The Pope is quite good at apologies, except for things he has done personally. He will also apologize on behalf of all Catholics for things that never occurred, like the completely fictitious mass graves at Indian schools run by the Church for the Canadian government in Canada. Think about this. Unless the Pope is a complete idiot, and PopeWatch does not entirely reject that possibility out of hand, he must know that this is a fake charge. He decides to go along with it, to get good media coverage for himself. That is the action of a very bad man, let alone a man who is Pope. Heckuva job Conclave of 2013, heckuva job.
I wondered why he doesn’t go back to his homeland. He has allowed abuse and atrocities there that are very real and very current.
They say you can’t defame the dead. Yet, God is the God of the living. Bergoglio defamed all the religious of that era who dedicated themselves “to the least of these”. Truly, he is an evil man. Come Holy Spirit with your winnowing fan, come!
These people went to remote areas without amenities and devoted their work life to teaching people from an innumerate and pre-literate culture how to read, write, and sum and how to speak to the other 99% of those living in Canada. They also taught them about Christ. They weren’t people incapable of sin and they weren’t people who made absolutely optimal decisions about how to fulfill their mission. Trashing them is just another act of betrayal by this ‘pope’, and just another aspect of his war on the Church as it was prior to 1962.
Next up -a trip to Ireland to apologize to the Druids.
I have always been skeptical of all these self serving apologies by our leaders in all spheres. For the most part the victims are dead, the person doing the apology is not the perpetrator and the people who are listening to the apology get nothing from it. Better to insure an accurate reporting of history (not a certainty these days) and let the facts speak for themselves.
[…] & the Catholic Church Today, Dcn. Harold Burke-Sivers, Podcast – The Catholic Gentleman A Very Bad Man – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at The American Catholic Field Trip: And God Walked With Us […]
Continued destruction of the Faith and continuing scandal. To ‘confirm’ this hoax, this lie, an elderly man in a wheelchair travels across the world to again shame the Church and the holy ones who evangelized America.
[…] WHEN IS THE HOLINESS GOING TO GO APOLOGIZE TO ARGENTINA […]
We are living through three mass murders (2020-22). Millions have died in each. Denial of early treatment (zinc, C, D3, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine), death by Remdesivir (et al.) and ventilator, and the killing, maiming, abortifacient Clot Shot. (It is as effective as RU-486–which makes the jab the first “papally”-approved abortifacient.) Only Abp. Carlo Maria Viganò has condemned the murders. The “pope” and 100% of the other bishops have maintained silence about the genocide–when they weren’t coercing their priests, seminarians, hospital workers, and schoolchildren to be injected.
Why so little public outcry? Perhaps virtually no one is left who even expects Catholic bishops to speak up in the face of monstrous crimes.
Why so little public outcry?
Because most people regard such discussion with more skepticism than you do.
Francis is (currently) the world’s leading proponent of the old, pagan, Babylonian Mystery Religion (The Modern, Green Movement) which is the antithesis of authentic Christianity. Something is obviously, very wrong, here!
Pachymamas in a Roman church who would have ever thunk it.
He said, “hagan lio”. He did and does just that.
General question for the group: It seems odd to me that the word “apology” used to have a different meaning, a positive one. Ditto “confession”. I was just commenting about the change in words for what we today call a recession, and it got me thinking. I don’t know if there was an old word for the public admission of guilt. Is that possible? Is there some Greek, Latin, or Hebrew word that conveys the idea?
How about penitence?
https://www.etymonline.com/word/penitence
That might be the answer. Thanks, CAG.
Oh, and “repentance” has the same root.
Penitents in their black robes and hoods participate in religious processions such as those on Good Friday. After Thomas a Becket was murdered King Henry II was ordered to do public penance. Still waiting for Mr. McCarrick to apologize in public. Such action would be closure for his victims. Cupich, Wuerl, Gregory and many others were protogees of McCarrick.
“Pachymamas in a Roman church who would have ever thunk it.” People worship gods like paccamama because they need God and they are seduced by ignorance. Their hearts and minds are smutted over by the smoke of Satan. So, they offer themselves up to the corruptible.
“Cupich, Wuerl, Gregory and many others were protogees of McCarrick.” Theodore did not live up to his name.
“Still waiting for Mr. McCarrick to apologize in public. Such action would be closure for his victims. “
I’m still waiting for an apology from the former Benedict XVI for not suppressing that cult masquerading as a religious order, the Legionaries of Christ that was founded by a drug addict, plagiarist, embezzler, bigamist, and the worst known clerical sexual predator in the Church, Marcial Maciel.
To be sure, McCarrick is a monster. But he’s a saint compared to Maciel. Unlike McCarrick, who was seen as a squishy moderate at best, Maciel had a Svengali-like influence in orthodox Catholic circles and was close to John Paul II. I guess that explains why there is scant outrage from popular orthodox Catholics about Maciel in comparison to McCarrick.
Wasn’t Maciel allowed to retire comfortably to some religious house in sunny Florida? And whatever happened with the McCarrick trial? That was supposed to be last October, wasn’t it?
Nothing says prayer and penance like sunny Florida.
I guess that explains why there is scant outrage from popular orthodox Catholics about Maciel in comparison to McCarrick.
Maciel was removed from public ministry in May of 2006. He died about a year and a half later.
Nothing says prayer and penance like sunny Florida.
People live quite ordinary lives in Florida, which can include prayer and penance (though by many accounts he was defiant to the end).
“Maciel was removed from public ministry in May of 2006. He died about a year and a half later.“
What does this have to do with anything I said?
What does this have to do with anything I said?
