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.

Pope Visits Fatima

An interesting take on that May 12, 2017 visit from Tradition in Action. 

An excerpt.

DENYING FATIMA’S MESSAGE  –   I would say that Pope Francis’ visit to Fatima this month can be summarized as an attempt to empty and deny the message of Fatima. The essence of his remarks appeared when he spoke these words at the Chapel of the Apparitions on May 12: “Great injustice is done to God’s grace whenever we say that sins are punished by his judgment, without first saying – as the Gospel clearly does – that they are forgiven by his mercy! Mercy has to be put before judgment and, in any case, God’s judgment will always be rendered in the light of his mercy.

“Obviously, God’s mercy does not deny justice, for Jesus took upon himself the consequences of our sin, together with its due punishment. He did not deny sin, but redeemed it on the cross. Hence, in the faith that unites us to the cross of Christ, we are freed of our sins; we put aside all fear and dread, as unbefitting those who are loved (cf. 1 Jn 4:18).” (1)

These words are meant to “correct” the two parts of the message of Fatima that undoubtedly speak about God’s judgment of individuals and nations and threaten them with chastisements. In that message, although Our Lady showed great mercy to the souls and nations, the emphasis was placed on the punishment God reserves for men if they do not convert. That is, it was precisely the opposite of Francis’ input.

Punishment of individuals

If we put the parts of the Fatima message in perspective, we see that the first part refers to the punishment of a huge number of individuals who go to Hell because they abandoned the Commandments, while the second part refers to the punishment of nations.

Indeed, in the apparition on July 13, 1917, Sister Lucy reported: “Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear.

“The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to Heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.” (2)

It is clear that this part of the message is turned to move Catholics primarily by means of fear, not mercy, inviting them to return to the path of grace. This way that Our Lady chose to send her message is in accordance with a multitude of Catholic teachings, which can be summarized in two maxims: “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” and “Think about the last things and you will not die eternally.” (3)

So, what Francis did was an attempt to deny Our Lady’s message.

When Pope Bergoglio revolted against the pedagogy of fear, he fell into multiple errors.

• The first is that by assuming that mercy always prevails over justice and that our sins were already forgiven on the Cross, he practically denied that sins are punished eternally.
• As a consequence, he implicitly denied Hell. He seemed to return to the error of John Paul II that Purgatory and Hell are existential situations a person experiences in this life.
• He further denied that each man must struggle against evil – the world, flesh and Devil – in order to merit his own salvation. Grace is only effective with man’s cooperation.
• He also indirectly encouraged people to sin. His motto seems to be: “Trust in mercy and do whatever you want.” Quite similar to that of Luther: “Believe and sin boldly.”

This analysis is in reference to the first part of the message.

Nostra Aetate

This was the Vatican II document helping Catholics understand the Church’s response to other religions and this article from Crisis Magazine is an excellent analysis of it.

An excerpt.

I have encountered serious Catholics who have invoked the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions) as seemingly discouraging or even reproving any kind of searching public examination and criticism of Islam. What exactly does this short statement of the Vatican II Fathers have to say about relation of the Church to non-Christian religions and to Islam specifically?

It says, first, to be sure, that the Church seeks to promote fellowship among all men (#1). Secondly, it speaks about how all historic religions that have grown up in the context of well-developed cultures have attempted to provide answers to the most central questions that confront man, such as who he is, what the meaning of his life is, and what kind of moral life he is to lead. Thirdly, it makes clear that there are elements of truth in all of these religious traditions, and so the Church “rejects nothing that is true and holy in” them (#2). Finally, it “exhorts” Catholics to engage in “dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions” so they can recognize “the good things” found among them (#2).

