Argentine Bishop close to Francis took nude selfies and exhibited obscene behavior...

The Associated Press is reporting that:


"The Vatican received information in 2015 and 2017 that an Argentine bishop close to Pope Francis had taken naked selfies, exhibited 'obscene' behavior and had been accused of misconduct with seminarians, his former vicar general told The Associated Press, undermining Vatican claims that allegations of sexual abuse were only made a few months ago.

Francis accepted Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta’s* resignation in August 2017, after priests in the remote northern Argentine diocese of Oran complained about his authoritarian rule and a former vicar, seminary rector and another prelate provided reports to the Vatican alleging abuses of power, inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment of adult seminarians, said the former vicar, the Rev. Juan Jose Manzano.



The scandal over Zanchetta, 54, is the latest to implicate Francis as he and the Catholic hierarchy as a whole face an unprecedented crisis of confidence over their mishandling of cases of clergy sexual abuse of minors and misconduct with adults. Francis has summoned church leaders to a summit next month to chart the course forward for the universal church, but his own actions in individual cases are increasingly in the spotlight.

The pope’s decision to allow Zanchetta to resign quietly, and then promote him to a new No. 2 position in one of the Vatican’s most sensitive offices, has raised questions again about whether Francis turned a blind eye to the misconduct of his allies or dismissed allegations against them as ideological attacks..."

______________________________



In his book entitled On Heaven and Earth, published in 2010, Pope Francis, speaking about homosexual sex, wrote: "If there's a private union, then third parties and society aren't affected."  And some argue that he is in full continuity with Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

Really?

Pope Francis should understand that at the root of all social injustice is personal sin.  When people deny God and objective moral limits, they have a tendency to become selfish and to regard others as mere instruments to their own ends.  The teaching magisterium explains: "Having become his own centre, sinful man tends to assert himself and to satisfy his desire for the infinite by the use of things: wealth, power and pleasure, despising other people and robbing them unjustly and treating them as objects or instruments.  Thus he makes his own contribution to the creation of those very structures of exploitation and slavery which he claims to condemn." (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, No. 42).

Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, No. 36, says further, "If the present situation can be attributed to difficulties of various kinds, it is not out of place to speak of 'structures of sin,' which....are rooted in personal sin, and thus always linked to the concrete acts of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them and make them difficult to remove.  And thus they grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins, and so influence people's behavior."

Third parties and society are not affected by homosexual unions?  Really?

In No. 36 of Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Pope John Paul II continues: "The God who is rich in mercy, the Redeemer of man, the Lord and giver of life, requires from people clear-cut attitudes which express themselves also in actions or omissions toward one's neighbor.  We have here a reference to the 'second tablet' of the Ten Commandments (cf. Exodus 20: 12-17; Deuteronomy 5: 16-21).  Not to observe these is to offend God and hurt one's neighbor, and to introduce into the world influences and obstacles which go far beyond the actions and the brief lifespan of an individual."

Pope John Paul II developed this theme in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, No. 16, saying that, "Whenever the Church speaks of situations of sin, or when she condemns as social sins certain situations or the collective behavior of certain social groups, big or small, or even of whole nations and blocs of nations, she knows and she proclaims that such cases of social sin are the result of the accumulation of and concentration of many personal sins.  It is a case of the very personal sins of those who cause or support evil or who exploit it; of those who are in a position to avoid, eliminate or at least limit certain social evils but who fail to do so out of laziness, fear or the conspiracy of silence, through secret complicity or indifference; of those who take refuge in the supposed impossibility of changing the world, and also of those who sidestep the effort and sacrifice required, producing specious reasons of a higher order.  The real responsibility, then, lies with individuals.  A situation - or likewise an institution, a structure, society itself - is not in itself the subject of moral acts.  Hence a situation cannot in itself be good or bad."

Pray for the Church in crisis.

