https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-burke-calls-vatican-deal-with-china-unconscionable Cardinal Burke calls Vatican deal with China ‘unconscionable’ Lisa Bourne October 22, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican’s recently signed deal with China on selecting bishops was “absolutely unconscionable,” and “a betrayal of so many confessors and martyrs who suffered for years and years and were put to death” by the Communist Party, Cardinal Raymond Burke said. There are deep divisions with the curia, with some focused on the Vatican-China deal, Burke said while visiting Australia last week, according to The Australian. The divisions and the Vatican-China deal both come at the time while the Communist nation is ramping up religious persecution. The Holy See signed a “provisional agreement” on September 22 with the People’s Republic of China on the appointment of bishops after months of speculation and apprehension among Catholics. Through the agreement, Pope Francis has also decided to readmit into communionwith the Catholic Church the Chinese government’s “official” bishops ordained without pontifical mandate. The agreement has been criticized by many experts on China and other Catholics, especially retired Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong, long a fierce critic of the deal, who has called it a betrayal and a surrender. Critics say the deal sells out the authority of the papacy in its handing over the task of naming bishops to the Chinese Communist Party, and that it also betrays the underground Church there. Catholics faithful to Rome have had to practice underground for decades and have also been, along with other Christians, the object of heightened religious persecution by the government. In the report from The Australian, also picked up by the Vatican-based Italian news website Il Sismografo, Cardinal Burke said he had no explanation for why Pope Francis had agreed to a deal yielding the Vatican’s power over appointing bishops to the Chinese government — something the Church would never do with other secular leaders. Burke further criticized the claim by Vatican Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo that the Communist Chinese state is exemplary in demonstrating Catholic social justice teaching — calling it “absurd.” Sorondo, head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academies for Sciences and Social Sciences, an Argentinian and close friend of Francis, had said earlier this year that China’s current Communist regime is the “best (at) implementing the social doctrine of the Church,” and he praised China as “extraordinary.” Among China’s myriad human rights violations is forced abortion under its two-child policy. Formerly a one-child policy, it is the government’s method for limiting the numbers of children that families can have. In 2012 alone, some 6.7 million Chinese mothers were forced to abort their children, and the numbers have topped 10 millions in previous years. China is also accused of mass incarceration of minority populations and extracting human organs from prisoners. “That was a totally absurd declaration,” Burke said of Sorondo’s praise for China as a model for Catholic social justice. “Atheistic communism is the antithesis of social justice.” The Australian noted also how “one of the prime movers of the Chinese deal” was Archbishop Theodore McCarrick. The disgraced former cardinal remains at the center of what the Australian news outlet called “a row between Pope Francis and the former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., Carlo Viganò.” Francis has yet to answer charges made via written and released testimony from Viganò beginning in August that the pope and other high-level prelates knew about and covered for McCarrick, an accused serial sexual predator. In a third testimony released Friday, former apostolic nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, stood by his initial testimony and his call for Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, to release documents pertinent to the McCarrick matter. Viganò also said in his latest testimony that the roots of the Church’s sexual abuse crisis originate within homosexuality, and that he came forward about McCarrick out of concern for souls, including his own.
