Francis condemns consumerism but doesn't appear troubled by clerical hedonism

Francis just warned that, "We must pray to the Lord 'to set us free' of that very dangerous evil that is consumerism, which enslaves us, makes us addicted to spending: 'it is a psychiatric disease.'"

Fair enough.  But what of the moral corruption found among so many within the Church's hierarchy?  A corruption which led to so many minors being sexually abused by clerics and to a staggering waste of financial resources - monies donated by good-hearted Catholics who gave freely (rather than spending these monies on material things) so that the Church could be built up she could minister to the poor?

Does this attitude of cover-up and homosexual enabling which led to countless victims and a squandering of vast resources not represent a "psychiatric disease"?

As this NPR article makes clear:

"Sixteen years after an investigation in Boston highlighted the dimensions of the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic priesthood, the financial and reputational cost to the Catholic church continues to grow.

Lawsuits by abuse victims have so far forced dioceses and religious orders in the United States to pay settlements totaling more than $3 billion, and at least 19 have filed for bankruptcy protection."

Yes Francis, excessive consumerism can indeed be an evil.  Perhaps even a psychiatric illness.  But what of hedonism?  Is that a psychiatric illness to your way of thinking?

You want us to believe you're concerned about the poor.  Then perhaps you should clean the filth and corruption from the Church so that those donations which continually come in from hard-working Catholics - many of whom live paycheck to paycheck - donations which very often result in real sacrifice, will no longer be squandered.

Three billion dollars wasted Francis. And you're worried about how many shoes we own?

Physician, heal thyself.

Bishop Robert McElroy's response at a "listening session" highlights the need for a revision of Canon Law

From the San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, during one of his "listening sessions," was asked:

"Would engaging in homosexual acts with another consenting adult end a priest’s career?"

To which the Bishop replied:

“It could. It’s a serious violation of his vow of celibacy...But I am not prepared to say that any single action between consenting adults would mean automatic dismissal."

As this excellent article from CWR explains:

"..it has only been in the last 35 years, since the advent of the 1983 Code, that such “consensual adult relationships” among clergy have not been treated as crimes under canon law!

1917 CIC 2359 § 2 stated:

If [clerics] engage in a delict against the sixth precept of the Decalogue with a minor below the age of sixteen, or engage in adultery, debauchery, bestiality, sodomy, pandering, [or] incest with blood-relatives or affines in the first degree, they are suspended, declared infamous, and are deprived of any office, benefice, dignity, responsibility, if they have such, whatsoever, and in more serious cases, they are to be deposed."

Perhaps it's time to revise the Code of Canon Law once again so that these perverted "consensual adult relationships" may once more be deemed crimes under Church Law?

"The Anti-Church whose centre is malice, error, falsehood, hypocrisy..."

From Francis the False Prophet:

"Championing the cause of the poor, Pope Francis on Sunday lamented that "the wealthy few" enjoy what, "in justice, belongs to all" and said Christians cannot remain indifferent to the growing cries of the exploited and the indigent, including migrants."


What is the "Social Gospel"?

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich was shown this secular humanism which would disguise itself as Christianity:


"...this church was born without a Saviour, good works without faith, the communion of the unbelieving with the appearance but not the reality of virtue; in a word, the anti-Church whose centre is malice, error, falsehood, hypocrisy, tepidity, and the cunning of all the demons of the period... Its mysteries are to have no mysteries and, consequently, its action is temporal, finite, full of pride and presumption, a teacher of evil clothed in specious raiment."

An authentic charity always places God first. We read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that, "Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God" (1822).

Proponents of the Social Gospel attempt to reverse this order. They would have us put man first and God (if at all) after. For some 40 years now Catholics have been subjected to a watered-down Catholicism which seeks to replace many basic truths of the Faith with an emphasis on the temporal. It was Bishop Fulton John Sheen who said that the unrepentant sinner turns to 'social justice" to ease his conscience.