*  See here

Father Naranjo on Good Friday: Passive Aggressive behavior in service to the Cult of Softness

As this article notes:

"In the seventh century, the Church in Rome adopted the practice of Adoration of the Cross from the Church in Jerusalem, where a fragment of wood believed to be the Lord's cross had been venerated every year on Good Friday since the fourth century. According to tradition, a part of the Holy Cross was discovered by the mother of the emperor Constantine, St. Helen, on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326. A fifth century account describes this service in Jerusalem. A coffer of gold-plated silver containing the wood of the cross was brought forward. The bishop placed the relic on the a table in the chapel of the Crucifixion and the faithful approached it, touching brow and eyes and lips to the wood as the priest said (as every priest has done ever since): 'Behold, the Wood of the Cross'...In kneeling before the crucifix and kissing it we are paying the highest honor to our Lord's cross as the instrument of our salvation. Because the Cross is inseparable from His sacrifice, in reverencing His Cross we, in effect, adore Christ. Thus we affirm: 'We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee because by Thy Holy Cross Thou has Redeemed the World.'"

I was hoping to reverence the Holy Cross today while commemorating Good Friday at Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts.  The priest, Father Peter Naranjo, brought the Cross to the first pew on the right side of the Church, allowing several people to venerate it with a kiss.  He then proceeded to the left side of the Church where he presented the Cross for veneration to those in the first pew, bypassing me.

I'm not surprised at Father Naranjo's hatred.

As this article explains:

"Though the New Evangelization has been a major effort in the Catholic Church for over forty years, it has failed to stem the disastrous losses of the faithful in the U.S. The New Evangelization is faltering: since 2000, 14 million Catholics have left the faith, parish religious education participation of children has dropped by 24%, Catholic school attendance has dropped by 19%, baptisms of infants has dropped by 28%, baptism of adults has dropped by 31% and sacramental Catholic marriages have dropped by 41%. Something is desperately wrong with the Church’s approach to the New Evangelization.

The New Emangelization Project has documented that a key driver of the collapse of Catholicism in the U. S. is a serious and growing Catholic “man-crisis”. One third of baptized Catholic men have left the faith and the majority of those who remain “Catholic” neither know nor practice the faith and are not committed to pass the faith along to their children. Recent research shows that large numbers of young Catholic men are leaving the faith to become “Nones”, men who have no religious affiliation. The growing losses of young Catholic men will have a devastating impact on the U.S. Catholic Church in the coming decades, as older Catholic men pass away and young men fail to remain and marry in the Church, accelerating the devastating losses that have already occurred.

While there are massive cultural forces outside of the Church (e.g. secularism, pluralism, anti-Christian bias, radical feminism, pornography, media saturation, etc.) and missteps within the Church (e.g. failure to make men a priority, sex abuse scandals, homosexuality in the priesthood, etc.) that have contributed to the Catholic “man-crisis”, the New Emangelization Project has conducted dozens of interviews with top Catholic men’s evangelists[4] that suggest that a core reason for the “man-crisis” is that bishops and priests have not yet made the evangelization and catechesis of men a clear priority. Men are being ignored by the Church."

Addicted to homosexuality and effeminism, the Cult of Softness has a deep and abiding hatred of real men and anything even remotely resembling masculinity.  I've addressed this truth often at this Blog.  Which is no doubt why Naranjo is filled with hatred toward me.

From Facebook.

The fraudulent banner of "pluralism"...

Life Site reports:



"Freedom doesn’t need reassignment surgery. But the scalpel is out. The anesthesia has been administered.

Tragically, most are asleep.

Overnight, we are witnessing the most radical (and destructive) transformation in America’s legal and cultural landscape than we’ve ever seen before. President Obama has long declared his intentions of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America”. No one realized he meant the change would be of a sexual nature.

We’ve gone from “no one should have a say what goes on in the privacy of someone’s bedroom” to forced conformation through the loss of your job or business, the imposing of steep fines or even the threat of prison. Bow to the rainbow god of LGBTQXYZ activism or you will be assimilated. I thought the Borg were some Star Trek fiction. But it’s the Obama administration and its fascist efforts to silence opposition and demand allegiance to the flag of the united states of LGBT fascism.

