Opinion

Today’s story about the German bishops ignoring repeated pleas from faithful Catholics regarding porn and other offensive books sold by their giant book sales company is very disturbing. It is yet more sex related scandal permitted by Church officials in the West, as we have seen all too often over the past several decades.

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Once again, even though they have a strong anti-Christian bias, secular media are owed thanks for exposing important facts that Church leaders and their tightly controlled Catholic media withhold from the public.

We have stated many times in LifeSiteNews, as others have also stated, that many bishops still do not seem to have learned a thing from the huge sex abuse scandals of not too many years ago. Denial, cover up the truth and attack the credibility and character of the whistleblowers still seem to be the mandatory elements of the response template, unless finally forced to take at least some action by public revelations of undeniable facts.

And even then, it often seems that the response is only limited to the very minimum that might satisfy the public.

This is not to minimize the importance of the cleaning up of many (but definitely not all) seminaries of dissenters, and the implementation of strict diocesan sexual abuse reporting policies (by no means always followed) and other positive measures that have taken place in the United States and Canada.

But the root causes of these horrible scandals still remain unresolved in the Church in North America and perhaps more so in much of Europe. That is, dissent from Church moral teaching amongst bishops, priests and in schools and other Church institutions is still a massive problem. On-going scandals reveal that it is a contrived illusion that the real, deeper causes of the horrors have actually been fully addressed.

Active homosexuality and acceptance of homosexuality among the clergy, including bishops and even cardinals and among religious, and in Catholic colleges and schools, and in the literature and programs in these institutions, has to a large degree still not been faced and firmly dealt with. This reality is massively related to all the problems in the Church in the West. Scratch under the surface of many unexplainable, disturbing actions and neglects of clergy, and frequently, as I have personally found over the years, homosexuality is involved. In a smaller number of cases, other violations of sexual chastity are found. I have been amazed how accurate this rule of thumb has turned out to be.

Wildly dissident, rebellious educational institutions, such as Washington’s Georgetown University or Loyola U,  are still not remotely held accountable by Church officials, as these colleges continue to form and spew out more fundamentally anti-Christian and sexually disordered graduates.

Many faithful clergy and bishops are suffering greatly from having to endure these ongoing travesties within the Church and consistently being subjected to harsh retributions if they speak out or try to implement corrective actions.

The German porn situation, from all the evidence I have seen over the years, was likely allowed to continue because a fair number of influential German clergy at all levels and their bureaucrats and other advisers possibly have no problem with this kind of porn and may use it themselves. Such is the degree of moral corruption that appears to exist in some parts of the Church, especially in the affluent, very comfortable and increasingly faithless West.

Gabriele Kuby and Bernhard Mueller are typical of the courageous Catholics who have been valiantly fighting this internal corruption and filth in the Church. Such people are heroic, especially when one considers the abuse that they have to endure from persons in positions of power in their much beloved Church.

Eventually, the whistleblowers come to see that the only solution, after all other legitimate avenues have proved futile, is to expose to the public light these awful things. Then, and only then, does some necessary resolution begin because of strong public pressure and worries about financial loss.

It is a tough road to clean up this mess within the Catholic Church, a church that is desperately needed now by all of society to play its proper, powerful role in the restoration of a true Christian civilization that will halt the current downward spiral into social and moral chaos.

It seems that the solution must largely come from the bottom up, that is, from the remaining lay faithful, rather than from the too common incredibly weak, incapable or corrupt church leaders and institutions. There are of course many praiseworthy exceptions among the bishops and other clergy, and hopeful developments – as LifeSiteNews has frequently reported.

However, there is still a long, long way to go and therefore there is a strong need for faithful lay Catholics to confidently and boldly engage in the battle to hold Church leaders accountable and set the Church, within the limits of their lay roles, back in the right direction.

If the Christian church is once again restored to what it should be, then we have a chance of restoring a Culture of Life. Otherwise, I fear it cannot happen, no matter what else we do.