The results? In the words of Stephen Brady, President of Roman Catholic Faithful, "By direct promotion of, or by simply ignoring the use of the birth control pill by the faithful, the corrupt Hierarchy has purchased the souls of millions of Catholics who now live as unrepentant sinners. These compromised Catholics are, for the most part, the ones who are pro-choice, pro-homosexual, and represent the liberal wing of the Church that accept all the sinful innovations that have now found a home in the local parish. This sodomite sexual revolution, aided by the abortifacient pill, has brought on all of society's ills, including unchecked abortion, adultery, fornication, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, divorce, sexually transmitted disease like AIDS, and the complete breakdown of the family. This compromised morality, winked at by the Church Hierarchy, has brought about the corruption of every segment of society. The moral guidepost, known as the Catholic Church, has been so weakened by the current Church leadership, that any true moral guidance offered by a Bishop is now ignored."

We have seen this repeatedly. When a faithful Bishop or other member of the Church's hierarchy speaks out against sin, he almost inevitably receives criticism. Especially from the Main Stream Media. Recall what happened when Cardinal Francis Arinze spoke out against the evils of our day (abortion, contraception, sodomy etc) - all of which are destroying the family - in an address given at Georgetown University.

The Social Gospel is not the true Gospel of Christ. It is a counterfeit which has been constructed to pave the way for the Man of Sin.

Francis, who is silent about the cover-up of sexual abuse, especially with regards to Cardinal McCarrick See here, continues to advance an agenda which is anything but the supernatural faith of Roman Catholicism.  See here.

Pray...Pray!

"The powers of Hell fear the name and protection of Mary."

Men do not fear a powerful hostile army as much as the powers of hell fear the name and protection of Mary.

-St. Bonaventure

“God has established not just one enmity but ‘enmities’, and not only between Mary and Satan but between her race and his race. That is, God has put enmities, antipathies and hatreds between the true children and servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and slaves of the devil. They have no love and no sympathy for each other. The children of Belial, the slaves of Satan, the friends of the world, - for they are all one and the same - have always persecuted and will persecute more than ever in the future those who belong to the Blessed Virgin, just as Cain of old persecuted his brother Abel, and Esau his brother Jacob. These are the types of the wicked and of the just. But the humble Mary will always triumph over Satan, the proud one, and so great will be her victory that she will crush his head, the very seat of his pride. She will unmask his serpent's cunning and expose his wicked plots. She will scatter to the winds his devilish plans and to the end of time will keep her faithful servants safe from his cruel claws.

But Mary's power over the evil spirits will especially shine forth in the latter times, when Satan will lie in wait for her heel, that is, for her humble servants and her poor children whom she will rouse to fight against him. In the eyes of the world they will be little and poor and, like the heel, lowly in the eyes of all, down-trodden and crushed as is the heel by the other parts of the body. But in compensation for this they will be rich in God's graces, which will be abundantly bestowed on them by Mary. They will be great and exalted before God in holiness. They will be superior to all creatures by their great zeal and so strongly will they be supported by divine assistance that, in union with Mary, they will crush the head of Satan with their heel, that is, their humility, and bring victory to Jesus Christ.” (Treatise On True Devotion To The Blessed Virgin, 54).

I have always viewed the sling which David used to slay Goliath as a harbinger, a sort of figure or sign pointing to the Holy Rosary which would be given to the faithful by Our Lady and by which they would “crush the head of Satan” – “the very seat of his pride” as Montfort puts it. We read in 1 Samuel 17:

“With his shield-bearer marching before him, the Philistine also advanced closer and closer to David. When he had sized David up, and seen that he was youthful and ruddy, and handsome in appearance, he held him in contempt. The Philistine said to David, ‘Am I a dog that you come against me with a staff?’ Then the Philistine cursed David by his gods and said to him, ‘Come here to me, and I will leave your flesh for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.’ David answered him: ‘You come against me with sword and spear and scimitar, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel that you have insulted. Today the Lord shall deliver you into my hand; I will strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will leave your corpse and the corpses of the Philistine army for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; thus the whole land shall learn that Israel has a God. All this multitude, too, shall learn that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he shall deliver you into our hands’…David put his hand into the bag and took out a stone, hurled it with the sling, and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone embedded itself in his brow, and he fell prostrate on the ground. Thus David overcame the Philistine with sling and stone..” (1 Samuel 17: 41-47, 49-50).