The complaint about McCarrick is that he had been put under an interdict by Benedict and then called out of retirement by Francis, to be put away only when the optics demanded it. The account of who knew what when has incorporated considerable dissembling by Francis et al.
The complaint about the handling of Maciel is that the Holy See operates at a glacial pace and that John Paul was readily gulled by Maciel, as many people were, among them Richard John Neuhaus. That’s a subject of dismay, not outrage. When Benedict had the opportunity to act, he removed Maciel from ministry. The man did not last long after that.
Interesting brain squeezer about Maciel is that the set of complaints about him sound like they were compiled about two or three different people. The top items on the bill of particulars at the end of his life concern fathering illegitimate children by several different women. Jason Berry twenty years ago was painting a portrait of him as a homosexual whose youthful effeminacy disgusted people.
A different complaint is that the order was not dissolved by Benedict and it’s priests and religious incardinated elsewhere. Steve Skojec has maintained for years that its lay affiliate, Regnum Christi, was a collecting pool of sinister and manipulative characters you don’t want to know. IIRC, he had some personal experience of them ca. 1998.
Good friend from a large Catholic family has a brother who was a priest in Maciel order. He left the order and chose to be laicized. Now middle aged he is still dealing with PTSD of it.. Don’t know if he went to minor seminary. Some of those have been hot beds, pun intended, of minor molestation.
Yes, the Vatican handled it poorly, no make that disgracefuly. McCarrick groomed seminarians. Had a beach house on the Jersey or New York shore to host like minded priests. Also there was an underground railroad of sorts where young men with homosexual leanings were sent up from west coast S. America to a seminary in New Jersey. The problem with McCarrick was that most of his victims were not minors so civil authorities were not inclined to prosecute.
Maciel was a classic cult leader. He demanded obedience to such an extent that his followers had no means of voicing any concerns. He targeted the rich and the powerful. There was no line he wouldn’t cross, because he wasn’t a churchman gone wrong, he was a man without principles.
He attracted a lot of good priests and laymen. I guess there’s a question whether he fostered genuine vocations. I’ve heard a few stories of laicizations. Did he appeal to people who should have been priests but then didn’t recover from the scandal? Or did he mold well-intentioned people into identical priests and lay religious, who have gone on to realize that they shouldn’t have been?
Since McCarrick ignored Benedict’s restrictions with impunity, it wasn’t really an interdict in any meaningful sense.
But none of this has anything to do with why the Legionaries should have been suppressed. In addition to Maciel raping countless boys, fleecing donors of millions, he created a cult where the entire leadership were monsters. Suppressing such an outfit is a no brainer.
There had been Vatican investigations on Maciel going all the way back to 1943. He was suspended in the mid 1950s by Pius XII. But was mysteriously reinstated around the time Pius died with no evidence the pope approved it.
Ratzinger supposedly wanted to basically reopen those investigations but was stymied by Cdl Sodano. But Ratzinger was supposedly John Paul II’s most trusted cardinal. You would think he would have pleaded his case to JPII with all his powers of persuasion to get to bottom if anything to clear Maciel. The story goes he finally broke ranks shortly before the pope died. In the end, evidence of Maciel being the worst known sexual predator in the history of the Church, it resulted in what amounted to a love tap on the wrist. If I recall correctly, Benedict refused to meet with Maciel’s victims, while meeting with other sex abuse victims.
As to Neuhaus, what a pathetic piece of work he turned out to be! He didn’t even have the decency to apologize to the victims of Maciel, whose accusations Neuhaus described as “scurrilous”. He hides behind the “I was acting in good faith.” excuse. Basic human decency would demand that Neuhaus and others who made those accusations toward Maciel’s victims apologize, given that characterization of legitimate claims of abuse being falsely characterized as “scurrilous” further compounds the harm done to victims even if made in good faith. But it turns out Fr. Neuhaus really wasn’t acting in good faith since he could have easily contacted Gerald Renner and Jason Berry, who broke the story in the Hartford Courant. They would have gladly put him in touch with Maciel’s victims where could have interviewed them and even cross examined them. But didn’t bother. But yet, he leveled serious accusations in the public sphere against Renner and Berry as well as Maciel’s victims. An exchange between Berry and Neuhaus in The Atlantic (yes, I know The Atlantic is a leftist rag), gives an insight as to how unwilling Neuhaus was to take any responsibility for what he said.
https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/02/neuhaus-and-maciel-for-the-record/205646/
Cardinal Ratzinger’s unconvincing Sgt. Schultz imitation when confronted by Brian Ross of ABC quickly evaporates in anger.
https://youtu.be/OlO5xYz0-Ko
A few documentaries about Maciel
https://youtu.be/cpSh9e0Tb9E
https://youtu.be/qxEdVXNj8sA
https://youtu.be/QcBx0TMMIfE
Suppressing such an outfit is a no brainer.
Yes!
Cardinal Ratzinger’s unconvincing Sgt. Schultz imitation when confronted by Brian Ross of ABC quickly evaporates in anger.
He declined to answer the question and was mildly irritated with the man. You can do better.
As to Neuhaus, what a pathetic piece of work he turned out to be! He didn’t even have the decency to apologize to the victims of Maciel, whose accusations Neuhaus described as “scurrilous”.
Precisely to whom do your fancy Fr. Neuhaus should have apologized?
To whom should Neuhaus have apologized?
To Maciel’s victims in general. Also, to the individual victims who came forward publicly, there’s Juan Vaca, Jose Barba, and Arturo Jurado to name a few.
Ratzinger became upset when he saw Ross wasn’t buying his bullshit attempt in claiming he was “not so informed.”
I think Neuhaus should also have apologized to both Renner and Berry.