From The National Catholic Register, Blogs Cardinal Sarah’s Synod Intervention: Teach Youth the Faith With Courage, Honesty Edward Pentin | October 22, 2018 “Underestimating the healthy idealism of young people can be a grave disservice to them, since it closes the doors to a true process of growth, ... *** From The Church Militant, theVortex Trump and the Vatican Trump is Rome's public enemy number one. October 23, 2018 | 50 Comments Headlines October 22, 2018 Get briefed on today's top stories with Christine Niles. 11 Comments https://twitter.com/Church_Militant/status/1054389351726096384 LGBT Agenda Hijacks Youth Synod By David Nussman • 85 Comments | October 22, 2018 Archbishop Vigano’s Testimony All His Letters By Church Militant • 8 Comments | October 22, 2018
Cardinal Burke: ‘It Will Be Hard to Vote’ for Next Pope Cardinal Raymond Burke told The Australian Sunday that the Catholic cardinals will have a hard time voting in the next papal conclave because they have had little contact and do not know each other very well. The College of Cardinals is “in a very bad way,” said the 70-year-old Burke, a canon lawyer and the former head of the Vatican’s highest court. Despite the vital role of the college in advising the pope and electing his successor, Pope Francis has not convened a meeting of cardinals for four years, Burke lamented, and therefore many of them do not even know each other. Of the 124 current cardinals eligible to vote in the next papal conclave, 59 were created by Francis and few of those created under earlier pontificates know the newer cardinals and many of the newer cardinals do not know each other, Burke said. “It will be hard to vote,’’ Cardinal Burke said. “We need regular meetings.” Burke said that the cardinals will be at a loss when they eventually meet in conclave, which is significant when a strong church is needed in the world. At the outset of his pontificate, Francis met twice with the college of cardinals — in February 2014 and February 2015 — for two full days each. The meetings took place in the Vatican Synod Hall and provided an opportunity for the pope to hear about issues from around the world. At the consistory of November 2016, however, the pope elected to forgo the traditional meeting with the cardinals, in what was widely interpreted as a move to avoid a confrontation with the four cardinals who had submitted five “dubia” or questions to the pontiff regarding perceived ambiguities in his teaching. Earlier in 2016, the four cardinals — one of whom was Cardinal Burke — had written a letter asking Francis to clarify five serious doctrinal doubts proceeding from his 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) concerning Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried, the indissolubility of marriage, and the proper role of conscience. The Pope chose not to respond to the cardinals’ doubts and many defenders of the pontiff interpreted the questions as a sort of opposition to the pope. Not long afterward, Cardinal Burke said that a response was necessary because different interpretations were being proposed without clarification. The Church “is suffering from a tremendous confusion on at least these five points,” Burke said, that have to do with “irreformable moral principles.” Once again in 2017, Pope Francis skipped the pre-consistory meeting with the college of cardinals for the second time in a row. He has not held one since. https://www.breitbart.com/national-...-burke-it-will-be-hard-to-vote-for-next-pope/
From Carol's listing of latest news above: LGBT Agenda Hijacks Youth Synod By David Nussman • 85 Comments | October 22, 2018 Looks like Trump is attempting to abolish all such divisional nonsense....so guess that will only add to his being the target, again, by the global elitists that now include the group at the Vatican, desperate to add more confusion to the young.
I hope Archbishop Vigano's testimony has stopped some sinister plots. I wanted to post on page 500 of this thread of lamentations for our beloved Church. May each sorrowful step be united with Our Lord for the reparation of our sins and the sins of the whole world.
This is extremly concerning. I believe this pope is preparing the way for the antichrist. 59 of 124 cardinals were selected by Francis. Out of the remaining 65 most support his agenda. Such a set-up!
