Posted on 08/28/2018 11:10:26 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Sometimes Caesar must act.
Sometime tomorrow Ambassador Callista Gingrich should march into the Vatican Secretariat of State in Rome. Then demand the release of all documents related to now-disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The former Archbishop of Washington, it’s widely known, molested teen boys and sexually preyed on seminarians.
Gingrich should tell Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin that the Vatican has one week to answer. If the answer is no, or if they are reluctant to answer, she should give them one month to reconsider. Then inform them on that day, she and her staff will leave for the United States. They won’t return until the issue is settled. How High Does the Rot Go?
Read the 11-page memo prepared by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. He’s no crank or amateur gadfly, but the former papal nuncio (ambassador) to the United States. He claims, based on personal knowledge, that it was not just Americans who gave the nod and wink to the criminal sexual assaults of “Uncle Ted” McCarrick. He charges high-ranking members of the Roman Curia knew as well. And they allowed this behavior to continue by giving McCarrick promotions and cover for his behavior.
Viganò lists many high-ranking churchmen as knowing about McCarrick’s crimes:
Pope Benedict XVI (who tried to take action and was apparently thwarted and flouted by his own bishops). Cardinal Angelo Sodano. The aforementioned Cardinal Pietro Parolin. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Pope Francis, who apparently revoked Benedict’s measures aimed at McCarrick, and made him a close advisor. (McCarrick had strongly supported him for pope.)
These and other Catholic prelates knew that Cardinal McCarrick was taking seminarians to his bed and molesting them. He did this for years, all the while receiving promotions, open-door access to the highest reaches of the Church. Also traveling high-wide-and-handsome on diplomatic missions for the Pope. What Did Pope Francis Know and When Did He Know It?
Many questions have been raised by Viganò’s critics, some of them are fair. For instance, if Pope Benedict did restrict McCarrick, why was he seen all over the world? Appearing in official Vatican ceremonies and certainly not hidden away? Was there really an interdict imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict? Did Fr. Boniface Ramsey’s letter reach influential offices of the Holy See? Did Viganò really tell these tales to his bosses in Rome?
Vatican offices must produce the McCarrick Files for officials from the U.S. Departments of Justice and State.
Viganò is coming under severe criticism from certain so-called progressives. They are driving the narrative that he’s attempting a “putsch” against Pope Francis. Note the veiled accusation that Viganò is a Nazi in league with other Nazis. Some on the dissident left are practically pulling out their hair. The often-comical Michael Sean Winters says his team has 24 hours to save the Church, or something. Even sensible commentators, like Dawn Eden, are focusing their criticism and questions on Viganò instead of trying to learn what really happened. It seems that many are not interested in knowing if there was a cover-up in the Vatican to protect McCarrick. Trump Can Demand the Documents
But no matter what the questions or criticism, they will not be answered. Not unless and until the Vatican produces the files that will tell the tale. Viganò says these files exist, in the Nunciature in Washington DC (and in various dicasteries in Vatican City — don’t hold your breath). These Vatican offices must produce the McCarrick Files for officials from the U.S. Departments of Justice and State. We must know if Vatican Cardinals knew about the sexual predator in our midst and let him proceed with his illegal, nefarious behavior.
We learned one thing in Pennsylvania. It will not be committees of laymen working with bishops who will bring these enormities into the light. No, it will be secular officials. It was an Attorney General who unveiled the crimes in Pennsylvania. It will be Attorneys General who will rip off the scab in Missouri and Illinois. Protect Americans First
This is a legal and diplomatic crisis. We Catholics must convince President Trump of this. And that he should act. The United States must move to protect our young people who have come under assault from a Prince of the Church and who have been protected and moved around by other Princes of the Church in Rome.
Frank Keating, former FBI agent, former Governor of Oklahoma, famously left the US Bishops’ National Review Board because the Bishops were not willing to cooperate with the investigations of priest pederasty. As he was walking out the door, Keating said this was not the Church he knew. The Bishops acted more like La Cosa Nostra (the Mafia) with its code of omertà (silence).