The recently fired baseball hall-of-famer, Curt Schilling, should have known better than to think free speech applied to him, personally. He dared to post a meme about transgenderism (not my style at all, but the First Amendment is more important than my own personal messaging preference). Silly conservative. It only applies to the Left as they parade their absolute intolerance through mainstream media, Hollywood, academia, public education, courts of law and now—aggressively—through the Department of (In)Justice.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch invoked Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX (as added in the 1972 Educational Amendments to the civil rights bill) in a press conference on C-SPAN attacking North Carolina’s recent House Bill 2, or HB2. She declared that these federal statutes were meant to cover “gender identity” issues because they bar discrimination based on “sex” (although the laws never mention this newly conjured up “gender identity”). Well, if that’s the case, then scholarship-stealing former NAACP chapter president Rachel Dolezal is covered by “race identity”, too. Why can’t white people, who thinks they’re black, apply for any black minority-based scholarship? Who are we to prevent their delusion…I mean, equality?

Lynch, who is adamantly pro-abortion, mentioned how the DOJ is concerned about discrimination against any American. Oh, but not those in the womb. Over 1 million a year have a lack of access to Life, but let’s pretend that the real injustice is the faux LGBT lack-of-access to bathrooms. Never mind that the nation’s largest abortion chain has been caught on video and in documented evidence illegally selling aborted baby body parts for profit. Lynch wasn’t moved, as the nation’s top attorney, to act. But within weeks of #HB2 becoming law, the Civil Rights division of the DOJ moved with lightning speed to protect the “equal rights” of 0.1% of the population.

Lynch says that North Carolina’s common sense #HB2 “presents the problem that does not exist.” We haven’t yet legalized men (whether transgender or not, because those bathroom bills don’t require any proof of such “status") going into girls’ bathrooms and changing rooms on a nationwide scale. Of course, we’ve never seen any articles of men secretly videoing or photographing women in bathrooms or similar facilities. Lynch says “North Carolina’s HB2 is based on distinction without a difference.” Really? No difference? Our sexual anatomy’s the same?

Lynch, like the rest of so-called progressives, compared the “transgender” issue with the struggle for dignity and justice of American blacks. Comparing something that esteemed medical professionals like Dr. Paul McHugh (former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital) and others call a “mental disorder” is nothing like the irrefutable innate characteristic of skin color. Of course, the deluded NAACP’s leadership agrees that opposing men using women’s bathrooms (or vice versa) is akin to racist support of Jim Crow laws. This, from the organization that recently forgot the actual wording of the First Amendment and sued me (and The Radiance Foundation) for exercising my right to free speech. I accurately called the far-left, pro-abortion organization the “National Association for the Abortion of Colored People” in several of my articles. Thankfully, Alliance Defending Freedom defended my actual civil rights. The NAACP was crushed in court and smacked down by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for trying to “censor speech it didn’t like.”

Here’s the thing. If we take this twisted liberal “logic” to its illogical conclusion by eradicating gender distinctions, it’s biological women (as if the term “women” needs a qualifier) who will always be harmed the most. Since LGBT activists are hell-bent on pretending that biological binary sex is just a figment of our imagination, let’s just do away with all gender-divided sports, for instance. Men should now be able to play in all women’s sports. Well, actually, there should be no women’s sports—just sports. Gee, I wonder which “gender” will dominate those records? Science has shown repeatedly that even among the most elite of professional athletes, there is a huge gap in performance as evidenced by the 10%-25% difference in world records between men and women.
This isn’t sexism. It’s realism. My wife and I are equal, but we’re not the same. She has a womb. I don’t. And I’m perfectly ok with that. She bore three of our four amazing children. She wins the Trophy of Strength Award for that category, all the way! We’re different, and no amount of political BS (bogus stuff) will change that.

But Obama’s administration is desperately trying to force this nation into having reassignment surgery. Forget the Constitution. Fundamentally transforming America requires ignoring the very thing that makes the United States great. Law. Order. And a rich cultural heritage of Religious Freedom that “hold these truths to be self-evident”.