The Devil is the adversary of faithful Christians. And, like Goliath, he seems to cast a big shadow. But when we approach him on the battlefield [“For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens,” Eph 6:12] we have our own sling as a weapon – the Holy Rosary. And every bead, every Hail Mary prayerfully recited, is hurled as a weapon against the Devil’s head, the seat of his pride. Therefore, Montfort exhorts us, “So arm yourself with the arms of God, with the holy Rosary, and you will crush the devil’s head and stand firm in the face of all his temptations. That is why even a pair of rosary beads is so terrible to the devil, and why the saints have used them to fetter him and drive him from the bodies of those who were possessed.” (The Secret of the Holy Rosary, 85).

Related reading here.

Bishop Thomas Daly: How much more can the People of God put up with?

From The Spokesman Review:

"Light streamed into Bishop Thomas Daly’s office one recent afternoon as he spoke, in sometimes blunt terms, about the widening scandal of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the United States.

'It’s a moral crisis,' Daly said. 'We have degenerate behavior, hypocrisy and now cover-up. My thought is, How much more can the people of God put up with?’ 

As the leader of the Spokane diocese since 2015, Daly has the final say on some investigations into abuse by clergy. He talked to The Spokesman-Review in late October following a wave of headlines about sexual abuse in all ranks of the Roman Catholic Church.

It began anew in June, when allegations emerged that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., had sexually abused minors and adult seminarians over the course of decades. Pope Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation in July. And then in August, the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office released a grand jury report finding that church leaders had covered up the abuse of more than 1,000 people over a 70-year period, prompting investigations in several other states.

Sexual abuse scandals have rocked the church for nearly 17 years. After the Boston Globe exposed a systemic cover-up in that city’s archdiocese in 2002, similar reports emerged across the country and the world, forcing the church to pay billions of dollars in settlements and establish reporting and prevention programs. The Spokane diocese is among those with a history of predator priests – revelations that sent it into bankruptcy in the early 2000s and dogged it for more than a decade.

The diocese has responded to new allegations in the aftermath of the bankruptcy. Last year, for example, Daly sanctioned a retired priest who had been 'credibly accused' of raping an altar boy in Spokane in the 1980s..."

As I warned in the pages of The Wanderer back in 2002, Canon 1040 of the Code of Canon Law states that: "Persons who are affected by a perpetual impediment, which is called an irregularity, or a simple impediment, are prevented from receiving orders."

Irregularities arise either from defect (ex defectu) or from crime (ex delicto).  It seems clear that a homosexual inclination, which the Church teaches is "intrinsically disordered," would constitute an irregularity ex defectu. And, as Father Heribert Jone, O.F.M. Cap., J.C.D. explains: "An irregularity is not a penalty, but a means to safeguard the dignity of the clerical state and office by excluding those who are unqualified for the service of the altar."

In fact, when asked by a Bishop if it is licit to confer priestly ordination to men with manifest homosexual tendencies, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments replied with a letter signed by Jorge Cardinal Medina Estevez which stated that, "Ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood of homosexual men or men with homosexual tendencies is absolutely inadvisable and imprudent and, from the pastoral point of view, very risky. A homosexual person, or one with a homosexual tendency is not, therefore, fit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders."

And we've witnessed this firsthand as homosexual predators have satisfied their perverse appetites by sexually abusing teenage boys.

Bishop Daly has said it well: How much more can the People of God put up with?

Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts: Ingratitude on Veteran's Day

The French preacher Lacordaire once said that the vocation of a soldier is next in dignity to the priesthood, not only because it commissioned him to defend justice on the field of battle and order on the field of peace, but also because it called him to the spirit and intention of sacrifice.