Shouldn't have made that deal with the devil....the great 501(c)(3).....always comes to ask for payment anyway: D.C. attorney general launches investigation into Catholic Church Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine announced Tuesday he has launched a civil investigation into whether the Archdiocese of Washington violated the law by covering up the sexual abuse of minors. "While we generally don't talk publicly about our confidential enforcement activity, I can report that our office has launched a civil investigation into whether the Archdiocese -- which is a nonprofit institution -- violated the District's Nonprofit Act by potentially covering up allegations of sexual abuse of minors," Racine said in a statement provided to CNN by a representative. "According to the law, nonprofits are required to work for a public purpose; if they are in fact covering up child sex abuse, that is clearly not in the public interest." Racine also announced a new portal for victims of clergy abuse in the district to report their abuse to his office. While the attorney general in Washington does not have jurisdiction over most criminal matters except for some misdemeanors, Racine can investigate potential civil violations. Racine could investigate, for example, whether the Archdiocese of Washington used donations or other funds to cover up the abuse of children, said Rob Marus, a spokesman for Racine. Racine also has jurisdiction to enforce local laws requiring entities to report the abuse of children, the spokesman added. In Washington, clergy are not considered "mandated" reporters of abuse, but Catholic school teachers and other school employees are, Marus said. Separately, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, which has jurisdiction over sex crimes in the district, launched its own hotline for survivors of sexual abuse by clergy. "All reports will be reviewed and a team of experienced criminal investigators, prosecutors, and victim advocates from the Superior Court Division of the US Attorney's Office will determine whether any criminal charges can be brought or victim services provided," the US Attorney's office said Monday. In a statement, the Archdiocese of Washington said its attorneys met with Racine and gave him copies of the annual reports on abuse allegations that it has published every year since 2003. "We had a very productive exchange with the attorney general and his staff," said Kim Viti Fiorentino, chancellor and general counsel for the Archdiocese of Washington. "We explained that the problem of sexual abuse of minors in the archdiocese was a historical one -- that to our knowledge there had not been an incident of abuse of a minor by an archdiocesan clergy member for almost 20 years." Fiorentino added that "there is not now, and has not been for decades, any problem of abuse of minors by clergy of the Archdiocese of Washington. Zero tolerance has been mandated in this archdiocese and zero abuse is the result." But the archdiocese had refused to release a list of clergy credibly accused of abusing minors until last week, just days after Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who has been accused of mishandling cases of clergy misconduct while he was a bishop in Pittsburgh. The Pope, who acknowledged Wuerl's "mistakes" but praised his "nobility" in stepping down, will let the cardinal continue to run the archdiocese until a successor is found. Wuerl's predecessor in Washington, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, was demoted by the Pope this summer and ordered to remain sequestered while the Vatican hears his appeal on charges that he sexually abused an altar boy. McCarrick has maintained his innocence, and now lives in a Nebraska monastery. He is also facing accusations that he sexually abused seminarians in New Jersey before he became archbishop of Washington. Racine's investigation comes just days after reports that federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania have issued subpoenas to the state's eight Catholic dioceses to probe for potential crimes. While the scope of that investigation is still unclear, groups such as the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which first asked the Justice Department to launch a probe in 2003, called it unprecedented. Separately, the Diocese of Buffalo, New York, also received a subpoena regarding clergy sexual abuse in late May, according to a source familiar with the subpoena. In September, the New York attorney general issued civil subpoenas for all eight Catholic dioceses in the state as part of a civil investigation into how the church reviewed and potentially covered up allegations of the sexual abuse of minors, according to a source close to the investigation. New Jersey's attorney general has also said his office would form a task force to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by clergy and any attempted cover-ups. Attorneys general in Missouri and New Mexico said they are also investigating church files for evidence of abuse and cover-ups. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/23/us/dc-catholic-investigation/index.html One would assume that once the Catholic school teachers are brought into the mix, mandating reporting that could have gone missing, that such a spot light would finally begin targeting one of the largest abuse cover-up ever....the public school system.
Though I don't think we are at the time of the antichrist, you bring up an extremely important point. In 5 years this Pope has shaped the College of Cardinals immensely. Given another few years (which is very likely considering his health and age) it could be shaped so much that any turning back of the destruction that has been wrought would seem virtually impossible. The reshaping of the college is perhaps even worse than the rest of the progressive agenda because it will make concrete the changes that are happening to the Church.