Apparently, common sense is not evident to this current President and those who work in our Executive Branch. Flagrantly disregarding the fact that they’re not in the legislative branch of government, they act like dictators, twisting the law to suit their gender-confused agenda.
This is no time to sleep, fellow Americans. The surgery is in progress, and it just might be irreversible. This isn’t about loving anyone you want, tolerance, or equality. Love illuminates the truth and lifts people out of their circumstances. Tolerance keeps people where they are and pretends there are no circumstances. (If you think that a perfectly healthy part of your anatomy needs to be cut off, there are definitely some circumstances.) And equality is too precious to have it distorted and defined by those who do all they can to suppress the truth."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Back in June of 2005 I posted the following here at La Salette Journey:


Those who are promoting the homosexual agenda are using time-proven tactics which have been employed by secular humanists for some time now. In the words of Ralph Martin, 'First, a plea is issued for a dominantly Christian society to 'tolerate' what appears to be a deviant behavior. Then pressure is applied to place the deviant behavior on an equal footing with traditional Christian values. Secular humanists argue that a pluralist society cannot do otherwise. They then try to make the deviant behavior seem normal and behavior governed by Christian values seem abnormal - a threat to a pluralist society. The last step is often to use the legal system to protect immorality and to undermine what Christians have always considered righteous behavior.' (A Crisis of Truth, pp. 101-102).


Professor James Hitchcock, in his excellent work entitled 'Catholicism and Modernity' (New York:Seabury Press, 1979, p. 86), explains the role of the media in this entire process: 'The media's alleged commitment to 'pluralism' is at base a kind of hoax. The banner of pluralism is raised in order to win toleration for new ideas as yet unacceptable to the majority. Once toleration has been achieved, public opinion is systematically manipulated first to enforce a status of equality between the old and the new, then to assert the superiority of the new over the old. A final stage is often the total discrediting, even sometimes the banning, of what had previously been orthodox.'

Was I exaggerating?  Cardinal Raymond Burke told the Catholic News Agency, back in 2011, that he could envision a time when the Catholic Church in the United States "even by announcing her own teaching" will be accused of "engaging in illegal activity, for instance, in its teaching on human sexuality."  When asked if he could even see American Catholics being arrested for their faith he replied, "I can see it happening, yes."  See here.

That time is now.  The persecution will now intensify.  Soon, when the Man of Sin reveals himself, that persecution will gradually sharpen until it erupts into full-scale violence and murder.


Related reading here.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan: Sinful clergy behavior one of the main reasons for defections from the Church

In an article published in The Christian Post, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan is quoted as having said that, said that "sinful" clergy behavior is one of the main reasons people are leaving Roman Catholicism and called on believers to hold on to the Church despite its flaws, during a speaking engagement in Milwaukee, Wis., on Thursday.

The Cardinal said that, "It's not a bad idea to fess up to the sinful side of the church...In her human side, the church can be imperfect, sloppy and corrupt. We admit her flaws, but we love her all the more because she is Christ on the cross."  See here:

http://www.christianpost.com/news/cardinal-dolan-admits-sinful-clergy-pushing-people-away-from-catholic-church-103942/print.html

In these times of scandal it is critical to remember that the Church remains spotless even when Her members sin. There is absolutely no doubt that the human history of the Church, like all of human history, has its dark pages. But if anyone cares to take an objective look at this history, one must quickly acknowledge that the doctrine of the Church has always implicitly condemned abuses introduced by Her members.


In the words of Dr. Dietrich Von Hildebrand, "There were sinners in the Church yesterday and there are sinners in the Church today. But the Church Herself, in her divine teaching, emerges gloriously unspotted in a history stained by human weaknesses, errors, imperfections, and sins." In the words of the great Cardinal Journet:

"All contradictions are eliminated as soon as we understand that the members of the Church do indeed sin, but they do so by their betraying the Church. The Church is thus not without sinners, but She is without sin. The Church as person is responsible for penance. She is not responsible for sins....The members of the Church themselves - laity, clerics, priests, Bishops, and Popes - who disobey the Church are responsible for their sins, but the Church as person is not responsible...It is forgotten that the Church as person is the Bride of Christ, 'Whom He has purchased with His own blood.'" (Acts 20:28).

