August 1, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The scandal of Cardinal McCarrick’s record of sexual abuse of seminarians and of minor children is sending waves of horror through the Church, as Catholics increasingly meditate on its disturbing implications. It is now clear that McCarrick’s reputation as a sexual predator was widely known in the Catholic hierarchy for decades, and nothing was done to stop the man or impede his career as he climbed the ladder of ecclesiastical power.
Despite attempts by a small number of priests and Catholic journalists to bring the truth to light about McCarrick’s filthy habit of sexual predation, and even to warn the Holy See, the prelate managed to climb the ladder of promotion, finally receiving the archbishopric of Washington D.C. and even a cardinal’s hat. It seems that no crime was sufficient to threaten McCarrick’s career, until he was safely in retirement.
The insidious influence of the Church’s gay mafia are now so extensive that bishops, cardinals, and even the pope seem to cow in fear before this infestation of effeminate perverts who have co-opted and hijacked the Church’s institutions. The “abominating desolation” of their filth is now openly on display throughout the Church, from the halls of the Holy See, to the chanceries of dioceses, to the innumerable “gay-friendly” parishes that pander to the spiritual self-destruction of their hapless clientele.
Church afflicted with moral corruption rivaling the era of the Borgias
A cursory review of this horror gives us confirmation that we are living in an age of corruption comparable with the decadence of the Borgias and the Renaissance papacy, whose blatant public displays of vice led to the Protestant Reformation, the most calamitous schism in the Church’s history.
An Italian archbishop who commissioned a blasphemous and homoerotic painting of Christ himself for his diocesan cathedral has been placed in charge of the Holy See’s Pontifical Council for Life and the Grand Chancellor of the St. John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies of Marriage and Family, leading former Council member Christine de Marcellus Vollmer to note that the appointment is more evidence of the power of the Vatican’s “gay lobby.”
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who claims that his obscene cathedral painting is an “evangelizing tool,” is using his perch to subvert the Church’s doctrines on life and sexuality. Following his appointment many authentic pro-lifers have been expelled from the Council and have been replaced in some cases with advocates of abortion and contraception. Paglia even sided publicly with the judge who ordered the withdrawal of life support from Alfie Evans, and did not join Pope Francis in his attempts to save the child from his induced death at the hands of Britain’s National Health Service.
Meanwhile, a former close associate of McCarrick, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, claims he knew nothing about McCarrick’s abusive behavior, even while he worked with him for six years in the Archdiocese of Washington chancery office and shared an apartment with him. Farrell is currently in charge of the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life, and has endorsed the homosexualist work Building a Bridge by Fr. James Martin, a priest who openly seeks to legitimize same-sex unions and to eliminate the Church’s clear condemnation of homosexual perversion in the Catechism.
Martin himself has been rewarded for his public LGBT activism by his appointment as a “communications consultant” to the Holy See, and is scheduled to give a talk at the Vatican-sanctioned “World Meeting of Families” in August.
A priest who became notorious in the Vatican diplomatic corps for his drunken homosexual trysts has been made prelate of the corrupt Vatican Bank, and is comically charged with reforming the institution. When Pope Francis was confronted with the accusations against Msgr. Battista Ricca in 2013 he claimed that they were unproven, but implied that the accusations were of little importance, adding that “many times we seem to seek out the sins of somebody’s youth and publish them. We’re not talking about crimes, which are something else. The abuse of minors, for instance, is a crime. But one can sin and then convert, and the Lord both forgives and forgets. We don’t have the right to refuse to forget … it’s dangerous.”
In May of 2017 the Vatican police raided an apartment next to St. Peter’s Basilica in which a cocaine-fueled homosexual orgy was being hosted by a high-ranking Vatican priest: Msgr. Luigi Capozzi, secretary to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, the President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. The Holy See has given no indication of any punitive measures taken against the participants. Cardinal Coccopalmerio has openly spoken to the press about the “positive elements” he sees in homosexual unions, which he says he tries to emphasize.
The hushed-up bust of Capozzi and his companions was then followed by two high-profile public trials of Vatican officials for child porn possession. Msgr. Carlo Alberto Capella, a Vatican diplomat who was caught with dozens of images and videos of child pornography on his cell phone, and who also distributed such materials to others, was given only five years in a Vatican detention cell and fined 5,000 euros. Msgr. Pietro Amenta, who attempted to molest an 18 year old man in a public place and had pornographic images of minors on his cell phone, received only a suspended sentence.