The document also makes clear the following. While the “precepts and teachings” of these other religions differ in many respects from the Church’s, they “often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men” (#2)—that is, they obscurely express Christ in some way. It also stresses that the dialogue and cooperation with them must be “carried out with prudence and love” (#2). In other words, while acting in charity Catholics must always bring discernment to their dealings with adherents of non-Christian religions. The Church—and by extension, the faithful—“ever must proclaim Christ ‘the way, the truth, and the life’” (#2) and “the cross of Christ as the sign of God’s all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows” (#4). What this means is that they can never back away from holding—always charitably, to be sure—that she alone teaches the fullness of the truth.

As far as Moslems are concerned, Nostra Aetate regards them “with esteem,” because as a fellow Abrahamic faith they submit to the one true God, revere Jesus as a prophet even if they don’t recognize him as God, have devotion to the Blessed Mother, and like Christianity “value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting,” and also await the resurrection of the body on Judgment Day (#3).

The document also affirms that Catholics cannot refuse to treat any person “in a brotherly way,” since all are created in the image of God, and that there is no basis “for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned” (#5).

A key point here are that Catholics cannot let themselves slip into a kind of religious syncretism when viewing other religions or in their dealings with their adherents. Charity is exhorted, but so is prudence. When the document says that dialogue and cooperation must be carried out with these things in mind, it is essentially cautioning Catholics not to slip into a mindset of moral or religious equivalency. When it says that these other religions have elements of the truth—which unwittingly, for them, reflect the truth of Christ—it is making clear that, as stated, the Church alone embraces and teaches the fullness of truth and the complete path to human salvation. She, in effect, is reminding the faithful that they cannot forget this or cease to make it a central element motivating their dialogue. Indeed, it has been just such a neglect that has abundantly characterized ecumenical relations since Vatican II and has helped retard the Church’s efforts at evangelization. Where Catholics have not succumbed to a functional religious syncretism, many have failed to understand that a charitable attitude can make it possible to stand solidly for principles and even speak the truth and still get along with people.

If anything, these points from Nostra Aetate invite, rather than discourage, a careful and honest examination and evaluation of the beliefs of non-Christian religions and a clarity in pointing out—especially to fellow Catholics, in the interest of their increased understanding—the realities about their origins, problems in their teaching, and ways in which they conflict with Catholic truth. It goes without saying that this is always supposed to be done charitably and respectfully, but getting to the point and laying out the realities is not the same thing as engaging in polemics. Many Catholics who have invoked this document to discourage blunt, even if well argued, criticisms of Islam have confused this.

Some of the things that would seem to be fair game in a careful examination of Islam are whether some of its basic teachings may encourage violence as a way to spread the faith, the historical background and character of Mohammed, whether an arbitrariness and radical voluntarism took deep root in Islam way back in the Middle Ages when it turned its back on philosophy (as Robert Reilly brilliantly discusses in The Closing of the Muslim Mind), how much Islamic teaching really permits coexistence with and equal treatment of other religions once it gains political power, whether its basic teachings give rise to the Islamic radicalism we witness today or if this is a divergence and corruption, and whether for it religious dominance also means political domination. In light of what we have witnessed historically and in the present crisis caused by Islamism, these are hardly red herrings or an unjustified sounding of alarms.

Let’s remember that the Church never asks the faithful to surrender reasonableness or good judgment in considering things. Nostra Aetate does not ask us to do that in our evaluation of Islam.

Anthony Esolen to Thomas More

Very good news from the National Catholic Register for one of the Church’s most important scholars whose works are must haves for your library.

An excerpt.

MERRIMACK, N.H. — Anthony Esolen, the prolific Catholic scholar and author known for his distinctly Catholic worldview and translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, has accepted a teaching position at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, severing his ties with Providence College, where he held a tenured professorship and waged a long battle for its Catholic identity.

The move marks the end of an increasingly tempestuous showdown between Esolen and Providence over the Dominican-run institution’s direction and the beginning of a new chapter for the Catholic scholar. Esolen will begin teaching courses at the New Hampshire Catholic liberal arts college starting with the fall semester. He will also begin work on Thomas More’s new Center for the Restoration of Catholic Culture.