An article by Brian Jones in the Catholic World Report: Viganó’s critics and the end of history Presentism and historicism are readily evident in the thinking of far too many Catholics, to the point that the Christian faith has become merely a means to change our social and economic structures. There has been much commentary on Archbishop Carlo Viganó’s recent bombshell letters, including from many who have strongly criticized both Archbishop Viganó’s motives and the contents of his testimonies. My interest here is to draw out a more explicit assumption, or first principle, at work in many of the writings of Vigano’s critics. This is not a critique of Pope Francis, but an attempt to show that those who have sought to undermine Vigano’s account do so by portraying Francis’ papacy through a lens that is imitative of Francis Fukayama’s “End of History” dialectic. Two recent criticisms set the stage for this argument. The first comes from a comment made on Twitter by Villanova professor Massimo Faggioli: I am afraid alt-right figures are using this—Vigano and not only—as an opportunity to destroy the institution in order to gain control of it. Turn bishops against one another. Get the laity to mistrust the leaders and work for their demise (Emphasis mine) A second was given by the English priest James Alison. Alison considers what the Catholic Church can do in light of the recent sex abuse scandals, most especially within the context of Pope Francis’ pontificate. Writing in the Tablet, Alison ponders: What is to be done, and what is quietly happening? In my view the first thing is for the laity to be encouraged in their fast growing majority acceptance of being gay as a normal part of life. This, despite fierce resistance from elements of the clerical closet. Pope Francis’ reported conversation with Juan Carlos Cruz (a gay man abused in his youth by the Chilean priest, Fr Karadima) is a gem in this area: “Look Juan Carlos, the pope loves you this way. God made you like this and he loves you”. This remark led to much spluttering and explaining away from those who realize that the moment you say “God made you like this” then the game is up as regards the “intrinsic evil” of the acts. Nevertheless, it is only when straightforward, and obviously true, Christian messaging like Francis’ becomes normal among the laity themselves that honesty can become the norm among the clergy. (Emphasis added) Faggioli and Alison’s comments (as well as similar remarks given by Jesuit priests Fr. Antonio Spadaro and Fr. James Martin) display an attempt to understand the Francis Pontificate that is remarkably akin to Francis Fukayama’s “End of History” narrative. For Fukayama, the notion of the “end of history” does not mean that history is now over. Rather, the notion refers to “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” In this rationalist account, history is understood as an entity, a Being that has given to the world a totalizing system that can solve the problems of human living in this world. According to the “end of history” dialectic, the various problems associated with living in a modern liberal democracy are not the result of democracy’s own internal problems. Rather, there is a misunderstanding or misapplication. The solution is to have more, not less, democracy. Many of Vigano’s critics seem convinced that the Francis pontificate is analogous to modern liberal democracy. They presuppose that the problems facing the church can never stem from Francis himself. Francis’ actions and words can never be understood as a source of confusion or discord. The rest of the article can be read here: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/10/22/viganos-critics-and-the-end-of-history/ The comments are also worth reading.
Once again, the Gospel reading for today really speaks to our current time. Gospel Luke 12:39-48 © The Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect Jesus said to his disciples: ‘You may be quite sure of this, that if the householder had known at what hour the burglar would come, he would not have let anyone break through the wall of his house. You too must stand ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.’ Peter said, ‘Lord, do you mean this parable for us, or for everyone?’ The Lord replied, ‘What sort of steward, then, is faithful and wise enough for the master to place him over his household to give them their allowance of food at the proper time? Happy that servant if his master’s arrival finds him at this employment. I tell you truly, he will place him over everything he owns. But as for the servant who says to himself, “My master is taking his time coming,” and sets about beating the menservants and the maids, and eating and drinking and getting drunk, his master will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not know. The master will cut him off and send him to the same fate as the unfaithful. The servant who knows what his master wants, but has not even started to carry out those wishes, will receive very many strokes of the lash. The one who did not know, but deserves to be beaten for what he has done, will receive fewer strokes. When a man has had a great deal given him, a great deal will be demanded of him; when a man has had a great deal given him on trust, even more will be expected of him.’ (emphasis is mine)