On the plane coming from Ireland this week, Pope Francis said he would not answer any questions about the Viganò document. Talk about omertà. Perhaps losing the US diplomatic presence will loosen his tongue, and more important, the McCarrick Files located somewhere in the Vatican’s embassy in Washington, D.C.
His immediate resignation and surrender to the civil authorities either in Italy or Argentina would be more relevant.
NorthMountain:
Well I think he should go, but charges, not sure he has committed any Crime. The issues with McCarrick which Vagano speak of refer to him involved with Homosexual relations with seminarians and priests, not a crime, but gravely immoral. The accusation of McCarrick and the sexual abuse of the 16 year old occurred (allegedly) in 1971. Francis to his credit stripped McCarrick from title of Cardinal and put him into what is in effect Catholic prison. I don’t think McCarrick can be charged for something that occurred in 1971 legally. Now, it seems obvious that if Benedict put McCarrick in Catholic house rest for his homosexual relations with adult seminarians and Francis removed him from Catholic time out, it suggest Francis did this to spite Benedict, did not believe the accusations that McCarrick used his position as Seminary Professor to seek out homosexual relations with Seminarians and young priests or He just does not care that MCarrick was an active homosexual involved with other seminarians and priests who were also active homosexuals.
But no.
I would oppose RICO or any other strategy that would result in "massive fines, forfeiture and generally putting the church out of business."
That would just re-victimize us, the innocent laypeople, liquidating what WE and our parents and grandparents had lovingly invested in our parishes and schools for generations, and leaving guilty high-level clerics free to retire with not a visible or audible scintilla of repentance.
Weakland paid out $$ settlements in Milwaukee, McCarrick in Metuchen and Newark NJ, Mahony in LA. Many dioceses (is it a dozen now? More?) went through bankruptcy. Everyone who is not living under a rock knows that the Bad Guys are not deterred by financial penalty, as long as those penalties are paid by fleecing or skinning us, the "flock".
I want the perps in jail.
Otherwise the wolves get to eat the lambs and make US pay the tab.
"Make then pay, make them put up for sale the wealth of the church."
No, dammit. They don't get to rape us and rob us too.
The "wealth of the church" belongs to us, not them. Leave us our parishes and schools. Put the cover-uppers in jail for obstruction of justice at least.
Let them find a new vocation doing prison ministry ---- from the inside.
And I think you're making a good point.
I'm not sure that Trump should do this without a good National Interest angle. Let Steve Bannon advise him on this.
I would vote for Trump a dozen more times, but I'm not confident he knows how to choreograph this with strategic precision, without Twittering like a Twit and looking like a goon or a buffoon. (Sorry, but it's true.)
He's good at using threats and bluffs, though. Vigano wouold be the man to ask: he's international diplomacy pro.
We’ve yet to see it. I’m pessimistic.
All the financial penalties that have been paid out over the past 20+ years --- from hush money, to confidential settlements, civil liability, pay-offs: it just spreads the costs to the Good Guys, the blameless pewsitters, and lets the Bad Guys off the hook.
The mitred princes are draining the Church of her whole patrimony built up over generations, robbing our grandparents who worked in the mines and mills and built the schools and cathedrals... our grandparents and and our grandchildren.
If they got hit with huge RICO penalties they´d probably sell off the parishes and schools. St. Brigid´s will be an art gallery, Sacred Heart an upscale condominium.
No. I want the perpetrators, and their enablers, in jail. I´m sorry.
If they serve hard time it´s no more than justice, and if the hard time makes them repent, so much the better for their eternity. See also #24
On reflection, I agree.
Stylishly tailored millstones is another consideration.
One way or the other, if this homoclerical demonocracy is to be overthrown and purged, it will cost the material patrimony of the Church.
The satanic sodomites are not going to give up without a fight. They are playing for keeps, and will fight to the death.