William Fahey, president of Thomas More, told the Register that both Esolen and the college have a long-established relationship. Esolen spoke recently at Thomas More’s President’s Council Dinner, addressed students at commencement, and gave a keynote address at the annual Catholic Literature Conference in Concord, New Hampshire, co-hosted by Thomas More.

Fahey said he also has had a long personal relationship with Esolen and admires his “educational vision, his love of the Church, his engagement in the political and cultural arena.”

“And like Thomas More, he has made tremendous sacrifices and suffered for holding to his convictions,” the college president added.

Esolen’s hiring by Thomas More, Fahey said, demonstrates both the college’s commitment to “excellence in teaching” and that “a small Catholic ‘Great Books’ college can continue to attract world-class faculty.”

Esolen’s additional work on the Center for the Restoration of Catholic Culture, Fahey added, highlights the college’s mission “to wed virtue and scholarship, contemplation with cultural engagement.”

“We are following the lead of our spiritual patron, St. Thomas More,” he said. “We can engage the world, hold firmly to our faith, and retire for learned and merry conversations among friends.”

The Perils of Providence

For more than a year, Esolen had been engaged in an acrimonious and rather public debate about the true nature of diversity at Providence College, which became known as “the Esolen Affair.” Esolen had vocally criticized “diversity” being used by students and some faculty on campus to push a political agenda rooted in current events, as opposed to his support for a “cultural diversity” that also treasures the best of Western civilization.

But the public battle came to a head after Providence’s administration publicly distanced itself from Esolen, who had written an essay for Crisis Magazine entitled, “My College Succumbed to the Totalitarian Diversity Cult” (a title that Esolen said he did not write).

The administration’s public repudiation of Esolen followed upon a protest march by Providence students and a faculty petition that alleged Esolen’s articles contained “racist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic and religiously chauvinist statements.”

Esolen told the Register that the turning point for him came after Providence’s president, Dominican Father Brian Shanley, allegedly refused to meet with a small group of Catholic professors intent on resolving the conflict and persuaded the Dominican provincial not to meet with them either.

Esolen explained that he could have lived with a “somewhat Catholic school that was really committed to the humanities” or “an unreservedly Catholic school where the humanities needed shoring up.” However, he concluded Providence offered neither of these options: The campus had become “highly politicized,” and the administrative decisions, to him, appeared “basically secular in their inspiration and their aim.”

“That is not to say that Providence College is lost,” he said. “There are still many excellent people there, Catholics and others who are friendly to the faith, even when they do not share it, and friendly to the humanities. But saving the school is no longer my battle.”

The public clash between Esolen’s “strong Catholic convictions” and the direction that Providence was going prompted Thomas More’s president and several trustees to meet with Esolen at a fundraising event and discuss the possibility of him leaving his tenured position to join Thomas More College.

“It was rather remarkable,” Fahey said. “After about an hour of conversation, we were all wondering why it had taken so long to come to the conclusion that Esolen’s scholarship, understanding of an integrated Catholic education, and love of traditional Catholic culture were a magnificent fit with the mission of Thomas More College.”

‘Good Cheer’ at Thomas More

In contrast to the exhaustion and isolation he experienced at Providence College, Esolen said a recent visit to Thomas More left him “full of good cheer and energy.”

“For somebody who isn’t getting younger, those can take you a long way,” he said. “They can add many years to your life as a teacher, whereas discouragement and disappointment lead to exhaustion.”

Having a community “filled with the faith,” Esolen said, strengthens his own faith. He finds it a “considerable advantage” that Thomas More has daily Mass offered outside of the class schedule, followed by lunch, “when you have a chance of sitting with anybody and everybody.”

He felt drawn to Thomas More College because the students are meant to be “surrounded by beauty and sanity,” where young men and women falling in love and getting married is celebrated — not the “rat poison of the sexual revolution, the ‘Lonely Revolution.’” He admires how the education focuses on the “whole human being, not disembodied chunks of him,” making it the kind of environment that can produce “leaders in thought, art, public affairs and the Church.”

