to her Divine Son, also a guest at the Wedding Feast, and instructing them: “Do whatever he tells you.”[1] These simple words express the mystery of the Divine Maternity by which the Virgin Mary became the Mother of God, bringing God the Son Incarnate into the world. By the same mystery, she continues to be the channel of all the graces which immeasurably and unceasingly pour forth from Her Divine Son’s glorious pierced Heart into the hearts of His faithful brothers and sisters on earthly pilgrimage to their lasting home with Him in Heaven.

By the mystery of the Divine Maternity, the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, assumed into glory, never ceases to beat with love for us, the children whom her Divine Son gave to her, as He was dying upon the Cross.[2] They are her sons and daughters in her Son, God the Son Incarnate. With maternal care, she draws hearts to her glorious Immaculate Heart and takes them to Him, to His Sacred Heart, and she instructs them: “Do whatever he tells you.” In the oldest preserved extant hymn to the Virgin Mother of God, found already on an Egyptian papyrus of the 3rd century, Christians pray:

We fly to your patronage, O holy Mother of God; despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin.[3]

Similarly, in the words of the ancient hymn for Vespers on feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Ave Maris Stella, we pray:

Show thyself a mother; may the Word divine, born for us thine Infant, hear our prayers through thine.[4]

These words of the eighth-century hymn express in a clear and striking manner the mystery of the Divine Maternity by which the Virgin Mary is both Mother of God and Mother of Divine Grace. We ask the Virgin Mother of God to lead us to her Divine Son, in order that our hearts, one with her Immaculate Heart, may rest always in His Heart, the only source of our salvation.

In a most wonderful way, the Blessed Virgin Mary has shown herself to be our Mother in her apparitions to the three shepherd children at Cova da Iria, near Fatima in Portugal, one hundred years ago, from May 13th to October 13th of 1917. The world at the time found itself torn asunder by the unimaginable destruction and death wrought by the First World War and fatally menaced by the spread of atheistic communism leading the hearts of men away from the Heart of Jesus, the sole font of salvation. Atheistic communion was leading hearts into a rebellion against God and the order, which He has placed in His creation and has written on the heart of every man,[5] the only earthly creature made in His own image and likeness.[6]

God prepared the messengers of the Virgin of Fatima, Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and the Servant of God Lucia Rosa dos Santos, by three visions of the Angel of Portugal which took place during the Spring, Summer and Autumn of 1916. During the first vision, while telling the shepherd children not to be afraid and assuring them that he was “the Angel of Peace,” he taught them to pray three times with these words:

My God, I believe, I adore, I hope [in] and I love You. I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope [in] and do not love You.[7]

The Angel, as God’s messenger to the shepherd children was already indicating the way in which the Mother of God would lead: the way of prayer, penance and reparation. He concluded the vision with the words:

Pray thus. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplications.[8]

During his second apparition, the Angel urged the children: “Offer prayers and sacrifices to the Most High.”[9] When Lucia asked how the children were to make sacrifices, the Angel replied:

Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God as an action of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners. You will thus draw down peace upon your country. I am its Guardian Angel, the Angel of Portugal. Above all, accept and bear with submission the suffering which the Lord will send you.[10]

The children were indeed led to pray as the Angel had taught them and to accept happily suffering for the sake of the forgiveness of sins and the repair of the disorder which sin always introduces into personal lives and into the world.

During the third apparition, in the autumn of 1916, the Angel, “holding in his hand a chalice with a Host suspended above it, from which a few drops of blood fell, taught the children a much longer prayer:

Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ present in the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference with which He Himself is offended. And, through the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of You the conversion of poor sinners.[11]

The Angel then communicated the Sacred Host to Lucia and the Precious Blood to Francisco and Jacinta, with these words: “Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.”[12]

The third apparition of the Angel of Portugal manifested to the children the essentially Eucharistic nature of their prayer and sacrifice. In fact, Christ makes ever new His sacrifice on Calvary through the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, for the salvation of souls and of the world. Hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, are most perfectly united to the Heart of Jesus through participation in the Eucharistic Sacrifice which reaches its culmination in the worthy reception of the incomparable fruit of the Sacrifice: the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ.

The central message of Our Lady of Fatima was revealed in what is called the Secret of Fatima during the apparition which took place on July 13, 1917. The first part of the Secret has two essential contents. First, there is the terrifying vision of Hell, foreshadowed in the evils visited upon the world at the time. Then, there is the offer of God’s healing peace through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that souls may be saved from a life of grievous or mortal sin and its fruit: eternal death. Our Lady spoke these words to the shepherd children:

You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, famine, persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.[13]

While the first part of the Secret gives a severe admonition, it is also full of hope in the unfailing grace of God which brings about repentance for sins committed and peace in individual repentant souls and, as a result, in the world.

Referring to the punishments necessarily connected with the grave sins of the time, the second part of the Secret is the announcement of the peace which God wants to give to souls and to the world. The peace of God will come to the world through two means: 1) the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and 2) the practice of the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturday of the month. Our Lady spoke these words to the shepherd children:

To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.

In the end my Immaculate heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world. In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, etc.[14]

Our Lady indicated the spiritual remedy of the deplorable situation in which the world and Church found themselves. She also foretold the terrible physical chastisements which would result from the failure to consecrate the agent of the spread of atheistic communism to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through her Immaculate Heart and to undertake the regular practice of reparation for so many offenses communicated against the immeasurable and unceasing love of God manifested so perfectly in the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus.

In fact, the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary did not take place, as she requested, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays did not become the practice of the universal Church. There ensued the terrible suffering of the Second World War and its aftermath, the spread of atheistic communism, resulting, in fact, in the persecution of many nations and of the Church in those nations, and the annihilation of some nations. The second part of the Secret also ends with the sure hope that the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph through obedience to her maternal instruction.