So, I think that there are roughly three scenarios (and a fourth chilling, long-term solution if both of the first two fail).
1. Internal Laity-Led Purge: The laity repent of their own sins, reclaim Catholic morality and culture, and entirely cut off the finances to every entity associated with the Church. The Church, having lost most of its income, can no longer support the homoclerics in the style of millionaires and billionaires from current cash flow. They sell off schools, parishes, hospital, artwork until there is nothing left. Then when the swarm of demonic vultures finds it has picked the material bones of the Church clean, they depart, looking for their next set of victims. The two or three remaining holy bishops, together with the 8 or 9 holy priests left rebuild, without the material wealth the Church once had.
2. Governments (incompetently) Cleans Up the Mess (and maybe go overboard and launch full-scale persecution of the surviving Church): Through the use of laws against conspiracy, governments around the world prosecute the homoclerics, jail many, and liquidate the assets of the Church to pay civil damages and fines. In many countries, the government uses this as an excuse to commit outright plunder, and, in some cases to criminally prosecute remaining laypeople.
3. Nothing Much Happens. For Now. The laity don’t get their act together, don’t repent, and don’t cut off the homoclerics cash flow, and the homoclerics keep charge, they pay off governments with the cash flow from the laity. We lose a few more of the laity, as they leave in righteous disgust, some more parishes, schools, and whatnot get closed, and the homoclerics continue to have homoorgies in very large penthouse apartments worth tens of millions of dollars where homocardinals live.
4. If Three, Then Four: The Fall of the West: The islamics overrun the West, and purge the Church (and all of the West), and oppress and persecute us for some centuries. From the new catacombs, we (or rather, our children’s children’s children’s children’s… children) eventually repent, God shows His Mercy, and we rebuild the Church above ground. Again. Minus our material “patrimony.”
No. Just enforce the laws of the U.S.A. and attend to U.S. interests. This isn’t old Europe. Our forefathers came here to get away from that.
It may necessary to threaten the Church with RICO and anything else to force them to give up the names of those who are pedophiles and make them available for prosecution.
The long term solution is a new fresh leadership that is determined to root out all corruption and punish those that need to be up to and including Excommunication.
To do that a Pope with great determination and backbone will be needed to clean house and the support to do so.
The Question is can or will that happen????????????
Two.
Yes, that's right: two.
And the accused had already been turned in to the secular authortiies for prosecution.
Most of what has gone on since the reforms of 2002-2003 has been. not pedophilia (sexual relations with children, pre-puberty), or ephebophilia/ pederasty (sexual relations with teenagers and youths, post-puberty) but sexual exploitation of males who are "street legal" teens (18-19) or young twenty-somethings, mostly seminarians or young priest-proteges, by their clerical peers and superiors.
Hence almost 100% homosexuals going after attractive, (civilly) legal, young adult men.
These are always damnably corrupt, deserving of hell-fire, but often not crimes that can be prosecuted by law enforcement and the courts unless you can nail them on, say, sexual battery.
Here the rectors and bishops have to expose, denounce, and laicize the offenders, or the lower clergy and laity have to rise up in righteous wrath and --- forcefully if needed --- throw the buggers out. Let them weep and gnash their teeth.
And yes, I fully support a collection-plate boycott. If your particular parish clergy are innocent, support them by direct-pay of parish bills (electrical, water-sewer. physical maintenance and repairs) and get them food baskets from St. Vincent de Paul.
The pedos are dead or in jail already. We need to go after the whole homosexual culture in the seminaries, the religious orders, the chanceries and the USCCB which enables the rot.
Thanks for your careful thinking.
Sounds like a RICO investigation is in order. Search warrants & grand jury subpoenas are necessary.
Innocent pastors will suffer, and blameless pewsitters will take the hit.
The wolves will fleece, skin, butcher and eat the flock, and the prosecutors will call it justice.
No, lock him up...He's a criminal...Harboring and enabling child rapists...
Bookmarking.
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