The influence of a powerful “homosexual mafia” in the Vatican was reportedly named as the principal source of the general malaise and corruption in the Holy See in a secret report given to Pope Benedict shortly before his resignation, and may have been a major cause of his decision to resign the office. It appears that the problem has only worsened since 2013.
Bishops resign as multiple gay child molestation rings discovered in Latin American dioceses
In Chile, Pope Francis has recently removed five bishops following years of complaints of their connections to a priest who led a sex-abuse ring, reportedly with their knowledge and even complicity. The pope took the measures after years of defending one of the bishops, Juan Barros, in which he publicly derided those who denounced the bishops’ corruption as engaging in “slander.”
Finally, when the pope was revealed to have falsely claimed that no victims had given him testimony, the public outrage in Chile was so deafening and disruptive to his pontificate that he was forced to act, issuing a muted apology for his errors and ordering a Vatican investigation of the Chilean church. Francis has now begun to speak of enforcing the Church’s long-defunct policy of excluding homosexuals from seminaries.
After a team of investigators were sent by the Vatican to Chile to interview victims, Bishop Alejandro Goić Karmelić of the Diocese of Rancagua has suspended twelve priests who were allegedly members of a sex-abusing “confraternity” that called itself “the family,” and used female family titles to refer to their hierarchy, such as “grandmother,” “aunts,” and “daughters.” Goić admitted that he had been warned about the group a year earlier but hadn’t acted. Pope Francis has since accepted his resignation.
In the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, an auxiliary bishop was recently forced to resign after accusations of his own sexual abuse of seminarians, and now a group of students in the seminary have signed a public statement denouncing a pervasive “network” of homosexuals there, writing that they are “scandalized and really depressed” by the situation. Their act of bravery has been rewarded by a contemptuous dismissal from the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, who accuses them of “gossip.” The cardinal, who has been credibly accused of siphoning hundreds of thousands of dollars from the University of Tegucigalpa, is a member of the pope’s “C9” group assigned with the task of reforming the Church.
The only seminary remaining in Ireland, where the Catholic faith is now in free fall and only a few dozen seminarians remain, has also been blasted for the predominance of homosexuals there, which has created such discontent that some bishops have decided to send their students to the Pontifical Irish College in Rome.
The problem of a homosexual mafia in the seminaries of the Church has been public knowledge for decades, but has been systematically ignored or downplayed by the ecclesiastical establishment. The scandal was thoroughly exposed in 2002 by journalist Michael Rose in his work Goodbye, Good Men, a work that was ruthlessly attacked by mainstream Catholic media. Regnery published a Kindle version of the book in 2015.
Even “conservative” bishops co-opted by the gay mafia
The reign of the sodomites in the Church is so powerful that even some of the most conservatively minded bishops in the U.S. are afraid to do anything to impede LGBT activism in their dioceses, no matter how egregious it might be.
I had the sad duty of reporting recently on the complicity of “conservative” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco in the scandalous behavior of one of his own deacons. Cordileone, a prelate who made a reputation for himself a few years ago for ostensibly fighting against the influence of homosexuals in the archdiocesan school system, continues to supply clerical faculties to an openly “gay” activist deacon, Brian Bromberger, despite being very aware for over a year that Bromberger makes his living publicly writing dirty articles for an anti-Catholic homosexual newspaper. In fact, Cordileone has apparently given Bromberger permission to continue writing for the publication, despite repeatedly being informed of the salacious content of the articles. Bromberger also continues to give talks on homosexuality at parishes.
Even worse, Cordileone allows San Francisco’s Most Holy Redeemer parish to continue its decades-long project of legitimizing and celebrating homosexual behavior among its members, despite the parish’s open LGBT advocacy on its webpage and numerous complaints made to him by laity. Cordileone long ago made peace with the homosexualist teacher’s union of the archdiocese, and appears to have all but totally dropped his public opposition to the gay agenda.
In Los Angeles, Archbishop José Gómez, a conservative former member of Opus Dei, appears to be even more in thrall to the gay mafia, maintaining blatant LGBT activists in major diocesan posts. Every year the prelate continues the tradition of organizing a “Religious Education Congress” that openly promotes homosexuality and transgenderism. At this year’s congress, LGBT ideologues had their way with the participants, instructing them on gender ideology’s “genderbread person,” denouncing the Church’s condemnation of sodomy as “unfair,” encouraging allowing homosexual couples to attend proms, and declaring that there are no moral absolutes. Two years ago, at the Religious Education Congress closing mass, a self-parody of modernist liturgical abuse, Gómez received the gifts from a male homosexual couple with their adopted child.