Kingship of Christ

This article from the Remnant Newspaper is excellent.

An excerpt.

We who are here together and in peace believe and hope in a fraternal world. We desire that men and women of different religions may everywhere gather and promote harmony, especially where there is conflict. Our future consists in living together. For this reason we are called to free ourselves from the heavy burdens of distrust, fundamentalism and hate. Believers should be artisans of peace in their prayers to God and in their actions for humanity! As religious leaders, we are duty bound to be strong bridges of dialogue, creative mediators of peace.  – Pope Francis, World Day of Prayer for Peace. Assisi, September 20, 2016

As DenzingerBergoglio.com notes, “Among the bizarre principles of bergoglian philosophy is this nugget: “unity is greater than conflict”. The consequences of this pseudo-principle are explained in Evangelii Gaudium, which claims to indicate the direction of Francis’ pontificate: we find expressions like “communion amid disagreement”, “friendship in society”, “multifaceted unity” and many others that, although deliberately ambiguous as Francis’ ideas and gestures have always been, nonetheless still permit an attentive observer to discern their true meaning.

En passant, it is noteworthy that someone who tries to appear as perfectly accessible to all – as a pastor who uses a telephone in order to reply to those who write to him, who devotes more time to greetings than to instruction when he meets pilgrims – prefers to keep one of the primary aspects of his doctrine shrouded in a nebulous mystery…. For what reason?

We have our own theory as to why that is, having everything to do with the great apostasy infecting the Catholic Church under this most disastrous pontificate. But rather than delve into the obvious contradictions, let us simply juxtapose the words of Pope Francis with those of the great Louis-Édouard-François-Desiré Pie, also knowns, simply, as Cardinal Pie—the French Catholic bishop of Poitiers–famous for his massive defence of the social reign of Christ the King. As the Catholic voice of Cardinal Pie answers the myriad errors of Pope Francis, let us pray for his intercession on behalf of our beloved Church in unprecedented crisis.

And as for our Protestant friends, let us recall that Christian can only be understood as Catholic. As St. Thomas says, we only call the “separated brethren” or the heretics and schismatics “Christian” out of politeness. They are not “Christian” simpliciter loquendo, but only in a qualified sense, secundum quid. So Christian unity can only be accomplished, as Pope Pius XI teaches in Mortalium Animos, by a return to the fold, to the one holy Catholic and apostolic Church–a prescription Pope Francis seems to reject. Again, contrast the words of Pope Francis at Assisi 2016 with those of his predecessor, Pope Pius XI:

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it.

Dorothy Day & Catholic Soft Communism

I was not familiar with the writings of Dorothy Day until I became a Catholic, but then became a fervent fan after reading much of her published work and eventually have pretty much collected everything she wrote in book form.

However, since I read the shocking 2010 book by Dr. Carol Byrne, The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis and followed up with my own research, I realized how devoted she remained to Communism throughout her life.

Dorothy Day’s published writings, which is what most of us base our opinion of her on, are filled with devotional service and Catholic oriented content; but her writings to her fellow workers, those writings specifically in the Catholic Worker—which Dorothy Day edited from its beginning in 1933 to her death in 1980, clearly stood on the side of Communism against Capitalism, as did her many speeches, people she honored and her activism.