All good points. But I think this is the way God loves it - He likes to test us - sometimes to the limit! And in greatest despair He comes and rescues the faithful! And all this has been predicted by multiple credible prophetic visions, like Anna Catharina Emmerich: April 22, 1823 “I saw that many pastors allowed themselves to be taken up with ideas that were dangerous to the Church. They were building a great, strange, and extravagant Church. Everyone was to be admitted in it in order to be united and have equal rights: Evangelicals, Catholics sects of every description. Such was to be the new Church…But God had other designs…” “I see that when the Second Coming of Christ approaches, a bad priest will do much harm to the Church. When the time of the reign of Antichrist is near, a false religion will appear which will be opposed to the unity of God and His Church. This will cause the greatest schism the world has ever known. The nearer the time of the end, the more the darkness of Satan will spread on earth, the greater will be the number of the children of corruption, and the number of the just will correspondingly diminish…” “They built a large, singular, extravagant church which was to embrace all creeds with equal rights: Evangelicals, Catholics, and all denominations, a true communion of the unholy with one shepherd and one flock. There was to be a Pope, a salaried Pope, without possessions. All was made ready, many things finished; but, in place of an altar, were only abomination and desolation. Such was the new church to be, and it was for it that he had set fire to the old one; but God designed otherwise….” https://veritas-vincit-internationa...atherine-emmerichs-prophecy-on-the-two-popes/
Yes, but what can they achieve against the will of God? “I saw the fatal consequences of this counterfeit church: I saw it increase; I saw heretics of all kinds flocking to the city. I saw the ever-increasing tepidity of the clergy, the circle of darkness ever widening…” “Again I saw in the midst of these disasters the twelve new Apostles laboring in different countries, unknown to one another, each receiving streams of living water from on high They all did the same work. They know not whence they received their tasks; but as soon as one was finished, another was ready for them…” October 22, 1822 “Very bad times will come when non-Catholics will lead many people astray. A great confusion will result. I saw the battle also. The enemies were far more numerous, but the small army of the faithful cut down whole rows of enemy soldiers. During the battle, the Blessed Virgin stood on a hill, wearing a suit armor. It was a terrible war. At the end, only a few fighters for the just cause survived, but the victory was theirs…” https://veritas-vincit-internationa...atherine-emmerichs-prophecy-on-the-two-popes/
September 12, 1820 “I saw a strange church being built against every rule…No angels were supervising the building operations. In that church, nothing came from high above…There was only division and chaos. It is probably a church of human creation, following the latest fashion, as well as the new heterodox Church of Rome [one world church of the False Prophet], which seems of the same kind…”
Francis-appointed bishop touts women’s ordination: ‘transformation of priesthood’ is underway Dorothy Cummings McLean https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/f...le-priests-would-be-like-new-wine-in-old-wine Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen parracatholic.org CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand, October 23, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – An Australian bishop recently told priests that admitting women to the priesthood in the Church's current state of affairs would be like pouring new wine into old wine skins, but that a "transformation of the priesthood" was underway. Vincent Long Van Nguyen, OFM Cons., Bishop of the Parramatta Diocese of Sydney, Australia gave an address in September to the New Zealand National Assembly of Diocesan Clergy about the current crises rocking the Church. Blaming the clerical abuse crisis on a faulty conception of the priesthood, Long mentioned women’s ordination as a possibility – but only after even more sweeping changes. “... As important as it is to consider the question of women ordained ministry in the Church, it is far worse to persist with structures that fail to convey the message of the Gospel to the deep yearnings of the men and women of today,” he told his audience. “Adding women into the mix in terms of admitting them to ordination might be likened to pouring new wine into old wine skins. For the Church to flourish, it is more crucial that we come to terms with the flaws of clericalism within the very structure of the Church and move beyond its patriarchal matrix,” Long continued. The Bishop praised Pope Francis for unleashing a "new energy" and pouring a "new wine" upon the Church. "Pope Francis has unleashed a new energy, he has poured a new wine which cannot be contained in old wineskins," he said. He added later in his talk that such new wine is leading to a "transformation of the priesthood." I firmly believe that we are on the threshold of renewal and transformation of the priesthood. Like the wedding feast of Cana, the wine of old has served the Church well but it is running out. The old way of being a priest has, likewise, well served the Church we love. But that model of the exalted, separated and elitist priesthood is drawing its last breaths – at least in many parts of the world including Australia. There is a better wine that the good Lord has prepared for us. The new wine of God’s unconditional love, boundless mercy, radical inclusivity and equality needs to be poured into new wineskins of humility, mutuality, compassion and powerlessness. The old wineskins of triumphalism, authoritarianism and supremacy, abetted by clerical power, superiority, and rigidity, are breaking. (continues...)