There are those priests who wish to assign the blame elsewhere.  During a recent homily given at the 10 AM Mass at Our Lady Immaculate Parish in Athol, Massachusetts, Fr. Krzysztof Korcz noted how churches are emptying and closing everywhere and laid the blame almost entirely on parents for not imparting Gospel values to their children.

This does not square with the words of Our Lady to Father Stefano Gobbi.  The humble Italian priest, who received interior locutions from the Mother of God, was told that, "The cause of such a vast diffusion of errors and of this great apostasy rests with unfaithful pastors. They remain silent when they should speak with courage to condemn error and to defend the truth. They do not intervene when they should be unmasking the rapacious wolves who, hidden beneath the clothing of lambs, have insinuated themselves into the flock of Christ. They are mute dogs who allow their flocks to be torn to pieces...."


Which is why some priests dismiss the messages of Our Lady to Father Gobbi.  The message is not one they want to hear.
To whom much has been given, much will be required (Luke 12:48). How quickly some priests forget this as they attempt to shift the blame for virtually everything that goes wrong in the Church to the laity, and especially parents. This is not, of course, to excuse those parents who have in fact neglected to pass along the faith to their children or who have been poor examples of what it means to be Christian. But we have had more than our share of priests who have failed miserably to sanctify others and to provide a model of holiness.

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., whom many consider to have been one of the finest theologians of the 20th century, a Dominican who was a master of the spiritual life, explains in his book "The Priest In Union With Christ, that "St. Thomas writes: 'They who belong to the divine ministry assume a royal dignity and ought to be perfect in virtue' (cf. IV Sent., dist. 24, q. 2); this is also repeated in the Pontifical (Cf. Suppl. Summae Theol., q. 35, a. 1,2, de Ordine). And thus priestly Ordination is certainly superior to religious profession. This sacramental grace of Holy Orders is a modal reality added to habitual grace, which gives the priest a right to receive all the actual graces he needs for an increasingly holier celebration of the Mass. See the Imitation of Christ, Bk. iv, c. 5: 'Thou art made a priest and art consecrated to celebrate; see now that faithfully and devoutly, in due time, thou offer up the sacrifice to God, and that thou show thyself blameless. Thou hast not lightened thy burden, but art now bound by a stricter bond of discipline and obliged to greater perfection of sanctity. A priest ought to be adorned with all virtues and set the example to others of a good life.'...the priest's special obligation to tend to perfection is confirmed by his duties toward the Mystical Body of Christ. He is called upon to sanctify others by preaching the word and by spiritual direction both inside and outside the confessional." (The Priest In Union With Christ, pp. 54-55).

But many priests today are not preaching the word. They are not instructing the faithful. Many have abandoned prayer. And this has led to a satanic pride which resulted in priests abusing innocent and vulnerable children. We read in Galatians 5: 22-23 that: "..the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity." But as Fr. Lagrange notes, "In contrast to the spirit of God, the spirit of the Devil at first lifts the soul to the heights of pride and then plunges it down into turmoil and despair, just as the Devil himself sinned through pride and is now condemned to an eternity of despair and hatred of God...humility is never encouraged by this spirit, for it gradually distorts the soul's vision to see itself greater than anyone else. Almost unconsciously it makes the prayer of the Pharisee its own: 'O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men...as also this publican" (Luke 18: 11). (The Priest In Union With Christ, pp. 238, 239).

It is this spirit of pride which has infected much of the clergy in our time. And it is pride which goes before a fall. Although the priesthood "has been instituted for the good of men and the communion of the Church" and "The Lord said clearly that concern for his flock was proof of love for him" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1551), so many of the clergy have not shown any concern for Christ's flock. They have not preached the hard truths which the People of God need to hear. One Worcester-area priest was actually encouraging some of his parishioners to remain in a sinful lifestyle while another gave a homily, broadcast over Gardner, Massachusetts radio, actually denigrating Our Lady.

The fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity." But corruption of dogma and the works of the flesh are the work of the evil spirit.

Father Emile "Mike" Boutin of the Boston Archdiocese and the Roman Collar

"Father Angel Mariano, S.J. was arrested about midnight Sept. 21, 1998, in Campbell, Calif., near San Jose when a police officer caught him in a sex act with a 17-year-old student in a parked car. According to police reports, Mariano arranged to meet two teenagers by posing as a 25-year-old woman on an Internet chat room. He wore lipstick and rouge when he met the boys.... Mariano was removed without any explanation. Asked why parishioners at Holy Trinity were not made aware of the reasons for Mariano's departure, [Provincial Father Tom] Smolich said: "Why should they? This is an Internet cruising thing. This is anonymous sex. This doesn't involve people at the parish. It wasn't a priest thing. He wasn't dressed in a collar." [Glenn Bunting, "Lawsuit Ends Silence on Abuse at Jesuit Retreat," Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2002

The Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests, prepared by the Congregation for the Clergy and approved by Pope John Paul II on January 31, 1994, says:

"In a secularized and tendentiously materialistic society, where even
the external signs of sacred and supernatural realities tend to be
disappearing, the necessity is particularly felt that the priest-man
of God, dispenser of His mysteries-should be recognizable in the
sight of the community, even through the clothing he wears, as an
unmistakable sign of his dedication and of his identity as a
recipient of a public ministry. The priest should be recognizable
above all through his behavior, but also through his dressing in a
way that renders immediately perceptible to all the faithful, even to
all men, his identity and his belonging to God and to the Church.

For this reason, the cleric should wear 'suitable clerical clothing,
according to the norms issued by the Episcopal Conference and
according to legitimate local customs.' (Canon 284) This means that
such clothing, when it is not the cassock, should be distinct from
the manner in which laymen dress, and in conformity with the dignity
and sacredness of the ministry.

Apart from entirely exceptional circumstances, the non-use of
clerical clothing on the part of the cleric can manifest a weak sense
of his own identity as a pastor completely dedicated to the service
of the Church (# 66).

Father Emile "Mike" Boutin of the Boston Archdiocese disagrees. In a Blog post entitled "Sitting by the pool in my Roman collar....another myth debunked!," the priest who was just recently arrested and charged with indecent assault and battery, wrote: "Honestly, I don’t wear my Roman collar all that often even when I’m not on vacation. I wear it when I go to wakes or to the hospital to visit the sick or when I’m going to an official Archdiocesan meeting or event, but almost never when I’m in the office, or even when I celebrate Mass on Sunday. Now, I know I’m opening myself up to a whole lot of criticism from a whole bunch of folks, including my bishop, but I find today that sometimes the collar “gets in the way.” It represents a lot of things to a lot of people, and at least some of those things aren’t so helpful…and since there are plenty of priests who wear their collar all the time, I figure they have me covered! Seriously, it seems to me that if they can’t tell I’m a priest from what’s on the inside, what I wear on the outside doesn’t make one bit of difference…I'm getting back to the pool...without my Roman Collar." (August 6, 2009).

Pope John Paul II stressed the importance of clerical dress. In a September 8, 1982 letter to Ugo Cardinal Poletti, his Vicar for the Diocese of Rome, instructing him to promulgate norms concerning the use of the Roman collar and religious habit, the Holy Father observed that clerical dress is valuable "...not only because it contributes to the propriety of the priest in his external behavior or in the exercise of his ministry, but above all because it gives evidence within the ecclesiastical community of the public witness that each priest is held to give of his own identity and special belonging to God."

The propriety of the priest in his external behavior. Reflect on that. How many priests shed the collar to hide their identity in order to engage in behaviors which are hardly Christ-like? Such as "sex games"? This is all the more troubling when the priest argues against celibacy.

Related reading here and here.