As I wrote in my book, Catholicism, Communism & Criminal Reformation:

As Earl Browder, who headed the Party during its heyday in the 1930s, would later boast:

Entering the 1930s as a small ultra-left sect of some 7,000 members, remnant of the fratricidal factional struggle of the 1920s that had wiped out the old “left wing” of American socialism, the CP rose to become a national political influence far beyond its numbers (at its height it never exceeded 100,000 members), on a scale never before reached by a socialist movement claiming the Marxist tradition. It became a practical power in organized labour, its influence became strong in some state organizations of the Democratic party (even dominant in a few for some years), and even some Republicans solicited its support. It guided the anti-Hitler movement of the American League for Peace and Democracy that united a cross-section of some five million organized Americans (a list of its sponsors and speakers would include almost a majority of Roosevelt’s Cabinet, the most prominent intellectuals, judges of all grades up to State Supreme Courts, church leaders, labour leaders, etc.). Right-wing intellectuals complained that it exercised an effective veto in almost all publishing houses against their books, and it is at least certain that those right-wingers had extreme difficulty getting published.

While Browder’s boast contained a lot of truth, he could hardly take full credit. The Communist Party USA only broke out of its isolation in 1935, when the Comintern [Lenin’s Bolsheviks believed that unless socialist revolutions triumphed world-wide, they would be defeated by international capitalism, so they organized the Communist International—abbreviated as Comintern—in Moscow in 1919 to foment revolution around the world.] taking advantage of the widespread legitimate fear of German Nazism, ordered the international Communist movement to adopt an ecumenical attitude and stretch its hands out to those it previously hated, including socialists and Catholics. (Italicized section added.) Romerstein, H. & Breindel, E. (2000). The Venona secrets: Exposing Soviet espionage and America’s traitors. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc. (pp. 98-99)

David H. Lukenbill. (2013), Catholicism, Communism & Criminal Reformation. Sacramento, California: Chulu Press, The Lampstand Foundation. (pp. 84-85)

Byrne (2010)—virtually alone with an insightful and penetrating understanding of the deep Communist orientation of this seminal organization and its founders—writes about the Catholic Worker Movement in the introduction to her book:

The Catholic Worker Movement was co-founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in New York, on 1st May 1933, to provide food, clothing and shelter for the destitute during the years of the Great Depression. It was a movement built on the long-term despair of Americans who turned to radical political and social movements for a solution to unemployment, homelessness and poverty. For Day and Maurin it was an opportunity to fulfil their dream of starting a radical mass movement that might one day reverberate around the world. But in the intervening period they devoted their energies to fomenting a revolution against the US government, immersed as it was in upholding all the social and political institutions which they wanted to abolish: Capitalism, industrial corporations, big business and the armed forces. These they regarded as the causes of poverty and injustice in the world.

Key to the technique of protest was to project an image as a victim in the “class struggle” described by Karl Marx, then to seize the moral high ground by attacking the other side as the greedy, guilty “bourgeois.” It is essential to keep in mind that Day’s theories for a new social order share a common identity: they were all part of a “culture of victimization” which claims that any kind of social disadvantage is due entirely to “oppression” by the “bourgeoisie”. That explains her presumption that in the struggle for “liberation” the poor and the workers were by definition always innocent even when they resorted to armed violence, and rich capitalists always the guilty party even when they contributed notably to the common good. Carol Byrne, (2010). The Catholic worker movement (1933-1980): A critical analysis. United Kingdom: AuthorHouse UK Ltd. (pp. ix-x)

Lukenbill Ibid. (pp. 89-90)

I think that in Dorothy Day’s case, she had conflated Communism with Catholicism so deeply in her own mind and spirit that they were virtually one and the same thing to her—a classic case of being duped—a form of thinking still very prevalent within the Catholic left, especially those still, and they are many, enamored with Liberation Theology.

Now that her cause for sainthood has been approved by the American bishops to move her from the current designation as Servant of God, to the next step in the canonization process, the history of the Vatican’s connection to Russian Communism through the period when the Fatima call from the Holy Virgin to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart was not responded to, due, in large part, to the Vatican influence of Orthodox Russian Metropolitans now known to have been KGB directed, will perhaps be examined.

Lukenbill Ibid. (p. 92)

I trust soundness will prevail and Dorothy Day will not become a saint, though admiration for her work with the poor, even tinged at it is with the anger and hostility against capitalism and the American way, is warranted and it is an admiration I share.