St. Pope John Paul II reaffirmed in his encyclical Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, however, the doctrine that women can never become priests, a teaching Pope Francis’s own choice for Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith has recently called “infallible”. To put an end to all doubt, John Paul II wrote: “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.” Despite two thousand years of influential Catholic female saints, queens and abbesses, the papal encyclical On the Dignity of Women, the perennial veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the prayerful participation of generations of women, Long believes that women have been excluded from the Church, made invisible in her language, her liturgy, her theology and even her canon law. “So long as we continue to exclude women from the Church’s governance structures, decision making processes, and institutional functions, we deprive ourselves of the richness of our full humanity,” he said. “So long as we continue to make women invisible and inferior in our Church’s language, liturgy, theology and canon law, we impoverish ourselves, as if we saw or we heard, only with one ear, and we saw with only one eye, and we think or we thought with only one half of the brain, and very often it has been proved, it’s been the lowest reptilian section thereof.” The bishop then applied the metaphor of the “reptilian section” of the brain to the men of the Church: “Because it’s..., you know, the reptilian section, the lowest part of the brain that’s responsible for your instinctual behaviour, your survival mode, your desire for control, and you know, you just wonder if this whole culture of rigidity, legalism, triumphalism, has been buttressed by this thinking of the reptilian brain,” he said. In this same speech, Long, who passively supported the establishment of same-sex "marriage" in Australia, called the “spotless bride of Christ” a “blatantly poor image” for the Roman Catholic Church. “The separate, exalted, elitist priesthood is the by-product of the ecclesiology that emphasizes the perfection of the Church; and the Church as a perfect society, or the spotless bride of Christ,” he told the assembled priests. “The most spotless bride of Christ? That's a very blatantly poor image in the light of sexual abuse revelations isn't it? But let's not go down the path talking about spotless brides. So that ecclesiology needs to be consigned to the past.” The source of the doctrine that the Church is the Bride of Christ is the Bible. Christ refers to himself as the Bridegroom, as attested by the evangelists Matthew (9:15), Mark (2:19) and Luke (5:34. John the Baptist refers to Jesus as the Bridegroom in the Gospel of John (3:29). Saint Paul explicitly described the relationship of the Church to Jesus Christ as that of a wife to a husband in his letter to the Ephesians (5:22-33). Paul told the Church in Corinth that he had “espoused” them to Christ (2 Cor. 11: 2-4) and again used a marital analogy to the Church in Rome (Rom 7: 2-4). The image of the heavenly Bride appears several times in Revelations. Speaking as a bishop, Long lectured the priests on a clericalist culture in the Church, which he blames both for the collapse of the post-conciliar Church in Australia and the sex abuse crisis. At no time did he blame a culture of sexual permissiveness, homosexual networks, or even the sin of lust. “We need to break the clerical, or clericalist culture, which is, really responsible for the dearth of the Church, or even the demise of the Church,” he said. “It is becoming increasingly evident, that the clerical sexual abuse crisis is a symptom of a dysfunctional, corrosive, and destructive culture in the Church.” The bishop cited Pope Francis’ recent attacks on “clericalism” and wondered if cardinals and bishops “dressed in their finery” squirm in their seats when the Holy Father talks about it. He indicated that he himself had followed Pope Francis’ lead in simplicity by flying with a budget airline and praised the pontiff unreservedly while expressing dismay that other clerics had broken ranks. In his eagerness to support Francis against his critics, Long even took a cheap shot at Archbishop Viganò, the whistleblowing former nuncio to the U.S. who recently accused Pope Francis of promoting now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick despite