In effect, both Gómez and Cordileone appear to have been tamed, cowed, and neutralized by the Church’s “homosexual network,” which is able to operate with virtual impunity in their dioceses.
Similar atrocities are documented with regularity in other archdioceses led by more liberal bishops, such as Cardinal Timothy Dolan in New York, Cardinal Blase Cupich in Chicago, and Patrick McGrath in San José. Cupich in particular has repeatedly endorsed giving Holy Communion to homosexual couples, a position also taken by McGrath.
The heretical LGBT advocacy group for Catholics, “New Ways Ministry” reports that well over 200 parishes in the United States meet its “gay-friendly” standards. Such parishes openly celebrate and legitimize homosexual unions, promote gay porn, participate in obscene LGBT parades, host gay dance parties to fundraise for LGBT causes with Lady Gaga, and have meetings in gay drag bars.
I am sure that more conservative bishops such as Gómez and Cordileone, and perhaps even Timothy Dolan, don’t prefer such policies – they’re just too afraid to stand up to the homosexual power structure, and would rather permit such abuses and even cooperate with them rather than take on the difficulty of opposing them. Their complicity is a symptom of the seemingly unlimited power of the gay lobby in the Church today.
As ex-gay and former homosexual porn star Joseph Sciambra put it in a recent Facebook post: “I don’t mean to be crude, but some of these Bishops can’t even keep their priests out of the ‘Pride’ parades, therefore how are they going to keep them out of a guy’s pants? If they are openly disobedient in their public activities, why would they be obedient in terms of their private life? Bishops that continuously tolerate such behavior are usually complicit, sympathetic, or deeply involved.”
Sexual morality now understood as an “ideal”: the catastrophic moral laxism of the clergy
The triumph of homosexual corruption over so many dioceses and ministries in the Catholic Church are due to one fundamental cause: the generalized acceptance of a moral laxism that minimizes the seriousness of sexual sin and sees continence as a mere “ideal” that is beyond the capacity of ordinary Catholics.
Cardinal McCarrick himself became the spokesman for this doctrine as early as 2006, when he defended the creation of civil unions for homosexuals, claiming that heterosexual marriage was an “ideal” that not all could live up to. “I think basically the ideal would be that everybody was—was able to enter a union with a man and a woman and bring children into the world and have the wonderful relationship of man and wife that is so mutually supportive and is really so much part of our society and what keeps our society together. That’s the ideal,” said McCarrick.
“If you can’t meet that ideal, if there are people who for one reason or another just cannot do that or feel they cannot do that, then in order to protect their right to take care of each other, in order to take care of their right to have visitation in a hospital or something like that, I think that you could allow, not the ideal, but you could allow for that for a civil union,” he added.
The language of sexual morality as an “ideal” would ultimately find its way into Pope Francis’ now-infamous apostolic exhortation, Amoris laetitia, in which he repeatedly treats the moral requirements pertaining to marriage as an “ideal,” which can’t always be realized due to human frailty, particularly when people are living in invalid second “marriages” in which they are tempted to be sexually active.
Amoris laetitia’s approach to sexual morality in marriage as an “ideal” is now being publicly used by Cardinal Walter Kasper to openly claim that homosexual unions are “analogous” to marriage, and contain “elements” of Christian marriage, while not conforming to the “ideal” of marriage itself. Kasper’s theology regarding adulterous second marriages is seen as the chief inspiration behind the doctrines contained in Amoris laetitia.
The devastating effect of the clergy’s moral and disciplinary laxism, which has been widespread since the 1960s, can be seen in every aspect of the Church’s life. Priests have almost totally abandoned clerical garb in public, and often treat the Mass like a childish hootenanny rather than the solemn sacrifice that it is. Life and family issues are ignored in favor of socialist political causes under the guise of “social justice.” The ambiance in most parishes in Europe and the Anglophone countries is one of spiritual mediocrity and convenience, reflecting the carnal mentality of both clergy and laity.