It is the soldier's high calling to the defense of justice and freedom which makes him (or should) so loved.  It was a soldier who first spoke the words recalled by the Church during every Mass at Holy Communion: "Lord, I am not worthy to have Thee come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed." (Mt 8:8).

The Breviary, which priests pray daily, praises Judas Machabeus, who refused to surrender to superior enemy forces and died saying: "Far be it from us to do such a thing as to flee from them.  If our time has come, let us die bravely for our brethren, and leave no cause to question our honor." (1 Macc 9: 10).

A soldier who does his or her duty honorably contributes to the common good and to authentic peace.

Many do not appreciate this.  At Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts, Veteran's Day apparently means next to nothing. Veterans were not included in the Mass intentions or the prayer intentions during Mass.  And this is an old story.

In the Church, those of us who served in the military are often treated as second-class citizens. As Wintery Knight says, "All of the outward facing disciplines within Christianity, such as apologetics, theology, ethics, etc. are de-emphasized, censored or resisted in feminized churches. There is no place for rationality, moral judgments and boundaries, debates and disagreement, confrontations and persuasion, or other manly Christian practices."

I've personally encountered such resistance toward apologetics and spiritualities which are decidely masculine (such as the Ignatian model). I'm convinced that the effeminization which has take place within the Catholic Church in this country is one reason I am not welcome at my own parish and have been, like so many other healthy young men who are not homosexual or crippled by effeminacy, relegated to the trash bin.

What a shame!

Not all Catholic Churches treat veterans with contempt or ignore them altogether.  This Catholic Church is but one of many which does not suffer from ingratitude.

It's time for the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the criminal homosexual network within the Church...

From Lifesite News:

"In October, news broke that, in two instances, the U.S. Justice Department has taken steps pertaining to the Church's abuse crisis. It has now issued a subpoena to multiple dioceses in Pennsylvania to release documents concerned with sex abuse, and it has also now contacted the Diocese of Buffalo (New York) with a similar request. Additionally, the federal government has sent to all U.S. bishops a letter directing them not to destroy any relevant files pertaining to sex abuse.

Several Catholic intellectuals have commented on this development for LifeSiteNews.

The reaction among Catholics to this likely widening of federal investigations into the Church's sex abuse crimes – to include a possible opening of RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigations – is varied, with some welcoming this development and others fearing it. LifeSiteNews reached out to three prominent and learned Catholics – Father Joseph Fessio, S.J, Philip Lawler, and Donna Bethell – asking them for comment. (Parts of the comments were initially used for an article in German, written for the Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost.)

For Father Fessio, the larger problem in addition to the abuse of minors is the homosexual culture which fosters such abuse. He says: “Horrible as the abuse of minors is, the greater problem is the much larger one of which minor abuse is a small subset: Homosexual relations between consenting clerics and seminarians. And that too, is a subset of a pro-homosexual culture whose origins are in the rejection of Humanae Vitae.” For him, the whole “culture of secrecy and cover-up” is an underlying phenomenon."

Catholic author Paul Likoudis, who has served as Editor of The Wanderer, writes: "The nurturing of a homosexual/pedophile network in the Catholic Church in modern times, which parallels similar networks in government, business and education circles, may, some suggest, date back to the late 1920s and early 30s when the 'Cambridge Apostles,' that elite clique of homosexual Marxists under the direction of Anthony Blunt ( and including such notorious spies as Kim Philby), determined to seize control of the major institutions, especially the churches, newspapers, cinema and radio (and, later, television), universities, museums and government cultural agencies.