knowing of his sexual predation of seminarians and priests. “While Pope Francis was in Ireland, for the world meeting of families, one of his collaborators decided to fire a missile from his bunker in Italy, all the way across the Irish Sea,” Long said. “Who needs enemies with friends like that? Yes, it was the former nuncio to the USA, by the name of Vigano - sounds more like ’vinegar’.” The bishop believes that the sexual abuse crisis means that the image of the priest as a man above and apart is gone forever. Thus Long seemed to indicate that the sexual abuse of minors by priests has a silver lining for him: the end of clericalism “... The myth of the mysterious, heroic, uncontaminated, unblemished “man in black” has been blotted,” he said. “Instead of doctoring the image, of reviving the mythology and mystic of the priesthood of yesterday, can we accept that what has been destroyed is irretrievable?” “The temple and the temple-based priesthood was destroyed in the wake of the Babylonian invasion,” he continued. “There's something akin going on in the world of Catholicism today. Perhaps the end of the whole world will lead to a new era, and the current crisis offers the priesthood a chance to free itself from the manacle of clericalism. The priest is not alone as an exalted figure, exclusively chosen and gifted with something most people don't have.” As an example of this outmoded exalted figure, Bishop Long offered the Cure D’Ars himself: “Ironically, the whole clerical culture is often geared towards individual heroism and male chauvinism. The Cure of Ars, John Vianney, blessed John, he was a hard man wasn't he? He denounced dancing among other things. He is a patron saint par excellence for this kind of priestly individual heroism. No wonder many of us suffer from ministerial burn out, depression, and loneliness,” he said. In place of the Church we’ve known in the past, Long suggests a “journey of conversion” but nothing concrete: “We must abandon the old paradigm of a fortress Church prone to exclusivity and heroism. We must learn to rise, to the Christ-like way of humility, inclusivity, compassion and powerlessness, and that's the way I propose, I postulate. That is the way forward; to go back to that raw canvas of the Gospel my friends: the raw canvas of the Gospel. And relearn the Christ-like way of kenosis, relearn the Christ-like way of humility and vulnerability,” he told his subordinates. Bishop Long has a history of condemning the Church of the past despite the state of the Church today. He also raised eyebrows during the Australian referendum on same-sex "marriage" when he told Catholics both to witness to Church doctrine and be open to "what the Spirit is saying through the signs of the times." “I invite all Catholics in our Diocese to exercise our responsibility as citizens to engage in this community discernment. It should not be a matter of a simple answer Yes or No to the postal survey. It should be an opportunity for us to witness to our deep commitment to the ideal of Christian marriage. But it should also be an opportunity for us to listen to what the Spirit is saying through the signs of the times,” he wrote. (some of the emphasis is mine - SgC)
The BBC reports interesting news from China, the best implementer of Catholic social doctrine. But, hey, come to think of it this man just might be right. In the good ole days of Great Helmsman Mao´s Cultural Revolution they wouldn´t´ve bothered to build large detention centers. The poor Uighurs would just have been slaughtered. ‘China is the best implementer of Catholic social doctrine,’ says Vatican bishop China's hidden camps What's happened to the vanished Uighurs of Xinjiang? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/China_hidden_camps
What are the most common colors we or children use when we paint a picture ? It is is red, green, yellow, blue. And why ? Because those are the main colors we have at our disposal: all the rest is a mixture ! Moreover: you forget the color behind the cross: braun ! (color of the wood). So in total there are 7 colors ! Yeep ! Not 6 ! I think we get a little bit nuts here.... If you wish too, you can see the devil in every detail and that is EXACTLY what he wants you to do : it is the seed to start killing each other with hatred and accusing words....etc. etc. Christians, Christians be aware of what you are saying !