Church’s traditional condemnation of sodomy minimized and forgotten
As a consequence of this catastrophic decline in piety, the clergy has forgotten and ignored the Church’s traditional doctrines and discipline regarding what was once called by Pope St. Pius V, “that horrendous crime,” and by St. Peter Damian, “the worst of sins.”
The Catholic Church has condemned homosexual behavior since the first century of its inception, when the inspired authors of the New Testament repeatedly warned readers that “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21, also 1 Cor. 6:9, Rom. 1:26-27). The early Church Fathers repeated this condemnation in the strongest possible terms. St. Augustine writes that “those shameful acts against nature, such as were committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested and punished,” and others call such behavior a “disease,” “madness,” and “filthy.”
Regional councils soon began to establish punishments for Catholics guilty of sodomy, and in the Middle Ages the Catholic Church began to publish manuals containing penalties specifically for clergy who engaged in homosexual acts, and particularly those who prey on children. When the Church faced a crisis of sodomy in the eleventh century clergy, St. Peter Damian (a future Doctor of the Church) cried out against it to the Pope in his famous Book of Gomorrah, and invoked the Church’s tradition of canonical penalties to defend his position.
With regard to child molesters, Damian cited a canonical sanction found in many manuals attributed to St. Basil, but in fact was originated by St. Fructuosus of Braga, a seventh century abbot. It required that any cleric found in any compromising situation with a minor was to be punished severely, publicly humiliated, and sent off to permanent imprisonment in a monastery:
A cleric or monk who persecutes adolescents or children, or who is caught in a kiss or other occasion of indecency, should be publicly beaten and lose his tonsure, and having been disgracefully shaved, his face is to be smeared with spittle, and he is to be bound in iron chains, worn down with six months of imprisonment, and three days every week to fast on barley bread until sundown. After this, spending his time separated in his room for another six months in the custody of a spiritual senior, he should be intent upon the work of his hands and on prayer, subject to vigils and prayers, and he should always walk under the guard of two spiritual brothers, never again soliciting sexual intercourse from youth by perverse speech or counsel.
Pope St. Leo IX responded to Damian’s Book of Gomorrah by decreeing that all those who had engaged in anal sodomy must be removed from the priesthood, and that those who had engaged in lesser degrees of sodomy with high frequency or with many accomplices, should also be removed. Those who had engaged in lesser degrees with fewer or no accomplices and infrequently, could return to their clerical grade of order only after carrying out long penances.
Leo IX then attended two regional councils where strong penalties were prescribed for sodomy. Eventually, the Third Lateran Council made the penalty more severe, decreeing that all clerics guilty of sodomy were to be “expelled from the clergy or confined in monasteries to do penance,” while laymen were to be excommunicated. No exceptions were given to this penalty.
Pope St. Pius V, responding to the terrible corruption among the clergy in the wake of the Renaissance papacy, decided to go further than the Third Lateran Council. Denouncing “that horrendous crime” of sodomy among the clergy, and concerned about rampant impunity, he decreed that all clerics guilty of sodomy, of whatever rank, were to be removed from the clergy, stripped of all of their titles, and turned over to the secular authorities for the same punishment given to laymen – which, at that time, was often the death penalty, or castration.
“Lest the contagion of such a disgrace, from the hope of impunity – which is the greatest incentive to sin – strengthen in boldness, we have decided that the clerics who are guilty of this nefarious crime are to be more gravely punished, so that the avenger of the civil laws, the secular sword, might certainly deter those who do not fear the death of the soul,” wrote Pius V.
I have provided a complete translation of this decree, Horrendum Illud Scelus, which can be found in PDF form here in both Latin and English.
The Church has since acted against the influence of homosexuals in the priesthood, most notably Popes John XXIII and Pope Benedict, both of whom decreed that those with homosexual tendencies could not be admitted to seminaries. Pope Francis has renewed the prohibition, but it has now become little more than a dead letter.
The recognition of the crisis in Chile, which seems to have led to a new willingness of Pope Francis to punish those guilty of sodomy or at least of sexual abuse, was provoked not by conscientious and dutiful leadership on the part of the clergy, but by the public outrage of the faithful, who protested vigorously during the pope’s recent visit to that country. There is little reason to believe that the Holy See will continue to act without a continuation of that pressure. The reform of the Church, as was the case in the Arian crisis of the 4th century, will come largely from the pressure of the laity.
Contact information:
His Holiness, Pope Francis PP.
00120 Via del Pellegrino
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Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, Prefect
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
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