If this strikes the reader as difficult to believe, all I can plead is that there is a tremendous aount of information that supports the theory. The late John Costello's masterful biography of Anthony Blunt, Mask of Treachery (William and Morrow, Co., 1988) provides copious documentation on how Blunt placed his friends, both Marxists and homosexuals, in some of the most important cultural agencies in the western world, and even gloated how many were totally unqualified for their positions. In addition, there is the Congressional testimony of former Communists in the United States, such as Manning Johnson and Bella Dodd, who told how they encouraged more than a thousand communists or fellow travelers to enter Catholic seminaries in the 1930s. Bella Dodd tesified: 'In the 1930s, we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within,' and the chief tactic devised, once these men came to power, was to label the Church 'of the past' as oppressive, authoritarian, full of prejudices, arrogant and closed to the world.'

If the problem of a homosexual network in the Church is viewed in this larger perspective, one can understand more fully the remarkable role of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin in creating an 'American Church' that has become a trusted ally of all those various social, political and cultural forces promoting sexual libertinism...Bernardin, it must be recalled, at least briefly, was sponsored, tutored and promoted by a number of dubious characters, not only his clerical godfather and mentor, Archbishop Paul Hallinan of Atlanta, who served as a bishop in Bernardin's hometown, Charleston. Bernardin's other 'godfather' was Archbishop (later Cardinal) John Dearden, who would be responsible for the appointment of such notorious pro-homosexual bishops as Detroit Auxiliary Tom Gumbleton, Ken Untener of Saginaw, Joseph Imesch, of Joliet, and Springfield's Daniel Ryan....His closest friend from his South Carolina days, Monsignor Frederick Hopwood, had been accused of abusing hundreds of boys dating back to the early 1950s, when he and Bernardin shared a residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Charleston - where some of the alleged abuse took place....

At the time the Hopwood allegations became public in late December 1993, Bernardin was having trouble on another front. A former seminarian from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Steven Cook, filed a $10 million lawsuit against Bernardin and Cincinnati priest Ellis Harsham. The suit accused Harsham, when he was a priest at St. Gregory seminary in Cincinnati in the mid-19702, of numerous coercive sexual acts against him, and then delivering him to Bernardin, then Archbishop of Cincinnati, for the same purposes.

Several months later, however, in February 1994, Cook dropped Bernardin from the suit, saying he couldn't trust his memory. Cook never retracted his charges; nor did he say they were inaccurate - contrary to the accepted party line that Bernardin had been exonerated, which persists to this day. Four months later, Cook's suit against Harsham was conveniently - at least for Bernardin - settled out of court...

While Bernardin went on to have a very public (and filmed) reconciliation with Cook, showing the world what a generous man he was in forgiving a man who had accused him of sexual crimes, Bernardin's lawyers were involved in hushing up another case in which seminarians in Winona, Minnesota, had accused Bernardin and three other Bishops of participating in sexual/satanic rituals at the seminary. Among the facts that the plaintiffs in that case marshaled for their suit: Bernardin was frequently accompanied by Steven Cook.." ( Paul Likoudis, Amchurch Comes Out, pp. 136-139).

It is time for the U.S. Justice Department to step in.  The powerful homosexual network within the Catholic Church here in the United States needs to be stopped.  This network will continue to foster the sexual abuse of minors while doing everything in its power to cover-up these crimes.

The U.S. Bishops have had more than 16 years since the abuse crisis exploded into the open in 2002.  They have demonstrated that they are unwilling to address the problem of  homosexuality and a homosexual criminal network.

This is where the Justice Department comes in.

Clergy sexual abuse and homosexuality...

See here.

The problem of homosexual priests needs to be addressed.  See here.

Father James Martin and homosexual narcissism...

Lifesite News reports:

"America magazine has sent out a mass mailing containing a prayer composed by its “editor-at large,” LGBT activist Fr. James Martin, which captures so well the narcissistic pseudo-spirituality that sadly is plaguing so many among Catholic clergy today.

The prayer, taken from Martin’s homosexualist book “Building a Bridge,” reads like one that could have been composed by the Saturday Night Live Character, “Stuart Smalley,” who famously stared at a mirror and said to himself, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”

The title of Martin’s “Stuart Smalley prayer” is “A Prayer for When I Feel Rejected,” which feeds Martin’s narrative about the Catholic Church “rejecting” practicing homosexuals, rather than “welcoming them,” when it condemns the sin of sodomy. Martin claims that homosexual orientation is given to people by God, says that the Church’s condemnation of homosexual behavior isn’t “authoritative,” and advocates eliminating expressions of Catholic doctrine on the intrinsically disordered nature of homosexual attraction."

___________________

In the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Letter to Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, Cardinal Ratzinger summarized the biblical teaching on homosexuality and explained why the Church's teaching on this subject follows necessarily from her teaching on the nature and purpose of sexuality:

"The Church, obedient to the Lord who founded her and gave to her the sacramental life, celebrates the divine plan of the loving and life-giving union of men and women in the Sacrament of Marriage. It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally. To choose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent. As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one's own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood."

Homosexual activity is both self-indulgent and narcissistic. Gianfrancesco Zuanazzi, Professor of Psychology and Psychopathology for the John Paul II Institute for Studies at the Pontifical Lateran University, explains that, "The homosexual condition is difficult, sometimes tragic, and not only because of the obstacles it can still encounter in society and the injustices of which it can be the victim, but also because of its narcissistic quality. This quality is expressed in the continual attempts at 'self-recovery' and in searching for the 'better self' or the 'missing self' in another person. The homosexual approach is really one of identification and possession. According to Miller, it is easier for two homosexuals to regard each other as narcissistic extensions of themselves than to be involved in a mutual exchange. Socarides says without hesitation that in a homosexual relationship each partner plays his role, ignoring the complementarity of a sexual union, as if the act were consummated in "splendid isolation" from the other individual, simply as a stratagem for portraying a one-sided emotional conflict. Every homosexual encounter is primarily concerned with disarming the partner by means of seduction, prayer, power, prestige, effeminacy or masculinity, in order to derive satisfaction then from the loser.

Homosexual, like heterosexual, relationships exhibit forms of uplifting tenderness or mere genital expression, but whatever the approach, it always seems that the subjects use each other to fulfil themselves and, at the same time, to defend themselves from one another in a reciprocal way. Even if at the present time, dominated by the fear of AIDS, a couple's relations are not exceptional, as a rule they are unstable, unfaithful, strewn with jealousy and bitterness, marked by possessive love and demands that will never be satisfied. Very often homosexual relationships do not bind the two parties, but reveal that typical self-isolation which is an expression of complete autoerotism. The absence of complementarity, which stems from the radical difference between masculine and feminine identification, prevents the genuine dynamic of a couple. 'There is always something false", Marcel Eck notes, "and deeply painful in these loves which cannot experience reciprocity'. The problem of being, the title of a work by Jean Cocteau, who wrote from direct experience, is precisely the problem of being together.

Hans Giese rightly stresses that the 'foreground' of the homosexual syndrome comes from 'clinging to the self'. The move towards the other is not completed, while the move towards one's own sex is shorter, less costly, simpler; but, since one fears the risk of failure, to take this step involves a new risk, that of egotism. Bergler also maintains that the dominant note is always emotional detachment from the other and the focusing of interest on mere sexual gratification. Kardiner notes that the majority of these experiences are due to casual encounters and are 'one-night stands', i.e., the essential element is the value the experience has for the imagination and not the lasting human relationship. This easily leads to the desire for arousal for its own sake, to repetition and finally to anonymity, the discovery of the other not being worth the effort. Then the body is truly reduced to something corporeal: Pier Paolo Pasolini's posthumous work Petrolio exemplifies this eventuality as amply as it does monotonously. In short, for the homosexual there is the proximate danger of failing into such anonymous, repetitive and ever more demanding sexual behaviour that it becomes a kind of addiction. But this promiscuity or 'tricking', which is so frequent in the gay world, is sometimes praised by those involved as the best of relationships."

And Francis has made Martin an adviser to the Vatican.  But then, narcissism has crept into the Vatican under Francis.